Ancient Christian Magic: Coptic texts of ritual power
by Marvin W. Meyer and Richard Smith
Princeton University Press, 1994

Ancient Christian Magic is a scholarly book, but very accessible to a wide audience. It is a collection of ancient Christian texts. One of the editors is Marvin Meyer, who was Professor of Bible and Christian Studies and focused on Christian and Gnostic texts.

The book contains 135 spells that call on the Christian God. These spells were written down and used as “recipes” by magicians, who sometimes performed the spells on their own, but also worked for clients. The book is organized by need, such as healing, revenge, love or sex. You can consider this a sort of underworld approach to getting supernatural help– perhaps when a priest or pastor was not available, or when a Christian preferred to take direct action.

This may be a strange thing to think about– Christians doing magic. The authors discuss the topic “what is magic?” in their introduction, and each spell has a small preface explaining context or use. For example, a widowed woman, unable to get justice the normal human way, calls on God to give her justice and revenge against those who have wronged her (spells 187 and 188). Or a woman who has had a difficult pregnancy uses a spell for protection from demons of childbirth (spells 120 and 121). You can even find a spell to have a beautiful singing voice.

If you want to try a spell for yourself, I recommend you start with Spell 50, which will create an amulet to heal and protect by invoking “the one who was crucified upon the cross.”

I don’t know if the authors meant this book to be a guidebook for Christians interested in doing magic, but it serves as an excellent starting point. It also make you wonder: how is magic different from religion? This book invites you to explore the idea, both intellectually and practically.