Strategie di adattamento e innovazione nel rituale magico: il caso degli inni
Scholars agree that the so-called Greco-Egyptian magicians made extensive use of various forms of ritual expression also employed in religious rituals, to the extent that, in many respects, Greco-Egyptian magic does not differ from ritual practices considered to be religious. This study aims to explore the exceptional ability of these ritualists to adapt elements of the religious realm to different ritual contexts through the analysis of a particular type of magical logos, the hymn. Specifically, I will focus on the analysis of the strategies and mechanisms that were adopted to make possible the adaptation of a form of expression born from and for a religious context to the multicultural and multi-religious ritual environment of magic. This paper addresses this and other questions linked to the field of the resilience of ritual elements in Late Antiquity, within the panel Dinamiche rituali e strategie di resilienza nella tardoantichità, organised and coordinated by Professor Mariangela Monaca (Università di Messina).
Paper presented at the 18th Annual Conference of the European Association for the Study of Religions (EASR-IAHR Regional Conference), Pisa (Italy), 30.08– 3.09.2021