![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Cleopatra Magica research
Apparently I did WAY THE HELL too much research for the Cleopatra fic, but I like to be sure I have what I need.
First of all, I found this book, which at least clarified one thing for me - the magic system in Madoka Magica is completely unlike anything known in Cleopatra's time. Except for the broad outlines of wishes and curses, anyway. It also helped me sort out what terms were in use at the time and what they meant, and pick terminology for within the fic.
A couple of excerpts from that book that I'd pulled out into my notes file, and am currently unable to cite more specifically:
Sorcery [goêteia]: magic [mageia]. Sorcery and magic and witchcraft/poisoning [pharmakeia] are different things. They were the inventions of the Medes and the Persians. Magic is the invocation of beneficent demons to achieve a good goal, as with the miracles of Apollonius of Tyana. The term “sorcery” is applied to the raising of the dead by invocation, and the term is derived from the wailing [gooi] and the laments that are performed at tombs.
(And this is an excerpt from an ancient source.)
"Witches" mostly seemed to use herbal magic. That's why I chose "sorceress" for the witches within the fic. Also worth noting, in the book, one text refers to a "woman mage," which is flagged by the text as an unusual wording.
Within the book, I also found an example of a lesbian love spell from Egypt (a specific text in which one named woman tries to get another to come back to her, not a generic form spell) which made me squee a bit over its sheer appropriateness. From that, I swiped the name of my OC magical girl, since this is a Madoka Magica fanfic, after all. She's not otherwise based on the lady from the spell, though.
I would have liked to have made the OC magical girl Jewish - Alexandria had a sizable Jewish population, a detail that surprised me when I first read it - but couldn't think of a way to indicate that. I guess names might have done it, but meh.
Also interesting - apparently there was a whole class of love spells involving throwing fruit (specifically apples in the one cited in the book) at your beloved. This seems both unlikely to actually work in reality ("OW! What the hell?" "Do you love me yet?") and weirdly reminiscent of Sayaka and Kyoko's relationship.
The Egyptian hare (scroll to the bottom of the page) looks eerily similar to Kyubey, actually.
I picked the "Sage" name because Sophia was known as a woman's name at that time (she was involved in the other known lesbian love charm from that era) and Kyubey, while sexless, seems to be widely interpreted as male. I thought about trying for a play on "sophistry," but wasn't sure if the modern sense would have been known then, so I just let it lie. "Incubate" is a Latin term, so wouldn't work at the time. The Romans were just barbarian upstarts. All cultured people spoke Greek.
I had to figure out a way for Cleopatra to word her wish that would cover the bases she wanted to cover, and allow for her famed, preternatural charisma to be a result of the wish. Kyubey gives her the tools, but she's the one who has to raise armies, get herself smuggled in to see Caesar, and rule the kingdom. She's still the one who's pulling it all off. I didn't want her to wish for something that would give Kyubey the credit for everything she did.
First of all, I found this book, which at least clarified one thing for me - the magic system in Madoka Magica is completely unlike anything known in Cleopatra's time. Except for the broad outlines of wishes and curses, anyway. It also helped me sort out what terms were in use at the time and what they meant, and pick terminology for within the fic.
A couple of excerpts from that book that I'd pulled out into my notes file, and am currently unable to cite more specifically:
In the classical period a range of largely hostile sources constructs for us, under such terms as goêtes (“sorcerers”) and magoi (“mages”), an impression of a nebulous group of supposedly fraudulent and beggarly magical professionals who concerned themselves with such things as the curing of illness, the manufacture of curse tablets, and the well-being of the soul in the afterlife. Among these a subgroup of “evocators” (psuchagôgoi) is identifiable. Also in the classical period is found the phenomenon of the “ventriloquists” (engastrimuthoi, etc.), men or women with prophetic demons in their stomachs that use their hosts as mouthpieces.
(The above is written by the modern author)
(The above is written by the modern author)
Sorcery [goêteia]: magic [mageia]. Sorcery and magic and witchcraft/poisoning [pharmakeia] are different things. They were the inventions of the Medes and the Persians. Magic is the invocation of beneficent demons to achieve a good goal, as with the miracles of Apollonius of Tyana. The term “sorcery” is applied to the raising of the dead by invocation, and the term is derived from the wailing [gooi] and the laments that are performed at tombs.
(And this is an excerpt from an ancient source.)
Within the book, I also found an example of a lesbian love spell from Egypt (a specific text in which one named woman tries to get another to come back to her, not a generic form spell) which made me squee a bit over its sheer appropriateness. From that, I swiped the name of my OC magical girl, since this is a Madoka Magica fanfic, after all. She's not otherwise based on the lady from the spell, though.
I would have liked to have made the OC magical girl Jewish - Alexandria had a sizable Jewish population, a detail that surprised me when I first read it - but couldn't think of a way to indicate that. I guess names might have done it, but meh.
Also interesting - apparently there was a whole class of love spells involving throwing fruit (specifically apples in the one cited in the book) at your beloved. This seems both unlikely to actually work in reality ("OW! What the hell?" "Do you love me yet?") and weirdly reminiscent of Sayaka and Kyoko's relationship.
The Egyptian hare (scroll to the bottom of the page) looks eerily similar to Kyubey, actually.
I picked the "Sage" name because Sophia was known as a woman's name at that time (she was involved in the other known lesbian love charm from that era) and Kyubey, while sexless, seems to be widely interpreted as male. I thought about trying for a play on "sophistry," but wasn't sure if the modern sense would have been known then, so I just let it lie. "Incubate" is a Latin term, so wouldn't work at the time. The Romans were just barbarian upstarts. All cultured people spoke Greek.
I had to figure out a way for Cleopatra to word her wish that would cover the bases she wanted to cover, and allow for her famed, preternatural charisma to be a result of the wish. Kyubey gives her the tools, but she's the one who has to raise armies, get herself smuggled in to see Caesar, and rule the kingdom. She's still the one who's pulling it all off. I didn't want her to wish for something that would give Kyubey the credit for everything she did.