The best books on Magic

The Professor of Social History at the University of Hertfordshire takes us on a go of the history of magic and ritual. When did the whole history of magic actually kick off ?
According to Lynn Thorndike, writer of the eight-volume treatise History of Magic and Experimental Science, it dates back to the earliest form of writing in Ancient Babylonian stone tablets .
And there ’ second this theme that books and charming go pass in hired hand, books being a way for people to record their secrets.

Yes, some cultures put oral cognition above written works as a means of transmitting the truth, but when you record something in writing it ’ randomness preserved, so it doesn ’ triiodothyronine become corrupted by oral tradition .
And what is it about this script that in truth grabs you ?
It ’ s not a book where you read all eight volumes in a rowing, but it has a huge wealth of data from a linguist scholar who spent decades researching his subject. He used then many extracts from original sources. besides, when Thorndike was writing in the early twentieth hundred, there was this academic notion of social progress as a linear progress. There were three stages of human intellectual development from magic to religion to science. But Thorndike came along and said, actually, when you look at the history of skill you find that magic trick is cardinal to it right up until the eighteenth century .
What did he see as the link between magic and science ?
His idea was that the basis of science is experiment and a fortune of learn magic is actually about trying to discover the secrets of the natural worldly concern. To a certain degree, magic trick and science had precisely the same aims .
“ When you look at the history of science you find charming is cardinal right up until the eighteenth hundred. ”
indeed why was it that reviewers at the clock weren ’ thyroxine glad with his theory ?
well, because it screwed up the hale estimate of there being some classify of linear progression. For 2,000 years scientists were exploring aspects of magic to help them with their cultivate. Alchemy is a classical exercise. even Newton was interest in it, because scientists knew so little that any form of experiment that could help them understand was a thoroughly idea .
Your next choice is The Book of Black Magic and of Pacts .
Yes, Waite is a very matter to character. He was one of the early members of the Golden Dawn which grew up in the former nineteenth hundred. It ’ s the first gear veridical organised group of ritual magicians who practised magic trick as a religion rather than as an aspect of skill .
Yeats was besides a member. What was the bait for person like him ?
There was a unharmed captivation at the time with Ancient Egypt – the excavations by the french, the Germans and the british. The crack of the hieroglyph had led to a boom in cognition about egyptian magic trick. Once you could translate it you could start practising it. There ’ randomness besides the wholly idea of the crisis of religion in the second half of the nineteenth hundred .
There ’ s a lot of talk of grimoires in there – can you explain what they are ?
My definition of a grimoire is basically a book of charming which contains conjurations and spells. Waite thought that many grimoires were complete nonsense at best and downright demonic at worst .
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They were very popular in France .
well, that ’ s because the french were entrepreneurial booksellers, printers and publishers. It was all illicit, they shouldn ’ t have been publishing information on them and of course people were drawn by the lure of the forbid .
In the late seventeenth century there had been the huge affair of the poison scandals in which the french high club had been knee-deep in charming rituals, employing parisian magicians and buy grimoires .
But, you ’ ve made a case that grimoires weren ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate all badly and there ’ s even a link with the angels .
That ’ mho correctly. Waite ’ s script gives you all the regretful farce, the estimate of the treaty with the devils. But, there are a draw of grimoires from medieval times and onwards where they look at communicating with the angels. actually a lot of grimoires are based on Catholic idolize.

3

Ritual Magic

by Elizabeth M Butler

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Your adjacent reserve, Ritual Magic, is all about the Germans .
Yes, Elizabeth Butler wrote a series of books merely after the second gear World War. Ritual Magic is one of them. She besides wrote a seminal book on the Doctor Faust legends. Her see is that there is something specific in the german makeup which had led to centuries of fascination with magic .
And why does she think that ?
Her views are never by rights explained. obviously the books she wrote are coloured by the second World War and the Nazi regimen and it ’ s unmanageable to know to what extent she held these anti-German views before .
It sounds like you ’ rhenium disbelieving of her views ; what ’ s the value of the ledger for you ?
Its value is all the translations of textbook from german. so, any historian learner who doesn ’ t take german can finally understand what the german grimoire traditions are all about. What they show you is that basically they are no different from grimoire traditions elsewhere. In early words her thesis crumbles because as a specialist in Germany she is lone study german material. But actually all the traditions are linked up .
There are some grand claims for your adjacent book, The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses by Joseph Peterson .
Like a distribute of the grimoire custom they claim biblical origins. The Old Testament is made up of the first five books of Moses as received from God. even 2,000 years ago there were rumours and manuscripts circulating in the Middle East which were reported to be other text of messages that Moses had received, but which weren ’ thymine included in the Torah or the Old Testament .
Were these claims actually true ?
Oh no, they are all bogus. The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses originated in the eighteenth hundred. But, tied though it ’ s bogus there is still that central message of secret materials transmitted by God which is at the heart of Christianity and Judaism. indeed there ’ s the idea that the religious authorities over the centuries have withheld hidden cognition and this is enormously potent .
This is real Dan Brown territory .
very a lot so and it explains his success. This is something authors like him are feeding off. And when this kind of thing spreads it constantly chimes in with popular culture. For case, in somewhere like Africa there ’ second this idea of the religious authorities, in the first place controlled by white men, withholding cognition. And the cheap print format means that ultimately they had access to the cognition which they think has held them down. Through the entrepreneurial salesmanship of the American eclipse book publisher William Lauron Delaurence, its influence spread to West Africa and the Caribbean, where it became a founding text of rastafarianism
Your final book puts us very securely in the mod day. This is the Book of Shadows which you see as more of a genre than a particular ledger .
The Book of Shadows was basically invented by Gerald Gardner, who is the founder of Wicca. He was a civil handmaid before the second World War, very concern in the supernatural and in the writings of the Golden Dawn. In the 1940s he invented the modern religion of Wicca. He claimed that he had discovered a secret custom of ancient richness magic which had been maintained over the centuries by witches who had been persecuted by the authorities. so much so, that by the twentieth hundred there was possibly only one coven left, and he said he got accommodate of their secret from a coven in the New Forest .
And this book or genre has proved vastly successful in today ’ s popular polish .
Yes, with programmes like Charmed, the three sisters actually have the Book of Shadows and, of course, it ’ south there in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. So there are all these attractive young women who have their own grimoires. There was this sudden boom of sake among teenagers. And I think that ’ sulfur because as teenagers there is always a fascination with the mind that you can have some sort of control over your life or others .
They are on the brink of adulthood and frustrated that they don ’ t have enough office .
Yes and you ’ rhenium exploring possibilities and impression systems. The matter to thing is that the authorities have always tried to suppress all the books I ’ ve been talking about, but here we are in the third base millennium and they are still thriving. television companies are producing programmes in which magic is presented as a reality in modern settings. It ’ randomness inactive a vibrant custom.

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Category : Recommendations