This episode offers a critical examination of the question of “the most ancient forms of magic” by interrogating the category of magic itself as a historically contingent and analytically unstable concept. Rather than assuming magic as a universal or transhistorical phenomenon, the discussion situates ritual practices within their specific social, cosmological, and epistemic contexts, beginning with evidence for symbolic and ritual behaviour in deep prehistory and moving through animistic and shamanic worldviews, Neolithic monumental ritual landscapes, and the first literate traditions of Mesopotamia, Egypt, South Asia, and early China.

Engaging with archaeological data, comparative anthropology, and the history of religions, the episode explores how practices often labelled as magical functioned as socially embedded techniques for negotiating uncertainty, misfortune, and relational disruption in worlds understood to be animate and morally responsive. Particular attention is given to the role of materiality, speech, and ritual expertise, as well as to the gradual processes of textualisation and institutionalisation that reshape ritual efficacy in early complex societies. Rather than identifying a single origin or essence of magic, the episode argues for understanding ancient magic as a set of historically situated practices through which humans acted effectively within precarious and relational cosmologies.

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The Most Ancient Forms of Magic: Ancient Rituals from the Stone Age to Egypt

ANGELA'S SYMPOSIUM 📖 Academic Study on Witchcraft, Paganism, esotericism, magick and the Occult