MagiCog: Cognitive Approaches to Ancient Magic
Event Information
Description
This workshop will explore cognitive approaches to ancient magical practices, bringing together scholars of ancient cultures with specialists in cognitive approaches to magic. It aims to expose scholarship on ancient magic to new cognitive approaches, and allow methodical exploration of the results; test the questions raised by different cognitive approaches to magic; encourage comparison between approaches used to study disparate ancient cultures; and contribute to contemporary debates on the nature and role of magic.
We aim to discuss the practise of rituals, their perceived efficacy, and psychological functions; the role of emotions and the body in magical practices; the instrumentality of magical rituals, and/or their coercive nature; the performative nature of magical action, including the language of magic; the categorisation of ritual practices, including the interaction of magical actions with other types of symbolic behaviour and the historical context of institutional systems; magical practices as constituents of a cultural symbolic environment; the transmission of informed expertise in magic; and processes of learning magical knowledge
The programme is as follows:
Thursday, Jan 17
9.15 Introduction
9.30 Chris Gosden (Oxford), A Brief Description of Magic
10.15 Laura Feldt (SDU), The Role of Emotions in Magical Practice: the Mesopotamian Witchcraft Ritual Maqlû
11.00 Coffee break
11.30 Irene Salvo (Göttingen), Magical Knowledge and Learning Processes in Classical Athens: The Mental and Bodily Components
12.15 Yulia Ustinova (Ben Gurion), ‘Hands of Gods’ at Work: Magic and Hippocratic Catharsis
13.00 Lunch
14.00 Gustav Kuhn (Goldsmiths), Experiencing the Impossible: How Stage Magic Perpetuates Magical Beliefs
14.45 Jennifer Larson (Kent State), Causal Opacity or Causal Translucence? Magic, Causal Attribution and "the Ritual Stance"
15.30 Coffee break
16.00 Esther Eidinow (Bristol), Ancient Greek Magic: A Culture of Anxiety?
16.45 Anton Alvar (Málaga), Embodied Theories of Knowledge and the Evil Eye in the Roman World
Friday, Jan 18th
9.30 Jesper Sørensen (Aarhus), The Creation of Special Force: Reinvestigating Mana through Cognitive Science
10.15 Celia Sánchez Natalías (Zaragoza), To Catch a Thief in Roman Britain
11.00 Coffee break
11.30 Adam Parker (OU), Teething Problems: Pierced Tooth Pendants and the Protection of Pain in Roman Childhood
12.15 Lambros Malafouris (Oxford), Magical Thinging: On the Agency and Semiotics of Matter
13.00 Lunch
14.00 Franziska Naether (Leipzig), The Ignorant Pharaoh? Oracles in an Egyptian Narrative
14.45 Eleni Pachoumi (HOU/Oxford), Ritual Actions and Words in the Greek Magical Papyri from Roman Egypt
15.30 Concluding Thoughts
15.45 End
Image: From the British Museum Collection Online. Magical gem; intaglio; haematite; incomplete; bevelled edge; engraved on obverse; ouroboros enclosing at base, a womb, roots and an ape-headed figure; above from left to right: a scarab, Isis-Fortuna holding cornucopia and staff, Harpocrates seated on shoulders of Bes, Osiris mummy, and Nephthys-Fortuna holding cornucopia; in field: Greek vowels; on reverse: the top part of a womb, roots and donkey-headed figure of Seth holding animal-headed staff and ankh; inscribed on both sides.Museum number: OA.9967 © Trustees of the British Museum
The workshop is kindly supported by the Leverhulme Trust, the DFG Collaborative Research Centre 1136 Education and Religion at the University of Goettingen, and the Institute of Classical Studies.
