The Art of Magic (Part A)

The Art of Magic (Part A)

picture from charmedp3.bz.tc

Old fat lady with green face,smelly breath,black robe, who stands before a huge cauldron stirring a potion,which changes colours all the time and, when the potion is ready, she rides her broomstick and flies to the skies and when she finds her victim she sprinkles the magical potion on them and they are turned on frogs at once! I'm pretty sure that this is the image, that you have in your mind for the witches. Or you might think that a witch might be like the three cute sisters of Hollywood, who have killed every demon the imagination of the script writer has invented and call themselves "Charmed Ones". You might even think that a witch and a wizard is like the ones that are presented to the Harry Potter movies!
And worse some people probably reckon that a witch/wizard is a person devoted to the devil, who makes sacrifices of living beings and sometimes humans, so as to petition and satisfy their lord of darkness.
But let's be serious: you don't believe that magic is something like that,do you? And the truth is that IT ISN'T. "Then", you will ask, "what is magic, if it is nothing like that?". Would you like to  travelled in time and see how the meaning of the word "magic" has changed over the centuries?


History of Magic...
Magic is one of the most ancient crafts. It is unknown when magic appeared for the very first time,but some assume that it was appeared in the Paleolithic times (around 25,000 BC). Many philosophers,like Plato and Aristotle, after many years of research on Magic,conceded Magic's validity.
 Traces of the Art of Magic can be found in Paleolithic times, when people lived in caves. These first organised societies were matriarchal. The woman had the control over home and children. The Female in those times was the Guardian of the Hearth's fire, Manager of the home's saved food and goods, Inventor of agriculture (even in later times Goddess Demeter was the one who taught humankind how to cultivate the earth and not a male god), Carer and Protectress of the children. The woman was the one who had the total responsibility for these things. Men didn't know that they contributed to the miracle of Birth (they thought it was something supernatural and they didn't know that their sperm was that important for the life's creation). So, the female was free to choose how to use her body. The male visited the female to her mother's cave and after they were united with love, the man returned to his mother's cave again. The Woman was the one who gave birth to a tiny creature similar to her. Like Mother Earth, who offers Her fruit and plants that come from inside Her (the ground) every Spring and Summer in order to feed Her children (animals and humankind). Exquisite!!! The women were those who ruled the economy with agricultural products, texturing and tools' production. The Woman becomes Priestess of Her family. She prays to Mother Earth. You see, they are similar. She watches the sky and the moon and its phases. She sees that the moon phases have something to do with that blood that appears every 28 days. Yes! Now she can see it. The Goddess of the Moon has something to do with her famine period. Probably, it is a gift from the Goddess. A gift that has something to do with her babies. When she is pregnant, she stops bleeding.
So,the Female starts looking for answers. She watches the sky. There are some tiny lights on the sky. There is a circular and warm disk. There is the Moon. Throughout the years she becomes more certain that the movements of these lights on the sky are fixed. The warm round disk (sun) departed for a brief period (winter), in order to come back stronger (summer). The cold and the snow stay on Earth this period and when they melt, she sees that, little things grow on the ground. Beautiful plants and flowers that smell very nice.She found that some of them can be used as food, some as cure and some are just nice and smell good. Everything becomes her tool: the moon,the fire, the herbs and every tool that she made. Voila! The first Witches! Those women knew how to make food, how to use the plants to heal the diseases. Those women continued with their deeds and wanted to thank the powers that helped them. So, then they realised that there are invisible powers that affect them. She created ceremonies to thank the powers that helped her, she communicated with her gods.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I present you the first Witches, the first Priestesses!!!!!!


So, as we can see Magic and religion (sometimes is very difficult to separate these two as,in fact, they are the same thing: the calling of Divine Powers for a particular purpose) was invented by women. Besides don't forget about the nature of Woman: compassionate, wise, intuitive. Who would be better to communicate with the Divine powers? Women were the Mothers, the Advisors, the Healers, the Priestesses, the Seers.

The Triple Moon Goddess

 People in Paleolithic times used the magical energy by drawing in the caves, by dancing and singing around the fire, so as to have a successful hunting. They made offerings to the Great Mother Earth, the Lady of the Plants and the living beings, and they honoured the Sun and the Moon. They buried the bones of the animals they caught on the hunting deep in the ground. A magical action that assured them that the animals they buried, would be reborn and the power of Mother Earth would bring these animals back to them. Magic in that era was used to ensure that Mother Earth would continue to give them food and they had everything they needed to live. Later during 7500BC until 5500BC, the Great Mother Earth was worshiped along with a God of plantation, corn, winter and death. He was a god, who offered himself as a sacrifice in the time of the Harvest and was reborn in the middle of the Winter as the Sun god. Also, in that era people started worshipping an other Goddess along with the Mother Earth and the Solar God. They called Her "The Triple Goddess" (no, i'm not talking about Wicca!). This Goddess was connected with the three phases of the moon: the Waxing Moon, the Full Moon and the Waning Moon. The moon was a tool for those people to calculate the time. The moon was connected with Birth and Death, not only because it was born (waxing moon),died (waning moon) and reborn (waxing moon again), but, also because, a baby needs 9 moon cycles to be born (one moon cycle lasts 28,5 days, which is a month,so 9 moon cycles are 9 months approximately). Then the Full moon was corresponded to Women, because the woman's womb is like the full moon, when she is pregnant: round and full of life and energy! Later the moon was connected to romance and passion, because firstly was connected with the woman's fertility and, especially, when the woman's womb is ready to accept the man's sperm (sex), so sex is the time of love and the time that a new life is to be created. Even nowadays the rituals for love and fertility (whether it is spiritual fertility-inspiration- or fertility of the earth) take place under the Waxing Moon or Full Moon.
After Christianity appeared, the Old Ways were exiled by the new religion. The temples were burnt,the altars and the statues of the ancient gods broken, the Magicians and the Priests and Priestesses of the old religion were tortured and killed. The rituals of the Nature  and the ceremonies that honoured the gods were replaced by the christian ones.

In Medieval times, the Witch-Hunt took place for two basic reasons: the Christian Religion emphasised on the fact that women were Eve's daughters and because of what Eve did, women were considered to be inferior to men; secondly, in those times, that the societies were patriarchal, the women who were healers and midwives (professions that were allowed only to men) and those who still worshipped their ancient gods and refused to change their religion, were considered to be a threat for the type of  society that Christians wanted to create. The ability of those women to help mothers give birth without pain,was in contrast to the belief of the new religion's conquerors that the women-Eve's descendants are cursed by the god and they should give birth in pain and sorrow. These women became an objection of persecution. They were often accused that they sacrificed the babies in honour of the devil. This had a serious impact on the society. As the infant mortality rate (how many babies die per year per 1000 babies) was highly increased those years, the women whose babies died often blamed the midwives for their babies' death. The Church wanted to gain power. So, the Church mainly targeted to landowners, and especially the widowers, so as to steal what they owned. And the way to do that was to blame them as witches. The word "witch" did not have the same meaning as it did in the ancient times. In medieval times a witch was a worshipper of the devil, whereas in the ancient times a witch/wizard (of course there were men who practiced the Craft) was a person who could heal the diseases with their knowledge on herbalism, one who could communicate with the gods and bring the changes needed to society, a wise one.
Nobody knows how many people had died those times by the awful tortures, but some estimate that 250,000 people died during the 15-17th centuries.
In the 20th century, magic became legal in America, but people still are afraid  of it or make fun of it, just because they can't understand it. But Magic has no limits and has its own rules and it works in a way that people cannot understand, because of their imperfect nature and restricted knowledge.
But, I think this is the way it should be, for Magic would be nothing without its mysterious nature, which cannot be tamed by humans.

To be continued...