| Summary: | This paper examines the structural elements - namely, the roles of invocation and offerings - in the love spells of the Greek magical papyri. This is achieved through an analysis of spells that invoke a specific named deity in order to see, whether an underlying formal structure uniting this group of spells can be discerned. The meaning of invocation as a structural element is studied through the work of E. Szepes, concerning the magical hymns' origin in and departure from cultic hymns. The roles of invocation, ritual offering, and sleeplessless of the victim can be isolated as separate structural elements, repeated in spell after spell.
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