Prayer in Magic and Religious Ritual

Abstract

Abstract The relationship between magic and religion has long been a problem widely discussed among historians of religion. Opinions ranged from the one extreme position that magic is different from and in strict opposition to religion if not its most dangerous opponent to the other where the term magic is denounced as a semantic trap and altogether expelled from scientific vocabulary. Rather than revive this debate here, I propose to survey some prayers contained in the collection of the Papyri Graecae Magicae and ask in what respect, if at all, they are different from prayers in contexts traditionally regarded as non-magical. I shall also ask whether,such differences as can be detected confirm the most widespread theory about the difference between magic and religion (at least among classicists), the one made famous by Sir James Frazer, namely, that the magician constrains, coerces, and forces the divinity to do his will, whereas religious man meekly submits himself to God’s overpowering will. (The slight denigration of religion is Sir James’s.) Among anthropologists, this Frazerian dichotomy is long dead and buried. In classical scholarship however, it loomed very large and still is among us, explicitly or, more often nowadays, implicitly. I choose prayer as the focus of interest because it was, and still is, regarded as the quintessence of religion. Its occurrence in a magical context is liable to pose some problems to those who support the traditional dichotomy.

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