Judaica DH at the Penn Libraries Blog //Talking the Talk: Magic Snake
Blog //Talking the Talk: Magic Snake

In this series we honor the contributions made on the Zooniverse Talk boards for our project, Scribes of the Cairo Geniza . Talk is a way for citizen scientists on Zooniverse to converse with one another and experts on the different material they are working on, ask questions, and explore new insights. Each week we will feature a talk conversation that we love. Thanks for the participation #genizascribes!

@noamsienna: Wow! This is an amazing #magical fragment. The symbols on the verso are a magical alphabet (you see it in Sefer Raziel haMalakh, for example) surrounded by a serpent (ouroboros) — something I’ve never seen in Jewish magical art. The recto has #Judeo-Arabic segulot, or instructions for making amulets for different purposes. “If you asked […] and her partner, then draw it on a potsherd with a copper pen and smear it with oil […] and drink from it […] and if you wish to be loved, write it on a potsherd […] in the fire […]” I’ll share this with Prof. Bohak to see if he has comments!

Read the full discussion on the talk boards here.

👉 Read more Talk conversations or start your own by participating in Scribes of the Cairo Geniza on Zooniverse!

By Judaica DH at the Penn Libraries on .

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Exported from Medium on April 14, 2020.

Cite this post: admin. “Talking the Talk: Magic Snake”. Published February 19, 2019. https://judaicadh.github.io//blog/2019-02-19-talking-the-talk/. Accessed on .