What were court magicians in ancient times? In ancient sources you read about how the king brought forth sorcerors to fight off a pestilence or evil entities. How are we supposed to interpret the existence of court magicians?
>>18502214If you don't understand germ theory, washing your hands probably looks like a holy water ritual to ward off pestilence and evil entities. If your culture has been doing things a certain way for eons, any significant deviation from it, especially if there is no logic behind it that you can grasp, probably seems esoteric as fuck. Maybe it even looks like heresy, which could get you killed, unless it's sage advice from a wizard of great renown, whose supernatural power consists of being eccentric enough to FAFO.I bet that accounts for at least SOME of it.
It was just to make the people feel better. They were doing something that they thought was effective but gods are fickle.
>>18502214>What were court magicians in ancient times?the weird guy from some cult responsible for look up for omens and for performing rituals to protect whoever is in charge from demons/evil magic/angry spirits or prevent any mystical imbalances that could bring bad luck>How are we supposed to interpret the existence of court magicians?people were very superstitious back then, combine that with how most pre modern metaphysical systems allow for certain ritualistic behaviors and correspondences to affect the world without any apparent physical cause, a thing autists latch on to this day to create hypercomplex ritual systems that totally work and may or may not fit the cosmological model of the dominant religion
>>18502214If I’m not mistaken, they also served as seers or diviners. A sort of adviser and hype man could be nice to have around.
>>18502214It really depended on where and when. The vikings had sex magic with penis staffs. Medieval Europeans drew magic shapes like pentagrams around things to protect them. In the middle east magicians were believed to have enslaved djinn who'd fulfil their commandments. In ancient Greece magic and medicine were referred to with the same word and meant the same thing. In ancient Egypt magicians were a kind of priest who beat their gods into submission and made them do what they wanted.
