Erotic Magic
Scholars have debated the possible motivations for using erotic magic, including unrequited love, sexual control of the “victim”, financial gain, and social advancement. The love spells used were similar in design around the Mediterranean world, and could be adjusted to different situations, users and intended victims. Recent scholarship has shown that women used curse tablets for erotic magic much more than originally thought, although they were still in a minority.
There is also debate over the type of women that men were trying to attract with these spells. Some scholars subscribe to the idea of men trying to make fair, chaste women become filled with desire for them, while others argue that men were trying to control women whom they thought to be sexually active for their own personal benefit. Christopher A. Faraone considered the spells to fall into two distinct categories; spells used for inducing passion and spells used for encouraging affection. Men, according to Faraone, were the primary users of the passion-inducing spells, while women were the main users of the affection spells.
Read more about this topic: Curse Tablet
Famous quotes containing the words erotic and/or magic:
“No hand has been allowed to touch
The rose I hide,
Though eyes have looked upon it and desired it.”
—Unknown. The Thousand and One Nights.
ErPo. Erotic Poetry; the Lyrics, Ballads, Idyls, and Epics of Love—Classical to Contemporary. William Cole, ed. (1963)
“a flying open of doors, convergence
of magic objects into
feathered hands and crested heads, a prospect
of winter verve, a buildup to abundance.”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)