The important thing is to be aware of both. Imagination can give us an empathetic understanding of the world of magic; reason reminds us that the cast of mind that persecuted witches is still alive. The Home Office’s ‘hostile environment’ policy appeals to the same dark instinct. The Varieties of Magical Experience still has to be written, as far as I know; and it will only be done successfully by someone who engages the subject with both reason and imagination. Spellbound would be a very good place to start. Fetch Euphemia, whom Dorothea bore, for Theon, whom his mother Proechia bore, to love me with love and longing and affection and intercourse, with mad love. Burn her members, her liver, her female parts, until she comes to me, longing for me .|.|. do not let her eat, or drink, or find sleep, or have fun, or laugh, but make her run away from every place and from every house and leave father, mother, brother, sisters, until she comes to me. (SM 45.29–32, 45–8 = PGM CI; compare SM 40.12–21 = PGM LXXI) The impact of social location works both ways. A remedy used by old wives may be labeled magic and thus dismissed by an urbane sophisticate, but likewise a remedy may be dismissed by labelling it an old wives’ tale and thus magic, whether or not it is actually brought forth by (or even ever used by) old wives.

You can read more about weed witchcraft right here — Weed Witchcraft: A Ritual With The High Priestess of Smoke by Moxie McMurder, who writes, “Smoking the holy herb is a spiritual act, one that puts you in touch with the four elements and when practiced correctly can lift the veil reveal and nature's secrets.” Just remember to stay safe, be legal, and talk to a doctor before using any psychoactive substance. Poems bring pleasure to many. Being generally short, focusing on careful word choice and patterns, poems can cover the entire range of human emotions. They can be fun, they can be personal. They can be shared with those you love and shared with strangers too. Reading through poems slowly to allow their message to unravel is an almost meditative experience. If you find a poem that resonates, try reading it aloud as the way poetry sounds when read aloud is as important as the theme or visual imagery. Poetry for therapy Chess at Baden-Baden, 1925 Duncan Chambers Winner, Hamish Canham Prize 2018. Members' Poems - ElegantThe language of binding indeed seems to characterize the magical curses, and the Greek term katadesmos—binding down—is used in the ancient sources to designate the magical curse tablets. In addition to verbs of binding, verbs of handing over or registering appear, as the target is consigned to the power of the divinity invoked. It is notable, however, that such language of transfer also appears in the public curses, whereas binding less often appears in such prayers for justice or community curses. What is poetry? A short piece of imaginative writing, of a personal nature and laid out in lines is the usual answer. Will that do?

At one time it shows a man in the guise of an ass, (at another time) it makes an ass (look like) a man and a notable. When we wake up, our minds are loose and fluid, capable of magic — still tethered to other conscious states. Once away, tap into that dream space and write a poem about your dream. Let its contradictions and messiness and weirdness soak into your poetry. Henk S. Versnel, “Beyond Cursing: The Appeal to Justice in Judicial Prayers,” in Magika Hiera: Ancient Greek Magic and Religion, ed. Christopher A. Faraone and Dirk Obbink (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 60–106; and Versnel, “Some Reflections on the Relationship Magic-Religion” Numen 38, no. 2 (1991): 177–197. Our next members’ poems competition will be on the theme of ‘Broken Vessels’, proposed by our judge Naush Sabah. Naush is a writer, editor, critic, and educator based in the West Midlands. In 2019, she co-founded Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal where she is currently Editor and Publishing Director. Near the end of his life, Dante settled in Ravenna, Italy under the patronage of Guido da Polenta, where he died September 13 or 14, 1321. Although The Divine Comedy caused an immediate sensation during his life, Dante’s fame waned during the Italian Renaissance and was later revived in the 19th and 20th centuries. Many scholars have examined the structural unity of the poem, discussing the relationship between medieval symbolism and allegory within the poem’s three sections and exploring Dante’s narrative strategy. Others have marveled at the seemingly inexhaustible formal and semantic richness of Dante’s text. With its various enigmatic layers of philological and philosophical complexities, The Divine Comedy has received scrutiny by critics, literary theorists, linguists, and philosophers, who have cherished the immortal work precisely because it translates the harsh truth about the human condition into a poetics of timeless beauty.

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As a discourse describing non-normative religious activity, magic thus exists in the ancient Greek world even before the term magikē or its cognates comes into use. Such magic before magic appears in the literature of the Greeks before the Persian war, and the discourse of magic as a way of labelling extraordinary ritual performance or activity goes beyond the uses of any one of the terms that are used to describe it.