• Necromancy: divination and evocation of the dead

  • Jun 24 2024
  • Length: 13 mins
  • Podcast

Necromancy: divination and evocation of the dead

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  • Summary

  • The afterlife has always held a strange allure, depicted as a place teeming with "life" despite the absence of the living. We are familiar with the numerous legends from Greek mythology that tell of heroes like Odysseus, Heracles, Theseus, and Orpheus who descended into the Underworld for various reasons. This recurring narrative trope is even given a name: katabasis, meaning "to go down" in ancient Greek. Later figures like Aeneas, the founder of Rome, and even Dante Alighieri went in the place below, all united by a desire to explore the realm of the dead, even if it meant encountering lost souls and dry bones.However, lurking on the fringes of these heroic journeys were figures far more unsettling. These practitioners of a dark and macabre magical art – necromancy – were considered powerful and evil. Necromancy, derived from the Greek words "necros" (dead) and "manteia" (divination), literally translates to "divination by the dead."
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