Posts Tagged ‘Antiquity’

  At its most basic level: alchemy is a philosophy. It advocates the idea that things are changeable. That they are transmutable from one form to another: from base to gold, solid to liquid, young to old and back again. During the Renaissance and Enlightenment, when the practice of alchemy was at its peak; alchemy came to be applied not just to natural elements such as metals, but to nature and people as well. For several centuries, ‘Alchemy’ became the category under which magickal transformations were shelved. Alchemy was both an early form of science and a continuing form of practical magick. Indeed, the work of the alchemists of the 16th -18th centuries formed both the basis for the modern study of chemistry, as well as the foundation of traditional high magick as we know it today. The studies perpetuated by these same alchemists also continued the tradition of philosophic, mathematical, and supernatural studies of the Pythagoreans and practitioners of Qabbalah who had tread the same transcendental pathways over the previous centuries. Despite the pseudo-scientific reputation that alchemy often receives in modern pop culture, it is a very real and very important part of the magickal traditions which are carried on today by all esoteric forms of worship categorized under the ‘New Age’ umbrella.

  Alchemy is by no means a unified discipline. There is not codified set of facts which one would learn in order to become an alchemist. Alchemy was more a spiritual and educational pursuit than it was a strict science of any uniform kind.

  True, alchemists gleaned their knowledge from studying the works of their predecessors and being mentored by them. True, also, that some universities included forms of alchemy amongst their curriculum. Brotherhoods of scholars interested in esoteric learning formed, and among their subjects was alchemy. But despite these forms of learning, none of these men and women were necessarily learning the same curriculum. Even with the advent of the printing press, not all the books on alchemy were disseminated by each alchemist, nor were all the branches of alchemy studied by every practitioner. Each alchemist had his own agenda: using alchemy variously to heal, to make gold, or to find youth. Alchemy was an intellectual movement that walked in different spheres of life, spanning the society of its times. By the Seventeenth century, it connected the fraudulent drunk on the streets with the scholars of the university; the highest echelons of late Renaissance society at the royal court with the witch on the pyre: all with a common philosophical idea which worked towards a variety of their purposes.

  Indeed, alchemy operated much like the study of magick today perpetuates itself. Witches, wiccans, and pagans alike are deeply devoted to a pursuit of learning esoteric knowledge, but not everyone from each path chooses to learn the same thing. It is ultimately a personal quest, a search for knowledge in order to achieve a personal transformation.

Alchemy as a Science

  Before we delve deeper into the more easily recognized esoteric accolades of this lost art: let us look at the more scientific side of alchemy, of alchemy as a system of trial and error which was propagated in the universities of the time and by some of its greatest academics. Alchemy was a precursor to the science which we recognize today as fact. And though science may seem the antithesis of magick, they are really just part and parcel of the same thing.

  Initially, alchemical knowledge was collected informally and without passing through the conventional educational institutions which had sprung up in Europe since the Dark Ages. Paracelsus, sometimes considered the greatest alchemist of the Renaissance, never completed his university studies. He collected his alchemist’s secrets by travelling and observing folk remedies he combined with metallurgical practices. But with science’s new interest in the idea of a scientific method, which alchemy was already utilizing: alchemy became employed by some of the greatest minds of the time, at some of the greatest of the universities. In fact, the two great libraries, the Bodleian at Oxford and the Ashmolean at Cambridge respectively, were based off of the alchemical collections of Duke Humphrey and Elias Ashmole. Even the great Sir Isaac Newton is considered an alchemist for his research into ancient Egyptian hermeticists and through later connections made by alchemical groups like the Rosicrucians. But he also saw the science in alchemy and used some aspects of his laboratories at Cambridge University to study it. Sir Fancis Bacon is likewise called an alchemist for his association with esoteric societies, like the Rosicrucians and Freemasons and his literary endeavor The Masque of the Middle Temple and Lincoln’s Inn, which he wrote in honor of the marriage between Frederick V of the Rhineland Palatinate and Elizabeth, daughter of James I of England, who, incidentally were all also wrapped up in alchemical studies of very differing kinds. Bacon’s works set up the Baconian method that we today know vernacularly as the aforementioned ‘scientific method.’ Robert Boyle, the father of modern chemistry, began his education as an alchemist; though did not continue to teach alchemy once he himself became a professor.

  Outside of England, particularly in the Northern and Central areas of mainland Europe, alchemy was also finding a niche among scholars. The Danish antiquarian Doctor Ole Worm was given papal permission to collect so-called oddities, which came to include various texts and items of a magickal nature, later inspiring H.P. Lovecraft to include him in his twentieth century work Necronomicron. Some were not so lucky in support for the new science, like Theodore Zwinger, ~a professor of medicine at the University of Basel was penalized by the University for inclusions in his teachings work done by Paracelsus. But unlike the University of Basel, others, like the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. championed alchemy and supported multiple alchemists on its faculty and taught alchemical methodology in its classes on chemistry and anatomy.

  The leading doctors, the mathematicians and physicists of the day; all studied the ratios of alchemy and its history out of Egypt, Greece, and Rome. The scientific method alchemy had long been unintentionally advocating became recognized as the basis for all modern experimentation and creation. The study of alchemy in schools or independently by professors of these schools working outside their professional capacity helped shape the minds of generations of men and women, leading up to the modern science of today.

Alchemy & The Witch Hunts

  Despite this flourishing of alchemy among academia, it was a subject best approached with care. By the sixteenth century, some elements of alchemy’s esoteric studies had unfortunately come to be associated with the dark arts of witch craft and sorcery. The logic of the Burning Times decreed that how else would these men and women know the secrets of the universe unless the devil himself had whispered them into alchemist’s ears? Alchemists devised erudite languages and metaphors to transcribe their secrets in, ones they hoped that would not create alarm among their witch hunting neighbors. But they were not always successful and some alchemists were branded witches and sorcerers for their naïve scholarly endeavors. And many were persecuted alongside the wisewomen, innocents, and political victims who fell prey to the Witch Trials or Burning Times of the 16th and 17th centuries. Bookmakers who published grimores of alchemy were particularly susceptible and often had to move towns to avoid an uprising against their shops.

  The mighty Catholic Church was particularly skeptical of the new alchemical sciences that were springing up. For they threatened previously held notions of God and man and their relationship to the universe, which in turn threatened the church’s power. And if alchemists weren’t careful to make provisions for the Church’s scrutiny, they faced severe consequences. Sir Isaac Newton cleverly combined church sanctioned theology with his science, for instance, to explain his theory of gravity, Newton wrote, “Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who set the planets in motion. God governs all things and knows all that is or can be done.” He justified his science in the eyes of the church, but others were not so clever or else refused to concede. The scholar Giordano Bruno was sentenced to burn at the stake for refusing to recant his alchemy-based theories regarding ideas about the transmutation of the soul and the transubstantiation of the Catholic Mass. He was charged with the practices of divination and witchcraft, both of which had technically been outlawed under church law since the ratification of church doctrine at the Council of Nicea in the 4th century in continuation of earlier Roman laws. However, until the Burning Times, few cases were executed under such charges.

  While many of the alchemists charged for witchcraft during the Burning Times may never have actually practiced direct magickal acts (only studied magickal/scientific topics), others most likely did engage in acts some might call Dark Arts. Giordano Bruno and his one-time mentor the British royal advisor John Dee may have darker and more occult areas of alchemy. Often these pursuits focused on communication between the spirits and bordered on necromancy. Dee was at one point kicked out of Prague by Pope Sixtus V for committing acts of black magic in the city.

  Along with these Dark Arts and the politically motivated Church persecution, alchemy earned an even worse reputation from the slew of fraudulent schemers who pretended to be alchemists to con people out of money and goods. These faux-alchemists would practice simple chemical tricks, rigged to make it appear they could produce gold out of charcoal or other such feats to trick wealthy and gullible lords out of money. This was such a widespread stigma of the day that Dante Aligheri immortalized it in his social commentary of the day, The Divine Comedy, by placing the alchemists on the tenth level of Hell in his Inferno.

Alchemy in Power

  Despite the stigma attached to alchemy, there are many historical instances of European princes, kings, and queens participating and encouraging alchemy from both ends of the spectrum (i.e. as a science and as magic). Many rulers had alchemists as their advisors or as their doctors. Johann Friedrich Helvetius was the personal physician to William of Orange of the Netherlands, Johann Joachim Becher to Leopold I of Austria, Ole Worm to the skeptic Holy Roman Emperor Christian IV, and his predecessor Rudolph II went through a whole series of doctors with an alchemy sideline. Rudolph also utilized alchemists as his advisors, most notably, that king among alchemists, Michael Maier. Maier also spent some time at the court of James I of England. Queen Elizabeth II depended on her spy John Dee. And according to the social commentary inherent in the theatre of the day, James I of England (VI of Scotland) kept three alchemist witches as military advisors. These ‘advisors’ and James’ interest in the occult were included in Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Holinshead histories.

  Some rulers went beyond their advice and medical attention and are suspected by historians of studying alchemy themselves. The Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I personally ransacked a Benedictine archive in Rome looking for an ancient treatise on alchemy believed to be hidden within. Queen Barbara, the wife of Sigismund Vasa III of Poland is accused by history of being not only an alchemist, but a witch. James I of England and Rudolf II of Hungary delved deep into the arcane as rulers and alchemists. James I of England wrote his own Daemonologie in 1597, a witch-hunter’s guide written by a man perhaps too close to his subject to be perfectly free of the taint of magick. He was careful to lightly persecute others in his realm suspected of witchcraft and the like to avoid church persecution himself (though as leader of the aforementioned church, it was easy to get away with). The Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II set up a veritable playland for alchemists and other scientists of the day, which included an observatory, various labs, and libraries of grimoires. He himself was said to participate in alchemical experiments and work closely within the commune of scholars he had collected. His personal goal was to find the Philosopher’s Stone, a stone which, once created, would continue to spill forth an elixir of youth and the ability to turn things into gold.

  We cannot really know today just how much the alchemists and the philosophy of alchemy had on the rulers of this time period, or of how much their appreciation of what this arcane subject influenced their judgments and rulings over their respective countries. Nor can we really know what was known by the public at the time regarding the alchemy activities related above, or if they would have even wanted to know. All of these leaders made allowances for church dogma in order to avoid persecution. But were they actually religious beyond this façade? It is difficult for the historian to know or even to judge correctly. Regardless, we can at least state that alchemy must have had at least some influence over them.

  The history of alchemy is representative of a myriad of magickal movements and motivations. It is symbolic of both the persecution of magick and the championship of it. It represents both the veracity of knowledge gained and of the deception man is capable of using such knowledge for. It embodies the advancement of the human mind and the human race, of our wonder for the mysterious, and our quest to discover and control the laws of nature and the gods. The use of alchemy, pseudo-science that it may be considered now, encouraged the growth of other sciences still seen as legitimate. It inspired advancements in other fields, seeing the growth of library science in the modern age, and was the muse for multiple works of widely regarded literature. It was a profound step on man and woman-kind’s journey towards enlightenment. And it and its alchemists should not be forgotten. For we today are their descendents. The research scientists in labs, the doctors, pharmacists and nurses in their hospitals, the astronomers looking up at the night sky, the chefs in their kitchen, the students at their books: in our desire to learn something more, we are all alchemists.

  Want to learn more about historical magickal movements and the witches behind them? Keep your eyes peeled for History of Witches in the Western World, a new class from the College of the Sacred Mists on the Witches of Antiquity. Coming later this year!

Partial Bibliography

Cobb, C. & Goldwhite, H. 1995. Creations of Fire: Chemistry’s Lively History from Alchemy to the Atomic Age. New York: Plenum Press.

Fernando, D. 1998. Alchemy: An Illustrated A-Z. New York: Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.

Moran, B.T. 2005. Distilling Knowledge: Alchemy, Chemistry, and the Scientific Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Rice University. The Galileo Project.

Note: Image at top is William Fettes Douglas’ The Alchemist (1853).

Prayer and song are elements of religious culture which anthropologists assume were some of the key early features of the world’s first religions thousands of years ago. The spoken or sung verbalization of a wish, a cry for help, a thank you and other types of prayer formalizes the supplicant’s desire ~ pushing it out from them and into the wider cosmos. It is a beautiful expression which bridges the gap between human and divine.

With the advent of writing in ancient Mesopotamia, these prayers began to be written down ~ their power deriving now as much from the vocalization of the desire as from the act of being written. Early writing was considered sacred. The knowledge of being able to read and write was a powerful skill; one which was possessed by the rare few; in fact, initially only priests, royal administrators, their scribes, and occasionally the royals themselves were capable of writing and reading. It was used as much for organizing the newly expanding Empires of the world as it was for magickal purposes. Over time, it would filter down to the merchants and beyond, sifting down through the ages until the invention of the printing press in China in the sixth century AD and the later, more prominent Western discovery of the printing press in the mid-fifteenth century, and the wider spread of literacy that ensued because of these discoveries. But in ancient Mesopotamia, the power of the written prayer was myriad, and was used to call upon the gods for a vast array of purposes.

The following prayer, or hymn, to the goddess Ishtar is from approximately 1600 BCE, during the first Dynasty of Babylon. It was written in cuneiform on behalf of the King Ammiditana, and survived the ages, to be deciphered by the archaeologists of the early twentieth century and ultimately read by you, dear reader, at the beginning of the twenty-first.

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One of the things I love most about the Sacred Mists is its emphasis on learning; learning not just about oneself, but about the world at large. We are not alone, there is no singular Big Brother bland culture but rather an awe-inspiring multi-faceted tapestry of cultures. And I find that the Sacred Mists encourages people to take a step back and appreciate the vast and powerful picture the people of the world have created.

I recently had the opportunity to experience the magick of Hindu rituals up close and personal and thought that perhaps those of you at Sacred Mists might like to hear a bit about it. My lovely friend Anjali was recently wed ~ and as a bridesmaid at her fabulous Indian wedding, I had a chance of a lifetime to witness firsthand the beauty and sanctity of several ancient Hindu ceremonies in their modern contexts. Hinduism is one of the oldest continuing religious traditions still flourishing in the modern world. Based on the prehistoric beliefs of the Indian subcontinent, it was shaped by millennia of social and political upheavals, and influenced profoundly by its philosophical offshoots, Buddhism, Jainism, and Lamaism. With over one billion followers worldwide, it is one of the largest mainstream religions; and the biggest religion which recognizes more than two deities. Its emphasis on spirituality, myth, ritual, and polytheism make it of particular interest to Sacred Mists readers. Read the rest of this entry »

Native American Landscapes at Lake Tahoe

In North American it is easy to forget how long mankind has been wandering around its sprawling landscape. History here seems to start post-conquest and often ignores the thousands upon thousands of years during which Native American groups initially crisscrossed the continent.

I myself was once guilty of this thinking. When I started my academic career I very pointedly steered myself towards classical Mediterranean subjects; explicitly ignoring the archaeology of my own American backyard. Older now, I recognize the error of my ways and the sublime interest and importance of all anthropological topics. I also recognize the primary reason why North American Indian topics are so easily overlooked by the education system and the media: lack of archaeological and anthropological evidence, and particularly lack of spectacular archaeological evidence. Alas, there will be no equivalent of Tut’s tomb in North America. But there is a rich and varied tapestry of ritual and mythology that belies this lack of archaeological evidence, perhaps making it all the more magickal for its mystery.

I recently had a chance to visit one of the most gorgeous natural wonders of North America, one which despite a loaded ancient past, is often ignored as a site of Native American importance: Lake Tahoe. Nestled in the Sierra Nevada mountains of northern California and Nevada, Lake Tahoe and its surrounding smaller lakes were created through a combination of fault line activity between the geological plates of the earth’s crust and the eruption of the nearby and now extinct Mount Pluto, which dammed up a large portion of the northern end of Lake Tahoe, resulting in the Lake’s particularly unique size and depth for the region. It is, in fact, the sixteenth deepest lake in the world, and the second deepest in North America.

Lake Tahoe is surrounded by ridiculously majestic mountains and strands upon strands of alpine trees. It is a place both of great beauty and abundant resources. It is no wonder that when mankind first migrated across the northern icy land bridges and into what is now the continental USA; many of them lingered by Lake Tahoe, refusing to follow their brethren farther south and east across the wider North American plains as indicated by the antiquity of the local dialect and its unique place within the linguistic branches of Native American culture. Classified in antiquity variously as the Martis complex and then the Kings Beach complex; when white settlers arrived in Lake Tahoe approximately 300 years ago, the local people called themselves the waashiw, which means ‘the people from here.’ A fitting term for a group who had indeed been ‘here’ as long as being there was humanly possible. Waashiw in turn was transliterated into the modern name for the group: the Washoe. The Washoe furthermore divided themselves up, not into tribes, for they did not consider themselves a tribe or to have smaller tribes within itself, but rather family units who associated themselves specifically with a particular side of the Lake. In my exploration of Lake Tahoe, I particularly explored the sacred sites round the south end of the Lake, the sites of the Washoe who called themselves Hanalelti.

Ritual Landscapes

The southern end of the lake encompasses both rocky cliffs dropping steeply into the freshwater below on its western side; narrow, boulder strewn beaches on its eastern, and gentle plains descending into the water between. It is a varied place. One minute you can be strolling through the forest with only trees ahead and the next you’re overlooking the lake in all its glory or below a pulsing waterfall. It is a place of natural wonder. And if it still conjures up images of a magickal landscape to modern eyes, one can be sure it did the same for ancient orbits. One of the widest trends in the majority of Native American mythology is its use of the local landscape to define itself. A tree is not simply a tree nor a mountain a mountain. They are ideas of a mythic place set in the mundane human world. They are portals into the Platonic realm of the otherworld where the divine shapes are kept. This tree is the tree of Ta-iw, the god of the sky; that rock is where the Star Wives fell to earth. Places were not simply places, they were a part of a cosmic mythos themselves.

Washoe rituals reflected this idea of space. The Washoe spent their summers up on the mountain slopes overlooking the lake, and their snowy winters and springs along the more congenial lake shore. This annual migration is reflected in what little is known of their rituals and where they were held. In September, when the pine-nuts, a Washoe staple food, were plentiful, they would hold the pine-nut dance, the Tlagum-las: a processional ceremony begun by the dance, culminated in the movement from the mountain slopes to the lake valleys as they harvested pine nuts along the way and ending again with the dance in their new encampment. They likewise had a similar acorn dance, the Mallun-las performed higher up the mountains at the elevations where the oak trees live and a Peleu-las, the jack-rabbit dance, performed in the forests to ensure a good hunt. As you can tell by the types of the festivals held, the Washoe were very interested in keeping their food supply bountiful, not surprising given the harshness their mountain winters.

Cave Rock: A Site of Shamanic Dreaming

The wisemen and women of the Washoe were likewise influenced by their landscapes. The Washoe believed that their shaman and herb-doctors (both of which, by the way, could traditionally be held by either a man or a woman: a delightful affirmative action rarity in the ancient world) earned their power and their sacred knowledge through dreams. And that dreams could be influenced by sleeping in certain sacred places within the landscape.

Cave Rock, on the southeastern shore of the lake is one such site. The Washoe believed that whilst sleeping in the caves there, their medicine men would be visited by the water sprites of the lake who would teach him or her about healing and potentially give them special medicinal powers. However, for all its magickal significance to the Washoe, Cave Rock, like much of the lake was sold to the US government by the Washoe between 1916-1924. And though a small national park hunkers just below it, much to my dismay, I learned on my trip that the actual caves themselves are now highway tunnels. To get round the eastern shore of the lake, one actually drives through these sacred caves on the main road just above Zephyr Cove. A very sad development indeed, and unfortunately just another in a long list of sites which have been regrettably misappropriated by the government or other agencies before their anthropological significance could be appreciated and the site thereby preserved.

The Mythic Origins of the Tahoe Landscape

But it was not just individual spots which held mythological and ritual significance to the Washoe. Local legend attributes the entire creation of the surrounding landscape to magick and myth. The following was recorded by local colonists attempting to document the fascinating anthropology and mythology of their Native American counterparts at the turn of the last century.

Legend has it that once upon a time, The Good Indian tried to cross the Sierra Nevada mountains. But he was being chased by an Evil Spirit who did not want him to reach his destination on the western side, so he beseeched the spirits of the earth and sky and a Good Spirit heard him and gave him a magickal branch. The Good Spirit informed the Good Indian that whenever he plucked a bit from the branch and dropped it on the earth, it would create a body of water behind him to slow the Evil Spirit down long enough for the Good Indian to get away. For the Evil Spirit could not cross water and would have to detour around it. The Good Indian continued along his way and when next the Evil Spirit caught up with him, the Good Indian attempted to use the magickal branch. But in his haste to use the magickal branch the first time; he snapped off a huge piece of it and tossed it to the ground, thus creating Lake Tahoe, Tahoe meaning ‘big water’ or ‘big lake’.

The Good Indian fled further south through the canyons but eventually the Evil Spirit caught up with him again, and so he tossed a second smaller bit of the magickal branch to the earth and it became ‘doolagoga’ aka Fallen Leaf Lake. The Evil Spirit was briefly detoured but kept at him, and the Good Indian kept right on making lakes behind him until finally he came out of the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas, thus reaching his destination and defeating the plan of the Evil Spirit to stop him. The Evil Spirit gave up and went away to torment another Good Indian and our Good Indian lived a long and happy life with the family he found in his new home.

My recent trip to Lake Tahoe and its sacred sites was, shall we say, otherworldly. And its brought home, literally, a very intriguing concept. There are statistically few places in the world that have not felt the instep of a human foot at one point or another. Look around at your own backyard. Who passed through it once upon a time? Even if there isn’t any archaeological evidence for anyone having been there doesn’t mean that it wasn’t once part of a greater mythic landscape which the modern world can but glimpse.

Bibliography

E. S. Curtis, 1907-1930. The North American Indian Courtesy Northwestern University Digital Library
G. W. James, 1917. The Lake of the Sky, Lake Tahoe, in the High Sierras of California.
Include link to Cave Rock website
Sacred Land Film Project: Cave Rock
Site Materials, assorted

In the modern era, when one thinks ‘witch’ one is far more likely to conjure up images of Samantha Stevens, Sabrina Spellman, or the Halliwell sisters before ever settling an ancient and mysterious figure like the Greek witch Erichtho. And yet, over the course of the last two millennia, several famous authors have done just that: gone back and pulled her up from the depths of history and re-crafted her to fit into their contemporary culture.

Although it is not uncommon for mythological figures to crop up in the pop culture of multiple time periods, it is always rather mystifying and intriguing when a particularly obscure figure of the folkloric past manages cameos in a multitude of classics throughout the ages. Such is the case of Erichtho. She initially appears only in Lucan’s Pharsalia at the beginning of Imperial Rome, only to resurface more than a thousand years later as a guest star in Dante’s Divine Comedy, an inspiration for Shakespeare’s witches in Macbeth, and again a few centuries later in Goethe’s Faust.

But there are many “minor” sorceresses of the classical world: what was soo special about Erichtho that she was singled out and summoned up again and again by the writer’s pen ~ never as a main character; always as a suitably evocative and darkly magickal presence representative of the prevailing beliefs regarding witchcraft in each author’s contemporary society. It is almost as if the witch herself moved through time – immortal- to act as the muse for four of the western world’s arguably greatest writers. Given the current society’s flair for literary blending, It is surprising that she is not a figure of more prominence given her mysterious and villainous re-appearances in these latter two classics which have gone on to become the cornerstones of literature; and that she is not featured more often in further fictional works as an immortal witch travelling through time akin to Anne Rice’s vampires and the likes of Count Saint Germaine. And if this is not so (as sadly it is most likely just my imagination running rampant on the idea), then what was so endearing about this witch to bring her back time and time again?

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start at the beginning.

Erichtho in The Pharsalia, Book VI, Lines 496-987

In her intial appearance, Erichtho is cast in the role as the ultimate wicked witch, a role she is destined to repeat from thenceforth on. She appears for the first time in Lucan’s epic poem describing the Civil war between Julius Caesar and the Roman Senate under the Pompey the Great; which culminated in the Battle of Pharsalus in Greece on August 9, 48 BCE.

The son of Pompey the Great, Sextus Pompeius, having heard rumors of the local super-witch Erichtho, defies convention and rather than going to a reputable oracle or priest, consults her and her scandalous spirits on the eve of battle to find out who will die on the battlefield the next day. Lucan casts Erichtho as a witch who lives on the fringes of Thessalian society, having taken up residence in an abandoned tomb not far from the battlefield and who conducts her rituals in a sacred cave in the foothills just above Pharsalus. Thessaly, in much of ancient literature, is already given a rather haunted reputation. Located at the base of Mount Olympus and consisting of some seriously rocky terrain and scraggly forests; it was where the Titans fought the Olympic gods for supremacy, where Jason, Peleus, and Achilles were born, where the Argonauts set sail from, and where Medea travelled by dragonback to collect certain diabolical herbs from. It was also home to one of the earliest Neolithic Greek societies, which may account both for its prominence and centrality in so many of the famous Greek myths, as well as for its diverse and often chthonic local legends.

Beyond a strong knowledge of herbcraft, Erictho’s primary skill is that of necromancy. She calls up the spirits of the dead and can either ask them to do her bidding or else use them to inquire as to the actions of the Fates, thereby knowing the future. She also has the ability to make it possible so that no one will be able to raise a given spirit from the dead to use them for their purposes. She works using the body of the deceased, which in Lucan’s tale, she gets from among the Roman dead on the fringes on the battlefield. She cleans the body, ritually anoints it, and in a cave sacred to her magick performs a ritual which summons the spirit of the dead back into the body for questioning. Lucan does not seem to be sure of himself as to the source of her power, as throughout the text he variously states that she invokes the gods for aid in her magick, that she doesn’t invoke the gods and therefore has some other power beyond them, and that she provokes the gods and they’re so scared of her for unknown reasons that they do her bidding. He even indicates that she can summon a god or goddess in physical form if need be, which would have been a highly controversial idea at the time if done outside of a temple atmosphere (contrary to what the TV shows Hercules: The Legendary Journey and Xena: Warrior Princess would have fans believe). Most magickal practices in the ancient world revolved around the idea of beseeching the gods and performing a ritual and/or sacrifice to entice the god/goddess to come to the aid of the supplicant/the community, so the idea that she calls on the gods but does not need them but something else is an interesting prospect given this context.

One of my particular favorite facets of the story is its use of the serpent. When Sextus and his gang of morbid men first come upon Erichtho at home in her tomb, she is nude. But for the summoning ceremony she puts on a kind of ritual outfit.

“Discordant hues
flamed on her garb as by a fury worn;
Bare was her visage, and upon her brow
Dread vipers hissed, beneath her streaming locks
In sable coils entwined. “ (L. 772-776)

She also later uses a live snake in the summoning ritual itself, as a scourge to beat the dead body as she begins her chant to bring it back to life (L. 861). The symbolism of the snake, especially in the ancient Mediterranean, is a fascinating icon of life, death, and rebirth. It lives, but it burrows underground, essentially living in the Underworld. And it sheds its skin: symbolically it gets a new life while discarding the impure old one. It is no wonder that ancient man (and modern man for that matter too) were so fascinated with this creature.

Fact or Fiction?

The Pharsalia was written just over century after the battle in 61-65 AD, and Lucan would have been able to draw on the considerable resources of contemporary Roman records to flesh out his tale into a historical epic, one that was so well considered as a historical source, that for the remainder of the Roman Empire and beyond it was one of the core pieces of literature retained by the church and schools. Lucan was in a unique position for much of his career and its associated research: he was a close friend of the Emperor Nero, which allowed him to move quickly through the ranks of the poets and access to the same archives Plutarch would later accidentally preserve when he wrote his great histories of classical figures. However, Lucan would later fall from the Emperor’s grace and for much of the time he was writing the Pharsalia, he was a vocal political dissident against imperial rule and his once friend.

Regardless, Lucan’s access to records means that his poem included a high level of fact among the fiction. This leaves the slight possibility that Sextus Pompeius or some other figure in the army may have indeed consulted a local Thessalian witch for the outcome of the battle. It was not an uncommon practice for the military to consult a soothsayer, reputable or no, before a fight. Even so, it is still likely that Lucan’s portrayal of their meeting is more on the fictional end of the spectrum and probably a composite of friends experiences with similar country witches of his own and the previous two generations, the mythology of the Thessalian region, and general superstition. However, it is rather interesting to note that there are in fact a series of somewhat sacred caves located not far from Pharsalis, or modern Farsala as it is now known. Surveyed in 1920, the caves feature a series of ancient Greek inscriptions dedicating them to Chiron and the Nymphs of the wood: all of whom have at times been associated with darker magicks and esoteric knowledge of nature and life and death.

Erichtho’s form of magick is generally anthropologically likely to have been practiced as described. Its assignment by Lucan to the fringes of society has much to do with the changing politics of science, magick, and magic in his own times. Magick was still acceptable in civilized temple-going format but not when it is the wilder darker magick of the countryside or the later variants of magic (with no ‘k’) peddled on the streets as a pale, purchasable shade of the rural witchcraft aforementioned ~ which was a huge issue in ancient Rome and incurred the wrath of many laws against frauds, fakes, and other charlatans promising magick and delivering make-believe results. Like with Medea’s forms of magick discussed last week, the darker acts of ancient, more primal ritual are most likely representative of older shamanistic cults, of a religion before the mainstream ethics of polite society took over from superstition. And one which the more civilized post-Pax Romana Roman world would have shied away from as a reminder of their earlier, less powerful days.

Erichtho’s use of a dead body in her ritual and of her dwelling place within a tomb are of particular note in this context. Both of these elements of ritual would have been distinctly taboo and considered bad form when Lucan wrote his text, similar to as they are today. They were not, however, always taboo. Ancestor worship was a powerful factor leading up to the Greek and Roman civilizations, and while the body was no longer as important a facet in their death rituals as it once had been; the physical dead body was initially held in high esteem as a vessel of power and of the spirit. Take for instance ancient Egyptian beliefs that the body must be preserved in order for part of the spirit to return to it or even earlier Near Eastern beliefs regarding the need to have one’s deceased relatives buried underneath ones house to have their favor. Or the ritual of feasting with the dead, not just by leaving them an empty seat at the dinner table, but by having a feast in their tomb, situated among the macabre decaying bodies of their ancestors. Necromancy may seem like a thing straight out of B-horror movies to the modern world, but in the ancient world it was no laughing matter. If someone was rumored to be bringing up the spirits of the dead to help forsee the future, it would have been considered a powerful act of magick indeed. With the progression of mankind, science, and particularly medicine, death became a less mysterious, more understandable thing, and the body became more and more untouchable and its presence less tolerated among the living, for whatever purpose.

With regards to Erichtho living within a tomb, while other cultures, as I’ve just pointed out, had few qualms about interacting with the bodies of the dead, the Romans in particular were very superstitious about such things, and especially tombs. The Roman landscape in ancient Italy was dotted with Etruscan tombs which the Romans simply left alone out of fear of the ancient spirits and potentially political persecution by families claiming a genealogical connection to this or that tomb. Roman tombs likewise were sacrosanct. There was such strong element of superstition in the region that it was not until the Renaissance that most of these ancient tombs began to be vandalized (verses Egypt, for instance, where often tombs were robbed within months of the burial).

So while whether or not there was an actual historical Erichtho is debatable, it seems very likely, that at the least, she is based on a composite of the darker witches known to haunt the fringes of society during the late Roman Republic and the early Roman Empire. And that the circumstances of her presence in and her actions in the Pharsalia are understandable given the context of the then contemporary society which created her.

Erichtho’s Later Cameos

Flash forward to over a millennia later to the early fourteenth century and Medieval Italy: Erichtho’s second appearance in the literary canon. Since her first appearance, the Pharsalia had gone on to wide acclaim, and even following the fall of the Roman Empire, it remained one of the mainstays of classical history and of the Latin language. It is probably in his capacity as an informal student of Latin literature that Dante came across the dark and wild Erichtho.

His classical masterpiece, the Divine Comedy is the story of a young man, likewise named Dante, who travels through Hell and Heaven to find his dead love Beatrice. In its first book, The Inferno, Dante is guided by the shade of the Roman epic poet Virgil, and as they travel through Hell, they encounter several figures from Roman and Medieval Italian history, including Lucan himself. Virgil admits that this was not the only time he was summoned as such, and that the witch Erichtho had once called him up to bring her another spirit from a deeper level of hell (Book IX, L 22-33); presumably that of one of the conspirators against Julius Caesar, as in Lucan she is particularly excited at the possibility of having the body of either Caesar, Pompey, or one of the other generals (some of the aforementioned co-conspirators) to use in her magicks.

Jump ahead again to almost three hundred years later to the turn of the 17th century and Shakespeare’s Macbeth and his weird sisters. Their famous “double double toil and trouble” chant and subsequent listing of all their nefarious ingredients is based off of Erichtho’s magickal workings in the Pharsalia, lines 788-820:

Then copious poisons from the moon distils
Mixed with all monstrous things which Nature’s pangs
Bring to untimely birth; the froth from dogs
Stricken with madness, foaming at the stream;
A lynx’s entrails: and the knot that grows
Upon the fell hyaena; flesh of stags
Fed upon serpents; and the sucking fish
Which holds the vessel back though eastern winds
Make bend the canvas; dragon’s eyes; and stones
That sound beneath the brooding eagle’s wings.
Nor Araby’s viper, nor the ocean snake
Who in the Red Sea waters guards the shell,
Are wanting; nor the slough on Libyan sands
By horned reptile cast; nor ashes fail
Snatched from an altar where the Phoenix died.
And viler poisons many, which herself
Has made, she adds, whereto no name is given:
Pestiferous leaves pregnant with magic chants
And blades of grass which in their primal growth
Her cursed mouth had slimed. Last came her voice
More potent than all herbs to charm the gods
Who rule in Lethe. Dissonant murmurs first
And sounds discordant from the tongues of men
She utters, scarce articulate: the bay
Of wolves, and barking as of dogs, were mixed
With that fell chant; the screech of nightly owl
Raising her hoarse complaint; the howl of beast
And sibilant hiss of snake — all these were there;
And more — the waft of waters on the rock,
The sound of forests and the thunder peal.

But her most substantial role since her debut would be in the early 1800s in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust. Faust tells the story of the title character, a young scholar, who makes an arrangement with a devil known as Mephistopheles, and with whom with he has a series of adventures. Erichtho appears in Part Two of the play, which was published later and separately from the more famous Part One which details Faust’s failed romance. In Part Two, as Faust and Mephistopheles travel through various Hellenic scenarios, they encounter Erichtho, trapped on the battlefield at Pharsalus. She laments that she is doomed by history to repeat the night over and over again thus maintaining her evil reputation, one she feels she does not wholly deserve. She has a fabulous monologue (imagine it being recited with full early theatricality on a German stage, better yet, picture Lea Michelle from Glee up there lamenting), which starts off with the wonderful declaration:

“To this night’s awful festival, as oft before,
I stride in view, Erichtho, I the gloomy one,
Not so atrocious as the tiresome poet-crew
Calumniate me to excess… They never end
In praise and censure…..”

A Witch for All Ages

Erichtho’s journey through time is also the journey of the representation of “the witch” throughout time. In each of Erichtho’s appearances, she personifies the version of the witch or sorceress popular with the author’s contemporary society.

In Lucan, she is a Thessalian sorceress. She continues what Medea started and embodies the new version of us vs. them, the civilized world vs. the fringes of society, the new science and new morals vs. the old, darker, more superstitious ways.

By the Time of Dante’s Divine Comedy, opinions on witchcraft and magick had changed considerably for the worse. And though Erichtho is still cast in an antique role alongside the similarly ancient Virgil, she is intrinsically linked with the sending of people to Hell and the evil summoning of spirits; the latter of which is, certainly by the thirteenth century, is irrefutably considered a demonic act.

And by the writing of Faust by van Goethe in the 18th century, the continental witch craze of the Renaissance and Reformation was beginning to wane as the Enlightenment firmly took hold of Europe, and the figure of the witch, once evil through and through was being reconsidered. Learned society became split into two skeptical groups: some scoffed at the very idea of the witch and found the few remaining pockets of magickal accusations and witch trials laughable, and others, like Goethe, decided there was something more behind the figure of the wicked witch, something which was not entirely evil and was more a misunderstanding of her power than anything else.

It is perhaps then Erichtho’s adaptability which draws society to her again and again. As an obscure composite character of figures outside society, she is malleable. Each generation can see her as they wish and take from her what they require. Lucan needed a naughty sorceress to do forbidden magick for a weasel-y general, Dante needed a witch powerful enough to command the gates of Hell, and Goethe found in her the misunderstood witch who could symbolize the plight of the past several generations of victims of the European witch trials. In my own reading of the text, with a contemporary bias that witches are more Glinda style good than anything else, I can’t help but look through Lucan’s text and see his own bias against magick and against things he and the rest of his world did not yet understand. It is perhaps, for the best, that every few hundred years Erichtho is dusted off and reinvented. Like Elphaba in Wicked, it is always worth a second, or third, or fourth look before judging a witch.

Informal Bibliography

Magic in Greek & Latin Literature J.E. Lowe 2003
Magic & Magicians in the Greco-Roman World by Matthew Dickie 2003

Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: Ancient Greece & Rome by Bengt Ankarloo & Stuart Clark 1999
Recent Surveys & Excvacations, 1920. American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. XXIV.

Please note: Links to primary sources are included in the text.

Of all the known witches of the past, the figure of Medea is most representative of some of the oldest, darkest pagan arts still known to man. As such, it is fitting that she be the first in what I intend on being a series of articles for the Mists exploring the individual tales of the witches of the ancient world from archaeological, historic, and literary perspectives (entertaining rather than erudite ones, I promise!). So sit back, relax, and imagine yourself round a primeval campfire listening attentively to the ancient tale of Medea: princess, priestess, scorned wife, and witch.

The Romance & Plight of Medea

Once upon a time, long long ago, in Colchis on the far eastern end of the Black Sea, there was a princess called Medea. And one day, a band of travelers came to Colchis, in search of the Golden Fleece which belonged to King Aeëtes, Medea’s father. The travelers, known to posterity as the Argonauts after their ship, The Argo; were led by Prince Jason of Iolcus; who had been challenged by his throne usurping Uncle Pelias, to capture the fleece and bring it back in return for the crown. King Aeëtes received Jason’s delegation amicably and decreed that if Jason could complete three epic challenges, Jason could sail away with the Fleece. Medea, present for their meeting and seeing Jason, either of her own volition or cursed by Aphrodite and Eros, the gods of l’amour, fell instantly in love with Jason. And unbeknownst to her father, agreed to help him in return for his hand in marriage and his making an offering to her goddess Hekate. At each of the challenges, Medea used her magick and herb-craft to keep Jason safe and bring him triumph: Medea gave him an herbal charm to protect him from the fiery breath of the Khalkotauroi (bronze oxen); advised him as to the best way to defeat a magickal group of soldiers sprung from dragon’s teeth; and gave him a sleeping potion to use on the fearsome dragon that guarded the Fleece.

With the challenges complete and the Fleece won, Jason whisked Medea away from her homeland with her protesting father and brother giving chase. In the resulting skirmish, Medea’s brother, Apsyrtus, is killed, thus angering the gods. Now cursed, Jason and Medea head to sea and back into the odyssey-like vignettes that characterized the Argonaut’s initial voyage to Colchis; except this , they have Medea and her magick to aid them. Initially, at the ship’s request (that’s right, The Argo could talk), they stop at the island home of Medea’s aunt, the sorceress Circe of Homeric fame, to have the ship magickally cleansed for the crime against Apsyrtus. Continuing on, post-purification, the Argonauts run into the sirens; before travelling on to Crete, which was guarded by a robot-like bronze guardian called Talos. Medea be-spelled Talos long enough to wound him fatally ~ using her apparent knowledge of metallurgical magickal arts to know the golem’s weak point.

Next they sailed to Jason’s home of Iolchus, at which point in the story, it is often assumed that Medea and Jason have been officially married; but alas, even with a foreign wife of noble blood and the Golden Fleece in tow, Pelias would not give up his brother’s crown to Jason, its rightful heir. It thus falls to Medea to get the kingship back for her husband. And so Medea tricks Pelias’ three daughters into believing that she can return the aged Pelias back to youth. Having given Jason’s father Aeson back some of his youth, she is rumored to have power over life and death. So she shows them a ritual similar to the one she performed for Aeson, whereby an elderly ram is chopped up, brewed in a cauldron of magickal herbs, and comes back out as a lamb; and then instructs the daughters to do the same for their father. They merrily (and gruesomely) chop him up, but Medea withholds the correct magickal formula for the herbs, and Pelias remains old, and dead. Unfortunately, Medea’s ploy to win the crown for her handsome hubby backfires: the people of Iolcus, led by Jason’s cousin and Pelia’s son, Acastus, run Jason and Medea out of town for her trickery.

Jason and Medea then flee to Corinth and set up shop. And they have two children, usually said to be sons. But in the Greek culture of the historic classic period, when the tales of Jason and Medea were finally written down; a foreign wife, like Medea, did not have citizenship: leaving the family status and Jason’s prestige in the lurch. Yearning for more power, Jason claims his family at home is not legitimate given Medea’s dubious legal status; and he ends up betrothed to the local Princess Glauce (sometimes called Creusa). Medea, furious, vows revenge, and sends a poisoned wedding dress to the lucky princess. Glauce and her father, King Creon, both die by the dress; leaving Jason once again without a throne to look forward to. And in some versions of the tale, Jason accosts Medea, only to learn that she has also murdered their two children, fearing both Jason’s wrath and the wrath of the citizen’s upon them for her regicide (Although in one version it is the crowd which kills the children; after Euripides’ play featuring the above storyline, few have deviated from the more dramatic element of Medea killing them herself).

Medea is swept away from Corinth by her grandfather, the sun god Helios and continues to travel around Greece. She first takes refuge in Thebes with her friend and former Argonaut, now the King, Herakles (Hercules,) before again being cast out when word of her wicked reputation reaches the Thebans. Next she takes refuge in Athens, where she meets and married King Aegeus, father of the hero Theseus and namesake of the Aegean Sea around Greece. Medea, now a skilled political schemer, arranges for her new son (some say by Jason, others by Aegeus), Medus, to become the heir apparent for the Athenian crown; and all goes well until Theseus appears and claims his birthright. Attempting to win the crown for her son, Medea attempts to kill Theseus and is caught in the act by Aegeus who promptly kicks her and Medus out of Athens. They run back home to Colchis, where Medea dethrones an evil uncle and puts one of her other brothers on the throne. And then, according to Herodotus at least, Medea and Medus move farther east into Iran where they become the namesakes of the Medes, an early incarnation of the cultural group that will eventually become the ancient Persians.

Jason, meanwhile, regains his throne in Iolcus, but lives out his life scorned by the gods for reneging on his promises to Medea. Ultimately, aged and ruined, he takes up residence under the remains of his once glorious ship, the Argo; only to be killed when the rotting wood of the hull fell apart on his head.

How do we know Medea’s Story?

Medea’s story is a tale of a woman scorned; the tale of the Hester Prynne & Scarlet Letter of the Ancient World. Her story is both the simple, heart-rending quest of a woman looking for love a la the Lifetime Channel; and a complex wander through the realms of ancient Greek myth. Even the basic tale of Medea is a sprawling epic of many names, multiple places, and considerable socio-political and fairy tale elements. It would have been told orally for possibly a millennia before it was ever written down, with elements added, subtracted, and altered to reflect the understanding of the audiences it was being told to. For instance, take the dubious legal loophole through which Jason divorces Medea. This is an element of the political and legal system of classical Athens circa the 5th century BCE, but in the story it is applied to the period of the tale, which is typically dated to have occurred (if it did indeed occur in any way, shape, or form) sometime around the 12th century BCE at the beginning of the Greek Dark Ages. But not everything is reworked and old elements slip in, staying because they are fragments of society still in use or those recognized as ancient: for instance the use of bronze when by now the Greeks had discovered harder metals; or the idea of their being a King of Athens and Corinth, when by the classic period, only Sparta had kings, most other city-states had adopted other more democratic forms of government.

The tale above is one I have amalgamated for you, as a timeline of Medea, taken from the primary historic literary versions of her tale. Each of those stories varies in its details and some only tell part of her tale, relying on the pop culture knowledge of its contemporary audience, much of which we are no longer aware of, to fill in the blanks. Although Hesiod, Pindar, and Herodotus both mention her, the earliest full source is Euripides classic play Medea , a tragedy which was written and performed first in ancient Athens in 431 BCE century and onwards and which focuses only on Medea’s time in that same city, though it mentions earlier events and foreshadows later ones within its script. It is considered the classic version of the story, as well as one of the most venerated plays in all of theatric history. Next comes Apollonius of Rhodes’ Alexandrine epic The Argonautika from the third century BCE. This text is unique in its romantic and epic language, and its use of extensive research to fill in the earlier portions of the story in particular. For Apollonius was a scholar at the library of Alexandria and in writing his tale, he preserved for us snippets of earlier texts, poems, and oral lore which recounted the melancholy tale of Medea. A smattering of others reference her in between classical Greece and Imperial Rome until finally there is Seneca’s Medea and Ovid’s 1st century AD versions of her in his Metamorphoses and The Heroides (which translates to The Heroines), which Ovid based on the classical mythology and clues from the decorative artwork of Greece that had been handed down to the culture of Rome. Ovid was much enamored of the story of Medea, and indeed wrote a third, full length text telling her tale which has sadly been lost to mankind by the ravages of time. However, his Metamorphoses provides ample anthropological details on the magickal rites of Medea and therefore what was considered pop culture magick or ancient ritual by his time period, and his Heroides delivers a poignant “letter” of Medea’s story, telling the tale as if from the point of view of the witch herself.

The Anthropological Background of Medea

Medea, an eastern figure, enters what we now know as Greek myth at an important time in proto-history; as the eastern European tribes of the Asian steppes migrated into the Balkan Peninsula, mixing with the so-called Pelagasian population that was already living in what is now modern day Greece. The mixture of populations as thus would have resulted first in a period of cultural conflict as the two societies’ belief systems and sacred stories fought for supremacy before ultimately settling into an amalgamated version which reflected the dominance of one and the submission of the other. In other words, the two sets of stories got shoved together and the powerful witch/goddess of Eastern legend becomes subject to and wife of the more western hero Jason; with the role of Medea and her dark arts possibly considerably toned down from what they may have once been and twisted to cast her as the villain. The culture that resulted from the mix of the Eastern nomads and the “Pelagasians” becomes the Mycenaean society of Dark Age Greece, circa 1200-800 BCE. Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad, contemporaries of the story of Jason and the Argonauts, are likewise born from this same mish-mashing of East meets West, and indeed all three stories cross-reference each other considerably, both in the use of the same characters and the use of certain linguistic phrases to describe people, places, actions, and cultural facets.

Medea’s story, in particular, is an ethical quagmire of the ancient world. Undeniably a villain for much of her tale, she starts off as the bright, innocent heroine, eager to help her hero succeed. Through circumstance and experience she is shaped into the nasty piece of work the society of her tale needed her to be in order to understand her place within their contemporary mythology. Medea, as a woman, was too powerful for them to begin with. Her magick afforded her a weapon against society, which put her on equal stance with men and allowed her loopholes around the burgeoning legal rules which ancient Greek society was starting to view as necessary and unbreakable. Her role as an outsider, a member of a barbarian nation to the East who has migrated into the “civilized” world of the Greek city-states, adds to the fear surrounding Medea. She becomes the misogynist’s boogeyman, terrifying three millennia’s’ worth of men with the tales of her magickal destruction and her symbolic role as the ultimate woman scorned. Even when sympathetic versions of her are introduced, like Ovid’s letter from Medea to Jason in the Heroides: she cannot even excuse herself for the evil acts she has and is about to commit. Modern opinions of Medea are perhaps more lax, in that expanded women’s rights and increased general psychological knowledge give us a deeper insight into the mind of Medea, who’s actions, though still not excusable, can be arguably seen as having a motive.

The later sections of Medea’s journey are also of anthropological note as not only does Medea travel from her native Colchis, she moves from Greek city-state to city state: Colchis to Iolcus to Corinth to Thebes to Athens, back to Colchis, and then potentially to the Iranian plateau. This could speculatively be associated with the cult of Medea or an ancient sorceress/goddess figure quite like her, moving across the prehistoric landscape and being variously adopted and then neglected just before or during the so-called Greek Dark ages (1200 to 800 BCE). But even with this cult gone, a vague memory of it lingered into the historic period to be included as one of the tourist stops along Medea’s life voyage.

The sometime finale to the story of Medea killing her children could also be explained as a regional variation of this religious following. In Athens, there is indeed evidence of an early mother goddess cult, often associated with Hera and Medea alike, which involved either the ritual death of children or else was in honor of the early death of children and the mourning mothers (let’s hope the latter). In Corinth there are indications of a cult specifically focusing on Medea and Jason’s two deceased children themselves. Temple excavations at several archaic Greek sites associated with this early mother goddess group contain the burials of children within or around the foundations of the building. Although macabre to modern tastes, this focus on death, especially the death of young people, is common throughout world cultures, both ancient and modern; especially in the developing stage between a nomadic existence and settling down in towns and cities. In the ancient Near East, it was quite common for the bodies of younger members of societal groups to be relegated to distinct burial areas separate from the living spaces and the adult burial grounds; either in commemoration, or in fear that those who had not had a chance to live would retaliate on the still-living or their remains.

Another possible cult detail hidden within Medea’s tale regards the use of Pelias’ three daughters. In almost all versions of the story, they are basically seen as faux-initiates of Medea who are meant to learn magickal workings from her but are ultimately, for political/vengeful reasons, not allowed into the full secrets of Medea’s magickal craft. This is potentially indicative of some element of the cult whereby magickal knowledge was transferred from teacher to student until ultimately, with the cult’s downfall, the power of the magick faded and initiates were left in the dark, literally.

Exploring the Witchcraft of Medea

The sheer antiquity of the character of Medea is also attested to in the types of magick Medea practices within what remains of her tale. Medea’s magick is not the ritual temple magick, secret devotion, or cosmopolitan charlatanism that came to dominate the classical Greek period: it is a darker breed altogether. Medea acts more as a tribal shaman cum medicine woman of the older hunter-gatherer days. Her ways are less the ways of the city-states she visits and more those of the countryside and the mysterious “other” of foreign lands outside the realm of “civilized” society. She is a darker, chthonic goddess of life and death, power and destruction. She builds kingdoms and watches them fall, only to help them rebuild again. Her magicks, like her, are representative of the older ways on the outskirts of the Greek culture that built the city and the myth around her.

Medea is first and foremost, a devotee of the goddess Hekate. But whereby the acts and devotions of priestesses of her ilk had become privatized by the classical Greek period when her story was written down, Medea, wild-child that she is perceived to be, practices her prayers in public and private alike. She has no qualms about involving others in her rituals and at multiple points in her story invites others to witness her magick, pushing them away only at the peak of ritual thus preserving only a small element of secrecy. Apollonius has Medea and Jason perform an offering prior to his trials together, where in she instructs him on how to invoke magick herself. And in most versions, Pelias’ daughters as well as a possible royal retinue witness the midnight youth ritual both the times she conducts it properly and the time she purposefully does not, again, only being kicked out for a brief portion of the ritual. Despite these witnesses, Medea’s magick is not the communal magick of a temple, it is a personal relationship with a goddess. It is an individual chanting alone in a sacred grove rather than a throng singing together as a priest makes a sacrifice.

Medea’s affinity for Hekate runs in the family. Her mother Idyia, her aunt Circe, and potentially her sister, are likewise devotees of the goddess and of her student the goddess Artemis/Diana. Intriguingly, most versions of Medea’s story indicate that a grove or shrine sacred to the goddess existed near the “palace” of King Aeëtes in Colchis. Colchis, or Kolkhis, is not so much a city as a region in modern day Georgia (the country, not the state mind you ~ you have no idea how often that confuses people). King Aeëtes would have not been so much the ruler of a city and its people as the leader of one large or several nomadic groups along the edge of the Black Sea, with a potentially movable “capital” and immovable sacred sites. Ovid’s Heroides insists that not only is there a grove, but that in it, is a golden statue of Diana, “wrought by barbarian hands” ~ an anthropological detail backed by archaeological and historical evidence of the religious practices of the Balkan and Caucasus regions around the Black Sea: sacred groves with central features, often a statue, which has been embedded with precious metals. Notably there is the later sanctuary at Sarmizegetuza in modern day Romania, which was built over a pre-existing sacred site quite similar to the sacred grove in Colchis under discussion. However, for all that there are sacred sites which Medea works her magick in, she and her magick are not tied to the site alone. She does not have to be working within the confines of the goddesses’ sacred space, be it a grove or a temple, in order to call upon the goddess. She uses her powers this just as easily from the bow of The Argo, in a field outside Iolcus, and in the streets of Athens as she does at the beginning of her story in the grove of her goddess.

Medea’s magickal litany consists of several practices which are still highly regarded within witchcraft today; namely: the arts of invocation, purification, herb-lore, and rituals combing these elements. It is her herb craft which distinguishes her more as a witch and less a simple pagan priestess. She uses her herbal skills multiple times throughout her life: twice to help win the Golden Fleece, in the youth ritual for the ram and Pelias, and as a poison against Glauce, her father, and later Theseus. She also uses her herbs to heal, in what are often side notes to the primary tale which are typically disregarded or made little of because they cast the wicked witch in a more positive role. Even I have left some of these side-notes out of my narrative above because they are often just that, side notes to the primary tale. Medea heals several of the Argonauts while on board ship, most notably the highly controversial and only female Argonaut, Atalanta. She heals and makes younger Jason’s father, Aeson. And she also cures Hercules when she visits him later in Thebes. Ironically, Hercules would eventually succumb to the same kind of “poisoned-outfit death” Medea had previously sentenced Glauce to just before she visited Hercules.

The biggest magickal feat she performs, however, is arguably the youth ritual at Iolcus. And it is this which I would like to leave you with as the pinnacle of Medea’s magick. [Please note, do not try this ritual at home ~ even if you can find a dragon to take you round to collect all the ingredients: don’t even think about repeating it!] Ovid’s rendition of this magickal feat is, in my opinion, the best of the bunch, albeit the one that takes the most mythological license.

“Three nights remained before the moon’s bright horns
Would meet and form her orb; when she shone
In fullest radiance and with form complete
Gazed down upon the sleeping lands below.
Medea, barefoot, her long robe unfastened,
Her hair upon her shoulders falling loose,
Went forth alone upon her roaming way,
In the deep stillness of the midnight hour.
Now men and birds and beasts in peace profound
Are lapped; no sound comes from the hedge; the leaves
Hang mute and still and all the dewy air
Is silent; nothing stirs; only the stars
Shimmer. Then to the stars she stretched her arms,
And thrice she turned about and thrice bedewed
Her locks with water, thrice a wailing cry
She gave, then kneeling on the stony ground,

‘O night’ , she prayed, ‘Mother of mysteries,
And all ye golden stars who with the moon
Succeed the fires of day, and thou, divine
Three-formed Hecate, who knowest all
My enterprises and dost fortify
The arts of magic, and thou, kindly earth,
Who dost for magick herbs provide;
Ye winds and airs, ye mountains, lakes, and streams,
And all ye forest gods and gods of night,
Be with me now! By your enabling power,
At my behest, broad rivers to their source
Flow back, their banks aghast; my magick song
Rouses the quiet, calms the angry seas;
I bring the clouds and make the clouds withdraw,
I call the winds and quell them; by my art
I sunder the serpents’ throats; the living rocks
And mighty oaks from out their soil I tear;
I move the forests, bid the mountains quake,
The deep earth groan and ghosts rise from their tombs.
Thee too, bright Moon, I banish, though thy throes
The clanging bronze assuage; under my spells
Even my grandsire’s chariot grows pale
And the dawn pales before my poisons’ power.
You at my prayer tempered the flaming breath
Of the dread bulls, you placed their necks,
Necks never yoked before, the curving plough;
You turned the warriors, serpent-born, to war
Against themselves; you lulled at last to sleep
The guardian that knew not sleep, and sent
Safe to the homes of Greece the golden prize.
Now I have need of essences whose power
Will make age new, bring back the bloom of youth,
The prime years win again. These you will give.
For not in vain the shimmering stars have shown,
Nor stands in vain, by winged dragons drawn,
My chariot here.’ And there the chariot stood,
Send down from heaven her purpose to fulfill.

She mounted, stroked and harnessed dragon’s necks,
Shook the light reins and soared into the sky,
And gazing down beheld, far far below,
Thessalian Tempe; then the serpent’s course
She set of regions that she knew of old.
The herbs that Pelion and Ossa bore,
Othyrs and Pindus and that loftiest peak,
Olympus, she surveyed those that pleased
Some by the roots she culled, some with the curve
Of her bronze blade she cut; many she chose
Beside Apidanus’ green banks and many
Beside Amphrysus; now was swift Enipeus
Exempt; Peneus too and the bright stream
Of broad Spercheus and the reedy shores
Of boeb gave their share, and from Anthedon
She plucked the grass of life, not yet renowned
For that sea-change the Euboean merman found.

And now nine days had seen her and nine nights
Roaming the world, driving her dragon team.
Then she returned; the dragons, though untouched
Save by the wafting odor of the those herbs,
Yet sloughed their aged skins of many years.
Before the doors she stopped nor crossed the threshold;
Only the heavens covered her; she shunned
Jason’s embrace; then two turf altars built,
The right to Hecate, the left to youth,
Wreathed with the forest’s mystic foliage,
And dug two trenches in the ground beside
And then performed her rites. Plunging a knife
Into a black sheep’s throat she drenched the wide
Ditches with blood; next from the chalice poured
A stream of wine and from a second chalice
Warm frothing milk, chanting magick words,
Summoned the deities of the earth and prayed
The sad shades’ monarch and his stolen bride
That, of their mercy, from old Aeson’s frame
They will not haste to steal the breath of life.

And when in long low-murmured supplications
The deities were appeased, she bade bring out
The old exhausted king, and with a spell
Charmed him to deepest sleep and laid his body,
Lifeless it seemed, stretched on a bed of herbs.
Away! She ordered Jason and Away!
The ministrants and warned that eyes profane
See not her secrets; then with streaming hair,
Ecstatic round the flaming altars moved,
And in the troughs of blood dipped cloven stakes
And lit them dripping at the flames, and thrice
With water, thrice with sulfur, thrice with fire
Purged the pale sleeping body of the king.

Meanwhile with the deep bronze cauldron, white
With bubbling froth, the rich elixir boils.
Roots from the vales of Thessaly and seeds
And flowers from the farthest Orient
And sand that Ocean’s ebbing waters wash,
And hoar-frost gathered when the moon shines full,
And wings and flesh of owls and the warm guts
Or wolves that change at will to human form.
To them she adds the slender scaly skins
Of Libyan water-snakes and then the livers
Of long-living gazelles and eggs and heads
Of ancient crows, nine generations old.
With these and a thousand other nameless things
Her more than mortal purpose she prepared.

Then with a seasoned stick of olive wood
She mixed the whole and stirred it. And behold!
The old dry stick that stirred the bubbling brew
Grew green and suddenly burst into leaf,
And all at once was laden with fat olives;
And where the froth flowed from the pot
And the hot drops spattered the ground beneath,
Fair springtime bloomed again, and everywhere
Flowers of the meadow sprang and pasture sweet.
And seeing this Medea drew her blade
And slit the old king’s throat and let the blood
Run out and filled his veins and arteries
With her elixir; and when Aeson drank,
Through wound and lips, at once his lips and beard,
White for long years, regained their raven hue;
His wizened pallor, vanquished, fled away
And firm new flesh his sunken wrinkles filled,
And all his limbs were sleek and proud and strong.
Then Aeson woke and marveled as he saw
His prime restored forty years before.”

Bibliography of Secondary Sources

Cleasby, H.L., 1907. The Medea of Seneca. Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. 18, pp. 39-71.
Clauss, J.J., and Johnston, S.I. (eds.), 1997. Medea: Essays on Medea in Myth, Literature, and Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Cockburn, G. 2005. Lecture series on Medea: Analysis & Interpretation. Durham University

Further Sources:
Medea and Witchcraft in Classical Greek Art
The Medea Tradition presented by Wesleyan College
(For classical, primary sources, please see links embedded in the text)