This collection of essays considers the place of magic in the modern world, first by exploring the ways in which modernity has been defined in explicit opposition to magic and superstition, and then by illuminating how modern proponents of magic have worked to legitimize their practices through an overt embrace of evolving forms such as esotericism and supernaturalism.
Taking a two-track approach, this book explores the complex dynamics of the construction of the modern self and its relation to the modern preoccupation with magic. Essays examine how modern “rational” consciousness is generated and maintained and how proponents of both magical and scientific traditions rationalize evidence to fit accepted orthodoxy. This book also describes how people unsatisfied with the norms of modern subjectivity embrace various forms of magic—and the methods these modern practitioners use to legitimate magic in the modern world.
A compelling assessment of magic from the early modern period to today, Magic in the Modern World shows how, despite the dominant culture’s emphatic denial of their validity, older forms of magic persist and develop while new forms of magic continue to emerge.
In addition to the editors, contributors include Egil Asprem, Erik Davis, Megan Goodwin, Dan Harms, Adam Jortner, and Benedek Láng.
Table of Contents:
Contents
Introduction, Edward Bever and Randall Styers
Magic and the Making of Modernity
Chapter 1, “Bad Habits, or, How Superstition Disappeared in the Modern World,” Randall Styers
Chapter 2, “Descartes’ Dreams, the Neuropsychology of Disbelief, and the Making of the Modern Self,” Edward Bever
Chapter 3, “Why Magic Cannot Be Falsified by Experiments,” Benedek Láng
Chapter 4, “Witches as Liars: Witchcraft and Civilization in the Early American Republic,” Adam Jortner
Magic in Modernity
Chapter 5, “Loagaeth, q consibra a caosg: The Contested Arena of Modern Enochian Angel Magic,” Egil Asprem
Chapter 6, “Babalon Launching: Jack Parsons, Rocketry, and the ‘Method of Science,’” Erik Davis
Chapter 7, “Manning the High Seat: Seidr as Self-Making in Contemporary NorseNeopaganisms,” Megan Goodwin
Chapter 8, “Reviving Dead Names: Strategies of Legitimization in the Necronomicon of Simon and the Dark Aesthetic,” Dan Harms
Selected Bibliography
Notes
List of Contributors
Index
About the Author :
Edward Bever is Professor of History at the State University of New York at Old Westbury and the author of The Realities of Witchcraft and Popular Magic in Early Modern Europe: Culture, Cognition, and Everyday Life.
Randall Styers is Associate Professor of Religion at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the author of Making Magic: Religion, Magic, and Science in the Modern World.
Review :
“A powerful collection that succeeds in connecting history, science, and psychology, and will be relevant to scholars of each.”
—A. E. Leykam Choice
“Hopefully, this book will be read both by historians of magic and scholars of contemporary magic in the fields of anthropology and sociology. As such, it is a valuable contribution to the interdisciplinary study of magic; such interdisciplinary engagement is especially important when dealing with as elusive and controverted a concept as magic.”
—Francis Young Reviews in History
“Magic in the Modern World stands out among other edited volumes in the quality of its contributions and the erudition of its contributors. . . . I anticipate returning to my copy again and again to draw fresh insights into my research and pedagogy in the field.”
—Michael E. Heyes Nova Religio
“Ever since the nineteenth century, it has been a staple of the discourse on modern society that magic and supernaturalism were on their way out. The contributors to this splendid volume explain why this idea has been so persuasive, and why it is utterly wrong.”
—Olav Hammer, author of Claiming Knowledge: Strategies of Epistemology from Theosophy to the New Age
“Most readers of this review surely would say that magic has long passed its prime, surviving in the modern Western world only in the enfeebled state of sleight of hand. But Magic in the Modern World . . . is determined to prove them wrong.”
—Steven P. Marrone Isis: Journal of the History of Science Society
“Well-conceived and thought-provoking.”
—Bernd-Christian Otto Jahrbuch für Kommunikationsgeschichte
“Perhaps the main value of this collection is not so much in each individual contribution, but in adding a great deal of scholarly weight to the voices increasingly challenging the 'disenchantment' theory of the history of magic, and establishing contemporary magical practices as subjects worthy of scholarly study.”
—John Rimmer Magonia Review of Books
