RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIESplacing the bowls upside down on the threshold or inside the walls
of their houses. Sorcerers were the most typical practitioners of pa-
ganism by the late Sasanian period. They mumbled incantations, chanted
the liturgy of demons, calling on them by name, and smeared them-
selves with excrement. The style of the exorcism, in which a sorcerer
claimed he had authority from one of the gods to expel demons, came
ultimately from the white-robed iishipu (Ak.) priests of ancient Bab-
ylonia. Sorcerers are depicted on incantation bowls as human figures
with long hair, wearing star-covered robes, and standing with their
arms outstretched or raised at the elbows, with fingers spread out, in
an attitude of invocation or exorcism (see fig. 8). The activity of
sorcerers tended to shade over into producing illusions, performing
tricks, and telling fortunes.^37
Sorcerers also used magic to invoke or to exorcise the influence of
the planetary deities or demons. The ancient Babylonian myth of the
binding of the planets and their release by Marduk (Bel) survived in
a magical formula which refers to the seal that charmed the seven
stars and the twelve signs of the zodiac, and to charming a demon
until the great day of judgment and its redemption.^38 Babil had a
reputation as the place where the planet Mercury (Nabu or nr) was
bound and as the earthly location of the "houses" of the planets and
the signs of the zodiac.^39 The Babylonian day of destinies on the first
of Nisan (April), when the fate of the coming year was decided, also
survived as an auspicious day for expelling demons.4o
Next to magic, astrological fatalism was the most important expres-
sion of pagan traditions. It was also the most intellectualized and
scientific expression and had been combined with Hellenistic and Per-
sian traditions. The current Babylonian mechanistic, astrological tra-
dition explained events on earth according to the doctrine of corre-
spondence. The inexorable turning of the planets in their spheres in
conjunction with the signs of the zodiac determined events on earth,
including the material and spiritual fate of people. This was interpreted
as the .... esult of either the malevolent operation of planetary and earthly
demons or as the impersonal and mechanical operation of a blind fate.
The latter interpretation came close to a concept of laws of nature
31 R. Adams, "Tell Abii Sarifa, a Sassanian-Islamic Ceramic Sequence from South
Central Iraq," Ars Orientalis 8 (1970), 115; de Menasce, Denkart, p. 315; Gordon,
"Magical Bowls," pp. 319-20; Montgomery, Incantation Texts, pp. 100-101; Rod-
kinson, Talmud, XVI, "Sanhedrin," 320-21; Yamauchi, Incantation Texts, pp. 5, 54.
38 Montgomery, Incantation Texts, pp. 113, 137.
39 Ibn an-Nadim, Fihrist, n, 573; Markwart, Eriinshahr, p. 14.
40 Montgomery, Incantation Texts, p. 55.