Altorientalistik at the Philipps-University of Marburg warmly invites to attend the scientific colloquium “Legitimising Magic” in Marburg, Germany, July 13–14.
“Magic” is one of the most colourful terms used to describe phenomena in the history of religions. From the beginning, magic acquired a distinct negative connotation. Early scholars of the history of religion used it intentionally to describe to describe certain knowledge, crafts and practises in ancient pre-Greek and modern indigenous cultures to stress the “otherness” of those cultures in comparison to that of the modern western world and its perceived foundation, the bible on the one hand and the Graeco-Roman world on the other. Despite the term’s obvious shortcomings as a just description of ancient and modern practices, it has never been dropped, probably for lack of a better term in modern western languages and in the respective ancient cultures. In Ancient Near Eastern studies, and by us, it is used faute de mieux, but with an explicit negation of any pejorative meaning, solely as a convenient, established term to describe an ancient belief system consisting of practices, incantations and rituals to influence the world…
Read more and workshop programme:
https://www.uni-marburg.de/de/cnms/altorientalistik/aktuelles/nachrichten/workshop-legitimising-magic
Website:
https://www.uni-marburg.de/de/cnms/altorientalistik
Contact:
Nils Heeßel (nils.heessel@staff.uni-marburg.de)
Elyze Zomer (elyze.zomer@staff.uni-marburg.de)
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