normal-horoscopes:normal-horoscopes: Reading about medieval magic like “Oh hey turns out a lot the…

normal-horoscopes:

normal-horoscopes:

Reading about medieval magic like “Oh hey turns out a lot the fathers of the church wrote extensively on magic. I wonder where they got these ideas from they sound kinda familiar.“ Then you get to the translation footnotes at the bottom like

Source: Pliny the Elder

Like, I’m a huge proponent of the idea that a lot of classical magic actually had an underlying empirical method and that much of what modern scholarship disregards as folk practices and mysticism actually has a consistent and comprehensible logic that is more than worthy of study.

I also think Pliny the Elder enjoyed just kinda making shit up.