Magic exists. This ancient art, once available to people. Anyway, if magic was a lie and fiction, there would be no ancient magical texts, no people who have been subject to much more than if they were just people. Magic was once the alternative science. And she honestly worked until there was our scientific knowledge.

In other words, until there arose another approach to the world of phenomena and until we began to look for a physical laws and has not developed a system of correspondences with constants and axioms. And until we live in a world of these constants and axioms, for most people the magic unreal, because in the magical world of our laws is absolutely false. The world to them is not subject.

If you think of a fairy tale is a lie, you are mistaken. Tales is evidence of our ancestors, who summarized the known magical experience. Don't believe the fairy tales? Then read a book about the historicity of which no one argues, is the Bible. In it you will find magicians and sorcerers, and description of their acts. Take, known to all of Moses. His Christians revere as the founding father of Israel. And yet Moses, if carefully this ancient history of the study, was not only the founder of the Jewish monotheism, but a magician. Who but he turned the stick in a brass serpent, and then the snake is in regular staff? Who was opened in the wilderness with the withering heat the water source? Who talked with God, or (as it will be more correct) gods? Moses. During his stay in Egypt he was a court magician. And these wonderful stories in this book will gain a lot. But it is the basis of Christian doctrine, that is the platform of faith.

No wonder once a Christian Church forbade ordinary people to read this book and even sent them for curiosity at the fire. People about this incident, of course, have long forgotten. But even Jesus Christ, who is considered the son of God, even he, of all the evidence of the New Testament, was a magician and sorcerer. He could turn water into wine, fed a few loaves and fishes a huge crowd of people was up in the air and raised the dead. Of course, he did it in the name of God himself was one of the emanations of the divine, it is said in the Gospels. But what would Jesus do if we refused recognition of his divine nature? A wizard and a sorcerer, of course. And all because the magician and the sorcerer is a person who violates our scientific axioms and constants.

ANCIENT WITCHCRAFT

The most ancient centers of magic were the lands of Mesopotamia, where a relatively small area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers formed several large States, successive. Interestingly, the first middle Eastern people, to whom we owe civilization, came out of nowhere with ready-made knowledge. This people called the Hittites, and scientists still argue about its origin and its history.

In Mesopotamia for a short time, the city grew Elam, Sumer, Assyria, Babylon. These names are mentioned in the Bible. And in those days, when the people of Israel was a separate nomadic clans, Babylonians and Assyrians lived in huge cities, had an incredible that just not true for that time, knowledge and a well-developed system of magic with priestly housing complex rituals and developed literature. These Babylonian priests brought their magic in Egypt and Greece.

In Egypt, the knowledge caught on, and formed no less strong layer of the Egyptian priests, but with Greece has turned out more difficult. The Greeks were much more rational than the Egyptians. They gave rise to the phenomenon, which we know today as science. Magical knowledge they started analyzing and questioning. And while in Greece there was a magic, but science there was to the fore. However, just like today, all European Nations. So we can say that our civilization come from the rational antiquity. And if the Egyptian asked the Babylonian: "Teach me magic" - the Greek more interested in him: "why do your magic work?" - and with the same intensity, as modern scientists searched for answers to the questions "How?" and "What is the sequence of actions in this focus?"

Mesopotamia

About the magic of the peoples of Mesopotamia we know from archaeological finds. It was there seven thousand years ago on the soft clay plates scribes wrote not only household records necessary for the proper management, but also magical texts. And as the Sands of the Middle East has preserved for us the entire libraries of the ancient kings, we can learn much about the magic of these peoples. And the first thing we know is that the magic held in the middle East a special place, it was strongly connected with the fact that now we call science. Astronomy was a part of astrology: the position of the planets and stars foretold future events that affect the lives of people. In order to more accurately calculate the path of light, was necessary mathematics. In Mesopotamia was known the world with the help of magic. And with the help of magic same averted disaster and misfortune.

Preserved ancient texts which told the researchers about which high demands were made to those who wanted to become a mage-priest. He, first, was not supposed to have no physical or mental defects, that is not to be lame or a hunchback, no bias, no sick or weak. It had to be physically perfect and coming from a noble family: tall, strong, curious, endowed with abilities for Sciences. Oh, he had a lot to learn and explore! He had to have a natural inclination to learn, otherwise with such volume of the information would not have coped and our civilized contemporaries. With keen sight, he had to watch the night sky; with stubborn mind, he had to solve puzzles; with a thin device psyche, he was obliged to understand the slightest movements of the soul, to be able to interpret dreams, or to see the initial traces the coming of the disease. Perhaps even in our days to find a good candidate for admission to the corps of the priests would be a difficult task.

It is from Babylon came to us basic magic rituals, healing, love, good luck and success, to wealth, to achieve good positions for peace in the home, for the success of children and their health, as well as rituals, destroying those who wish to cause us harm. Strictly speaking, nothing new, all subsequent Magi came up with. They apply their knowledge for the same purposes.

In order to magical help to solve problems, Chaldean priests learned induce a state of clairvoyance, that is, they could go into a trance. In this state they were able not only to look into the future or the past and to move in space. Anyway, so tell cuneiform tablets. And how much we still don't know about the Chaldean magic! Because the number of decoded tablets very small, and not all of them are found. Under the Sands of Mesopotamia hidden treasures of the past, would know just where to dig!

The Babylonian magicians told miracles: they could move the huge blocks of stone, and carried up into the air like birds; and by their word dying could get up, and healthy, a person who is found in the unseemly behavior, " to fall and die. No houses were built without watching the work of the priest, and to the new dwelling was also part of the first priest. He was placed in a certain order figures of gods: in front of the house, at the door, under the bed. From Mesopotamia came to us and what is called talismans and amulets, and what is called black magic. The Babylonians themselves such, it is not believed. It was also one of the forms of protective magic, and no black.

The Babylonians were the first to have used envoltorio for the destruction of the enemy. To do this, the magician created the figure of the enemy, going into a trance to the smallest details to see the one against whom it acts. Then he presented as the enemy dies, and experienced this event in detail. Then destroyed figure, turning her face down and throwing it into the fire. Surprisingly, was killed and a real person, a figure which was burned. This ritual was especially popular among the commanders and often practiced before the fighting. In everyday life it was used with caution: after all, if this was to know the high priest, that Kara was imminent.

Magee was engaged in the interpretation of dreams. And did this, incidentally, is no worse than modern psychology. On a strictly scientific magical basis. Of course, the most common in this region was healing magic - either to expel the evil spirit, or to increase strength of the patient, his resistance. The priests thought that all the problems of man and his disease is caused by evil spirits, which had quite visible form. Lemurs, Lamia, outage (perfume desert), dead dead, vampires, demons, succubi, incuba, ghosts, devils - all evil woke up after sunset and wanted to possess a person. People always becomes a playfield for the forces of light and the forces of darkness: darkness send misfortunes and diseases, light heals and makes a person happy. The struggle of good and evil happens all the time, and the winner is the one who has better protection.

You know, with this faith in the persecutors of the human race priests never without work does not remain. They performed rituals casting out evil spirits. They were treating the disease, expelled from the body demons of disease, and externally, these rituals are very similar to the modern Church exorcism. Only drove doHove they are not in the name of Jesus Christ, and the name of their gods.

They [spirits] there are charges, reports ancient plate. - The fact; that is high, fall threaten, below are the great distemper do; they poison in the bile of the gods; they kidnap him at the sky, in the great days they fall from the sky as the rain; they Chad, land cultivated; around the high towers, buildings spacious crowd, they whirl; they go from one house to another, and keep their doors cannot, you cannot lock the door and locks; they crawl through the door, as snakes, and prevent his wife from her husband to conceive; from the hands of a man steal children from the father houses cast owners. They are the voice ominous that people cursing, pursued everywhere. They attack the country one after another; they interfere with the slave to become a mother; they cast away the owner of the father's house. Even dove they are forced to leave their nest all the birds make in his wings to rise, and swallows even from nests kicked out wandering in space; they pursue bull; chase lamb; they have great days, the evil persecutors demons.

Spirits who have the charges, were many. And with all that was required to fight. As the number of demonic entity was huge, and it was necessary for the success of the enterprise to study the habits of each of the spirit and not have a right for a mistake, all mages formed a group of specialization. The enchanters, have been working with natural phenomena, the doctors were cast out the spirits of sickness, magicians helped when it was necessary to prevent harm caused to the person, or revenge, astrologers and soothsayers practiced divination or reading of fate by the stars.

Interesting, but this separation magic specialties turned then and in other countries. And - a dream for all the rulers of the future - the high priest was the Supreme ruler, that is, the countries of Mesopotamia were theocratic States. We have such States today? Yes, there are, or rather were, it Tibet before its inclusion in the PRC.

Egypt

Egypt is also served by the caste of priests, and Pharaoh was high priest. The gods ruled the Pharaoh and the priests, and the priests and the Pharaoh ruled his people, ensuring the prosperity of the country. The Egyptians took their magic at inhabitants of Mesopotamia, with one difference - the main thing in their magic was the service of the cult of the dead. Anyway what have seen archaeologists, says about such overwhelming cult. The Egyptians wanted to live happy and to be resurrected after death in their own bodies. A huge number of funerary texts archeologists find the graves of the Egyptians. And not only high-ranking inhabitants of the Nile valley, and the artisans. All were concerned about the future life. So that the priests of Egypt also had a lot of work.

As in Mesopotamia, all the priests were versatile educated people. Astronomy, chemistry, mathematics, physics and biology have been for them not just words. Egyptian knowledge is striking in its depth and breadth. But this is only a small part of what they knew in fact, since the Egyptian knowledge was secret and guarded from the uninitiated. The Egyptians were able to do a craniotomy surgery, they were skilled dentists, they had the knowledge of geometry, and they have made incredible strides in construction.

The famous pyramids that many modern scholars believe the tombs of the pharaohs, were never tombs. Destination them we don't know closer to the truth that they served some buildings for magical operations. They can be anything - meeting rooms relays energy, a sort of ancient plants, even drives water, not tombs. Yes and time of the building of the pyramids, which, as usual believe, built by the pharaohs of Egypt, probably, from the Egyptian civilization is not connected. Some of these wonderful buildings was built, without a doubt, the Egyptians, but large pyramid - something different. Importantly, this "someone else", apparently, has taught and residents of Mesopotamia, and the inhabitants of the Nile same knowledge.

One of these peoples was the first? We do not know. But traditionally it is considered that the Egyptians have expanded existing magic of Mesopotamia. By faith the Egyptians treated the deceased in a special way: from the body removed all the internal organs and brain pulled a special device with a hook through his nose. Then the body was embalmed, that is inflicted on it a layer of special oils that prevent rotting. The body had to shrink, but not decompose. In the withering heat of Egypt processed correctly body - mummy - could not be dry. In order mummy was protected, it was wrapped in layers of special bandages. And taken out of the body was placed in a special solution and placed next to the mummy. Was considered, that in due time the soul of the deceased come to the judgment of Osiris, and she will be required to correctly answer questions, to get to a good place and not to be lost in the next world. In the sarcophagus dead person dressed properly, put magical texts, which were well known in Egypt. It is the words written on papyrus, he had to answer, standing before the court of the gods. These words conducting the funeral, the priest carefully recorded for the dead.

Very popular in Egyptian magic enjoyed invalidate - actions wax figures. Sorcerers were able figures to revive and to make the move. But that was not the most important. Each figurine was so skillfully done, which symbolized a man. Sometimes in a basin with water was played sea battles, which some time later, exactly the scenario of the magician was happening in real life. Destroying your wax figure and throwing it into the fire, the magician can seek the death of the enemy, and sticking in figure sharp needle - excruciating pain from a real live person. During the witching session, he always spoke words of power that immediately had the desired action.

By using a wax magic ran everything from the highest officials to ordinary Egyptians. However, the latter was difficult to hire a costly priest, so rite they conducted themselves, and therefore not always successfully. Everything depended on training envoltorio.