One of the problems with our educational system is that it tries to teach people things that they have no interest in learning. There is a better way. What started me thinking about the issue and persuaded me to write this post was an online essay, by a woman I know, describing how she used D&D to cure her math phobia.
Great post, David. As an anglophone Canadian, I always thought forcing kids to learn French was a form of child abuse. Barely anyone I know in Toronto (my hometown) speaks French. So, I never really understood why I had to learn it. I rebelled and, much to my parents’ chagrin, I later decided to learn German instead of continuing with French. Sadly, as a philosophy student, knowing German hasn’t helped me to better understand any German continental philosophers, they’re as confusing in German as they are in English.
RPGS are amazing tools for motivating research. I ran an Ars Magica game for years, where the setting is Medieval Europe (13th Century) as it was perceived by people in that time frame, so god, the devil, faeries, and magic are all real. As a result of wanting to be a good GM I learned a lot of Hungarian and adjacent-countries history, old-school theology, more about medieval perceptions of physics, mathematics, etc. Slowly spinning up for campaign two, I've been learning an awful lot about Ireland and the technological / industrial base of the time, from tidal mills to mining.
Is it clear how much people actually believed in magic? You see a little in the Icelandic sagas but a lot less than in modern fantasy. Nobody is throwing fireballs.
It depends a lot on how you draw your borders around "magic." People regularly attest to the performance of miracles, ascribe maladies to the devil, and there are lots of folk traditions who put a lot of work into "doing magic". There's also things that learned people of the time would believe in due to their presence in the Bible, through the proscriptions against them in the text and through stories, like that of the Witch of Endor (who summoned the spirit of the prophet Samuel, although theologians both Christian and Jewish argue about what exactly occurred in fact). In the apocryphal "Acts of Peter," there is a man named Simon Magus (the same Simon who the crime of "simony" was named for!) who was a sorcerer who could fly. The Koran likewise contains information about jinn. Plus, a lot of stuff that was considered natural philosophy or medicine in this time frame is basically powered by magical thinking. Doctors would take horoscopes for their patients, symbolic correspondences would be used to produce "medicinal" pouches of stones to help people heal, and so on. This wasn't restricted to the lower classes either, the court astronomer / astrologer / mathematician / magician Michael Scot was a highly successful and popular figure employed most famously by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II.
The setting has a somewhat anachronistic group of protagonist wizards in an "Order of Hermes" at the core (with Hermeticism really being more of an Early Modern phenomenon), but pretty much all secondary magical traditions within the system have real-world counterparts.
Where can I learn more about doctors and horoscopes? I'm actually working on a post about chapter 2 in the book of Daniel and trying to parse the difference between physicians, astrologers, demonologists, enchanters, necromancers, etc
Within the specific context of the time frame of the old testament, I unfortunately have to plead ignorance. There's some amount of carry-over to medieval times, but also no doubt a lot of changing interpretations. One of the big dividing lines is whether or not a person works with supernatural entities, a physician or astrologer is supposedly just an expert of natural phenomenon, with the official Christian opinion throughout the Middle ages being that astrology doesn't determine the future (which would go against free will) but is merely a secular influence that can be predicted and measured, like the effect of the moon on the tides. By contrast, a sorcerer / invoker / demonologist, etc., works with demons, jinn, spirits, etc, which is generally (but not always!) considered bad. According to folkloric and apocryphal sources, Solomon was able to command a veritable army of demons and jinn, who according to these sources were used in the construction of the temple. Necromancy was just talking to dead people, which different medieval opinions considered to be impossible (anything you talk to is actually just a demon), unethical, or at least both of those things if not part of a direct act of god.
Thanks for the interesting answer! Jewish sources seem to agree that necromancy was a real thing, which throws me every time because I can't quite integrate it into everything else, but the point is to have fun anyway. The reasoning you provided for the prohibition against witchcraft not applying to medicine or astrology is very helpful, thank you!
There's also the old Egyptian "Khartoum"; besides for being able to change sticks to snakes and arguably make water turn into blood, it's unclear what their role actually was. But it was important to Pharaoh, and by the book of Daniel entirely omitted from the list.
Sorry, I can go on in this vein for a while, but you seem to know more than I do overall.
I teach, the details don't matter, but I enjoy challenging kids the most. My goal is to make it worth it to them to learn.
I don't do charts. I do little tiles and small wooden cubes. It's an immediate, tangible reward, and the kids can also earn building time, so it works better than check boxes.
I often go straight to an original text and tell them a story, but they have to read or research part of it to find the piece I don't tell them. Half the job is getting them curious.
I have a child with real dysledia, a totally different story, but another child had a dyslexia diagnosis in first grade, which I thought was ridiculous, and by second grade he was reading Hebrew and English very well, and is working on Russian. (A lot of his friends are from Russian - speaking backgrounds) I paid ten dollars an hour to a 14 year old with severe ADHD who liked reading books aloud to read books to him and then he learned to play Monopoly, and now I have to hide any books I don't want him reading.
Great post, David. As an anglophone Canadian, I always thought forcing kids to learn French was a form of child abuse. Barely anyone I know in Toronto (my hometown) speaks French. So, I never really understood why I had to learn it. I rebelled and, much to my parents’ chagrin, I later decided to learn German instead of continuing with French. Sadly, as a philosophy student, knowing German hasn’t helped me to better understand any German continental philosophers, they’re as confusing in German as they are in English.
RPGS are amazing tools for motivating research. I ran an Ars Magica game for years, where the setting is Medieval Europe (13th Century) as it was perceived by people in that time frame, so god, the devil, faeries, and magic are all real. As a result of wanting to be a good GM I learned a lot of Hungarian and adjacent-countries history, old-school theology, more about medieval perceptions of physics, mathematics, etc. Slowly spinning up for campaign two, I've been learning an awful lot about Ireland and the technological / industrial base of the time, from tidal mills to mining.
Is it clear how much people actually believed in magic? You see a little in the Icelandic sagas but a lot less than in modern fantasy. Nobody is throwing fireballs.
It depends a lot on how you draw your borders around "magic." People regularly attest to the performance of miracles, ascribe maladies to the devil, and there are lots of folk traditions who put a lot of work into "doing magic". There's also things that learned people of the time would believe in due to their presence in the Bible, through the proscriptions against them in the text and through stories, like that of the Witch of Endor (who summoned the spirit of the prophet Samuel, although theologians both Christian and Jewish argue about what exactly occurred in fact). In the apocryphal "Acts of Peter," there is a man named Simon Magus (the same Simon who the crime of "simony" was named for!) who was a sorcerer who could fly. The Koran likewise contains information about jinn. Plus, a lot of stuff that was considered natural philosophy or medicine in this time frame is basically powered by magical thinking. Doctors would take horoscopes for their patients, symbolic correspondences would be used to produce "medicinal" pouches of stones to help people heal, and so on. This wasn't restricted to the lower classes either, the court astronomer / astrologer / mathematician / magician Michael Scot was a highly successful and popular figure employed most famously by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II.
The setting has a somewhat anachronistic group of protagonist wizards in an "Order of Hermes" at the core (with Hermeticism really being more of an Early Modern phenomenon), but pretty much all secondary magical traditions within the system have real-world counterparts.
Where can I learn more about doctors and horoscopes? I'm actually working on a post about chapter 2 in the book of Daniel and trying to parse the difference between physicians, astrologers, demonologists, enchanters, necromancers, etc
Within the specific context of the time frame of the old testament, I unfortunately have to plead ignorance. There's some amount of carry-over to medieval times, but also no doubt a lot of changing interpretations. One of the big dividing lines is whether or not a person works with supernatural entities, a physician or astrologer is supposedly just an expert of natural phenomenon, with the official Christian opinion throughout the Middle ages being that astrology doesn't determine the future (which would go against free will) but is merely a secular influence that can be predicted and measured, like the effect of the moon on the tides. By contrast, a sorcerer / invoker / demonologist, etc., works with demons, jinn, spirits, etc, which is generally (but not always!) considered bad. According to folkloric and apocryphal sources, Solomon was able to command a veritable army of demons and jinn, who according to these sources were used in the construction of the temple. Necromancy was just talking to dead people, which different medieval opinions considered to be impossible (anything you talk to is actually just a demon), unethical, or at least both of those things if not part of a direct act of god.
Really bad mistake, it does appear in Daniel, but maybe you'll enjoy reading this
http://parsha.blogspot.com/2011/01/how-did-chartumim-turn-water-to-blood.html?m=1
Thanks for the interesting answer! Jewish sources seem to agree that necromancy was a real thing, which throws me every time because I can't quite integrate it into everything else, but the point is to have fun anyway. The reasoning you provided for the prohibition against witchcraft not applying to medicine or astrology is very helpful, thank you!
There's also the old Egyptian "Khartoum"; besides for being able to change sticks to snakes and arguably make water turn into blood, it's unclear what their role actually was. But it was important to Pharaoh, and by the book of Daniel entirely omitted from the list.
Sorry, I can go on in this vein for a while, but you seem to know more than I do overall.
Really bad mistake here - חרטום appears several times in Daniel.
But, enjoyed reading this, perhaps you will too. http://parsha.blogspot.com/2011/01/how-did-chartumim-turn-water-to-blood.html?m=1
I teach, the details don't matter, but I enjoy challenging kids the most. My goal is to make it worth it to them to learn.
I don't do charts. I do little tiles and small wooden cubes. It's an immediate, tangible reward, and the kids can also earn building time, so it works better than check boxes.
I often go straight to an original text and tell them a story, but they have to read or research part of it to find the piece I don't tell them. Half the job is getting them curious.
I have a child with real dysledia, a totally different story, but another child had a dyslexia diagnosis in first grade, which I thought was ridiculous, and by second grade he was reading Hebrew and English very well, and is working on Russian. (A lot of his friends are from Russian - speaking backgrounds) I paid ten dollars an hour to a 14 year old with severe ADHD who liked reading books aloud to read books to him and then he learned to play Monopoly, and now I have to hide any books I don't want him reading.