Fantasy is fun?
this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2025
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The last statement is not necessarily true- witchcraft has until very recently been understood to derive power from a concord with the devil.
Here, I googled it for you:
“Witches were sometimes said to have communed with demons or with the Devil, though such accusations were mainly made against perceived opponents of the Church.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witchcraft (This specific section has a paper citation)
ITT: “if only girls didn’t believe in horoscopes, my friend from college would have had a girlfriend”
Seriously. It’s so crazy to me to hate a behaviour based solely on its perceived impact on the chances of getting laid.
As if most of the people who got dumped over their zodiac weren’t just arseholes and the other person didn’t have heart to tell them.
When I was a kid girls went through a horse obsession phase. Boys had one with cars or dinosaurs.
Meanwhile wizards: "BEHOLD MY STAFF OF POWER", "I'm pondering the SPHERES", "KNEEL BEFORE MY MIGHTY ROD".
Jokes aside, that is a culture thing - if my rather tattered memory serves, historically, a lot of magic was pact magic (asking someone else for power in exchange). Necromancy was a little different (before its conflation with "nigromancy" by the church in medieval times) and in its earlier incarnation generally involved a "descent" into the underworld via a gate (of which there were many) and so was almost "adventure magic". These ancient holy sites were venerated rather than shunned and, again memory is patchy here, generally held an oracle (i.e. a witch).
So, fun fact of the day, if you go caving in the right place you're technically a necromancer.
What's the go with necromancy/nigromancy? This is all new to me and sounds fascinating!
So, in essence, necromancy was (traditionally) a divinatory art (in short asking questions of the dead who were seen to stand outside time [the notions of time and mortality being intertwined]). Greek and Roman Necromancy by Ogden is a good text on the history here.
Nigromancy, translating to "black divination" (black as in dark/evil magic) was more to do with demonic pacts and spells focused around power (e.g. summoning a feast, calling up a castle, cursing to madness or death, winning the love of a woman). The text forbidden rites gives a good exploration of this from a historical perspective.
This witch magics
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