There shall not be found among you...a consulter with familiar spirits, ..or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the LORD: and because of these abominations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee. Deuteronomy 18:10-12
So how did Lucifer deceive these pagans with his bag of tricks?....read below...
"Pausanias, regent of Sparta, was one of Greece’s greatest heroes. He led the Greek forces in the decisive defeat of the massive Persian invasion at Plataea in 479 B.C. It was this splendid victory that ushered in what has become known as the Classical Age of Greek culture.
But just a few years after his victory, Pausanias was found to be betraying Greece to the very Persians over whom he had triumphed. The Spartans devised a terrible punishment for him. They bricked him up inside one of their principal temples, the so-called Bronze House of Athena, and starved him to death. It is said that Pausanias’s own mother laid the first brick.
What happened in between his victory and his death is a sad story.
In the years after his victory at Plataea, Pausanias and the Greek forces carried the battle to the Persians. Success soon went to his head. He fell into madness, and his behavior became erratic. Treachery aside, he acted like a tyrant in his treatment of the freedom-loving Greeks under his command. But his troubles really began when he fell in love while in Byzantium, at that time the base of his operations.
The object of his desires was the beautiful virgin Cleonice. Pausanias meant to have his way with her and had her brought to his chamber at night. When she arrived, he was tossing and turning in a fitful, guilty sleep. Pausanias’s guards had extinguished the lamps around his bed out of respect for the girl’s modesty. As she felt her way towards him through the dark, she accidentally knocked over one of the lamps and sent it clanging to the ground. Pausanias, starting from his sleep, thought assassins had come for him, and he lashed out with the sword he kept by his side. The girl fell dead.
Cleonice’s ghost now harried him and drove him further into madness. Eventually he took ship and sailed along the southern shore of the Black Sea to the seat of an Oracle of the Dead. There he called up Cleonice’s ghost and asked her what he had to do to bring her (and himself!) peace. Her price seemed to be a small one: All he had to do was return home to Sparta. But in fact his return home brought about his conviction for treachery and his being bricked up in the temple of Athena where he had sought refuge. So the recompense Cleonice demanded could not have been greater: Pausanias’s own life.
The story does not end here, however. Had he himself not been horribly murdered? His ghost would chase away the Spartans from the Temple of Athena, where he had been killed. The goddess was already angry at the Spartans for killing a man who had sought refuge in her house. But now her anger toward them only increased as, debarred from her temple, they had no opportunity to appease her through sacrifice.
As was often the case in times of religious crisis in ancient Greece, Apollo’s oracle at Delphi came to the rescue. The oracle advised the Spartans to bring in professional evocators (the Greek term for them is psuchagôgoi, which means
“soul-conductors”) to rid themselves of Pausanias’s ghost. A team was brought in from Italy, and they succeeded in their task.
This tale, assembled from accounts preserved in Thucydides 1.34, Plutarch’s Cimon 6 and others, involves the most commonly sought secret in necromancy: What did a restless ghost need to achieve peace?
Necromancy is now usually used to refer to “black” magic—any variety of magic involving ghosts or demons.
But in its original Greek sense it referred specifically to learning secrets from the dead.
In the case of Pausanias and Cleonice, it was a matter of negotiating compensation for the killing.
In other cases it could be a matter of asking the ghost for the name of his or her undetected murderer, so that the killer could be brought to book.
--Ghosts called up through the rites of necromancy, however, were more approachable, even if they had previously appeared as an attacking ghost. The emperor Nero was harried by the ghost of his mother, whom he had killed. Driven to distraction by her attacks, he asked his Persian magus to call up her ghost for him so that he could appease her.
Ghosts could also reveal other kinds of secrets....Periander the tyrant of Corinth called up the ghost of his dead wife to ask her where, in life, she had hidden some money. She does indeed tell him (but only after reminding him that he had had sex with her corpse and demanding that he sacrifice vast amounts of costly clothing to her—which he acquires by publicly stripping the good women of Corinth of their clothes)." BibleHistoryDaily
So how did Lucifer deceive these pagans with his bag of tricks?....read below...
"Pausanias, regent of Sparta, was one of Greece’s greatest heroes. He led the Greek forces in the decisive defeat of the massive Persian invasion at Plataea in 479 B.C. It was this splendid victory that ushered in what has become known as the Classical Age of Greek culture.
But just a few years after his victory, Pausanias was found to be betraying Greece to the very Persians over whom he had triumphed. The Spartans devised a terrible punishment for him. They bricked him up inside one of their principal temples, the so-called Bronze House of Athena, and starved him to death. It is said that Pausanias’s own mother laid the first brick.
What happened in between his victory and his death is a sad story.
In the years after his victory at Plataea, Pausanias and the Greek forces carried the battle to the Persians. Success soon went to his head. He fell into madness, and his behavior became erratic. Treachery aside, he acted like a tyrant in his treatment of the freedom-loving Greeks under his command. But his troubles really began when he fell in love while in Byzantium, at that time the base of his operations.
The object of his desires was the beautiful virgin Cleonice. Pausanias meant to have his way with her and had her brought to his chamber at night. When she arrived, he was tossing and turning in a fitful, guilty sleep. Pausanias’s guards had extinguished the lamps around his bed out of respect for the girl’s modesty. As she felt her way towards him through the dark, she accidentally knocked over one of the lamps and sent it clanging to the ground. Pausanias, starting from his sleep, thought assassins had come for him, and he lashed out with the sword he kept by his side. The girl fell dead.
Cleonice’s ghost now harried him and drove him further into madness. Eventually he took ship and sailed along the southern shore of the Black Sea to the seat of an Oracle of the Dead. There he called up Cleonice’s ghost and asked her what he had to do to bring her (and himself!) peace. Her price seemed to be a small one: All he had to do was return home to Sparta. But in fact his return home brought about his conviction for treachery and his being bricked up in the temple of Athena where he had sought refuge. So the recompense Cleonice demanded could not have been greater: Pausanias’s own life.
The story does not end here, however. Had he himself not been horribly murdered? His ghost would chase away the Spartans from the Temple of Athena, where he had been killed. The goddess was already angry at the Spartans for killing a man who had sought refuge in her house. But now her anger toward them only increased as, debarred from her temple, they had no opportunity to appease her through sacrifice.
As was often the case in times of religious crisis in ancient Greece, Apollo’s oracle at Delphi came to the rescue. The oracle advised the Spartans to bring in professional evocators (the Greek term for them is psuchagôgoi, which means
This tale, assembled from accounts preserved in Thucydides 1.34, Plutarch’s Cimon 6 and others, involves the most commonly sought secret in necromancy: What did a restless ghost need to achieve peace?
Necromancy is now usually used to refer to “black” magic—any variety of magic involving ghosts or demons.
But in its original Greek sense it referred specifically to learning secrets from the dead.
In the case of Pausanias and Cleonice, it was a matter of negotiating compensation for the killing.
In other cases it could be a matter of asking the ghost for the name of his or her undetected murderer, so that the killer could be brought to book.
Ghosts could manifest themselves in two very different forms.
--They could appear as terrifying, attacking ghosts, with whom there could be no possibility of communication. --Ghosts called up through the rites of necromancy, however, were more approachable, even if they had previously appeared as an attacking ghost. The emperor Nero was harried by the ghost of his mother, whom he had killed. Driven to distraction by her attacks, he asked his Persian magus to call up her ghost for him so that he could appease her.
Ghosts could also reveal other kinds of secrets....Periander the tyrant of Corinth called up the ghost of his dead wife to ask her where, in life, she had hidden some money. She does indeed tell him (but only after reminding him that he had had sex with her corpse and demanding that he sacrifice vast amounts of costly clothing to her—which he acquires by publicly stripping the good women of Corinth of their clothes)." BibleHistoryDaily
