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The History of Magic: From Alchemy to Witchcraft, from the Ice Age to the Present
Three great strands of practice and belief run through human history: science, religion and magic. But magic - the idea that we have a connection with the universe - has developed a bad reputation.
It has been with us for millennia - from the curses and charms of ancient Greek, Roman and Jewish magic, to the shamanistic traditions of Eurasia, indigenous America and Africa, and even quantum physics today. Even today seventy-five per cent of the Western world holds some belief in magic, whether snapping wishbones, buying lottery tickets or giving names to inanimate objects.
Drawing on his decades of research, with incredible breadth and authority, Professor Chris Gosden provides a timely history of human thought and the role it has played in shaping civilization, and how we might use magic to rethink our understanding of the world.
It has been with us for millennia - from the curses and charms of ancient Greek, Roman and Jewish magic, to the shamanistic traditions of Eurasia, indigenous America and Africa, and even quantum physics today. Even today seventy-five per cent of the Western world holds some belief in magic, whether snapping wishbones, buying lottery tickets or giving names to inanimate objects.
Drawing on his decades of research, with incredible breadth and authority, Professor Chris Gosden provides a timely history of human thought and the role it has played in shaping civilization, and how we might use magic to rethink our understanding of the world.
492 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 1, 2020
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About the author
Chris Gosden
24 books33 followersChris Gosden is a Professorial Fellow in European Archaeology at the University of Oxford. He teaches students in the Archaeology and Anthropology degree. He is also an author of several books on human links with the material world, the long term history of creativity, intelligence, the emotions, and aesthetics; the archaeology of colonisation in the recent past, as well as in older periods such as the setting up of the Roman empire;late Prehistoric periods in Europe from the late Bronze Age to AD 400. Celtic art and other aspects of material culture;issues of identity, especially what it means to be English;the history of museums, their collections, archaeology and anthropology as disciplines.
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January 17, 2025Chris Gosden is an archaeologist, who had first been a curator-lecturer at the Pitt Rivers Museum and then a Professor of European Archaeology in Oxford. His work as an archaeologist has led him to places like Papua New Guinea, Turkmenistan, etc.
At the beginning of his book, the author describes his intention as showcasing how, as he calls them, the three helix of belief - magic, religion and science, developed through time and geographical areas, beginning with prehistoric magical practices in the Middle East and ending with a view about how a belief in a sentient system (promoted by magic) complements new quantum physics discoveries, and the benefits of adopting such a belief when dealing with contemporary problems like global warming, inequality, and more.
I found Gosden`s qualifying of the term magic interesting. For him, magic is a worldview, according to which, everything is connected, and man, using these connections, has the power to influence other beings or events. This allows him to describe even ancestor cults, like those in China, or animism, as magical, and both of these would otherwise be described as early forms of religion. Logically, his description of the term works, I am only a bit put off because of its broadness. I am used to academic approaches of such terms to be very different, most specialists trying to narrow down the subject as much as they can.
Gosden lists three aspects of magic - transcendence, transformation and transaction, each of these playing a different role in every culture, time period and region. Transcendence, for example, he explains with the help of astrology and the maxim “as above, so below” - a one way influence on humans. Transformation can be seen in alchemy and transaction in votive offerings. This creates a very wide spectrum of magic attitudes and allows for various combinations.
Throughout almost half of his book, Gosden is dealing with prehistoric magic, which I attribute to his general interest in prehistory (he has several books on the subject and in this one he mentions having worked on prehistoric archaeological sites). Of course, our knowledge of prehistoric magic can only come from material finds and their interpretations are often ambiguous and too rooted in our own cultural background. Another problem is the hyper interpretation, a trap in which most prehistoric archaeologists easily follow. I am glad the author acknowledged the risk of the last one in the beginning of the book and repeatedly reminded the reader of it.
Gosden has embarked on an enormous task - to write a history of magic throughout ALL human history, which of course, comes with its setbacks. For example, because of dealing with such broad geographic areas and time periods, the author is obliged to give the reader enough background knowledge of the certain one who looks at, as to make his statement on how magic developed, evolved and contributed to that specific culture (or cultures). This results in an average 50-60 pages chapter on a specific area and period (which are enormous in their own terms), with almost half of these filled with background knowledge, thus leaving only around 30-40 to the specific subject. The constrained volume, also, allows only a handful detailed looks at specific archaeological materials or written sources.
I was somewhat puzzled at one of his statements: “In contrast to Mesopotamia, there is no mention (in Egyptian mythology) of the creation of people or their cosmological role”, which is just wrong. In Coffin Text 80, for example, Atum refers to human beings as having come forth from his Eye. In fact, there are several variations of this myth - the sun god weeping because he is alone after his birth and unable to find his mother, or the Eye of Atum crying in rage after founding out it was replaced by another, both of these resulting in the creation of mankind. The Teaching for King Merikare also provides some knowledge about the role and place of humankind in the cosmos: “For it is for their sake that He created heaven and earth. He stilled the raging of the waters, and created the winds so that their nostrils might live. They are His images who come forth from His body, and it is for their sake that He rises in the sky… And when they weep, He hearkens.”
Despite this, Gosden has some really interesting ideas (I attribute them to him, because I haven't really met them somewhere else, but this might be my fault). For example, the idea of the neolithic house as a living being with its own character and life (birth and death) or the far-fetched ,but still rather curious, connection between mesolithic lake deposits of weapons in Britain and the Lady of the Lake providing Arthur with Excalibur, a magical sword.
The author writes with caution and detail, but despite this, the book never felt dry. This would definitely help in engaging the mind of a reader, who lacks an academic background. There are also a lot of illustrations and tables, which always come in hand.
Overall, the book provides a lot of interesting material, but I wouldn't recommend it to the more advanced, in such subjects, reader. It would be a good starting point for someone with a more general interest in magical or religious attitudes, tho! It's a great foundation to build on. The provided bibliography also helps with that. Some of the titles in it have been on my to-read list for a long time, and some I gladly added to it.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book for free in an exchange for an honest review.
At the beginning of his book, the author describes his intention as showcasing how, as he calls them, the three helix of belief - magic, religion and science, developed through time and geographical areas, beginning with prehistoric magical practices in the Middle East and ending with a view about how a belief in a sentient system (promoted by magic) complements new quantum physics discoveries, and the benefits of adopting such a belief when dealing with contemporary problems like global warming, inequality, and more.
I found Gosden`s qualifying of the term magic interesting. For him, magic is a worldview, according to which, everything is connected, and man, using these connections, has the power to influence other beings or events. This allows him to describe even ancestor cults, like those in China, or animism, as magical, and both of these would otherwise be described as early forms of religion. Logically, his description of the term works, I am only a bit put off because of its broadness. I am used to academic approaches of such terms to be very different, most specialists trying to narrow down the subject as much as they can.
Gosden lists three aspects of magic - transcendence, transformation and transaction, each of these playing a different role in every culture, time period and region. Transcendence, for example, he explains with the help of astrology and the maxim “as above, so below” - a one way influence on humans. Transformation can be seen in alchemy and transaction in votive offerings. This creates a very wide spectrum of magic attitudes and allows for various combinations.
Throughout almost half of his book, Gosden is dealing with prehistoric magic, which I attribute to his general interest in prehistory (he has several books on the subject and in this one he mentions having worked on prehistoric archaeological sites). Of course, our knowledge of prehistoric magic can only come from material finds and their interpretations are often ambiguous and too rooted in our own cultural background. Another problem is the hyper interpretation, a trap in which most prehistoric archaeologists easily follow. I am glad the author acknowledged the risk of the last one in the beginning of the book and repeatedly reminded the reader of it.
Gosden has embarked on an enormous task - to write a history of magic throughout ALL human history, which of course, comes with its setbacks. For example, because of dealing with such broad geographic areas and time periods, the author is obliged to give the reader enough background knowledge of the certain one who looks at, as to make his statement on how magic developed, evolved and contributed to that specific culture (or cultures). This results in an average 50-60 pages chapter on a specific area and period (which are enormous in their own terms), with almost half of these filled with background knowledge, thus leaving only around 30-40 to the specific subject. The constrained volume, also, allows only a handful detailed looks at specific archaeological materials or written sources.
I was somewhat puzzled at one of his statements: “In contrast to Mesopotamia, there is no mention (in Egyptian mythology) of the creation of people or their cosmological role”, which is just wrong. In Coffin Text 80, for example, Atum refers to human beings as having come forth from his Eye. In fact, there are several variations of this myth - the sun god weeping because he is alone after his birth and unable to find his mother, or the Eye of Atum crying in rage after founding out it was replaced by another, both of these resulting in the creation of mankind. The Teaching for King Merikare also provides some knowledge about the role and place of humankind in the cosmos: “For it is for their sake that He created heaven and earth. He stilled the raging of the waters, and created the winds so that their nostrils might live. They are His images who come forth from His body, and it is for their sake that He rises in the sky… And when they weep, He hearkens.”
Despite this, Gosden has some really interesting ideas (I attribute them to him, because I haven't really met them somewhere else, but this might be my fault). For example, the idea of the neolithic house as a living being with its own character and life (birth and death) or the far-fetched ,but still rather curious, connection between mesolithic lake deposits of weapons in Britain and the Lady of the Lake providing Arthur with Excalibur, a magical sword.
The author writes with caution and detail, but despite this, the book never felt dry. This would definitely help in engaging the mind of a reader, who lacks an academic background. There are also a lot of illustrations and tables, which always come in hand.
Overall, the book provides a lot of interesting material, but I wouldn't recommend it to the more advanced, in such subjects, reader. It would be a good starting point for someone with a more general interest in magical or religious attitudes, tho! It's a great foundation to build on. The provided bibliography also helps with that. Some of the titles in it have been on my to-read list for a long time, and some I gladly added to it.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book for free in an exchange for an honest review.
January 6, 2021
“La magia es un arte, y como cualquier arte, no se enseña. Se aprende”.
Cuando un extraño me pregunta dónde puede aprender sobre magia, la verdad es que la respuesta nunca es simple y tampoco es la misma para todos. Durante los años que tengo leyendo y aprendiendo sobre estos temas, mi visión sobre la magia ha mutado del asombro y la curiosidad hacia el respeto y la admiración no sólo de la forma en la que los humanos, por medio de su mera voluntad, pretenden cambiar su destino, los acontecimientos cotidianos o la propia naturaleza, sino qué es lo que nos ha llevado como culturas y sociedades a interpretar la forma de lograr estos cambios. Y para mí, comprender de dónde viene la magia, cómo ha evolucionado y hacia donde va es un paso esencial para todo aquel que esté interesado en la magia, ya sea para fines prácticos o antropológicos.
“Magic: A history: from alchemy to witchcraft from the ice age to the present” es un libro de Chris Gosden, arqueólogo especialista en identidad de la Universidad de Oxford, en donde de manera clara y breve nos introduce en viaje del desarrollo de esta “hélice” humana, desde su origen más primitivo hasta la actualidad. He encontrado este libro útil y esclarecedor sobre todo para aquellos que empiezan a conocer este sendero de la magia y el ocultismo, además de que creo que Gosden aborda los temas con un respeto enorme por las prácticas y culturas que aborda, aún desde su punto de vista científico. Uno de los mayores “peros” que suelo encontrar de parte de otros lectores respecto a este libro (y en el que no estoy de acuerdo) es que casi la mitad de sus páginas aborda la historia paleolítica de la magia y da poco espacio para magias más “interesantes y modernas”.
A mí, en lo personal, me parece mucho más importante explorar la raíz de lo que percibimos hoy como “magia” para poder interpretarla con eficacia en el presente, en vez de dejarnos llevar siempre por únicamente el impacto visual o ideológico de los tipos de magia actuales (cosa que, curiosamente, es uno de los elementos más fuertes para llevar a cabo la magia como tal).
Una cosa importante que sí necesita entender el lector antes de empezar, es que muchos de los conceptos y deducciones prehistóricas que encontramos en la actualidad son hipótesis todavía; si no conoces todavía mucho del tema, es probable que tomes algunos conceptos dados por Chris Gosden como válidos en su totalidad si no has leído a otros autores o libros relacionados con esto, pero aún así, Gosden se esfuerza por esclarecernos párrafo por párrafo cuáles son estas deducciones personales.
Cuando un extraño me pregunta dónde puede aprender sobre magia, la verdad es que la respuesta nunca es simple y tampoco es la misma para todos. Durante los años que tengo leyendo y aprendiendo sobre estos temas, mi visión sobre la magia ha mutado del asombro y la curiosidad hacia el respeto y la admiración no sólo de la forma en la que los humanos, por medio de su mera voluntad, pretenden cambiar su destino, los acontecimientos cotidianos o la propia naturaleza, sino qué es lo que nos ha llevado como culturas y sociedades a interpretar la forma de lograr estos cambios. Y para mí, comprender de dónde viene la magia, cómo ha evolucionado y hacia donde va es un paso esencial para todo aquel que esté interesado en la magia, ya sea para fines prácticos o antropológicos.
“Magic: A history: from alchemy to witchcraft from the ice age to the present” es un libro de Chris Gosden, arqueólogo especialista en identidad de la Universidad de Oxford, en donde de manera clara y breve nos introduce en viaje del desarrollo de esta “hélice” humana, desde su origen más primitivo hasta la actualidad. He encontrado este libro útil y esclarecedor sobre todo para aquellos que empiezan a conocer este sendero de la magia y el ocultismo, además de que creo que Gosden aborda los temas con un respeto enorme por las prácticas y culturas que aborda, aún desde su punto de vista científico. Uno de los mayores “peros” que suelo encontrar de parte de otros lectores respecto a este libro (y en el que no estoy de acuerdo) es que casi la mitad de sus páginas aborda la historia paleolítica de la magia y da poco espacio para magias más “interesantes y modernas”.
A mí, en lo personal, me parece mucho más importante explorar la raíz de lo que percibimos hoy como “magia” para poder interpretarla con eficacia en el presente, en vez de dejarnos llevar siempre por únicamente el impacto visual o ideológico de los tipos de magia actuales (cosa que, curiosamente, es uno de los elementos más fuertes para llevar a cabo la magia como tal).
Una cosa importante que sí necesita entender el lector antes de empezar, es que muchos de los conceptos y deducciones prehistóricas que encontramos en la actualidad son hipótesis todavía; si no conoces todavía mucho del tema, es probable que tomes algunos conceptos dados por Chris Gosden como válidos en su totalidad si no has leído a otros autores o libros relacionados con esto, pero aún así, Gosden se esfuerza por esclarecernos párrafo por párrafo cuáles son estas deducciones personales.
January 3, 2021
1st book for 2021.
I thought this was a decent book, but sadly it was just too information dense for my tiny brain.
Gosden uses a very broad definition of magic—basically anytime anyone interacts with the physical world via supernatural means (so prayer? many so called "primitive" religions etc). His book essentially attempts to cover magic from the last Ice Age to the Present, giving proper weight to every major world culture. As a result each chapter is very dense, but also shallow (e.g., his discussion of magic in the modern world reads more like a shopping list of various organisations than any detailed look at magic practices now—this is of course equally true for this discussion of magic in Ancient Sumer or Medieval Europe or early China).
I could recommend this book to anyone who is looking to get a broad lay of the land before jumping into areas that are of particular interest, but if you are just a tourist like me, there are too many sites on this tour, with little or not explanation of the significance of any particular monument.
3-stars.
I thought this was a decent book, but sadly it was just too information dense for my tiny brain.
Gosden uses a very broad definition of magic—basically anytime anyone interacts with the physical world via supernatural means (so prayer? many so called "primitive" religions etc). His book essentially attempts to cover magic from the last Ice Age to the Present, giving proper weight to every major world culture. As a result each chapter is very dense, but also shallow (e.g., his discussion of magic in the modern world reads more like a shopping list of various organisations than any detailed look at magic practices now—this is of course equally true for this discussion of magic in Ancient Sumer or Medieval Europe or early China).
I could recommend this book to anyone who is looking to get a broad lay of the land before jumping into areas that are of particular interest, but if you are just a tourist like me, there are too many sites on this tour, with little or not explanation of the significance of any particular monument.
3-stars.
February 1, 2021
As a practitioner of modern paganism and witchcraft, I'm always excited to read a book about how the Craft evolved from early practitioners of magic. This book does just that, explaining how early civilizations viewed and practiced magic. It's a comprehensive book for early eras of magic from an archeologist. Unfortunately, modern magic is given only a few chapters and is honestly pretty vague and often inaccurate. While Gosden shows a deep understanding of magic in ancient and medieval cultures, he completely lacks an understanding of what it means in modern culture. The Golden Dawn and Wicca, the two most influential traditions of magic in modern history, are given only a few paragraphs. Gosden seems to almost pick out names from a bad Wikipedia article. We hear about Aleister Crowley and Gerald Gardner but not about other important people that shaped our modern history such as Eliphas Levi, Madame Blavatsky, Scott Cunningham, Z. Budapest or Starhawk. In one section, he even begins discussing Freud, giving him credit in the movement when Freud actually has little to no influence on modern magic. He discusses Freud's interest in spiritualism but for some reason completely ignores Freud's protege Carl Jung who dedicated much of his life to studying the occult and alchemy! Overall this book is great for understanding the ancient to medieval history of magic, but it's clear Gosden did very little research into the modern history of magic.
June 9, 2022
It's hard to imagine who'll come away from this book with fond memories. Gosden's history is extremely deep, but almost all of the book is taken up with "pre-historical" matters. That's not surprising; Gosden is an archaeologist. For some reason I've now read three history books by archaeologists this year, and they've all been tough going. Archaeology is obviously very good on minutia and 'day-in-the-life' stuff; I can also see how doing archaeology is *not* good training for writing narratives or explaining things historically.
So, what we have here is a long list of archaeological bits and bobs, vaguely joined together by an absolutely terrible distinction between 'magic' 'science' and 'religion'. I quote, because I couldn't quite believe anyone could write something so silly after the nineteenth century: "Human history as a whole is made up of a triple helix of magic, religion, and science," p 12. Um, no, it's not.
There's cool archaeology stuff, but it's shoehorned into this distinction with no apparent care or thought. If it's cool, it's 'magic.' If it's not cool, it's 'religion'. If it's boring, it's 'science.' So much of what he writes about would be more easily understood as religion, despite his own protestations that he's just using a different definition of magic.
So, if you're looking for a book about the history of magic in the usual sense (i.e., semi-miraculous human interventions in the natural order), you'll be disappointed. Also, if you're looking for any narrative or historical explanation. If you're looking for individual people, you'll be disappointed. If, by some miracle, you bought 'The History of Magic' expecting whatever this is, I guess you'll be satisfied.
So, what we have here is a long list of archaeological bits and bobs, vaguely joined together by an absolutely terrible distinction between 'magic' 'science' and 'religion'. I quote, because I couldn't quite believe anyone could write something so silly after the nineteenth century: "Human history as a whole is made up of a triple helix of magic, religion, and science," p 12. Um, no, it's not.
There's cool archaeology stuff, but it's shoehorned into this distinction with no apparent care or thought. If it's cool, it's 'magic.' If it's not cool, it's 'religion'. If it's boring, it's 'science.' So much of what he writes about would be more easily understood as religion, despite his own protestations that he's just using a different definition of magic.
So, if you're looking for a book about the history of magic in the usual sense (i.e., semi-miraculous human interventions in the natural order), you'll be disappointed. Also, if you're looking for any narrative or historical explanation. If you're looking for individual people, you'll be disappointed. If, by some miracle, you bought 'The History of Magic' expecting whatever this is, I guess you'll be satisfied.
January 6, 2022
Some of the book was interesting but I found myself getting lost in the amount of contextual and descriptive information. This book does not make light reading.
February 28, 2023
There are more things in heaven and on earth, Horatio, but this was awful. Tedious and unconvincing; I am not entirely sure how the author managed to make it so dull…
June 24, 2021
I bought this on a whim. I managed to get through the first chapter by valiantly fighting back the urge to dismiss it as a waste of time, given that the author appears to exhibit the critical thinking skills of a college freshman. This will be the first book I've ever added to my Goodreads that I have not read in full, but I cannot bring myself to devote any more time to it, and I also cannot restrain myself from the small rant that follows.
I don't know exactly what I was expecting here. I think the blurb of praise from Simon Sebag Montfiore ("deep scholarship") threw me off. I suppose I was thinking it would be a more objective history of magical practices. What I was not expecting was someone who clearly presents as a scholar attempting to legitimize magical beliefs whose validity can be readily debunked through very straightforward scientific inquiry.
Gosden spends so much time discussing science on the one hand and contrasting it with magic on the other. This makes it all the more remarkable that he does not even seem to understand what science is. Science is not a mode of belief. It is a process by which we can determine whether certain beliefs are reliably accurate or not. Its function is to demystify, and to separate the demonstrably correct from the demonstrably incorrect. Far from being the colder and more remote way of viewing the world Gosden suggests it is, it allows us to uncover some truly amazing things that have the virtue of actually being real -- special relativity and quantum physics are great examples that, to his credit, the author does at least acknowledge.
Most troublingly, Gosden repeatedly pigeonholes science as "holding the world at a distance" and contrasts magic as "immersing" ourselves in the world. He never explains what he means, even though this distinction seems to be critical to his project and his understanding of science. It seems to me that this framing could not be further from the truth. Science is the ultimate embodiment of immersion in the world. You have an idea about how something works; you put it to the test by playing out your idea in the world; you hone and refine (or perhaps radically change or abandon) that idea based on what the world tells you in response to your probing; and ultimately, you arrive at an understanding that the world and you have reached together as partners by working together. Of course, each practitioner of science is biased in their own ways. But that's the whole point -- to do everything you can to check those biases through experimentation and replication by others. Between magic and science, it is plainly magic that holds the world at a distance, namely by attempting to cram through purely subjective notions of what might be possible, even if those notions prove to be unreliable in light of subsequent experience.
The other thing that drove me nuts was Gosden's positing of a "triple helix" of belief that sort of animates human history -- magic, religion, and science. First of all, what on earth possessed him to analogize to a helix? Why not, oh I don't know, a triangle perhaps? If he was attempting to communicate authentically, he wouldn't have gone out of his way to sound so fancy. But much more importantly with regard to his helix, isolating just these three --magic, religion, and science -- seems arbitrary and ridiculous. What about power? What about desire? What about masculinity and sexism? And sexuality? What about race, or perhaps more generally, otherness? How about language? Family? Government? Gosden never explains why it's in any way defensible to single out just the three he has. One might say, he didn't proceed scientifically. He proceeded by trying to cram through a purely subjective notion of what might true, even if that notion proves to be unreliable in light of subsequent experience.
I think this archaeologist should have just stuck to presenting his findings, rather than expounding in the manner of a philosopher. I am not qualified to opine one way or the other as to the quality of his work in the former respect. But his philosophy is absolute bullshit.
I don't know exactly what I was expecting here. I think the blurb of praise from Simon Sebag Montfiore ("deep scholarship") threw me off. I suppose I was thinking it would be a more objective history of magical practices. What I was not expecting was someone who clearly presents as a scholar attempting to legitimize magical beliefs whose validity can be readily debunked through very straightforward scientific inquiry.
Gosden spends so much time discussing science on the one hand and contrasting it with magic on the other. This makes it all the more remarkable that he does not even seem to understand what science is. Science is not a mode of belief. It is a process by which we can determine whether certain beliefs are reliably accurate or not. Its function is to demystify, and to separate the demonstrably correct from the demonstrably incorrect. Far from being the colder and more remote way of viewing the world Gosden suggests it is, it allows us to uncover some truly amazing things that have the virtue of actually being real -- special relativity and quantum physics are great examples that, to his credit, the author does at least acknowledge.
Most troublingly, Gosden repeatedly pigeonholes science as "holding the world at a distance" and contrasts magic as "immersing" ourselves in the world. He never explains what he means, even though this distinction seems to be critical to his project and his understanding of science. It seems to me that this framing could not be further from the truth. Science is the ultimate embodiment of immersion in the world. You have an idea about how something works; you put it to the test by playing out your idea in the world; you hone and refine (or perhaps radically change or abandon) that idea based on what the world tells you in response to your probing; and ultimately, you arrive at an understanding that the world and you have reached together as partners by working together. Of course, each practitioner of science is biased in their own ways. But that's the whole point -- to do everything you can to check those biases through experimentation and replication by others. Between magic and science, it is plainly magic that holds the world at a distance, namely by attempting to cram through purely subjective notions of what might be possible, even if those notions prove to be unreliable in light of subsequent experience.
The other thing that drove me nuts was Gosden's positing of a "triple helix" of belief that sort of animates human history -- magic, religion, and science. First of all, what on earth possessed him to analogize to a helix? Why not, oh I don't know, a triangle perhaps? If he was attempting to communicate authentically, he wouldn't have gone out of his way to sound so fancy. But much more importantly with regard to his helix, isolating just these three --magic, religion, and science -- seems arbitrary and ridiculous. What about power? What about desire? What about masculinity and sexism? And sexuality? What about race, or perhaps more generally, otherness? How about language? Family? Government? Gosden never explains why it's in any way defensible to single out just the three he has. One might say, he didn't proceed scientifically. He proceeded by trying to cram through a purely subjective notion of what might true, even if that notion proves to be unreliable in light of subsequent experience.
I think this archaeologist should have just stuck to presenting his findings, rather than expounding in the manner of a philosopher. I am not qualified to opine one way or the other as to the quality of his work in the former respect. But his philosophy is absolute bullshit.
November 4, 2020
Read in Italian thanks to Rizzoli.
Non potete capire la gioia che ho provato nel realizzare di non trovarmi davanti al solito libro che, senza alcun fondamento o ricerca, tenta di dare un significato alle pratiche magiche della storia umana. Chris Gosden ci parla davvero della Storia della Magia, di come quest’ultima sia una parte costante del vissuto umano, del legame con la religione, con il mondo dei vivi e quello dei morti. Attraverso i secoli, trattati con cognizione di causa e ricchezza di testimonianze e immagini, l’autore ci aiuta a comprendere l’importanza di un incredibile bagaglio culturale, fatto di tradizioni, rituali, incantesimi, scienza prima della scienza stessa. Gli sciamani, gli alchimisti e le streghe non sono solo figure che riempiono le pagine della letteratura fantastica, ma persone che hanno saputo percepire la natura e il cosmo in una maniera tanto diversa da superare le convenzioni, come dei veri e propri scienziati, il cui operato è ancora di ispirazione per tutti noi. Tra queste pagine trovate la loro storia, la nostra. Trovate una fonte inesauribile di informazioni, condivise con uno stile mai pretenzioso, accessibile, vivo. Non è un libro da leggere una sola volta nella vita. La “Storia della Magia” è un compendio essenziale che non smetterete mai di consultare, di apprezzare.
Non potete capire la gioia che ho provato nel realizzare di non trovarmi davanti al solito libro che, senza alcun fondamento o ricerca, tenta di dare un significato alle pratiche magiche della storia umana. Chris Gosden ci parla davvero della Storia della Magia, di come quest’ultima sia una parte costante del vissuto umano, del legame con la religione, con il mondo dei vivi e quello dei morti. Attraverso i secoli, trattati con cognizione di causa e ricchezza di testimonianze e immagini, l’autore ci aiuta a comprendere l’importanza di un incredibile bagaglio culturale, fatto di tradizioni, rituali, incantesimi, scienza prima della scienza stessa. Gli sciamani, gli alchimisti e le streghe non sono solo figure che riempiono le pagine della letteratura fantastica, ma persone che hanno saputo percepire la natura e il cosmo in una maniera tanto diversa da superare le convenzioni, come dei veri e propri scienziati, il cui operato è ancora di ispirazione per tutti noi. Tra queste pagine trovate la loro storia, la nostra. Trovate una fonte inesauribile di informazioni, condivise con uno stile mai pretenzioso, accessibile, vivo. Non è un libro da leggere una sola volta nella vita. La “Storia della Magia” è un compendio essenziale che non smetterete mai di consultare, di apprezzare.
August 3, 2021
As an archaeologist the author has a lot of knowledge about the history of magic. However, his understanding of contemporary Witchcraft and magic is not so great.
He categorises 'witches' and 'witchcraft' as 'malign' magic which is a huge generalisation. Also the chapter on modern magic is lacking in depth and he offers little insight past the usual Crowley and Gardner information.
The last chapter is very preachy and the author focuses on magic today being about ecology. Although modern witches are usually activists for the planet, they also pride themselves on being advocates for many other causes.
Overall I was disappointed with this one.
He categorises 'witches' and 'witchcraft' as 'malign' magic which is a huge generalisation. Also the chapter on modern magic is lacking in depth and he offers little insight past the usual Crowley and Gardner information.
The last chapter is very preachy and the author focuses on magic today being about ecology. Although modern witches are usually activists for the planet, they also pride themselves on being advocates for many other causes.
Overall I was disappointed with this one.
July 17, 2021
Think most people will be disappointed with this one. The book reads as though the author didn't really know how to fill 400+ pages. Whilst i appreciate that archaeology, anthropology and pseudo science would feature in a book covering such a wide range of time periods. It often felt that magic was shoe horned into the book and that primarily was what my rating is based on. The content was good but not reflective enough of the title. That and the overly preachy last chapter, most people who are reading this book appreciate the situation and gosden is preaching to the choir so to speak.
November 5, 2020
I received an advance copy of this book via NetGalley.
Oxford professor of archaeology Chris Gosden authored this overview of magic across world history and cultures. His approach is comprehensive, his viewpoint honest; he doesn't sniff at magic as a primitive thing, but from a neutral standpoint as an essential part of people's lives from the ice age into the modern day. He doesn't shy away from the effects of colonialism on the loss of magical knowledge, and also addresses it as an inspiration or attacking or defending against oppressors. He does walk a delicate line between religion and magic; some readers will be irked that he classifies miracles within the Christian faith as magic, though by the definition he establishes early on, it fits.
He tries to give equal billing across history to various cultures, but that's hard when some people such as those in ancient Mesopotamia have left little in terms of a balanced record. In chapters such as that one, the emphasis on magic felt lost as it became more of an overview for readers who may not know much about the culture at all. That approach is understandable, but the focus felt lost and it became stodgy and, I hate to say it, boring at times. I actually deliberated whether or not to finish the book, which was a surprise because an unbiased study of this subject matter should very much be my sort of thing. I found the book became more engaging as it worked into the medieval and near-modern eras and he had a lot more material to draw from.
In all, a very uneven read, but one with plentiful insights to offer.
Oxford professor of archaeology Chris Gosden authored this overview of magic across world history and cultures. His approach is comprehensive, his viewpoint honest; he doesn't sniff at magic as a primitive thing, but from a neutral standpoint as an essential part of people's lives from the ice age into the modern day. He doesn't shy away from the effects of colonialism on the loss of magical knowledge, and also addresses it as an inspiration or attacking or defending against oppressors. He does walk a delicate line between religion and magic; some readers will be irked that he classifies miracles within the Christian faith as magic, though by the definition he establishes early on, it fits.
He tries to give equal billing across history to various cultures, but that's hard when some people such as those in ancient Mesopotamia have left little in terms of a balanced record. In chapters such as that one, the emphasis on magic felt lost as it became more of an overview for readers who may not know much about the culture at all. That approach is understandable, but the focus felt lost and it became stodgy and, I hate to say it, boring at times. I actually deliberated whether or not to finish the book, which was a surprise because an unbiased study of this subject matter should very much be my sort of thing. I found the book became more engaging as it worked into the medieval and near-modern eras and he had a lot more material to draw from.
In all, a very uneven read, but one with plentiful insights to offer.
August 28, 2024
My first five-star rating this year goes to Chris Gosden's excellently researched and compellingly written history of humans through the three-tiered lens of magic, religion and science. Far from the weird, occultist tract I had feared it might be, this book offers a brilliantly ambitious recount of how magic has developed and shaped people - the real thing, if you believe in it, or the belief in it, if you are sceptical. Personally, much as he correctly summarises the Christian attitude towards magic, I don't personally believe in it. But then it all depends on what exactly you define as magic. As far as miracles go, I'm a believer. Contact with the dead - in certain cases anyway -I accept as within the realms of possibility. But jinxes, curses and protection spells? Healing crystals? Telekinesis? I am not so sure, but I certainly have my doubts.
Anyway, this book does an outstanding job in demonstrating magic's prevalence in our history, in whatever capacity we may like to consider it. And I also really appreciated Gosden's balanced approach, wherewith he treats both religion and science with as much respect as he does magic, arguing that all three are vital to our continued existence.
Anyway, this book does an outstanding job in demonstrating magic's prevalence in our history, in whatever capacity we may like to consider it. And I also really appreciated Gosden's balanced approach, wherewith he treats both religion and science with as much respect as he does magic, arguing that all three are vital to our continued existence.
July 26, 2021
Dry, dense and often repetitive. No doubt well researched but this reads more like a textbook rather than targeted to a wider audience. The argument seems stronger once documentary evidence becomes available but even still the central thesis is likely to draw questions due to what can only be described as a very broad definition of magic that incorporates what is possibly proto-religion, spirituality, superstition and even, what the author positions as bed buddies, science and religion.
Would have been improved by narrowing the timeline and much tighter editing.
Would have been improved by narrowing the timeline and much tighter editing.
April 10, 2021
I almost didn’t count this in my read goal and I might change my mind again later. I absolutely love research texts but I didn’t have the time to fully devote to this book and skimmed, A LOT. But, like I said before, I would definitely refer to this for questions later and would contemplate putting it on my own shelf.
June 13, 2025
i was a bit too stupid for this
i was excited to learn about wild and cool ways that magic was used in the ancient times up to now, and granted i did learn some of that. but trying to keep track of places and people was like trying to cut soup. it took me nearly 2 weeks to finish this mfer
i was excited to learn about wild and cool ways that magic was used in the ancient times up to now, and granted i did learn some of that. but trying to keep track of places and people was like trying to cut soup. it took me nearly 2 weeks to finish this mfer
July 31, 2023
Overall, absolutely fantastic book on the history of magic. I've been reading a lot of texts on magic and witchcraft lately, and it's hard to find this type of book. Most either blindly adopt ahistorical, woo-woo assumptions, or the author is an academic who can't keep his derision, arrogance, and self-righteous rationalism off the page.
For almost the entire book, Gosden manages beautifully to strike a middle ground: he is an archaeologist, and the amount of care and caution he puts into establishing what historical and scientific facts we definitely have, and what conclusions we can (or cannot) derive from them is truly a delight. I LOVE reading a book that is always careful about 1) what we know, 2) how we know that, and 3) what the possible interpretations of that bare fact might be. Gosden does a fantastic job at this.
The only bummer was the last chapter. I think I've seen some reviews by folks complaining about Gosden trying to be "woke" in the last chapter, and I think that's unfair. He makes a very small number of statements regarding capitalism, which are well-established within scholarly circles; i.e., that capitalism is both founded on and perpetuates a "disenchanting" of the world. This is uncontroversial and totally appropriate for Gosden to bring up given his subject matter. However, he tries to get into what is essentially philosophical territory, touching on debates about consciousness, quantum mechanics, and ethics. In these domains, I have a tiny bit more background than Gosden does, and he kind of makes a mess of it. I don't want to get into the debates themselves here, but he really doesn't know the ground he's on, and it was a disappointing way to end the book. He makes some sort of muddled arguments that one can easily poke a million holes in, and it all just felt like an unnecessary loss.
That being said...it was disappointing largely because the book was so fantastic. Gosden is on very solid ground when he talks about history and archaeology. He is a careful thinker (except in the last chapter), and he is very respectful towards non-Western cultures and their magico-religious beliefs and practices.
Overall, I highly recommend this book, but would suggest taking the final chapter with a grain of salt.
For almost the entire book, Gosden manages beautifully to strike a middle ground: he is an archaeologist, and the amount of care and caution he puts into establishing what historical and scientific facts we definitely have, and what conclusions we can (or cannot) derive from them is truly a delight. I LOVE reading a book that is always careful about 1) what we know, 2) how we know that, and 3) what the possible interpretations of that bare fact might be. Gosden does a fantastic job at this.
The only bummer was the last chapter. I think I've seen some reviews by folks complaining about Gosden trying to be "woke" in the last chapter, and I think that's unfair. He makes a very small number of statements regarding capitalism, which are well-established within scholarly circles; i.e., that capitalism is both founded on and perpetuates a "disenchanting" of the world. This is uncontroversial and totally appropriate for Gosden to bring up given his subject matter. However, he tries to get into what is essentially philosophical territory, touching on debates about consciousness, quantum mechanics, and ethics. In these domains, I have a tiny bit more background than Gosden does, and he kind of makes a mess of it. I don't want to get into the debates themselves here, but he really doesn't know the ground he's on, and it was a disappointing way to end the book. He makes some sort of muddled arguments that one can easily poke a million holes in, and it all just felt like an unnecessary loss.
That being said...it was disappointing largely because the book was so fantastic. Gosden is on very solid ground when he talks about history and archaeology. He is a careful thinker (except in the last chapter), and he is very respectful towards non-Western cultures and their magico-religious beliefs and practices.
Overall, I highly recommend this book, but would suggest taking the final chapter with a grain of salt.
October 30, 2021
This book wasn't at all what I wanted. I wanted, I guess, a history of witches and wizards and so on. Maybe a cultural history or sociological survey.
Instead I got archaeology. And that was awesome! Truly fascinating. Just not what I wanted. But also maybe better than what I wanted.
At the same time, everything is maybe too broad and too difficult to wrap your head around any specifics. So much of the book is sort of conjecture about the ancient past and what certain artifacts may have said about behavior. Even so, what archaeology tells us about history is always fascinating to me. It shows how beliefs came out of specific behaviors or events.
Anyrate, just a very cool book, but I wish there was a bit more to get my hands around.
Instead I got archaeology. And that was awesome! Truly fascinating. Just not what I wanted. But also maybe better than what I wanted.
At the same time, everything is maybe too broad and too difficult to wrap your head around any specifics. So much of the book is sort of conjecture about the ancient past and what certain artifacts may have said about behavior. Even so, what archaeology tells us about history is always fascinating to me. It shows how beliefs came out of specific behaviors or events.
Anyrate, just a very cool book, but I wish there was a bit more to get my hands around.
January 19, 2021
Didn' finish, intro turned me off completely. Come in expecting a book about the history of magic, leave realizing this man wants magic to endure even though, his quote, "Societies in which magic was dominant, was not harmonious and peaceful, because of their state of oneness with the universe. There was considerable violence, social collapse and disruption...."
There's more, I just don't have the time to type out 4 pages full of complaints and refutations this morning, nor do I care enough to at this point. Waste of time.
There's more, I just don't have the time to type out 4 pages full of complaints and refutations this morning, nor do I care enough to at this point. Waste of time.
August 19, 2021
Comprehensive history of magic but imho some weird thinking, and ignorance of science. The proposed helix of magic, religion and science seems to deny any progress in knowledge, thinking and practice. And ultimately, I was just bored to death. I've speed read through the whole book, not wanting to give up reading it. But trying initially to read more the book more thoroughly caused a feeling of exasperation! Good luck to anyone who can and enjoys the book. I didn't!
December 8, 2023
After a two-month hiatus, I have finished this book! Wahoo!
In all seriousness, I really enjoyed this work. It's dense and covers a lot of time and space in a relatively short amount of pages. Gosden's main argument is that within history and the present, there exists a triple helix of magic, religion, and science. However, magic has been ostracized, particularly in Western culture. Gosden provides a definition of magic (well, a whole chapter for the definition and its importance): "Magic emphasizes human connections with the universe, so that people are open to the workings of the universe and the universe is responsive to us [...] Magic is one of the oldest world-views and yet is capable of constant renewal, so that a modern magic can help us to explore our physical and ethical connections to the world in a time of profound ecological crisis." Yes, this is our-world-is-burning-we-need-to-do-something book. The last chapter really drives this argument home of why magic and a magical mindset is imperative if we are to change the course of a warming planet, especially in Western cultures.
Starting from the Ice Age, Gosden provides archeological and anthropological examples of how magic has existed since prehistory. Magic was (and is) a technology used to try and make sense of the world and living within it. Subjects such as art, architecture, food, burial and death practices, astrology, and religion interact with magic in multitudinous ways across space and time. Gosden spends time in particular areas of the world, exploring the region's history and how people came to live and thrive (and die) there. A combination of factors pushed magic to the fringes; the witch hunts of the late Medieval and Early Modern periods in Eurasia and colonialism in Africa, the Americas, and Australia being crucial. I think Gosden does good work building up to how different cultures interacted and meshed with each other to create, and destroy, idea, culture, art, history, and philosophy.
The final chapter briefly touches on contemporary magic, beginning with spiritualism of the 1840s and ending with a list of magical organizations that exist today. Gosden spends some time on Aleister Crowley (including a printed signed portrait of a bald Crowley).
The book culminates in a call to action to stop global warming. To do, we as humans (though I think he is really addressing Westerners), must reconsider our relationship and connection with the planet. This includes plants, animals, other people, and matter we may consider non-sentient. Gosden discusses that even the term sentience should be reconsidered, as we are constantly learning that the universe and the objects within may not just be force and matter. To address the lack of empathy, we must take into account human emotions and mental health. Feelings of isolation are abundant in Western culture; we can reduce alienation through participation and reconnection with our community.
We don't need to pick one strand of the helix over another; rather, magic, science, and religion work best when complementary as each stress and develop varied aspects of human action and belief (415). Ultimately, if we open ourselves to these considerations, we may find new and constant ways that we are all enmeshed. We can encourage an attitude of custodianship and nurture a relationship with the living and nonliving objects around us. Gosden puts it best: "We have separated out magic, religion, and science as strands in a triple helix: connected but distinguishable. It is possible that, in pursuing contemporary questions of energy, sentience, and animism, distinctions between these three basic human orientations to the world will gradually become less important, leading to a more holistic physical, spiritual, and moral appreciation of the world." (427)
Overall, this book is packed with a lot of information, maps, and photographs. I think this book would pair very well with the classic "Braiding Sweetgrass" by Robin Wall Kimmerer as well as Caitlin Doughty's book "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory." I kept thinking about these two while reading this book. In particular, Kimmerer's argument of reconfiguring our relationship and way of thinking in regards to nature and our place within, told through a botanist and Native American lens; and Doughty's argument that Westerners must reconcile our relationship with death and burial, as we lack a sense of lineage and personal history.
As a small aside, I would have liked more within the "Africa, the Americas, and Australia" chapter. For the most part, Gosden does hit his main points and provides context of why he picked those particular topics.
In all seriousness, I really enjoyed this work. It's dense and covers a lot of time and space in a relatively short amount of pages. Gosden's main argument is that within history and the present, there exists a triple helix of magic, religion, and science. However, magic has been ostracized, particularly in Western culture. Gosden provides a definition of magic (well, a whole chapter for the definition and its importance): "Magic emphasizes human connections with the universe, so that people are open to the workings of the universe and the universe is responsive to us [...] Magic is one of the oldest world-views and yet is capable of constant renewal, so that a modern magic can help us to explore our physical and ethical connections to the world in a time of profound ecological crisis." Yes, this is our-world-is-burning-we-need-to-do-something book. The last chapter really drives this argument home of why magic and a magical mindset is imperative if we are to change the course of a warming planet, especially in Western cultures.
Starting from the Ice Age, Gosden provides archeological and anthropological examples of how magic has existed since prehistory. Magic was (and is) a technology used to try and make sense of the world and living within it. Subjects such as art, architecture, food, burial and death practices, astrology, and religion interact with magic in multitudinous ways across space and time. Gosden spends time in particular areas of the world, exploring the region's history and how people came to live and thrive (and die) there. A combination of factors pushed magic to the fringes; the witch hunts of the late Medieval and Early Modern periods in Eurasia and colonialism in Africa, the Americas, and Australia being crucial. I think Gosden does good work building up to how different cultures interacted and meshed with each other to create, and destroy, idea, culture, art, history, and philosophy.
The final chapter briefly touches on contemporary magic, beginning with spiritualism of the 1840s and ending with a list of magical organizations that exist today. Gosden spends some time on Aleister Crowley (including a printed signed portrait of a bald Crowley).
The book culminates in a call to action to stop global warming. To do, we as humans (though I think he is really addressing Westerners), must reconsider our relationship and connection with the planet. This includes plants, animals, other people, and matter we may consider non-sentient. Gosden discusses that even the term sentience should be reconsidered, as we are constantly learning that the universe and the objects within may not just be force and matter. To address the lack of empathy, we must take into account human emotions and mental health. Feelings of isolation are abundant in Western culture; we can reduce alienation through participation and reconnection with our community.
We don't need to pick one strand of the helix over another; rather, magic, science, and religion work best when complementary as each stress and develop varied aspects of human action and belief (415). Ultimately, if we open ourselves to these considerations, we may find new and constant ways that we are all enmeshed. We can encourage an attitude of custodianship and nurture a relationship with the living and nonliving objects around us. Gosden puts it best: "We have separated out magic, religion, and science as strands in a triple helix: connected but distinguishable. It is possible that, in pursuing contemporary questions of energy, sentience, and animism, distinctions between these three basic human orientations to the world will gradually become less important, leading to a more holistic physical, spiritual, and moral appreciation of the world." (427)
Overall, this book is packed with a lot of information, maps, and photographs. I think this book would pair very well with the classic "Braiding Sweetgrass" by Robin Wall Kimmerer as well as Caitlin Doughty's book "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory." I kept thinking about these two while reading this book. In particular, Kimmerer's argument of reconfiguring our relationship and way of thinking in regards to nature and our place within, told through a botanist and Native American lens; and Doughty's argument that Westerners must reconcile our relationship with death and burial, as we lack a sense of lineage and personal history.
As a small aside, I would have liked more within the "Africa, the Americas, and Australia" chapter. For the most part, Gosden does hit his main points and provides context of why he picked those particular topics.
Read
January 24, 2023A magnificent piece of scholarship, Gosden delving back into the dawn of humanity and then following his subject right through to the modern day, offering pointers for further reading while still packing in more than enough to leave the reader feeling informed, going on glutted. Often, my reviews of non-fiction can end up a little too full of fascinating facts, but not here, because there are simply too damn many. If the subject seems niche, well, as the introduction points out, the modern world's veneer of rationality is pretty bloody thin, not just in terms of what people allegedly believe, but in terms of how they behave: he quotes swearing at the printer as a pretty solid example, though I reckon swearing at apps might be an even stronger case, given a printer is at least physically present. Certainly either is a better choice than his other example, talking to cats, which if it does not convey information is at least companionable, and let's face it, the same goes for much human-human conversation. That's a rare and marginal mis-step, though. Crucially, after generations of the likes of EB Tylor and James Frazer, who talked in terms of a gradual movement from magic to religion to science, he talks in terms of "the triple helix of magic, religion and science", one thing which has separated out over the centuries, but has much more of a shared history than its two junior strands would admit. After all, "magic is a basic part of being human as far back as we have looked. We can see no easy origin to magic, because it has always been with us" – a matter of making sense of the world as much as trying to improve one's odds in practical terms. Now, I confess, I do slightly prefer Alan Moore's take on this, magic as the long-suffering parent trying to get squabbling offspring science and religion to behave, and for me Moore looms over the whole project even beyond his normal knack for looming. I nearly didn't request Magic from Netgalley because, apart from anything else, I assumed a lot of it would overlap with the historical sections of Moore's long-promised Bumper Book Of Magic. But even after the appallingly long time I've taken reading this, the other remains forthcoming – and I suspect even once it does hit, this will remain useful as a somewhat more respectable complement, one you can mention in polite circles on account of the author being a professor at Oxford, and not having actually declared himself a wizard. Either way, in the meantime it's so refreshing to read an account of the topic which doesn't make the assumptions either of a devoted believer, or of a Keith Thomas – and was I the only one who found it slightly inexplicable that anyone would write a book as monumental as Religion And The Decline Of Magic about a topic they took it as read was nonsense? Gosden, on the other hand, takes what's normally the best approach; he follows Ken Campbell, and supposes. Now, in a sense I disagree with his founding principles here, because if you ask whether the human race is really so stupid as to spend its entire history doing something which is no use whatsoever, then I'd reply that recent evidence suggests yes, we absolutely are. But at the very least, 'what if the entire species aren't utter morons?' feels like an interesting and potentially productive counterfactual.
Not that the book only stands out against other writing specifically on magic. Just in terms of big-picture history and non-fiction, compare and contrast a statement like "To say a group is animist is the start of a description, not its end" with the sort of broad-brush bullshit so lucratively peddled by charlatans like Harari. At the same time, it's never so hedged around as to end up barely saying anything. Gosden is apologetic to a fault about the areas and eras where he's not so expert (most notably, India), but the overwhelming impression is that he knows a quite astounding amount about huge sweeps of human culture and history. "Ojibwe people in North America make a linguistic distinction between animate and inanimate nouns, and for them rocks fall into the animate category, being able to move on their own and follow some form of rocky intention." Or "sorcery is found throughout coastal Papua New Guinea but is absent from New Guinea Highland cultures, a division that is widely recognized but poorly understood". Bringing it closer to home, he has the numbers on who believes what in the modern West, in which it's tempting but tough to find patterns: more Britons (27%) than Americans (21%) think communication with the dead is possible – but 21% in the US believe in witches, to only 13% in the UK. Meanwhile, on both counts the French are more sceptical, but over half of them believe in 'magnetic healing', which is the one I find really risible. And where this could have so easily tipped into some Casaubon exercise in occult stamp collecting, Gosden can keep on top of the whole equation, the sheer scale of his subject, which leads to remarkable but justifiable theses. So it's not just in the sense that the vast majority of human time on earth was the Paleolithic (although it was, and that's also relevant) that he can talk about "shamans as relatively recent figures" – it turns out that hiving off what had been a regular part of life in those cultures to one specialist was
in part a reaction against incoming imperialist cultures, which as is so often the way, ended up taking on some of the structure of the enemy. The notion that people in other times and places approached the fundamentals of life more differently than we can readily conceive, given the assumptions within which we start, is a recurring motif. Occasionally to a fault: when Gosden says "It is important to recognize that for a long time organized religion was found only in a small area of the globe: that area between the central Mediterranean and South Asia. It is only in the last two millennia that religions such as Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism and Islam have spread"...well, yes, it's a useful corrective to the assumptions even of people who think they're being open-minded in terms of comparative religions by looking at the big six we used to get in RE lessons, but it doesn't feel like it entirely takes the Aztecs into account, whose religion was both home-grown, and sufficiently organised to need a whole military machine to keep feeding its corpse-grinder. Once we get to South America, he clarifies that Olmec and then Aztec gods are "better seen as sets of tendencies or powers rather than as clearly defined deities", but I'm not sure I fully buy the distinction. Do we need to know anecdotes about gods before they count as gods? Might those not just be lost, like so much Norse myth? And even if not, couldn't you say the same about many pantheons, even Rome's before they merged with the Olympians?
Still, it should be reiterated that such quibbles were very rare compared to the volume of solid information and interpretation. Any assumption that the whole notion of divination was always founded on the strategic vagueness of cold reading doesn't last long: "Predictions range from the bog standard 'Good fortune' to the more mysterious and highly specific 'You will be interested in the Navy.'" And the further back we go, while the evidence obviously becomes more and more patchy and open to multiple readings, the more truly strange the conceptions of the world become. The lion person, the earliest known surviving totem, has been the subject of much debate about sex, and may even have had a detachable penis; obviously I love the idea of one of the oldest surviving traces of human culture involving a strap-on. But from this distance we don't even know whether they saw species as distinct in the way we currently do, or people as separate from the landscape, or whether the underground was seen as the same world as the surface. In Kfar HaHoresh, multiple gazelle and human skeletons have been made into a composite skeleton of something else, perhaps a boar; I suppose you could argue that might be art not magic, but the obvious rejoinder would be, what's the difference? Certainly the long catalogue of plastered skulls and human bones found in ones or twos, suggesting bodies were gradually dispersed by the living ("it might mean that a whole human body was too important to bury at once") are testament to a very different treatment of death than anything with which squeamish moderns would be comfortable. And amidst this whole mad panoply, the line which for me echoes the most is one discussing the relationship between the Mesolithic people of the Danube and fish, "their most significant other and therefore possibly not other at all". Granted, the final chapter, "Modern and Future Magic", can feel a bit scrappy and scattershot compared to what's gone before, but isn't that so often the way when these big histories run smack bang into a present that doesn't know what it's doing itself yet, and have to wrap up without a neat endpoint available, only a series of uncertain gestures? Though I suppose if it turns out Gosden has called it right, that will do a lot to support his case elsewhere...
Not that the book only stands out against other writing specifically on magic. Just in terms of big-picture history and non-fiction, compare and contrast a statement like "To say a group is animist is the start of a description, not its end" with the sort of broad-brush bullshit so lucratively peddled by charlatans like Harari. At the same time, it's never so hedged around as to end up barely saying anything. Gosden is apologetic to a fault about the areas and eras where he's not so expert (most notably, India), but the overwhelming impression is that he knows a quite astounding amount about huge sweeps of human culture and history. "Ojibwe people in North America make a linguistic distinction between animate and inanimate nouns, and for them rocks fall into the animate category, being able to move on their own and follow some form of rocky intention." Or "sorcery is found throughout coastal Papua New Guinea but is absent from New Guinea Highland cultures, a division that is widely recognized but poorly understood". Bringing it closer to home, he has the numbers on who believes what in the modern West, in which it's tempting but tough to find patterns: more Britons (27%) than Americans (21%) think communication with the dead is possible – but 21% in the US believe in witches, to only 13% in the UK. Meanwhile, on both counts the French are more sceptical, but over half of them believe in 'magnetic healing', which is the one I find really risible. And where this could have so easily tipped into some Casaubon exercise in occult stamp collecting, Gosden can keep on top of the whole equation, the sheer scale of his subject, which leads to remarkable but justifiable theses. So it's not just in the sense that the vast majority of human time on earth was the Paleolithic (although it was, and that's also relevant) that he can talk about "shamans as relatively recent figures" – it turns out that hiving off what had been a regular part of life in those cultures to one specialist was
in part a reaction against incoming imperialist cultures, which as is so often the way, ended up taking on some of the structure of the enemy. The notion that people in other times and places approached the fundamentals of life more differently than we can readily conceive, given the assumptions within which we start, is a recurring motif. Occasionally to a fault: when Gosden says "It is important to recognize that for a long time organized religion was found only in a small area of the globe: that area between the central Mediterranean and South Asia. It is only in the last two millennia that religions such as Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism and Islam have spread"...well, yes, it's a useful corrective to the assumptions even of people who think they're being open-minded in terms of comparative religions by looking at the big six we used to get in RE lessons, but it doesn't feel like it entirely takes the Aztecs into account, whose religion was both home-grown, and sufficiently organised to need a whole military machine to keep feeding its corpse-grinder. Once we get to South America, he clarifies that Olmec and then Aztec gods are "better seen as sets of tendencies or powers rather than as clearly defined deities", but I'm not sure I fully buy the distinction. Do we need to know anecdotes about gods before they count as gods? Might those not just be lost, like so much Norse myth? And even if not, couldn't you say the same about many pantheons, even Rome's before they merged with the Olympians?
Still, it should be reiterated that such quibbles were very rare compared to the volume of solid information and interpretation. Any assumption that the whole notion of divination was always founded on the strategic vagueness of cold reading doesn't last long: "Predictions range from the bog standard 'Good fortune' to the more mysterious and highly specific 'You will be interested in the Navy.'" And the further back we go, while the evidence obviously becomes more and more patchy and open to multiple readings, the more truly strange the conceptions of the world become. The lion person, the earliest known surviving totem, has been the subject of much debate about sex, and may even have had a detachable penis; obviously I love the idea of one of the oldest surviving traces of human culture involving a strap-on. But from this distance we don't even know whether they saw species as distinct in the way we currently do, or people as separate from the landscape, or whether the underground was seen as the same world as the surface. In Kfar HaHoresh, multiple gazelle and human skeletons have been made into a composite skeleton of something else, perhaps a boar; I suppose you could argue that might be art not magic, but the obvious rejoinder would be, what's the difference? Certainly the long catalogue of plastered skulls and human bones found in ones or twos, suggesting bodies were gradually dispersed by the living ("it might mean that a whole human body was too important to bury at once") are testament to a very different treatment of death than anything with which squeamish moderns would be comfortable. And amidst this whole mad panoply, the line which for me echoes the most is one discussing the relationship between the Mesolithic people of the Danube and fish, "their most significant other and therefore possibly not other at all". Granted, the final chapter, "Modern and Future Magic", can feel a bit scrappy and scattershot compared to what's gone before, but isn't that so often the way when these big histories run smack bang into a present that doesn't know what it's doing itself yet, and have to wrap up without a neat endpoint available, only a series of uncertain gestures? Though I suppose if it turns out Gosden has called it right, that will do a lot to support his case elsewhere...
May 28, 2025
Già il libro trasuda di magia e mistero.
Siamo abituati a pensare alla magia come un qualcosa destinato ai bambini, un trucchetto infantile che serve a meravigliare chi si approccia al mondo per la prima volta.
Eppure, Chris Gosden ci ricorda che la magia è una cosa seria. Una cosa che ha dominato la vita dell'uomo per secoli e secoli. E sono sicura che andando in angoli sperduti e dimenticati da Dio e dall'uomo, essa sia ancora viva e pulsante e in realtà dalle nostre vite non se n'è mai andata.
Perché tutti abbiamo il nostro portafortuna, il nostro rituale prima di una prova, o di un esame perché nel profondo crediamo che se non saltiamo nemmeno un passaggio, allora quella verifica andrà sicuramente bene.
Siamo tutti più o meno inconsciamente convinti che la parola abbia un potere concreto, di rendere reale ciò che è affidato al vento.
E il nuovo singolo di Lady Gaga ha rievocato una tematica tutt'altro che sepolta nel passato. Molto opportuna questa lettura.
Sono sicura che non serve che io vi faccia un incantesimo per farvelo leggere! Ovviamente super consigliato per la tematica particolare e interessante.
Siamo abituati a pensare alla magia come un qualcosa destinato ai bambini, un trucchetto infantile che serve a meravigliare chi si approccia al mondo per la prima volta.
Eppure, Chris Gosden ci ricorda che la magia è una cosa seria. Una cosa che ha dominato la vita dell'uomo per secoli e secoli. E sono sicura che andando in angoli sperduti e dimenticati da Dio e dall'uomo, essa sia ancora viva e pulsante e in realtà dalle nostre vite non se n'è mai andata.
Perché tutti abbiamo il nostro portafortuna, il nostro rituale prima di una prova, o di un esame perché nel profondo crediamo che se non saltiamo nemmeno un passaggio, allora quella verifica andrà sicuramente bene.
Siamo tutti più o meno inconsciamente convinti che la parola abbia un potere concreto, di rendere reale ciò che è affidato al vento.
E il nuovo singolo di Lady Gaga ha rievocato una tematica tutt'altro che sepolta nel passato. Molto opportuna questa lettura.
Sono sicura che non serve che io vi faccia un incantesimo per farvelo leggere! Ovviamente super consigliato per la tematica particolare e interessante.
February 16, 2024
This book is very dense and was a slog to get through at times. As others have pointed out here, Gosden focuses a lot on pre-history and tries to summarize “magical” practices from around the world over millennia. Unfortunately this got a bit tedious for me and after a while just seemed like an archeological and paleontological info-dump. His thesis that history is a “triple-helix” of magic, religion, and science was a bit of a stretch given his nebulous definition of magic. The audiobook was very difficult to follow given some odd pauses mid-sentence by the reader.
Format: Audiobook and Hardcover
Format: Audiobook and Hardcover
November 24, 2023
The book starts out conventionally for a non fiction book within the parameters it has set itself - it is by and large an anthropological history of magic. It is well researched, with an engaging writing style.
It really goes down a wild rabbit hole in the final chapter when it heavily suggests all matter is sentient. I'm here for it. Highly recommend.
It really goes down a wild rabbit hole in the final chapter when it heavily suggests all matter is sentient. I'm here for it. Highly recommend.
Read
June 19, 2024LOTS to think about
August 7, 2022
Not what I thought it would be (I anticipated more talk of alchemy and spellcasting) but I learned a lot (about the archeological evidence of potential magical belief and action).
August 12, 2020
(This is a review of the audiobook version)
I was not sure what this book was going to be, but it was not what this book ended up being. In the very beginning it seemed to imply that Magic was as real and important as Science and this rationalist atheist was 'nope''.
I did stick to the book and glad I did. There was a lot of interesting material in this book and I was particularly happy that the author including a lot of - and treated as validly - non-European cultures. Essentially this book is the history of early belief systems. The author attempts to say that what he is describing is different than religion, but often it seems that what he is describing *is* religious belief and practice.
And that was the main problem I had with this book. It was interesting and there were some things I had not come across before but except for a few sections it didn't seem to really be about magic.
Note: the author is explicit that this book is not about conjuring. About the only famous magician that is included is Houdini and that is because he (Houdini) was a rationalist.
I was not sure what this book was going to be, but it was not what this book ended up being. In the very beginning it seemed to imply that Magic was as real and important as Science and this rationalist atheist was 'nope''.
I did stick to the book and glad I did. There was a lot of interesting material in this book and I was particularly happy that the author including a lot of - and treated as validly - non-European cultures. Essentially this book is the history of early belief systems. The author attempts to say that what he is describing is different than religion, but often it seems that what he is describing *is* religious belief and practice.
And that was the main problem I had with this book. It was interesting and there were some things I had not come across before but except for a few sections it didn't seem to really be about magic.
Note: the author is explicit that this book is not about conjuring. About the only famous magician that is included is Houdini and that is because he (Houdini) was a rationalist.
January 26, 2022
L’opera è, a tutti gli effetti, un manuale di storia sociale in cui l’archeologo Chris Gosden, professore all’Università di Oxford, ripercorre per contesti geografici il rapporto dell’essere umano con la magia.
Per tal motivo il volume si fa ricco di excursus storici e teorie antropologiche volte a contestualizzare tale tema nelle aree continentali dell’Africa, America e Eurasia.
Il periodo su cui si concentrano gli interessi di Gosden è la Preistoria, affrontata in gran parte del libro. Ben otto su Dieci sono i capitoli dedicati a questa fascia temporale in cui l’archeologo tenta di spiegare come culture e luoghi differenti siano accomunati da un forte legame con l’elemento magico, concepito quale strumento per poter spiegare la realtà circostante. Ecco perché, per i nostri antenati, scienza, religione e magia sono considerati come un’unica unità capace di rievocare il nostro legame con la natura e approfondire la nostra conoscenza empirica. Anticamente gli uomini esploravano le proprie connessioni attraverso l’arte, la quale combinava esigenze pragmatiche con aspetti filosofici. Per esempio la rievocazione di figure su vasi evocava le entità rappresentate, ognuna concepita con i propri poteri e le proprie caratteristiche.
Per Gosden la magia quindi è la profonda connessione con l’universo, costituita da energie in grado di influenzare esseri viventi e eventi. Tuttavia, la sua visione si dimostra limitata solo all’epoca preistorica lasciando in disparte quelle successive a cui dedica solo pochi capitoli, risultando così di essere piuttosto vago e scarno di contenuti.
Nel complesso il libro fornisce materiali interessanti e rappresenta un buon punto di partenza per chi non ha dimestichezza con l’argomento.
Per tal motivo il volume si fa ricco di excursus storici e teorie antropologiche volte a contestualizzare tale tema nelle aree continentali dell’Africa, America e Eurasia.
Il periodo su cui si concentrano gli interessi di Gosden è la Preistoria, affrontata in gran parte del libro. Ben otto su Dieci sono i capitoli dedicati a questa fascia temporale in cui l’archeologo tenta di spiegare come culture e luoghi differenti siano accomunati da un forte legame con l’elemento magico, concepito quale strumento per poter spiegare la realtà circostante. Ecco perché, per i nostri antenati, scienza, religione e magia sono considerati come un’unica unità capace di rievocare il nostro legame con la natura e approfondire la nostra conoscenza empirica. Anticamente gli uomini esploravano le proprie connessioni attraverso l’arte, la quale combinava esigenze pragmatiche con aspetti filosofici. Per esempio la rievocazione di figure su vasi evocava le entità rappresentate, ognuna concepita con i propri poteri e le proprie caratteristiche.
Per Gosden la magia quindi è la profonda connessione con l’universo, costituita da energie in grado di influenzare esseri viventi e eventi. Tuttavia, la sua visione si dimostra limitata solo all’epoca preistorica lasciando in disparte quelle successive a cui dedica solo pochi capitoli, risultando così di essere piuttosto vago e scarno di contenuti.
Nel complesso il libro fornisce materiali interessanti e rappresenta un buon punto di partenza per chi non ha dimestichezza con l’argomento.
September 20, 2020
Remarkably comprehensive book spanning time periods from prehistory all the way to present day. I was particularly impressed at how Gosden incorporated parts the magical traditions of every continent across the globe with comparisons across numerous civilizations. Unsurprisingly for an archaeologist there is a heavy focus on archeological evidence for much of this history.
Extremely scholarly it is not a book to be read in one sitting. I frequently paused to digest the material, much of which I was unfamiliar with. But it is well worth a read for anyone with an interest in archaeology, magic and human cultures. I found it riddled with fascinating anecdotes.
Extremely scholarly it is not a book to be read in one sitting. I frequently paused to digest the material, much of which I was unfamiliar with. But it is well worth a read for anyone with an interest in archaeology, magic and human cultures. I found it riddled with fascinating anecdotes.
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