Magick

This is another installment of a series of posts on how modern Neopaganism is the ‘Old Religion’ because it contains similar tropes and beliefs as the oldest recorded Indo-European religion, in this case, Mesopotamian, which far predates Abrahamic monotheism.

The belief that humans can influence fate or probability through the force of will (i.e., magick) is found in most Neopagan traditions. The practice of magick may be Neopaganism’s second most distinctive feature after polytheism. Mountains of Neopagan books exist on how to perform magick.

 

The Mesopotamians didn’t believe in a separation between the natural and the supernatural. They believed that gods, demons, ghosts, and monsters lived among us, even if they could not be seen. Not only were supernatural beings everywhere, but they were also constantly interacting with people and the rest of the world in good and bad ways. Whether it was a good or bad occurrence, there was most likely a spirit at work behind it. 

To Mesopotamians, the spirit world was complicated. Unlike how we in the contemporary West view gods and demons, they didn’t see gods as always good and demons as always bad. A god could be benevolent or evil. The same was true for demons because there were both good and evil. There were even demonic gods. Because of this, if something terrible happened, it often wasn’t easy to determine the source.

With this belief system, magick was seen by Mesopotamians as essential for survival. A magick user, known in Akkadian as an āšipu or mašmaššu, would first try to determine the source of suffering. Was it due to a god, demon, ghost, or something else? Once determined, the magick user had numerous tools in their toolbox. Divination, incense, talismans, purification, sacrifice, magick circles, and more would have been used as deemed by the magick user.  

Most Neopagans don’t share the Mesopotamian belief that everything, good or bad, is the product of supernatural beings. However, our practice of magick is similar to the Mesopotamian in many ways. We even use modern variants of the same tools in our magick practices. 

Neopaganism is truly the old religion.