Magical texts from the ancient and medieval Mediterranean region attract increasing scholarly attention, giving rise to new interpretative issues as well as questions. In this paper (part of a larger joint project, titled “Structuring Magic”) we present some of the key issues, and the ways in which interdisciplinary DH projects can answer these questions. This paper discusses a type of “text that wasn't”, that is, magical symbols (‘charakteres’), an important phenomenon found in magical texts which is not textual in itself.
Saar et al. (2026) studied this question.