Historicising 'Western Learned Magic': Preliminary Remarks (original) (raw)

Introduction to Magic and Witchcraft in the West: Historiography

Introduces the historiographical framework within which magic has been the object of scholarly reflection and research over the last century and lays out the innovative overall structure of the volume: The Cambridge History of Magic and Witchcraft in the West: From Antiquity to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).

Western Learned Magic as an Entangled Tradition

Entangled Religions , 2023

The introduction to this special issue outlines the concept of Western learned magic and suggests to analyse it as an entangled tradition, thus calling for an interdisciplinary, transcultural and transreligious perspective on its history. A working heuristic of seven different types of entanglement in the history of Western learned magic is proposed, whereas special emphasis is placed on processes of ritual hybridisation. Entangled rituals are one of the most unique characteristics of Western learned magic and often mirror millenia-long processes of textual-ritual transmission across numerous cultural and religious boundaries. Inspired by this working heuristic of different types of entanglement in the history of Western learned magic, the introduction summarises the six contributions to this special issue. These contributions represent the fruits of a workshop on Western learned magic as an entangled tradition that was held at the Center for Religious Studies (CERES) at the University of Bochum on September 14-15, 2019.

Magic in the Modern World: Strategies of Repression and Legitimization

2017

Since the turn of the millennium it has become increasingly common for general histories of magic and witchcraft to include a section on the phenomenon of magic in the contemporary western world, but the precise relationship between contemporary manifestations of magical belief and their historical antecedents is rarely explored. This book, part of Pennsylvania State University’s important ‘Magic in History’ series, aims to put that right. It adopts an unusual ‘two track’ approach that examines both the ‘disenchantment’ of the modern world from the seventeenth-century onwards and the ‘re-enchantment’ of modernity offered by revivals of magic. The two sections of the book, ‘Magic and the Making of Modernity’ and ‘Magic in Modernity’ aim to accomplish these two aims, and the book’s ‘two track’ approach is also unusual in combining a study of historic critiques of magic with scholarship on more recent attempts to defend it.

Introduction: Modern Western Magic. Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism, 12 ( 1 ), special issue on Modern Western Magic, guest edited by Henrik Bogdan

Man kann verteidigen, dass das Konzept der Magie als Antithese zur westlichen Kultur auf vier polemischen Diskursen basiert. Zunächst gibt es die Annahme, dass Magie eine Form von 'primitivem' abergläubischem (oder nicht-rationalem) Denken ist. Zweitens gibt es die Ansicht, dass Magie etwas aus anderen Teilen der Welt und daher ein fremdes Element in der westlichen Kultur ist. Drittens gibt es den Diskurs über Magie als etwas, das im Gegensatz zum christlichen Glauben steht. Der vierte und letzte Diskurs ist die bezüglich der inhärent böse Natur der Magie. Die Dialektik zwischen polemischen und apologetischen Diskursen über Magie und die bedeutende Rolle der wissenschaftlichen Literatur in dieser dialektischen Beziehung sind wichtig, um Konstruktionen der modernen westlichen Magie zu verstehen.