Volume 19

Ancient Necromantic Rituals in Contemporary Celestial Magic

Jane Burton

Abstract

This paper explores how witches and spiritual mediums both focus on solar and lunar events as important times for their magical rituals, and also the importance they place upon zodiacal influences. Additionally, it will investigate if blood, either the practitioners own or symbolic, is utilised in basic magical rituals for necromantic purposes such as spirit divination. Necromantic rituals from Ancient Greek magical texts were compared with contemporary rituals employed by the informants, using primary and secondary sources. This is an ethnographic report of participant observation of spiritual mediums and witches living in the Valencia region of Spain. It was conducted over a one-year period of fieldwork study. Data was collected by way of a questionnaire and in a series of interviews with spiritual mediums and witches who practice spirit invocation for divinatory purposes.

Citation: Jane Burton, 'Ancient Necromantic Rituals in Contemporary Celestial Magic', Celestial Magic, special issue of Culture and Cosmos, Vol. 19, nos. 1 and 2, 2015, pp. 225-50.