It mentions the Golden Ass by Apuleius, who was an amazing Pythagorean-Platonic philosopher, too. Can find a great podcast about him on SHWEP.net

Notably, in the Golden Ass, the sorceress covers herself with a magical ointment and rubs herself till she "shook her limbs with a tremulous agitation" then turns into a owl. Magic! Or, an early attestation for transdermal psychoactives.

“Turns into an owl”. Does it mean she physically transforms or just that she started hooting like an owl?

Bit of a difference there!

Having passed a few nights voluptuously after this manner, Fotis, on a certain day, ran to me, agitated and trembling exceedingly, and informed me that her mistress, because she had not hitherto made any proficiency in her amours, by other arts, would, on the following night, assume wings, and be changed into a bird, and would, thus transformed, fly to the object of her love. I cautiously, therefore, prepared myself for the survey of a thing of such importance. And now, towards the beginning of the night, Fotis brought me, with doubtful and silent steps, to that lofty chamber, and ordered me to look through a certain chink of the door, that I might see what was transacted. And, in the first place, indeed, Pamphile divested herself of all her garments, and having opened a certain small chest, took from thence many boxes, from one of which the covering being removed, she rubbed herself, for a long time, with an ointment contained in it, from the extremities of her feet to the crown of her head. When, also, with the lamp in her hand, she had said much in a low voice, she shook her limbs with a tremulous agitation; and from these, lightly fluctuating, soft feathers extend themselves, and strong wings burst forth, the nose is hardened and incurvated, the nails are compressed and made crooked, and Pamphile becomes an owl. Being thus changed, and emitting a querulous sound, she made a trial of herself, and gradually leapt from the earth; and soon after, being raised on high, she flew out of doors, with all the force of her wings. Thus she, indeed, was voluntarily changed, by her own magic arts. ... [He wants to try!!] she went into the bedchamber with great trepidation, and took out a box from the chest, which, I, having first embraced and kissed, and prayed that it would favor me with prosperous flights, hastily divested myself of all my garments, and having ardently put my hand into it, and taken from thence a sufficient quantity of the ointment, I rubbed with it the members of my body. And now, balancing my arms with alternate efforts, I longed to be changed into a similar bird. No plumes, however, nor any wings germinated, but my hairs became evidently thickened into bristles, my tender skin was hardened into a hide, and the extremities of my hands, all my fingers, having lost their number, coalesced into several hoofs, and a long tail proceeded from the extremity of my spine. My face was now enormous, my mouth was long, and my lips immoderate and pendant. Thus, also, my ears increase excessively, and were clothed with rough hairs. And while, destitute of all hope, I consider the whole of my body, I see that I am not a bird, but an ass!

I wonder if this kind of thinking caused them to adapt to Christianity.

By all intents and purposes Jesus and the early Christians were magicians themselves.

For a different perspective, Tolkien (in non-fiction writing) distinguishes two kinds of supernatural power: Magic, which is power over others and over the world, to manipulate and control; and on the other hand, supernatural power that is creative, enrichment with and for others, something that gives them hope in a dark world, and Tolkien associates Christ with the latter.

Also, we can observe that religions have survived and thrived, while 'magic' has few followers and little endurance through the generations.

>For a different perspective, Tolkien (in non-fiction writing) distinguishes two kinds of supernatural power: Magic, which is power over others and over the world, to manipulate and control; and on the other hand, supernatural power that is creative, enrichment with and for others, something that gives them hope in a dark world, and Tolkien associates Christ with the latter.

Common terms for this distinction are thaumaturgy (magic done as an extension of human will) versus theurgy (magic done through the evocation of divine power.) And there's a long, strange history within Judaism and Christianity of what we would now consider "magic" (demonology, necromancy, talismans, etc.) attempting exert direct control over others and the world. Ironically, we know such practices often involved the clergy, because many of the rituals discovered in occult books involved Latin prayers and ecclesiastical elements, and few other classes would have been literate enough to write these things down.

This brings up another axis of magical classification, between "ceremonial" magic, such as what John Dee and other "mages" were up to (think wizards and books and sacred circles and such), and "folk" magic (think witches messing with herbs in the woods), the latter of which was often elements of pagan belief carried over into a Christianized culture.

The lines between "religion" and "magic" have always been a bit blurry, and mostly a matter of culture and politics. One person's sorcery is another person's religion and so forth.

Is there a term for magic that would be similar to proto-sciences or superstition? Things like alchemy, magical geometry, psychic abilities, qigong, etc. that don't necessarily directly involve a spiritual being at all?

I might go with "natural magic" or maybe "psionics" in a modern context. I'm not a scholar, my interest in this stuff is as a fan of folklore, but AFAIK historically speaking the distinction you're looking for didn't really exist. Separating the supernatural from the religious is a post-Enlightenment phenomenon influenced by the spiritualist movements of the 19th century and commercial fantasy media like RPGs.

For example, alchemy and sacred geometry were deeply rooted in Christian and hermetic philosophy (themselves influenced by Platonism) - and as much about understanding God and purifying the soul as mathematics and proto-chemistry. I don't know anything about qigong but I'm just assuming the same or similar applies.

I'd suggest the Youtube channels Esoterica[0] and Modern Hermeticist[1] for some further research.

[0]https://www.youtube.com/c/ESOTERICAchannel

[1]https://www.youtube.com/c/TheModernHermeticist/videos

How so?

Because they performed miracles. If you argue that those were real and magic is not, then that's just a matter of perspective.

I think it's more likely that those miracles were invented for propaganda reasons in the period between the crucification and when the New Testament was finalized. For instance there's a whole lot of apocryphal texts (e.g. [1]) about Jesus as a child where he performed all sorts of miracles, but I guess those were considered a bit too over the top even for 1st millenium standards and thus hadn't been included in the official Bible.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infancy_Gospel_of_Thomas

In Jesus' time and region there were miracle workers by the hundreds, and he was just seen as another one of them. They travelled form village to village performing miracles in exchange for, I guess, money and food. If I'm not mistaken, on what I read about the historical Jesus, the difference was that he didn't charge for the miracles, but I could be wrong here, don't remember much.

By the time Paul was writing a few years after the crucifixion, the Jesus movement already believed God raised him from the dead, which made him the exalted messiah in their minds. So it's not too far a stretch to think they believed he also performed miracles while alive. In the Hebrew scriptures/OT, Jewish prophets performed miracles. Why not Jesus?

In the canonical gospel accounts, God's spirit enters Jesus when John baptizes him. Then he starts his ministry which includes miracle working. The disciples did the same thing in Acts after receiving the spirit. There is an even a false prophet (from the Christian POV), Simon Magus, who could perform some miracles.

There was widespread belief in miracle working in the ancient world. It meant the miracle worker had been empowered by the gods, or was a son of a god (or Yahweh in the case of Jesus).

Historical Jesus is just a few sentences by Flavius Joseph, a couple of references in the Talmud of Jerusalem. All the other sources are Christian.

So we lack sources to say if he was considered a magician or not to be honest.

Luke was a pretty decent historian. Writing him off because he was a Christian seems rather narrow-minded.

I never dismissed him, I’m Christian. However historians tend to be a bit more cautious with the different Christian sources.

>Luke was a pretty decent historian.

How do you know? What other historical documents did he write that we can compare to what we now understand of the historical record, in order to judge his quality as a historian?

We know because we can check a bunch of what he wrote. Not everything - not the miracles, not the resurrection - but we can check a bunch of the background details against known secular history.

When Luke wants to locate the start of John the Baptist's ministry in time, he says, "In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness." We can check that all those people were in those positions at the time Luke said they were. He's tying the events he's narrating to a specific, concrete historical setting.

One little thing that I notice: When he's writing Acts, Luke is at times part of the events. He's describing Paul's travels, but sometimes it's "he", and sometimes it's "we" - that is, Luke is traveling with Paul. And whenever it's "we", the level of detail goes up. The ship had this figurehead. Here's where we sailed, day by day. But when Luke's not part of the party, he doesn't know at that level of detail, and he doesn't say what he doesn't know. That's a careful writer.

> a whole lot of apocryphal texts (e.g. [1])

> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infancy_Gospel_of_Thomas

How does the cited source differ from apocryphal texts; how is it more than a modern apocryphal text on a modern medium?

The distinction that I would make is that Christians view miracles as an intelligent being choosing to temporarily circumvent the laws of nature. That is in contrast to rituals or magical substances which are believed to directly influence the laws of nature.

From a theological perspective (which may not be the same as how a given lay Christian thinks about things) prayer is simply asking God to perform a miracle for you in the same way that you might ask a human to do a favor for you. Similarly, Christian ritual is seen as intended to help humans have faith, not as having any magical properties in of themselves.