The practice of magic in antiquity is an interesting manipulation of nature. I had never considered that magic is a way of dominating nature. However, it makes sense. Casting spells, in theory, can change people and nature. I thought it was particularly interesting that in antiquity magic was often seen as a malevolent force. Witches were often viewed with suspicion, and magic was used to curse other people or for other nefarious purposes. I wonder if magic was viewed in a negative light because it was interfering with nature or for some other reason.<\/p>\n
Magic in antiquity and its interaction with love is also connected to manipulation with a negative connotation. Heroes such as Odysseus were enchanted into falling in love, with some detrimental consequences. Magic could induce love with charms, and I think it is interesting that Professor O\u2019Neill pointed out that today we still use words such as \u2018charming\u2019 or \u2018enchanting\u2019 to describe attractive people. Love can be viewed as a sort of manipulation of people\u2019s senses, or a sort of magical manipulation of nature. Magic is a powerful way for people to interact with nature because it is actively working to influence the outcomes of human interactions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The practice of magic in antiquity is an interesting manipulation of nature. I had never considered that magic is a way of dominating nature. However, it makes sense. Casting spells, in theory, can change people and nature. I thought it… Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7015,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[250053],"tags":[258883,258863,120869],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7015"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=766"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":767,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766\/revisions\/767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}