Note that although 'Aztec' sounds super old, they were actually a civilisation from as recently as 1300 to 1550 or so, so not nearly as long ago as it sounds, and actually relatively contemporary To Elizabeth.
As an occult practice, it may have been discouraged at least, but to say "non-Christian" makes it sound like one arbitrary practice extirpating another.
Rather, the Christian view (and certainly the Catholic view) is one opposed to superstition and the occult on the grounds that superstitions are irrational and immoral and thus opposed to the good of those who engage in them[0].
It is one thing for there to exist varying customs that are more-or-less arbitrary w.r.t. the signifier (greetings, for example), but the signified is no longer arbitrary.
As a Catholic, even I recognize that essentially the entirety of Catholic practice is superstition from the perspective of anyone who doesn't either take Catholicism as a priori true on authority or (arguably equivalently) have a personal divine experience justifying Catholicism experientially.
If one is not Catholic to start with, it as easy to dismiss Catholic practice on the same argument as presented above against superstition as it is for Catholics to do so for non-Catholic superstitions.
While the foundational tenets of Catholicism are supernatural but the system that sprouts from it is highly rational, descriptive and formal. It's a religion of Roman lawyers and it shows.
As a result I have a hard time seeing anybody dismissing Catholicism as superstitious, even if they a priori dismiss the existence of God, unless they have no actual knowledge of it (which, you know, ends up being most people who feel to need to utter an opinion on the subject).
Catholicism teaches that the laying of hands can endow a person (of male biological sex) with the power to transform bread and wine into flesh and blood through the ritual utterance of certain words.
It's going to be hard sell to explain how that's not superstitious...
I guess I see what you mean by a religion of Roman lawyers...
To the Aztecs, presumably, there was nothing superstitious about using obsidian mirrors as a shield against evil sprits, either.
Also, the belief that praying to someone who was executed two millennia ago would bring you eternal life in Heaven is as superstitious as you can get.
Yes, with the minor complication that a substantial number of Catholics don't actually understand how it's supposed to work (spiritually speaking) and would be absolutely dumbfounded at the basic concept of transubstantiation.
According to doctrine, it's more than symbolic: Catholicism teaches that bread and wine 'really' turn into flesh and blood, while only 'superficially' maintaining the appearance of bread and wine (cf Aristotle's substance theory and the difference between essential and accidental properties). So under a certain point of view, the Eucharist could indeed be considered cannibalism - however, the body of Christ is divine and cannot be digested...
https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12734a.htm
In any case, the conquerors of New Spain did not encourage the Nahuas to reform their indigenous religion on a rational basis free of superstition. They did not train up an Aquinas for Tezcatlipoca. They suppressed the religion of their conquered subjects in favor of their own, a tale as old as written history.
Yes, because that's exactly what it was. If anything they could stand to emphasise the hypocrisy a bit more, though I don't think that was particularly relevant to their actual point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_I
To 21st-century eyes, [court astrologer John] Dee's activities straddle magic and modern science, but the distinction would have meant nothing to him. He was invited to lecture on Euclidean geometry at the University of Paris while still in his early twenties. He was an ardent promoter of mathematics, a respected astronomer and a leading expert in navigation, who trained many who would conduct England's voyages of discovery.
Meanwhile, he immersed himself in sorcery, astrology and Hermetic philosophy. Much effort in his last 30 years went into trying to commune with angels, so as to learn the universal language of creation and achieve a pre-apocalyptic unity of mankind.
Sorcery and astrology are certainly frowned upon: ‘The nations you will dispossess listen to those who practice sorcery or divination. But as for you, the Lord has not permitted you to do so.’ Deuteronomy 18:9-14.
The OT, as I further understand, contains a number of different prohibitions of very specific magical practices in the source language, most of which are highly genericized in most English translations.
(There's also a specific enumeration of the parts of the Jewish law that remain in force for Christians in Acts 15, and most of the probibitions under discussion here don't fall within its scope.)
And there's a lot of magic in the apocrypha (which, despite having been removed from canon, does reflect the diversity in Christian belief at the time) such as the angel who teaches astrology and spells to drive away demons in the Book of Tobit, or Solomon using a magic ring to control demons in the Testament of Solomon, or the wizard battle in the Acts of Peter.
I also read it as the witch being surprised when the spirit actually shows up...
I think we need to be careful in how we are using words like "astrology" and "spells", since it is easy to group many ideas under those umbrellas in a way that people living long ago wouldn't have.
For a start, I don't see any mention in Tobit chapter 6 of astrology[0], and the technique given for driving away a particular demon is "thou shalt take the ashes of perfume, and shalt lay upon them some of the heart and liver of the fish, and shalt make a smoke with it: And the devil shall smell it, and flee away, and never come again any more" followed by "and pray to God".
We wouldn't say that someone is casting a spell if they used cayenne pepper to keep cats away from their garden, and early readers of Tobit wouldn't have considered fish organs to be an unholy or forbidden substance. For a process to deserve the designation of a "spell", it would have to involve either a means or an ends that was forbidden by God.
Edit, to add: I initially cited to the King James-translation as that has historically been the most promulgated version of the gospels.
I feel the real interesting point is that he was interested in the unknown, and back in those days they didn't have the modern distinctions between what we now consider as natural and supernatural.
Seems that if you want to make progress in human knowledge, you assume the risk of doing things that appear frivolous or just stupid in hindsight.
Lol! I had to look this up, and indeed it’s true: http://www.danbaines.com/blog/tag/New+Motive+Power
“English physicist and mathematician Isaac Newton produced works exploring chronology, and biblical interpretation (especially of the Apocalypse), and alchemy. Some of this could be considered occult. Also, Newton described himself as a ‘natural philosopher’, and his work is grounded in Aristotelian metaphysics. Newton’s scientific work may have been of lesser personal importance to him, as he placed emphasis on rediscovering the wisdom of the ancients. In this sense, some historians, including economist John Maynard Keynes, believe that any reference to a ‘Newtonian Worldview’ as being purely mechanical in nature is somewhat inaccurate.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton%27s_occult_studie...
[1]: https://eugenicsarchive.ca/discover/tree/5233e4365c2ec500000...
[2]: Lytton Strachey: A Critical Biography, Holroyd 1967
> Nice quote, and a very concise diagnosis of what ails much of science: lots of data jockeys, few true scientists. The output of scientific endeavor is not simply truth, but true theories. Or, more accurately, theories which accurately predict (i.e. are not falsified by) the broadest set of relevant observations. The real tragedy is that genuine theoretical advances are often ignored or overlooked because everyone is too busy collecting more data to notice.
A bit too much focus on the known or what can be known is (probably) playing it too safe to make the big gains.
In spirit, modern science is closer to the occult in the sense that mastery over nature is a major motivation for its pursuit.
Unfortunately, the book has this to say about the mirror:
The large obsidian mirror that is often associated with Dee, an Aztec cult artifact dedicated to Tezcatlipoca brought back from the New World after the conquest of Mexico by Cortés, which has long been on display at the British Museum,54 may not have been used at all, nor has it been conclusively shown that the mirror even belonged to Dee. If the black mirror was Dee’s, it may have come into his possession at Louvain or through a Spanish courtier.55 Of the other objects in the British Museum attributed to Dee’s use, it is likely that only the three wax seals actually belonged to him; the crystal ball and gold engraving of the “Vision of the Four Castles” are probably later acquisitions by collectors from other magicians or antiquarians who reproduced them from Casaubon’s printing of A True & Faithful Relation.56
[0]: https://smile.amazon.com/John-Dee-Empire-Angels-Enochian/dp/...
But at this point, maybe incorrectly but surely, 'Roman Empire' is synonymous with antiquity so the republic and early empire, I think that even if year 495 counts here then it's borderline
Sometimes is it very good to see the perspective of others. Thank you.
We consider Adam, Noah ancient. But the Romans? Might as well have been last week.
Even Moses, who might have lived around the 13th century bc would have been 1000 years after Sargon of Akkad.
There is a lot of history to go around, so many peoples and civilisations that we know of, and so many that we do not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universidad_Santo_Tomás_de_Aqu...
Does it? I always felt Columbus was pretty young history and I associate Aztecs with him. Not sure how the time period where we had guns and ships good enough to cross the great seas can be seen as super old, great civilizations had already existed thousands of years at that point.
The Aztecs had no written language equivalent to what we’re using here, and instead used ideographs. They did, however, record history cartographically!
Either way, it's a terrible definition. As an archaeologist, I use "prehistoric" to describe really old fossilized crap. Anything newer is historic.
My understanding - which may be wrong - is that it's at the level of much older high civilization. And I think that makes them "feel" as old as those civilizations, because we know so little.
I'm not sure the Aztecs were that technologically behind. The main reason they and all the other New World peoples lost was their less robust immune system. Typically, 80-90% of the population died of European diseases as soon as - or often even before - the Europeans arrived.
This was 300 years before germ theory, so no one on either side knew what was happening.
I agree with the core of your post, but it should be noted that the great seas had been crossed for thousands of years at this time by Polynesian navigators (over the Pacific, not Atlantic), and had also been previously crossed by Vikings a few hundred years before.
It rather sounds super primitive and savage. With human sacrifices and stuff. And yes, that stone mirror was polished by slaves.
Oh, those columbus day inspired pages...