ABSTRACT
The source body will be the "Greek magical papyri," first collected by Karl Preisendanz, supplemented by collections such as that of Daniel and Franco Maltomini, and popularized in the translation edited by Hans D. Betz, which incorporates the sections in Demotic ignored by Preisendanz. When magical papyri first emerged in the nineteenth century, they were quick to be labeled as "gnostic." It is the intertexuality which accounts for the majority of the "Gnostic elements in magical papyri," the transmission and adaptation of names of powers and titles between ritual genres, often clearly from "magical" traditions into Gnostic, Hermetic, and philosophical ones. Despite the lack of knowledge on the part of the various copyists, specific details can be excavated from even the most garbled passages which demonstrate a qualitatively different relationship with its source material than the general circulation of references to "Gnostic" names and titles commonly found in Coptic magical texts.
