History of magic

The history of magic refers to the entire history of

events that from someones' perception were
impossible to occur, while from the perspective of
another person (often performing the magic/magic
trick, but could also refer to people in the future who
understood the science that caused the events) there
is a logical explanation. There is supernatural, ritual,
illusion, and dark magic, which some refer to as
witchcraft.
Ancient practitioners

Mesopotamia

Bronze protection plaque from the Neo-

Assyrian era showing the demon Lamashtu

Magic was invoked in many kinds of rituals and

medical formulae, and to counteract evil omens.
Defensive or legitimate magic in Mesopotamia
(asiputu or masmassutu in the Akkadian language)
were incantations and ritual practices intended to
alter specific realities. The ancient Mesopotamians
believed that magic was the only viable defense
against demons, ghosts, and evil sorcerers.[1] To
defend themselves against the spirits of those they
had wronged, they would leave offerings known as
kispu in the person's tomb in hope of appeasing
them.[2] If that failed, they also sometimes took a
figurine of the deceased and buried it in the ground,
demanding for the gods to eradicate the spirit, or
force it to leave the person alone.[3]

The ancient Mesopotamians also used magic

intending to protect themselves from evil sorcerers
who might place curses on them.[4] Black magic as a
category didn't exist in ancient Mesopotamia, and a
person legitimately using magic to defend
themselves against illegitimate magic would use
exactly the same techniques.[4] The only major
difference was the fact that curses were enacted in
secret;[4] whereas a defense against sorcery was
conducted in the open, in front of an audience if
possible.[4] One ritual to punish a sorcerer was
known as Maqlû, or "The Burning".[4] The person
viewed as being afflicted by witchcraft would create
an effigy of the sorcerer and put it on trial at night.[4]
Then, once the nature of the sorcerer's crimes had
been determined, the person would burn the effigy
and thereby break the sorcerer's power over them.[4]

The ancient Mesopotamians also performed magical

rituals to purify themselves of sins committed
unknowingly.[4] One such ritual was known as the
Šurpu, or "Burning",[5] in which the caster of the
spell would transfer the guilt for all their misdeeds
onto various objects such as a strip of dates, an
onion, and a tuft of wool.[5] The person would then
burn the objects and thereby purify themself of all
sins that they might have unknowingly committed.[5]
A whole genre of love spells existed.[6] Such spells
were believed to cause a person to fall in love with
another person, restore love which had faded, or
cause a male sexual partner to be able to sustain an
erection when he had previously been unable.[6]
Other spells were used to reconcile a man with his
patron deity or to reconcile a wife with a husband
who had been neglecting her.[7]
The ancient Mesopotamians made no distinction
between rational science and magic.[8][9][10] When a
person became ill, doctors would prescribe both
magical formulas to be recited as well as medicinal
treatments.[9][10][11] Most magical rituals were intended
to be performed by an āšipu, an expert in the
magical arts.[9][10][11][12] The profession was generally
passed down from generation to generation[11] and
was held in extremely high regard and often served
as advisors to kings and great leaders.[13] An āšipu
probably served not only as a magician, but also as a
physician, a priest, a scribe, and a scholar.[13]

The Sumerian god Enki, who was later syncretized

with the East Semitic god Ea, was closely associated
with magic and incantations;[14] he was the patron god
of the bārȗ and the ašipū and was widely regarded
as the ultimate source of all arcane knowledge.[15][16][17]
The ancient Mesopotamians also believed in omens,
which could come when solicited or unsolicited.[18]
Regardless of how they came, omens were always
taken with the utmost seriousness.[18]

Mandaic-language incantation bowl

A common set of shared assumptions about the

causes of evil and how to avert it are found in a form
of early protective magic called incantation bowl or
magic bowls. The bowls were produced in the Middle
East, particularly in Upper Mesopotamia and Syria,
what is now Iraq and Iran, and fairly popular during
the sixth to eighth centuries.[19][20] The bowls were
buried face down and were meant to capture
demons. They were commonly placed under the
threshold, courtyards, in the corner of the homes of
the recently deceased and in cemeteries.[21]

Egypt

Ancient Egyptian Eye of Horus amulet

In ancient Egypt (Kemet in the Egyptian language),

Magic (personified as the god heka) was an integral
part of religion and culture which is known to us
through a substantial corpus of texts which are
products of the Egyptian tradition.[22]

While the category magic has been contentious for

modern Egyptology, there is clear support for its
applicability from ancient terminology.[23] The Coptic
term hik is the descendant of the pharaonic term
heka, which, unlike its Coptic counterpart, had no
connotation of impiety or illegality, and is attested
from the Old Kingdom through to the Roman era.[23]
Heka was considered morally neutral and was
applied to the practices and beliefs of both foreigners
and Egyptians alike.[24] The Instructions for
Merikare informs us that heka was a beneficence
gifted by the creator to humanity "... in order to be
weapons to ward off the blow of events".[25]
Magic was practiced by both the literate priestly
hierarchy and by illiterate farmers and herdsmen,
and the principle of heka underlay all ritual activity,
both in the temples and in private settings.[26]

The main principle of heka is centered on the power

of words to bring things into being.[27]: 54  Karenga[28]
explains the pivotal power of words and their vital
ontological role as the primary tool used by the
creator to bring the manifest world into being.
Because humans were understood to share a divine
nature with the gods, snnw ntr (images of the god),
the same power to use words creatively that the gods
have is shared by humans.[29]
 Illustration from the Book of the Dead of Hunefer showing the
Opening of the Mouth ceremony being performed before the
tomb

The use of amulets, (meket) was widespread among

both living and dead ancient Egyptians.[30][27]: 66  They
were used for protection and as a means of
"...reaffirming the fundamental fairness of the
universe".[31] The oldest amulets found are from the
predynastic Badarian Period, and they persisted
through to Roman times.[32]
Book of the Dead

The Book of the Dead were a series of texts written

in Ancient Egypt with various spells to help guide the
Egyptians in the afterlife.

The interior walls of the pyramid of Unas, the final

pharaoh of the Egyptian Fifth Dynasty, are covered
in hundreds of magical spells and inscriptions,
running from floor to ceiling in vertical
columns.[27]: 54  These inscriptions are known as the
Pyramid Texts[27]: 54  and they contain spells needed
by the pharaoh in order to survive in the
Afterlife.[27]: 54  The Pyramid Texts were strictly for
royalty only;[27]: 56  the spells were kept secret from
commoners and were written only inside royal
tombs.[27]: 56  During the chaos and unrest of the First
Intermediate Period, however, tomb robbers broke
into the pyramids and saw the magical
inscriptions.[27]: 56  Commoners began learning the
spells and, by the beginning of the Middle Kingdom,
commoners began inscribing similar writings on the
sides of their own coffins, hoping that doing so
would ensure their own survival in the afterlife.[27]: 56 
These writings are known as the Coffin Texts.[27]: 56 

After a person died, his or her corpse would be

mummified and wrapped in linen bandages to
ensure that the deceased's body would survive for as
long as possible[33] because the Egyptians believed
that a person's soul could only survive in the
afterlife for as long as his or her physical body
survived here on earth.[33] The last ceremony before
a person's body was sealed away inside the tomb was
known as the Opening of the Mouth.[33] In this ritual,
the priests would touch various magical instruments
to various parts of the deceased's body, thereby
giving the deceased the ability to see, hear, taste, and
smell in the afterlife.[33]

Spells

The mystical Spell 17, from the Papyrus of Ani.

The vignette at the top illustrates, from left to
right, the god Heh as a representation of the
Sea; a gateway to the realm of Osiris; the Eye of
Horus; the celestial cow Mehet-Weret; and a
human head rising from a coffin, guarded by
the four Sons of Horus.[34]

The Book of the Dead is made up of a number of

individual texts and their accompanying
illustrations. Most sub-texts begin with the word ro,
which can mean "mouth", "speech", "spell",
"utterance", "incantation", or "chapter of a book". This
ambiguity reflects the similarity in Egyptian thought
between ritual speech and magical power.[35] In the
context of the Book of the Dead, it is typically
translated as either chapter or spell. In this article,
the word spell is used.

At present, some 192 spells are known,[36] though no

single manuscript contains them all. They served a
range of purposes. Some are intended to give the
deceased mystical knowledge in the afterlife, or
perhaps to identify them with the gods: for instance,
Spell 17 is an obscure and lengthy description of the
god Atum.[37] Others are incantations to ensure the
different elements of the dead person's being were
preserved and reunited, and to give the deceased
control over the world around him. Still others
protect the deceased from various hostile forces or
guide him through the underworld past various
obstacles. Famously, two spells also deal with the
judgement of the deceased in the Weighing of the
Heart ritual.

Such spells as 26–30, and sometimes spells 6 and 126,

relate to the heart and were inscribed on scarabs.[38]

The texts and images of the Book of the Dead were

magical as well as religious. Magic was as legitimate
an activity as praying to the gods, even when the
magic was aimed at controlling the gods
themselves.[39] Indeed, there was little distinction for
the Ancient Egyptians between magical and religious
practice.[40] The concept of magic (heka) was also
intimately linked with the spoken and written word.
The act of speaking a ritual formula was an act of
creation;[41] there is a sense in which action and
speech were one and the same thing.[40] The magical
power of words extended to the written word.
Hieroglyphic script was held to have been invented
by the god Thoth, and the hieroglyphs themselves
were powerful. Written words conveyed the full
force of a spell.[41] This was even true when the text
was abbreviated or omitted, as often occurred in
later Book of the Dead scrolls, particularly if the
accompanying images were present.[42] The
Egyptians also believed that knowing the name of
something gave power over it; thus, the Book of the
Dead equips its owner with the mystical names of
many of the entities he would encounter in the
afterlife, giving him power over them.[43]

Egyptian Book of the Dead, painted on a coffin

fragment (c. 747–656 BCE): Spell 79 (attaching
the soul to the body); and Spell 80 (preventing
incoherent speech)

The spells of the Book of the Dead made use of

several magical techniques which can also be seen in
other areas of Egyptian life. A number of spells are
for magical amulets, which would protect the
deceased from harm. In addition to being
represented on a Book of the Dead papyrus, these
spells appeared on amulets wound into the
wrappings of a mummy.[39] Everyday magic made
use of amulets in huge numbers. Other items in
direct contact with the body in the tomb, such as
headrests, were also considered to have amuletic
value.[44] A number of spells also refer to Egyptian
beliefs about the magical healing power of saliva.[39]

Judea

Halakha (Jewish religious law) forbids divination and

other forms of soothsaying, and the Talmud lists
many persistent yet condemned divining
practices.[45] Practical Kabbalah in historical Judaism,
is a branch of the Jewish mystical tradition that
concerns the use of magic. It was considered
permitted white magic by its practitioners, reserved
for the elite, who could separate its spiritual source
from Qliphoth realms of evil if performed under
circumstances that were holy (Q-D-Š) and pure
(‫טומאה וטהרה‬, tvmh vthrh[46]). The concern of
overstepping Judaism's strong prohibitions of
impure magic ensured it remained a minor tradition
in Jewish history. Its teachings include the use of
Divine and angelic names for amulets and
incantations.[47] These magical practices of Judaic folk
religion which became part of practical Kabbalah
date from Talmudic times.[47] The Talmud mentions
the use of charms for healing, and a wide range of
magical cures were sanctioned by rabbis. It was
ruled that any practice actually producing a cure
was not to be regarded superstitiously and there has
been the widespread practice of medicinal amulets,
and folk remedies (segullot) in Jewish societies
across time and geography.[48]

Jewish law views the practice of witchcraft as being

laden with idolatry and/or necromancy; both being
serious theological and practical offenses in Judaism.
Although Maimonides vigorously denied the efficacy
of all methods of witchcraft, and claimed that the
Biblical prohibitions regarding it were precisely to
wean the Israelites from practices related to idolatry.
It is acknowledged that while magic exists, it is
forbidden to practice it on the basis that it usually
involves the worship of other gods. Rabbis of the
Talmud also condemned magic when it produced
something other than illusion, giving the example of
two men who use magic to pick cucumbers.[49] The
one who creates the illusion of picking cucumbers
should not be condemned, only the one who actually
picks the cucumbers through magic.

Although magic was forbidden by Levitical law in the

Hebrew Bible, it was widely practised in the late
Second Temple period, and particularly well
documented in the period following the destruction
of the temple into the third, fourth, and fifth
centuries CE.[50][51][52] Some of the rabbis practiced
"magic" themselves or taught the subject. For
instance, Rava (amora) created a golem and sent it to
Rav Zeira, and Hanina and Hoshaiah studied every
Friday together and created a small calf to eat on
Shabbat.[53] In these cases, the "magic" was seen more
as divine miracles (i.e., coming from God rather than
"unclean" forces) than as witchcraft.

A subcategory of incantation bowls are those used in

Jewish magical practice. Aramaic incantation bowls
are an important source of knowledge about Jewish
magical practices.[54][55][56][57][58]

Judaism does make it clear that Jews shall not try to

learn about the ways of witches[59] and that witches
are to be put to death.[60] Judaism's most famous
reference to a medium is undoubtedly the Witch of
Endor whom Saul consults, as recounted in 1 Samuel
28.
Greco-Roman world

Hecate, the ancient Greek goddess of

magic

The English word magic has its origins in ancient

Greece.[61] During the late sixth and early fifth
centuries BCE, the Persian maguš was Graecicized
and introduced into the ancient Greek language as
μάγος and μαγεία.[62] In doing so it transformed
meaning, gaining negative connotations, with the
magos being regarded as a charlatan whose ritual
practices were fraudulent, strange, unconventional,
and dangerous.[62] As noted by Davies, for the ancient
Greeks—and subsequently for the ancient Romans
—"magic was not distinct from religion but rather an
unwelcome, improper expression of it—the religion
of the other".[63] The historian Richard Gordon
suggested that for the ancient Greeks, being accused
of practicing magic was "a form of insult".[64]

This change in meaning was influenced by the

military conflicts that the Greek city-states were then
engaged in against the Persian Empire.[62] In this
context, the term makes appearances in such
surviving text as Sophocles' Oedipus Rex,
Hippocrates' De morbo sacro, and Gorgias'
Encomium of Helen.[62] In Sophocles' play, for
example, the character Oedipus derogatorily refers
to the seer Tiresius as a magos—in this context
meaning something akin to quack or charlatan—
reflecting how this epithet was no longer reserved
only for Persians.[65]

In the first century BCE, the Greek concept of the

magos was adopted into Latin and used by a number
of ancient Roman writers as magus and magia.[62]
The earliest known Latin use of the term was in
Virgil's Eclogue, written around 40 BCE, which
makes reference to magicis... sacris (magic rites).[66]
The Romans already had other terms for the
negative use of supernatural powers, such as
veneficus and saga.[66] The Roman use of the term
was similar to that of the Greeks, but placed greater
emphasis on the judicial application of it.[62] Within
the Roman Empire, laws would be introduced
criminalising things regarded as magic.[67]

In ancient Roman society, magic was associated with

societies to the east of the empire; the first century
CE writer Pliny the Elder for instance claimed that
magic had been created by the Iranian philosopher
Zoroaster, and that it had then been brought west into
Greece by the magician Osthanes, who accompanied
the military campaigns of the Persian King
Xerxes.[68]

Ancient Greek scholarship of the 20th century,

almost certainly influenced by Christianising
preconceptions of the meanings of magic and
religion, and the wish to establish Greek culture as
the foundation of Western rationality, developed a
theory of ancient Greek magic as primitive and
insignificant, and thereby essentially separate from
Homeric, communal (polis) religion. Since the last
decade of the century, however, recognising the
ubiquity and respectability of acts such as
katadesmoi (binding spells), described as magic by
modern and ancient observers alike, scholars have
been compelled to abandon this viewpoint.[69]: 90–95 
The Greek word mageuo (practice magic) itself
derives from the word Magos, originally simply the
Greek name for a Persian tribe known for practicing
religion.[70] Non-civic mystery cults have been
similarly re-evaluated:[69]: 97–98 
 the choices which lay outside
the range of cults did not just
add additional options to the
civic menu, but ... sometimes
incorporated critiques of the
civic cults and Panhellenic
myths or were genuine
alternatives to them.

— Simon Price, Religions of

the Ancient Greeks (1999)[71]

Katadesmoi (Latin: defixiones), curses inscribed on

wax or lead tablets and buried underground, were
frequently executed by all strata of Greek society,
sometimes to protect the entire polis.[69]: 95–96 
Communal curses carried out in public declined
after the Greek classical period, but private curses
remained common throughout antiquity.[72] They
were distinguished as magical by their
individualistic, instrumental and sinister
qualities.[69]: 96  These qualities, and their perceived
deviation from inherently mutable cultural
constructs of normality, most clearly delineate
ancient magic from the religious rituals of which
they form a part.[69]: 102–103 

A large number of magical papyri, in Greek, Coptic,

and Demotic, have been recovered and translated.[73]
They contain early instances of:
 the use of magic words said to have the power to
command spirits;[74]
the use of mysterious symbols or sigils which are
thought to be useful when invoking or evoking
spirits.[75]

The practice of magic was banned in the late Roman

world, and the Codex Theodosianus (438 AD) states:[76]

If any wizard therefore or

person imbued with magical
contamination who is called by
custom of the people a
magician...should be
apprehended in my retinue, or in
that of the Caesar, he shall not
 escape punishment and torture
by the protection of his rank.

Middle Ages
In the first century CE, early Christian authors
absorbed the Greco-Roman concept of magic and
incorporated it into their developing Christian
theology.[67] These Christians retained the already
implied Greco-Roman negative stereotypes of the
term and extented them by incorporating conceptual
patterns borrowed from Jewish thought, in
particular the opposition of magic and miracle.[67]
Some early Christian authors followed the Greek-
Roman thinking by ascribing the origin of magic to
the human realm, mainly to Zoroaster and Osthanes.
The Christian view was that magic was a product of
the Babylonians, Persians, or Egyptians.[77] The
Christians shared with earlier classical culture the
idea that magic was something distinct from proper
religion, although drew their distinction between the
two in different ways.[78]

A 17th-century depiction of the medieval writer

Isidore of Seville, who provided a list of
activities he regarded as magical

For early Christian writers like Augustine of Hippo,

magic did not merely constitute fraudulent and
unsanctioned ritual practices, but was the very
opposite of religion because it relied upon
cooperation from demons, the henchmen of Satan.[67]
In this, Christian ideas of magic were closely linked
to the Christian category of paganism,[79] and both
magic and paganism were regarded as belonging
under the broader category of superstitio
(superstition), another term borrowed from pre-
Christian Roman culture.[78] This Christian emphasis
on the inherent immorality and wrongness of magic
as something conflicting with good religion was far
starker than the approach in the other large
monotheistic religions of the period, Judaism and
Islam.[80] For instance, while Christians regarded
demons as inherently evil, the jinn—comparable
entities in Islamic mythology—were perceived as
more ambivalent figures by Muslims.[80]
The model of the magician in Christian thought was
provided by Simon Magus, (Simon the Magician), a
figure who opposed Saint Peter in both the Acts of
the Apostles and the apocryphal yet influential Acts
of Peter.[81] The historian Michael D. Bailey stated that
in medieval Europe, magic was a "relatively broad
and encompassing category".[82] Christian theologians
believed that there were multiple different forms of
magic, the majority of which were types of
divination, for instance, Isidore of Seville produced a
catalogue of things he regarded as magic in which he
listed divination by the four elements i.e. geomancy,
hydromancy, aeromancy, and pyromancy, as well as
by observation of natural phenomena e.g. the flight of
birds and astrology. He also mentioned enchantment
and ligatures (the medical use of magical objects
bound to the patient) as being magical.[83] Medieval
Europe also saw magic come to be associated with
the Old Testament figure of Solomon; various
grimoires, or books outlining magical practices,
were written that claimed to have been written by
Solomon, most notably the Key of Solomon.[84]

In early medieval Europe, magia was a term of

condemnation.[85] In medieval Europe, Christians
often suspected Muslims and Jews of engaging in
magical practices;[86] in certain cases, these perceived
magical rites—including the alleged Jewish sacrifice
of Christian children—resulted in Christians
massacring these religious minorities.[87] Christian
groups often also accused other, rival Christian
groups—which they regarded as heretical—of
engaging in magical activities.[81] Medieval Europe
also saw the term maleficium applied to forms of
magic that were conducted with the intention of
causing harm.[82] The later Middle Ages saw words
for these practitioners of harmful magical acts
appear in various European languages: sorcière in
French, Hexe in German, strega in Italian, and bruja
in Spanish.[88] The English term for malevolent
practitioners of magic, witch, derived from the
earlier Old English term wicce.[88]

Ars Magica or magic is a major component and

supporting contribution to the belief and practice of
spiritual, and in many cases, physical healing
throughout the Middle Ages. Emanating from many
modern interpretations lies a trail of misconceptions
about magic, one of the largest revolving around
wickedness or the existence of nefarious beings who
practice it. These misinterpretations stem from
numerous acts or rituals that have been performed
throughout antiquity, and due to their exoticism
from the commoner's perspective, the rituals
invoked uneasiness and an even stronger sense of
dismissal.[89][90]

An excerpt from Sefer Raziel HaMalakh,

featuring various magical sigils (‫סגולות‬
segulot in Hebrew)
In the Medieval Jewish view, the separation of the
mystical and magical elements of Kabbalah, dividing
it into speculative theological Kabbalah (Kabbalah
Iyyunit) with its meditative traditions, and theurgic
practical Kabbalah (Kabbalah Ma'asit), had occurred
by the beginning of the 14th century.[91]

One societal force in the Middle Ages more powerful

than the singular commoner, the Christian Church,
rejected magic as a whole because it was viewed as a
means of tampering with the natural world in a
supernatural manner associated with the biblical
verses of Deuteronomy 18:9–12. Despite the many
negative connotations which surround the term
magic, there exist many elements that are seen in a
divine or holy light.[92]
Diversified instruments or rituals used in medieval
magic include, but are not limited to: various
amulets, talismans, potions, as well as specific
chants, dances, and prayers. Along with these rituals
are the adversely imbued notions of demonic
participation which influence of them. The idea that
magic was devised, taught, and worked by demons
would have seemed reasonable to anyone who read
the Greek magical papyri or the Sefer-ha-Razim and
found that healing magic appeared alongside rituals
for killing people, gaining wealth, or personal
advantage, and coercing women into sexual
submission.[93] Archaeology is contributing to a
fuller understanding of ritual practices performed
in the home, on the body and in monastic and church
settings.[94][95]
The Islamic reaction towards magic did not condemn
magic in general and distinguished between magic
which can heal sickness and possession, and
sorcery. The former is therefore a special gift from
God, while the latter is achieved through help of Jinn
and devils. Ibn al-Nadim held that exorcists gain
their power by their obedience to God, while
sorcerers please the devils by acts of disobedience
and sacrifices and they in return do him a favor.[96]
According to Ibn Arabi, Al-Ḥajjāj ibn Yusuf al-
Shubarbuli was able to walk on water due to his
piety.[97] According to the Quran 2:102, magic was also
taught to humans by devils and the fallen angels
Harut and Marut.[98]
 Frontispiece of an English translation of
Natural Magick published in London in 1658

During the early modern period, the concept of

magic underwent a more positive reassessment
through the development of the concept of magia
naturalis (natural magic).[67] This was a term
introduced and developed by two Italian humanists,
Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola.[67]
For them, magia was viewed as an elemental force
pervading many natural processes,[67] and thus was
fundamentally distinct from the mainstream
Christian idea of demonic magic.[99] Their ideas
influenced an array of later philosophers and
writers, among them Paracelsus, Giordano Bruno,
Johannes Reuchlin, and Johannes Trithemius.[67]
According to the historian Richard Kieckhefer, the
concept of magia naturalis took "firm hold in
European culture" during the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries,[100] attracting the interest of
natural philosophers of various theoretical
orientations, including Aristotelians, Neoplatonists,
and Hermeticists.[101]

Adherents of this position argued that magia could

appear in both good and bad forms; in 1625, the
French librarian Gabriel Naudé wrote his Apology
for all the Wise Men Falsely Suspected of Magic, in
which he distinguished "Mosoaicall Magick"—which
he claimed came from God and included prophecies,
miracles, and speaking in tongues—from "geotick"
magic caused by demons.[102] While the proponents of
magia naturalis insisted that this did not rely on the
actions of demons, critics disagreed, arguing that the
demons had simply deceived these magicians.[103] By
the seventeenth century the concept of magia
naturalis had moved in increasingly 'naturalistic'
directions, with the distinctions between it and
science becoming blurred.[104] The validity of magia
naturalis as a concept for understanding the
universe then came under increasing criticism
during the Age of Enlightenment in the eighteenth
century.[105]
Despite the attempt to reclaim the term magia for use
in a positive sense, it did not supplant traditional
attitudes toward magic in the West, which remained
largely negative.[105] At the same time as magia
naturalis was attracting interest and was largely
tolerated, Europe saw an active persecution of
accused witches believed to be guilty of maleficia.[101]
Reflecting the term's continued negative associations,
Protestants often sought to denigrate Roman Catholic
sacramental and devotional practices as being
magical rather than religious.[106] Many Roman
Catholics were concerned by this allegation and for
several centuries various Roman Catholic writers
devoted attention to arguing that their practices were
religious rather than magical.[107] At the same time,
Protestants often used the accusation of magic
against other Protestant groups which they were in
contest with.[108] In this way, the concept of magic was
used to prescribe what was appropriate as religious
belief and practice.[107] Similar claims were also being
made in the Islamic world during this period. The
Arabian cleric Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab—
founder of Wahhabism—for instance condemned a
range of customs and practices such as divination
and the veneration of spirits as sihr, which he in
turn claimed was a form of shirk, the sin of
idolatry.[109]

Witchcraft in Medieval Europe

In the early Middle Ages, there were those who both

spoke against witchcraft, and those who spoke
against accusing others of witchcraft (at all). For
example, the Pactus Legis Alamannorum, an early
7th-century code of laws of the Alemanni
confederation of Germanic tribes, lists witchcraft as
a punishable crime on equal terms with poisoning. If
a free man accuses a free woman of witchcraft or
poisoning, the accused may be disculpated either by
twelve people swearing an oath on her innocence or
by one of her relatives defending her in a trial by
combat. In this case, the accuser is required to pay a
fine (Pactus Legis Alamannorum 13). In contrast,
Charlemagne prescribed the death penalty for
anyone who would burn witches,[110] as seen when he
imposed Christianity upon the people of Saxony in
789 and he proclaimed:
 If anyone, deceived by the Devil,
shall believe, as is customary
among pagans, that any man or
woman is a night-witch, and
eats men, and on that account
burn that person to death... he
shall be executed.[111]

Similarly, the Lombard code of 643 states:

Let nobody presume to kill a

foreign serving maid or female
slave as a witch, for it is not
possible, nor ought to be
believed by Christian minds.[111]
This conforms to the thoughts of Saint Augustine of
Hippo, who taught that witchcraft did not exist and
that the belief in it was heretical.[112]

In the Late Middle Ages, witch trials started

becoming more accepted if the accusations of
witchcraft were related to heresy. However,
accusations of witchcraft could be for political
reasons too, such as in 1425 when Veronika of
Desenice was accused of witchcraft and murdered
even though she was acquitted by a court because
her father-in-law didn't want her to marry his
son.[113] The trial of Joan of Arc in 1431 may be the
most famous witch trial of the Middle Ages and can
be seen as the beginning of the witch trials of the
early modern era. A young woman who led France
to victory during the Hundred Years' War, she was
sold to the English and accused of heresy because
she believed God had designated her to defend her
country from invasion. While her capture was
initially political, the trial quickly turned to focusing
on her claims of divine guidance, leading to heresy
and witchcraft being the main focus of her trial. She
was given the choice to renounce her divine visions
and to stop wearing soldier's clothing, or to be put to
death. She renounced her visions and stopped
wearing soldier's clothing, but only for four days.
Since she again had professed her belief in divine
guidance and began wearing men's clothes, she was
convicted of heresy and burnt alive at the stake—a
punishment that at the time was felt only necessary
for witches.[114]
Renaissance practitioners

Woodcut illustration from an edition of Pliny

the Elder's Naturalis Historia (1582)

The term "Renaissance magic" originates in 16th-

century Renaissance magic, referring to practices
described in various Medieval and Renaissance
grimoires and in collections such as that of Johannes
Hartlieb. Georg Pictor uses the term synonymously
with goetia.

James Sanford in his 1569 translation of Heinrich

Cornelius Agrippa's 1526 De incertitudine et vanitate
scientiarum has "The partes of ceremoniall Magicke
be Geocie, and Theurgie". For Agrippa, ceremonial
magic was in opposition to natural magic. While he
had his misgivings about natural magic, which
included astrology, alchemy, and also what we would
today consider fields of natural science, such as
botany, he was nevertheless prepared to accept it as
"the highest peak of natural philosophy". Ceremonial
magic, on the other hand, which included all sorts of
communication with spirits, including necromancy
and witchcraft, he denounced in its entirety as
impious disobedience towards God.[115]

Portrait of Gemistus Pletho, detail of

a fresco by acquaintance Benozzo
Gozzoli, Palazzo Medici Riccardi,
Florence, Italy
Both bourgeoisie and nobility in the 15th and 16th
centuries showed great fascination with the seven
artes magicae, which exerted an exotic charm by
their ascription to Arabic, Jewish, Romani, and
Egyptian sources. There was great uncertainty in
distinguishing practices of vain superstition,
blasphemous occultism, and perfectly sound
scholarly knowledge or pious ritual. Intellectual and
spiritual tensions erupted in the Early Modern witch
craze, further reinforced by the turmoils of the
Protestant Reformation, especially in Germany,
England, and Scotland.[116] The people during this
time found that the existence of magic was
something that could answer the questions that they
could not explain through science. To them it was
suggesting that while science may explain reason,
magic could explain "unreason".[117]

Renaissance humanism saw a resurgence in

hermeticism and Neo-Platonic varieties of
ceremonial magic. The Renaissance, on the other
hand, saw the rise of science, in such forms as the
dethronement of the Ptolemaic theory of the
universe, the distinction of astronomy from
astrology, and of chemistry from alchemy.[116]

In Hasidism, the displacement of practical Kabbalah

using directly magical means, by conceptual and
meditative trends gained much further emphasis,
while simultaneously instituting meditative theurgy
for material blessings at the heart of its social
mysticism.[118] Hasidism internalised Kabbalah
through the psychology of deveikut (cleaving to God),
and cleaving to the Tzadik (Hasidic Rebbe). In Hasidic
doctrine, the tzaddik channels Divine spiritual and
physical bounty to his followers by altering the Will
of God (uncovering a deeper concealed Will) through
his own deveikut and self-nullification. Dov Ber of
Mezeritch is concerned to distinguish this theory of
the Tzadik's will altering and deciding the Divine
Will, from directly magical process.[119]

In the nineteenth century, the Haitian

government began to legislate against Vodou,
describing it as a form of witchcraft; this
conflicted with Vodou practitioners' own
understanding of their religion.[120]
In the sixteenth century, European societies began to
conquer and colonise other continents around the
world, and as they did so they applied European
concepts of magic and witchcraft to practices found
among the peoples whom they encountered.[121]
Usually, these European colonialists regarded the
natives as primitives and savages whose belief
systems were diabolical and needed to be eradicated
and replaced by Christianity.[122] Because Europeans
typically viewed these non-European peoples as
being morally and intellectually inferior to
themselves, it was expected that such societies would
be more prone to practicing magic.[123] Women who
practiced traditional rites were labelled as witches by
the Europeans.[123]
In various cases, these imported European concepts
and terms underwent new transformations as they
merged with indigenous concepts.[124] In West Africa,
for instance, Portuguese travellers introduced their
term and concept of the feitiçaria (often translated as
sorcery) and the feitiço (spell) to the native
population, where it was transformed into the
concept of the fetish. When later Europeans
encountered these West African societies, they
wrongly believed that the fetiche was an indigenous
African term rather than the result of earlier inter-
continental encounters.[124] Sometimes, colonised
populations themselves adopted these European
concepts for their own purposes. In the early
nineteenth century, the newly independent Haitian
government of Jean-Jacques Dessalines began to
suppress the practice of Vodou, and in 1835 Haitian
law-codes categorised all Vodou practices as sortilège
(sorcery/witchcraft), suggesting that it was all
conducted with harmful intent, whereas among
Vodou practitioners the performance of harmful
rites was already given a separate and distinct
category, known as maji.[120]

Late Middle Ages to early Renaissance

Georgius Gemistus Pletho

Georgius Gemistus Pletho (c. 1355/1360 – 1452/1454)

was a Greek scholar[125] and one of the most
renowned philosophers of the late Byzantine era.[126]
He was a chief pioneer of the revival of Greek
scholarship in Western Europe.[127] As revealed in his
last literary work, the Nomoi or Book of Laws, which
he only circulated among close friends, he rejected
Christianity in favour of a return to the worship of
the classical Hellenic Gods, mixed with ancient
wisdom based on Zoroaster and the Magi.[128] Plethon
may also have been the source for Ficino's Orphic
system of natural magic.[129]

Marsilio Ficino from a fresco

painted by Domenico Ghirlandaio in
the Tornabuoni Chapel, Santa Maria
Novella, Florence
Marsilio Ficino

Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) was an Italian scholar and

Catholic priest who was one of the most influential
humanist philosophers of the early Italian
Renaissance. He was an astrologer, a reviver of
Neoplatonism in touch with the major academics of
his day, and the first translator of Plato's complete
extant works into Latin.[130] His Florentine Academy,
an attempt to revive Plato's Academy, influenced the
direction and tenor of the Italian Renaissance and the
development of European philosophy.

Ficino's letters, extending over the years 1474–1494,

survive and have been published. He wrote De amore
(Of Love) in 1484. De vita libri tres (Three books on
life), or De triplici vita[131] (The Book of Life),
published in 1489, provides a great deal of medical
and astrological advice for maintaining health and
vigor, as well as espousing the Neoplatonist view of
the world's ensoulment and its integration with the
human soul:

There will be some men or

other, superstitious and blind,
who see life plain in even the
lowest animals and the meanest
plants, but do not see life in the
heavens or the world ... Now if
those little men grant life to the
smallest particles of the world,
 what folly! what envy! neither to
know that the Whole, in which
'we live and move and have our
being,' is itself alive, nor to wish
this to be so.[132]

One metaphor for this integrated "aliveness" is

Ficino's astrology. In the Book of Life, he details the
interlinks between behavior and consequence. It
talks about a list of things that hold sway over a
man's destiny.

His medical works exerted considerable influence on

Renaissance physicians such as Paracelsus, with
whom he shared the perception on the unity of the
micro- and macrocosmos, and their interactions,
through somatic and psychological manifestations,
with the aim to investigate their signatures to cure
diseases. Those works, which were very popular at
the time, dealt with astrological and alchemical
concepts. Thus Ficino came under the suspicion of
heresy; especially after the publication of the third
book in 1489, which contained specific instructions
on healthful living in a world of demons and other
spirits.

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

Portrait from the Uffizi Gallery, in

Florence
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494) was an
Italian Renaissance nobleman and philosopher.[133] He
is famed for the events of 1486, when, at the age of 23,
he proposed to defend 900 theses on religion,
philosophy, natural philosophy, and magic against all
comers, for which he wrote the Oration on the
Dignity of Man, which has been called the "Manifesto
of the Renaissance",[134] and a key text of Renaissance
humanism and of what has been called the "Hermetic
Reformation".[135] He was the founder of the tradition
of Christian Kabbalah, a key element of early modern
Western esotericism. The 900 Theses was the first
printed book to be universally banned by the
Church.[136]
In November 1484, he settled for a time in Florence
and met Lorenzo de' Medici and Marsilio Ficino. It
was an astrologically auspicious day that Ficino had
chosen to publish his translations of the works of
Plato from Greek into Latin, under Lorenzo's
enthusiastic patronage. Pico appears to have
charmed both men, and despite Ficino's
philosophical differences, he was convinced of their
Saturnine affinity and the divine providence of his
arrival. Lorenzo would support and protect Pico
until his death in 1492.

Pico spent several months in Perugia and nearby

Fratta. It was there, as he wrote to Ficino, that "divine
Providence ... caused certain books to fall into my
hands. They are Chaldean books ... of Esdras, of
Zoroaster and of Melchior, oracles of the magi, which
contain a brief and dry interpretation of Chaldean
philosophy, but full of mystery."[137] It was also in
Perugia that Pico was introduced to the mystical
Hebrew Kabbalah, which fascinated him, as did the
late classical Hermetic writers, such as Hermes
Trismegistus. The Kabbalah and Hermetica were
thought in Pico's time to be as ancient as the Old
Testament.
 Johann Reuchlin, woodcut depiction
from 1516

Pico's tutor in Kabbalah was Rabbi Johannan

Alemanno (1435/8–c. 1510), who argued that the study
and mastery of magic was to be regarded as the final
stage of one's intellectual and spiritual education.[138]
This contact, initiated as a result of Christian interest
in Jewish mystical sources, resulted in
unprecedented mutual influence between Jewish and
Christian Renaissance thought.[138] The most original
of Pico's 900 theses concerned the Kabbalah. As a
result, he became the founder of the tradition known
as Christian Kabbalah, which went on to be a central
part of early modern Western esotericism.[136]

Pico's approach to different philosophies was one of

extreme syncretism, placing them in parallel, it has
been claimed, rather than attempting to describe a
developmental history.[139] Pico based his ideas
chiefly on Plato, as did his teacher, Marsilio Ficino,
but retained a deep respect for Aristotle. Although he
was a product of the studia humanitatis, Pico was
constitutionally an eclectic, and in some respects he
represented a reaction against the exaggerations of
pure humanism, defending what he believed to be the
best of the medieval and Islamic commentators, such
as Averroes and Avicenna, on Aristotle in a famous
long letter to Ermolao Barbaro in 1485.

It was always Pico's aim to reconcile the schools of

Plato and Aristotle since he believed they used
different words to express the same concepts. It was
perhaps for this reason his friends called him
"Princeps Concordiae", or "Prince of Harmony" (a
pun on Prince of Concordia, one of his family's
holdings).[140] Similarly, Pico believed that an
educated person should also study Hebrew and
Talmudic sources, and the Hermetics, because he
thought they represented the same concept of God
that is seen in the Old Testament, but in different
words.
In 1490 Pico met with Johannes Reuchlin (1455–1522),
who became heir to his Kabbalistic doctrines.
Following Pico, Reuchlin seemed to find in the
Kabbala a profound theosophy which might be of the
greatest service for the defence of Christianity and
the reconciliation of science with the mysteries of
faith, a common notion at that time. Reuchlin's
mystico-cabbalistic ideas and objects were
expounded in the De Verbo Mirifico, and finally in
the De Arte Cabbalistica (1517).[141]
 Title page of one of the Höllenzwang
grimoires attributed to D. Faustus
Magus Maximus Kundlingensis (18th
century)

The legendary Doctor Faustus

Johann Georg Faust (c. 1480 or 1466 – c. 1541) was a

German itinerant alchemist, astrologer and magician
of the German Renaissance. Because of his early
treatment as a figure in legend and literature, it is
difficult to establish historical facts about his life
with any certainty.
For the year 1506, there is a record of Faust
appearing as performer of magical tricks and
horoscopes in Gelnhausen. Over the following 30
years, there are numerous similar records spread
over southern Germany. Faust appeared as
physician, doctor of philosophy, alchemist, magician
and astrologer, and was often accused as a fraud. The
church denounced him as a blasphemer in league
with the devil.

On 23 February 1520, Faust was in Bamberg, doing a

horoscope for the bishop and the town, for which he
received the sum of 10 gulden.[142] In 1528, Faust
visited Ingolstadt, whence he was banished shortly
after.
In 1532 he seems to have tried to enter Nürnberg,
according to an unflattering note made by the junior
mayor of the city to "deny free passage to the great
nigromancer and sodomite Doctor Faustus" (Doctor
Faustus, dem großen Sodomiten und Nigromantico
in furt glait ablainen). Later records give a more
positive verdict; thus the Tübingen professor
Joachim Camerarius in 1536 recognises Faust as a
respectable astrologer, and physician Philipp Begardi
of Worms in 1539 praises his medical knowledge. The
last direct attestation of Faust dates to 25 June 1535,
when his presence was recorded in Münster during
the Anabaptist rebellion.
 Page of Praxis Magia Faustiana (1527)

Doctor Faust became the subject of folk legend in the

decades after his death, transmitted in chapbooks
beginning in the 1580s, and was notably adapted by
Christopher Marlowe in his play The Tragical
History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus (1604).
The Faustbuch tradition survived throughout the
early modern period, and the legend was again
adapted in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's closet
drama Faust (1808), Hector Berlioz's musical
composition La damnation de Faust (premiered 1846),
and Franz Liszt's Faust Symphony of 1857.

There are several prints of grimoires or magical

texts attributed to Faust. Some of them are artificially
dated to his lifetime, either to "1540", or to "1501",
"1510", etc., some even to unreasonably early dates,
such as "1405" and "1469". The prints in fact date to the
late 16th century, from ca. 1580, i.e. the same period of
the development of the Volksbuch tradition.[a]

Other early writers

Other writers on occult or magical topics during this

period include:
Johannes Hartlieb (1410-1468) wrote a compendium
on herbs in ca. 1440, and in 1456 the puch aller
verpoten kunst, ungelaubens und der zaubrey
(book on all forbidden arts, superstition and
sorcery) on the artes magicae, containing the
oldest known description of witches' flying
ointment.
Thomas Norton (b. <1436 – d. c. 1513) was an
English poet and alchemist best known for his 1477
alchemical poem, The Ordinal of Alchemy.
Johannes Trithemius (1462–1516) Trithemius' most
famous work, Steganographia (written c. 1499;
published Frankfurt, 1606), was placed on the
Index Librorum Prohibitorum in 1609[143] and
removed in 1900.[144] This book is in three
 volumes, and appears to be about magic—
specifically, about using spirits to communicate
over long distances. However, since the
publication of a decryption key to the first two
volumes in 1606, they have been known to be
actually concerned with cryptography and
steganography. Until recently, the third volume
was widely still believed to be solely about magic,
but the magical formulae have now been shown to
be covertexts for yet more material on
cryptography.[145][146]

Renaissance and Reformation

C. S. Lewis in his 1954 English Literature in the

Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama differentiates
what he takes to be the change of character in magic
as practiced in the Middle Ages as opposed to the
Renaissance:

Only an obstinate prejudice

about this period could blind us
to a certain change which comes
over the merely literary texts as
we pass from the Middle Ages to
the sixteenth century. In
medieval stories there is, in one
sense, plenty of “magic”. Merlin
does this or that “by his
subtilty”, Bercilak resumes his
severed head. But all these
passages have unmistakably the
note of “faerie” about them. But
in Spenser, Marlowe, Chapman,
and Shakespeare the subject is
treated quite differently. “He to
his studie goes”; books are
opened, terrible words
pronounced, souls imperiled.
The medieval author seems to
write for a public to whom
magic, like knight-errantry, is
part of the furniture of romance:
the Elizabethan, for a public
who feel that it might be going
on in the next street. [...] Neglect
 of this point has produced
strange readings of The
Tempest, which is in reality [...]
Shakespeare’s play on magia as
Macbeth is his play on
goeteia.[147]

Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa

Woodcut print portrait of Agrippa

The Cabalistic and Hermetic magic, which was

created by Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) and Giovanni
Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494), was made popular
in northern Europe, most notably England, by
Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486–1535), via his De
occulta philosophia libra tres (1531–1533). Agrippa
had revolutionary ideas about magical theory and
procedure that were widely circulated in the
Renaissance among those who sought out knowledge
of occult philosophy.

Agrippa himself was famous as

a scholar, physician jurist, and
astrologer, but throughout his
life he was continually
persecuted as a heretic. His
problems stemmed not only
 from his reputation as a
conjurer, but also from his
vehement criticism of the vices
of the ruling classes and of the
most respected intellectual and
religious authorities.

While some scholars and students viewed Agrippa as

a source of intellectual inspiration, to many others,
his practices were dubious and his beliefs serious.
The transitive side of magic is explored in Agrippa's
De occulta philosophia, and at times it is vulgarized.
Yet in Ficino and Pico and we never lose sight of
magic's solemn religious purposes: the magician
explores the secrets of nature so as to arouse
wonder at the works of God and to inspire a more
ardent worship and love of the Creator.

Considerable space is devoted to

examples of evil sorcery in De
occulta philosophia, and one
might easily come away from
the treatise with the impression
that Agrippa found witchcraft
as intriguing as benevolent
magic.[148]

However, at the peak of the witch trials, there was a

certain danger to be associated with witchcraft or
sorcery, and most learned authors took pains to
clearly renounce the practice of forbidden arts. Thus,
Agrippa while admitting that natural magic is the
highest form of natural philosophy unambiguously
rejects all forms of ceremonial magic (goetia or
necromancy).

1538 portrait of Paracelsus by

Augustin Hirschvogel

Paracelsus

Paracelsus (c. 1493[b]–1541) was a Swiss[c] physician,

alchemist, lay theologian, and philosopher of the
German Renaissance.[150][151] As a physician of the
early 16th century, Paracelsus held a natural affinity
with the Hermetic, Neoplatonic, and Pythagorean
philosophies central to the Renaissance, a world-view
exemplified by Marsilio Ficino and Pico della
Mirandola.

Astrology was a very important part of Paracelsus's

medicine and he was a practising astrologer – as
were many of the university-trained physicians
working at that time in Europe. Paracelsus devoted
several sections in his writings to the construction of
astrological talismans for curing disease. He largely
rejected the philosophies of Aristotle and Galen, as
well as the theory of humours. Although he did
accept the concept of the four elements as water, air,
fire, and earth, he saw them merely as a foundation
for other properties on which to build.[152] Paracelsus
also described four elemental beings, each
corresponding to one of the four elements:
Salamanders, which correspond to fire; Gnomes,
corresponding to earth; Undines, corresponding to
water; and Sylphs, corresponding to air.[153][154]

He often viewed fire as the Firmament that sat

between air and water in the heavens. Paracelsus
often uses an egg to help describe the elements. In
his early model, he wrote that air surrounded the
world like an egg shell. The egg white below the shell
is like fire because it has a type of chaos to it that
allows it to hold up earth and water. The earth and
water make up a globe which, in terms of the egg, is
the yolk. In De Meteoris, Paracelsus wrote that the
firmament is the heavens.[155]
Nostradamus

Nostradamus: original portrait by

his son Cesar

Nostradamus (1503–1566) was a French astrologer,

physician and reputed seer, who is best known for
allegedly predicting future events. Following popular
trends, he wrote an almanac for 1550, for the first
time in print Latinising his name to Nostradamus. He
was so encouraged by the almanac's success that he
decided to write one or more annually. Taken
together, they are known to have contained at least
6,338 prophecies,[156][157] as well as at least eleven
annual calendars, all of them starting on 1 January
and not, as is sometimes supposed, in March.

It was mainly in response to the almanacs that the

nobility and other prominent persons from far away
soon started asking for horoscopes and psychic
advice from him, though he generally expected his
clients to supply the birth charts on which these
would be based, rather than calculating them himself
as a professional astrologer would have done. When
obliged to attempt this himself on the basis of the
published tables of the day, he frequently made
errors and failed to adjust the figures for his clients'
place or time of birth.[158][159][160]
He then began his project of writing his book Les
Prophéties, a collection of 942 poetic quatrains[d]
which constitute the largely undated prophecies for
which he is most famous today. Feeling vulnerable to
opposition on religious grounds,[162] however, he
devised a method of obscuring his meaning by using
"Virgilianised" syntax, word games and a mixture of
other languages such as Greek, Italian, Latin, and
Provençal.[163] For technical reasons connected with
their publication in three instalments (the publisher
of the third and last instalment seems to have been
unwilling to start it in the middle of a "Century," or
book of 100 verses), the last fifty-eight quatrains of
the seventh "Century" have not survived in any
extant edition.
 Century I, Quatrain 1 in the 1555 Lyon
Bonhomme edition

Les Prophéties received a mixed reaction when it

was published. Some people thought Nostradamus
was a servant of evil, a fake, or insane, while many of
the elite evidently thought otherwise. Catherine de'
Medici, wife of King Henry II of France, was one of
Nostradamus's greatest admirers. After reading his
almanacs for 1555, which hinted at unnamed threats
to the royal family, she summoned him to Paris to
explain them and to draw up horoscopes for her
children. At the time, he feared that he would be
beheaded,[164] but by the time of his death in 1566,
Queen Catherine had made him Counselor and
Physician-in-Ordinary to her son, the young King
Charles IX of France.

In the years since the publication of his Les

Prophéties, Nostradamus has attracted many
supporters, who, along with much of the popular
press, credit him with having accurately predicted
many major world events.[165][166] Most academic
sources reject the notion that Nostradamus had any
genuine supernatural prophetic abilities and
maintain that the associations made between world
events and Nostradamus's quatrains are the result of
misinterpretations or mistranslations (sometimes
deliberate).[167] These academics also argue that
Nostradamus's predictions are characteristically
vague, meaning they could be applied to virtually
anything, and are useless for determining whether
their author had any real prophetic powers.

Johann Weyer

Engraving of Johann Weyer, age 60,

from De Lamiis Liber

Johann Weyer (1515–1588) was a Dutch physician,

occultist and demonologist, and a disciple and
follower of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa. He was
among the first to publish against the persecution of
witches. His most influential work is De Praestigiis
Daemonum et Incantationibus ac Venificiis ('On the
Illusions of the Demons and on Spells and Poisons';
1563).

Weyer criticised the Malleus Maleficarum and the

witch hunting by the Christian and Civil authorities;
he is said to have been the first person that used the
term mentally ill or melancholy to designate those
women accused of practicing witchcraft.[168] In a time
when witch trials and executions were just
beginning to be common, he sought to derogate the
law concerning witchcraft prosecution. He claimed
that not only were examples of magic largely
incredible but that the crime of witchcraft was
literally impossible, so that anyone who confessed to
the crime was likely to be suffering some mental
disturbance (mainly melancholy, a very flexible
category with many different symptoms).

While he defended the idea that the Devil's power

was not as strong as claimed by the orthodox
Christian churches in De Praestigiis Daemonum, he
defended also the idea that demons did have power
and could appear before people who called upon
them, creating illusions; but he commonly referred
to magicians and not to witches when speaking about
people who could create illusions, saying they were
heretics who were using the Devil's power to do it,
and when speaking on witches, he used the term
mentally ill.[169]
Moreover, Weyer did not only write the catalogue of
demons Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, but also gave
their description and the conjurations to invoke them
in the appropriate hour and in the name of God and
the Trinity, not to create illusions but to oblige them
to do the conjurer's will, as well as advice on how to
avoid certain perils and tricks if the demon was
reluctant to do what he was commanded or a liar. In
addition, he wanted to abolish the prosecution of
witches, and when speaking on those who invoke
demons (which he called spirits) he carefully used
the word exorcist.

Weyer never denied the existence of the Devil and a

huge number of other demons of high and low order.
His work was an inspiration for other occultists and
demonologists, including an anonymous author who
wrote the Lemegeton (The Lesser Key of Solomon).
There were many editions of his books (written in
Latin), especially Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, and
several adaptations in English, including Reginald
Scot's "Discoverie of Witchcraft" (1584).

Weyer's appeal for clemency for those accused of the

crime of witchcraft was opposed later in the
sixteenth century by the Swiss physician Thomas
Erastus, the French legal theorist Jean Bodin and
King James VI of Scotland.
John Dee and Edward Kelley

A 16th-century portrait by an unknown artist[e]

John Dee (1527–1608 or 1609) was an English

mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, teacher,
occultist, and alchemist.[170] He was the court
astrologer for, and advisor to, Elizabeth I. A student
of the Renaissance Neo-Platonism of Marsilio Ficino,
he spent much of his time on alchemy, divination and
Hermetic philosophy. As an antiquarian, he had one
of the largest libraries in England at the time. As a
political advisor, he advocated for the founding of
English colonies in the New World to form a "British
Empire", a term he is credited with coining.[171]

Dee was an intense Christian, but his religiosity was

influenced by Hermetic and Platonic-Pythagorean
doctrines pervasive in the Renaissance.[172] He
believed that numbers were the basis of all things
and key to knowledge.[173] From Hermeticism he
drew a belief that man had the potential for divine
power that could be exercised through
mathematics.[174] His goal was to help bring forth a
unified world religion through the healing of the
breach of the Roman Catholic and Protestant
churches and the recapture of the pure theology of
the ancients.[173]
In 1564, Dee wrote the Hermetic work Monas
Hieroglyphica ("The Hieroglyphic Monad"), an
exhaustive Cabalistic interpretation of a glyph of his
own design, meant to express the mystical unity of
all creation. Having dedicated it to Maximilian II,
Holy Roman Emperor in an effort to gain patronage,
Dee attempted to present it to him at the time of his
ascension to the throne of Hungary. The work was
esteemed by many of Dee's contemporaries, but
cannot be interpreted today in the absence of the
secret oral tradition of that era.[175]

By the early 1580s, Dee was discontented with his

progress in learning the secrets of nature. He
subsequently began to turn energetically towards the
supernatural as a means to acquire knowledge. He
sought to contact spirits through the use of a "scryer"
or crystal-gazer, which he thought would act as an
intermediary between himself and the angels.[176]

Edward Kelley

Dee's first attempts with several scryers were

unsatisfactory, but in 1582 he met Edward Kelley
(1555–1597/8), then calling himself Edward Talbot to
disguise his conviction for "coining" or forgery, who
impressed him greatly with his abilities.[177] Dee took
Kelley into his service and began to devote all his
energies to his supernatural pursuits.[177] These
"spiritual conferences" or "actions" were conducted
with intense Christian piety, always after periods of
purification, prayer and fasting.[177] Dee was
convinced of the benefits they could bring to
mankind. The character of Kelley is harder to assess:
some conclude that he acted with cynicism, but
delusion or self-deception cannot be ruled out.[178]
Kelley's "output" is remarkable for its volume,
intricacy and vividness. Dee claimed that angels
laboriously dictated several books to him this way,
through Kelley, some in a special angelic or
Enochian language.[179][180]

In 1583, Dee met the impoverished yet popular Polish

nobleman Albert Łaski, who, after overstaying his
welcome at court, invited Dee to accompany him
back to Poland.[181] With some prompting by the
"angels" (again through Kelley) and by dint of his
worsening status at court, Dee decided to do so. He,
Kelley, and their families left in September 1583, but
Łaski proved to be bankrupt and out of favour in his
own country.[182] Dee and Kelley began a nomadic life
in Central Europe, meanwhile continuing their
spiritual conferences, which Dee detailed in his
diaries and almanacs.[179][180] They had audiences with
Emperor Rudolf II in Prague Castle and King
Stephen Bathory of Poland, whom they attempted to
convince of the importance of angelic
communication.

In 1587, at a spiritual conference in Bohemia, Kelley

told Dee that the angel Uriel had ordered the men to
share all their possessions, including their wives. By
this time, Kelley had gained some renown as an
alchemist and was more sought-after than Dee in this
regard: it was a line of work that had prospects for
serious and long-term financial gain, especially
among the royal families of central Europe. Dee,
however, was more interested in communicating
with angels, who he believed would help him solve
the mysteries of the heavens through mathematics,
optics, astrology, science and navigation. Perhaps
Kelley in fact wished to end Dee's dependence on him
as a diviner at their increasingly lengthy, frequent
spiritual conferences.[182] The order for wife-sharing
caused Dee anguish, but he apparently did not doubt
it was genuine and they apparently shared wives.
However, Dee broke off the conferences immediately
afterwards. He returned to England in 1589, while
Kelley went on to be the alchemist to Emperor Rudolf
II.[182][183]

By 1590 Kelley was living an opulent lifestyle in

Europe, enjoying the patronage of nobility: he
received several estates and large sums of money
from Rosenberg. Meanwhile, he continued his
alchemical experiments until he had convinced
Rudolf II that he was ready to start producing gold,
the purpose of his work. Rudolf knighted him Sir
Edward Kelley of Imany and New Lüben on 23
February 1590 (but it is possible that this happened in
1589). In May 1591, Rudolf had Kelley arrested and
imprisoned in the Křivoklát Castle outside Prague,
supposedly for killing an official named Jiri Hunkler
in a duel; it is possible that he also did not want
Kelley to escape before he had actually produced any
gold.[184] In 1595, Kelly agreed to co-operate and return
to his alchemical work; he was released and restored
to his former status. When he failed to produce any
gold, he was again imprisoned, this time in Hněvín
Castle in Most. His wife and stepdaughter attempted
to hire an imperial counselor who might free Kelley
from imprisonment, but he died a prisoner in late
1597/early 1598 of injuries received while attempting
to escape.[184]

A few of Kelley's writings are extant today, including

two alchemical verse treatises in English, and three
other treatises, which he dedicated to Rudolf II from
prison. They were entitled Tractatus duo egregii de
lapide philosophorum una cum theatro astronomiae
(1676). The treatises have been translated as The
Alchemical Writings of Edward Kelley (1893).[184]

Modern portrait of Giordano Bruno

based on a woodcut from Livre du
recteur, 1578

Giordano Bruno

Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) was an Italian

Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician, poet,
cosmological theorist, and Hermetic occultist.[185] He
is known for his cosmological theories, which
conceptually extended the then-novel Copernican
model. He proposed that the stars were distant suns
surrounded by their own planets, and he raised the
possibility that these planets might foster life of their
own, a cosmological position known as cosmic
pluralism. He also insisted that the universe is
infinite and could have no "center".

In addition to cosmology, Bruno also wrote

extensively on the art of memory, a loosely
organized group of mnemonic techniques and
principles. Historian Frances Yates argues that
Bruno was deeply influenced by Islamic astrology
(particularly the philosophy of Averroes),[186]
Neoplatonism, Renaissance Hermeticism, and
Genesis-like legends surrounding the Egyptian god
Thoth.[f] Other studies of Bruno have focused on his
qualitative approach to mathematics and his
application of the spatial concepts of geometry to
language.[187][188]

In 1584, Bruno published two important philosophical

dialogues (La Cena de le Ceneri and De l'infinito
universo et mondi) in which he argued against the
planetary spheres (Christoph Rothmann did the
same in 1586 as did Tycho Brahe in 1587) and
affirmed the Copernican principle. In particular, to
support the Copernican view and oppose the
objection according to which the motion of the Earth
would be perceived by means of the motion of winds,
clouds etc., in La Cena de le Ceneri Bruno anticipates
some of the arguments of Galilei on the relativity
principle.[189]
Bruno's cosmology distinguishes between "suns"
which produce their own light and heat, and have
other bodies moving around them; and "earths"
which move around suns and receive light and heat
from them.[190] Bruno suggested that some, if not all,
of the objects classically known as fixed stars are in
fact suns.[190] According to astrophysicist Steven
Soter, he was the first person to grasp that "stars are
other suns with their own planets."[191] Bruno wrote
that other worlds "have no less virtue nor a nature
different from that of our Earth" and, like Earth,
"contain animals and inhabitants".[190]

In 1588, he went to Prague, where he obtained 300

taler from Rudolf II, but no teaching position. He
went on to serve briefly as a professor in Helmstedt,
but had to flee when he was excommunicated by the
Lutherans. During this period he produced several
Latin works, dictated to his friend and secretary
Girolamo Besler, including De Magia (On Magic),
Theses De Magia (Theses on Magic) and De Vinculis
in Genere (A General Account of Bonding). All these
were apparently transcribed or recorded by Besler
(or Bisler) between 1589 and 1590.[192] He also
published De Imaginum, Signorum, Et Idearum
Compositione (On the Composition of Images, Signs
and Ideas, 1591).

Starting in 1593, Bruno was tried for heresy by the

Roman Inquisition on charges of denial of several
core Catholic doctrines, including eternal damnation,
the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the virginity of
Mary, and transubstantiation. Bruno's pantheism
was not taken lightly by the church,[g] nor was his
teaching of the transmigration of the soul
(reincarnation). The Inquisition found him guilty,
and he was burned at the stake in Rome's Campo de'
Fiori in 1600. After his death, he gained considerable
fame, being particularly celebrated by 19th- and early
20th-century commentators who regarded him as a
martyr for science, although most historians agree
that his heresy trial was not a response to his
cosmological views but rather a response to his
religious and afterlife views.[193][h][i][j][k] However some
historians[194] do contend that the main reason for
Bruno's death was indeed his cosmological views.
Bruno's case is still considered a landmark in the
history of free thought and the emerging
sciences.[l][m]

Giambattista della Porta[195]

Giambattista della Porta

Giambattista della Porta (1535-1615) was an Italian

scholar, polymath and playwright who lived in
Naples at the time of the Scientific Revolution and
Reformation. His most famous work, first published
in 1558, is entitled Magia Naturalis (Natural Magic).[196]
In this book he covered a variety of the subjects he
had investigated, including occult philosophy,
astrology, alchemy, mathematics, meteorology, and
natural philosophy. He was also referred to as
"professor of secrets".[197]

In Natural Magic, della Porta describes an imaginary

device known as a sympathetic telegraph. The device
consisted of two circular boxes, similar to
compasses, each with a magnetic needle, supposed to
be magnetized by the same lodestone. Each box was
to be labeled with the 26 letters, instead of the usual
directions. Della Porta assumed that this would
coordinate the needles such that when a letter was
dialed in one box, the needle in the other box would
swing to point to the same letter, thereby helping in
communicating,[197]
In 1563, della Porta published De Furtivis Literarum
Notis, a work about cryptography. In it he described
the first known digraphic substitution cipher.[198]
Charles J. Mendelsohn commented:

He was, in my opinion, the

outstanding cryptographer of
the Renaissance. Some unknown
who worked in a hidden room
behind closed doors may
possibly have surpassed him in
general grasp of the subject, but
among those whose work can be
studied he towers like a
giant.[199]
Della Porta invented a method which allowed him to
write secret messages on the inside of eggs. During
the Spanish Inquisition, some of his friends were
imprisoned. At the gate of the prison, everything was
checked except for eggs. Della Porta wrote messages
on the egg shell using a mixture made of plant
pigments and alum. The ink penetrated the egg shell
which is semi-porous. When the egg shell was dry,
he boiled the egg in hot water and the ink on the
outside of the egg was washed away. When the
recipient in prison peeled off the shell, the message
was revealed once again on the egg white.

Della Porta was the founder of a scientific society

called the Academia Secretorum Naturae (Accademia
dei Segreti). This group was more commonly known
as the Otiosi, (Men of Leisure). Founded sometime
before 1580, the Otiosi were one of the first scientific
societies in Europe and their aim was to study the
"secrets of nature." Any person applying for
membership had to demonstrate they had made a
new discovery in the natural sciences.[200]

The Academia Secretorum Naturae was compelled to

disband when its members were suspected of
dealing with the occult. A Catholic, della Porta was
examined by the Inquisition and summoned to Rome
by Pope Gregory XIII. Though he personally
emerged from the meeting unscathed, he was forced
to disband his Academia Secretorum Naturae, and in
1592 his philosophical works were prohibited from
further publication by the Church. The ban was lifted
in 1598.

Despite this incident, della Porta remained

religiously devout and became a lay Jesuit brother.
Porta's involvement with the Inquisition puzzles
historians due his active participation in charitable
Jesuit works by 1585. A possible explanation for this
lies in Porta's personal relations with Fra Paolo
Sarpi after 1579.

Portrait of Heinrich Khunrath from

his Amphitheatrum sapientiae
aeternae
Heinrich Khunrath

‹ The template below (Unreferenced) is being considered for

merging. See templates for discussion to help reach a
consensus. ›

Heinrich Khunrath (c. 1560–1605) was a German

physician, hermetic philosopher, and alchemist.
Frances Yates considered him to be a link between
the philosophy of John Dee and Rosicrucianism. His
name, in the spelling "Henricus Künraht" was used
as a pseudonym for the 1670 publisher of the
Tractatus Theologico-Politicus of Baruch Spinoza.

Khunrath, a disciple of Paracelsus, practiced

medicine in Dresden, Magdeburg, and Hamburg and
may have held a professorial position in Leipzig. He
travelled widely after 1588, including a stay at the
Imperial court in Prague, home to the mystically
inclined Habsburg emperor Rudolf II. Before
reaching Prague he had met John Dee at Bremen on
27 May 1589, when Dee was on his way back to
England from Bohemia. Khunrath praised Dee in his
later works. During his court stay Khunrath met the
alchemist Edward Kelley who had remained behind
after he and Dee had parted company. In September
1591, Khunrath was appointed court physician to
Count Rosemberk in Trebona. He probably met
Johann Thölde while at Trebona, one of the suggested
authors of the "Basilius Valentinus" treatises on
alchemy.

Khunrath's brushes with John Dee and Thölde and

Paracelsian beliefs led him to develop a Christianized
natural magic, seeking to find the secret prima
materia that would lead man into eternal wisdom.
The Christianized view that Khunrath took was
framed around his commitment to Lutheran
theology. He also held that experience and
observation were essential to practical alchemical
research, as would a natural philosopher.

His most famous work on alchemy is the

Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae (Amphitheater
of Eternal Wisdom), a work on the mystical aspects
of that art, which contains the oft-seen engraving
entitled "The First Stage of the Great Work", better-
known as the "Alchemist's Laboratory". The book
was first published at Hamburg in 1595, with four
circular elaborate, hand-colored, engraved plates
heightened with gold and silver which Khunrath
designed and were engraved by Paullus van der
Doort. The book was then made more widely
available in an expanded edition with the addition of
other plates published posthumously in Hanau in
1609.

Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae is an alchemical

classic, combining both Christianity and magic. In it,
Khunrath showed himself to be an adept of spiritual
alchemy and illustrated the many-staged and
intricate path to spiritual perfection. Khunrath's
work was important in Lutheran circles. John
Warwick Montgomery has pointed out that Johann
Arndt (1555–1621), who was the influential writer of
Lutheran books of pietiesm and devotion, composed
a commentary on Amphitheatrum. Some of the ideas
in his works are Kabbalistic in nature and
foreshadow Rosicrucianism.

Other Renaissance writers and practitioners

Other writers and practitioners on occult or magical

topics during this period include:

Thomas Charnock (1524–1581) was an English

alchemist and occultist who devoted his life to the
quest for the Philosopher's Stone.
Nicolas Flamel (1330-1418) was a French scribe and
manuscript-seller. After his death, Flamel
developed a reputation as an alchemist believed to
have discovered the philosopher's stone and to
have thereby achieved immortality. These
 legendary accounts first appeared in the late 16th
century. Several late 16th- to early 17th-century
works are attributed to Flamel.
Basil Valentine (pseudonym for one or more 16th-
century authors) known especially for The Twelve
Keys of Basil Valentine (1599).
Michael Sendivogius (1566–1636)
Tommaso Campanella (1568–1639)
Jakob Böhme (1575–1624)
Jan Baptist van Helmont (1577–1644)

Baroque practitioners
Writers on and practitioners on occult or magical
topics during this period include:
 Franz Kessler (1580–1650)
Adrian von Mynsicht (1603–1638)
Sir Kenelm Digby (1603–1665)
Johann Friedrich Schweitzer (1625–1709)
Isaac Newton (1642–1727), see Isaac Newton's occult
studies

Modernity
By the nineteenth century, European intellectuals no
longer saw the practice of magic through the
framework of sin and instead regarded magical
practices and beliefs as "an aberrational mode of
thought antithetical to the dominant cultural logic –
a sign of psychological impairment and marker of
racial or cultural inferiority".[201]
As educated elites in Western societies increasingly
rejected the efficacy of magical practices, legal
systems ceased to threaten practitioners of magical
activities with punishment for the crimes of
diabolism and witchcraft, and instead threatened
them with the accusation that they were defrauding
people through promising to provide things which
they could not.[202]

This spread of European colonial power across the

world influenced how academics would come to
frame the concept of magic.[203] In the nineteenth
century, several scholars adopted the traditional,
negative concept of magic.[105] That they chose to do
so was not inevitable, for they could have followed
the example adopted by prominent esotericists active
at the time like Helena Blavatsky who had chosen to
use the term and concept of magic in a positive
sense.[105] Various writers also used the concept of
magic to criticise religion by arguing that the latter
still displayed many of the negative traits of the
former. An example of this was the American
journalist H. L. Mencken in his polemical 1930 work
Treatise on the Gods; he sought to critique religion
by comparing it to magic, arguing that the division
between the two was misplaced.[204] The concept of
magic was also adopted by theorists in the new field
of psychology, where it was often used
synonymously with superstition, although the latter
term proved more common in early psychological
texts.[205]
In the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
folklorists examined rural communities across
Europe in search of magical practices, which at the
time they typically understood as survivals of
ancient belief systems.[206] It was only in the 1960s
that anthropologists like Jeanne Favret-Saada also
began looking in depth at magic in European
contexts, having previously focused on examining
magic in non-Western contexts.[207] In the twentieth
century, magic also proved a topic of interest to the
Surrealists, an artistic movement based largely in
Europe; the Surrealism André Breton for instance
published L'Art magique in 1957, discussing what he
regarded as the links between magic and art.[208]
The scholarly application of magic as a sui generis
category that can be applied to any socio-cultural
context was linked with the promotion of modernity
to both Western and non-Western audiences.[209]

The term magic has become pervasive in the popular

imagination and idiom.[210] In contemporary contexts,
the word magic is sometimes used to "describe a
type of excitement, of wonder, or sudden delight",
and in such a context can be "a term of high
praise".[211] Despite its historical contrast against
science, scientists have also adopted the term in
application to various concepts, such as magic acid,
magic bullets, and magic angles.[210]
 Many concepts of modern
ceremonial magic are heavily
influenced by the ideas of Aleister
Crowley.

Modern Western magic has challenged widely-held

preconceptions about contemporary religion and
spirituality.[212] The polemical discourses about magic
influenced the self-understanding of modern
magicians, several whom—such as Aleister Crowley
and Julius Evola—were well versed in academic
literature on the subject.[213] According to scholar of
religion Henrik Bogdan, "arguably the best known
emic definition" of the term magic was provided by
Crowley.[213] Crowley—who favoured the spelling
'magick' over magic to distinguish it from stage
illusionism[214]—was of the view that "Magick is the
Science and Art of causing Change to occur in
conformity with Will".[213] Crowley's definition
influenced that of subsequent magicians.[213] Dion
Fortune of the Fraternity of the Inner Light for
instance stated that "Magic is the art of changing
consciousness according to Will".[213] Gerald Gardner,
the founder of Gardnerian Wicca, stated that magic
was "attempting to cause the physically unusual",[213]
while Anton LaVey, the founder of LaVeyan
Satanism, described magic as "the change in
situations or events in accordance with one's will,
which would, using normally acceptable methods, be
unchangeable."[213]
The chaos magic movement emerged during the late
20th century, as an attempt to strip away the
symbolic, ritualistic, theological or otherwise
ornamental aspects of other occult traditions and
distill magic down to a set of basic techniques.[215]

These modern Western concepts of magic rely on a

belief in correspondences connected to an unknown
occult force that permeates the universe.[216] As noted
by Hanegraaff, this operated according to "a new
meaning of magic, which could not possibly have
existed in earlier periods, precisely because it is
elaborated in reaction to the "disenchantment of the
world"."[216] For many, and perhaps most, modern
Western magicians, the goal of magic is deemed to be
personal spiritual development.[217] The perception of
magic as a form of self-development is central to the
way that magical practices have been adopted into
forms of modern Paganism and the New Age
phenomenon.[217] One significant development within
modern Western magical practices has been sex
magic.[217] This was a practice promoted in the
writings of Paschal Beverly Randolph and
subsequently exerted a strong interest on occultist
magicians like Crowley and Theodor Reuss.[217]

The adoption of the term magic by modern occultists

can in some instances be a deliberate attempt to
champion those areas of Western society which have
traditionally been marginalised as a means of
subverting dominant systems of power.[218] The
influential American Wiccan and author Starhawk
for instance stated that "Magic is another word that
makes people uneasy, so I use it deliberately, because
the words we are comfortable with, the words that
sound acceptable, rational, scientific, and
intellectually correct, are comfortable precisely
because they are the language of estrangement."[219]
In the present day, "among some countercultural
subgroups the label is considered 'cool'"[220]

Sorcery is a legal concept in Papua New Guinea law,

which differentiates between legal good magic, such
as healing and fertility, and illegal black magic, held
responsible for unexplained deaths.[221]
Conceptual development

According to anthropologist Edward Evan Evans-

Pritchard, magic formed a rational framework of
beliefs and knowledge in some cultures, like the
Azande people of Africa.[222] The historian Owen
Davies stated that the word magic was "beyond
simple definition",[223] and had "a range of
meanings".[224] Similarly, the historian Michael D.
Bailey characterised magic as "a deeply contested
category and a very fraught label";[225] as a category,
he noted, it was "profoundly unstable" given that
definitions of the term have "varied dramatically
across time and between cultures".[226] Scholars have
engaged in extensive debates as to how to define
magic,[227] with such debates resulting in intense
dispute.[228] Throughout such debates, the scholarly
community has failed to agree on a definition of
magic, in a similar manner to how they have failed to
agree on a definition of religion.[228] According with
scholar of religion Michael Stausberg the
phenomenon of people applying the concept of magic
to refer to themselves and their own practices and
beliefs goes as far back as late antiquity. However,
even among those throughout history who have
described themselves as magicians, there has been
no common ground of what magic is.[229]

In Africa, the word magic might simply be

understood as denoting management of forces,
which, as an activity, is not weighted morally and is
accordingly a neutral activity from the start of a
magical practice, but by the will of the magician, is
thought to become and to have an outcome which
represents either good or bad (evil).[230][231] Ancient
African culture was in the habit customarily of
always discerning difference between magic, and a
group of other things, which are not magic, these
things were medicine, divination, witchcraft and
sorcery.[232] Opinion differs on how religion and
magic are related to each other with respect
development or to which developed from which,
some think they developed together from a shared
origin, some think religion developed from magic,
and some, magic from religion.[233]

Anthropological and sociological theories of magic

generally serve to sharply demarcate certain
practices from other, otherwise similar practices in
a given society.[78] According to Bailey: "In many
cultures and across various historical periods,
categories of magic often define and maintain the
limits of socially and culturally acceptable actions in
respect to numinous or occult entities or forces.
Even more, basically, they serve to delineate arenas
of appropriate belief."[234] In this, he noted that
"drawing these distinctions is an exercise in
power".[234] This tendency has had repercussions for
the study of magic, with academics self-censoring
their research because of the effects on their
careers.[235]

Randall Styers noted that attempting to define magic

represents "an act of demarcation" by which it is
juxtaposed against "other social practices and modes
of knowledge" such as religion and science.[236] The
historian Karen Louise Jolly described magic as "a
category of exclusion, used to define an unacceptable
way of thinking as either the opposite of religion or
of science".[237]

Modern scholarship has produced various

definitions and theories of magic.[238] According to
Bailey, "these have typically framed magic in relation
to, or more frequently in distinction from, religion
and science."[238] Since the emergence of the study of
religion and the social sciences, magic has been a
"central theme in the theoretical literature" produced
by scholars operating in these academic
disciplines.[227] Magic is one of the most heavily
theorized concepts in the study of religion,[239] and
also played a key role in early theorising within
anthropology.[240] Styers believed that it held such a
strong appeal for social theorists because it provides
"such a rich site for articulating and contesting the
nature and boundaries of modernity".[241] Scholars
have commonly used it as a foil for the concept of
religion, regarding magic as the "illegitimate (and
effeminized) sibling" of religion.[242] Alternately,
others have used it as a middle-ground category
located between religion and science.[242]

The context in which scholars framed their

discussions of magic was informed by the spread of
European colonial power across the world in the
modern period.[203] These repeated attempts to define
magic resonated with broader social concerns,[243]
and the pliability of the concept has allowed it to be
"readily adaptable as a polemical and ideological
tool".[107] The links that intellectuals made between
magic and those they characterized as primitives
helped to legitimise European and Euro-American
imperialism and colonialism, as these Western
colonialists expressed the view that those who
believed in and practiced magic were unfit to govern
themselves and should be governed by those who,
rather than believing in magic, believed in science
and/or (Christian) religion.[244] In Bailey's words, "the
association of certain peoples [whether non-
Europeans or poor, rural Europeans] with magic
served to distance and differentiate them from those
who ruled over them, and in large part to justify that
rule."[245]

Many different definitions of magic have been

offered by scholars, although—according to
Hanegraaff—these can be understood as variations
of a small number of heavily influential theories.[239]

Intellectualist approach

Edward Tylor, an anthropologist

who used the term magic in
reference to sympathetic magic, an
idea that he associated with his
concept of animism
The intellectualist approach to defining magic is
associated with two prominent British
anthropologists, Edward Tylor and James G.
Frazer.[246] This approach viewed magic as the
theoretical opposite of science,[247] and came to
preoccupy much anthropological thought on the
subject.[248] This approach was situated within the
evolutionary models which underpinned thinking in
the social sciences during the early 19th century.[249]
The first social scientist to present magic as
something that predated religion in an evolutionary
development was Herbert Spencer;[250] in his A
System of Synthetic Philosophy, he used the term
magic in reference to sympathetic magic.[251] Spencer
regarded both magic and religion as being rooted in
false speculation about the nature of objects and their
relationship to other things.[252]

Tylor's understanding of magic was linked to his

concept of animism.[253] In his 1871 book Primitive
Culture, Tylor characterized magic as beliefs based
on "the error of mistaking ideal analogy for real
analogy". [254] In Tylor's view, "primitive man, having
come to associate in thought those things which he
found by experience to be connected in fact,
proceeded erroneously to invert this action, and to
conclude that association in thought must involve
similar connection in reality. He thus attempted to
discover, to foretell, and to cause events by means of
processes which we can now see to have only an
ideal significance".[255] Tylor was dismissive of
magic, describing it as "one of the most pernicious
delusions that ever vexed mankind".[256] Tylor's
views proved highly influential,[257] and helped to
establish magic as a major topic of anthropological
research.[250]

James Frazer regarded magic as the

first stage in human development, to
be followed by religion and then
science

Tylor's ideas were adopted and simplified by James

Frazer.[258] He used the term magic to mean
sympathetic magic,[259] describing it as a practice
relying on the magician's belief "that things act on
each other at a distance through a secret sympathy",
something which he described as "an invisible
ether".[255] He further divided this magic into two
forms, the "homeopathic (imitative, mimetic)" and the
"contagious".[255] The former was the idea that "like
produces like", or that the similarity between two
objects could result in one influencing the other. The
latter was based on the idea that contact between two
objects allowed the two to continue to influence one
another at a distance.[260] Like Taylor, Frazer viewed
magic negatively, describing it as "the bastard sister
of science", arising from "one great disastrous
fallacy".[261]

Where Frazer differed from Tylor was in

characterizing a belief in magic as a major stage in
humanity's cultural development, describing it as
part of a tripartite division in which magic came
first, religion came second, and eventually science
came third.[262] For Frazer, all early societies started
as believers in magic, with some of them moving
away from this and into religion.[263] He believed that
both magic and religion involved a belief in spirits
but that they differed in the way that they responded
to these spirits. For Frazer, magic "constrains or
coerces" these spirits while religion focuses on
"conciliating or propitiating them".[263] He
acknowledged that their common ground resulted in
a cross-over of magical and religious elements in
various instances; for instance he claimed that the
sacred marriage was a fertility ritual which
combined elements from both world-views.[264]
Some scholars retained the evolutionary framework
used by Frazer but changed the order of its stages;
the German ethnologist Wilhelm Schmidt argued
that religion—by which he meant monotheism—was
the first stage of human belief, which later
degenerated into both magic and polytheism.[265]
Others rejected the evolutionary framework entirely.
Frazer's notion that magic had given way to religion
as part of an evolutionary framework was later
deconstructed by the folklorist and anthropologist
Andrew Lang in his essay "Magic and Religion"; Lang
did so by highlighting how Frazer's framework
relied upon misrepresenting ethnographic accounts
of beliefs and practiced among indigenous
Australians to fit his concept of magic.[266]
Functionalist approach

The functionalist approach to defining magic is

associated with the French sociologists Marcel Mauss
and Emile Durkheim.[267] In this approach, magic is
understood as being the theoretical opposite of
religion.[268]

Mauss set forth his conception of magic in a 1902

essay, "A General Theory of Magic".[269] Mauss used
the term magic in reference to "any rite that is not
part of an organized cult: a rite that is private, secret,
mysterious, and ultimately tending towards one that
is forbidden".[267] Conversely, he associated religion
with organised cult.[270] By saying that magic was
inherently non-social, Mauss had been influenced by
the traditional Christian understandings of the
concept.[271] Mauss deliberately rejected the
intellectualist approach promoted by Frazer,
believing that it was inappropriate to restrict the
term magic to sympathetic magic, as Frazer had
done.[272] He expressed the view that "there are not
only magical rites which are not sympathetic, but
neither is sympathy a prerogative of magic, since
there are sympathetic practices in religion".[270]

Mauss' ideas were adopted by Durkheim in his 1912

book The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life.[273]
Durkheim was of the view that both magic and
religion pertained to "sacred things, that is to say,
things set apart and forbidden".[274] Where he saw
them as being different was in their social
organisation. Durkheim used the term magic to
describe things that were inherently anti-social,
existing in contrast to what he referred to as a
Church, the religious beliefs shared by a social
group; in his words, "There is no Church of
magic."[275] Durkheim expressed the view that "there
is something inherently anti-religious about the
maneuvers of the magician",[268] and that a belief in
magic "does not result in binding together those who
adhere to it, nor in uniting them into a group leading
a common life."[274] Durkheim's definition encounters
problems in situations—such as the rites performed
by Wiccans—in which acts carried out communally
have been regarded, either by practitioners or
observers, as being magical.[276]
Scholars have criticized the idea that magic and
religion can be differentiated into two distinct,
separate categories.[277] The social anthropologist
Alfred Radcliffe-Brown suggested that "a simple
dichotomy between magic and religion" was
unhelpful and thus both should be subsumed under
the broader category of ritual.[278] Many later
anthropologists followed his example.[278]
Nevertheless, this distinction is still often made by
scholars discussing this topic.[277]

Emotionalist approach

The emotionalist approach to magic is associated

with the English anthropologist Robert Ranulph
Marett, the Austrian Sigmund Freud, and the Polish
anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski.[279]

Marett viewed magic as a response to stress.[280] In a

1904 article, he argued that magic was a cathartic or
stimulating practice designed to relieve feelings of
tension.[280] As his thought developed, he increasingly
rejected the idea of a division between magic and
religion and began to use the term "magico-religious"
to describe the early development of both.[280]
Malinowski similarly understood magic to Marett,
tackling the issue in a 1925 article.[281] He rejected
Frazer's evolutionary hypothesis that magic was
followed by religion and then science as a series of
distinct stages in societal development, arguing that
all three were present in each society.[282] In his view,
both magic and religion "arise and function in
situations of emotional stress" although whereas
religion is primarily expressive, magical is
primarily practical.[282] He therefore defined magic as
"a practical art consisting of acts which are only
means to a definite end expected to follow later
on".[282] For Malinowski, magical acts were to be
carried out for a specific end, whereas religious ones
were ends in themselves.[276] He for instance believed
that fertility rituals were magical because they were
carried out with the intention of meeting a specific
need.[282] As part of his functionalist approach,
Malinowski saw magic not as irrational but as
something that served a useful function, being
sensible within the given social and environmental
context.[283]
 Ideas about magic were also
promoted by Sigmund Freud

The term magic was used liberally by Freud.[284] He

also saw magic as emerging from human emotion
but interpreted it very differently to Marett.[285]
Freud explains that "the associated theory of magic
merely explains the paths along which magic
proceeds; it does not explain its true essence, namely
the misunderstanding which leads it to replace the
laws of nature by psychological ones".[286] Freud
emphasizes that what led primitive men to come up
with magic is the power of wishes: "His wishes are
accompanied by a motor impulse, the will, which is
later destined to alter the whole face of the earth to
satisfy his wishes. This motor impulse is at first
employed to give a representation of the satisfying
situation in such a way that it becomes possible to
experience the satisfaction by means of what might
be described as motor hallucinations. This kind of
representation of a satisfied wish is quite comparable
to children's play, which succeeds their earlier
purely sensory technique of satisfaction. [...] As time
goes on, the psychological accent shifts from the
motives for the magical act on to the measures by
which it is carried out—that is, on to the act itself. [...]
It thus comes to appear as though it is the magical act
itself which, owing to its similarity with the desired
result, alone determines the occurrence of that
result."[287]
In the early 1960s, the anthropologists Murray and
Rosalie Wax put forward the argument that scholars
should look at the magical worldview of a given
society on its own terms rather than trying to
rationalize it in terms of Western ideas about
scientific knowledge.[288] Their ideas were heavily
criticised by other anthropologists, who argued that
they had set up a false dichotomy between non-
magical Western worldview and magical non-
Western worldviews.[289] The concept of the magical
worldview nevertheless gained widespread use in
history, folkloristics, philosophy, cultural theory, and
psychology.[290] The notion of magical thinking has
also been utilised by various psychologists.[291] In the
1920s, the psychologist Jean Piaget used the concept
as part of their argument that children were unable
to clearly differentiate between the mental and the
physical.[291] According to this perspective, children
begin to abandon their magical thinking between the
ages of six and nine.[291]

According to Stanley Tambiah, magic, science, and

religion all have their own "quality of rationality",
and have been influenced by politics and ideology.[292]
As opposed to religion, Tambiah suggests that
mankind has a much more personal control over
events. Science, according to Tambiah, is "a system of
behavior by which man acquires mastery of the
environment."[293]
Ethnocentrism

The magic-religion-science triangle developed in

European society based on evolutionary ideas i.e.
that magic evolved into religion, which in turn
evolved into science.[268] However using a Western
analytical tool when discussing non-Western
cultures, or pre-modern forms of Western society,
raises problems as it may impose alien Western
categories on them.[294] While magic remains an emic
(insider) term in the history of Western societies, it
remains an etic (outsider) term when applied to non-
Western societies and even within specific Western
societies. For this reason, academics like Michael D.
Bailey suggest abandon the term altogether as an
academic category.[295] During the twentieth century,
many scholars focusing on Asian and African
societies rejected the term magic, as well as related
concepts like witchcraft, in favour of the more
precise terms and concepts that existed within these
specific societies like Juju.[296] A similar approach
has been taken by many scholars studying pre-
modern societies in Europe, such as Classical
antiquity, who find the modern concept of magic
inappropriate and favour more specific terms
originating within the framework of the ancient
cultures which they are studying.[297] Alternately, this
term implies that all categories of magic are
ethnocentric and that such Western preconceptions
are an unavoidable component of scholarly
research.[294] This century has seen a trend towards
emic ethnographic studies by scholar practitioners
that explicitly explore the emic/etic divide.[298]

Many scholars have argued that the use of the term

as an analytical tool within academic scholarship
should be rejected altogether.[299] The scholar of
religion Jonathan Z. Smith for example argued that it
had no utility as an etic term that scholars should
use.[300] The historian of religion Wouter Hanegraaff
agreed, on the grounds that its use is founded in
conceptions of Western superiority and has "...served
as a 'scientific' justification for converting non-
European peoples from benighted superstitions..."
stating that "the term magic is an important object of
historical research, but not intended for doing
research."[301]
Bailey noted that, as of the early 21st century, few
scholars sought grand definitions of magic but
instead focused with "careful attention to particular
contexts", examining what a term like magic meant
to a given society; this approach, he noted, "call[ed]
into question the legitimacy of magic as a universal
category".[302] The scholars of religion Berndt-
Christian Otto and Michael Stausberg suggested that
it would be perfectly possible for scholars to talk
about amulets, curses, healing procedures, and other
cultural practices often regarded as magical in
Western culture without any recourse to the concept
of magic itself.[303] The idea that magic should be
rejected as an analytic term developed in
anthropology, before moving into Classical studies
and Biblical studies in the 1980s.[304] Since the 1990s,
the term's usage among scholars of religion has
declined.[300]

Modern practitioners

Francis Barrett

Portrait of Francis Barrett, author

of the book The Magus (1801)

Among the various sources for ceremonial magic,

Francis Barrett, a late 18th-century Englishman,
called himself a student of chemistry, metaphysics,
and natural occult philosophy.[305] Barrett was
enthusiastic about reviving interest in the occult arts,
and published a magical textbook called The Magus.
The Magus dealt with the natural magic of herbs and
stones, magnetism, talismanic magic, alchemy,
numerology, the elements, and biographies of
famous adepts from history. It was a compilation,[306]
almost entirely consisting of selections from
Cornelius Agrippa's Three Books of Occult
Philosophy, the Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy
attributed to Agrippa, and Robert Turner's 1655
translation of the Heptameron of Peter of Abano.
Barrett made modifications and modernized spelling
and syntax. Possibly influencing the novelist Edward
Bulwer-Lytton, the book gained little other notice
until it influenced Eliphas Levi.
 Éliphas Lévi

Éliphas Lévi

‹ The template below (Unreferenced) is being considered for

merging. See templates for discussion to help reach a
consensus. ›

Éliphas Lévi (1810–1875) conceived the notion of

writing a treatise on magic with his friend Bulwer-
Lytton. This appeared in 1855 under the title Dogme
et Rituel de la Haute Magie, and was translated into
English by Arthur Edward Waite as Transcendental
Magic, its Doctrine and Ritual.
In 1861, he published a sequel, La Clef des Grands
Mystères (The Key to the Great Mysteries). Further
magical works by Lévi include Fables et Symboles
(Stories and Images), 1862, and La Science des Esprits
(The Science of Spirits), 1865. In 1868, he wrote Le
Grand Arcane, ou l'Occultisme Dévoilé (The Great
Secret, or Occultism Unveiled); this, however, was
only published posthumously in 1898.

Lévi's version of magic became a great success,

especially after his death. That Spiritualism was
popular on both sides of the Atlantic from the 1850s
contributed to his success. His magical teachings
were free from obvious fanaticisms, even if they
remained rather murky; he had nothing to sell, and
did not pretend to be the initiate of some ancient or
fictitious secret society. He incorporated the Tarot
cards into his magical system, and as a result the
Tarot has been an important part of the
paraphernalia of Western magicians. He had a deep
impact on the magic of the Hermetic Order of the
Golden Dawn and later Aleister Crowley, and it was
largely through this impact that Lévi is remembered
as one of the key founders of the twentieth century
revival of magic.
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers

(1854–1918), in Egyptian costume,
performs a ritual of Isis in the rites
of the Golden Dawn

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (founded

1888) was a secret society devoted to the study and
practice of the occult, metaphysics, and paranormal
activities during the late 19th and early 20th
centuries. Known as a magical order, the Hermetic
Order of the Golden Dawn was active in Great Britain
and focused its practices on theurgy and spiritual
development. Many present-day concepts of ritual
and magic that are at the centre of contemporary
traditions, such as Wicca[307] and Thelema, were
inspired by the Golden Dawn, which became one of
the largest single influences on 20th century
Western occultism.[n][o]

The three founders, William Robert Woodman,

William Wynn Westcott, and Samuel Liddell Mathers,
were Freemasons. Westcott appears to have been the
initial driving force behind the establishment of the
Golden Dawn.

The "Golden Dawn" was the first of three Orders,

although all three are often collectively referred to as
the "Golden Dawn". The First Order taught esoteric
philosophy based on the Hermetic Qabalah and
personal development through study and awareness
of the four classical elements, as well as the basics of
astrology, tarot divination, and geomancy. The
Second or Inner Order, the Rosae Rubeae et Aureae
Crucis, taught magic, including scrying, astral travel,
and alchemy.

Aleister Crowley, c. 1912

Aleister Crowley

English author and occultist Aleister Crowley (1875–

1947) wrote about magical practices and theory,
including those of theurgy ("high magic") and goetia
("low magic"). In The Book of the Law and The Vision
and the Voice, the Aramaic magical formula
Abracadabra was changed to Abrahadabra, which he
called the new formula of the Aeon of Horus. He also
famously spelled magic in the archaic manner, as
'magick', to differentiate "the true science of the Magi
from all its counterfeits."[308] He also stated that "The
spirits of the Goetia are portions of the human
brain."[309]

His book Magick, Liber ABA, Book 4, is a lengthy

treatise on magic in which he which also presents
his own system of Western occult practice,
synthesised from many sources, including Yoga,
Hermeticism, medieval grimoires, contemporary
magical theories from writers like Eliphas Levi and
Helena Blavatsky, and his own original
contributions. It consists of four parts: Mysticism,
Magick (Elementary Theory), Magick in Theory and
Practice, and ΘΕΛΗΜΑ—the Law (The Equinox of
The Gods). It also includes numerous appendices
presenting many rituals and explicatory papers.

Dion Fortune

An illustration of Fortune's hometown, Llandudno, in

1860

Dion Fortune (1890–1946) was a Welsh occultist,

ceremonial magician, novelist and author. She was a
co-founder of the Fraternity of the Inner Light, an
occult organisation that promoted philosophies
which she claimed had been taught to her by
spiritual entities known as the Ascended Masters. A
prolific writer, she produced a large number of
articles and books on her occult ideas and also
authored seven novels, several of which expound
occult themes.

Fortune was a ceremonial magician.[310] The magical

principles on which her Fraternity was based were
adopted from the late nineteenth century Hermetic
Order of the Golden Dawn, with other influences
coming from Theosophy and Christian Science.[311]
The magical ceremonies performed by Fortune's
Fraternity were placed into two categories:
initiations, in which the candidate was introduced to
magical forces, and evocation, in which these forces
were manipulated for a given purpose.[312]

The Fraternity's rituals at their Bayswater temple

were carried out under a dim light, as Fortune
believed that bright light disperses etheric forces.[312]
An altar was placed in the centre of a room, with the
colours of the altar-cloth and the symbols on the
altar varying according to the ceremony being
performed. A light was placed on the altar while
incense, usually frankincense, was burned.[312] The
senior officers sat in a row along the eastern end of
the room, while officers—who were believed to be
channels for cosmic forces—were positioned at
various positions on the floor. The lodge was opened
by walking around the room in a circle chanting,
with the intent of building a psychic force up as a
wall.[313] Next, the cosmic entities would be invoked,
with the members believing that these entities would
manifest in astral form and interact with the chosen
officers.[313]

Fortune was particularly concerned with the issue of

sex.[314] She believed that this erotic attraction
between men and women could be harnessed for use
in magic.[315] She urged her followers to be naked
under their robes when carrying out magical rituals,
for this would increase the creative sexual tension
between the men and women present.[316] Although
sex features in her novels, it is never described in
graphic detail.[317] The scholar Andrew Radford noted
that Fortune's "reactionary and highly
heteronormative" view of "sacralised sexuality"
should be seen as part of a wider tradition among
esoteric currents, going back to the ideas of Emanuel
Swedenborg and Andrew Jackson Davis and also
being found in the work of occultists like Paschal
Beverly Randolph and Ida Craddock.[318]

The religious studies scholar Hugh Urban noted that

Fortune was "one of the key links" between early
twentieth-century ceremonial magic and the
developing Pagan religion of Wicca.[314] Similarly, the
Wiccan high priestess Vivianne Crowley
characterised Fortune as a "proto-Pagan".[319] The
scholar and esotericist Nevill Drury stated that
Fortune "in many ways anticipated feminist ideas in
contemporary Wicca", particularly through her
belief that all goddesses were a manifestation of a
single Great Goddess.[320] Graf agreed, adding that
Fortune's works found "resonance" in the work of
the later feminist Wiccan Starhawk, and in
particular in the latter's 1979 book, The Spiral
Dance.[321]

In researching ceremonial magic orders and other

esoteric groups active in the London area during the
1980s, Luhrmann found that within them, Fortune's
novels were treated as "fictionalized ideals" and that
they were recommended to newcomers as the best
way to understand magic.[322] The Pagan studies
scholar Joanne Pearson added that Fortune's books,
and in particular the novels The Sea Priestess and
Moon Magic, were owned by many Wiccans and
other Pagans.[319] The religious studies scholar
Graham Harvey compared The Sea Priestess to the
Wiccan Gerald Gardner's 1949 novel High Magic's
Aid, stating that while neither were "great literature",
they "evoke Paganism better than later more didactic
works".[323]

Fortune's priestesses were an influence on the

characters of Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of
Avalon,[324] and her ideas were adopted as the basis
for the Aquarian Order of the Restoration, a
ceremonial magic group led by Bradley.[325] Her
works also influenced Bradley's collaborator and
fellow Order member Diana Paxson.[326] As of 2007,
Fortune's latter three novels remained in print and
had a wide readership.[327]
 Parsons in 1941

Jack Parsons

John Whiteside Parsons (1914–1952) was an American

rocket engineer, chemist, and Thelemite occultist.
Parsons converted to Thelema, the new religious
movement founded by the English occultist Aleister
Crowley. Together with his first wife, Helen
Northrup, Parsons joined the Agape Lodge, the
Californian branch of the Thelemite Ordo Templi
Orientis (O.T.O.) in 1941. At Crowley's bidding, Parsons
replaced Wilfred Talbot Smith as its leader in 1942
and ran the Lodge from his mansion on Orange
Grove Boulevard.

Parsons identified four obstacles that prevented

humans from achieving and performing their true
will, all of which he connected with fear: the fear of
incompetence, the fear of the opinion of others, the
fear of hurting others, and the fear of insecurity. He
insisted that these must be overcome, writing that
"The Will must be freed of its fetters. The ruthless
examination and destruction of taboos, complexes,
frustrations, dislikes, fears and disgusts hostile to
the Will is essential to progress."[328]

In 1945, Parsons separated from Helen, after having

an affair with her sister Sara; when Sara left him for
L. Ron Hubbard, Parsons conducted the Babalon
Working, a series of rituals intended to invoke the
Thelemic goddess Babalon on Earth. The Babalon
Working was a series of magic ceremonies or rituals
performed from January to March 1946 by Parsons
and Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.[p] This
ritual was essentially designed to manifest an
individual incarnation of the archetypal divine
feminine called Babalon. The project was based on
the ideas of Crowley, and his description of a similar
project in his 1917 novel Moonchild.[q]

When Parsons declared that the first of the series of

rituals was complete and successful, he almost
immediately met Marjorie Cameron in his own
home, and regarded her as the elemental that he and
Hubbard had called through the ritual.[329] Soon
Parsons began the next stage of the series, an attempt
to conceive a child through sex magic workings.
Although no child was conceived, this did not affect
the result of the ritual to that point. Parsons and
Cameron, who Parsons now regarded as the Scarlet
Woman, Babalon, called forth by the ritual, soon
married.

The rituals performed drew largely upon rituals and

sex magic described by Crowley. Crowley was in
correspondence with Parsons during the course of
the Babalon Working, and warned Parsons of his
potential overreactions to the magic he was
performing, while simultaneously deriding Parsons'
work to others.[330]
A brief text entitled Liber 49, self-referenced within
the text as The Book of Babalon, was written by Jack
Parsons as a transmission from the goddess or force
called 'Babalon' received by him during the Babalon
Working.[329] Parsons wrote that Liber 49 constituted
a fourth chapter of Crowley's Liber AL Vel Legis (The
Book of the Law), the holy text of Thelema.[331]

Phyllis Seckler

Phyllis Seckler (1917–2004), also known as 'Soror

Meral', was a ninth degree (IX°) member of the
Sovereign Sanctuary of the Gnosis of Ordo Templi
Orientis (O.T.O.), and a lineage holder in the A∴A∴
tradition. She was a student of Jane Wolfe, herself a
student of Aleister Crowley.[332]
Sekler was a member of O.T.O. Agape Lodge, the only
working Lodge of the O.T.O. at the time of Aleister
Crowley's death. Seckler was also instrumental in
preserving important parts of Crowley's literary
heritage, typing parts of his Confessions, and the
complete texts of The Vision and the Voice and
Magick Without Tears during the 1950s. Seckler was
also instrumental in re-activing the O.T.O. with
Grady Louis McMurtry, during the early-mid 1970s,
following the death of Crowley's appointed successor,
Karl Germer.

Seckler continued her lifelong work with the A∴A∴,

founding the College of Thelema and co-founding
(with James A. Eshelman) the Temple of Thelema, and
later warranting the formation of the Temple of the
Silver Star. Seeking to guide her students to an
understanding of the Law of Thelema, especially
deeper understanding of oneself and of one's magical
will, Sekler published the bi-annual Thelemic journal
In the Continuum which featured her essays on
Thelema and initiation as well as instructional
articles for the students of the A.:.A.:., illustrations
and essays which help to clarify some of Crowley's
thoughts and aid in the understanding of Thelemic
principles expressed in Liber AL. Printed for 20
years from 1976 through 1996, In the Continuum also
published rare works by Aleister Crowley which at
the time were out of print or hard to find.[333]

Seckler served as a master of 418 Lodge of O.T.O. in

California from its inception in 1979 until her death.
Kenneth Grant

Kenneth Grant (1924–2011) was an English

ceremonial magician and advocate of the Thelemic
religion. A poet, novelist, and writer, he founded his
own Thelemic organisation, the Typhonian Ordo
Templi Orientis—later renamed the Typhonian
Order—with his wife Steffi Grant.

Grant was fascinated by the work of the occultist

Aleister Crowley, having read a number of his books.
Eager to meet Crowley, Grant wrote letters to
Crowley's publishers, asking that they pass his
letters on to Crowley himself.[334] These eventually
resulted in the first meeting between the two, in
autumn 1944,[334] at the Bell Inn in
Buckinghamshire.[335] After several further
meetings and an exchange of letters, Grant agreed to
work for Crowley as his secretary and personal
assistant. Now living in relative poverty, Crowley was
unable to pay Grant for his services in money,
instead paying him in magical instruction.[336]

In March 1945, Grant moved into a lodge cottage in the

grounds of Netherwood, a Sussex boarding house
where Crowley was living.[337] He continued living
there with Crowley for several months, dealing with
the old man's correspondences and needs. In turn,
he was allowed to read from Crowley's extensive
library on occult subjects, and performed
ceremonial magic workings with him, becoming a
high initiate of Crowley's magical group, the Ordo
Templi Orientis (O.T.O.).[338] Crowley saw Grant as a
potential leader of O.T.O. in the UK, writing in his
diary, "value of Grant. If I die or go to the USA, there
must be a trained man to take care of the English
O.T.O."[339]

Grant drew eclectically on a range of sources in

devising his teachings.[340] Although based in
Thelema, Grant's Typhonian tradition has been
described as "a bricolage of occultism, Neo-Vedanta,
Hindu tantra, Western sexual magic, Surrealism,
ufology and Lovecraftian gnosis".[341] According to
Djurdjevic, Grant's writing style is notorious for
being opaque with "verbal and conceptual
labyrinths".[342] The historian of religion Manon
Hedenborg White noted that "Grant's writings to not
lend themselves easily to systematization".[343] She
added that he "deliberately employs cryptic or
circuitous modes of argumentation",[344] and lacks
clear boundaries between fact and fiction.[340]

Grant promoted what he termed the Typhonian or

Draconian tradition of magic,[345] and wrote that
Thelema was only a recent manifestation of this
wider tradition.[346] In his books, he portrayed the
Typhonian tradition as the world's oldest spiritual
tradition, writing that it had ancient roots in
Africa.[347] The religious studies scholar Gordan
Djurdjevic noted that Grant's historical claims
regarding Typhonian history were "at best highly
speculative" and lacked any supporting evidence,
however he suggested that Grant may never have
intended these claims to be taken literally.[348]

Grant adopted a perennialist interpretation of the

history of religion.[349] Grant's wrote that Indian
spiritual traditions like Tantra and Yoga correlate to
Western esoteric traditions, and that both stem from
a core, ancient source, has parallels in the perennial
philosophy promoted by the Traditionalist School of
esotericists.[350] He believed that by mastering magic,
one masters this illusory universe, gaining personal
liberation and recognising that only the Self really
exists.[351] Doing so, according to Grant, leads to the
discovery of one's true will, the central focus of
Thelema.[348]
Grant further wrote that the realm of the Self was
known as "the Mauve Zone", and that it could be
reached while in a state of deep sleep, where it has
the symbolic appearance of a swamp.[352] He also
believed that the reality of consciousness, which he
deemed the only true reality, was formless and thus
presented as a void, although he also taught that it
was symbolised by the Hindu goddess Kali and the
Thelemic goddess Nuit.[353]

Grant's views on sex magic drew heavily on the

importance of sexual dimorphism among humans
and the subsequent differentiation of gender
roles.[354] Grant taught that the true secret of sex
magic were bodily secretions, the most important of
which was a woman's menstrual blood.[347] In this he
differed from Crowley, who viewed semen as the
most important genital secretion.[355] Grant referred
to female sexual secretions as kalas, a term adopted
from Sanskrit.[356] He thought that because women
have kalas, they have oracular and visionary
powers.[344] The magical uses of female genital
secretions are a recurring theme in Grant's
writings.[357]
James Lees

The mysterious 'grid' page of Liber AL's

manuscript. "for in the chance shape of the
letters and their position to one another: in
these are mysteries that no Beast shall divine.
... Then this line drawn is a key: then this circle
squared in its failure is a key also. And
Abrahadabra."

James Lees (August 22, 1939[358] – 2015) was an

English magician known for discovering the system
he called English Qaballa.

Lees was born in Bolton, Lancashire. He established a

career as an analytic chemist. In his search for truth,
he also studied psychology. Not finding the answers
he wanted from science, he turned to the study of
astrology, even making a living for a time as a
horary astrologer.[358]

Still resolved to discover further answers, Lees

decided to study Kabbalah and the Tree of Life. From
here he proceeded to experiment with invocations
from the Key of Solomon. Satisfied with the results,
he proceeded to perform the 18-month working
described in The Book of Abramelin by means of the
Bornless Ritual. Having successfully invoked his
Holy Guardian Angel, he turned his attention to
ascending the 'Middle Pillar' of the Tree of Life,
culminating with an experience known as crossing
the abyss.[358]
Then, in November 1976, Lees discovered[359] the
"order & value of the English Alphabet."[360]
Following this discovery, Lees founded the O∴A∴A∴
in order to assist others in the pursuit of their own
spiritual paths.[358] The first public report of the
system known as English Qaballa (EQ) was published
in 1979 by Ray Sherwin in an editorial in the final
issue of his journal, The New Equinox. Lees
subsequently assumed the role of publisher of The
New Equinox and, starting in 1981, published
additional material about the EQ system over the
course of five issues of the journal, extending into
1982.[359]

In 1904, Aleister Crowley wrote out the text of the

foundational document of his world-view, known as
Liber AL vel Legis, The Book of the Law. In this text
was the injunction found at verse 2:55; "Thou shalt
obtain the order & value of the English Alphabet,
thou shalt find new symbols to attribute them unto"
which was understood by Crowley as referring to an
English Qabalah yet to be developed or revealed.[361]

The "order & value"[360] discovered by James Lees

lays the letters out on the grid superimposed on the
page of manuscript of Liber AL on which this verse
(Ch. III, v. 47) appears (sheet 16 of Chapter III).[360] Also
appearing on this page are a diagonal line and a
circled cross. The Book of the Law states that the
book should only be printed with Crowley's hand-
written version included, suggesting that there are
mysteries in the "chance shape of the letters and
their position to one another" of Crowley's
handwriting. Whichever top-left to bottom-right
diagonal is read the magickal order of the letters is
obtained.[362]

Little further material on English Qaballa was

published until the appearance of Jake Stratton-Kent's
book, The Serpent Tongue: Liber 187, in 2011.[363] This
was followed in 2016 by The Magickal Language of
the Book of the Law: An English Qaballa Primer by
Cath Thompson.[364] The discovery, exploration, and
continuing research and development of the system
up to 2010, by James Lees and members of his group
in England, are detailed in her 2018 book, All This
and a Book.[358]
Nema Andahadna

Nema Andahadna (1939-2018) practiced and wrote

about magic (magical working, as defined by Aleister
Crowley) for over thirty years. In 1974, she
channelled a short book called Liber Pennae
Praenumbra.

From her experience with Thelemic magic, she

developed her own system of magic called "Maat
Magick" which has the aim of transforming the
human race. In 1979, she co-founded the Horus-Maat
Lodge. The Lodge and her ideas have been featured
in the writings of Kenneth Grant.[365][366]

Her writings have appeared in many publications,

including the Cincinnati Journal of Ceremonial
Magick, Aeon, and Starfire. According to Donald
Michael Kraig:

Nema has been one of the most

influential occultists of the last
quarter century although most
occultists have never read her
works. What Nema has done is
influence those who have been
writers and teachers. They, in
turn, influenced the rest of
us.[367]
Illusion magic
To the general public, successful acts of illusion
could be perceived as if it were similar to a feat of
magic supposed to have been able to be performed by
the ancient magoi. The performance of tricks of
illusion, or magical illusion, and the apparent
workings and effects of such acts have often been
referred to as "magic" and particularly as magic
tricks.

One of the earliest known books to explain magic

secrets, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, was published
in 1584. It was created by Reginald Scot to stop people
from being killed for witchcraft. During the 17th
century, many books were published that described
magic tricks. Until the 18th century, magic shows
were a common source of entertainment at fairs. The
"Father" of modern entertainment magic was Jean
Eugène Robert-Houdin, who had a magic theatre in
Paris in 1845.[368] John Henry Anderson was
pioneering the same transition in London in the
1840s. Towards the end of the 19th century, large
magic shows permanently staged at big theatre
venues became the norm.[369] As a form of
entertainment, magic easily moved from theatrical
venues to television magic specials.

Performances that modern observers would

recognize as conjuring have been practiced
throughout history. For example, a trick with three
cups and balls has been performed since 3 BC.[370]
and is still performed today on stage and in street
magic shows. For many recorded centuries,
magicians were associated with the devil and the
occult. During the 19th and 20th centuries, many
stage magicians even capitalized on this notion in
their advertisements.[371] The same level of ingenuity
that was used to produce famous ancient deceptions
such as the Trojan Horse would also have been used
for entertainment, or at least for cheating in money
games. They were also used by the practitioners of
various religions and cults from ancient times
onwards to frighten uneducated people into
obedience or turn them into adherents. However, the
profession of the illusionist gained strength only in
the 18th century, and has enjoyed several popular
vogues since.
Magic tricks

Opinions vary among magicians on how to

categorize a given effect, but a number of categories
have been developed. Magicians may pull a rabbit
from an empty hat, make something seem to
disappear, or transform a red silk handkerchief into
a green silk handkerchief. Magicians may also
destroy something, like cutting a head off, and then
"restore" it, make something appear to move from
one place to another, or they may escape from a
restraining device. Other illusions include making
something appear to defy gravity, making a solid
object appear to pass through another object, or
appearing to predict the choice of a spectator. Many
magic routines use combinations of effects.
 An illustration from Reginald Scot's The
Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584), one of the
earliest books on magic tricks, explaining how
the "Decollation of John Baptist" decapitation
illusion may be performed

Among the earliest books on the subject is

Gantziony's work of 1489, Natural and Unnatural
Magic, which describes and explains old-time
tricks.[372] In 1584, Englishman Reginald Scot
published The Discoverie of Witchcraft, part of
which was devoted to debunking the claims that
magicians used supernatural methods, and showing
how their "magic tricks" were in reality
accomplished. Among the tricks discussed were
sleight-of-hand manipulations with rope, paper and
coins. At the time, fear and belief in witchcraft was
widespread and the book tried to demonstrate that
these fears were misplaced.[373] Popular belief held
that all obtainable copies were burned on the
accession of James I in 1603.[374]

During the 17th century, many similar books were

published that described in detail the methods of a
number of magic tricks, including The Art of
Conjuring (1614) and The Anatomy of Legerdemain:
The Art of Juggling (c. 1675).
 Advertisement for Isaac Fawkes' show from
1724 in which he boasts of the success of his
performances for the King and Prince George

Until the 18th century, magic shows were a common

source of entertainment at fairs, where itinerant
performers would entertain the public with magic
tricks, as well as the more traditional spectacles of
sword swallowing, juggling and fire breathing. In the
early 18th century, as belief in witchcraft was
waning, the art became increasingly respectable and
shows would be put on for rich private patrons. A
notable figure in this transition was the English
showman, Isaac Fawkes, who began to promote his
act in advertisements from the 1720s—he even
claimed to have performed for King George II. One of
Fawkes' advertisements described his routine in
some detail:

He takes an empty bag, lays it

on the Table and turns it several
times inside out, then
commands 100 Eggs out of it
and several showers of real Gold
and silver, then the Bag
beginning to swell several sorts
of wild fowl run out of it upon
the Table. He throws up a Pack
of Cards, and causes them to be
 living birds flying about the
room. He causes living Beasts,
Birds, and other Creatures to
appear upon the Table. He blows
the spots of the Cards off and
on, and changes them to any
pictures.[375]

From 1756 to 1781, Jacob Philadelphia performed feats

of magic, sometimes under the guise of scientific
exhibitions, throughout Europe and in Russia.
Modern stage magic

Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin, pioneer

of modern magic entertainment

The "Father" of modern entertainment magic was

Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin, originally a clockmaker,
who opened a magic theatre in Paris in 1845.[368] He
transformed his art from one performed at fairs to a
performance that the public paid to see at the theatre.
His speciality was constructing mechanical automata
that appeared to move and act as if alive. Many of
Robert-Houdin's mechanisms for illusion were
pirated by his assistant and ended up in the
performances of his rivals, John Henry Anderson
and Alexander Herrmann.

John Henry Anderson was pioneering the same

transition in London. In 1840 he opened the New
Strand Theatre, where he performed as The Great
Wizard of the North. His success came from
advertising his shows and captivating his audience
with expert showmanship. He became one of the
earliest magicians to attain a high level of world
renown. He opened a second theatre in Glasgow in
1845.
 John Nevil Maskelyne, a famous
magician and illusionist of the late
19th century.

Towards the end of the century, large magic shows

permanently staged at big theatre venues became the
norm.[369] The British performer J N Maskelyne and
his partner Cooke were established at the Egyptian
Hall in London's Piccadilly in 1873 by their manager
William Morton, and continued there for 31 years.
The show incorporated stage illusions and
reinvented traditional tricks with exotic (often
Oriental) imagery. The potential of the stage was
exploited for hidden mechanisms and assistants, and
the control it offers over the audience's point of view.
Maskelyne and Cooke invented many of the illusions
still performed today—one of his best-known being
levitation.[376]

The model for the look of a 'typical' magician—a man

with wavy hair, a top hat, a goatee, and a tailcoat—
was Alexander Herrmann (1844–1896), also known as
Herrmann the Great. Herrmann was a French
magician and was part of the Herrmann family
name that is the "first-family of magic."

The escapologist and magician Harry Houdini (1874–

1926) took his stage name from Robert-Houdin and
developed a range of stage magic tricks, many of
them based on what became known after his death as
escapology. Houdini was genuinely skilled in
techniques such as lockpicking and escaping
straitjackets, but also made full use of the range of
conjuring techniques, including fake equipment and
collusion with individuals in the audience. Houdini's
show-business savvy was as great as his
performance skill. There is a Houdini Museum
dedicated to him in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

The Magic Circle was formed in London in 1905 to

promote and advance the art of stage magic.[377]

As a form of entertainment, magic easily moved

from theatrical venues to television specials, which
opened up new opportunities for deceptions, and
brought stage magic to huge audiences. Famous
magicians of the 20th century included Okito, David
Devant, Harry Blackstone Sr., Harry Blackstone Jr.,
Howard Thurston, Theodore Annemann, Cardini,
Joseph Dunninger, Dai Vernon, Fred Culpitt, Tommy
Wonder, Siegfried & Roy, and Doug Henning. Popular
20th- and 21st-century magicians include David
Copperfield, Lance Burton, James Randi, Penn and
Teller, David Blaine, Criss Angel, Hans Klok, Derren
Brown and Dynamo. Well-known women magicians
include Dell O'Dell and Dorothy Dietrich. Most
television magicians perform before a live audience,
who provide the remote viewer with a reassurance
that the illusions are not obtained with post-
production visual effects.
Many of the principles of stage magic are old. There
is an expression, "it's all done with smoke and
mirrors," used to explain something baffling, but
effects seldom use mirrors today, due to the amount
of installation work and transport difficulties. For
example, the famous Pepper's Ghost, a stage illusion
first used in 19th-century London, required a
specially built theatre. Modern performers have
vanished objects as large as the Taj Mahal, the Statue
of Liberty, and a space shuttle, using other kinds of
optical deceptions.

Notes
a. Engel (1885) is aware of fifteen prints (nos. 335–349,
pp. 154–157) dated between 1501 and 1540. Engel's no.
334 (Dr. Johann Faustus Miracul- Kunst- und
 Wunder-Buch, reprinted in Kloster vol. 2, 852–897) is
dated MCDXXXXXXIX, i.e. 1469.
b. Pagel (1982), p. 6, citing Bittel (1942), p. 1163, Strebel
(1944), p. 38. The most frequently cited assumption
that Paracelsus was born in late 1493 is due to
Sudhoff (1936), p. 11.
c. Paracelsus self-identifies as Swiss (ich bin von
Einsidlen, dess Lands ein Schweizer) in grosse
Wundartznei (vol. 1, p. 56) and names Carinthia as his
"second fatherland" (das ander mein Vatterland).[149]
d. The original edition of Nostradamus's Les
Prophéties from 1555 contained only 353 quatrains.
More were later added, amounting to 942 in an
omnibus edition published after his death organized
into ten "Centuries", each one containing one
hundred quatrains, except for Century VII, which,
for unknown reasons, only contains forty-two; the
other fifty-eight may have been lost due to a problem
during publication.[161]
e. According to Fell Smith (1909) it was painted when
Dee was 67. It belonged to a grandson, Rowland Dee,
and later to Elias Ashmole, who left it to Oxford
University.
f. The primary work on the relationship between
Bruno and Hermeticism is Yates (1964); for an
alternative assessment, placing more emphasis on
the Kabbalah, and less on Hermeticism, see De León-
Jones (1997); for a return to emphasis on Bruno's role
in the development of Science, and criticism of Yates'
emphasis on magical and Hermetic themes, see Gatti
(2002).
g. Birx (1997): "Bruno was burned to death at the stake
for his pantheistic stance and cosmic perspective."
h. Crowe (1986), p. 10: "[Bruno's] sources... seem to have
been more numerous than his followers, at least
until the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century revival
of interest in Bruno as a supposed 'martyr for
science.' It is true that he was burned at the stake in
Rome in 1600, but the church authorities guilty of
this action were almost certainly more distressed at
his denial of Christ's divinity and alleged diabolism
than at his cosmological doctrines."
i. Frank (2009), p. 24: "Though Bruno may have been a
brilliant thinker whose work stands as a bridge
between ancient and modern thought, his
persecution cannot be seen solely in light of the war
between science and religion."
j. White (2002), p. 7: "This was perhaps the most
dangerous notion of all... If other worlds existed with
intelligent beings living there, did they too have their
visitations? The idea was quite unthinkable."
k. Shackelford (2009), p. 66: "Yet the fact remains that
cosmological matters, notably the plurality of
worlds, were an identifiable concern all along and
appear in the summary document: Bruno was
repeatedly questioned on these matters, and he
apparently refused to recant them at the end.14 So,
Bruno probably was burned alive for resolutely
maintaining a series of heresies, among which his
teaching of the plurality of worlds was prominent
but by no means singular."
l. Gatti (2002), pp. 18–19: "For Bruno was claiming for
the philosopher a principle of free thought and
inquiry which implied an entirely new concept of
authority: that of the individual intellect in its
serious and continuing pursuit of an autonomous
inquiry… It is impossible to understand the issue
involved and to evaluate justly the stand made by
Bruno with his life without appreciating the
question of free thought and liberty of expression.
His insistence on placing this issue at the center of
both his work and of his defense is why Bruno
remains so much a figure of the modern world. If
there is, as many have argued, an intrinsic link
between science and liberty of inquiry, then Bruno
was among those who guaranteed the future of the
newly emerging sciences, as well as claiming in
wider terms a general principle of free thought and
expression."
m. Montano (2007), p. 71: "In Rome, Bruno was
imprisoned for seven years and subjected to a
difficult trial that analyzed, minutely, all his
philosophical ideas. Bruno, who in Venice had been
willing to recant some theses, became increasingly
resolute and declared on 21 December 1599 that he
'did not wish to repent of having too little to repent,
and in fact did not know what to repent.' Declared an
unrepentant heretic and excommunicated, he was
burned alive in the Campo dei Fiori in Rome on Ash
Wednesday, 17 February 1600. On the stake, along
with Bruno, burned the hopes of many, including
philosophers and scientists of good faith like Galileo,
who thought they could reconcile religious faith and
scientific research, while belonging to an
ecclesiastical organization declaring itself to be the
custodian of absolute truth and maintaining a
 cultural militancy requiring continual commitment
and suspicion."
n. Jenkins (2000), p. 74: "Also in the 1880s, the tradition
of ritual magic was revived in London by a group of
Masonic adepts, who formed the Order of the Golden
Dawn, which would prove an incalculable influence
on the whole subsequent history of occultism."
o. Smoley (1999), pp. 102–103: "Founded in 1888, the
Golden Dawn lasted a mere twelve years before it
was shattered by personal conflicts. At its height, it
probably had no more than a hundred members. Yet
its influence on magic and esoteric thought in the
English-speaking world would be hard to
overestimate."
p. Urban (2011), p. 39–42: "The aim of Parson's 'Babalon
Working' was first to identify a female partner who
would serve as his partner in esoteric sexual rituals;
the partner would then become the vessel for the
'magical child' or 'moonchild,' a supernatural
offspring that would be the embodiment of ultimate
power... According to Parson's account of March 2–
3, 1946, Hubbard channeled the voice of Babalon,
speaking as the beautiful but terrible lady..."
q. Urban (2006), pp. 135–137: "The ultimate goal of these
operations, carried out during February and March
1946, was to give birth to the magical being, or
'moonchild,' described in Crowley's works. Using the
powerful energy of IX degree Sex Magick, the rites
were intended to open a doorway through which the
goddess Babalon herself might appear in human
form."
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