Defining 'magic' is a maddening task. Over the last century numerous philosophers, anthropologists, historians, and theologians have attempted to pin down its essential meaning, sometimes analysing it in such complex and abstruse depth that it all but loses its sense altogether. For this reason, many people often shy away from providing a detailed definition, assuming it is generally understood as the human control of supernatural forces. 'Magic' continues to pervade the popular imagination and idiom. People feel comfortable with its contemporary multiple meanings, unaware of the controversy, conflict, and debate its definition has caused over two and a half millennia. In common usage today 'magic' is uttered in reference to the supernatural, superstition, illusion, trickery, religious miracles, fantasies, and as a simple superlative. The literary confection known as 'magical realism' has considerable appeal and many modern scientists have ironically incorporated the word into their vocabulary, with their 'magic acid', 'magic bullets' and 'magic angles'. Since the so-called European Enlightenment magic has often been seen as a marker of primitivism, of a benighted earlier stage of human development. Yet across the modern globalized world hundreds of millions continue to resort to magic - and also to fear it. Magic provides explanations and remedies for those living in extreme poverty and without access to alternatives. In the industrial West, with its state welfare systems, religious fundamentalists decry the continued moral threat posed by magic. Under the guise of neo-Paganism, its practice has become a religion in itself. Magic continues to be a truly global issue. This Very Short Introduction does not attempt to provide a concluding definition of magic: it is beyond simple definition. Instead it explores the many ways in which magic, as an idea and a practice, has been understood and employed over the millennia. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Dion Fortune's The Cosmic Doctrine is a spiritual work that resulted from a psychic experiment between two friends in Glastonbury, 1923. It has since become one of the most important works in modern esoteric literature and a constant source of inspiration and instruction to many practitioners. Sparks from the Cosmic Flame is a series of essays written by some of those inspired practitioners, which rather than seeking to 'explain' the work or re-write it in more modern vernacular, instead develops various and different aspects of its ideas that can be applied to one's practice. It's a book about how The Cosmic Doctrine can be used, or perhaps used differently and more flexibly. Wendy Berg, author of Red Tree, White Tree and Gwenevere and the Round Table has collated a series of illuminating essays by those who share a common enthusiasm for The Cosmic Doctrine and its applicability to contemporary practice. The contributors include the editor as well as M. E. Beardsley, James North, Stuart Delacey, Dale Kendrick, J.R. Petrie, Derek Thompson, Gwen Blythe, Christian Gilson, Holly Mulhern and Alan Robinson. There is no single or orthodox interpretation but rather a call for individual imagination and intuition, as well as the reasoning mind. It is unlike any other book and the reader will find that the guidance and inspiration of the original Inner Plane communicators are still there to be contacted; the words are the catalyst. One needs only to read a portion of the text and hold the images and concepts in the mind for the magic to work.

This is the first systematic attempt to analyse key aspects of ancient Greek philosophy in their original context of mystery religion, and magic. Peter Kingsley brings to light new evidence recently uncovered about ancient Pythagoreanism and its influence on Plato, and reconstructs the transmission of Pythagorean ideas from the Greek West down to the alchemists and magicians of Egypt, and from there into the Islamic world.

The story of the Horned God can be heard in various mythologies from around the world and like the Goddess he has become part of our psychological and spiritual heritage. Alan Richardson revisits his previous work on the male mysteries, Earth God Rising, adding a new commentary alongside the original text. Readers of Alan Richardson have come to love his sartorial wit, honest assessment and fresh exploration. His expertise on magical matters and its practitioners make for an insightful commentary on male deity - but always prodding readers to forge their own paths and make up their own minds. Earth God Risen is a tour through the origins and archetypes of male spirituality for both new seekers and seasoned practitioners (of both sexes).

In Rewriting Magic, Claire Fanger explores a fourteenth-century text called The Flowers of Heavenly Teaching. Written by a Benedictine monk named John of Morigny, the work all but disappeared from the historical record, and it is only now coming to light again in multiple versions and copies. While John's book largely comprises an extended set of prayers for gaining knowledge, The Flowers of Heavenly Teaching is unusual among prayer books of its time because it includes a visionary autobiography with intimate information about the book's inspiration and composition. Through the window of this record, we witness how John reconstructs and reconsecrates a condemned liturgy for knowledge acquisition: the ars notoria of Solomon. John's work was the subject of intense criticism and public scandal, and his book was burned as heretical in 1323. The trauma of these experiences left its imprint on the book, but in unexpected and sometimes baffling ways. Fanger decodes this imprint even as she relays the narrative of how she learned to understand it. In engaging prose, she explores the twin processes of knowledge acquisition in John's visionary autobiography and her own work of discovery as she reconstructed the background to his extraordinary book. Fanger's approach to her subject exemplifies innovative historical inquiry, research, and methodology. Part theology, part historical anthropology, part biblio-memoir, Rewriting Magic relates a story that will have deep implications for the study of medieval life, monasticism, prayer, magic, and religion.

What did it mean to believe in alchemy in early modern England? In this book, Bruce Janacek considers alchemical beliefs in the context of the writings of Thomas Tymme, Robert Fludd, Francis Bacon, Sir Kenelm Digby, and Elias Ashmole. Rather than examine alchemy from a scientific or medical perspective, Janacek presents it as integrated into the broader political, philosophical, and religious upheavals of the first half of the seventeenth century, arguing that the interest of these elite figures in alchemy was part of an understanding that supported their national--and in some cases royalist--loyalty and theological orthodoxy. Janacek investigates how and why individuals who supported or were actually placed at the traditional center of power in England's church and state believed in the relevance of alchemy at a time when their society, their government, their careers, and, in some cases, their very lives were at stake.

The subject of 'magic' has long been considered peripheral and sensationalist, the word itself having become something of an academic taboo. However, beliefs in magic and the rituals that surround them are extensive - as are their material manifestations - and to avoid them is to ignore a prevalent aspect of cultures worldwide, from prehistory to the present day. The Materiality of Magic addresses the value of the material record as a resource in investigations into magic, ritual practices, and popular beliefs. The chronological and geographic focuses of the papers presented here vary from prehistory to the present-day, including numinous interpretations of fossils and ritual deposits in Bronze Age Europe; apotropaic devices in Roman and Medieval Britain; the evolution of superstitions and ritual customs - from the 'voodoo doll' of Europe and Africa to a Scottish 'wishing-tree'; and an exploration of spatiality in West African healing practices. The objectives of this collection of nine papers are two-fold. First, to provide a platform from which to showcase innovative research and theoretical approaches in a subject which has largely been neglected within archaeology and related disciplines, and, secondly, to redress this neglect. The papers were presented at the 2012 Theoretical Archaeology Group (TAG) conference in Liverpool.

The most detailed analysis of the techniques of Solomonic magic from the seventh to the nineteenth century ever published. This volume explores the methods of Solomonic magic in Alexandria, tracing how the tradition passed through Byzantium (the Hygromanteia) to the Latin Clavicula Salomonis and its English incarnation as the Key of Solomon. Discover specific magical techniques such as the invocation of the gods, the binding of demons, the use of the four demon Kings, and the construction of the circle and lamen. The use of amulets, talismans, and phylacteries is outlined along with their methods of construction. Also included are explanations of the structures and steps of Solomonic evocation, the facing directions, practical considerations, the use of thwarting angels, achieving invisibility, sacrifice, love magic, treasure finding and the binding, imprisoning, and licensing of spirits.

In this original, provocative, well-reasoned, and thoroughly documented book, Frank Klaassen proposes that two principal genres of illicit learned magic occur in late medieval manuscripts: image magic, which could be interpreted and justified in scholastic terms, and ritual magic (in its extreme form, overt necromancy), which could not. Image magic tended to be recopied faithfully; ritual magic tended to be adapted and reworked. These two forms of magic did not usually become intermingled in the manuscripts, but were presented separately. While image magic was often copied in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, The Transformations of Magic demonstrates that interest in it as an independent genre declined precipitously around 1500. Instead, what persisted was the other, more problematic form of magic: ritual magic. Klaassen shows that texts of medieval ritual magic were cherished in the sixteenth century, and writers of new magical treatises, such as Agrippa von Nettesheim and John Dee, were far more deeply indebted to medieval tradition--and specifically to the medieval tradition of ritual magic--than previous scholars have thought them to be.

Evoking hidden worlds, summoning visions and making magic happen, Conjure: A Book Of Spells is filled with vivid images and tantalizing narrative fragments that stir the heart, mind and eye. Echoing the tone and structure of Medieval and Renaissance grimoires, Dube's unique collection joins surrealist automatism with rigorous formal discipline and offers readers a profound and complex work. Peter Dube is the author of four other books: Hovering World, At the Bottom of the Sky, Subtle Bodies: a Fantasia on Voice, History and Rene Crevel, which was a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award, and most recently the novel The City's Gates. He is also the editor of three anthologies of contemporary writing. His essays and critical writings have been widely published in journals such as CV Photo, ESSE, Hour and Ashe, and in exhibition publications for various galleries, among them SKOL, Occurrence, Quartier Ephemere and the Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery of Concordia University. He lives in Montreal.