Magic and Witchcraft

Lead Curse Tablets; defixiones

Curses scratched into thin lead sheet, rolled up, and hidden, often in the sacrificial tubes attached to graves; another word for curse tablets, so called because they often start “I bind” (defigo), i.e., paralyze someone’s body parts, like a rival athlete’s legs before a race, or because they were rolled up and pierced by a nail (defigere)

Sympathetic Magic

Magical rituals based on the belief that to imitate an action will have the same effect as the actual action (Law of Similarity) and that a person can be affected magically by actions performed towards something that represents them, like a voodoo doll made of clay and something that once belonged to them, like one hair (Law of Contagion)

Love Potions

Magic potion made of difficult to procure ingredients that is supposed to make the drinker fall in love with someone

Necromancy

Conjuring up of the dead in order to ask them about the future