me: idk babe what demon bowl do you want?
her: ooo get the two figures one, they look gay
If you're curious here's the wiki, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incantation_bowl
it's a practice of early protective magic from mesopotamia thought to trap demons or ward evil spirits and a local museum sent me a fucking coupon code for them lmao
seems like a cheap replica of a bespoke magical artifact designed to trap a demon would succeed only in replicating the trapped demon ~Chara
so that's the thing that's fucking me up, like, these are replicas sure
but they're made in the same region of the world as the originals were, out of the same material, and reportedly hand painted as the originals were. and, important to note, the originals were mass produced commodities that every house had so them being made at scale doesn't really cheapen it.
as far as I can tell the only things really different from the original and the replica is time and intent which,, are not things you can really point to lol
not only were the originals mass produced, many of them have complete gibberish written on them because they were painted by illiterate fake scribes trying to scam illiterate customers with something that looks like a protective bowl! and yeah replicating them wouldn't worry me because the idea is that like, you put it in your basement and passing demons will get stuck there instead of getting into your house, rather than it being made to contain a specific demon. like putting out a trap for fruit flies or something
Calling it a fruit fly trap is so apt omg
also fun fact, I was looking into if im even allowed to own one of these while converting to Judaism, feels like something that would be frowned upon, but apparently incantation bowls were a surprisingly Jewish practice? Seems like a sizable chunk of the ones we've found were made by or for jews during the Babylon exhile, they frequently had rabbinical text as the incantation, it was just a thing everyone in that region did as a matter of course regardless or religion or group. also wildly enough the Talmud even specifies that they're one of the few things that is okay to carry on shabbat lmao
There's even an article on My Jewish Learning about them https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/magic-bowls/
there's a very cool album and art project by deeply Jewish prog-folk band Charming Hostess where the songs are a combination of traditional folk songs and original songs with lyrics based on inscriptions from Babylonian Jewish demon bowls.
Scroll down a bit at this link: https://www.charminghostess.com/music
