Lately, I’ve been seeing the word paganism bandied about everywhere. From the dismissive (not another magic system based on pagan beliefs) to the worshipful (instructions on how to practice modern witchcraft) to just not getting it (paganism is based on polytheistic beliefs with mass human sacrifice. Huh?).
As I was writing my novel, I too faced the question of coming up with a believable magic system, and I too turned to history as my first port of call.
Magic systems through the ages have drawn a great deal of inspiration from old European civilisations, those which we call “pagan”. But what is paganism, and what does it have to do with magic?
Well, the truth is, paganism is nothing at all.
That’s right, it doesn’t really mean anything.
Shocked?
Wait until you hear that it’s just a propaganda term made up by ancient Christians.
Don’t believe me?
Let’s jump right in.
The etymology of paganism
The term is first attested in English from the fifteenth century as meaning “person of non-Christian and non-Jewish faith”. It originates from the Latin paganus, “pagan”, which originally meant “villager, rustic”, and was also military jargon for “non-combatant, civilian”.
The religious meaning of the word likely derives from the military use, and was adopted with the military imagery of the early church. Roman Christians considered themselves milites (“soldiers of Christ”).
The term came to be used for all non-Christian/non-Jewish civilizations, and existed contemporary to other similar terms (hellene, gentile, heathen).
So who were the pagans?
The Romans used the term paganus to designate any number of cults existing in Europe at the time. Mostly, this was done out of convenience and for reasons of rhetoric; it was easier to describe them as one single people. The truth is that the pagans had little in common. Although many were polytheistic, some were monotheistic. They weren’t united by location or language, either. Many of them were not even religions in the modern sense; instead, they were a collection of customs (rituals, beliefs, traditions) that were fluid and open to interpretation by practisers. Often, they did not have a name for their beliefs, or a written text describing their practices.
In short, the pagans were all other civilisations in and around Europe at the same time as the early Christians were spreading their beliefs. Lumping them together under the single heading of “pagans” made it easier for the Christians to gradually eliminate their belief systems.
What happened to the pagans?
The Christianisation of pagan tribes in Europe began in the Late Antiquity (4th to 5th centuries AD), with the Christians employing a number of different strategies to convert the pagans. In general, Christianisation occurred in a top-down fashion, with rulers being converted first, before Christianity spread to their people. The conversion of rulers was generally voluntary, with the pagan rulers of the Germanic tribes and the Anglo-Saxons admiring the prestige of the Christians. The mass conversion of their people was often performed through Interpretatio Christiana, the practice of adapting pagan rituals and celebrations to Christianity. It is thought that a lot of modern-day Christian traditions may find some of their roots in the pagan practices of the Late Antiquity.
But why was it so popular?
There are two running theories as to why people were so willing to convert. The first is that the church played an important role in helping the poor. The second is that the ideas underpinning the religion were appealing, particularly the concept of the immortality of the spirit.
In any case, by 1000AD large swathes of Europe had been Christianised. Armenia was the first country to declare Christianity its state religion, in 301AD. The Baltic states held out the longest, with most of them only being converted during religious crusades in the twelfth to fourteenth centuries.
Even after Christianity was made the state religion of most countries, it didn’t just suddenly die out. The actual transformation of beliefs occurred much slower, with many of them still evident in the modern traditions and beliefs of individual countries.
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Further reading:
Vampires have been a mainstay of paranormal fiction and TV for generations, from Dracula to Twilight to The Vampire Diaries. We all know and (mostly) love them. Who wouldn’t want a sexy bad boy feasting on their blood?
The origins of vampires aren’t exactly shrouded in mystery—unless you count the fact that there are so many “origin stories” that things have become a bit confused. Bram Stoker borrowed a real-life person (Vlad the Impaler) as the inspiration for his story, and since then we’ve seen any number of different variations on vampires. But is it any wonder that there’s a lot of confusion (do vampires burn in sunlight? Or do they glitter?) when they appear in the folklore of every country and language under the sun, and people used to believe they really existed?
That’s right, there is real-life evidence that people believed in vampires. How do we know this? Because they used to exhume corpses that were suspected of vampirism and deface them: cut off limbs, stake them, or otherwise take measures to prevent them from rising from the grave.
But where did this very real fear of vampires actually come from? Would it surprise you to find out that it may have had its roots in medical diseases? Probably not—these days everyone’s probably heard of porphyria, which had symptoms remarkably similar to the modern conception of vampirism. But in fact, porphyria is not alone in inspiring the vampire mythos. Here are four illnesses that contributed to rising paranoia about vampires in the eighteenth century.
Vampirism: Symptoms and Signs
But first, what is a vampire?
Developed a sudden allergy to sunlight? Hate the smell of garlic? Feel a sudden, burning desire to chow down on someone’s neck? You may be a vampire. Here’s a handy checklist of symptoms to look out for:
Disclaimer: This is by far not an exhaustive list. Consult your doctor if concerns persist.
Got any of these? Probably nothing to worry about. Here are four other illnesses that explain these symptoms.
1. Porphyria
Porphyria is an illness affecting the production of heme, a part of the haemoglobin in our blood. Although today severe cases are fairly rare, and treatable (albeit not curable), at the height of the vampire hysteria in Europe it may have been particularly common in rural areas with limited gene pools. The symptoms include skin blistering when exposed to sunlight, gums receding (which would have made teeth appear more prominent and fang-like), and urine turning reddish-brown (the same colour as blood). Interestingly, one of the prescribed treatments was drinking animal blood to replenish their own.
2. Rabies
Rabies is a disease which has been linked both to the vampire and the werewolf mythos. Although there is now a vaccination, it used to be fairly common in Europe. Conferred by bite or blood-to-blood contact from animals to humans, it caused symptoms such as aversion to light, aggressive/delusional behaviour, and biting. Many early tales about vampires, particularly in Slavic folklore, refer to them as having beastlike behaviour, rushing at their victims, and biting them. Interestingly, there was also a major outbreak of rabies in eastern Europe around the time that the vampire was gaining traction in folklore.
3. The Plague
Even with modern medical understand, pandemics are scary things. In the past, with limited knowledge of the spread and treatment of diseases, they were even more terrifying. It’s not surprising, therefore, that vampire scares often coincided with waves of the Plague, which spread around Europe in the 1300s and 1400s. Humans contracted it from rats, and would develop symptoms such as fevers, chills, and weakness. Although it extremely rare today, the disease is still fatal if left untreated.
Suffers of the plague would often develop lesions around the mouth or emit a black purge fluid from their mouths after death. This led to the belief that they were drinking blood to keep themselves alive. Archaeologists have uncovered bodies amongst plague victims who had been buried with bricks in their mouths. This is thought to have been a method of preventing them from climbing out of their graves to drink the blood of the living.
4. Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (also known as consumption or TB) is a virus which destroys the tissue of the lungs. Although there is a vaccine, and it can be treated with modern antibiotics, the illness is fatal if untreated. It could be transmitted from person to person by air and spread particularly in poorer communities in the 19th century.
Tuberculosis suffers exhibited symptoms such as physical weakness, coughing up blood, and fevers. If one person in a household became sick, they would often infect the other family members. Because people at the time didn’t understand how diseases spread, it wasn’t a leap of logic to believe that a recently deceased relative was draining the life out of their family members, like a vampire would. The most famous case of this belief was Mercy Brown, in New England, USA… But that’s a story for another day!
Evidence of belief in vampires in Slavic folklore dates back to the 9th century, with notable periods of vampire hysteria over the centuries following that. These periods are often linked to the spread of highly infectious diseases. The vampire has been used as a symbol for all sorts of things over the centuries, often representing the unknown or the foreign, but it may well have found its origin as an early attempt to understand what we now explain through science and medicine.
Sources:
Sledzik and Bellantoni: Bioarcheological and Biocultural Evidence for the NewEngland Vampire Folk Belief (http://www.yorku.ca/kdenning/+++2150%202007-8/sledzik%20vampire.pdf)
Welcome to my new blog: all things magic.
I’ve been obsessed with magic more or less my entire life. As a child, I binge-read books like The Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter, The Magician’s House, and the Septimus Heap saga. (Full disclosure: I still reread all of those occasionally, even as an adult.) In recent years, I’ve graduated to writing my own books about magic—the culmination of which will be published on 21 July 2021. This has meant an awful lot of research into magic: what is magic and where did the idea come from?
When I write, I love including titbits from actual history, real beliefs in magic which have existed throughout civilisation. In this blog, I’ll share some of my learnings and experimentation with you, along with tips for writing about magic, and a few fun projects to bring more magic into your own life.
I hope you enjoy, and please do leave a comment! I love talking to people.
Without further ado, let’s jump right in.
THE ETYMOLOGY OF "MAGIC"
Magic can mean different things to different people, but at its core it describes the process of harnessing supernatural forces in order to manipulate events, things, or people. This definition encompasses a vast variety of practices, depending on culture and historical context, including divination, curses, protective enchantments, and many others.
The concept of magic goes back as far as human civilisation. It developed alongside religion and science as a mode of understanding and explaining the world around us. (Magic, variously, has been used to explain everything from the spread of diseases, to medicine, to early alchemical experiments.) Depending on the civilisation in question, magic plays a lesser or greater role in human consciousness. In fact, it is often impossible to define strict lines where magic ends and religion or science take over.
There are a myriad of terms to describe magic and the practice thereof in English: magic, witchcraft, wizardry, sorcery, thaumaturgy, and enchantment, to name just a few. Practitioners of magic are variously called magicians, mages, witches, wizards, warlocks, and sorcerers. Merely the profusion of terms associated with the craft indicates how prevalent the belief in it must have been.
The English word “magic” comes from the French “magique”, which in turn comes from the Latin terms “magica” and “magicos”. These originate from the Greek “magos”, meaning “member of the learned or priestly class”. The term “magic” displaced existing forms in English which derived from Germanic: “gaeldorcræft” (“enchantment”), “wiccecræft” (“witchcraft”), and “drycræft” (“dry-” meaning “magician”, from the Irish “drui” (“priest”), which is the source of the word “druid”). The existence of these terms in all languages, going back thousands of years, demonstrates that magic has always been an integral concept in human consciousness. It also reveals a close association with both learning and priesthood.
Magic has had mixed connotations over the years. In fact, much of the early Greco-Roman and Judo-Christian traditions relating to magic concerned the need to protect oneself against sorcery. This carried over into the Christian tradition, which associated magic with demons. The notion of magic as something evil spread as the rest of Europe converted to Christianity. The extant Germanic, Celtic, and Scandinavian religious beliefs were strongly associated with magic, and the Church labelled these beliefs “pagan” in order to condemn them. This struggle continued throughout the medieval period, and eventually culminated in the witch hunts.
In spite of this widespread persecution, a proliferation of magic-related texts from the medieval period, the use of magic as a theme in literature, and the continuation of magical beliefs up to the modern day, demonstrate that magical beliefs did not diminish with the spread of Christianity. They continued to hold sway in Europe as a mode of rationality (term coined by Jacob Neusner to mean a method of explaining natural phenomena) up until the Age of Enlightenment, when science began to win out as the preferred method. In other cultures around the world, magic continues to play an important role in belief systems.
Magic has been critical to the development of modern-day societies around the world and continues to hold importance in the human consciousness: one only has to look at children’s books and fairy tales to see that magic is still an integral part of our upbringing and an important stage in the development of our individual psyches.
This blog will explore what magic really means to modern-day society: real-world examples of how the belief in magic has manifested, how different magic systems are represented in literature, the importance of magic to our consciousness, and how each of us can bring a little bit of magic back into our lives. I look forward to taking this journey with you.
Until next time,
Margot
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Sources:
