Who knows some "prayers" are actually theurgy?

[DetlefK]

1. It's funny how theurgy passes over into the occult.

The Renaissance in Europe was a complicated time for Christianity. Reformation, hysteria about witches, the 30-year between the catholic and evangelical power-blocs... and occult christian sects were springing up everywhere.

Those sects were a major problem for the christian mainstream, because those sects were largely based on the same biblical, jewish and philosophical scriptures as the christian mainstream, they just interpreted them differently.

Those sects and cults mixed Christianity with magic and there was a MASSIVE scholarly debate going on at the time, where people were arguing back and forth (on an entirely fact-free theoretical basis, of course) why these magical rituals DON'T work while prayers DO work.

For example, it was argued that any effect produced by a magical ritual is just a hallucination sent by Satan.