Magic and Witchcraft: The Ancient History. History Essay

Magic and Witchcraft: The Ancient History
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During the pre-Christian period, religion and supernatural causes have massive influence over people's lives and philosophies. The majority of the people, particularly the Romans and the Greeks, praised and believed many entities and are considered as polytheistic. "Supernatural" of today's time was considered as ordinary, and that magic was branded as either supernatural or conjuring (Irby, 2016). One of the most influential philanthropists and prose writers of the pre-Christian period, Lucius Apuleius, has left his literary works in awe of the practice of magic and witchcraft. This paper analyzes Apuleius' literary piece, entitled, "Golden Ass," on his standpoint on the role of sexually desirable and libidinous women on magic and witchcraft during the Ancient Greek and Roman period and its association with the real history of magic, sexuality, and science and religion.
Human sexuality and sexual desires are some of the hot topics in the twentieth century despite having minimal importance during the nineteenth century. Aristophanes rationalized a fable that the original human has eight limbs with two sets of faces and genitals, and three sexes, namely, the female, male, and androgyne. Because of the ambitiousness of humans, Zeus decided to punish them by separating these three identities. Zeus opted to cut their bodies into halves and gave each half a set of genitals. The only way to reunite the original body is to bind one another through marriage, but more importantly, through sex. These severed halves shall find each other in a frantic effort to return to their previous selves (Halperin, 1986).
Moreover, the individual half may perish in the world if this half cannot find its other half on time. In pity of this tragic event, Zeus decided to move their genitals to one side of their bodies, one for male and one for female genital, to end the despair of these bereaved creatures. Furthermore, Zeus stated that this is the proper judgment so that each half may devote its time and effort to other, more significant affairs (Halperin, 1986).
From here, Aristhopanes obtains the knowledge on the probable genetic explanation of the differences between sexes and their typical preference. Males who are enchanted by women stemmed from the androgyne sex, and the adulterers originated from this species. Aristophanes' explanation was followed by the majority of the literary pieces during the ancient Greek and Roman period (Halperin, 1986). One of the stories that purposively emphasized this philosophy is Metamorphoses, also known as the Golden Ass.
Apuleius (1932) highly differentiated the roles between men and women, especially their duties concerning magical crafts. Women are considered as powerful and formidable creatures who have control over men's sexual desires and sexuality. Apuleius characterized men as weak, humble, harmless, and immaculate beings, in contrast to the current view on men in society. This makes them susceptible to the malevolent women's spell casters, whose main purpose is to enchant men to cause them grief and nuisance, which are only mild cases of ill-enchantment. Sometimes, these wicked wome...