Do you know about curse tablets?
2/ So to help Talia in dealing with skeeves who were sexting with her under false pretenses, let's discuss curse tablets. I actually have an infinitesimally small connection to scholarship on the subject.
3/ Curse tablets were ubiquitous in the ancient world, though "curse" makes it sound like they were all negative, which they weren't. The basic idea is this. Say you want to hurt your enemy, or get someone to have sex with you, or demand justice for some wrong.
4/ Basically whatever it was you were hankering for you'd take a small piece of super thin led and scrawl out a formulaic curse or incantation. Then you'd usually roll up the lead sheet, stick a nail through it and bury it in the ground. And that was pretty much it.
5/ In a sense it's kind of like Twitter, but shit-posting to the gods rather than your followers. In any case, the efficacy of doing this was widely believed. And across what we'd call "religions". One of my college mentors, John Gager, is a historian of ancient religions.
6/ He became interested in these twenty-five years ago or so. And one of the themes of his study of them is that the distinction between the "magic" element of this and "religion" really doesn't hold up. A lot of the curse tablets that have been dug up are appealing to ...
7/ Apollo or Jupiter or whatever Greek or Roman god. But there are also Jewish and Christian ones. When I was in college Gager was putting together a book bringing together all the then-extant curse tablets, with translations etc. I did a bit of research assistant work on that.
8/ Here's that book. amazon.com/Curse-Tablets-… A key concern here is the magic/religion debate.
9/ They are a fascinating window into every day life since they are about revenge, love, who's winning at the race track, binding people to commitments, etc. Everything that goes into life. Here's what one looks like, after being unfurled. 
10/ Here's another, suitably punched through with nails.
11/ Looking back over some of the transcriptions of the curse tablets, you can actually see them as an archaic for of incel/MRA activism, since quite a lot of them invoke the power of some god to make a woman want to have sex with the guy who's writing the hex/curse.
12/ So here for instance is a curse tablet for 2nd or 3rd century CE Egypt. Like I said, basically an archaic MRA type thing in the form of curse tablets. No agency for Theodotis.
13/ Or here's another recipe for a curse tablet with the addition of figurines for extra juice. Sort of an ancient Reddit board comment.
