There is not a person alive who has not been
touched by death in some form or other. Some come close to be taken by death,
others loose those they love. Sometimes due simply to age but most often it is
tragic and at some point there are always one of two wishes spoken – to be
able to go back in time or to be able to speak or see the deceased
again.
It was once believed that death was simply a veil that could be pushed aside by the gifted or most adept. Today most monotheistic religions believe that once you die you will either enter heaven or hell. Death is the end until the day of the second coming.
Now let me make myself clear I am not opposed to a person’s view or beliefs we are all together on this very complicated journey together called life and I believe that in someway our actions somehow touch and affect the lives of others. Some known to us some unknown to us, the ripple effect of one small action can span the world, I believe, without our knowing it.
So with that thought in mind there is a very interesting subject that I have begun to explore some years ago and recently I found myself increasing my research. What I have looked into only begins to scratch the surface and even here there is no possible way I can even begin to touch on the things I have learnt.
There is a practice that most frown on and see as evil and satanic. But as many things in this world – we have not explored the concept to its full in our modern time, we shy from it because of misconception or because we simply believe it foolish nonsense…
NECROMANCY
For as long as there has been death man has believed in the spirits of the dead, he has believed that there is some way to summon them, appease them and communicate with them. Today the interaction has been limited to prayers by mainstream religious beliefs.
The very word necromancy conjures visions of animated corpses, the walking dead, and bodies with rotting flesh. Visions of blood sacrifices and human offerings and severed body parts are not far behind either.
The word “necromancy” is adapted from Late Latin necromantia, itself borrowed from
post-Classical Greek νεκρομαντεία (nekromanteía), a compound of Ancient Greek
νεκρός (nekrós), “dead body”, and μαντεία (manteía), “prophecy or divination”. N
igromancy (niger, black), which is the Italian, Spanish and old French form, the term suggests “black” magic or “black” art, in which marvellous results are due to the agency of
evil spirits.
As per wikipedia :
Necromancy (/ˈnɛkrɵˌmænsi/) is a claimed form of magic involving communication with the deceased
– either by summoning their spirit as an apparition or raising them bodily – for the purpose of
divination, imparting the means to foretell future events or discover hidden knowledge. The term may sometimes be used in a more general sense to refer to
black magic or witchcraft.
The oldest literary account of necromancy is in Homer’s Odyssey. Under the tutelage of
Circe, who is a powerful sorceress, Odysseus travels to the underworld (katabasis) in order to gain insight about his impending voyage home by raising the spirits of the dead through the use of spells.
The Odyssey’s passages contain many descriptive references to necromantic rituals: rites must be performed around a pit with fire during nocturnal hours, and Odysseus has to follow a specific recipe, which includes the blood of sacrificial animals, to concoct a libation for the ghosts to drink while he recites prayers to both the ghosts and gods of the underworld. Then one wonders why people get cold shivers when necromancy is mentioned and believe it could only be the work of the devil.
The belief or idea was that practices such as these varying from the mundane to the grotesque were required of a necromancer. Rituals performed could be quite intricate involving magic circles, talismans, wands and incantations. The necromancer might also surround himself with morbid aspects of death. Like wearing the deceases cloths and consuming foods that symbolized lifelessness and decay such as unleavened black bread and unfermented grape juice (drama queens in my opinion). Some necromancers even went so far as to take part in the mutilation and consumption of corpses (more shivers and extreme yuck factor). These ceremonies could carry on for hours, days even weeks, leading up to the eventual summoning of the spirit. They were frequently performed in places of internment or other miserable places that suited specific guidelines for necromancy (yes I am rolling my eyes at this). Necromancers preferred to summon the recently departed based on the premise that their revelations were spoken more clearly. This timeframe was usually limited to the twelve months following the death of the physical body; once this period elapsed, necromancers would evoke the deceased’s ghostly spirit instead (which basically means that the belief was precedent that within 12 months the body could still be raised).
Necromancy was common throughout Western antiquity with records of its practice in Babylon, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. In his Geographica, Strabo refers to νεκρομαντία (necyomanteis), or “diviners by the dead”, as the foremost practitioners of divination amongst the people of
Persia,[8] and it is believed to have also been widespread amongst the peoples of Chaldea (particularly the Sabians, or star-worshipers or more correctly the
Sabians’s of Harran), Etruria, and Babylonia. The Babylonian necromancers were called manzazuu or sha’etemmu, and the spirits they raised were called etemmu.
There are also several references to necromancers – called “bone-conjurers” amongst Jews of the later Hellenistic period[16]. The Book of Deuteronomy (18:9–12[17]) explicitly warns the Israelites
against engaging in the Canaanite practice of divination from the dead:
9When thou art come into the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do according to the abominations of those nations.
10There shall not be found among you any one who maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or who useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch,
11or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer.
12For all who do these things are an abomination unto the LORD, and because of these abominations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee (
KJV).
Though Mosaic Law prescribed the death penalty to practitioners of necromancy (Leviticus 20:27[18]), this warning was not always heeded. One of the foremost examples is when
King Saul had the Witch of Endor invoke the shade of Samuel, a judge and prophet, from Sheol using a ritual conjuring pit (1 Samuel 28:3–25
[19]).
Some later Christian writers rejected the idea that humans could bring back the spirits of the dead in any form and interpreted such shades as disguised demons instead, thus conflating necromancy with demon summoning.
Caesarius of Arles entreated his listeners to put no stock in any demons or gods other than the Christian God, even if the working of spells appears to provide benefit. He stated that demons only act with divine permission and are permitted by God to test Christian people. Caesarius does not condemn man here; he only states that the art of necromancy exists, although it is prohibited by the Bible.
The cultures that believe in the wisdom of the dead have various philosophies on what the dead can tell us. While some cultures considered the knowledge of the dead to be unlimited, ancient Greeks and Romans believed that individual shades knew only certain things. The apparent value of their counsel may have been based on things they knew in life or knowledge they acquired after death.
Ovid writes in his Metamorphoses of a marketplace in the underworld where the dead convene to exchange news and gossip.
“There is a pathway
going downhill, shaded by gloomy yews, 640
which leads through silent, solitary spots
to the world below, where the sluggish Styx
breathes mist. Fresh ghosts of the dead pass this way,
the forms of those who have had full burial rites.
In all directions the place is dreary,
pale, and freezing. New spirits of the dead
are ignorant of the road which takes them
to that city by the Styx, where black Dis
has his grim palace. This roomy city
has a thousand gateways and entrances 650
open on all sides, and just as the sea
absorbs rivers from all around the earth, [440]
in the same way this place receives all souls.
There is no group for which it is too small,
nor does it notice large crowds when they come.
Bloodless shadows with no bones or bodies
wander around. Some throng the market place,
some the palace of the infernal king,
and some keep busy working various trades,
in imitation of their previous life, 660
while others suffer punishments to suit
the wicked acts they have committed.”
Eliphas Levi in his book entitled Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie – stated that necromancy is the evoking of aerial bodies (aeromancy). Translated into English by Arthur Edward Waite – Transcendental Magic, its Doctrine and Ritual in 1910. Its famous opening lines present the single essential theme of Occultism and gives some of the flavour of its atmosphere:
Behind the veil of all the hieratic and mystical allegories of ancient doctrines, behind the darkness and strange ordeals of all initiations, under the seal of all sacred writings, in the ruins of Nineveh or Thebes, on the crumbling stones of old temples and on the blackened visage of the Assyrian or Egyptian sphinx, in the monstrous or marvelous paintings which interpret to the faithful of India the inspired pages of the Vedas, in the cryptic emblems of our old books on alchemy, in the ceremonies practised at reception by all secret societies, there are found indications of a doctrine which is everywhere the same and everywhere carefully concealed.
So what have we established thus far, necromancy was a widely practiced art centuries ago, we know that the Greeks and Romans called on their dead for council only when they felt it was necessary to do so for answers that their Oracles could not provide or confirmation there of, even probably as an alternative.
Although the bible warned against necromancy it was still practiced, still is practiced even by the church but we’ll get to that in a moment. So did the ancients actually raise dead bodies to talk to them?
Canaanite Necromancy
Biblical texts and tradition, which forbade necromancy, points to the Canaanites as practicing it.
In truth they did, but the way it was practiced simply involves communicating with the dead for guidance. Some would say that necromancy is “calling” or “summoning” the dead for divining the future. Others would claim that it is physically animating the dead. Though this is not mentioned in Canaanite texts, some might confuse this with summoning a demon, but ideally in a rite to consult with the ancestors harmful spirits are not present or are divinely guided away. The dead where specifically consulted for purposes of healing and guidance (fairly boring and mundane). It is likely that it was believed that the rapiu the “spirit” would speak aloud, through dreams or through a person (sound familiar?). It is unlikely that it was believed that the body could be reunited with the spirit. It is also possible and most likely that the Canaanites would have found the removal of the body from its final resting place abhorrent to their mores since it would weaken the rapiu and cause a “troubled spirit” to come into being. Mesopotamian Magicians did not call on the dead often as not only did the dead answer but also, unwanted, unhelpful and even harmful spirits could respond. Rituals where only conducted out of necessity after deep consideration and careful preparation.
It was not thought of as evil but like consulting the elders of the community for advice.
Another form of necromancy also used –Sciomancy
- divination by shadows
Greek- sica ( shadow, outline) and menteia (divination). The art and practice of divining the future by shadows, or by the shades of the dead. A common practice was to observe the size and shapes or changing appearance of shadows, thus drawing a prophetic conclusion.
For your shadow to appear headless was an omen of your very near and impending death.
Strangely I came across a religious group I have not heard much about, it intrigued me as they were also said to have practiced necromancy among many other things:
Sabians
I know this name sounds like something out of Star Wars but as far as I could find this culture or race of people have been mentioned in only three places in the Qur’an and in very few other texts.
The Qur’an mentions briefly the Sabians in three places and the Hadith provides additional details as to who they were:
“Surely those who believe, and those who are Jews, and the Christians, and the Sabians, whoever believes in Allah and the Final Day and does good, they shall have their reward from their Lord, and there is no fear for them, nor shall they grieve.”
[Quran 2:62]
“Surely those who believe and those who are Jews and the Sabians and the Christians whoever believes in Allah and the Final Day and does good– they shall have no fear nor shall they grieve.”
[Quran 5:69]
“Surely those who believe and those who are Jews and the Sabeans and the Christians and the Magians and those who associate (others with Allah)– surely Allah will decide between them on the day of resurrection; surely Allah is a witness over all things.”
[Quran 22:17]
A per wikipedia:
The Sabians (Arabic:صابئة) of Middle Eastern tradition are a variety of monotheistic: Gnostic
(Mandeans), Hermetic (Harranian) as well as Abrahamic religions mentioned three times in the Qur’an with thepeople of the Book, “the Jews, the Sabians, and the Christians.”] In the hadith, they are described merely as converts to Islam, but interest in the identity and history of the group increased over time, and discussions and investigations about the Sabians begin to appear in later Islamic literature.
According to Muslim authors, Sabians followed the fourth book of Abrahamic tradition, the Zabur, which was given to the prophet King David of Ancient Israel according to the Qur’an. The “Zabur” is identified by many modern scholars as the biblical Book of Psalms. Most of what is known of them comes from Ibn Wahshiyya‘s The Nabatean Agriculture, and the translation of this by Maimonides. According to Daniel Chwolsohn (1856) they appear to have gravitated around the original pro-Jewish Hanputa of Elchasai out of which the miso-Judaic prophet Mani seceded and are identified therefore as the pro-Torah Sampsaeans but also less accurately with the anti-Torah Mandaeans. They were said by Khalil Ibn Ahmad (d.786) to believe that they “belonged” to the prophet Noah. The Sabians existed before Muhammad. They came under Islamic rule about 639 CE. At that time in history they were described as Greek immigrants[citation needed] but were grouped together with the Nabataeans. Many Islamic writers from the period of about 650 CE onward gave further descriptions of the Sabians. They wrote that the Sabians lived in Iraq around Sawad, Kutha and Mosul and they “wash themselves with water”, had “long hair”, and “white gowns”.
They had a monotheistic faith with religious literature (the Zabur) and acknowledged the prophets. Their theology resembled that of Judaism and Christianity yet were neither, nor were they Magians.
The Qu’ran briefly announces the Sabians as people of the book but provides no details as to who they were.
There is a lot of evidence that shows the Mandaeans are not the Harranians and are the true Sabians of the Qu’ran. Many authors have mixed up the various reports about the Sabians without first dividing them into two different groups. This confusion began when the Harrians (in the 9th century) stole the name Sabian in order to protect themselves from the Muslims.
It is this second group of Sabians who concern us, who some supposed that they influenced the practices of the Hellenic Godfearers (theosebeis Greek: Θεοσεβεῖς) while their angelology (based around the movements of the Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn) found its greatest development in the community which was based in the Harran region of south-eastern Anatolia and northern Syria. Ibn al-Qayyim distinguished them as the Sabians of Harran from the south Mesopotamian Sābi’ūna Hunafā.
The city of Harran is virtually a forgotten spot in the geography of Anatolia. Whereas in reality, it is a place of great importance having a very significant role in the development of civilization. It may surprise you to know that a 11,500-year-old temple was discovered in Göbeklitepe, and a 13,500-year-old statue, the world’s oldest, was discovered during an excavation in Balıklıgöl. Assistant Professor A. Cihat Kürkçüoglu of Harran University claims that the history of civilization began in the Urfa (a city just 45 kilometers from Harran). When we consider that civilization was supposed to have began in Egypt in Mesopotamia roughly 5,000 years ago we can have an idea on how these archeological finds have rocked the foundations of our understanding of history.
The city of Harran was believed to have been founded in 2000 B.C. as a merchant outpost of Ur. The name “Harran-U” means “caravan” or “crossroad” in Sumerian and Akkadian. The Bible records that Abraham stayed in Harran after leaving Ur, which some claim was actually Urfa. Though there are claims that Harran got its name from Haran the brother of Abraham. Other than the similarity of name this is not substantiated. Furthermore, we learn that Terah, the father of Abraham and Haran died and was buried in Haran, and that a branch of the family remained there. Later Abraham sent a servant to Harran to obtain a wife for his son Isaac.
Though Harran, once a fabulous city, is now in ruins, we are told that not only was this city built over an area where the first world’s cities with the first temples rose, and where agriculture was first started, but hosted perhaps the world’s oldest university in the world. Many philosophers, scientists, such as Al-Battanai, who calculated the distance from the Earth to the Moon, Thabit ibn Qurrah, who translated Greek classics and scientific works into Arabic, and wrote on mathematics and astronomy, and the physicist and chemist Jabir ibn Hayyan to name just a few of the figures who rose to prominence in the Harran school.
At a time when Christianity was rapidly spreading throughout the known world. Harran became the last pagan enclave, and as the seats of learning in Alexandria fell in the wake of the new religion, and the Academies and schools of philosophy were closed down because of the new religious beliefs (it appears that texts were ceased and might have been changed), philosophers sought refuge in Harran, where their books and teachings were preserved. Later many of them were translated into Arabic. Some by the so called “Sabians of Harran”, ushering a golden age in the Islamic world. Later these works were to make their way into Europe, directly resulting in the Renaissance along with those works that were preserved in monasteries. Furthermore such underground movements as the Rosicrucians that fought for the reformation of state institutions, religion and science claimed their source of knowledge was obtained from the mysterious Damkar. It was believed to be a Sabian center of learning. The secular, democratic and humanistic principles of the modern world are due to such struggles which have taken centuries. The Harranians were famed as Sabians, “Star Worshippers.” Both Jewish and Islamic sources claim that Abraham was himself a star worshiper, and there is mutually a story told that after contemplating the setting of Sun and the Moon, he came to the conclusion that there must be one God. There was a great temple dedicated to the moon god Sin at Harran, and it is claimed that Harran was one of seven cities each of which was dedicated to one of the seven planets. Such a system of astrolatry could be the oldest religion of man. Ancient structures like Stonehenge and the pyramids are known to be constructed on the basis of very fine astronomical calculations such as planetary and stellar movements, seasons and eclipse and if it is possible that the oldest temple was found in Harran the possibilities of human heritage is endless.
In 830 A.D. It is said that the Caliph al-Ma’mum while passing through Harran during an expedition to Byzantium, asked the Harranians what religion they belonged to. They said, “We are Harranians,” and made it clear that they were neither Muslims, Christians or Jews, the Caliph said that was not good enough, they had to be either Muslims, Jews, Christians or Sabians, as only these are lawfully “People of the Book” according to the Koran. The Caliph continued on his journey and said they when he returned, they should have convert to one of these or it would be lawful to shed the blood of idolaters. After consultations the anxious Harranians were advised by someone clever to say “We are Sabians,” and thereby the Pagan “Sabians” were able to continue their faith undisturbed until in 1251, when Harran was destroyed by a Mongol invasion.
WHAT NECROMANCY BECAME
Later necromancy became what now gives people the chills when they hear the word:
Taken from the 1960 reprint of AN ENCLYCLOPAEDIA OF OCCULTISM
by Lewis Spence, University Books, Hyde Park, New York. First
published in 1920, it is considered to be one of the best
sources on the subject.
Submitted by Alan Wright, Atlanta GA, Illumi-Net 404-377-1141
IF the ghost of deceased person is to be raised, the grave must
be resorted to at midnight, and a different form of conjuration is
necessary. Still another, is the infernal sacrament for “any corpse
that hath hanged, drowned, or otherwise made away with itself”; and in
this case the conjurations are performed over the body, which will at
last rise, and standing upright, answer with a faint and hollow voice
the questions that are put to it.
Eliphas Levi, in his `Ritual of Transcendent Magic’ says that
“evocations should always have a motive and a becoming end, otherwise
the are works of darkness and folly, dangerous for health and reason.”
The permissible motive of an evocation may be either love or
intelligence. Evocations of love require less apparatus and are in
every respect easier. The procedure is as follows: “We must, in the
first place, carefully collect the memorials of him (or her) whom we
desire to behold, the articles he used, and on which his impressions
remains; we must also prepare an apartment in which the person lived, or
otherwise, one of similar kind, and place his portrait veiled in white
therein, surrounded with his favorite flowers, which must be renewed
daily. A fixed date must then be observed, either the birthday of the
person, or that day which was most fortunate for his and our own
affection, one of which we may believe that his soul, however blessed
elsewhere, cannot lose the remembrance; this must be the day for the
evocation and we must provide for it during the space of fourteen days.
Throughout this period we must refrain from extending to anyone the same
proofs of affection which we have the right to expect from the dead; we
must observe strict chastity, live in retreat, and take only modest and
light collation daily. Every evening at the same hour we must shut
ourselves in the chamber consecrated to the memory of the lamented
person, using only one small light, such as that of a funeral lamp or
taper. This light should be placed behind us, the portrait should be
uncovered and we should remain before it for an hour, in silence;
finally, we should fumigate the apartment with a little good incense,
and go out backwards. On the morning of the day fixed for the
evocation, we should adorn ourselves as if for a festival, not salute
anyone first, make but a single repast of bread, wine, and roots, or
fruits; the cloth should be white, two covers should be laid, and one
portion of the bread broken should be set aside; a little wine should
also be placed in the glass of the person we design to invoke.
The meal
must be eaten alone in the chamber of evocations, and in the presence of
the veiled portrait; it must be all cleared away at the end, except the
glass belonging to the dead person, and his portion of bread, which must
be placed before the portrait. In the evening, at the hour for the
regular visit, we must repair in silence to the chamber, light a fire of
cypress wood, and cast incense seven times thereon, pronouncing the name
of the person whom we desire to behold. The lamp must then be
extinguished, and the fire permitted to die out. On this day the
portrait must not be unveiled. When the flame is extinct, put more
incense on the ashes, and invoke God according to the forms of the
religion to which the dead person belonged, and according to the ideas
845
which he himself possessed of God. While making this prayer we must
identify ourselves with the evoked person, speak as he spoke, believe in
a sense as he believed; then, after a silence of fifteen minutes, we
must speak to him as if he were present, with affection and with faith,
praying him to manifest to us. Renew this prayer mentally, covering the
face with both hands; then call him thrice with a loud voice; tarry on
our knees, the eyes closed and covered, for some minutes; then call
again thrice upon him in a sweet and affectionate tone, and slowly open
the eyes. Should nothing result, the same experiment must be renewed in
the following year, and if necessary a third time, when it is certain
that the desired apparition will be obtained, and the longer it has been
delayed the more realistic and striking it will be.
“Evocations of knowledge and intelligence are made with more solemn
ceremonies. If concerned with a celebrated personage, we must meditate
for twenty-one days upon his life and writings, form an idea of his
appearance, converse with him mentally, and imagine his answers; carry
his portrait, or at least his name, about us; follow a vegetable diet
for twenty-one days, and a severe fast during the last seven.
We must
next construct the magical oratory. This oratory must be invariably
darkened; but if we operate in the daytime, we may leave a narrow
aperture on the side where the sun will shine at the hour of the
evocation, and place a triangular prism before the opening, and a
crystal globe, filled with water, before the prism. If the operation
be arranged for the night the magic lamp must be so placed that its
single ray shall be upon the alter smoke. The purpose of the
preparations is to furnish the magic agent with elements of corporeal
appearance, and to ease as much as possible the tension of imagination,
which could not be exalted without danger into the absolute illusion of
dream. for the rest, it will be easily understood that a beam of
sunlight, or the ray of a lamp, colored variously, and falling upon
curling and irregular smoke, can in no way create a perfect image.
The
chafing-dish containing the sacred fire should be in the center of the
oratory, and the alter of perfumes close by. The operator must turn
toward the east to pray, and the west to invoke; he must be either alone
or assisted by two persons preserving the strictest silence; he must
wear the magical vestments, which we have described in the seventh
chapter (of Levi`s “Ritual of Transcendent Magic”), and must be crowned
with vervain and gold. He should bathe before the operation, and all
his under garments must be of the most intact and scrupulous
cleanliness. The ceremony should begin with a prayer suited to the
genius of the spirit about to be invoked and one which would be approved
by him if he still lived. For example, it would be impossible to evoke
Voltaire by reciting prayers in the style of St. Bridget. For the great
men of antiquity, we may see the hymns of Cleathes or Orpheus, with the
adjuration terminating the Golden Venus of Pythagoras. In our own
evocation of Apollonius, we used the magical philosophy of Patricius for
the ritual, containing the doctrines of Zoroaster and the writings of
Hermes Trismegistus. We recited the Nuctemeron of Apollonius in greek
with a loud voice and added the following conjuration:-
It continues in this tract for some extended time reciting various suggestions of evocation in case the deceased was of the Jewish faith, you soon find yourself thinking shall we move on please.
In all honesty from my research I thing people tend to get the wrong end of the stick as far as necromancy is concerned ( just my opinion) but maybe if we look into when it became an act associated with the Devil and Demons that we’ll understand our reactions to what we think it is to what it in actual fact is.
Necromancy is any magickal technique which seeks communication with the dead.
Shamanism, for example, is an essentially necromantic system. In primitive cultures, it is the office of the shaman to deal with the spirits of the dead. He is also a healer and a spiritual guide for his community. He is a diviner, able to predict impending plagues, droughts, or other calamities, and he is the one who is responsible for guiding the dying to the other world. Unlike ordinary men, the shaman can speak with and interact with the denizens of the spirit world. In fact, it is the shaman’s primary duty to serve as a kind of mediator between the fleshly and the spiritual worlds. He bargains with the spirits, gains knowledge and power from them, gives them offerings, and at times does battle with them in order to protect his community.
A crucial part of the shaman’s initiation is a ritual death and rebirth. During this initiation, often performed by the spirits themselves, the shaman’s spirit leaves his body and passes over to the otherworld. Here the spirits test him and often grant him special abilities. He this during initiation gains the ability to see spirits in both realities and to interact with them. Certain spirits claim friendship and become spirits guides so that it will be easier for the shaman to call upon them in the future, as well as warning the shaman about impending danger. After this harrowing is finished he is returned to his body, where he awakens a full shaman. At this point, he is considered twice born and walks between both realities, physical and spiritual, at once.
Another system which has necromantic overtones is the Tibetan Art of Dying, also known as the Bardo Thodrol.
This system officially dates back to the eighth century BCE (before current era/ BC) when the adept Padme Sambhava recorded his teachings about lucid dying and the between places in a series of texts now known as the
Tibetan Book of the Dead.
The Bardo Thodrol tradition undoubtedly dates back before the eighth century, but Padme Sambhava was the first person to actually commit the techniques to writing. Padme Sambhava, wary of impending persecution, hid his texts away in a cave located high up in the Gampo Dar Mountain. The texts were then discovered by Karma Lingpa in the fourteenth century and made accessible to the Buddhist world.
The Tibetan Art of Dying is a very complex and intricate system. On the most basic level, the Bardo Thodrol describes the process of death and what comes after. It is a guidebook for the soul, providing what amounts to a road map of the otherside to help the spirit of the deceased get where he is going.
Reincarnation is taken as a given as is the immortality of the soul.
The word “bardo” itself means a gap or a threshold and in essence describes the between-place (some might call it limbo but is essentially the waiting room for either re-incarnation or nirvana) that is inhabited by spirits who have moved beyond the fleshly reality.
The Bardo Thodrol is meant to be read aloud to the spirit of the deceased so that he may not wander blindly in the between-place or become earth-bound. The ultimate goal of the Bardo Thodrol is to help the deceased achieve nirvana and, if this is not possible, then help him achieve the best rebirth possible.
Adepts of the system can see and interact with the spirits much like a shaman. Very skilled adepts can also send their spirits forth into the between-place where they can interact with things just as if they were a spirit themselves. And because the Bardic tradition devotes so much time and energy to understanding the process of death, there is a great deal of useful information in the Bardo Thodrol about spirits and the nature of the reality in which they exist. Even spiritualism, that late nineteenth century passion, can be considered a form of necromancy. Although sadly it has rapidly been degraded into little more than parlour tricks – slight of hand, when the original aim of spiritualism was communication with the dead. This is where modern day séances come from. The medium who led the séance was someone whose sensitivities were uniquely attuned to the spirit world. The very word medium was meant to imply a mediator, someone who, like the shaman, hovered on the threshold between worlds. Ultimately, the spiritualists were seeking answers. They wanted to know what death was like and what lay in the realms beyond. In that respect, they were searching for many of the same things the Bardo Thodrol addressed nearly two thousand years earlier.
Yet most people, if asked, would not equate any of these practices with necromancy. Necromancy is almost universally considered a “black art”.
The very word “necromancy” conjures images of cloaked figures huddled in a graveyard, digging up a corpse. It had been moved into the realms of a repellent, gory, and morbid art – or so most occult books would imply. Pagans and Wiccans have nothing to say about the practice, as although they believe the dead can be contacted it is not something many deal in. Christians and most other monotheistic religions tend to view it as Satanic, but I suppose there’s nothing surprising about that. In their reasoning, anything that is not a part of their religion must be against it.
So what is so awful about traditional necromancy that it is universally shunned?
First, there is the natural human fear of death and the dead. Freud, in his Totem and Taboo explains that most primitive cultures have taboos against touching the dead or touching articles that belonged to the dead because they view death as somehow contagious (death is catching). He goes on to explain primitive man’s belief that the dead are naturally jealous of the living, and that such jealousy will drive even the dearest loved ones to murderous ends. They want companionship on the other-side, and they will do just about anything to drag their loved ones across into death with them. In other words that the spirit of our loved one can easily return or haunt us to death as they do not want to be alone in death.
A hint of this primal fear remains even in our sanitized modern culture. Have you ever been to a funeral?
How many people present could actually bring themselves to touch the dead body? Did you reach your hand out to see if you could? Death is frightening. First of all, we have no control over it. Second of all, there is no way for us to truly understand it until we ourselves have undergone the process – and that in itself is an intimidating thought.
Witches in the Middle Ages (through most of the world) were believed to sign a pact with the Devil for their powers. They were believed to gather in great orgies in the woods at night, and at these so-called Witches’ Sabbats, they were believed to slaughter and eat infants, engage in perverted sexual activities, and work spells to bring plagues, famines, and other evils to the land. Numerous tracts on witches and witchcraft, written by Christian experts, asserted all those things and more.
The Malleus Maleficarum (or “Hammer of Witches”), a famous tract on witches from the 15th century even made the claim that witches (who were almost invariably women) had the power to steal men’s genitals (yip u read correctly – they stole the penises of men). The witches then kept their pet penises in little nests hidden away high up in trees, feeding them on honey, milk, and blood (now this I would have loved to have seen, wonder what they used them for?).
What does any of this have to do with necromancy?
Well the summoning of spirits was of course one of the many charges levied against the witches. But yet in the same breath I must inform you that Necromancy was apparently practiced by certain members of the Church – but it had to be sanctioned. In 13th century Florence, Niccolo Consigli was tried for practicing necromancy without a license. This implies that the art was allowed and accepted so long as it was performed within certain limitations of the law. Richard Kieckhefer, in his book Forbidden Rites, tells us that many of the clergy practiced the summoning of spirits. Sometimes they were looked down upon by their fellow priests, but for the most part it was believed that if anyone could practice such arts and remain uncorrupted by them, the clergy could do it. Notably, one of the major necromantic grimoires to have been produced in the medieval era is the Grimoire of Honorius – attributed to no one less than Pope Honorius himself!
Yet the so-called necromancy that appears in these early grimoires rarely requires the necromancer to shed blood or mutilate corpses. Most of the evocation which appears in the texts is pure ceremonial magick, the kind heavily influenced by Qabbalistic teachings and the Solomonic tradition. In most, although not all, of the spells, the goal of summoning is to gain knowledge and information.
So where does the notion that a necromancer must wallow in body parts and blood arise from?
Where, indeed?
As far as the witch-craze was concerned, there was no distinction between someone who practiced witchcraft and someone who practiced unlicensed necromancy. Without the sanction and power of the Church behind you, you could not work magick. Period. Anything else was considered an infernal art.
Those who practiced unsanctioned magick were invariably considered to be in league with Satan and working (ultimately) toward the destruction of the One True Church. In fact, the word necromancy was at one point completely interchangeable with the word nigromancy, – a catch-all term for any of the black arts in general. Just as the writings of the day described what the Christians believed the witches were up to, so too did those tracts include the Christians’ view of the necromancer’s art. Writers like Cornelius Agrippa, whose Three Books on Occult Philosophy is still in circulation today, paint a very dark picture of the necromancer indeed.
The Influence of Agrippa:
Agrippa, writing in the early portion of the 16th century, tells us that necromancy
“worketh all its experiments by the carcasses of the slain, and their bones and members,
and what is from them, because there is in these things a spiritual power friendly to them.”
(Tyson, 606).
He tells us also that the necromancer uses blood to call up spirits, and when a body cannot be obtained, a fresh blood sacrifice will do.
As dictated by Christian afterlife beliefs, Agrippa could not admit that the spirits of the righteous could be summoned through necromancy. (There was a huge debate among medieval scholars about whether the witch of Endor could have actually called up the prophet Samuel as he was one of the Lord’s chosen and should have been protected from such summoning by the Lord).
But Agrippa believed that it was possible to summon the spirits of the damned and perhaps those wandering in limbo. Therefore since the necromancers dealt only with the spirits of the damned, it is implied that they themselves are damned also.
The best place to summon such spirits, Agrippa tells us, is at a crossroads or at a similarly dark, isolate, and barren locale. Agrippa also tells us that necromancers will often haunt places of execution, sneaking in under cover of darkness in order to cut off choice bits of murderer and thief to use later in various spells. Graveyards are not safe either, as necromancers will enter places of the dead at night and dig up corpses with the express aim of resurrecting the spirits and forcing them to reveal hidden treasure.
So what does this tell us about our traditional view of medieval necromancy?
I think Agrippa as well as other writers like him indelibly shaped the popular image of necromancy, and further, I think that image is very misleading. In my opinion Agrippa was writing to impress a very Christian audience with his magickal knowledge. The first drafts of his masterwork were sent to the Abbot Johannes Trithemius as well as the abbot of Saint James at Wurtzburg. Both of these men, particularly Trithemius, studied the magickal arts themselves. It has been suggested even that Trithemius was Agrippa’s mystical mentor, primarily in the art of evoking spirits. Trithemius and the abbot of Saint James would have been among those clergy whose magickal experiments were accepted and even sanctioned by the Church. As such, it would suit them to have their unsanctioned rivals calumnied in print. Agrippa may have (and most probably did) sacrificed accuracy in favour of giving his audience what they wanted to hear.
Out of the Coffin.
We have already established that much of the medieval perception of witchcraft was formed through Christian propaganda and ignorant speculation.
So, too, do I think the necromancy described by Agrippa and his contemporaries is only a skewed version of an actual tradition that existed prior to that time.
The blood and the bones and the exhumed corpses, like the infamous witches’ Sabbat, were sensational fabrications designed to shock the populace and condemn an art the monotheistic regime objected to. Interestingly, it is only after Agrippa’s writings were published that grimoires began to appear which contained bloody, corpse-ridden rituals that pretended to be necromancy. Even the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage, though it purports to have been written in 1458, exists only in a copy which Mathers dated to the end of the 17th or beginning of the 18th centuries. Another grimoire containing necromantic material, the Red Dragon Grimoire, I think very clearly demonstrates the negative influence Agrippa’s work had on later writers.
The Red Dragon Grimoire contains a ritual for summoning a dead man which, among other things, requires the necromancer to dig up a grave with his bare hands in the middle of winter, expose himself to the elements for hours on end, and throw exhumed bones into a Church during midnight mass – and then run like hell before he gets caught. Reading rituals like that one makes me wonder if they were ever intended to be performed at all – or if the writer was trying to create the strangest, goriest and most gruesome effect imaginable just to see if someone would actually be stupid enough to try it. Seeming more of a dare saying “come on fool let’s see if you dare do this”. In cases like the Red Dragon Grimoire and others, it is almost as if the writers of the later grimoires were trying to tailor their necromancy to fit the spooky stereotype established by Agrippa.
Necromancy, as a spiritual art, is not what these sources make it out to be. While it is definitely a darker practice, there is no need to relegate it to cemeteries and crossroads. Like the art of the shaman, necromancy is basically threshold work. Its magick takes places in that liminal state between living and dying, and most of its power comes from this very liminality. The conjuring of spirits for divinatory purposes is actually only a small and relatively unimportant part of necromancy.
The real work comes from the necromancer’s contact with death and with the transformative power of death.
There is power released in the falling apart of things, and like the meddlers and sorb-apples celebrated in D.H. Lawrence’s poem, some things only achieve their fullness by falling through the stages of decay.
Necromancy is not about bones or blood or putrid corpses. It is about reaching across from one state of being to the next. The necromancer is not some grave-robbing black magician but a shamanic initiate who harnesses the between-state for the power of destruction and recreation that it brings. If we are to explore this fascinating and liberating magickal art, we have to explode our preconceptions of what it is, and to do that, we have to abandon the ghost-stories told to us by Agrippa and other contemporary writers.
Rather than looking at the texts which are clearly an outgrowth of the witchcraze era. A time we just about everything not dictated by church doctrine had to be of the devil.
To truly understand the art and deep understanding it takes we should look within, where life and death meet inside ourselves, as we are all both alive and in the process of dying, to truly understand where to begin.
It was once believed that death was simply a veil that could be pushed aside by the gifted or most adept. Today most monotheistic religions believe that once you die you will either enter heaven or hell. Death is the end until the day of the second coming.
Now let me make myself clear I am not opposed to a person’s view or beliefs we are all together on this very complicated journey together called life and I believe that in someway our actions somehow touch and affect the lives of others. Some known to us some unknown to us, the ripple effect of one small action can span the world, I believe, without our knowing it.
So with that thought in mind there is a very interesting subject that I have begun to explore some years ago and recently I found myself increasing my research. What I have looked into only begins to scratch the surface and even here there is no possible way I can even begin to touch on the things I have learnt.
There is a practice that most frown on and see as evil and satanic. But as many things in this world – we have not explored the concept to its full in our modern time, we shy from it because of misconception or because we simply believe it foolish nonsense…
NECROMANCY
For as long as there has been death man has believed in the spirits of the dead, he has believed that there is some way to summon them, appease them and communicate with them. Today the interaction has been limited to prayers by mainstream religious beliefs.
The very word necromancy conjures visions of animated corpses, the walking dead, and bodies with rotting flesh. Visions of blood sacrifices and human offerings and severed body parts are not far behind either.
The word “necromancy” is adapted from Late Latin necromantia, itself borrowed from
post-Classical Greek νεκρομαντεία (nekromanteía), a compound of Ancient Greek
νεκρός (nekrós), “dead body”, and μαντεία (manteía), “prophecy or divination”. N
igromancy (niger, black), which is the Italian, Spanish and old French form, the term suggests “black” magic or “black” art, in which marvellous results are due to the agency of
evil spirits.
As per wikipedia :
Necromancy (/ˈnɛkrɵˌmænsi/) is a claimed form of magic involving communication with the deceased
– either by summoning their spirit as an apparition or raising them bodily – for the purpose of
divination, imparting the means to foretell future events or discover hidden knowledge. The term may sometimes be used in a more general sense to refer to
black magic or witchcraft.
The oldest literary account of necromancy is in Homer’s Odyssey. Under the tutelage of
Circe, who is a powerful sorceress, Odysseus travels to the underworld (katabasis) in order to gain insight about his impending voyage home by raising the spirits of the dead through the use of spells.
The Odyssey’s passages contain many descriptive references to necromantic rituals: rites must be performed around a pit with fire during nocturnal hours, and Odysseus has to follow a specific recipe, which includes the blood of sacrificial animals, to concoct a libation for the ghosts to drink while he recites prayers to both the ghosts and gods of the underworld. Then one wonders why people get cold shivers when necromancy is mentioned and believe it could only be the work of the devil.
The belief or idea was that practices such as these varying from the mundane to the grotesque were required of a necromancer. Rituals performed could be quite intricate involving magic circles, talismans, wands and incantations. The necromancer might also surround himself with morbid aspects of death. Like wearing the deceases cloths and consuming foods that symbolized lifelessness and decay such as unleavened black bread and unfermented grape juice (drama queens in my opinion). Some necromancers even went so far as to take part in the mutilation and consumption of corpses (more shivers and extreme yuck factor). These ceremonies could carry on for hours, days even weeks, leading up to the eventual summoning of the spirit. They were frequently performed in places of internment or other miserable places that suited specific guidelines for necromancy (yes I am rolling my eyes at this). Necromancers preferred to summon the recently departed based on the premise that their revelations were spoken more clearly. This timeframe was usually limited to the twelve months following the death of the physical body; once this period elapsed, necromancers would evoke the deceased’s ghostly spirit instead (which basically means that the belief was precedent that within 12 months the body could still be raised).
Necromancy was common throughout Western antiquity with records of its practice in Babylon, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. In his Geographica, Strabo refers to νεκρομαντία (necyomanteis), or “diviners by the dead”, as the foremost practitioners of divination amongst the people of
Persia,[8] and it is believed to have also been widespread amongst the peoples of Chaldea (particularly the Sabians, or star-worshipers or more correctly the
Sabians’s of Harran), Etruria, and Babylonia. The Babylonian necromancers were called manzazuu or sha’etemmu, and the spirits they raised were called etemmu.
There are also several references to necromancers – called “bone-conjurers” amongst Jews of the later Hellenistic period[16]. The Book of Deuteronomy (18:9–12[17]) explicitly warns the Israelites
against engaging in the Canaanite practice of divination from the dead:
9When thou art come into the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do according to the abominations of those nations.
10There shall not be found among you any one who maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or who useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch,
11or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer.
12For all who do these things are an abomination unto the LORD, and because of these abominations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee (
KJV).
Though Mosaic Law prescribed the death penalty to practitioners of necromancy (Leviticus 20:27[18]), this warning was not always heeded. One of the foremost examples is when
King Saul had the Witch of Endor invoke the shade of Samuel, a judge and prophet, from Sheol using a ritual conjuring pit (1 Samuel 28:3–25
[19]).
Some later Christian writers rejected the idea that humans could bring back the spirits of the dead in any form and interpreted such shades as disguised demons instead, thus conflating necromancy with demon summoning.
Caesarius of Arles entreated his listeners to put no stock in any demons or gods other than the Christian God, even if the working of spells appears to provide benefit. He stated that demons only act with divine permission and are permitted by God to test Christian people. Caesarius does not condemn man here; he only states that the art of necromancy exists, although it is prohibited by the Bible.
The cultures that believe in the wisdom of the dead have various philosophies on what the dead can tell us. While some cultures considered the knowledge of the dead to be unlimited, ancient Greeks and Romans believed that individual shades knew only certain things. The apparent value of their counsel may have been based on things they knew in life or knowledge they acquired after death.
Ovid writes in his Metamorphoses of a marketplace in the underworld where the dead convene to exchange news and gossip.
“There is a pathway
going downhill, shaded by gloomy yews, 640
which leads through silent, solitary spots
to the world below, where the sluggish Styx
breathes mist. Fresh ghosts of the dead pass this way,
the forms of those who have had full burial rites.
In all directions the place is dreary,
pale, and freezing. New spirits of the dead
are ignorant of the road which takes them
to that city by the Styx, where black Dis
has his grim palace. This roomy city
has a thousand gateways and entrances 650
open on all sides, and just as the sea
absorbs rivers from all around the earth, [440]
in the same way this place receives all souls.
There is no group for which it is too small,
nor does it notice large crowds when they come.
Bloodless shadows with no bones or bodies
wander around. Some throng the market place,
some the palace of the infernal king,
and some keep busy working various trades,
in imitation of their previous life, 660
while others suffer punishments to suit
the wicked acts they have committed.”
Eliphas Levi in his book entitled Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie – stated that necromancy is the evoking of aerial bodies (aeromancy). Translated into English by Arthur Edward Waite – Transcendental Magic, its Doctrine and Ritual in 1910. Its famous opening lines present the single essential theme of Occultism and gives some of the flavour of its atmosphere:
Behind the veil of all the hieratic and mystical allegories of ancient doctrines, behind the darkness and strange ordeals of all initiations, under the seal of all sacred writings, in the ruins of Nineveh or Thebes, on the crumbling stones of old temples and on the blackened visage of the Assyrian or Egyptian sphinx, in the monstrous or marvelous paintings which interpret to the faithful of India the inspired pages of the Vedas, in the cryptic emblems of our old books on alchemy, in the ceremonies practised at reception by all secret societies, there are found indications of a doctrine which is everywhere the same and everywhere carefully concealed.
So what have we established thus far, necromancy was a widely practiced art centuries ago, we know that the Greeks and Romans called on their dead for council only when they felt it was necessary to do so for answers that their Oracles could not provide or confirmation there of, even probably as an alternative.
Although the bible warned against necromancy it was still practiced, still is practiced even by the church but we’ll get to that in a moment. So did the ancients actually raise dead bodies to talk to them?
Canaanite Necromancy
Biblical texts and tradition, which forbade necromancy, points to the Canaanites as practicing it.
In truth they did, but the way it was practiced simply involves communicating with the dead for guidance. Some would say that necromancy is “calling” or “summoning” the dead for divining the future. Others would claim that it is physically animating the dead. Though this is not mentioned in Canaanite texts, some might confuse this with summoning a demon, but ideally in a rite to consult with the ancestors harmful spirits are not present or are divinely guided away. The dead where specifically consulted for purposes of healing and guidance (fairly boring and mundane). It is likely that it was believed that the rapiu the “spirit” would speak aloud, through dreams or through a person (sound familiar?). It is unlikely that it was believed that the body could be reunited with the spirit. It is also possible and most likely that the Canaanites would have found the removal of the body from its final resting place abhorrent to their mores since it would weaken the rapiu and cause a “troubled spirit” to come into being. Mesopotamian Magicians did not call on the dead often as not only did the dead answer but also, unwanted, unhelpful and even harmful spirits could respond. Rituals where only conducted out of necessity after deep consideration and careful preparation.
It was not thought of as evil but like consulting the elders of the community for advice.
Another form of necromancy also used –Sciomancy
- divination by shadows
Greek- sica ( shadow, outline) and menteia (divination). The art and practice of divining the future by shadows, or by the shades of the dead. A common practice was to observe the size and shapes or changing appearance of shadows, thus drawing a prophetic conclusion.
For your shadow to appear headless was an omen of your very near and impending death.
Strangely I came across a religious group I have not heard much about, it intrigued me as they were also said to have practiced necromancy among many other things:
Sabians
I know this name sounds like something out of Star Wars but as far as I could find this culture or race of people have been mentioned in only three places in the Qur’an and in very few other texts.
The Qur’an mentions briefly the Sabians in three places and the Hadith provides additional details as to who they were:
“Surely those who believe, and those who are Jews, and the Christians, and the Sabians, whoever believes in Allah and the Final Day and does good, they shall have their reward from their Lord, and there is no fear for them, nor shall they grieve.”
[Quran 2:62]
“Surely those who believe and those who are Jews and the Sabians and the Christians whoever believes in Allah and the Final Day and does good– they shall have no fear nor shall they grieve.”
[Quran 5:69]
“Surely those who believe and those who are Jews and the Sabeans and the Christians and the Magians and those who associate (others with Allah)– surely Allah will decide between them on the day of resurrection; surely Allah is a witness over all things.”
[Quran 22:17]
A per wikipedia:
The Sabians (Arabic:صابئة) of Middle Eastern tradition are a variety of monotheistic: Gnostic
(Mandeans), Hermetic (Harranian) as well as Abrahamic religions mentioned three times in the Qur’an with thepeople of the Book, “the Jews, the Sabians, and the Christians.”] In the hadith, they are described merely as converts to Islam, but interest in the identity and history of the group increased over time, and discussions and investigations about the Sabians begin to appear in later Islamic literature.
According to Muslim authors, Sabians followed the fourth book of Abrahamic tradition, the Zabur, which was given to the prophet King David of Ancient Israel according to the Qur’an. The “Zabur” is identified by many modern scholars as the biblical Book of Psalms. Most of what is known of them comes from Ibn Wahshiyya‘s The Nabatean Agriculture, and the translation of this by Maimonides. According to Daniel Chwolsohn (1856) they appear to have gravitated around the original pro-Jewish Hanputa of Elchasai out of which the miso-Judaic prophet Mani seceded and are identified therefore as the pro-Torah Sampsaeans but also less accurately with the anti-Torah Mandaeans. They were said by Khalil Ibn Ahmad (d.786) to believe that they “belonged” to the prophet Noah. The Sabians existed before Muhammad. They came under Islamic rule about 639 CE. At that time in history they were described as Greek immigrants[citation needed] but were grouped together with the Nabataeans. Many Islamic writers from the period of about 650 CE onward gave further descriptions of the Sabians. They wrote that the Sabians lived in Iraq around Sawad, Kutha and Mosul and they “wash themselves with water”, had “long hair”, and “white gowns”.
They had a monotheistic faith with religious literature (the Zabur) and acknowledged the prophets. Their theology resembled that of Judaism and Christianity yet were neither, nor were they Magians.
The Qu’ran briefly announces the Sabians as people of the book but provides no details as to who they were.
There is a lot of evidence that shows the Mandaeans are not the Harranians and are the true Sabians of the Qu’ran. Many authors have mixed up the various reports about the Sabians without first dividing them into two different groups. This confusion began when the Harrians (in the 9th century) stole the name Sabian in order to protect themselves from the Muslims.
It is this second group of Sabians who concern us, who some supposed that they influenced the practices of the Hellenic Godfearers (theosebeis Greek: Θεοσεβεῖς) while their angelology (based around the movements of the Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn) found its greatest development in the community which was based in the Harran region of south-eastern Anatolia and northern Syria. Ibn al-Qayyim distinguished them as the Sabians of Harran from the south Mesopotamian Sābi’ūna Hunafā.
The city of Harran is virtually a forgotten spot in the geography of Anatolia. Whereas in reality, it is a place of great importance having a very significant role in the development of civilization. It may surprise you to know that a 11,500-year-old temple was discovered in Göbeklitepe, and a 13,500-year-old statue, the world’s oldest, was discovered during an excavation in Balıklıgöl. Assistant Professor A. Cihat Kürkçüoglu of Harran University claims that the history of civilization began in the Urfa (a city just 45 kilometers from Harran). When we consider that civilization was supposed to have began in Egypt in Mesopotamia roughly 5,000 years ago we can have an idea on how these archeological finds have rocked the foundations of our understanding of history.
The city of Harran was believed to have been founded in 2000 B.C. as a merchant outpost of Ur. The name “Harran-U” means “caravan” or “crossroad” in Sumerian and Akkadian. The Bible records that Abraham stayed in Harran after leaving Ur, which some claim was actually Urfa. Though there are claims that Harran got its name from Haran the brother of Abraham. Other than the similarity of name this is not substantiated. Furthermore, we learn that Terah, the father of Abraham and Haran died and was buried in Haran, and that a branch of the family remained there. Later Abraham sent a servant to Harran to obtain a wife for his son Isaac.
Though Harran, once a fabulous city, is now in ruins, we are told that not only was this city built over an area where the first world’s cities with the first temples rose, and where agriculture was first started, but hosted perhaps the world’s oldest university in the world. Many philosophers, scientists, such as Al-Battanai, who calculated the distance from the Earth to the Moon, Thabit ibn Qurrah, who translated Greek classics and scientific works into Arabic, and wrote on mathematics and astronomy, and the physicist and chemist Jabir ibn Hayyan to name just a few of the figures who rose to prominence in the Harran school.
At a time when Christianity was rapidly spreading throughout the known world. Harran became the last pagan enclave, and as the seats of learning in Alexandria fell in the wake of the new religion, and the Academies and schools of philosophy were closed down because of the new religious beliefs (it appears that texts were ceased and might have been changed), philosophers sought refuge in Harran, where their books and teachings were preserved. Later many of them were translated into Arabic. Some by the so called “Sabians of Harran”, ushering a golden age in the Islamic world. Later these works were to make their way into Europe, directly resulting in the Renaissance along with those works that were preserved in monasteries. Furthermore such underground movements as the Rosicrucians that fought for the reformation of state institutions, religion and science claimed their source of knowledge was obtained from the mysterious Damkar. It was believed to be a Sabian center of learning. The secular, democratic and humanistic principles of the modern world are due to such struggles which have taken centuries. The Harranians were famed as Sabians, “Star Worshippers.” Both Jewish and Islamic sources claim that Abraham was himself a star worshiper, and there is mutually a story told that after contemplating the setting of Sun and the Moon, he came to the conclusion that there must be one God. There was a great temple dedicated to the moon god Sin at Harran, and it is claimed that Harran was one of seven cities each of which was dedicated to one of the seven planets. Such a system of astrolatry could be the oldest religion of man. Ancient structures like Stonehenge and the pyramids are known to be constructed on the basis of very fine astronomical calculations such as planetary and stellar movements, seasons and eclipse and if it is possible that the oldest temple was found in Harran the possibilities of human heritage is endless.
In 830 A.D. It is said that the Caliph al-Ma’mum while passing through Harran during an expedition to Byzantium, asked the Harranians what religion they belonged to. They said, “We are Harranians,” and made it clear that they were neither Muslims, Christians or Jews, the Caliph said that was not good enough, they had to be either Muslims, Jews, Christians or Sabians, as only these are lawfully “People of the Book” according to the Koran. The Caliph continued on his journey and said they when he returned, they should have convert to one of these or it would be lawful to shed the blood of idolaters. After consultations the anxious Harranians were advised by someone clever to say “We are Sabians,” and thereby the Pagan “Sabians” were able to continue their faith undisturbed until in 1251, when Harran was destroyed by a Mongol invasion.
WHAT NECROMANCY BECAME
Later necromancy became what now gives people the chills when they hear the word:
Taken from the 1960 reprint of AN ENCLYCLOPAEDIA OF OCCULTISM
by Lewis Spence, University Books, Hyde Park, New York. First
published in 1920, it is considered to be one of the best
sources on the subject.
Submitted by Alan Wright, Atlanta GA, Illumi-Net 404-377-1141
IF the ghost of deceased person is to be raised, the grave must
be resorted to at midnight, and a different form of conjuration is
necessary. Still another, is the infernal sacrament for “any corpse
that hath hanged, drowned, or otherwise made away with itself”; and in
this case the conjurations are performed over the body, which will at
last rise, and standing upright, answer with a faint and hollow voice
the questions that are put to it.
Eliphas Levi, in his `Ritual of Transcendent Magic’ says that
“evocations should always have a motive and a becoming end, otherwise
the are works of darkness and folly, dangerous for health and reason.”
The permissible motive of an evocation may be either love or
intelligence. Evocations of love require less apparatus and are in
every respect easier. The procedure is as follows: “We must, in the
first place, carefully collect the memorials of him (or her) whom we
desire to behold, the articles he used, and on which his impressions
remains; we must also prepare an apartment in which the person lived, or
otherwise, one of similar kind, and place his portrait veiled in white
therein, surrounded with his favorite flowers, which must be renewed
daily. A fixed date must then be observed, either the birthday of the
person, or that day which was most fortunate for his and our own
affection, one of which we may believe that his soul, however blessed
elsewhere, cannot lose the remembrance; this must be the day for the
evocation and we must provide for it during the space of fourteen days.
Throughout this period we must refrain from extending to anyone the same
proofs of affection which we have the right to expect from the dead; we
must observe strict chastity, live in retreat, and take only modest and
light collation daily. Every evening at the same hour we must shut
ourselves in the chamber consecrated to the memory of the lamented
person, using only one small light, such as that of a funeral lamp or
taper. This light should be placed behind us, the portrait should be
uncovered and we should remain before it for an hour, in silence;
finally, we should fumigate the apartment with a little good incense,
and go out backwards. On the morning of the day fixed for the
evocation, we should adorn ourselves as if for a festival, not salute
anyone first, make but a single repast of bread, wine, and roots, or
fruits; the cloth should be white, two covers should be laid, and one
portion of the bread broken should be set aside; a little wine should
also be placed in the glass of the person we design to invoke.
The meal
must be eaten alone in the chamber of evocations, and in the presence of
the veiled portrait; it must be all cleared away at the end, except the
glass belonging to the dead person, and his portion of bread, which must
be placed before the portrait. In the evening, at the hour for the
regular visit, we must repair in silence to the chamber, light a fire of
cypress wood, and cast incense seven times thereon, pronouncing the name
of the person whom we desire to behold. The lamp must then be
extinguished, and the fire permitted to die out. On this day the
portrait must not be unveiled. When the flame is extinct, put more
incense on the ashes, and invoke God according to the forms of the
religion to which the dead person belonged, and according to the ideas
845
which he himself possessed of God. While making this prayer we must
identify ourselves with the evoked person, speak as he spoke, believe in
a sense as he believed; then, after a silence of fifteen minutes, we
must speak to him as if he were present, with affection and with faith,
praying him to manifest to us. Renew this prayer mentally, covering the
face with both hands; then call him thrice with a loud voice; tarry on
our knees, the eyes closed and covered, for some minutes; then call
again thrice upon him in a sweet and affectionate tone, and slowly open
the eyes. Should nothing result, the same experiment must be renewed in
the following year, and if necessary a third time, when it is certain
that the desired apparition will be obtained, and the longer it has been
delayed the more realistic and striking it will be.
“Evocations of knowledge and intelligence are made with more solemn
ceremonies. If concerned with a celebrated personage, we must meditate
for twenty-one days upon his life and writings, form an idea of his
appearance, converse with him mentally, and imagine his answers; carry
his portrait, or at least his name, about us; follow a vegetable diet
for twenty-one days, and a severe fast during the last seven.
We must
next construct the magical oratory. This oratory must be invariably
darkened; but if we operate in the daytime, we may leave a narrow
aperture on the side where the sun will shine at the hour of the
evocation, and place a triangular prism before the opening, and a
crystal globe, filled with water, before the prism. If the operation
be arranged for the night the magic lamp must be so placed that its
single ray shall be upon the alter smoke. The purpose of the
preparations is to furnish the magic agent with elements of corporeal
appearance, and to ease as much as possible the tension of imagination,
which could not be exalted without danger into the absolute illusion of
dream. for the rest, it will be easily understood that a beam of
sunlight, or the ray of a lamp, colored variously, and falling upon
curling and irregular smoke, can in no way create a perfect image.
The
chafing-dish containing the sacred fire should be in the center of the
oratory, and the alter of perfumes close by. The operator must turn
toward the east to pray, and the west to invoke; he must be either alone
or assisted by two persons preserving the strictest silence; he must
wear the magical vestments, which we have described in the seventh
chapter (of Levi`s “Ritual of Transcendent Magic”), and must be crowned
with vervain and gold. He should bathe before the operation, and all
his under garments must be of the most intact and scrupulous
cleanliness. The ceremony should begin with a prayer suited to the
genius of the spirit about to be invoked and one which would be approved
by him if he still lived. For example, it would be impossible to evoke
Voltaire by reciting prayers in the style of St. Bridget. For the great
men of antiquity, we may see the hymns of Cleathes or Orpheus, with the
adjuration terminating the Golden Venus of Pythagoras. In our own
evocation of Apollonius, we used the magical philosophy of Patricius for
the ritual, containing the doctrines of Zoroaster and the writings of
Hermes Trismegistus. We recited the Nuctemeron of Apollonius in greek
with a loud voice and added the following conjuration:-
It continues in this tract for some extended time reciting various suggestions of evocation in case the deceased was of the Jewish faith, you soon find yourself thinking shall we move on please.
In all honesty from my research I thing people tend to get the wrong end of the stick as far as necromancy is concerned ( just my opinion) but maybe if we look into when it became an act associated with the Devil and Demons that we’ll understand our reactions to what we think it is to what it in actual fact is.
Necromancy is any magickal technique which seeks communication with the dead.
Shamanism, for example, is an essentially necromantic system. In primitive cultures, it is the office of the shaman to deal with the spirits of the dead. He is also a healer and a spiritual guide for his community. He is a diviner, able to predict impending plagues, droughts, or other calamities, and he is the one who is responsible for guiding the dying to the other world. Unlike ordinary men, the shaman can speak with and interact with the denizens of the spirit world. In fact, it is the shaman’s primary duty to serve as a kind of mediator between the fleshly and the spiritual worlds. He bargains with the spirits, gains knowledge and power from them, gives them offerings, and at times does battle with them in order to protect his community.
A crucial part of the shaman’s initiation is a ritual death and rebirth. During this initiation, often performed by the spirits themselves, the shaman’s spirit leaves his body and passes over to the otherworld. Here the spirits test him and often grant him special abilities. He this during initiation gains the ability to see spirits in both realities and to interact with them. Certain spirits claim friendship and become spirits guides so that it will be easier for the shaman to call upon them in the future, as well as warning the shaman about impending danger. After this harrowing is finished he is returned to his body, where he awakens a full shaman. At this point, he is considered twice born and walks between both realities, physical and spiritual, at once.
Another system which has necromantic overtones is the Tibetan Art of Dying, also known as the Bardo Thodrol.
This system officially dates back to the eighth century BCE (before current era/ BC) when the adept Padme Sambhava recorded his teachings about lucid dying and the between places in a series of texts now known as the
Tibetan Book of the Dead.
The Bardo Thodrol tradition undoubtedly dates back before the eighth century, but Padme Sambhava was the first person to actually commit the techniques to writing. Padme Sambhava, wary of impending persecution, hid his texts away in a cave located high up in the Gampo Dar Mountain. The texts were then discovered by Karma Lingpa in the fourteenth century and made accessible to the Buddhist world.
The Tibetan Art of Dying is a very complex and intricate system. On the most basic level, the Bardo Thodrol describes the process of death and what comes after. It is a guidebook for the soul, providing what amounts to a road map of the otherside to help the spirit of the deceased get where he is going.
Reincarnation is taken as a given as is the immortality of the soul.
The word “bardo” itself means a gap or a threshold and in essence describes the between-place (some might call it limbo but is essentially the waiting room for either re-incarnation or nirvana) that is inhabited by spirits who have moved beyond the fleshly reality.
The Bardo Thodrol is meant to be read aloud to the spirit of the deceased so that he may not wander blindly in the between-place or become earth-bound. The ultimate goal of the Bardo Thodrol is to help the deceased achieve nirvana and, if this is not possible, then help him achieve the best rebirth possible.
Adepts of the system can see and interact with the spirits much like a shaman. Very skilled adepts can also send their spirits forth into the between-place where they can interact with things just as if they were a spirit themselves. And because the Bardic tradition devotes so much time and energy to understanding the process of death, there is a great deal of useful information in the Bardo Thodrol about spirits and the nature of the reality in which they exist. Even spiritualism, that late nineteenth century passion, can be considered a form of necromancy. Although sadly it has rapidly been degraded into little more than parlour tricks – slight of hand, when the original aim of spiritualism was communication with the dead. This is where modern day séances come from. The medium who led the séance was someone whose sensitivities were uniquely attuned to the spirit world. The very word medium was meant to imply a mediator, someone who, like the shaman, hovered on the threshold between worlds. Ultimately, the spiritualists were seeking answers. They wanted to know what death was like and what lay in the realms beyond. In that respect, they were searching for many of the same things the Bardo Thodrol addressed nearly two thousand years earlier.
Yet most people, if asked, would not equate any of these practices with necromancy. Necromancy is almost universally considered a “black art”.
The very word “necromancy” conjures images of cloaked figures huddled in a graveyard, digging up a corpse. It had been moved into the realms of a repellent, gory, and morbid art – or so most occult books would imply. Pagans and Wiccans have nothing to say about the practice, as although they believe the dead can be contacted it is not something many deal in. Christians and most other monotheistic religions tend to view it as Satanic, but I suppose there’s nothing surprising about that. In their reasoning, anything that is not a part of their religion must be against it.
So what is so awful about traditional necromancy that it is universally shunned?
First, there is the natural human fear of death and the dead. Freud, in his Totem and Taboo explains that most primitive cultures have taboos against touching the dead or touching articles that belonged to the dead because they view death as somehow contagious (death is catching). He goes on to explain primitive man’s belief that the dead are naturally jealous of the living, and that such jealousy will drive even the dearest loved ones to murderous ends. They want companionship on the other-side, and they will do just about anything to drag their loved ones across into death with them. In other words that the spirit of our loved one can easily return or haunt us to death as they do not want to be alone in death.
A hint of this primal fear remains even in our sanitized modern culture. Have you ever been to a funeral?
How many people present could actually bring themselves to touch the dead body? Did you reach your hand out to see if you could? Death is frightening. First of all, we have no control over it. Second of all, there is no way for us to truly understand it until we ourselves have undergone the process – and that in itself is an intimidating thought.
Witches in the Middle Ages (through most of the world) were believed to sign a pact with the Devil for their powers. They were believed to gather in great orgies in the woods at night, and at these so-called Witches’ Sabbats, they were believed to slaughter and eat infants, engage in perverted sexual activities, and work spells to bring plagues, famines, and other evils to the land. Numerous tracts on witches and witchcraft, written by Christian experts, asserted all those things and more.
The Malleus Maleficarum (or “Hammer of Witches”), a famous tract on witches from the 15th century even made the claim that witches (who were almost invariably women) had the power to steal men’s genitals (yip u read correctly – they stole the penises of men). The witches then kept their pet penises in little nests hidden away high up in trees, feeding them on honey, milk, and blood (now this I would have loved to have seen, wonder what they used them for?).
What does any of this have to do with necromancy?
Well the summoning of spirits was of course one of the many charges levied against the witches. But yet in the same breath I must inform you that Necromancy was apparently practiced by certain members of the Church – but it had to be sanctioned. In 13th century Florence, Niccolo Consigli was tried for practicing necromancy without a license. This implies that the art was allowed and accepted so long as it was performed within certain limitations of the law. Richard Kieckhefer, in his book Forbidden Rites, tells us that many of the clergy practiced the summoning of spirits. Sometimes they were looked down upon by their fellow priests, but for the most part it was believed that if anyone could practice such arts and remain uncorrupted by them, the clergy could do it. Notably, one of the major necromantic grimoires to have been produced in the medieval era is the Grimoire of Honorius – attributed to no one less than Pope Honorius himself!
Yet the so-called necromancy that appears in these early grimoires rarely requires the necromancer to shed blood or mutilate corpses. Most of the evocation which appears in the texts is pure ceremonial magick, the kind heavily influenced by Qabbalistic teachings and the Solomonic tradition. In most, although not all, of the spells, the goal of summoning is to gain knowledge and information.
So where does the notion that a necromancer must wallow in body parts and blood arise from?
Where, indeed?
As far as the witch-craze was concerned, there was no distinction between someone who practiced witchcraft and someone who practiced unlicensed necromancy. Without the sanction and power of the Church behind you, you could not work magick. Period. Anything else was considered an infernal art.
Those who practiced unsanctioned magick were invariably considered to be in league with Satan and working (ultimately) toward the destruction of the One True Church. In fact, the word necromancy was at one point completely interchangeable with the word nigromancy, – a catch-all term for any of the black arts in general. Just as the writings of the day described what the Christians believed the witches were up to, so too did those tracts include the Christians’ view of the necromancer’s art. Writers like Cornelius Agrippa, whose Three Books on Occult Philosophy is still in circulation today, paint a very dark picture of the necromancer indeed.
The Influence of Agrippa:
Agrippa, writing in the early portion of the 16th century, tells us that necromancy
“worketh all its experiments by the carcasses of the slain, and their bones and members,
and what is from them, because there is in these things a spiritual power friendly to them.”
(Tyson, 606).
He tells us also that the necromancer uses blood to call up spirits, and when a body cannot be obtained, a fresh blood sacrifice will do.
As dictated by Christian afterlife beliefs, Agrippa could not admit that the spirits of the righteous could be summoned through necromancy. (There was a huge debate among medieval scholars about whether the witch of Endor could have actually called up the prophet Samuel as he was one of the Lord’s chosen and should have been protected from such summoning by the Lord).
But Agrippa believed that it was possible to summon the spirits of the damned and perhaps those wandering in limbo. Therefore since the necromancers dealt only with the spirits of the damned, it is implied that they themselves are damned also.
The best place to summon such spirits, Agrippa tells us, is at a crossroads or at a similarly dark, isolate, and barren locale. Agrippa also tells us that necromancers will often haunt places of execution, sneaking in under cover of darkness in order to cut off choice bits of murderer and thief to use later in various spells. Graveyards are not safe either, as necromancers will enter places of the dead at night and dig up corpses with the express aim of resurrecting the spirits and forcing them to reveal hidden treasure.
So what does this tell us about our traditional view of medieval necromancy?
I think Agrippa as well as other writers like him indelibly shaped the popular image of necromancy, and further, I think that image is very misleading. In my opinion Agrippa was writing to impress a very Christian audience with his magickal knowledge. The first drafts of his masterwork were sent to the Abbot Johannes Trithemius as well as the abbot of Saint James at Wurtzburg. Both of these men, particularly Trithemius, studied the magickal arts themselves. It has been suggested even that Trithemius was Agrippa’s mystical mentor, primarily in the art of evoking spirits. Trithemius and the abbot of Saint James would have been among those clergy whose magickal experiments were accepted and even sanctioned by the Church. As such, it would suit them to have their unsanctioned rivals calumnied in print. Agrippa may have (and most probably did) sacrificed accuracy in favour of giving his audience what they wanted to hear.
Out of the Coffin.
We have already established that much of the medieval perception of witchcraft was formed through Christian propaganda and ignorant speculation.
So, too, do I think the necromancy described by Agrippa and his contemporaries is only a skewed version of an actual tradition that existed prior to that time.
The blood and the bones and the exhumed corpses, like the infamous witches’ Sabbat, were sensational fabrications designed to shock the populace and condemn an art the monotheistic regime objected to. Interestingly, it is only after Agrippa’s writings were published that grimoires began to appear which contained bloody, corpse-ridden rituals that pretended to be necromancy. Even the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage, though it purports to have been written in 1458, exists only in a copy which Mathers dated to the end of the 17th or beginning of the 18th centuries. Another grimoire containing necromantic material, the Red Dragon Grimoire, I think very clearly demonstrates the negative influence Agrippa’s work had on later writers.
The Red Dragon Grimoire contains a ritual for summoning a dead man which, among other things, requires the necromancer to dig up a grave with his bare hands in the middle of winter, expose himself to the elements for hours on end, and throw exhumed bones into a Church during midnight mass – and then run like hell before he gets caught. Reading rituals like that one makes me wonder if they were ever intended to be performed at all – or if the writer was trying to create the strangest, goriest and most gruesome effect imaginable just to see if someone would actually be stupid enough to try it. Seeming more of a dare saying “come on fool let’s see if you dare do this”. In cases like the Red Dragon Grimoire and others, it is almost as if the writers of the later grimoires were trying to tailor their necromancy to fit the spooky stereotype established by Agrippa.
Necromancy, as a spiritual art, is not what these sources make it out to be. While it is definitely a darker practice, there is no need to relegate it to cemeteries and crossroads. Like the art of the shaman, necromancy is basically threshold work. Its magick takes places in that liminal state between living and dying, and most of its power comes from this very liminality. The conjuring of spirits for divinatory purposes is actually only a small and relatively unimportant part of necromancy.
The real work comes from the necromancer’s contact with death and with the transformative power of death.
There is power released in the falling apart of things, and like the meddlers and sorb-apples celebrated in D.H. Lawrence’s poem, some things only achieve their fullness by falling through the stages of decay.
Necromancy is not about bones or blood or putrid corpses. It is about reaching across from one state of being to the next. The necromancer is not some grave-robbing black magician but a shamanic initiate who harnesses the between-state for the power of destruction and recreation that it brings. If we are to explore this fascinating and liberating magickal art, we have to explode our preconceptions of what it is, and to do that, we have to abandon the ghost-stories told to us by Agrippa and other contemporary writers.
Rather than looking at the texts which are clearly an outgrowth of the witchcraze era. A time we just about everything not dictated by church doctrine had to be of the devil.
To truly understand the art and deep understanding it takes we should look within, where life and death meet inside ourselves, as we are all both alive and in the process of dying, to truly understand where to begin.
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