by Rev. Michael J Dangler, originally published on his Patreon

In this session, we’re going to talk about the importance of the magico-religious function in the broader context of Indo-European culture. I’m going to preface this by saying I’m not a native speaker of any of these languages, so I’m doing the best I can with pronunciations. This video also answers question 2 of Magic for Priests in the ADF Clergy Training Program, Question 2 for History of Magic 1 in the Initiate Program, and Question 3 in History of Magic in the Magician’s Guild Study Program, as they stand at this recording. That question prompt is:

“Identify the terms used within one Indo-European language to identify ‘magic’ and ‘magician’ examining what these terms indicate about the position of the magician in that society and the practice of his or her art.”

What does the question mean?

Indo-European “culture,” if such a thing can be said to exist, is strongly reflected in language: words provide a guide to societal and cultural institutions, and the relationships between institutions are structured and perpetuated by language. This question is aiming to use the native, Indo-European words as a gateway to understanding the position and function of a person who does what we call magic.

So, what’s the question asking?

Your assignment here is to look at a subset of words in one IE language that are related to magic, particularly different types of magic and magicians if we have words that differentiate them, and describe what those words (and possibly their etymology and connection to other words) tells us about both practice and position.

In terms of practice, we’re looking at what those words tell us the magician did. In terms of position, we’re looking at what those words tell us about how the magician was situated into the structure of society around them.

Proto-Indo European Root for Magic

The Proto-Indo-European root for the word “Magic” is likely *magh-, whose reconstructed meaning seems to be “to be able” or “to have power.” I always like to look at other words we get from PIE roots when I start looking at etymology, so here are a few. From the same root, we get words like “may,” which means “to be able,” as in, “May I?” which we can think of as asking, “Am I able to do the thing?” We also get the word “might,” as in strength or power, and “machine,” “mechanic,” and “mechanism,” which are things that are able to do things, by way of the Greek mēkhanē.

Sanskrit mahan, meaning “great,” derives from this as well. We even get the word “dismay,” meaning being “alarmed or frightened,” via the Vulgar Latin *exmagare, meaning to “divest of power or ability.”

But that’s a root, not words in individual languages. So let’s get to those. I’m not sure I can cover all the possible Indo-European cultures in about 10 minutes, but I sure as heck can start with Persia.

Persian Words for Magic

Why would we start with Persia? Well, it’s pretty simple. The Indo-Iranian word for “people who practice magic” is where major cultures west of Anatolia pick up their word: “Magi.” The word has deep resonance, even today: the Bible speaks of their three gifts to Christ upon his birth, and they take a place in nativity scenes to this day.

But even the Persians didn’t love all their priests: Darius I would use the term derisively when referring to the false Smerdis who pretended to be the son of Cyrus the Great, and the death of the false Smerdis was annually celebrated in Persia with a feast called “the killing of the magian.”

Greek Words for Magic

We have a breadth of terms descending from “magi” to work from in Greece; Herodotus first describes the magoi, who are responsible for divination, dream interpretation, sacrifice, and such. Xenophon describes them as experts regarding the gods, and Plato says that the magic of Zoraster is “worship of the gods.” Generally speaking, magi are known for piety and knowledge of the gods, but by the fifth century, Heraclitus of Ephesus lumps the magi in with such weirdos as bacchantes (buh-KANTS), maenads, and initiates.

The word magi is likely combined in Greek with the word for “art,” tekhnē, to get us to the word we know: magike or magikos for “magical.” Magic, then, is the “art of the magi.”

Though the reputation of the magi was powerful enough to overwhelm a number of other words for magicians, there were older words, native to Greece, that we still retain. Plato speaks of agúrtēs, which are beggar priests, and mántis, who are diviners. We also hear of the goēs, a sort of composite “jack of all trades” magical personage who works between the worlds of gods and men, providing initiatory, divinatory, healing, and ecstatic ritual services to those who would pay. Additionally, we understand the word phármakon to mean both medicine and poison, and this term also applies to the magical working that changes Odysseus’ men into pigs when Circe wants him to stay. 

From Greek roots, we get our words for wizardry (goētia) and sorcery (mageia), and also augury (agúrtēs) and the suffix –mancy (mantis), which is placed on the ends of words to denote a type of divinatory work, like cartomancy for divination by cards, and necromancy for divination via the knowledge of the dead. Of course, phármakon brings us the word pharmacy. Thaumatourgos is where we get the word “thaumaturgy,” which is from the root of theatre and work, and means a wonder-worker.

Roman Words for Magic

The Romans, of course, import much from the Greeks. They used the words magus and magia, but also philtra, which are love charms. These words are mostly ethnographic in the Republic (Graf, 39), describing magicians and their works using the foreign term.

But the Romans had words of their own, too. Carmen, meaning “song,” is an old Roman word for magic, specifically malum carmen for evil magics, and carmen auxiliare for helpful songs. Cato uses the word cantio, “a singing,” from which we derive the word “incantation,” to refer to a magical working. Another set of Roman words are veneficus and cantionibus, meaning “sorcery” and “incantation,” respectively. Veneficium means witchcraft of any kind, and derives from venenum, which is a broader word than the Greek phármakon, and implies knowledge of healing and herbs. Defixiones are the lead curse tablets we often hear so much about, and these are used by anyone who can write and left or offered in sacred places. Some of these were prepared in advance, written by an enterprising magician and sold with a blank for the person to write in their own name, or the name of the person to be cursed or acted upon.

What of the specialized role of itinerant priests and wonder-workers in Greece? In Rome, the words we have suggest that these roles were primarily filled by diviners. An auspex, one who divines from birds, comes from spek-, meaning “to observe.” The same root provides us haruspex, which is the divining from entrails. But for most things, the Romans used Greek and other imported words to refer to those other roles that we know must have existed. After all, someone was selling those fill-in-the-blank defixiones.

Celtic Words for Magic

It’s worth noting that the Irish most of us know best, the name of our home Druid organization, Ár nDraíocht Féin, has two translations: “Our Own Druidry,” of course, but also “Our Own Magic.” The words for magic and Druidry are entwined in Celtic languages, in a way they are not in Greek and Roman languages.

Druid, as we know, is a compound of the PIE words for “tree” and “seeing” or “knowledge.” I won’t dive deeply into etymological disputes about the word “wicca,” but Old English picks up “witan” from the same root, *weid-, meaning “to know.”

Interestingly, the English word for Druid comes by way of Latin, rather than Celtic. Old English picks up the word Druid as dry, meaning “magician,” probably from the Irish. Similarly, “bard” in modern English comes to us from Greek and Latin, which picked up the term from the Gauls, which comes from the PIE *gwere-, whose meaning implies a favorable song.

Fili is the old Gaelic word for a poet, but the word itself also derives from *weid-, meaning “seer.” Ovate may not be a native Celtic word, but rather from the Greek ouateis, meaning “soothsayer,” first found in Strabo. A reconstructed Proto Celtic word, *vatis, seems to link Irish and Welsh cognates to the Latin vatis, however, so we can assume that this function of prophecy was filled by a distinct group of people. The Welsh and Breton words for sorcery are hud, which are tied into the Germanic word, seiðr, which we’ll come to in a moment.

Norse and Germanic Words for Magic

Norse and Germanic words are many and varied. We’ll cover a few of them, though.

Vitki is a word for sorcerer or magician. I use it when I refer to myself as a rune-carver, as it comes from the same PIE root, *weid-, meaning “to know,” as Druid does, and implies seeing things that are secret.

Seiðr is a prominent word, particularly to modern students of Old Norse magic. Deriving from the word for “cord” or “string,” it often involves a distaff, and is practiced by a vǫlva or spákona, both feminine words for “prophetess.” Of interest, vǫlva comes from the Germanic word for “staff.” The distaff, and connections to the words for “staff” seem to provide a distinctly domestic connection, but the lore provides a clear picture of traveling prophetesses who hold high respect.

Galdr is the Old Norse word for “spell” or “incantation.” Drawn from the root for singing, there is a religious meter called galdralag that was used for incantations. Of personal interest to me, we also have galdrastafir, or the magical staves of Iceland, which include sigils like the helm of awe and the vegvísir.

In Old Norse, the word læknir means healer, and both the root (*lep-agi) and related words suggest that this is related to our word, “conjurer.”

It’s also worth mentioning that the word “troth” comes from the same root that Druid does, *deru-, meaning “tree,” and connoting steadfastness and firmness.

Vedic Words for Magic

Heading from the far north to the far east, though, we can cover a couple of words for magic in the Vedic world.

The most common word in Sanksrit for magic is maya; in the Vedas, it has many meanings, but generally means “magic” or “power.” Gonda describes it as “wisdom and power enabling its possessor, or being able itself, to create, devise, contrive, effect, or do something.” Both gods and demons are able to use it: Indra uses it to defeat Vṛtra, and Varuna’s power is called maya; the asuras use it to wield illusions against the gods. It is both divine and undivine in the vedas, not “good” or “evil,” but intent and the magician can change it. By the time of the Upanisads, maya is set against vidya, or “true knowledge,” as its opposite. In Buddhism, maya becomes the deceitful illusion of the world.

Another word worth knowing is smará, which is both “memory” and “desire.” The use of this word is often translated either as “love” or as “love-spell,” and the Atharvaveda surely makes use of it in what we might consider a “love spell;” it calls upon the target to receive memory of the person, and for the target to then burn with desire as part of the memory. In this way, smará intersects in the same way that love spells in the Greek Magical Papyri do: make this memory and desire cause a person to burn for me, to have a fire that cannot be put out.

The difference between the Atharvaveda’s use of this spell work and the PGM’s is that the PGM provides what we would consider “definitely magic, not religion,” in a western dichotomy between those two streams. The Atharvaveda, though, wraps everything into the same religious practice of the preceding Vedas, which gives it a different sort of connection and societal acceptance. The Atharvaveda is one of the primary religious texts of Vedic lore. The PGM is in no way a part of the corpus of western religious history, as we think of it.

While in a western view of magic and religion we like to create a dichotomy, in Vedic, as in Celtic, the language does not lend itself to such a division. Indeed, the whole body of Vedic lore does not seem to contain any distinction of the sort. “Magical” rites are no different from “religious” rites in the Vedas, and an insistence on differentiating texts of “magic,” such as the Atharvaveda, from texts on “religion,” such as the Rgveda or Samaveda, is a form of cultural violence that causes us to miss the delicious differences between these Indo-European cultures.

Conclusion

There are plenty of other cultures that we can travel through, but hopefully this gives you a really good start on that journey.