Magical texts

Magical texts are written documents which show or refer to knowledge of ancient practices of magic. Texts which are using magic might also be described as "texts of ritual power". Scholars and historians are aware that many texts of magic were written during antiquity, of which relatively few though are extant as a result of destruction of material. Emperor Augustus suppressed material by ordering the burning of 2000 scrolls (ordered during 13 B.C.E. ), authorities of Christianity pursued a frequent destruction of material pertaining to magic during at least the early centuries of Christianity (Betz 1996). Alternatively the converted Christians of the Acts of the Apostles Chapter 19 verses 17-20 of the Bible, burned their own books, of presumably writings of magic, upon becoming Christians.

A reason why monotheistic religions would have chosen to destroy the texts of magic is, historically and also today, individuals within those religions have a tendency to condemn other religious beliefs as superstitions and to stigmatize their associated religious practices as being magical, which translates as their taking a position where-by other religions are thought of and so perceived as both morally and spiritually . Accordingly, magical was synonymous for a kind of heresy for those authorities concerned.

The famous Grecian of ancient times, Plato, made a classification of divinations as either the learned (entehknos) or the unlearned (adidaktos) types.

Texts known as Grimoires are discerned as being different from magical texts because grimoires are classified books of spells specifically.

In the context of Mesopotamian texts, magic is understood to be the following things: curses, incantations and spells, divination, attempts at communication with lesser-beings, namely the daemonological, charms, amulets, talismans, and curative methodologies harnessing materia medica. Written forms on the divinatory begun during the third millennia B.C.E. The earliest written form on celestial divination comes from the 22nd century B.C.E.

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