--- title: Angels in Coptic Magic I: Introduction | daily.dev description: An introduction to a new blog series on angels in Coptic magic, covering the concept of angels in Late Antique and early Medieval Egypt. The post traces the... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/angels-in-coptic-magic-i-introduction-kb0yxobun twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Angels in Coptic Magic I: Introduction | daily.dev og:description: An introduction to a new blog series on angels in Coptic magic, covering the concept of angels in Late Antique and early Medieval Egypt. The post traces the... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/angels-in-coptic-magic-i-introduction-kb0yxobun og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/kB0yxObUn.png og:image:alt: Angels in Coptic Magic I: Introduction og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Angels in Coptic Magic I: Introduction **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 9 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary An introduction to a new blog series on angels in Coptic magic, covering the concept of angels in Late Antique and early Medieval Egypt. The post traces the origins of angelic traditions across Greek magical papyri, Jewish ritual, and Christian liturgical practice, then outlines the main groups of angels found in Coptic magical texts — including the Twenty-Four Presbyters, the Four Living Creatures, archangels, and infernal angels like Tartarouchos. It also notes how different angels became associated with specific magical purposes, such as healing, protection, curses, and love spells, setting the stage for deeper dives in subsequent posts. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 15 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-07-30). **TL;DR:** The community is genuinely engaged and curious, with ethnic Copts sharing personal cultural context about syncretism and language, while others enjoy the historical depth; a few comments are tangential jokes about expecting a software framework. **Sentiment:** 70% positive · 20% mixed · 10% skeptical **The case for** - Ethnic Copt commenters add valuable first-hand cultural context about surviving syncretism between ancient Egyptian religion and Coptic Christianity, including language and ceremony. - The post prompted interesting linguistic discussion about Coptic script's relationship to Demotic and hieroglyphs. - One commenter draws a compelling parallel between the psychology of ancient magical texts and modern internet subcultures (anarchy files, BBS culture). **The pushback** - A commenter notes that most of the spells/charms described would be considered heretical by modern Copts, limiting the post's relevance to living practice. **By community** - hackernews (positive): Commenters are broadly enthusiastic, with ethnic Copts enriching the discussion with personal cultural knowledge and lively tangents on linguistics and script origins. **Hottest debate:** Whether Coptic script characters derive from hieroglyphs directly or primarily from Greek (with only a small subset from Demotic). **Open questions** - How much of the magical tradition described survives in any form in contemporary Coptic practice? - What is the precise relationship between the seven non-Greek Coptic letters and their Demotic antecedents? **Highlights** > Disclaimer: This is just a comparison to modern practice for academic interest. Offering a perspective as an ethnic Copt, it is notable that most of the charms, “spells”, whatever you would call them, shown here, would be considered heretical today by Copts, though with the exception of basic crosses and icons and inscriptions limited to that of protection. The love spells and and such are in many a cautionary tale told to kids growing up to avoid at risk of invoking evil, so to say. Most of those stories come from the period where the “old religion” and Christianity were in flux. Copts do also maintain a significant amount of syncretism with ancient Egyptian religion as well, both within language (typically, Egyptian Arabic words that are “odd” to middle eastern speakers are pulled from Coptic or earlier stages of Egyptian), and within ceremony (musical scales that do not sound “middle eastern” and are derivations of older Egyptian ceremony), and a belief that the Ankh, Hathor and Horus, etc. were precursors to modern Coptic religion. > — [dodongobongo on hackernews · 2 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49106590) > These documents always have a strong whiff of anarchy files about them to me. You're got copy-pasting of recipes between documents, warnings, threats, boasts, forbidden knowledge (the most delicious kind), wishful thinking dressed up as fact, pseudonymity, wisdom lineages, the lure of easy power, and recipes that don't actually work. The tone, to me, isn't a million miles away from a 90s-era BBS filled with geeky teenagers. The tools might change, but the psychology remains the same. > — [flir on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49108136) > > also many of the characters in the language are believed to be derived from hieroglyphs This is true insofar as all Western writing systems are ultimately descended from Egyptian Hieroglyphics, via the Phoenician script. In the case of Coptic most of the letters are rather transparently borrowed from Greek. Of course, Coptic is unusual in having added seven letters to the Greek alphabet for sounds not in Greek (Ϣ, Ϥ, Ϧ, Ϩ, Ϫ, Ϭ, Ϯ), and these were taken directly from the indigenous Egyptian writing system of the time, namely Demotic, itself a direct descendant of the Hieroglyphic script: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coptic_script#Letters_derived_.... > — [bradrn on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49109489) > As another ethnic Copt, I'm also very fascinated by the language and history, particularly the differences between the Bohairic and Sahidic dialects. > Copts do also maintain a significant amount of syncretism with ancient Egyptian religion as well, both within language (typically, Egyptian Arabic words that are “odd” to middle eastern speakers are pulled from Coptic or earlier stages of Egyptian) This is true and also many of the characters in the language are believed to be derived from hieroglyphs. > — [alpha\_squared on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49109405) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49061213) · 48 points · 15 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Medium](https://daily.dev/posts/medium-0diwbnswl) · Medium · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Egerton MS 1995](https://daily.dev/posts/egerton-ms-1995-o0kqzsbog) · Arthur O'Dwyer · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Medium](https://daily.dev/posts/medium-e0zlrh3x7) · Medium · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/angels-in-coptic-magic-i-introduction-kb0yxobun) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Angels in Coptic Magic I: Introduction","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/angels-in-coptic-magic-i-introduction-kb0yxobun","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/angels-in-coptic-magic-i-introduction-kb0yxobun"},"datePublished":"2026-07-30T11:49:18.704Z","dateModified":"2026-07-30T13:20:02.134Z","description":"An introduction to a new blog series on angels in Coptic magic, covering the concept of angels in Late Antique and early Medieval Egypt. 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