The Goēs: Magic as National Quality

Herodotus (c. 484—424 BCE) uses goēs to refer to nations with strange powers — Ukraine is such a nation. No other country on earth could unite the world against Ruschism. Magic was first a characteristic of countries. Of states. I am bringing back that meaning.

Source: Our Disinfolklore Universe

Wizard Putin, like Aeschylus (~500 BCE), employs through his speeches “songs that call upon the souls of the [Soviet] dead to appear to the living.” Euripides’s character Hippolytus is called a goēs when he attempts to control his father through his clever speech.

Source: Pensees (9)

The word “magic” originally described nations, not individuals. Herodotus’s goēs is a quality of states with strange rhetorical power. Putin calls upon the Soviet dead like Aeschylus’s goēs. Ukraine’s power to unite the world is also goēs. The author recovers this ancient meaning to reframe War Magic as statecraft.

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