ABSTRACT
The category of ``magical initiation'' is an anomaly. Scholars generally identify initiation as a social phenomenon: the passage of initiands from one social group to another through a ritual process of separation, liminality, and reintegration.1 The magician, however, is usually understood as a more solitary figure, and in many cultures as permanently marginal.2 These considerations did not, however, prevent Arnold Van Gennep from treating the magician's initiation as a variety of rite de passage, since he recognized the homologies between the induction of the magician into his profession and other forms of initiation.3 Interpreters of magical initiations in the GrecoRoman world have similarly recognized the hermeneutic value of these homologies in their work: the aspiring magician of antiquity had to undergo a rite of initiation before taking up the profession, and the structure of this rite, it has been argued, is more or less analogous to that of Graeco-Roman mystery initiations, and features a good deal of the separation andmarginality we have come to expect from a rite de passage. Though the third, integrative stage of Van Gennep's tripartite ritual process was not as salient as in agegroup initiations or those of cult associations, certain rites described in literary sources and the magical papyri were undoubtedly meant to confer on the initiand the status and prerogatives of the magician.4
