Anonymous, Pagan Exorcism

A pagan magical exorcism from the Paris magical codex

A pagan magical exorcism from the Paris magical codex

 From A. Deissmann,  Light from the ancient east (1910), pp. 254-260

There is a papyrus book from Egypt written around 300 AD and now in the Bibliothèque Français in Paris, shelfmark Ms. Suppl. gr. 574. It contains spells and prescriptions compiled by a magician. Folio 33 contains the following material, the end of a prescription for an exorcism.

We start on line 2993 of the codex. The subject referred to is a root, which is dug up with certain ceremonies, while a magic spell is pronounced, part of which comes on this page. The daemon is being addressed. Note the paratactic style and the frequent use of "and".

[ Recto, Pagan Text]

^{- - -} of the depth. But your powers are in the heart of
Hermes. Your trees are the bones of Mnevis. ¹ And your
[ l.2995] flowers are the eye of Horus. Your seed
is the seed of Pan. Gird yourself for the strife with rosin as also ^{- - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - -- - - - - - ²} the gods. And for my health <and> be my companion in arms
at my prayer. And give us power like Ares and
Athena. I am Hermes. I seize you in fellowship with good
[ l.3000] Tyche and good Daemon, and in a good hour, and on a
day good and prosperous for all things." Having said this,
roll up the gathered herb in a clean
linen cloth. But into the place of the root seven wheat-
grains, and the like number of barley, they ³ mixed with honey
and threw. And having filled in the earth that was dug up
he ⁴ departs.

[ Recto, Jewish Text]

For those possessed by daemons, an approved charm by
Pibechis ⁵ .

Take oil made from unripe olives, together with the plant
mastigia and lotus pith, and boil it with marjoram
[ l.3010] (very colourless), saying: "Joel, ⁶ Ossarthiomi,
Emori, Theochipsoith, Sithemeoch, Sothe,
Joe, Mimipsothiooph, Phersothi AEHIOYW ⁷
Joe, Eochariphtha: come out of ⁸ such an one (and the other usual formulae)."
But write this phylactery ⁹ upon a little sheet of
tin : "Jaeo, Abraothioch, Phtha, Mesen-
tiniao, Pheoch, Jaeo, Charsoc,'' and hang it
round the sufferer: it is for every daemon a thing to be trembled at, ¹⁰ which
he fears. Standing opposite, adjure him. The adjuration is
this: " I adjure you by the god of the Hebrews
[ l.3020] Jesus, ¹¹ Jaba, Jae, Abraoth, Aia, Thoth, Ele,
Elo, Aeo, Eu, Jiibaech, Abarmas, Jaba-
rau, Abelbel, Lona, Abra, Maroia, arm,
you that appear in fire, ¹² you that are in the middle of earth and snow
and vapour, ¹³ Tannetis ¹⁴ : let your angel descend,
the implacable one, and let him draw into captivity the
daemon as he flies around this creature
which God formed in his holy paradise. ¹⁵ For I pray to the holy god, through the might of Ammon-
ipsentancho." Sentence. " I adjure you with bold, rash words: Jacuth,
[ l.3030] Ablanathanalba, Acramm." Sentence. " Aoth, Jatha-
bathra, Chachthabratha, Chamynchel, Abro-
oth. You are Abrasiloth, Allelu, Jelosai,
Jael: I adjure you by him who appeared unto
Osrael ¹⁶ in the pillar of light and in the cloud by
day, ¹⁷ and who delivered his people from the taskwork of Pharaoh and brought upon Pharaoh the
ten plagues because he heard not. I adjure
you, every daemonic spirit, say whatsoever
you are. ¹⁸ For I adjure you by the seal
[ l.3040] which Solomon ^¹⁹ laid upon the tongue
of Jeremiah ²⁰ and he spoke. And say you
whatsoever you are, in heaven, or of the air,
[ verso] or on earth, or under the earth or below the ground, ²¹ or an Ebusaean, or a Chersaean, or a Pharisee. ²² Say
whatsoever you are, for I adjure you by God the light-
bringer, invincible, who knows what is in the heart
of all life, who from the dust has formed the race
of men, who has brought out of uncertain [places]
and makes thick the clouds and causes it to rain upon the earth ⁴[ l.3050] and blesseth the fruits thereof; who is
blessed by every power in heaven of angels, of archangels. I adjure you by the great God Sabaoth,
through whom the river Jordan returned
backward,-the Red Sea also,
which Israel journeyed over and it stood impassable.
For I adjure you by him that revealed the hundred
and forty tongues and divided them
by his command. ²³ I adjure you by him who
with his lightnings the [race ?] of stiff-necked giants con-
[ l.3060] sumed, to whom the heaven of heavens sings praises, to whom Cherubin ²⁴ his wings sing praises.
I adjure you by him who hath set mountains ²⁵ about the sea,
a wall of sand, and has ordered it not to pass
over, and the deep listened. And do you
listen, every daemonic spirit, for I adjure you
by him that moves the four winds since
the holy aeons, him the heaven-like, sea-
like, cloud-like, the light-bringer, invincible.
I adjure you by him that is in Jerosolymum ²⁶ the pure, to whom the
[ l.3070] unquenchable fire ²⁷ through every aeon is
offered, through his holy name Jaeo-
baphrenemun (Sentence), before whom trembles the Genna ²⁸ of fire
and flames flame round about and iron
bursts ²⁹ and every mountain fears from its foundations.
I adjure you, every daemonic spirit, by him that
looks down on earth and makes tremble its
foundations and has made all things
out of things which are not into Being. But I adjure you,
you that use ³⁰ this adjuration: do not eat the flesh of swine,
[ l.3080] and there shall be subject to you every spirit
and daemon, whatsoever he be. But when you adjure,
blow, ³¹ sending the breath from above [to the feet] and
from the feet to the face, and he [the daemon] will
be drawn into captivity. Be pure and keep it. For the sentence
is Hebrew and kept by men
that are pure. ³²

[Deissman adds:] Good parallels to the Jewish portion of the above text, both as a whole and in details, are furnished by the leaden tablet from Hadrumetum ³³ and a magician's outfit discovered at Pergamum. ³⁴ Any one who can read this one leaf without getting bewildered by the hocus-pocus of magic words, will admit that through the curious channel of such magical literature a good portion of the religious thought of the Greek Old Testament found its way into the world, and must have already found its way by the time of St. Paul. The men of the great city in Asia Minor in whose hands St. Paul found texts of this kind were, though heathen, not altogether unprepared for Bible things. The flames of the burning papyrus books could not destroy recollections of sacred formulae which retained a locus standi even in the new faith. But, apart from this, the magical books with their grotesque farrago of Eastern and Western religious formulae, afford us striking illustrations of how the religions were elbowing one another as the great turning-point drew near.

[Selected footnotes]

1. The Egyptian Sun-bull.

2. Here, I think, one line or more must have dropped out; even by taking ὡς as a preposition we get no good sense.

3. Note the change of subject.

4. I.e. the digger of the root.

5. A magician, cf. Albrecht Dieterich, Jahrbucher fur classische Philologie, 16, Supplementband (1888), p. 756.

6. In these charms we should try to distinguish between meaningless hocus-pocus and words of Semitic (cf. Bibelstudien, p. 1 ff.; Bible Studies, p. 321 ff.) or Egyptian origin, etc., which once had and might still have a meaning. In trying to recover this meaning we must not only employ the resources of modern philology but also take into account the ancient popular and guessing etymologies, of which we have a good number of (Semitic) examples in the Onomastica Sacra. Several of the magical words in this text are Biblical and are explained in the Onomastica Sacra. That the explanations in the Onomastica Sacra were in some cases current among the people, is shown by the Heidelberg papyrus amulet containing Semitic names and Greek explanations (cf. Figure 62, facing p. 415 below).

7. [The seven Greek vowels. The long and short vowels are not shown in this online edition because of transcription difficulties.]

8. The same formula exactly occurs in Luke iv. 35; with ἐκ instead of ἀπό in Mark i. 25, v. 8, ix. 25.

9. I.e. amulet.

10. Cf. James ii. 19, and Bibelstudien, p. 42 f.; Bible Studies, p. 288.

11. The name Jesus as part of the formula can hardly be ancient. It was
probably inserted by some pagan: no Christian, still less a Jew, would have
called Jesus "the god of the Hebrews." [Note to the online text; the name is "Jesus", but Deissmann for some reason writes "Jesu"]

12. The arm of God together with the fire is probably a reminiscence of passages like LXX Isaiah xxvi. 11 and Wisdom xvi. 16.

13. Snow and vapour coming from God, LXX Psalm cxlvii. 5 [16], cf. also LXX Job xxxviii. 22, 9.

14. ? Dieterich, Abraxas, p. 138, alters it to τανυσθείς .

15. Cf. Tanchuma, Pikkude 3 : Rabbi Jochanan said: "... Know that all the souls which have been since the first Adam and which shall be till the end of the whole world, were created in the six days of creation. They are all in the garden of Eden" (Ferdinand Weber, Judische Theologie auf Grund des Talmud und verwandter Schriften, ² Leipzig, 1897, p. 225).

16. This form [of "Israel"] also suggests the pagan origin of the editor of the Jewish text.

17. See for the facts Exod. xiii. 21. The LXX has pillar of fire, not pillar of light.

18. To obtain complete power over the daemon it is necessary to know his name ; hence the question to the daemon in Mark v. 9 = Luke viii. 30.

19. Solomon's seal is well known in magic; see for instance Dieterich, Abraxas, p. 141 f., Schiirer, Geschichte des Judischen Volkes, III. ³ p. 303.

20. I do not know what this refers to. The tradition is probably connected with LXX Jer. i. 6-10.

21. In spite of the resemblance to Phil. ii. 10, Eph. ii. 2, iii. 10, vi. 12, this is not a quotation from St. Paul. The papyrus and St. Paul are both using familiar Jewish categories.

22. This remarkable trio of daemons obviously comes from LXX Gen. xv. 20, Exod. iii. 8, 17, etc., where we find Χετταῖοι (who have become Χερσαῖοι, i.e. " land daemons"), Φερεζαῖοι (who have become the more intelligible " Pharisees"), and Ἰεβουσαῖοι . Χερσαῖοι , which also occurs elsewhere as a designation applied to a daemon (see Wessely's index), has here no doubt the force of an adjective derived from a proper name. Dieterich, Abraxas, p. 139, explains the passage somewhat differently.

23. Noah's generations enumerated in Genesis x. contain the names of 70 peoples; the Jews therefore assumed that there were 70 different languages (Weber, ² p. 66). Our papyrus has 2 x 70 languages-a number not mentioned elsewhere, so far as I know.

24. The use of Cherubin as a singular may perhaps be regarded as another proof that this Jewish formula was written out by a pagan. Cf. Tersteegen's plural form die Seraphinen, resulting from a like misconception of Seraphin as a singular.

25. Mountains is a corruption of bounds, cf. LXX Job xxxviii. 10, and especially LXX Jer. v. 22.

26. Cf. LXX Psalm cxxxiv. [cxxxv.] 21. The form of the name of the city again points to a pagan writer.

27. LXX Lev. vi. 9, 12, 13. The fire is that on the altar of burnt-offering at Jerusalem. As this fire was extinguished for ever in the year 70 A.D., this portion of the papyrus at any rate must have originated before the destruction of Jerusalem.

28. I.e. Gehenna.

29. The translation is not certain.

30. Or " receive."

31. For this formula cf. Luke x. 17, 20; 1 Cor. xiv. 32.

32. These concluding lines again prove that the formula was written out by a pagan magician.

33. Bibelstudien, pp. 21-54; Bible Studies, pp. 269-300.

34. An tikes Zaubergerat aus Pergamon, herausgegeben von Eichard Wunsch. Jahrbuch des Kaiserl. Deutschen Archaolog. Instituts, Erganzungsheft 6, Berlin, 1905, p. 35 f.