Re: Religion and Magick Jenny jennyg@compuserve.com Wed Oct 27 16:46:01 1999 : I personally see no difference *br*: between what some might call "prayer" and what I *br*: might call "magic," for instance. :-)*br*:*br*: Leigh*p*Me too. I've found that when I talk to fundamentalist friends and relatives, I communicate a lot better if I call my rituals "prayers" instead of "spells." Nobody ever objects to me praying for them, but their hair will stand on end if I offer to do a spell for them... <g>*p*The only reason I hesitated to apply Luck's theory to today, is that now there are people who call what they do "magick". On the other hand, there were people back then who did the same thing, so maybe I need to take a more cultural, rather than individual, outlook. To me, my spells are religious -- to most people in my society, they're magick.*p*Another essay I'm reading comes to essentially the same conclusions as Luck. The author (Richard Gordon) argues that in Greece, prejudice against magick was directly tied to ideas of citizenship. The rituals of citizens (male, free-born Greeks) were religion. The rituals of non-citizens (slaves, women, and foreigners) were magick.*p*Like Luck's article, Gordon's piece sheds light on some interesting trivia. For instance, we've all been told it's "bad" to charge for spells. The Greeks and Romans agreed -- charging for your rituals was one of the surest ways of being labelled a "magus" or "witch", rather than a priest or priestess. *p*But Gordon points out that this is just another reflection of the Us vs Them dichotomy. In Greek and Roman times, a priest/ess WAS paid for doing rituals. They were paid by the state, which supported "official" rites. If you had to charge your client, that meant you weren't an *official* religion. Authors make it sound like these "magi" are money-grubbing con-artists. But, Gordon argues, they're not really different from the traditional priests. They just didn't have the city's monetary support.*p*Jenny*br* Re: Religion and Magick TopazOwl 229 Fri Oct 22 20:53:39 1999