Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Science vs magic

Writing about magic is not something that I'm used to doing so this is very different for me.

I never really realized how life was during the time period we are looking at.  When I think of the 1200-1400's I think of the plague and terrible conditions.  But in addition to this the Catholic church and kings were fighting a different enemy.  This enemy was people being interested in science, or as it was called back then, magic. Studying things such as astronomy and astrology were looked as magic but are actually valuable items.  The things they associated with the stars as well as positions of the stars in the sky though, that was the magic.  There is just no proof behind Mars being close to the Sun is a good or bad time to go to war with another country.  Alchemy was a legitimate science back then as well.  It was a complete dead end though if you look at it with what we know today.  You couldn't possibly turn one element into gold back then.  We can today though.  No one from this time period knew this though.  Everyone just knew that it was hard and if someone claimed they could do it then they were lying.  Alchemy was the work of the devil in the Catholic church's eyes.

People accused of witchcraft or devil worshipping really were tortured or burned to death.  I don't know how people could really want someone to die like this but I guess they really were scared of what these devil worshippers were capable of.  I found it pretty funny that the devil worshippers claimed they ate like 60 babies for example but they never mentioned anyone claiming they were missing their children.  Maybe the parents just cut their losses back then, who knows.  The cults these people claim to be apart of sound like they actually could have existed apart from them eating more little kids and seasoning the kids with venom from poisonous animals.

Some of the stories from K/P are interesting so hopefully there will be more in future chapters.

2 comments:

  1. I'm hooked that magic is just a science we have yet to fully understand. We, as humans, have advanced to miraculously and I believe it's because of magic. All of this magic is through science and technology which could just be the beginning of it all.

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  2. I think what was interesting is that there were some science that they knew were sciences, but had to be cautious in how people studied them for fear of persecution. It's crazy to me to think that people depended, so much on astronomy to help heal people, but that same study could get them condemned for their practices.What a scary world?

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