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Magical Tools and their Application

The Ancient Egyptians believed that there was a mysterious connection between them and the world of the Gods, which could be activated by saying holy words. Moreover, they believed they could have the divine powers at their disposal by saying prayers.

But the strongest Ancient Egyptian principle about magic is the belief in a direct connection between the spoken word or the image shown and the desired event or circumstance.

In other words, the Egyptian was so intensely aware of the power of the word and the image that his entire theological, spiritual worldview was based on this. Therefore, word and image magic is part of the Egyptian’s basic understanding of creative processes.

The principles of analogy and sympathy were the most crucial building blocks of this magical practice in profane everyday life and the sacred and funerary realm.

An analogy here means the imitation and equation of two or more things. Sympathy is the use of similarity between things, in Latin called similia similibus.

Magical tools can be of material or linguistic nature.

Material magical tools could be:

 materials and the symbolism of their colors,

 amulets,

 the entire funerary equipment, including tomb models, servant figures, and ushabtis,

 remedies,

 magic knives (or birth tusks)

 offerings or also

 concrete objects symbolizing the enemy.

By linguistic magical tools, we understand, for example:

 recited texts, hymns, and litanies (repeated chanting prayers),

 pyramid texts,

 coffin texts,

 the Ancient Egyptian Book-of-the-Dead,

 afterlife guides such as the Amduat,

 magical letters to the dead ancestors,

and much more.

They performed spell actions for preventive protection. The spells worked as concrete defensive steps to create the desired event or restore a previous state.

This took the form of rituals through

 incenses

 libations (pouring liquids)

 symbolic smashing and destruction

 real or symbolic slaughter

 gestures or

 offerings.

Even the compliance to chastity rules and the cultivation of purity can be interpreted as part of a magic act as soon as it happened with the intention of a concrete, foreseeable manifestation.

Fig. 7: Book-of-the-Dead of the priest of Horus, Imhotep, ca. 332–200 B.C., Early Ptolemaic Period.