The Metamorphosis of Magic: From Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period

Deities, demons, and angels became important protagonists in the magic of Late Antiquity, and were also the main reasons for the condemnation of magic in the Christian era. Rituals of coercion, magical prayers and mystical songs drew spiritual powers to the human domain. Next to the magician’s desire to regulate fate and fortune, it was the communion with the spirit world that gave magic the potential to purify and even deify its practitioners. The sense of elation and the awareness of a metaphysical order caused magic to merge with philosophy (notably Neoplatonism). The heritage of Late Antiquity theurgy was passed on to the Arab world, and together with classical science and learning took root again in the Latin West in the High Middle Ages. The metamorphosis of magic laid out in this book is the transformation of ritual into occult philosophy against the background of cultural changes in Judaism, Graeco-Roman religion and Christianity. The book has been written by scholars from varied disciplines such as classics, theology, philosophy, cultural history, and law. Their contributions shed new light upon several old obscurities; they show magic to be a significant area of culture, and they advance the case for viewing transformations in the lore and practice of magic as a barometer with which to measure cultural change.