- Title Pages
- Preface
- Illustrations
- Notes on Contributors
- Abbreviations
- Introduction the Greek Gods in the Twentieth Century
- 1 What is A Greek God?
- 2 Canonizing the Pantheon: The Dodekatheon in Greek Religion and its Origins
- 3 Gods in Greek Inscriptions: Some Methodological Questions
- 4 Metamorphoses of Gods into Animals and Humans
- 5 Sacrificing to the Gods: Ancient Evidence and Modern Interpretations
- 6 Getting in Contact: Concepts of Human—Divine Encounter in Classical Greek Art
- 7 New Statues for Old Gods
- 8 Zeus at Olympia
- 9 Zeus in Aeschylus: The Factor of Monetization
- 10 Hephaistos Sweats or How to Construct an Ambivalent God
- 11 Transforming Artemis: From the Goddess of the Outdoors to City Goddess
- 12 Herakles Between Gods and Heroes
- 13 Identities of Gods and Heroes: Athenian Garden Sanctuaries and Gendered Rites of Passage
- 14 Early Greek Theology: God as Nature and Natural Gods
- 15 Gods in early Greek Historiography
- 16 Gods in Apulia
- 17 Lucian's Gods: Lucian's Understanding of the Divine
- 18 The Gods in the Greek Novel
- 19 Reading Pausanias: Cults of the Gods and Representation of the Divine
- 20 Kronos and the Titans as Powerful Ancestors: A Case Study of the Greek Gods in Later Magical Spells
- 21 <i>Homo Fictor Deorum Est</i>: Envisioning the Divine in Late Antique Divinatory Spells
- 22 The Gods in Later Orphism
- 23 Christian Apologists and Greek Gods
- 24 The Materiality of God's Image: The Olympian Zeus and Ancient Christology
- 25 The Greek Gods in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century German and British Scholarship
- Epilogue
- Index
Kronos and the Titans as Powerful Ancestors: A Case Study of the Greek Gods in Later Magical Spells
Kronos and the Titans as Powerful Ancestors: A Case Study of the Greek Gods in Later Magical Spells
- Chapter:
- (p.388) 20 Kronos and the Titans as Powerful Ancestors: A Case Study of the Greek Gods in Later Magical Spells
- Source:
- The Gods of Ancient Greece
- Author(s):
Jan N. Bremmer
Andrew Erskine
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
There are several ways in which the Greek gods are transformed in late-antiquity in the handbooks and charms of itinerant magicians. One method involves expropriating and shrinking a god’s public cult (e.g. Apollo at Delphi) to the size of household shrine for personal rather than public use. Christian magical spells take another tactic: they demonize gods (e.g. Aphrodite or Artemis) so that they aligned solely with evil. A third process is simple persistence: chthonic gods like Persephone and Hekate, whom the Greeks in the classical period invoke in curses, persist throughout late antiquity in this same role. This chapter examines Kronos and Titans as a special and difficult case: although they were originally powerful free-ranging gods, because they take up an ultimate and permanent position in Tartarus, they are assimilated to other underworld entities and eventually become agents of oaths, curses and necromancy – roles that they borrow from ghosts and other chthonic demons.
Keywords: Magic, Titans, Christianity, Chthonic gods, Kronos, Tartarus, Necromancy, Curses, Spells
Edinburgh Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
- Title Pages
- Preface
- Illustrations
- Notes on Contributors
- Abbreviations
- Introduction the Greek Gods in the Twentieth Century
- 1 What is A Greek God?
- 2 Canonizing the Pantheon: The Dodekatheon in Greek Religion and its Origins
- 3 Gods in Greek Inscriptions: Some Methodological Questions
- 4 Metamorphoses of Gods into Animals and Humans
- 5 Sacrificing to the Gods: Ancient Evidence and Modern Interpretations
- 6 Getting in Contact: Concepts of Human—Divine Encounter in Classical Greek Art
- 7 New Statues for Old Gods
- 8 Zeus at Olympia
- 9 Zeus in Aeschylus: The Factor of Monetization
- 10 Hephaistos Sweats or How to Construct an Ambivalent God
- 11 Transforming Artemis: From the Goddess of the Outdoors to City Goddess
- 12 Herakles Between Gods and Heroes
- 13 Identities of Gods and Heroes: Athenian Garden Sanctuaries and Gendered Rites of Passage
- 14 Early Greek Theology: God as Nature and Natural Gods
- 15 Gods in early Greek Historiography
- 16 Gods in Apulia
- 17 Lucian's Gods: Lucian's Understanding of the Divine
- 18 The Gods in the Greek Novel
- 19 Reading Pausanias: Cults of the Gods and Representation of the Divine
- 20 Kronos and the Titans as Powerful Ancestors: A Case Study of the Greek Gods in Later Magical Spells
- 21 <i>Homo Fictor Deorum Est</i>: Envisioning the Divine in Late Antique Divinatory Spells
- 22 The Gods in Later Orphism
- 23 Christian Apologists and Greek Gods
- 24 The Materiality of God's Image: The Olympian Zeus and Ancient Christology
- 25 The Greek Gods in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century German and British Scholarship
- Epilogue
- Index
