Note 178.1 — Chapter X · The Concept of Divine Power and the Ancient Cosmogonies.

Now, in the respects just considered, the earliest aspect of Greek religion that is revealed to us presents a striking contrast. The relations between magic and religion are markedly different.178.1 Magic had doubtless the same hold on early Greece as it has on most societies at a certain stage of culture. We can conclude this from the glimpses of it revealed by Homer and some ancient myths, such as the story of Salmoneus, as well as by the evidence of its practice in later Greece, and as such phenomena are not of sudden growth we can safely believe that they were part of an ancient tradition always alive among the people. But while Babylonian magic proclaims itself loudly in the great religious literature and highest temple ritual, Greek magic is barely mentioned in the older literature of Greece, plays no part at all in the hymns, and can only with difficulty be discovered as latent in the higher ritual. Again, Babylonian magic is essentially demoniac; but we have no evidence suggesting that the pre-Homeric Greek was demon-ridden, or that demonology and exorcism were leading factors of his consciousness and practice: the earliest mythology does not suggest that he habitually imputed his physical or moral disorders to demons, nor does it convey any hint of the existence in the early society of that terrible functionary, the witch-finder, or of the institution of witch-trials.