ANST-501 Lessons

The professor smiles as she sees all of the eager faces of students arriving in her classroom. She flicks her wand in the air for attention, and the class quickly settles into their seats.

Welcome to Fifth Year, my dears! I am so glad you have chosen to continue in this class. Some of you may be here because you are hoping to become a curse-breaker or an auror when you graduate, some of you may be pursuing other related careers, and some of you may simply enjoy the course material. Whatever the reason, I am glad you are here.

Because there is simply too much history of the world to cover in your short years at Hogwarts, we will not be spending any time reviewing what you learned last year. I hope you took good notes in Year Four as we may be referring back to other cultures that we have learned about in the continuation of our studies.

We will begin today with a brief overview of the year, grading expectations, and general rules to follow, and conclude with a discussion on magic use in prehistoric Europe. Onwards and upwards!

Ancient Studies Year 5 Syllabus

And now that we have all of that boring material out of the way, let’s jump right into today’s lesson on prehistoric Europe. Shall we?

Introduction to Ancient European Magic

You will have noticed from our outline for this year that we are focusing mainly on three groups of people (four, if you separate the ancient Greeks from the ancient Romans, but we will discuss that issue next week). Please do not think that these three groups, the Greco-Romans, Celts, and Norse, were the only major civilizations throughout ancient Europe. That is simply not the case!

There are, indeed, a vast number of other cultures and societies that have existed throughout what is now modern-day Europe, including the Germanic tribes, Basques, Iberians, Etruscans, Illyrians, Minoans, Scythians, Slavs, Proto-Baltic Slavs, Finnic tribes, Proto-Uralians, and the Magyars. While some of these civilizations have many similarities with each other, they do still have their own unique sets of practices and beliefs. 

Before many of these civilizations took root, the men and women who lived in prehistoric Europe also practiced magic, as you may remember from taking History of Magic. In Europe specifically, we can see that magic, in some form, was practiced as long as 13,500 to 14,000 years ago. That, I’m sure you would agree, is a substantially long time ago in terms of the human race!

You may be asking yourselves how on Earth we know what kinds of magic a civilization from so long ago could possibly have used, and you are quite right to do so! There certainly wasn’t an advanced form of writing that could have allowed these civilizations to communicate with thousands of years in the future. However, what we do have are cave paintings that appear in subterranean areas throughout modern day France, Spain, England, Romania, Bulgaria, and others.

In a nutshell, Muggle and magical archaeologists, anthropologists, and other scientists have been studying these cave paintings for decades. With our combined knowledge and record keeping, we have discovered many things about these people simply through what they have drawn on the walls of caves. You may have heard the saying that “a picture is worth a thousand words.” It is through these thousands of words from ancient cave paintings that researchers have pieced together parts of these civilizations’ lives, beliefs, and magical practices.

What we have learned about these ancient civilizations is that they practiced a sort of totemism, or the belief that people are descended from animals, plants, and other natural objects. These animals, plants, and natural objects are thought to be that person’s ancestors. The totems themselves are symbols that hearken back to the specific ancestor, and are often associated with clans (groups of families tracing common descent). By representing desirable individual qualities (such as the swiftness of a deer) and helping to explain the mythical origin of the clan, different groups of people were associated with different traits. From this practice and the details surrounding it, we can extrapolate that they were very interconnected with the natural world around them, and considered themselves a part of the natural process.

Upon further investigation of the cave paintings and their possible meanings, magical researchers have decoded the types of very basic magic that these civilizations used. The magic itself can be broken down into two distinct types: sympathetic magic, and shamanism.

Sympathetic Magic

Sympathetic magic is based on the relationship, or perceived relationship, between an image and its subject. When acting upon the image, the act is carried out upon the person or animal represented. Simply put, a cave painting of a bison being killed with a spear was part of a magical rite designed to make a hunt easier and more successful. Other types of sympathetic magic that were performed included increasing fertility in animals, and causing destruction (upon another tribe, for example).

In theory this magic works because “the representation of any living being is, to some extent, an emanation of the same being, and that the possession of the image of this being grants the bearer a certain power over him” (Clottes, 1998, pg 66). In actuality, we are not entirely certain how successful these magical rites were - we simply have no proof of success or failure. What we can see are distinct similarities in the types of magic we believe were performed during prehistoric times and the magic we know was performed in similar regions of the world during the reign of the ancient Greeks, Romans, Celts, and Norse peoples. Those similarities cannot be solely coincidental.

Shamanism

Shamanism, contrary to popular definitions, was not only practiced in northern Asia. In fact, it is a practice that occurred (and in some places still occurs) across the globe. Sometimes it simply has a different name, but the inherent beliefs behind shamanism remain the same. Put in basic terms, shamanism is the belief and practice where powerful spirits can be influenced by the magic of the practitioner (the shaman).

In practice, shamans often induced hallucinations in order to journey to the underworld and communicate with the dead and the spirits. It is here that cave paintings become quite interesting, as we discover that cave paintings, especially of this type of magic, were not meant to be seen by outsiders - they were for the shamans alone. These paintings were part of their magic, performed in a location as close to the underworld as they could get. In fact, researchers suspect that shamans believed that caves were the physical entrances to the underworld. Quite often, the paintings in this case represented a shaman, or a spirit, or perhaps both merged together. 

Given how ancient and far removed these prehistoric civilizations were, we can really only speculate on their relationship with magic. The themes that are portrayed in our assumptions however do have a relationship with what we know to be true in much younger (yet still “ancient” by our standards) civilizations. I strongly encourage you to watch for these connections as we progress through the year.

Magic Versus Superstition

You may recall that we had a discussion around the difference between magic and religion at the beginning of Year Four. When discussing magic in ancient Europe, it is quite important that we add to that a brief comparison between magic and superstition, as many of these ancient civilizations walked a fine line between the two. Let’s take a quick look at what separates these two concepts:

An excellent definition of superstition is that it is the “fear of the unknown allied to a false idea of the causes of events”, whereas magic is the “attempt to control such events by direct actions and rituals.” Put more simply, a superstitious practice is one where the practitioner asks the gods for something. A magical practice is one where the practitioner directly attempts to make that thing happen. 

Both of these concepts are based on the belief in magical forces that control or affect people’s lives - whether those magical forces are gods or magic itself. In ancient magical practices, there was often both a superstitious and a magical aspect to a ritual. For our intents and purposes today, a ritual is a prescribed or established form of a religious or other ceremony. For example, a farmer may ask for the gods to bring him a good harvest as he is pouring a growth potion over his crop. The magical aspect would be the potion, and the superstitious part would be the prayer to the gods. Both aspects of this ritual were critical to the farmer in this situation, and so both magic and superstition became part of the practice.

Now some of you may be wondering what the difference is then between superstition and religion. Put simply, superstitious beliefs are those that are based on fear, whereas religion - in general - is based on hope. The farmer in our example above would have said the prayer to the gods not in the hopes that they would grant his request for a good growing season, but in the hopes that by asking kindly,  they would be less inclined to send a pestilence during that season. It is a fine line - and a tricky one to navigate! 

Conclusion

And that concludes our first lesson of Year Five. You will have a short quiz to complete today.

Our next lesson will begin our discussion on Greco-Roman history and magic. Make sure you bring your togas!

Image credits here and here
Original lesson written by Professor Liria Morgan