This collection of magical procedures from Graeco-Roman Egypt is powerful and fascinating. This is serious magic, and potentially dangerous; caution is advised to those who would work many of these operations.
Shortly after my wife acquired the magical papyri, I studied the spells and formulae for a research project I was involved in. Strange things began to happen. A wine bottle containing sacred water to be used in an upcoming ceremony suddenly and spontaneously shattered. Now, my theory was that the setting sun had been shining on the enclosed bottle and caused it to explode, but I still felt an occult force at work, and immediately a name jumped into my mind: Typhon/Set. Then I noticed an invocation adressed to Set as the Typhonic being who "shatters all things", to be recited at sunrise and sunset. I found a hymn to Selene - beautiful, evocative, terrifying - that expressed perfectly the essence of the Gorgon which, that very night, was guarding my doorway under the majestic and severe light of the full moon. Magical symbols began appearing to my mind's eye, and I drew one to show my wife, who was reading the papyri at the time; when I gave her drawing, she showed me the page she was reading, and there was the very same symbol.
Once again, a very powerful book, an excellent source for those researching the pagan occult arts, and not to be approached by the frivolous.

What most people know of ancient Greece is the classics. But behind them, there were the everyday people, the women and the slaves, who had no means of improving their lives. No means but witchcraft. This is a collection of the spells and incantations they used. If you believe in "harm none", you will find this book disturbing. This book reflects the dreams, fears and hopes of desperate people who would try anything, including the use of human corpses of animal sacrifice to get what they needed. But this book also includes some very beautiful hymns and invocation, especially the one addressed to Selene/Artemis. An important book of ancient lore.

This book lets the reader decide not only what type of spell to do, but gives many different ways of doing each spell. The one thing I didn't like was that there were no substitues or other names for the more unusal ingredients for the spell. But this book will be one of my most valued texts to study through out the years.

Hans Dieter Betz's book on the Sermon on the mount is the book to end all books on the Sermon on the Mount ( and the Sermon on the Plain ). It is a must in the library of every minister, every New Testament Scholar, every teacher of New Testament and everyone who wants to know everything about the Sermon on the Mount. There is an extensive bibliography. There are copious notes on every verse. There are comments on exigesis which are extremely helpful. There are even comments on the social and political events which may be relevant to understand the implications of the Sermon on the Mount. The only times it does seem to fall down is his few comments on the organization of the Sermon. Sometimes he expresses a lack of comfort about how one idea relates to another. He should have paid more attention to Michael Golder's "Midrash and Lection in Matthew's Gospel," which he quotes in one or two places. This explains the organization a little better. I highly recommend Dr. Betz's book. Any minister who wants to preach a sermon on any part of the Sermon on the Mount must have this as his primary source.