Curse Tablets and Binding Spells from the Ancient World

by John G. Gager (Editor)

In the ancient Greco-Roman world, it was common practice to curse or bind an enemy or rival by writing an incantation on a tablet and dedicating it to a god or spirit. These curses or binding spells, commonly called defixiones were intended to bring other people under the power and control of those who commissioned them. More than a thousand such texts, written between the 5th Century B.C.E. and the 5th Century C.E., have been discovered from North Africa to England, and from Syria to Spain. Extending into every aspect of ancient life--athletic and theatrical competitions, judicial proceedings, love affairs, business rivalries, and the recovery of stolen property--they shed light on a new dimension of classical study previously inaccessible. Here, for the first time, these texts have been translated into English with a substantial translator's introduction revealing the cultural, social, and historical context for the texts. This book will interest historians, classicists,
scholars of religion, and those concerned with ancient magic.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Religion, Spirituality, Witchcraft, Classics, Magick

296 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

Reviews

[Trinity Benstock · Rating 5 out of 5]

Provides what it says with brief annotation and provenance of cited tablets. Readers with lower ratings, simply didn’t appreciate the reference nature of this great work.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am ambivalent about this book. In many ways it was very interesting for me, because it's been a long time since I was exposed to anything resembling an academic text in the classics and it was super cool to delve into this common cultural phenomenon that I was largely ignorant of. On the other hand, this book is a bit repetitive and academic for a popular treatment of the subject, but too superficial to be a good academic treatment of the subject, so it's not clear where exactly it fits in. If you read this book, I highly recommend that you read the footnotes!. They are where a lot of the most interesting material comes in!

The book catalogues a number of ancient materials related to curse tablets and magic, grouping them roughly by the subject or purpose of the tablet. Each chapter has a few introductory pages about the category to be examined, followed by descriptions and translations of a number of tablets or artifacts (and in some chapters texts). Pictures and/or untranslated texts are available for very few of these materials, though I'm not sure how much I would have gotten out of seeing more pictures.

Reading this as a popular introduction to the subject, I am most struck by how easily this could give a misleading picture of the actual state of the world. I have very little understanding of the context in which these tablets were written, so I could never tell which features of the tablets that I found interesting were features of the cultures at large, features of the magical tradition, artifacts of the translation or later interpretation of the materials, or some mixture of all three. This is a downside of the book being so close to the original sources - in some ways it seems that a more comprehensive summary of the materials compiled by experts should be able to give much better context on these things.

One very interesting feature that was particularly noticable in the tablets from after the spread of Christianity, was the highly syncretic nature of many of the invocations; the same tablet would make heavy use of Jewish mystic traditions while invoking Greek gods, Egyptian gods and angels. It would be interesting to know if this is specific to the magical tradition (invoke everyone and just hope that everything works out) or if possibly the ancient world was just very cosmopolitan and that there was a great deal more cultural mixing that went on than is usually portrayed in the popular imagination. I imagine it's a combination of the two, but again lack of context rears its head.

As an academic work, I find it hard to imagine that this would be terribly useful except as a laying out a general case for the editor's view that curse tablets and other forms of magic played out in the world, plus a source of many citations. Without the original texts to study, it seems that any specific conclusions drawn would be hopelessly tied down to the translator's interpretations.

The last thing I'd like to address in this review is the editor's position on the reality of magic. In several places, Gager makes the case that it is a mistake to view these tablets as "not having worked" since from our modern viewpoint we know that engraving text on a lead tablet and burying it in a graveyard does not cause mystical spirits to do your bidding. While he makes a fairly reasonable point, which is that there is a mechanism for these curse tablets to have worked via a social mechanism - which is to say that if there was already a widespread belief that these tablets worked then in some sense they could work if, for example, Anaxios heard (or feared) that Diocles had commissioned a curse tablet against him, Anaxios might change his behavior in response to the curse. However, I think that this clearly violates the clear meaning of the curse tablets working in the sense that they certainly didn't have the effects nominally expected but rather that there is reason to believe that they had effects on society just because they were believed to work. These are distinct phenomena and I believe the muddling of the two concepts of "working" is an over-correction to the imperious attitude that was once prevalent among the social sciences; the fact of the matter is that these curse tablets did not work by the ordinary meaning of the term, and I don't think it hurts to say this even if you go on to say that they had some effect on the social fabric of society at the time.

Regardless of its faults, I did quite enjoy reading this book, and it definitely engaged me deeply. Half the people around me probably heard about this book as I was reading it, because it kept providing me interesting tid-bits of information that I couldn't help but share with the people around me. If there were a popular treatment of this material, I'd definitely read and recommend it, but until then this book is good enough.

3.5 of 5 stars

[Maggie Anton · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book both informative and interesting. Only in the last decade or so have scholars started to seriously study the magic, superstitions, sorcery, etc of the ancient world as a guide to how the average person [not the rich, famous or intellectual] lived approximately 2000 years ago. Not surprisingly, Gager has deduced from the many amulets, curse tables, incantation bowls and love spells that sorcery was ubiquitous in the countries surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. Practitioners and clients were Jews, Christians, and pagans, wealthy, poor and everyone in between, in Babylonia and the Roman Empire.

[Lolo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting read. This is a history book about curse tablets, and not an occult book. The book contains a lot of images of how the curse was written on the tablets.

I was hoping for a deeper insight in how the curse tablets work (or supposed to be working). Or historic evidence of the results, if any exists.

The author it seems to me is trying to focus on the academic point of view and tries to sidestep the “occult” point of view.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is important history: Magic has been a “thing” since ancient times. The author adds context and carefully annotates each example. I found these examples fascinating!

[Brandy Dolce · Rating 4 out of 5]

My copy of this book is used. The notes along the margins indicate this must've been used as a textbook at one time, which is fine with me. I enjoy the previous owner's comments! This work contains pictures of coffins, spell tablets, actual wording of spells, etc. Neat to see the evolution of religion/spiritual beliefs over the centuries.

[Larry · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a scholarly presentation of the subject. It is focused on 168 artifacts or passages from ancient texts. Each entry states where the artifact was found, describes it, and presents a translation of the writing.

[Aimee Lowe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written, interesting and informative. Could do with a few more images of tablets but it's very descriptive.