occult practice

necromancy, communication with the dead, usually in order to obtain insight into the future or to accomplish some otherwise impossible task. Such activity was current in ancient times among the Assyrians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and Etruscans; in medieval Europe it came to be associated with black (i.e., harmful, or antisocial) magic and was condemned by the church.

Its practitioners were skilled magicians who used a consecrated circle in some desolate spot, often a graveyard, to protect themselves from the anger of the spirits of the dead. In the event of a premature or violent death, the corpse was thought to retain some measure of unused vitality, and so the use of parts of corpses as ingredients of charms came to be an important technique of witchcraft. Necromancy was especially popular in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and its temptations and perils were vividly described in the Faust stories of Christopher Marlowe and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

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THE CRAZY HISTORY OF NECROMANCY EXPLAINED

Necromancers have a bit of a bad reputation. Say that you play one in D&D, or any of the scores of online games that have them as an option, and you’re bound to get a bit of a funny look before people start backing away. The mere mention of them conjures up images of raising the dead, of leading scores of skeletons and rotting corpses into battle, of sending the dead and diseased into a city to swarm the streets.

The necromancers of our favorite fantasy games and stories were based on a very real practice that tried to cross the boundaries between the living and the dead. For as long as mankind has lived, loved, and lost, we’ve wanted to know what comes after. We’ve wanted to reach out to people just one last time, to say the things that went unsaid, to see them one final time. It’s a powerful thing, and here’s where necromancy comes in.

The history of necromancy goes back thousands of years, and it hasn’t always been about creating undead hordes. In fact, it’s really never been about that. Let’s talk to — and about — the dead.

NECROMANCY ISN’T WHAT YOU THINK IT IS

Necromancy, it turns out, wasn’t originally about raising the dead at all. According to Andrej Kapcar of Masaryk University’s Department of Archaeology and Museology (via ResearchGate), the general term “necromancy” refers to any and all divination practices that involve the spirits of people who have passed on. The precise details of just what that includes has changed a lot over the course of centuries, but necromancy got its start when we started forming complex ideas about the afterlife. Once we believed spirits went somewhere, it wasn’t that far-fetched to believe that if we just knew how to dial the celestial telephone, we could reach them.

Read More – THE CRAZY HISTORY OF NECROMANCY EXPLAINED

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