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The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation: Including the Demotic Spells: Texts

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According to the introduction to this volume, among other competent sources, one of the more interesting shocks to the delicate sensibilities of nineteenth-century classical scholars was delivered by papyri from Greco-Roman Egypt. The serene and rational "classical" Greeks of their (mainly German) imaginations turned out to be human beings with messy fears, desires, hatreds, and jealousies, and a willingness to turn to magic (ugh!) to obtain their ends. There they were, in Greek, actual "magical papyri" -- spell books, that is, not so much documents purporting to be potent agents in themselves, in the old Egyptian manner of ritually empowered images and paintings.

A common reaction: Let's keep it a secret!

It didn't work. A younger generation of scholars (also mainly, but not entirely, German) began mining the texts for information on daily life (astrological papyri proved more helpful) and religion (more successfully) in late antiquity. Texts scattered in museums and published, if at all, in a variety of journals, had to be assembled and properly edited. Some early efforts were exemplary, some problematic (and some both). It sometimes seemed as if a curse had been laid on the enterprise. Early deaths, the First World War, and economic chaos delayed the publication of a carefully edited volume of collected papyri (Greek passages only). The second volume survived World War II only in proof copies. Meanwhile, more papyri turned up, and the project had to be re-done.

One of the more fortunate results of this delay is the present volume, a careful translation of the Greek papyri containing magic spells, along with the Demotic (late Egyptian in a native "shorthand") and Coptic (late Egyptian in a mostly Greek-derived script) passages in the same manuscripts. A team of scholars worked on the translations, which come with concise introductions and notes. It is based on the arrangement in the earlier text editions (although, frustratingly, it does not come with page-references to the first edition, used in over half a century of scholarly literature).

A second volume, including fuller references, and, above all, indexes, was announced, but so far does not seem to have appeared. This is frustrating, given the number of topics, names, and materials mentioned in just the larger manuscript collections.

As for the work at hand, it is fascinating, if inherently frustrating. We have parts of a library of someone who may have been a working magician, with the habits of a scholar, and actual charms and amulets for a less discriminating clientele. There are instructions on how to pull off party tricks, win (or torment) a lover, or influence important people, as well as protect yourself from the spells of others.

Greek gods mingle with Egyptian deities older than the Pyramids, and Mesopotamian (even Sumerian) Powers make brief appearances. Garbled bits of Jewish and Christian lore are sprinkled throughout. The extent to which any of this represents a real synthesis of religious beliefs (syncretism), or is an unthinking compilation of whatever might give access to power, is a question long debated. I suspect that every instance needs a separate answer, and in most cases we will never have one.

At least four fairly large groups of readers should find the book invaluable.

Those interested in Egypt will welcome a mass of post-Pharaonic material, a lot of it with good parallels from earlier centuries. This has a large and growing bibliography. With some reservations, I would suggest Bob Brier's "Ancient Egyptian Magic" as a place to start, with the bibliography in Betz for additional titles.

For the really serious, David Frankfurter's "Religion in Roman Egypt: Assimilation and Resistance" (1998) will be rewarding, but not as a start. It is available in paperback from Princeton University Press in the MYTHOS series, as is a revised version of Garth Fowden's "The Egyptian Hermes: An Historical Approach to the Late Pagan Mind" (1993; originally 1986), another valuable work intended for relatively advanced students.

Those interested in the gods of Greece will find here much evidence of how they were viewed in popular (rather than elite) culture, and what happened to them when carried abroad by their worshippers. As supplements on these areas, I suggest two far-ranging surveys, Fritz Graf's "Magic in the Ancient World" and Matthew W. Dickie's "Magic and Magicians in the Greco-Roman World." I have some methodological concerns with both, and with what I regard as some serious errors by Dickie (particularly regarding Mesopotamian and Jewish topics), but both display immense learning and intelligence. Graf is easier, and also has some excellent discussions of the Egyptian material to add to Brier, with more bibliography. With a narrower range, but extremely important, is Christopher A. Faraone's "Ancient Greek Love Magic," which deals directly with a whole class of texts translated in Betz et al., and places them in a long cultural context.

Thirdly, students of early Jewish mysticism will at last get ready access to texts which have been used to date "Merkabah" and "Hekhalot" texts (concerning heavenly ascents and visions of the Divine Throne), which survive only in medieval manuscripts. There is a remarkable overlap of "secret names" of God and angels, and some shared ideas of the cosmos, and how to obtain visionary knowledge. The bibliography for this is large, and I have yet to find a good introductory volume; for now, see my review of Rebecca Macy Lesses's "Ritual Practices to Gain Power: Angels, Incantations, and Revelation in Early Jewish Mysticism.""

Finally, the late pagan spells fade off into the Coptic literature of early Christian Egypt, although "Christian Magic" usually has received separate treatments, and is only incidentally represented in this collection. A good place to start (and containing some minor overlaps) is "Ancient Christian Magic: Coptic Texts of Ritual Power" (1994), translations with commentary, edited by Marvin W. Meyer and Richard Smith. The supposed limits of official Christianity, superficially Christianized paganism, fringe Christianity, and Gnosticism, are crossed and recrossed in the texts presented. This too is available, slightly revised, in the Princeton MYTHOS series of trade paperbacks (1999).

As for practicing magicians -- everyone should know that you can't just use someone else's book of spells, you need authorization and personal instruction! And a copy made personally from a manuscript....

(Reposted from my "anonymous" review, originally posted September 9, 2003 )

Of all of the works on Magic in the ancient and modern worlds I have read, this volume ranks among the highest. Readers who are interested in or who practice magic in any way, shape, or form should find this a refreshing break from so-called "New age" and "Neo-pagan" romanticisms. A fantastic sourcebook for the scholar and the practioner (espescially in a market dominated by Celtic and Middle Ages influences), this work presents scores of translated texts with minimal (yet precise) commentary and a fine glossary of the more obscure terms. This book represents a rare glimpse into the magical lives of real people in the Ancient world- which in the end , reveals how distorted, predjudiced and misinformed much of the present day attitudes regarding the subject of Magic and belief systems in the Ancient World can be.

Much has already been said about this phenomenal collection of texts and I would be redundant to merely repeat much of what I find intriguing. However with that said, I have been delving into this phenomenal text since a fellow Evocational Magics practitioner turned me onto it. There's quite a bit of useful information for those who are practitioners of the arts of Summoning Spirits via Evocation.

If you desire to use this collection of texts in this manner, then you will need to make a thorough study of the various texts in this collection. There are specific passages that work very well as incantations for summoning the 72 Spirits listed in the Goetia, the first book of the Lemegeton. Further the rite of the Headless One is included in this text without modification and that too is an excellent addition to the arsenal of the working karcist.

Overall you will find a lot of useful lore and knowledge in this manual. Get it. Study it. Put it into use.

What most people know of ancient Greece is the classics. But behind them, there were the everyday people, the women and the slaves, who had no means of improving their lives. No means but witchcraft. This is a collection of the spells and incantations they used. If you believe in "harm none", you will find this book disturbing. This book reflects the dreams, fears and hopes of desperate people who would try anything, including the use of human corpses of animal sacrifice to get what they needed. But this book also includes some very beautiful hymns and invocation, especially the one addressed to Selene/Artemis. An important book of ancient lore.

The Greek Magical Papyri have had a profound impact on a wide range of historical topics, from esoteric traditions of magic to the shaping of Christianity (see Morton Smith's book "Jesus the Magician"). Hence this work is invaluable for anyone studying the history of religious and magical thought.

I found the translations here to be accessible and to the point, Some of the charms were rather amusing (to have an erection anoint your "thing"---translator's words!---with a mixture of honey and pepper), to fairly well outside what I would consider ethical (large numbers of charms requiring the drowning of animals).

All in all though this is an unappreciated and important work. I would highly recommend it.

A must have for anyone interested in Hermetic magick, this edition of PMG is fantastic, easy to read , very tidy clean work with many useful notes and references. Even if you're not into to the occult this edition of PMG will help you uderstand what religion was for people back then. Great work I really enjoyed reading it.

This book isn't for the casual reader, it is both hard to read as well as understand, if you are looking for a book on witchcraft there are much easier reads and the spells and rituals in this tome are not really going to be possible to recreate without serving time.
As a look into the everyday lives of our ancestors and how they saw magick as an everyday event it is amazing, worth the hard read to see just what the modern world has lost in it's rush to dismiss what we have difficulty in explaining or are to afraid to ask.

No fluff in this book
Anybody thats interested in Greek Magic this book is a must have.

Other reviews have successfully commented on the exhaustive scholarly endeavor that resulted in this book. The book is a rare window into a lost world of the syncretic and eclectic milieu of Hellenized Egypt and the magical paradigm thereof.

The main corpus of the book is broken down into "spells" and various other information that would have been of use to a "magician" of the times. Some entries are beautiful works in their own right, such as PGM IV 2785-2890 "A Prayer to Selene".

Other entries are an unfortunately violent display of the attitude of the times, such as PGM III. 1-164 which suggests drowning a cat and reciting a spell to the "cat faced god" and then shoving a section written parchment up the cat's rectum and another down the deceased cats throat before preceding with the rest of the lengthy (and incomplete) spell. Luckily there are not too many (useless) selections like this that are violent and require sacrificing animals. The entries and "spells" are obviously from a plethora of sources and therefore represent a wide selection of practices of the time. However you should know that you will come across a few disturbing entries such as the forementioned one.

Many of the spells are incomplete due to deterioration of the papyrus itself. However there are enough complete and interesting entries to make the book absolutely worthwhile as a "window" to the past attitudes of Hellenized magical Egypt.

The most amusing entry in my opinion must be PGM IV. 2125-39:
"A restraining seal for skulls that are not satisfactory for use in divination, and to prevent them from speaking or doing anything whatsoever of the sort."
After a good laugh at this entry you should ask yourself why these Hellenized magicians would need a spell to make their talking skulls stay quiet! Apparently some skulls just wouldn't shut up? This is the only example of a "necromantic" spell I have found in the corpus, however.

Of note to modern magicians is the source material for various moderns spells such as Crowley's "Bornless Ritual" which shows up in PGM V. 96-172 as the summoning of the "Headless One". Seeing the original source material for some of these spells is quite revealing and rewarding to a discerning interested party.

For anyone interested in Hermetic, Pagan, Greek, Egyptian and even Judeo-Christian magic there is no other readily available and ancient source material that even comes close to what the Greek Magical Papyri contains.

The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation contains a wealth of Greek and Demotic magical texts from Roman Egypt. These valuable texts shed light into what was undoubtedly the Golden Age of spirituality and religion, when all the great currents of western esotericism were at their peak. The Mediterranean world, particularly Egypt in Roman times saw the unprecedented growth of innumerable religious and mystical philosophies, each more rich and sophisticated than the other. In the multicultural Egypt of this era, Egyptian and Greek Paganism, Hermetism, Neoplatonism, Gnosticism, Judaism, and Christianity among others, all flourished and mingled, each contributing considerably to the material in the Magical Papyri. The papyri are largely syncretistic, mixing many different philosophies and religious traditions, but the Egyptian and Greek currents are predominant. In the actual Greek texts, Egyptian and Greek ideas are found in more or less equal proportion, while in the Demotic texts Egyptian mythology is preponderant. Most of the texts also contain Jewish, Christian, and other elements.
The material in the papyri is rich and varied. It ranges from high magic and theurgy, such as rituals and hymns to invoke Gods for revelation, all the way to spells, curses, and other material usually classified as "low magic". These These texts are at the root of Western magic. In this book you will find, for instance, the original "Bornless ritual" (pg 103), a magical invocation that was made famous by Israel Regardie and Aleister Crowley. Also found in Betz's book is possibly the oldest magical text attributed to Moses: the 8th Book of Moses (PGM XIII), a fascinating text full of magical names, rituals, and esoteric traditions, and rich in occult theories regarding the 7 Greek vowels. It is otherwise unrelated to the much more recent 6th and 7th Books of Moses, an 18th century magical text.
In short, The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation is an indispensable book for every occultist, a treasury of wisdom at the heart of the western mystery tradition.