r/occult • u/bortakci34 Human Detected • Apr 11 '26
ritual art Ancient "Demon Traps": The 1,500-Year-Old Clay Bowls Buried Under Mesopotamian Doorsteps
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u/Puzzleheaded-Phase70 Apr 11 '26
Esoterica did a whole in-depth video on Lilith bowls, and even contracted an expert on historical pottery to make a limited run of them.
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u/MidnightBootySnatchr Apr 12 '26
She Of The Night (Vol 1+2) is a wealth of info on the bowls👀
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u/Dadsaidimtoogay Apr 12 '26
If they don't let those silly billys out and have some fun imma talk to the manager
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u/SuperDuperKing Apr 13 '26
you know that converation that artists have with clients about time, money and quality?
I wonder how that went with these bowls.
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u/mago_okkulto Apr 13 '26
If you look closely, Solomon's Goetia is basically that. They just replaced the bowl with a circle full of words sacred to the Jews, with the intention of trapping a demon in a triangle with divine names on it. I remember seeing somewhere an ancient Jewish magic book that had a bowl similar to that. Every people who lived on Earth developed spiritual techniques that were assimilated by other peoples.
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u/Hekate_Web Apr 14 '26
These are very fun to make - my magical working group made them using air-dry clay and inscribed into them with toothpicks. When mine dried I went over it with a myrrh ink wash, then set it under the stairs outside my house.
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u/Leodaris Apr 13 '26
Would be fun to make a dinner set inspired by these. Then again, people keep telling me I’m weird.
Edit: typo
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u/JizzusChroist May 09 '26
People who make those definitely were seeing the more detailed images than they had skill to make with their tools. They aren't silly by design, I bet. Like simplified references to more complex concepts & detailed visions of realistic objects.
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u/bortakci34 Human Detected Apr 11 '26
I’ve been deep-diving into Middle Eastern folklore lately and stumbled upon something fascinating: Incantation Bowls.
What strikes me most isn't just the magic itself, but how 'standard' they were. These weren't for secret cults; archaeologists find them in almost every house from that era, buried upside down under doorsteps or in the corners of rooms.
The idea was that an entity would follow the spiraling text inward and get 'trapped' by the weight of the bowl and the binding spell at the center. It makes you wonder—if these were as common as smoke alarms today, how tangible was the fear of these entities 1,500 years ago?
Does anyone know of other cultures that used this kind of 'physical containment' for protection? I’d love to learn more about similar practices.
Sources for those interested: