Magic and fortune-telling in the ancient world

ARTICLE

Magic and fortune-telling in the Anciente World - Art in Tres Mancias Consultancy

A series of programs transmitted on UNED's channel in Madrid (Spain), from 1996 to 2005.

The Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, by TVE-2, transmitted a high educational quality series with participants who especially emphasized the historical description and comparison of subjects, finding continuities with the current ways and meanings of fortune-telling and magical practices. In a very clear style, easy to understand by all, the series is far from the usual trivialization of these types of matters in massive media, as well as from reductive psychological and philosophical points of view when trying to blur their oracular worth.

Among the programs, three of them were especially focused on some classical subjects in Tres Mancias: practices for physical and psychic development by working on chakras, oracles and fortune-telling, throughout time and in different civilizations.

(Videos in Spanish language)

Magic and sexuality in the ancient world

Transmission: 04-16-96. Duration: 56’ 48”. Participants: Ignacio Pérez. Ana María Vázquez Hoys. María Teresa Román. Oscar Muñoz Martín.

Topics. Sex and magic from a historical point of view. Orgies in the ancient world, phallic amulets and sex relations with animals. Normality in different cultures and ages. Symbolizations and rituals. Sensorial primacy and deprivation. Sexual organs as protecting amulets against the evil eye and bad spirits. Nature, sexuality, fecundity and death. Corporal liquids and their relationship with magic and fertility. Tantric practices, chakras, kundalini, deidentification and ego disappearance.

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Magic and fortune-telling in the ancient world: fortune-telling (I)

Transmission: 10-29-96. Duration: 43’ 33”. Participants: Ana María Vázquez Hoys. Federico Lara Peinado. Oscar Muñoz Martín.

Topics. Definitions and differences of religion, magic and fortune-telling. Mesopotamia before The Flood. The 3000 omens in The Tables of Sargon, some of them as conditionals ("If A then B…"). Discontinuity with ancient times since Middle Age and distortions produced by time passing by. Fortune-telling dancing with snakes: the importance of contacting Earth, the subterranean world and the connection with the immortality of the animal to do premonitions. Psychic and physical opening of channels (chakras) to predict by using colors.

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Magic and fortune-telling in the ancient world: fortune-telling (II)

Transmission: 12-13-96. Duration: 45’ 19”. Participants: Ana María Vázquez Hoys. Santiago Montero Herrero. Oscar Muñoz Martín.

Topics. Live fortune-telling with coffee ground and water with oil. Types of divination. Oracles in ancient Egypt, Elade (Greece) and Sicily (Magna Greece), integrations into official religions and into magic. Uses for programming colonizations, wishing evilness and death with execrations. The origin of some current superstitions and the way magic is useful for fortune-telling. Specialized sanctuaries, like those of Asclepius whose clients were ill. Some references in Aeneid by Virgil: Febus' oracle (Apollo), Cassandra, the Sibyl, itinerant fortune-tellers like Calcas. The Gorgone, Pythia and ecstatic divination with drugs as laurel, steams, mirrors and water with oil. The control of divinatory practices of an ecstatic kind, the fearing roman clergy, its books, demonization and the Sibyl's sanctuary closure.

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You can see and directly download other programs of Magic and fortune-telling... series on UNED's website: