The Gates; Magic: A History

[essentialsaltes]

 The Gates by John Connolly

A lightly humorous novel of the end of the world. A bit too winky-winky and young adult-ish for me, but it races along amiably. There was one good laugh, regarding a zombie medieval bishop who had a rather one track mind about how he wanted to get medieval on everyone's asses.

Magic: A History: From Alchemy to Witchcraft, from the Ice Age to the Present by Chris Gosden

By training, Gosden is a professor or archaeology, so much of the focus of the book is on prehistory rather than history. Much of it is inherently fascinating stuff from sites all over the world. And of course a bit frustrating, since we don't really know what this or that meant to those people. Although obviously we have to speculate, I think Gosden occasionally speculates too much, or worse, employs wiggle words to make things seem more magical than they are. 

All in all, it's not what I expected from a 'history of magic', but I did like what I got (anyway). Some notes:

In 1951, relatively early in the campaign of excavations near Dolní Věstonice, a structure sometimes known as the ‘magician’s hut’ was excavated. A circular depression had been dug into the soil above the permafrost, its edge marked by stones and bones, which probably held down the roof of the hut, possibly made of animal skins or branches. The hut was small and at some remove from the other winter shelters. In its centre was a small structure made of clay, thought to be a kiln, within which were found the remains of 2,300 small clay figurines. These were mainly effigies of animals that had been deliberately exploded in the kiln
 

Perched on top of a limestone ridge in the Turkish Province of Urfa are several mounds of stone with many Neolithic flints on their surface and initial indications of large limestone slabs. Here the German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt excavated with the Şanlıurfa Museum from 1996 until his death in 2014. The archaeological world is still coming to terms with the discoveries they made. Partly cut into the underlying limestone are up to twenty-two circular stone-walled features, some of which also have benches. Most are yet to be excavated. Either set into the walls or free-standing in the middle of the structures are stone pillars up to 6 m tall and maybe weighing 50 tonnes. The pillars appear to have been people, with the t-shaped top a head, occasionally showing a face, and some with arms carved on the sides, meeting as hands at a belt on the front. On to these stone humans was carved a range of beasts, all of which were fierce or dangerous in some way, either because they were large cats, or smaller deadly creatures such as snakes or scorpions. The animals that people ate, primarily gazelle, were not depicted.

[wiggle word example:] People shaped matter and channelled energy to create sophisticated jade and pottery.
 

Late in the Mesolithic we find a new-born baby laid on a swan’s wing in its grave at the cemetery at Vedbæk-Bøgebakken in eastern Denmark, a poignant indication of possible links to a bird that is seen on water, land and in the air, bridging all three elements. Next to the baby is the body of a woman thought to have died in childbirth. 

[Innsmouth look] - As younger generations made the slow shift to farming, older cosmologies were not immediately given up, and they maintained their links between houses and mountains, to the Danube and to the hybrid fish/humans embodied in the sculptures of their ancestors in Lepenski Vir.
 

Various regions have their geographies of deposition, indicating local cultural norms, so that in the Iron Age (800 BCE–43 CE) in southern Britain swords were regularly thrown into rivers, but in northern England and Scotland swords are found only on dry land, mainly in graves.

[pretty harsh horoscope] The role of astrology more generally within Jewish magic is controversial, with some insisting on its importance.7 The ‘Treatise of Shem’, surviving now in a version probably written from the first to third centuries CE in Syriac, but probably using earlier material, contains an almanac. How your year will be is laid out through the zodiac signs, and the predictions given are surprisingly specific, being worked out from the rising sign at the spring equinox: ‘If the year begins in Virgo: Everyone whose name contains Yudhs or Semkat, and Beth and Nun, will be deceased and robbed, and will flee from his home … and the first grain will not prosper … and dates will be abundant, but dried peas will be reduced in value.’ 

The large complex at Paquimé flourished between 1200 and 1450 CE in present-day Mexico, and exhibited sophisticated symbolism combining elements of land and water, with many canals between earthen mounds. Plumed serpents in the art show the influence of Mesoamerica, as do ball courts, but local peculiarities occur, including the ritual killing of 300 scarlet macaws, which were probably bred for sacrifice