Additionally, necromancers preferred to summon the recently departed based on the premise that their revelations were spoken more clearly. Frequently they were performed in places of interment or other melancholy venues that suited specific guidelines of the necromancer. These ceremonies could carry on for hours, days, or even weeks, leading up to the eventual summoning of spirits. Some necromancers even went so far as to take part in the mutilation and consumption of corpses. The necromancer might also surround himself with morbid aspects of death, which often included wearing the deceased's clothing and consuming foods that symbolized lifelessness and decay such as unleavened black bread and unfermented grape juice. Rituals could be quite elaborate, involving magic circles, wands, talismans, and incantations. Practices such as these, varying from the mundane to the grotesque, were commonly associated with necromancy. The Odyssey 's passages contain many descriptive references to necromantic rituals: rites must be performed around a pit with fire during nocturnal hours, and Odysseus has to follow a specific recipe, which includes the blood of sacrificial animals, to concoct a libation for the ghosts to drink while he recites prayers to both the ghosts and gods of the underworld. He wishes to invoke and question the shade of Tiresias in particular however, he is unable to summon the seer's spirit without the assistance of others. Under the direction of Circe, a powerful sorceress, Odysseus travels to the underworld ( katabasis) in order to gain insight about his impending voyage home by raising the spirits of the dead through the use of spells which Circe has taught him. The oldest literary account of necromancy is found in Homer's Odyssey. Traditional Chinese folk religion involves necromancy in seeking blessing from dead ancestors through ritual displays of filial piety. The Babylonian necromancers were called manzazuu or sha'etemmu, and the spirits they raised were called etemmu. In his Geographica, Strabo refers to νεκρομαντία ( nekromantia), or "diviners by the dead", as the foremost practitioners of divination among the people of Persia, and it is believed to have also been widespread among the peoples of Chaldea (particularly the Hermeticists, or "star-worshipers"), Etruria and Babylonia. Necromancy was prevalent throughout antiquity with records of its practice in ancient Egypt, Babylonia, Greece, Rome, and China. Classical necromancers addressed the dead in "a mixture of high-pitch squeaking and low droning", comparable to the trance-state mutterings of shamans. Main article: Magic in the Graeco-Roman worldĮarly necromancy was related to – and most likely evolved from – shamanism, which calls upon spirits such as the ghosts of ancestors. The Classical Greek term was ἡ νέκυια ( nekyia), from the episode of the Odyssey in which Odysseus visits the realm of the dead souls, and νεκρομαντεία in Hellenistic Greek necromantīa in Latin, and necromancy in 17th-century English. The Koine Greek compound form was first documented in the writings of Origen of Alexandria in the 3rd century CE. The word necromancy is adapted from Late Latin necromantia: a loan word from the post-Classical Greek νεκρομαντεία ( nekromanteía), a compound of Ancient Greek νεκρός ( nekrós, or 'dead body') and μαντεία ( manteía, or 'divination'). However ‘ reanimation necromancy’ is not considered a real practice by occultists and authentic practitioners of witchcraft. Sometimes categorized under death magic, the term is occasionally also used in a more general sense to refer to black magic or witchcraft as a whole. Necromancy ( / ˈ n ɛ k r ə m æ n s i/) is the practice of magical sorcery involving communication with the dead by summoning their spirits as apparitions or visions, or by resurrection for the purpose of divination imparting the means to foretell future events discovery of hidden knowledge “returning a person to life”, or to use the dead as a weapon.
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