Magical Craftwork

The priests who read services in the temples of Ancient Egypt were supported by a caste of magical crafters who created enchanted items. Roman and Greek authors noted that the Egyptians had a strange facility with the manufacture of amulets and talismans. They were the focus of a major export industry during Ptolemaic times. Tomb robbers often recover magic items. A formal process for their sale exists, described in the section on the guild of tomb explorers. A black market for amulets also thrives.

The writings of these crafters have also

been recovered. These books can used and understood by those who speak Coptic. One book of Egyptian magic, describing this group's work, has been circulated in Europe, and created the Learned Magician tradition (see Hedge Magic: Revised Edition).

Relationship to Learned Magic

Ancient Egyptian craft magic, at its simplest, focused on the creation of three types of objects: amulets, talismans, and curses. An amulet protected the wearer, a talisman made life easier for the wearer, and a curse hurt something else. This is very similar to the Learned Magic tradition, which has three Techniques, for protection, assistance, and harm. The Learned Magic tradition has Luck, Magic, and Health forms. These can be used to simulate a wide variety of Ancient Egyptian effects, but individual priesthoods may have had other forms or techniques. Learned magic can be boosted by aid from spirits from the Four Realms. In Egypt, the ready access to powerful faeries and magical spirits may have made this easier. Learned Magic has a limited series of Ranges, Target and Durations: Egyptian magic does not have these limitations. Learned Magic also has Difficult Arts: this was not the case for Egyptian Magicans, and is a relic of the origin of the Learned Magic tradition: a single book intended to be studied as part of a wider corpus.

Troupes using the Learned Magician rules to create Egyptian spells should assume that the Egyptians had very high casting and laboratory totals, reflecting their generations of accumulated learning, and access to potent lab texts.

Egyptian demons and ghosts were thought, in some sense, to resemble birds. People were buried with weapons that were used to snare birds, to allow them to fight off demons on their trip through the underworld. The most common of these weapons is a throwing stick with an effect similar to Faerie's Eternal Oblivion upon it. Others had nets, which have ReVi effects which immobilize the demons, allowing their victims to flee, or stab the defenseless enemy.

Troupes not using Hedge Magic: Revised Edition should just design amulets as Hermetic items.

Color

The color of amulets is significant in Egyptian magic. The color of magic is black, but green is also widely used, presumably because it attracts faeries. The color blue is used for invoking gods, due to its heavenly associations. Yellow, orange, and some shades of red are all the same color to an Egyptian magician, and they are excellent for fire magic.

Red is used for evil magic: the names of Apep and Seth are always written in red. Spells to conjure the servants of Seth, or to ask for favors from the god of chaos, sterility and foreigners, are always written in red. Amulets of red stone are used to control and ward against these creatures, Red is also used for curses, as it is the color of destruction.

The priests of Egypt, who drew their power from the Faerie Realm, also used to trap spirits in boxes. The faeries involved in this process are not still in their containers. Egyptian cosmology stated that the trapped beings, generally Apep or his followers, found their way out of the boxes. Clearly this was the case; otherwise the celestial drama of solar rebirth would cease. Also, since the peasants who dig up these boxes are now Muslims, faeries who are nearby when the boxes are found prefer to take the forms of trapped djinn or efreets. Characters who have learned the stories of Ancient Egypt, however, may tempt a faerie back into the role of a servant of Apep. See the animal-headed demons in the Tombs chapter for ideas, or just use the statistics of any dragon in a previous supplement.

Shape

Many amulets were made in one of a limited variety of shapes. The most popular is a representation, in precious metal, of the linen bags used to make temporary talismans. Many other charms portray a thing from which the wearer borrows a Virtue or other quality while the item is worn. Most charms have the symbol of the Wedjat eye upon them. Thoth, the Lord of Amulets, is often evoked in inscriptions on the sides of amulets.