As Diodorus remarks, so evenly ordered
was their whole manner of life that it was as if arranged by a learned
physician rather than by a lawgiver.
Two world-wide modes of practice found their earliest illustration in
ancient Egypt. Magic, the first of these, represented the attitude of
primitive man to nature, and really was his religion. He had no idea
of immutable laws, but regarded the world about him as changeable and
fickle like himself, and "to make life go as he wished, he must be able
to please and propitiate or to coerce these forces outside himself."(8)
(8) L. Thorndike: The Place of Magic in the Intellectual
History of Europe, New York, 1905, p. 29.
The point of interest to us is that in the Pyramid Texts--"the oldest
chapter in human thinking preserved to us, the remotest reach in the
intellectual history of man which we are now able to discern"(9)--one of
their six-fold contents relates to the practice of magic. A deep belief
existed as to its efficacy, particularly in guiding the dead, who
were said to be glorious by reason of mouths equipped with the charms,
prayers and ritual of the Pyramid Texts, armed with which alone could
the soul escape the innumerable dangers and ordeals of the passage
through another world.
Pages:
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38