Iranian Magic
"Destruction of an enemy is wrought by a wax image, seven times melted and congealed ... in olden times they believed that its power pursued even beyond the grave."— Persia: Kitabi Asrari Sibri Qavi, 1326 A.H.
"A waxen effigy of a person placed beside a corpse caused evil to befall the cursed person."—Assyria: Maqlu, Tablet IV.
Persia should be the best of all fields for the study of Middle Eastern magic. But the conquests and religious controversies which have affected this buffer country between East and West during the past three thousand years have resulted in much that would have been of great importance being lost. That the Zoroastrians had a body of magical ritual of great antiquity is well known.* Some of this is preserved in the secret books of their descendants, the Parsis of contemporary India. The Arab conquest at the beginning of the seventh century swept away many traces of occult practices, and substituted beliefs brought from the Arabian desert. Traces of the Assyrian and Babylonian supernatural beliefs once so rampant in Persia, remain, generally speaking, only in rural areas, preserved in the form of tribal charms and spells.
Works of contemporary magic are of comparatively rare occurrence in Persia, even today: rare, that is, in comparison with such places as Egypt and India, where they are to be bought freely. When, however, one does come across a Persian magical manuscript, it very often bears unmistakable marks of serious occult study and belief: in contradistinction to the Indian and Egyptian efforts, which are most often merely intriguingly titled tracts to lure pennies from the credulous.
On the other hand, the Persians usually take their magic seriously. Evidence of this is contained in a manuscript which I was allowed to examine by a self-styled adept. Containing some four hundred pages, I concluded from its calligraphy and phraseology that it was about two hundred years old. Entitled the Ocean of Mysteries, it contained no illustrations, and, unlike many magical scripts, bore marks of a certain amount of research.
* Zoroaster himself is the reputed author of 20,000 magical couplets.
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