|
Books > Religion & Spirituality > Alternative belief systems > Occult studies > Magic, alchemy & hermetic thought
In The Chain of Things, Eric Downing shows how the connection
between divinatory magic and reading shaped the experience of
reading and aesthetics among nineteenth-century realists and
modernist thinkers. He explores how writers, artists, and critics
such as Gottfried Keller, Theodor Fontane, and Walter Benjamin drew
on the ancient practice of divination, connecting the Greek idea of
sympathetic magic to the German aesthetic concept of the attunement
of mood and atmosphere. Downing deftly traces the genealogical
connection between reading and art in classical antiquity,
nineteenth-century realism, and modernism, attending to the ways in
which the modern re-enchantment of the world-both in nature and
human society-consciously engaged ancient practices that aimed at
preternatural prediction. Of particular significance to the
argument presented in The Chain of Things is how the future figured
into the reading of texts during this period, a time when the
future as a narrative determinant or article of historical faith
was losing its force. Elaborating a new theory of magic as a
critical tool, Downing secures crucial links between the governing
notions of time, world, the "real," and art.
Treason and magic were first linked together during the reign of
Edward II. Theories of occult conspiracy then regularly led to
major political scandals, such as the trial of Eleanor Cobham
Duchess of Gloucester in 1441. While accusations of magical treason
against high-ranking figures were indeed a staple of late medieval
English power politics, they acquired new significance at the
Reformation when the 'superstition' embodied by magic came to be
associated with proscribed Catholic belief. Francis Young here
offers the first concerted historical analysis of allegations of
the use of magic either to harm or kill the monarch, or else
manipulate the course of political events in England, between the
fourteenth century and the dawn of the Enlightenment. His book
addresses a subject usually either passed over or elided with
witchcraft: a quite different historical phenomenon. He argues that
while charges of treasonable magic certainly were used to destroy
reputations or to ensure the convictions of undesirables, magic was
also perceived as a genuine threat by English governments into the
Civil War era and beyond.
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.
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.
Katrina Hazzard-Donald explores African Americans' experience and
practice of the herbal, healing folk belief tradition known as
Hoodoo. She examines Hoodoo culture and history by tracing its
emergence from African traditions to religious practices in the
Americas. Working against conventional scholarship, Hazzard-Donald
argues that Hoodoo emerged first in three distinct regions she
calls "regional Hoodoo clusters" and that after the turn of the
nineteenth century, Hoodoo took on a national rather than regional
profile. The spread came about through the mechanism of the
"African Religion Complex," eight distinct cultural characteristics
familiar to all the African ethnic groups in the United States. The
first interdisciplinary examination to incorporate a full glossary
of Hoodoo culture, Mojo Workin': The Old African American Hoodoo
System lays out the movement of Hoodoo against a series of
watershed changes in the American cultural landscape.
Hazzard-Donald examines Hoodoo material culture, particularly the
""High John the Conquer"" root, which practitioners employ for a
variety of spiritual uses. She also examines other facets of
Hoodoo, including rituals of divination such as the ""walking boy""
and the ""Ring Shout,"" a sacred dance of Hoodoo tradition that
bears its corollaries today in the American Baptist churches.
Throughout, Hazzard-Donald distinguishes between ""Old tradition
Black Belt Hoodoo"" and commercially marketed forms that have been
controlled, modified, and often fabricated by outsiders; this study
focuses on the hidden system operating almost exclusively among
African Americans in the Black spiritual underground.
In the middle of the fourteenth century, the Franciscan friar
John of Rupescissa sent a dramatic warning to his followers: the
last days were coming; the apocalypse was near. Deemed insane by
the Christian church, Rupescissa had spent more than a decade
confined to prisons--in one case wrapped in chains and locked under
a staircase--yet ill treatment could not silence the friar's
apocalyptic message.
Religious figures who preached the end times were hardly rare in
the late Middle Ages, but Rupescissa's teachings were unique. He
claimed that knowledge of the natural world, and alchemy in
particular, could act as a defense against the plagues and wars of
the last days. His melding of apocalyptic prophecy and
quasi-scientific inquiry gave rise to a new genre of alchemical
writing and a novel cosmology of heaven and earth. Most important,
the friar's research represented a remarkable convergence between
science and religion.
In order to understand scientific knowledge today, Leah DeVun
asks that we revisit Rupescissa's life and the critical events of
his age--the Black Death, the Hundred Years' War, the Avignon
Papacy--through his eyes. Rupescissa treated alchemy as medicine
(his work was the conceptual forerunner of pharmacology) and
represented the emerging technologies and views that sought to
combat famine, plague, religious persecution, and war. The advances
he pioneered, along with the exciting strides made by his
contemporaries, shed critical light on later developments in
medicine, pharmacology, and chemistry.
This book gives the beginner and experienced practitioner alike a
modern, 21st century view into the powerful and often misunderstood
magical current called 'Chaos Magick'. Written in a clear and
easily accessible style it examines the theory behind many
techniques used in magical, artistic, religious and scientific
systems of thought; then links and applies them towards desired
goals. Separated into two volumes the book can be used by the
reader as a workbook with rituals, techniques and exercises to be
followed, as a window into contemporary magical thought at the turn
of the century or simply as a rollercoaster of a good read! However
you choose to use it, this book will leave you feeling positive,
inspired and ready to apply any of the methods presented to your
own life.
Ancient Greeks and Romans often turned to magic to achieve personal
goals. Magical rites were seen as a route for direct access to the
gods, for material gains as well as spiritual satisfaction. In this
fascinating survey of magical beliefs and practices from the sixth
century B.C.E. through late antiquity, Fritz Graf sheds new light
on ancient religion. Evidence of widespread belief in the efficacy
of magic is pervasive: the contemporaries of Plato and Aristotle
placed voodoo dolls on graves in order to harm business rivals or
attract lovers. The Twelve Tables of Roman Law forbids the magical
transference of crops from one field to another. Graves, wells, and
springs throughout the Mediterranean have yielded vast numbers of
Greek and Latin curse tablets. And ancient literature abounds with
scenes of magic, from necromancy to love spells. Graf explores the
important types of magic in Greco-Roman antiquity, describing rites
and explaining the theory behind them. And he characterizes the
ancient magician: his training and initiation, social status, and
presumed connections with the divine world. With trenchant analysis
of underlying conceptions and vivid account of illustrative cases,
Graf gives a full picture of the practice of magic and its
implications. He concludes with an evaluation of the relation of
magic to religion. Magic in the Ancient World offers an unusual
look at ancient Greek and Roman thought and a new understanding of
popular recourse to the supernatural.
For all their pride in seeing this world clearly, the thinkers and
artists of the English Renaissance were also fascinated by magic
and the occult. The three greatest playwrights of the period
devoted major plays (The Tempest, Doctor Faustus, The Alchemist) to
magic, Francis Bacon often referred to it, and it was ever-present
in the visual arts. In "Renaissance Magic and the Return of the
Golden Age" John S. Mebane reevaluates the significance of occult
philosophy in Renaissance thought and literature, constructing the
most detailed historical context for his subject yet attempted.
Just when it seemed that Science and Reason had scored their
greatest triumphs, the mid-nineteenth century witnessed an
astonishing rebirth of occultism and anit-rationalism: the
beginnings of the movement we now call New Age. A secret tradition
of knowledge rejected by the Christian or Scientific establishments
suddenly became emboldened to seek publicity and converts. James
Webb's painstaking research carry him into the undergrowth
inhabited by such illuminated personages as Madame Blavatsky, the
Reverend Leadbeater, the Bortherhood of Luxor, Annie Besant,
Krishnamurti, Swami Vivekananda, Spiritualists, Rosicrucians,
Vegetarians, Mithraic cults, and all manner of occult
propagandists. "fascinating detail . . . particularly good in
tracing the obscure and subterranean spiritual affiliations through
which these pilgrims of eternity were bound together . . . as
relevant to our own time as it is to the nineteenth century."
--Goronwy Rees, ENCOUNTER
This is a new release of the original 1923 edition.
|
|