Magic: A History
From Alchemy to Witchcraft, from the Ice Age to the Present
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
An Oxford professor of archaeology explores the unique history of magic—the oldest and most neglected strand of human behavior and its resurgence today
Three great strands of belief run through human history: Religion is the relationship with one god or many gods, masters of our lives and destinies. Science distances us from the world, turning us into observers and collectors of knowledge. And magic is direct human participation in the universe: we have influence on the world around us, and the world has influence on us.
Over the last few centuries, magic has developed a bad reputation—thanks to the unsavory tactics of shady practitioners, and to a successful propaganda campaign on the part of religion and science, which denigrated magic as backward, irrational, and "primitive." In Magic, however, the Oxford professor of archaeology Chris Gosden restores magic to its essential place in the history of the world—revealing it to be an enduring element of human behavior that plays an important role for individuals and cultures. From the curses and charms of ancient Greek, Roman, and Jewish magic, to the shamanistic traditions of Eurasia, indigenous America, and Africa; from the alchemy of the Renaissance to the condemnation of magic in the colonial period and the mysteries of modern quantum physics—Gosden's startling, fun, and colorful history supplies a missing chapter of the story of our civilization.
Drawing on decades of research around the world—touching on the first known horoscope, a statue ordered into exile, and the mystical power of tattoos—Gosden shows what magic can offer us today, and how we might use it to rethink our relationship with the world. Magic is an original, singular, and sweeping work of scholarship, and its revelations will leave a spell on the reader.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Oxford University archaeology professor Gosden (Prehistory: A Very Short Introduction) delivers a sophisticated and wide-ranging study of the role of magic in human history. He explores the differences between magic, religion, and science as methods of facilitating human communication with the universe, and examines prehistoric cave art; the complex dynamic between magic and miracles in Jewish, Greek, and Roman settlements between 1000 BCE and 1000 CE; the role of gods and divination in Mesopotamia; Chinese beliefs in a portal between the worlds of the living and the dead that could be used to obtain help from deceased ancestors; and the development of shamanism in the Eurasian steppe. European societies have practiced many forms of magic throughout history, according to Gosden, including astrology, the symbolic placement of artifacts on the landscape (Stonehenge), and the transformation and creation of potent objects. Gosden also explores the use of magic in colonized Africa, Australia, and the Americas, and looks at how spiritualism, the Wiccan movement, and the growing importance of ecology have become important expressions of magic since the 19th century. Though dense and scholarly, Gosden's meticulous account offers many intriguing glimpses of early human societies. Readers with a deep interest in human belief systems will be captivated.
