This episode explores the role of protection magic as a historically grounded response to war, oppression, and systemic violence across diverse cultural and temporal contexts.
Drawing on peer-reviewed academic sources, it examines how magical practices—rituals, talismans, verbal formulae, and spirit invocations—have been used as forms of spiritual defence and political resistance. From Mesopotamian anti-witchcraft rites and Greco-Roman defensive curses to medieval Christian amulets, Renaissance grimoires, and the Magical Battle of Britain, the lecture situates protection magic within broader religious, social, and cosmological frameworks.
Special attention is given to non-Western and postcolonial contexts, including the ritual technologies of Haitian Vodou during the revolution, Obeah in the British Caribbean, Yoruba warrior rites, and Andean protective ceremonies. The discussion also considers contemporary expressions of magical protection, including digital activist magic, Chaos Magic, and the esoteric disciplines of Damien Echols under carceral conditions.
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RECOMMENDED READINGS
REFERENCES
References / Bibliography
Abusch, T., & Schwemer, D. (2011). Corpus of Mesopotamian Anti-Witchcraft Rituals, Volume 1. Brill.
Betz, H. D. (Ed.). (1992). The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, Including the Demotic Spells. University of Chicago Press.
Christian, W. A. (1981). Apparitions in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain. Princeton University Press.
Davies, O. (2003). Cunning-Folk: Popular Magic in English History. Hambledon and London.
Davies, O. (2012). Magic: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press.
Dayan, J. (1995). Haiti, History, and the Gods. University of California Press.
Desmangles, L. G. (1992). The Faces of the Gods: Vodou and Roman Catholicism in Haiti. University of North Carolina Press.
Fanger, C. (2012). Invoking Angels: Theurgic Ideas and Practices, Thirteenth to Sixteenth Centuries. Penn State University Press.
Faraone, C. A. (1991). Binding and burying the forces of evil: The defensive use of “voodoo dolls” in ancient Greece. Classical Antiquity, 10, 165–205.
Handler, J. S., & Bilby, K. M. (2012). Enacting Power: The Criminalization of Obeah in the Anglophone Caribbean, 1760–2011. University of the West Indies Press.
Hazzard-Donald, K. (2013). Mojo Workin’: The Old African American Hoodoo System. University of Illinois Press.
[…]
(Check the last slide in the video for full bibliography)
00:00 Introduction: Protection in Time of War
04:59 Support Angela’s Symposium
06:33 Protection Magic in Ancient and Classical Warfare
09:42 Ancient Military Magic: Protective Amulets and Rituals in the Roman Empire
12:21 Gendered Vulnerability and Protective Magic in Times of Conflict
13:49 Protection Magic in Medieval and Early Modern Europe
17:15 The Apotropaic Nature of Grimoires: Spiritual Fortification and Protection
22:00 Protection Magic in Modern Warfare: The Occult Defence of the Nation
24:20 War-Time Mysticism: The Intersection of Magic and Modernity in Britain
30:03 Global and Postcolonial Protection Magic: Resistance, Ritual, and Survival
33:36 Obeah and Myal: Protective Magic in the British Caribbean
36:18 West African Protection Magic and the Construction of Invulnerability
37:44 Andean Magical Protection in Times of Civil Strife
39:48 Contemporary Protection Magic: Digital Rituals
43:36 Chaos Magic and the Postmodernisation of Protection Rituals
46:02 Damien Echols and the Magick of Survival
48:17 Practical Examples
49:33 Support Angela’s Symposium
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Published on April 27, 2025
