Category Archives: Med. and Magic

Judeo-Christian medical care in early Rome

Posted on July 1, 2016 by Ruth

In reference to medical history, Christianity must be seen, first, as a Jewish movement. Within a few centuries, root and branch had become hostile to each other, so it’s hard to bear in mind just how fundamentally Jewish the early … Continue reading →

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Roman medical care before conversion

Posted on July 1, 2016 by Ruth

What was the effect of Christianity on Western medicine? I’m approaching this question via Rodney Stark’s 1996 book, The Rise of Christianity. It looks at the “Jesus Movement” among Hellenistic Jews in the first three centuries, examining sociological evidence to … Continue reading →

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Christian and Roman conversion

Posted on June 14, 2016 by Ruth

Christianity came first to the Near East; its earliest adherents were in the Roman provinces of Palestine, Egypt and Ethiopia, Syria, Macedonia, and other places around the Mediterranean rim. In 301, Armenia formally adopted the Christian religion. During the next … Continue reading →

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High religion: War gods and Wyrd

Posted on June 12, 2016 by Ruth

As I explained in the last post, I am dividing pagan beliefs into “low” and “high” religion. Low religion is the daily stuff of getting along with the earth and raising children. High religion is the philosophy and mythos of … Continue reading →

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Low religion: Nerthus and Frey

Posted on June 11, 2016 by Ruth

When I say “low,” I am thinking of the way the Anglicans distinguish between “high church” and “low church,” and applying this distinction analogically to early European pagan beliefs. For this purpose, low religion is everything connected to daily life … Continue reading →

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Medicine and Magic: what is the world?

Posted on June 10, 2016 by Ruth

We interact with our planet in so many ways, but most importantly, we have to interact with a bit of the physical world in our own corporeal nature. We have bodies, the world acts upon them, we become injured, sick, … Continue reading →

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Medieval balanced diet

Posted on April 28, 2013 by Ruth

Forget the food groups or pyramid. Balanced diet, in those times, meant using food to balance the body’s proportion of hot, cold, wet and dry. The stomach was viewed as a cooking pot. In order to process what’s put into … Continue reading →

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