Abstract
Magic and Witchcraft are two distinct and mutually exclusive esoteric pursuits, the one being ritualistic and the other religious. After defining each and tracing their histories, the distinction is applied to Tragicomedia de Calixto y Melibea in order to rectify the traditional conception of Celestina as a witch in the popular sense of a person who has made a pact with Satan and is thus empowered to affect human life through supernatural means. But Celestina's "power" derives from a different source. Based upon the internal evidence of words and rites, Celestina is now revealed as a practitioner of Magic, the object of her incantations being the pagan Pluto and not the Christian Satan.
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Lima, R. The Arcane Paganism of Celestina: Plutonic Magic Versus Satanic Witchcraft in Tragicomedia De Calixto Y Melibea. Neophilologus 82, 221–233 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1004292418577
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1004292418577