Ritual Ingredients, Folklore, and the Meaning of Invisibility

Abstract

A range of ingredients are used in the invisibility rituals from the PGM. This discussion will explore the nature of these ingredients and lay out some of the folklore surrounding them, using Graham Anderson's definition of folklore as «anonymously transmitted culture». In doing so it will outline some of the ritual antecedents to these rites in Pliny's Natural History. Moreover, it will consider what the ingredients and analogic nature of such rites can tell us about their conception of invisibility itself.