2 Qs: Egyptian Magic & Ley Lines

[C_Zeree]

Good morning,

I have two questions with a decidedly fantasy stint.

As a fan of ancient Egyptian culture I wanted to semi-recreate it a fantasy culture. As it is fantasy, there will be magic, and there is the crux of the question. What flavor do people feel Egyptian magic would have.

From my studies and search the Egyptians were a very spiritual people, and the priests of the various deities had great impact on the culture. I mean they felt their pharaoh was a god. Thus, most magic would be divine in nature, practitioners would ask the various gods for favors (spells). Magic might take the form of blessings, curses, and plagues (Aids, Drains, Transforms?). I don’t see divine magic as being very combat oriented.

What about Egyptian sorcerers or wizards? My searching did not prove to fruitful in this area. I mean Hollywood has sensationalized an Egyptian wizard in the Mummy, but is there any basis? I think the flavor of wizardry would be similar, perhaps the wizards are priests, I am not sure.

One thing I just can’t see is a wizard/priest flinging fireballs or erecting fields of force to protect themselves and still maintain the feel. Maybe I need to look at it another way.


Second question, Ley Lines:

If geomantic mage has some abilities that depend on them being on ley lines for them to work, what would the Limitation be worth. I realize it depends on the rarity of ley lines in the world, but I was thinking of a general –1 for starters.

Thanks!

[keithcurtis]

Lots of necromantic spells. Egyptian culture was very Afterlife-oriented.

Keith "Would like to date Bast" Curtis

[Bartman]

I would say necromatic in the traditional sense rather than the D&D sense though. Lots of communing with the dead rahter than summoning the dead.

[Old Man]

Conversely, you could stick with more overt magic (from whatever source) and egyptianize the special effects. Go rent The Mummy--lots of summoning of undead, RKAs in the form of scarab swarms, drains and transforms, sandstorms, and so forth.

[ShinDangaioh]

Or you could try and track down a copy of Mythic Egypt by ICE. Since it did cover both Rolemaster and Fantasy Hero roleplaying in that area.

True Names were a part of magic. A VERY important par of the magic

Since it is in that area, the Djinn are present as well. But they are controled not by Solomons' power but by their True Name

Communing with the dead.

[Ternaugh]

Actually, Ley lines are more of a modern thing, having been "found" by connecting the dots formed by churches and historical sites in England on a map. The sacred geometry of ancient Egypt is much more interesting: There is increasing evidence that the layout of the pyramids is an earth-based model of the constellation of Orion. Other astronomical ties could surely be found. Of course, without Ley lines, the ancient Egyptians would have trouble levitating all of those stones, (and von Daniken wouldn't have anything to write about).

If you want to use Ley lines as a major power source, then you need to decide how wide they are, and how far away from them you can be to cast magic. If, like Skeeve in the Myth series, you just have to locate one nearby( within a few miles or so) before using it, then it is probably at -1/2, or even less. If, however, the line is narrow, and you have to be right on top of it, this could be -2. Splitting the difference, your limitation of -1 would be right if the lines are wide, or can be tapped into from a little ways away.

Another way to do it would be to assign modifiers to casting based upon proximity and strength of the lines. Maybe casting on the line is easy, giving a +3 to the casting roll. A little ways away, tapping into the line is a bit more difficult, perhaps +0, And maybe a mile away, it's at -5. You could still try to cast a spell away from a Ley line, but it would be extremely difficult.

YMMV,

JoeG

[Zoth]

When I think of Egyptian Magic I think Scrolls and charms.

The scrolls would not only till you how do the ritual but be a key component in the ritual itself.
Basically the scrolls will be a focus and the spell will take skill and time to cast. Also it would be take time to come into effect.

The charms would mainly do protection and would kind work like magic item but they would require a ritual to be preformed thou not as hard and time-consuming as scrolls.

Z.O.T.H “OUTPUT DISPLAYED”

[Lucius]

"What about Egyptian sorcerers or wizards? My searching did not prove to fruitful in this area. I mean Hollywood has sensationalized an Egyptian wizard in the Mummy, but is there any basis? I think the flavor of wizardry would be similar, perhaps the wizards are priests, I am not sure."

Perhaps you need to just keep delving.

Although the Gods were important in Egypt, I do not think it follows that all magick is necessarily "divine" in the D&D sense of "Deity granting a favor or delegating power to an Accredited representative."

It may interest you to know that the term "hermetic" (which you may have come across in reference to thaumaturgy) derives from the name Hermes Trismegistus, meaning Hermes Thrice Great, which was the Hellenic translation of the original Kamitic God-Name Thoth (usually written accompanied by a hieroglyph meaning "great" repeated three times.) Thoth/Hermes was credited with (among other things) literally writing the Book on thaumaturgy. The apocryphal Emerald Tablet supposedly begins with the words "That which is above is as that which is below, and that which is below is as that which is above, for the purpose of the performance of the wonders of the One Thing" often summarized as "As Above, So Below."

Which brings us to the supposed astronomical significance of the pyramids. The idea that they were trying to create a map in stone of the heavens is actually pretty shaky - the arrangement of the three pyramids near the Sphinx resembles that of the three stars of Orion's belt, but as you search farther afield than that, the correspondances grow quite strained. This is not to say that astrology had no place in their world view, of course. And in your fantasy world, anything can be true that you want to be true - including a system of ley lines and nexus points (probably marked with pyramids, obelisks, or the like) that reflect the patterns of stars in the sky. Also including whatever concept of "pyramid power" or other magick geometry you care to use. The Kamitic civilization really pioneered geometry, especially plane geometry, and surveying. That is because the annual Nile flood often washed away fences and other boundaries and completely transformed the face of the land. Redrawing boundaries each year required mastery of geometry and measuring. They may never have developed an idea of "ley lines" but I don't think the concept would have been alien to them.

Of course, the most important aspect of the geography was the Nile. Given that this river and the deposits of fresh fertile soil it made at each annual flood was The. Most. Important. Fact in the life of ancient Egypt, without which the whole civilization would have been inconceivable, and given their tendency to Deify anything and everything, it has been asked why the Nile was not a God to them. Personally, I think it was just too cosmically big and important to be Deified - it would be like a fish worshipping water, or you and I worshipping the concept of three dimensional space.

Yes, wizards will likely be priests. or priestesses. So will a lot of other important people. A noble is quite likely to hold at least an honorary priesthood of some sort at some point in their career. Remember that a priest in this context is not like a D&D cleric, nor even exactly like medieval clergy. Being appointed high priest of a given temple might entail ruling the associated town, commanding the local garrison, collecting taxes, supervising public works, judging important criminal cases.....

Magickal power will not necessarily correspond to rank in the heirarchy, although there is like to be SOME correlation for a couple of obvious reasons. Magick may or may not be subtle - I don't remember reading of fireballs and forcewalls, but there is for example an account of a priest moving aside the waters of a lake to expose the lakebed so as to retrieve an ornament dropped overboard by one of the Pharoah's handmaidens. And this, by the way, was a thousand years before the time of that most famous prince of Egypt, Moses, who reputedly parted the Red Sea (or should I say, for whom that sea was reputedly parted.)

A lot of the magick of Egypt was a local manifestation of concepts ubiquitous to magick of all cultures. Consider this tale -

Isis wished to learn the True Name of Ra, the Sun God and King of the Gods. She formed an asp out of mud moistened with Her own spittle and left it where Ra would pass on His way to board the ship He sails across the sky each day. Bitten by the serpent, Ra fell ill. Isis agreed to heal Him, but said She could only effect a cure if She knew His True Name. Ra whispered His Name to Isis. Isis restored the God to health, but She also now was able to command His power as well as Her own.

We see how important Names are. Knowing the True Name of a person, place or thing gives one an ability to effect it - to heal, to harm, to change, to control. Knowing one of the Secret Names, or still more the one True Name, of a Deity, allowed one to use the Power associated with that name - not necessarily according to the Named Being's own will.

Similarly, the ideas usually called "sympathetic magic" - the Laws of Similarity and of Contagion - apply here as anywhere else. Consider such things as the shawabtis, the images of workers put in tombs that were supposed to act as actual servants in the afterlife. And Isis had to use Her saliva to animate an asp because it was part of Her and conveyed Her powers - in particular the powers pertaining to any living thing, such as sensation (to percieve Ra, the target) and motion (to strike.)

"Hieroglyph" literally means "sacred writing" and writing was indeed a sacred art. Glyphs and symbols, on scrolls, on walls, on amulets, etc. are likely to be very prominent if you want an "Egyptian" flavor. A simpler form of writing, the demotic script, eventually evolved - you may want to charge one price for demotic literacy, more points for hieroglyphic literacy. Remember that even if you don't allow mere literacy to convey magick power, it still carries considerable advantages and should probably cost at least the 3 pts a normal skill does.

Items such as scarabs, ankhs, and other amulets or charms are also going to be common (The old Focus limitation, usually inaccessible.) Apotropaic items are likely to require no skill roll, END, or conscious effort on behalf of the bearer - they were expected to automatically work against whatever danger they were supposed to avert.

The very word alchemy is said to derive from the Egyptian name for their own country. Alchemists, if you have them, should probably specialize in 1) metallurgy - on creating special or magickal metals and alloys. 2) medicine, healing potions and poultices. Or 3) poisons and antidotes.

Interestingly, I hear one papyrus blames sickness on "invisible worms." Living things too small to see. Hmm. I wonder if there could be anything to that idea.

Some comments about the culture, apart from the occult aspects.

The Kamitic culture endured for at least three thousand years before Christianity and Islam swept away the last traces of it, consigning the remnants of the once Great Library to be fuel for the public baths. That is long enough for even a God to grow old and senile (that's why Osiris replaced Re as leader.) Although profoundly conservative, the civilization DID change during that time, and new ideas arose. One must be careful when speaking of "ancient Egypt" to note that what was characteristic of one Dynasty, such as pyramid building, was not characteristic of all.

From the First Dynasty, when Upper and Lower Egypt were united, it seems to have been a remarkably unprejudicial culture. Many of the Upper Egyptians were people we would classify as "Black" and the Lower Egyptians we would call "White" and while the culture was severely stratified by class, color doesn't seem to have been a factor. A slave was a slave, a noble was a noble, regardless of what color skin either had. And the Biblical experience of Joseph, the talented outsider who rose to high authority, was more characteristic than that of the Hebrews under Moses (although as I noted, the civilization changed over time and was no doubt more or less tolerant at different periods.) Those who try to claim the ancient Kamitic people as purely "Black Africans" are only acknowledging part of the truth. I consider this a valuable fact. Because when anyone sounds off about racism being "natural" or "inevitable" it is useful to be able to shut them up by taking a three thousand year history to the contrary and shoving it down their throat to prove that they're full of what the scarab likes to lay her eggs in.

Lucius Alexander

The palindromedary considers the routi the most interesting thing in ancient Egyption art - and devoutly hopes never to meet one.

[Lucius]

"What about Egyptian sorcerers or wizards? My searching did not prove to fruitful in this area. I mean Hollywood has sensationalized an Egyptian wizard in the Mummy, but is there any basis? I think the flavor of wizardry would be similar, perhaps the wizards are priests, I am not sure."

Perhaps you need to just keep delving.

Although the Gods were important in Egypt, I do not think it follows that all magick is necessarily "divine" in the D&D sense of "Deity granting a favor or delegating power to an Accredited representative."

It may interest you to know that the term "hermetic" (which you may have come across in reference to thaumaturgy) derives from the name Hermes Trismegistus, meaning Hermes Thrice Great, which was the Hellenic translation of the original Kamitic God-Name Thoth (usually written accompanied by a hieroglyph meaning "great" repeated three times.) Thoth/Hermes was credited with (among other things) literally writing the Book on thaumaturgy. The apocryphal Emerald Tablet supposedly begins with the words "That which is above is as that which is below, and that which is below is as that which is above, for the purpose of the performance of the wonders of the One Thing" often summarized as "As Above, So Below."

Which brings us to the supposed astronomical significance of the pyramids. The idea that they were trying to create a map in stone of the heavens is actually pretty shaky - the arrangement of the three pyramids near the Sphinx resembles that of the three stars of Orion's belt, but as you search farther afield than that, the correspondances grow quite strained. This is not to say that astrology had no place in their world view, of course. And in your fantasy world, anything can be true that you want to be true - including a system of ley lines and nexus points (probably marked with pyramids, obelisks, or the like) that reflect the patterns of stars in the sky. Also including whatever concept of "pyramid power" or other magick geometry you care to use. The Kamitic civilization really pioneered geometry, especially plane geometry, and surveying. That is because the annual Nile flood often washed away fences and other boundaries and completely transformed the face of the land. Redrawing boundaries each year required mastery of geometry and measuring. They may never have developed an idea of "ley lines" but I don't think the concept would have been alien to them.

Of course, the most important aspect of the geography was the Nile. Given that this river and the deposits of fresh fertile soil it made at each annual flood was The. Most. Important. Fact in the life of ancient Egypt, without which the whole civilization would have been inconceivable, and given their tendency to Deify anything and everything, it has been asked why the Nile was not a God to them. Personally, I think it was just too cosmically big and important to be Deified - it would be like a fish worshipping water, or you and I worshipping the concept of three dimensional space.

Yes, wizards will likely be priests. or priestesses. So will a lot of other important people. A noble is quite likely to hold at least an honorary priesthood of some sort at some point in their career. Remember that a priest in this context is not like a D&D cleric, nor even exactly like medieval clergy. Being appointed high priest of a given temple might entail ruling the associated town, commanding the local garrison, collecting taxes, supervising public works, judging important criminal cases.....

Magickal power will not necessarily correspond to rank in the heirarchy, although there is like to be SOME correlation for a couple of obvious reasons. Magick may or may not be subtle - I don't remember reading of fireballs and forcewalls, but there is for example an account of a priest moving aside the waters of a lake to expose the lakebed so as to retrieve an ornament dropped overboard by one of the Pharoah's handmaidens. And this, by the way, was a thousand years before the time of that most famous prince of Egypt, Moses, who reputedly parted the Red Sea (or should I say, for whom that sea was reputedly parted.)

A lot of the magick of Egypt was a local manifestation of concepts ubiquitous to magick of all cultures. Consider this tale -

Isis wished to learn the True Name of Ra, the Sun God and King of the Gods. She formed an asp out of mud moistened with Her own spittle and left it where Ra would pass on His way to board the ship He sails across the sky each day. Bitten by the serpent, Ra fell ill. Isis agreed to heal Him, but said She could only effect a cure if She knew His True Name. Ra whispered His Name to Isis. Isis restored the God to health, but She also now was able to command His power as well as Her own.

We see how important Names are. Knowing the True Name of a person, place or thing gives one an ability to effect it - to heal, to harm, to change, to control. Knowing one of the Secret Names, or still more the one True Name, of a Deity, allowed one to use the Power associated with that name - not necessarily according to the Named Being's own will.

Similarly, the ideas usually called "sympathetic magic" - the Laws of Similarity and of Contagion - apply here as anywhere else. Consider such things as the shawabtis, the images of workers put in tombs that were supposed to act as actual servants in the afterlife. And Isis had to use Her saliva to animate an asp because it was part of Her and conveyed Her powers - in particular the powers pertaining to any living thing, such as sensation (to percieve Ra, the target) and motion (to strike.)

"Hieroglyph" literally means "sacred writing" and writing was indeed a sacred art. Glyphs and symbols, on scrolls, on walls, on amulets, etc. are likely to be very prominent if you want an "Egyptian" flavor. A simpler form of writing, the demotic script, eventually evolved - you may want to charge one price for demotic literacy, more points for hieroglyphic literacy. Remember that even if you don't allow mere literacy to convey magick power, it still carries considerable advantages and should probably cost at least the 3 pts a normal skill does.

Items such as scarabs, ankhs, and other amulets or charms are also going to be common (The old Focus limitation, usually inaccessible.) Apotropaic items are likely to require no skill roll, END, or conscious effort on behalf of the bearer - they were expected to automatically work against whatever danger they were supposed to avert.

The very word alchemy is said to derive from the Egyptian name for their own country. Alchemists, if you have them, should probably specialize in 1) metallurgy - on creating special or magickal metals and alloys. 2) medicine, healing potions and poultices. Or 3) poisons and antidotes.

Interestingly, I hear one papyrus blames sickness on "invisible worms." Living things too small to see. Hmm. I wonder if there could be anything to that idea.

Some comments about the culture, apart from the occult aspects.

The Kamitic culture endured for at least three thousand years before Christianity and Islam swept away the last traces of it, consigning the remnants of the once Great Library to be fuel for the public baths. That is long enough for even a God to grow old and senile (that's why Osiris replaced Re as leader.) Although profoundly conservative, the civilization DID change during that time, and new ideas arose. One must be careful when speaking of "ancient Egypt" to note that what was characteristic of one Dynasty, such as pyramid building, was not characteristic of all.

From the First Dynasty, when Upper and Lower Egypt were united, it seems to have been a remarkably unprejudicial culture. Many of the Upper Egyptians were people we would classify as "Black" and the Lower Egyptians we would call "White" and while the culture was severely stratified by class, color doesn't seem to have been a factor. A slave was a slave, a noble was a noble, regardless of what color skin either had. And the Biblical experience of Joseph, the talented outsider who rose to high authority, was more characteristic than that of the Hebrews under Moses (although as I noted, the civilization changed over time and was no doubt more or less tolerant at different periods.) Those who try to claim the ancient Kamitic people as purely "Black Africans" are only acknowledging part of the truth. I consider this a valuable fact. Because when anyone sounds off about racism being "natural" or "inevitable" it is useful to be able to shut them up by taking a three thousand year history to the contrary and shoving it down their throat to prove that they're full of what the scarab likes to lay her eggs in.

Lucius Alexander

The palindromedary considers the routi the most interesting thing in ancient Egyption art - and devoutly hopes never to meet one.

[tomd1969]

Just so you know, Mythic Egypt is available through Amazon.com:
Mythic Egypt
Price: $43.90 US

BTW, Lucius, good run-down of Egyptian occult practice.