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Concept
Necromancy
Summary
Necromancy (ˈnɛkrəmænsi) is the practice of magical sorcery involving communication with the dead by summoning their spirits as apparitions or visions for the purpose of divination; imparting the means to foretell future events; and discovery of hidden knowledge. Sometimes categorized under death magic, the term is occasionally also used in a more general sense to refer to black magic or witchcraft as a whole. In fictional settings such as Dungeons and Dragons or fantasy video games it is associated with the reanimation of corpses often meant to be used as weapons.
The word necromancy is adapted from Late Latin necromantia: a loan word from the post-Classical Greek νεκρομαντεία (), a compound of Ancient Greek νεκρός (, or 'dead body') and μαντεία (, or 'divination'). The Koine Greek compound form was first documented in the writings of Origen of Alexandria in the 3rd century CE. The Classical Greek term was ἡ νέκυια (), from the episode of the Odyssey in which Odysseus visits the realm of the dead souls, and νεκρομαντεία in Hellenistic Greek; necromantīa in Latin, and necromancy in 17th-century English.
Magic in the Graeco-Roman world
Early necromancy was related to – and most likely evolved from – shamanism, which calls upon spirits such as the ghosts of ancestors. Classical necromancers addressed the dead in "a mixture of high-pitch squeaking and low droning", comparable to the trance-state mutterings of shamans.
Necromancy was prevalent throughout antiquity with records of its practice in ancient Egypt, Babylonia, Greece, Rome, and China. In his Geographica, Strabo refers to νεκρομαντία (), or "diviners by the dead", as the foremost practitioners of divination among the people of Persia, and it is believed to have also been widespread among the peoples of Chaldea (particularly the Hermeticists, or "star-worshipers"), Etruria and Babylonia. The Babylonian necromancers were called manzazuu or sha'etemmu, and the spirits they raised were called etemmu.
Official source
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