Magic Objects For Beginners

Magic Objects for Beginners

Magical items are mostly familiar from fantasy novels and fantasy movies, but they also exist "in real life." However, these real magic items are different from those that appear in the realm of fantasy. They are gateways to certain qualities, spirits, and deities, but not items that give a person a power they could not otherwise obtain. Such magical objects include talismans, magic rings, magic wands, voodoo dolls, and the spiritus familiaris (a self-made spirit), as well as statues, temples, sweat lodges, haunted houses, pyramids, power places, crop circles, and homeopathic globules. These magical objects are neither indispensable (you can achieve everything without them) nor useless (they can help with many things) - they are tools that can facilitate many things in magic.

Magical Objects

The Long Life of Magical Objects

This book explores a series of powerful artifacts associated with King Solomon via legendary or extracanonical textual sources. Tracing their cultural resonance throughout history, art historian Allegra Iafrate delivers exciting insights into these objects and interrogates the ways in which magic manifests itself at a material level. Each chapter focuses on a different Solomonic object: a ring used to control demons; a mysterious set of bottles that constrain evil forces; an endless knot or seal with similar properties; the shamir, known for its supernatural ability to cut through stone; and a flying carpet that can bring the sitter anywhere he desires. Taken together, these chapters constitute a study on the reception of the figure of Solomon, but they are also cultural biographies of these magical objects and their inherent aesthetic, morphological, and technical qualities. Thought-provoking and engaging, Iafrate’s study shows how ancient magic artifacts live on in our imagination, in items such as Sauron’s ring of power, Aladdin’s lamp, and the magic carpet. It will appeal to historians of art, religion, folklore, and literature.