History of Magic

Europe

Welcome back, students! We're getting closer and closer to the end of your First Year and the close of your History of Magic studies for the term. In this lesson, we'll be touching the tip of the iceberg with regards to early magical European communities, namely the Bell-Beaker Culture, ancient Rome, and ancient Greece. I told you you'd hear more about those civilizations last lesson!

Bell-Beaker Culture

The Bell-Beaker Culture is one of the few completely magical cultures. This long-lived culture took a while to develop and occupied the European Stone and Bronze Ages that started as early as 1.4 million years ago and finally ended around 1800 BCE. The people living at that time, while simple, have made their mark on history to be certain. Aside from their claim to fame of being completely magical, other things are quite interesting to magical academic circles, namely the development of writing (though not specific to the Bell-Beaker people), their curious style of pottery, and the construction of other stone structures which still spark the interest of magihistorians and anthropologists today.

Let's take a deeper look at some of these interesting features. Firstly, as mentioned, around the same time as this culture's development, there was an enormous global breakthrough in the development of humankind: writing. While symbols were used before this time, the era in which the Bell-Beaker Culture flourished finally saw the transition to symbols becoming text rather than just pictures of events. These symbols are believed to have often been the shape used for wand movements of spells. Similarly, they used these shapes to pass messages and words.

Next is the matter of those "stone structures" I mentioned a moment ago. Have you guessed what intriguing European stone structures I might be referring to? If your thoughts drifted to stone circles in England, you'd be on the right track! Built in roughly 3,000 BCE, Stonehenge is actually one of many similar structures in Europe (and a few in Asia) created during this period of time, and presumably by those of the Bell-Beaker Culture. Most appear to have astronomical magical functions (including Stonehenge), but others' uses are not quite as clear.

We'll start by speaking specifically about Stonehenge – the most well-known of this group. This monolithic structure is quite unique, as it is one of the few that has ever been uncovered by Muggles, and certainly the one best known by them (as well as other reasons we will examine in a moment). This was certainly considered quite unfortunate during the enactment of the ISOS, but by the time the 1600s came around, this area was far too well-known to completely eradicate from Muggle memory. This is for many reasons: partially because it is one of the largest monolithic structures in this group, because it was the most useful, and because magical folk had completely forgotten its use (until it was rediscovered by Alphonse Mason in the late 1800s). All of these factors contributed to the heightened fixation on and fascination with the area.

The truth about Stonehenge (and other similar, though hidden, monoliths) is that it is an enormous conduit built to channel astronomical magic (magic from the Sun or reflected from the moon or planets) for various purposes. On certain days (in some cases, days that only come once in hundreds of years), the structure can aid in fertility and childbirth. On other days of astronomical alignments, it was used to strengthen warriors or enhance endurance. Currently, it is believed that these functions were also helped by potions and/or spells, but as there is a distinct lack of records, it is difficult to be certain.

In any case, these functions are rather typical of stone structures from this time period. However, as mentioned, Stonehenge is unique in that it has multiple uses (and may have more that we are not currently aware of). More importantly, this means that Stonehenge's magic is more frequently active, in comparison to a stone structure that is only active on one certain day. Thus, there have been recent efforts by the MoM to keep Muggles from stumbling into it at inopportune times. They have made it nearly impossible to reach the center of the circle without Ministry clearance and application via official departments under the guise of the British Museum's desire to protect a fragile heritage site.