We explore the ancient Mesopotamian ritual-series known as Šurpu with Frank Simons. This interview is a window onto very, very ancient magical practice, but has a surprising amount to tell us about magic today.

We speak with Dan Levene, expert on the ancient Judæo-Aramaic incantation-bowls, on the bowls, the skulls, the Talmud, and what all of this tells us about late-ancient Judaism in the Sasanian empire and beyond.

In our fourth Roots of Magic interview, we speak with Jonathan Beltz, specialist on the scarier side of ancient Sumerian cultural life, the side occupied by demonic entities bringing disease and death. But one entity stands out from the crowd: Namtar, the divine psychopomp whose arrival means ineluctable mortality. Or does it? We explore the world of magical ways to send death packing in ancient Sumeria.

We discuss the dangerous, liminal space of childbirth and childhood in ancient Egypt. How might the gods, magic, and medicine interact to help make this a less perilous realm? Charlotte Rose has some ideas.

In our second Roots of Magic interview, we speak with Svenja Nagel on erotic magic in ancient Egypt. Ritual practices and potions, magical continuity and change, and cross-cultural pollination feature prominently in a conversation which tells us what Egyptian erotic magic was, and what dangerous-yet-sexy things you could do with it.

In the first interview of a new series, we discuss the academic project we have all been waiting for, MagEIA: Magic between Entanglement, Interaction, and Analogy, with one of its principal investigators, Daniel Schwemer. MagEIA will host cross-disciplinary conversations across specialisms in the study of ancient (bronze-age to late antiquity) magic. Amazing work, with amazing things to come.