The Decline of Pagan Magic
Aug. 17th, 2021 08:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sunnyskywalker posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
deathtocapslockThough the movies contradict the books too often for me to consider them canon, occasionally, a background detail is useful. One is Bathilda Bagshot’s book On the Decline of Pagan Magic, a movie prop in Deathly Hallows Part I. The existence of this book (should we choose to accept it) suggests that Bathilda didn’t only write propaganda for children. It could be propaganda for adults, but even that might include some genuine scholarship.
What might The Decline of Pagan Magic be about?
Depending on how she defines “pagan magic,” the time period covered could range from the first century to the nineteenth. If she means openly pagan magic in openly pagan European societies, it probably ends around the eleventh century, give or take a bit. So the book may mention the founding of the three great wizarding schools around that time, and how they did or didn’t contribute to the “decline.”
The idea that these schools were founded and the gradual splitting of magical and Muggle societies begun because of widespread, systematic(-ish) European witch persecutions is unlikely. That didn’t happen until a few centuries later. In fact, the Christian church often took the official position that witchcraft didn’t exist. Take this example from Charlemagne’s “Saxon Capitulary” of the late 8th century, which mandates execution for anyone who kills a supposed witch:
Or take this excerpt from the Canon Episcopi, circa 900:
Witchcraft is allegedly powered by pagan deities, who don’t exist. Ergo, witchcraft isn’t real but a delusion. Believing witches have real power is dangerously wrong.
However, this doesn’t mean there weren’t laws against witchcraft, witches, or specific types of magic. They were just a little more specific than blanket prohibitions against anything we today would consider magic.
Let’s step back to ancient Rome and the Twelve Tables. Our copies are incomplete and compiled from later quotations, but here are a few relevant fragments:
These fragments, at least, suggest that the offense was using magic to commit harm rather than any and all magic as such.
Or consider the 24th Canon from the Council of Ancyra in 324 C.E. Note the connection between divination and “the customs of the heathen.”
The Canon Episcopi, which denies that witches have real power, enjoins the church to oppose them anyway because of their religious heresy:
Jump forward to tenth-century Britain and the 16th canon law enacted under King Edgar:
Again, the law conflates the offenses of magic and “heathendom.” Other kingdoms of that era made the same connection. For example, in the late tenth century, King Olaf Tryggvason of Norway (a recent convert himself) started killing pagan seithr-magic practitioners and völva seeresses as part of his Christianization-by-force campaign.
On the other hand, Bald’s Leechbook, a (probably) tenth-century medical handbook, includes the following prescription (on page 291 of this edition):
Even leaving aside the mention of elves, this remedy relies on supernatural power: in this case, a specifically Christian power.
Or what about this eleventh-century English charm for keeping bees from leaving?
And that seer-killing King Olaf? His reign was supposedly foretold by a seer, often identified as a saint. According to some stories, the experience is what convinced him to convert. So Christian seers were okay — presumably because their power was believed to come from the Christian God rather than from delusions or demons masquerading as pagan gods.
Where am I going with this? Namely, that when Hogwarts was founded, magic was not considered to be one thing. There were various types of spells, which were believed to have different sources of power, and many or most were inextricably linked to a specific religion.
You could make a case — at least for purposes of constructing a Potterverse history — that all magic once was treated the same way “Dark magic” is in Harry’s time: bad if practiced by your enemies, if it threatened the state, or if it broke specific laws, but otherwise, it wasn’t really the same thing. Which is why people were practicing magic, from those bee-charms to divining who stole a cow, all over the place. It didn’t count, as long as they didn’t bother the wrong person.
Real-world history suggests that belief in multiple sources for magic lasted until quite recently. According to Cunning Folk: Popular Magic in English History by Owen Davies, there were several classes of magic-workers in the early modern period — and most were not considered witches. (The learned thought they were, but failed to convince the masses.) Charmers used charmed objects, and fortune-tellers specialized in divination. Cunning folk were full-service magic-workers — and a major service was providing magical protection against witchcraft. Davies contends that cunning folk were rarely prosecuted for witchcraft (fraud or defamation were more likely), and their neighbors tended to defend them against accusations of witchcraft. So, well into the 19th century, there were magic-workers who were not considered witches performing magic which was not considered witchcraft.
The Founders’ revolution might not just have been founding the school. Coming from different backgrounds, they might have compared notes, noticed that they sometimes achieved the same results with different methods, and realized that maybe all these different spells and powers had the same source. (Or perhaps two sources. They may have considered witchcraft and wizardry separate gifts. We don’t know how long that division lasted.)
Just as revolutionary was the realization that spells could be disentangled from their pagan roots. The fact that Bathilda’s book is about pagan magic’s decline suggests that they did disentangle it rather than retaining pagan ways in toto. What declined, specifically, was magic as practiced in pagan religious rites, not necessarily the magic itself. Some modern spells might well be derived from those ancient pagan versions, stripped of their religious trappings.
While magic-practitioners weren’t persecuted as a single, unified class, pagans with powers that rulers (or neighbors) found threatening or distasteful might be — and Christians could be accused of performing pagan magic rather than good Christian don’t-call-it-magic. So, while there wasn’t a witch persecution as such in the Founders’ time, they may have had cause to worry that they and their students would be accused of performing illegal, evil, pagan magic. Especially if they or any of their students had political or personal enemies. In that case, an accusation of “heathen witchcraft” would be a natural escalation.
Pagans might not have been their allies either, if they were upset about the Founders defiling sacred traditions and offending the gods by stripping magic of its original religious meanings (probably giving spells a Christian gloss instead). Such threats, plus any other political conflicts, raids, or wars going on may have made retreating to a remote location appealing.
Given that there was violent persecution of pagan magical practitioners, why does Bagshot call her book The Decline of Pagan Magic rather than The Destruction of Pagan Magic? Or why not The Christianization of Pagan Magic, which ought to be followed by Volume II: The Secularization of Christian Magic? Did the intermittent persecutions only accelerate an existing weakening of the ties between certain magical techniques and pagan religions? Did one or more European magic school try to preserve pagan religion(s) along with the magic, and it slowly declined as witches and wizards converted to Christianity despite their teachers’ best efforts? Or is Bagshot glossing over persecution by Muggle rulers and conflict between pagan and Christian witches and wizards by using the word “decline,” just as she glossed over the later witch persecutions in Harry’s textbook?
And if the book is propaganda, whose idea was that? We don’t know how tightly the Ministry controls publishing. They let Rita Skeeter insult them in print, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anyone can print anything. Xeno Lovegood might get away with his Rotfang Conspiracy articles only because they’re so absurd. For all we know, the manuscript version of A History of Magic was more accurate and nuanced than the blatant propaganda Harry reads, and Bagshot changed it under pressure from the Ministry. Or maybe her editor changed so they wouldn’t attract that attention in the first place. Decline may be a similar case.
Or, since it isn’t a textbook for children, maybe it can get away with more than History, merely softening the title and sticking a few Ministry-friendly disclaimers in at strategic points while preserving an otherwise sound analysis. I’d like to think so. The Potterverse needs the kind of critical historical inquiry the kids manifestly aren’t exposed to at school.
What might The Decline of Pagan Magic be about?
Depending on how she defines “pagan magic,” the time period covered could range from the first century to the nineteenth. If she means openly pagan magic in openly pagan European societies, it probably ends around the eleventh century, give or take a bit. So the book may mention the founding of the three great wizarding schools around that time, and how they did or didn’t contribute to the “decline.”
The idea that these schools were founded and the gradual splitting of magical and Muggle societies begun because of widespread, systematic(-ish) European witch persecutions is unlikely. That didn’t happen until a few centuries later. In fact, the Christian church often took the official position that witchcraft didn’t exist. Take this example from Charlemagne’s “Saxon Capitulary” of the late 8th century, which mandates execution for anyone who kills a supposed witch:
“If any one deceived by the devil shall have believed, after the manner of the pagans, that any man or woman is a witch and eats men, and on this account shall have burned the person, or shall have given the person's flesh to others to eat, or shall have eaten it himself, let him be punished by a capital sentence.”
Or take this excerpt from the Canon Episcopi, circa 900:
“It is also not to be omitted that some unconstrained women, perverted by Satan, seduced by illusions and phantasms of demons, believe and openly profess that, in the dead of night, they ride upon certain beasts with the pagan goddess Diana, with a countless horde of women, and in the silence of the dead of the night to fly over vast tracts of country, and to obey her commands as their mistress, and to be summoned to her service on other nights. But it were well if they alone perished in their infidelity and did not draw so many others into the pit of their faithlessness. For an innumerable multitude, deceived by this false opinion, believe this to be true and, so believing, wander from the right faith and relapse into pagan errors when they think that there is any divinity or power except the one God.”
Witchcraft is allegedly powered by pagan deities, who don’t exist. Ergo, witchcraft isn’t real but a delusion. Believing witches have real power is dangerously wrong.
However, this doesn’t mean there weren’t laws against witchcraft, witches, or specific types of magic. They were just a little more specific than blanket prohibitions against anything we today would consider magic.
Let’s step back to ancient Rome and the Twelve Tables. Our copies are incomplete and compiled from later quotations, but here are a few relevant fragments:
“Table VIII. Torts or Delicts
1a. Whoever enchants by singing an evil incantation ...
1b. ... If anyone sings or composes an incantation that can cause dishonor or disgrace to another ... he shall suffer a capital penalty.
8a. Whoever enchants away crops ...”
These fragments, at least, suggest that the offense was using magic to commit harm rather than any and all magic as such.
Or consider the 24th Canon from the Council of Ancyra in 324 C.E. Note the connection between divination and “the customs of the heathen.”
“As for those who are practicing divination and continuing the customs of the heathen, and who are introducing persons into their homes with a view to discovering sorceries, or even with a view to purification, let them fall under the Canon of five years in accordance with the fixed degrees; three years of kneeling, and two years of prayer, without oblation.”
The Canon Episcopi, which denies that witches have real power, enjoins the church to oppose them anyway because of their religious heresy:
"Bishops and their officials must labor with all their strength to uproot thoroughly from their parishes the pernicious art of sorcery and malefice invented by the devil, and if they find a man or woman follower of this wickedness to eject them foully disgraced from the parishes.”
Jump forward to tenth-century Britain and the 16th canon law enacted under King Edgar:
“If any wicca (witch), wiglaer (wizard), false swearer, morthwyrtha (worshipper of the dead) or any foul contaminated, manifest horcwenan (whore), be anywhere in the land, man shall drive them out. We teach that every priest shall extinguish heathendom and forbid wilweorthunga (fountain worship), licwiglunga (incantations of the dead), hwata (omens), galdra (magic), man worship and the abominations that men exercise in various sorts of witchcraft, and in frithspottum (peace-enclosures) with elms and other trees, and with stones, and with many phantoms.”
Again, the law conflates the offenses of magic and “heathendom.” Other kingdoms of that era made the same connection. For example, in the late tenth century, King Olaf Tryggvason of Norway (a recent convert himself) started killing pagan seithr-magic practitioners and völva seeresses as part of his Christianization-by-force campaign.
On the other hand, Bald’s Leechbook, a (probably) tenth-century medical handbook, includes the following prescription (on page 291 of this edition):
“If a horse is elf shot, then take the knife of which the haft is horn of a fallow-ox, and on which there are three brass nails, then write on the horse’s forehead Christ’s mark, and on each of the limbs which thou may feelest: then take the left ear, prick a hole in it in silence; this thou shalt do; then take a yerd; strike the horse on the back, then it will be whole. And write upon the horn of the knife these words, “Benedicite omnia opera domini, dominum” [“Bless all the works of the Lord of lords”]
Even leaving aside the mention of elves, this remedy relies on supernatural power: in this case, a specifically Christian power.
Or what about this eleventh-century English charm for keeping bees from leaving?
Against a swarm of bees, take some earth, throw it down with your right hand under your right foot, and speak:
“I catch it under foot, I may have found it. Listen, this earth can avail against every creature and against its opponent and against the lack of care and against the greatness of the human tongue.”
And against it cast away over the gravel, when they make a swarm, and speak:
“Sit down, victorious lady, sink to the earth! Never would you fly into the woods. Be so mindful of my good, as is every man of food and his home.”
And that seer-killing King Olaf? His reign was supposedly foretold by a seer, often identified as a saint. According to some stories, the experience is what convinced him to convert. So Christian seers were okay — presumably because their power was believed to come from the Christian God rather than from delusions or demons masquerading as pagan gods.
Where am I going with this? Namely, that when Hogwarts was founded, magic was not considered to be one thing. There were various types of spells, which were believed to have different sources of power, and many or most were inextricably linked to a specific religion.
You could make a case — at least for purposes of constructing a Potterverse history — that all magic once was treated the same way “Dark magic” is in Harry’s time: bad if practiced by your enemies, if it threatened the state, or if it broke specific laws, but otherwise, it wasn’t really the same thing. Which is why people were practicing magic, from those bee-charms to divining who stole a cow, all over the place. It didn’t count, as long as they didn’t bother the wrong person.
Real-world history suggests that belief in multiple sources for magic lasted until quite recently. According to Cunning Folk: Popular Magic in English History by Owen Davies, there were several classes of magic-workers in the early modern period — and most were not considered witches. (The learned thought they were, but failed to convince the masses.) Charmers used charmed objects, and fortune-tellers specialized in divination. Cunning folk were full-service magic-workers — and a major service was providing magical protection against witchcraft. Davies contends that cunning folk were rarely prosecuted for witchcraft (fraud or defamation were more likely), and their neighbors tended to defend them against accusations of witchcraft. So, well into the 19th century, there were magic-workers who were not considered witches performing magic which was not considered witchcraft.
The Founders’ revolution might not just have been founding the school. Coming from different backgrounds, they might have compared notes, noticed that they sometimes achieved the same results with different methods, and realized that maybe all these different spells and powers had the same source. (Or perhaps two sources. They may have considered witchcraft and wizardry separate gifts. We don’t know how long that division lasted.)
Just as revolutionary was the realization that spells could be disentangled from their pagan roots. The fact that Bathilda’s book is about pagan magic’s decline suggests that they did disentangle it rather than retaining pagan ways in toto. What declined, specifically, was magic as practiced in pagan religious rites, not necessarily the magic itself. Some modern spells might well be derived from those ancient pagan versions, stripped of their religious trappings.
While magic-practitioners weren’t persecuted as a single, unified class, pagans with powers that rulers (or neighbors) found threatening or distasteful might be — and Christians could be accused of performing pagan magic rather than good Christian don’t-call-it-magic. So, while there wasn’t a witch persecution as such in the Founders’ time, they may have had cause to worry that they and their students would be accused of performing illegal, evil, pagan magic. Especially if they or any of their students had political or personal enemies. In that case, an accusation of “heathen witchcraft” would be a natural escalation.
Pagans might not have been their allies either, if they were upset about the Founders defiling sacred traditions and offending the gods by stripping magic of its original religious meanings (probably giving spells a Christian gloss instead). Such threats, plus any other political conflicts, raids, or wars going on may have made retreating to a remote location appealing.
Given that there was violent persecution of pagan magical practitioners, why does Bagshot call her book The Decline of Pagan Magic rather than The Destruction of Pagan Magic? Or why not The Christianization of Pagan Magic, which ought to be followed by Volume II: The Secularization of Christian Magic? Did the intermittent persecutions only accelerate an existing weakening of the ties between certain magical techniques and pagan religions? Did one or more European magic school try to preserve pagan religion(s) along with the magic, and it slowly declined as witches and wizards converted to Christianity despite their teachers’ best efforts? Or is Bagshot glossing over persecution by Muggle rulers and conflict between pagan and Christian witches and wizards by using the word “decline,” just as she glossed over the later witch persecutions in Harry’s textbook?
And if the book is propaganda, whose idea was that? We don’t know how tightly the Ministry controls publishing. They let Rita Skeeter insult them in print, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anyone can print anything. Xeno Lovegood might get away with his Rotfang Conspiracy articles only because they’re so absurd. For all we know, the manuscript version of A History of Magic was more accurate and nuanced than the blatant propaganda Harry reads, and Bagshot changed it under pressure from the Ministry. Or maybe her editor changed so they wouldn’t attract that attention in the first place. Decline may be a similar case.
Or, since it isn’t a textbook for children, maybe it can get away with more than History, merely softening the title and sticking a few Ministry-friendly disclaimers in at strategic points while preserving an otherwise sound analysis. I’d like to think so. The Potterverse needs the kind of critical historical inquiry the kids manifestly aren’t exposed to at school.
no subject
Date: 2021-10-01 12:32 am (UTC)