While doing my
research on magic and witches throughout history, I came upon what was known
throughout the Greco-Roman world as a curse tablet. People who wish to ask the gods to do harm to
another wrote a curse tablet text. These
curses were usually scratched on very thin sheets of lead, then often rolled,
and pierced together with nails. The
bound tablets were often buried, either in graves, thrown in wells or rivers,
or nailed on the wall of temples.
Sometimes the tablets included a piece of hair or clothing, or the name
of the person the curse was meant to harm.
The messages
were often addressed to the lessor gods like Pluto, Charon, and
Persephone. Not all evoked the gods, and
some of the tablets provided a list of crimes against the target. The targets were often rivals in love and
war. Some tablets only carry the name of
the person targeted, leading researches to believe that the curse may have been
said aloud. The tablets are said to
often contain imprecise wording, like: “if he is guilty” or even conditional
phrases such as, “if he breaks his word.”
The concern is with justice being received by the target.
Curse tablets
were often used to deter thieves in Roman Bath houses. Over a hundred Latin written tablets were
excavated in Bath, England. Bathers
didn’t care to emerge from their bath to find their clothes stolen, so the
tablets were used to deter thieves by using their faith and fear in the
gods. The curse tablet was believed to
bring the criminal to justice and retrieve the lost item. They were oft times considered more binding
if the curse was written backwards.
Curse tablets
were also used for court cases, like writing down a curse that would prevent
another from speaking.
In
2006, a curse tablet was found in Leicester, England, outside of an Ancient
Roman townhouse, dating from the second century A.D. The tablet reads: “To the god Maglus, I give the wrongdoer who
stole the cloak of Servandus. Silvester, Roimandus … that he destroy
him before the ninth day, the person who stole the cloak of Servandus …" A
list of 18 or 19 suspects were named on the tablet.
Magic was used
by the Greco-Roman society, regardless of economic or class status. There are about 1600 curse tablets
discovered, 220 of them were located in Attica, Greece, with the many of those
written in Greek. The first sets of
tablets were found in Selinus, Sicily and are believed to be from the 6th
century B.C. Of the 1600 tablets found,
110 are written in Greek. Ancient
literature shows that these curse tablets were well known and feared.
Not all of these
tablets contained curses; some of them contained love spells. The curse tablet faded into obscurity around
the 7th or 8th centuries A.D., although cursing continues
to flourish today.
A
special thank you to National Geographic News and paganwiccan.com
http://www.lahilden.com/index.php?categoryid=6&p2_articleid=134
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