Other Magic
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As we have already said, Fire is considered the Element of an object’s Activity, its ascending force.
It is unsurprising that Fire is also credited with the greatest destructive power, since the Principle of ascent that it denotes is often accompanied by the disembodiment of things, that is — their material destruction.
The primary division of the universe drives further polarization and brings forth the quaternity of the Prima Materia.
The Tauri — Indo-European first-settlers of Crimea — also revered the Great Goddess. What the Great Goddess was called in the Tauri tongue we do not know; the Greeks called her Parthenos — the Maiden. She was the great goddess of the earth, of the waters, and of all animal and plant life — sovereign of every life and every birth.
Tabiti was called “the Queen of the Scythians”; she appears as the Lady-goddess of the subterranean fire. She is a formidable, “enkindling” Goddess, whose various functions were those of the household fire, the sacrificial fire, and, consequently, of prayer.
Although, according to Herodotus, “Among the Scythians there are many diviners who predict by means of numerous willow rods as follows: bringing large bundles of rods and laying them on the ground, they spread them apart and then, moving the rods one by one, they divine; speaking the predictions, they at the same time gather the rods again and lay them out one by one. Such is their ancestral method of divination,” the most venerated of the seers were precisely the Enarei, for the Great Goddess had given them this faculty.
Based on the beliefs of the peoples of Dahomey (now Benin, located in the region between the modern states of Togo to the west and Nigeria to the east) and their synthesis with Catholicism in Haiti several centuries ago, a system of beliefs emerged — Voodoo. A similar religion, Santería, based on the beliefs of the Yoruba people, arose in Cuba; macumba, likewise rooted in Yoruba beliefs, appeared in Brazil.
As we have already said, the kabbalists hold that the two world-principles—Attractiveness and Expansiveness—are not equivalent. Attractiveness is regarded as a created quality, while Expansiveness is an attribute of the Absolute. Nevertheless, when the Light of the Absolute enters the Vessel of Creation, that Vessel acquires certain properties of the Light. This phenomenon—the form of the Absolute’s presence in the world—is called the Shekhinah.
Alongside the well-known and indisputable wisdom of the druids, the literature about them often contains indications—almost bashful hints—of human sacrifices practiced by them.
It is well known that the druids and the religion they represented had, by the beginning of the 1st century CE, become the target of successive measures of suppression carried out by the Roman authorities.
Alongside the legends of Atlantis, the classical tradition preserves a legend of Hyperborea — a land where a sacred people with superhuman gifts once lived. According to ancient authors’ descriptions, this mythical country lay somewhere far to the north of the Mediterranean.
Among the kings and rulers of the ancient world several towering figures stand out, exceeding the bounds of ordinary humanity and rightly regarded as demigods. One of the best-known rulers who manifested divine power was Ramses the Great.
Among all Magi — real and mythical — perhaps none is as widely known as Merlin.
The last Magus and the most famous druid of Britain, he is remembered not only as King Arthur’s mentor but also as a distinct, deeply ambiguous figure who looks through the veil of later retellings.
Mesopotamian notions of postmortem existence are as elaborated as those of the Egyptians or Buddhists, although, unlike the latter two, they are not collected into “Books of the Dead.”
If, according to Egyptian myths (and, correspondingly, ancient Greek ones) the Judgement of the Dead leaves the soul a chance to enter Paradise (“Fields of Iaru,” “Elysian Fields”), Chaldean culture imagined a darker—and apparently, more plausible—picture.
Strikingly, the mythologies of many lands share the same motif — the god’s victory over the Dragon. Typhon and Jormungand, Vritra and Vritra’s counterpart, and the Black Serpent resisted the gods’ formative influence on the world.