Customer Reviews

Greek and Roman Necromancy

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In this work, Daniel Ogden explores necromancy (conjuring the dead for purposes of gaining information) in the ancient Greek world. He covers in detail where this would be done (tombs, battlefields, special places reserved for this sort of activity etc), who would be doing this sort of thing, broad outlines of how such rites were performed, and the ideas behind them.

This work is important for a number of reasons. First it tells us a great deal about the way the Greeks related to their dead. Secondly it tells us something about a subject which has never been treated carefully by historians.

This book is a must-read for the classicist, the student of ancient history, and even the occasional necromancer himself!

I wrote a research paper on ancient reanimation, and this is the only book (aside from Ogden's sourcebook) to have a serious discussion of the topic. It led to many new sources of inquiry, but still was my major source throughout. Anyone taking a class on ancient magic or wanting to look at necromancy more thoroughly must have this book.

In classical antiquity, there was much interest in necromancy--the consultation of the dead for divination. People could seek knowledge from the dead by sleeping on tombs, visiting oracles, and attempting to reanimate corpses and skulls. Ranging over many of the lands in which Greek and Roman civilizations flourished, including Egypt, from the Greek archaic period through the late Roman empire, this book is the first comprehensive survey of the subject ever published in any language.
Daniel Ogden surveys the places, performers, and techniques of necromancy as well as the reasons for turning to it. He investigates the cave-based sites of oracles of the dead at Heracleia Pontica and Tainaron, as well as the oracles at the Acheron and Avernus, which probably consisted of lakeside precincts. He argues that the Acheron oracle has been long misidentified, and considers in detail the traditions attached to each site. Readers meet the personnel--real or imagined--of ancient necromancy: ghosts, zombies, the earliest vampires, evocators, sorcerers, shamans, Persian magi, Chaldaeans, Egyptians, Roman emperors, and witches from Circe to Medea. Ogden explains the technologies used to evocate or reanimate the dead and to compel them to disgorge their secrets. He concludes by examining ancient beliefs about ghosts and their wisdom--beliefs that underpinned and justified the practice of necromancy.

This is a book on Classical necromancy that I find myself going back to again and again. Exhaustively researched, the book is filled to brimming with fascinating information on the attitudes and practices of necromancers in the Classical world. Each time I read it, I find new insights, and new, delightful nuggets of trivia that relate back to a variety of other magickal practices. Although this book is written with a scholarly audience in mind, I felt it was thoroughly accessible to the lay-reader without ever once stooping to patronize that reader. For magickal workers and occultists with an interest in necromancy and spirits, this book is a must-have.

This text is an invaluable reference for those interested in Greco-Roman necromancy. The author's commentary on the theory behind necromancy and what necromatic rites were though to accomplish is a notable contribution of the subject of Greco-Roman magic. This work is recommended without reservation both for those interested in the general topic and for those doing more technical work on the subject of magic in the ancient world.

I find the book to be insightful, concise, and filled with well-resourced information. A must-have for the Classical Historian, Mythographer or Thanatologist.

Only the more pedantic Hellenists should apply.

The layman should be warned that this will be a long, rough slog through many
references to classic texts that very few are familiar with. Many obscure Greek
and Latin terms; many examples and descriptions of evocation rites quoted from
classical sources that are often contradictory and result in confusion rather
than illumination.

The general presentation of the material seems promising when looking over
the outline, and after reading the introduction. From then on, however, things become
rather...disspiriting. Detail after petty detail is piled up until one's basic curiousity
about what the ancient's believed about the departed and the afterlife is almost entirely
dulled. No Golden Bough here.

I realize that Mr. Ogden is exceptionally learned in this area, and that this
project was primarily institutional in nature. However, I had expected to learn
much more about what the Greeks and Roman actually thought about the dead. Nowhere
is there mention of larvae (damned souls), lemures (ghosts), lares familiares
(ancestrals), manes (helpful ghosts), eidolons (images), or any of the other
fascinating denizens of the underworld like umbras, phasmas, animas or pemphix.
I had expected to learn how the ancient definitions and understanding of such phantoms
(or phantasms, if you prefer) might correspond with our own - or more likely supercede
dismissive modern knowledge. And perhaps that is Mr. Ogden's own major failing:
he seems to have spent enormous time and effort on a topic with which he does not
seem deeply enough invested in or engaged. There is great erudition here, but too
perfunctorily does all the study seem to connect to its truly soulful quest.

Do these arcane customs of the past actually reveal, in some degree, wisdom more
advanced than that of the present, or were they merely primitive and superstitious
rituals, now of only the most narrowly scholastic interest.

Question barely asked; left unanswered.