You're a Wizard! (Scary!)

I read this book called “Wizards: An Amazing Journey through the Last Great Age of Magic” by Candace Savage

[It just occurred to me: didn’t Candace Cameron marry Fred Savage? Or at least didn’t he abuse her in a LIFETIME TV movie? Can someone look into this?]

Anyway, the book is written for about 6^th graders, but surprisingly accessible. Rather than point out the foolishness of what people used to believe, or make it all tongue in cheek, Savage actually treats previous beliefs in magic straightforwardly. Of course, some of the more ridiculous practices speak for themselves, but I like how she didn’t talk down to her audience or put down the people of antiquity. It’s a nice breezy read if you see it in the library, like I did.

One of the things that caught my attention was an apothecary cure for asthma. You were fed 50 millipedes a dose, four doses in 24 hours. Often the bugs were ground up with mortar and pestle, but sometimes they were fed live, as in the asthma cure. Can you imagine having to swallow 200 live wriggling pinching millipedes a day to treat your asthma? That inhaler ain’t looking so bad, is it?

Another cool tidbit I came across was that Astrologers and other magicians used mathematics, there was a severe distrust of the discipline. People worried that it might be one of the Dark Arts, and partly for that reason, Math wasn’t taught in school until the mid 1600s. I bet a lot of you are jealous. (Don’t make me name names.)

Here’s another kind of cool thing I read, the Motto of Alchemists:

Ora, Lege, Lege, Lege, Relege, Labora, et Invenies.

(Pray, read, read, read, Reread, labor and succeed)

Those were hard working dudes. Alchemy is now considered a joke and made fun of, but Newton is a lot smarter than most of us (not me, but all of you), and he spent a big portion of his life devoted to the art.

Here’s a great quote I found on one of the side panels that I just know is going to piss off Bear:

Many people think of magic and science as opposites, like right and wrong. As these people tell the story, humanity sat under a cloud of error for thousands of years, until science showed us how the world worked. They think of science as the enemy of magic. But, in fact, science and magic are more like members of a family. They do not always agree with each other, but they share the same ancestry. Most of the people who contributed to the Scientific Revolution were wizards as well as scientists. In addition to Isaac Newton, the list includes the astronomers Nicolas Copernicus and Johannes Kepler, and the chemist Robert Boyle. Magic introduced them to the study of mathematics and the search for hidden truths. In a sense, the rise of science was the surprising last chapter in the wizards’ quest for understanding.

Finally (since you all have short attention spans), I ran into some of the lesser-known disciplines of yore that you might not have heard of. I’m going to print the list. See if you can figure out what they are, without cheating, and tomorrow I’ll have the answers:

Aeromancy

Auguria

Biteromancy

Capnomancy

Geomancy

Physiognomy

Pedestria

Pyromancy

Umbilicomancy