...This chapter presents a reading of Don Quixote. Topics covered include the novel as a travel chronicle; the women in the lives of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza; the magic in Don Quixote's world; the presence of Cervantes in the novel; and criticisms about Spanish society...

...The Introduction begins with a reading of The Tempest, in which Shakespeare sets Prospero’s pursuit of sympathy in the stars and the elements against his subsequent focus on sympathy among his fellow human beings. This shift from the natural and the magical to the moral represents...

...This chapter examines Auden’s vision of the body and the broader material character of existence by elaborating his critique of “magical thinking,” which for Auden marks an attempt to subsume the material otherness of the world into human subjectivity. As a late modernist, Auden is writing against...

...This chapter shows that magic was part of many forms of Judaism for centuries despite attempts to attenuate it, especially in the philosophically-oriented circle leaning towards Maimonides's thought. Jewish magic in the first stages of Jewish mysticism, the Heikhalot literature and its...

...This chapter discusses Merlin's problematic situation with regard to his magical powers. Although the reality of magic might have been established by the Bible, as well as by law, those same authorities treated it as something very dangerous. The author here uses the account of the Pharaoh's...

...This chapter provides an explanation for Merlin's superhuman powers in both magic and prophecy—the fact that his father was an incubus, which is also one of the most sensational mysteries about him. Questions arose as to whether a demon's son could have access to a genuine spirit of prophecy...

...This chapter discusses several views located in Jewish magical and Kabbalistic literatures. It looks at aspects that can be considered as magical, and addresses examples of a descending kind of magic. Next, the chapter turns to the assumption of angels being assigned to the Torah and of being able...

... constructed during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries from Neoplatonic and Hermetic thought, which informed the theory and practice of alchemy, astrology, and ritual magic. While the occult philosophical tradition remained relevant to early nineteenth-century Romantic writers, it had begun to fragment...

...This chapter turns to the rather paradoxical role of the early Royal Society in connection with magic, since as an institution it proved far less supportive of the supernaturalist project of Joseph Glanvill and Robert Boyle than might have been expected. This reveals significant fissures...

...This concluding chapter pulls together the themes emerging from the previous ones to offer an overview of this work. It shows that there can be no doubt that a transition did occur during the period surveyed by this book — that magical ideas that had been widely accepted among the educated...

...This book unveils the enduring power of witchcraft, curses, and black magic in modern times. Few topics are so secretive or controversial. Yet, whether in the 1800s or the early 2000s, when disasters struck or personal misfortunes mounted, many Britons found themselves believing in things they had...

... raged ever since. Is the text authentic, or a hoax? Is Smith's interpretation correct? Did Jesus really practice magic, or homosexuality? And if the letter is a forgery, then, why? Through close examination of the “discovered” manuscript's text, this book unravels the answers to the mystery and tells...

... magical attraction. action at a distance Cavendish and mechanistic theory Digby and Milton John Thyer Robert consent Bacon’s conception of Cudworth Ralph divorce harmony and other musical analogies discourse Hartman Geoffrey Hermes Trismegistus and hermeticism occultism Digby and universal...

...Against the idea of a linear “disenchantment of the world,” this chapter makes a case for the persistence of magical views of sympathy in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The Cambridge Platonists Ralph Cudworth, Henry More, and Benjamin Whichcote shared a commitment to a vital...

... of the development of a modern science of sympathy, however, its long-standing association with magic and mystery did not disappear. The chapter concludes with a reading of Samuel Jackson Pratt’s late eighteenth-century poem Sympathy, which reveals a longing for magical presence in the world outside...

... area” of magic from the twelfth century onwards, despite disapproval by the Church. Together with his vast knowledge of the cosmos, he put forward a prophetic account of the end of the world. The majority of Merlin's prophecies concerned the coming of various supernatural beings, but when he reached...

... and magic weapon of DDT (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane). It was so powerful that he predicted to a dubious audience that within five years malaria would be vanquished both locally in Littoria and throughout Italy. In this unexpected declaration, Missiroli had proclaimed the beginning of a new era...

...This chapter shows that the history of black magic in modern times is a cosmopolitan drama. Human movement rapidly accelerated from the nineteenth century. People, goods, technologies, and ideas began crossing the earth at a dizzying rate. Travellers took their magical beliefs abroad...

... in the reality of terrible magic. They no longer entertained themselves with tales of local witches: radio, cinema, and television were more interesting. But the main reason Britons stopped blaming their misfortunes on evil spells lay elsewhere. The state was growing, its tentacles reaching into previously...

...This concluding chapter shows that witchcraft, understood as black magic, is an enduring, erratic belief system. It can be therapeutic, but it is also apt to be fraudulent and dangerous. If it is not properly controlled, witchcraft will certainly do damage. In such cases, social activism...