Magie: Rezeptions- und diskursgeschichtliche Analysen von der Antike bis zur Neuzeit by Bernd-Christian Otto (review)

What is one to make of a seven-hundred-page book that, by its own admission, only addresses the “tip of the iceberg” of its chosen topic (615)? Certainly, the topic is enormous: nothing less than the twenty-five-hundred-year history of conceptions of magic in Western culture, from the ancient Greeks to the present day. Otto writes from the perspective of religious studies, and he reacts in particular to the century-long effort by modern scholars of religion to define magic in some coherent and appropriately wissenschaftlich way. In the first hundred pages of his book, Otto examines the “academic discourse of magic,” focusing mainly on the highly influential formulations of James Frazer and Émile Durkheim, although Edward Tylor, Bronislav Malinowksi, and other famous figures make supporting appearances. He concludes, unsurprisingly, that all attempts to develop universalist definitions of magic have failed. Hans Kippenberg’s notion of the “decay of the category” (Zerfall der Kategorie) becomes a touchstone throughout this section and indeed the entire book.

Despite such failures, Otto maintains that we should still think about how magic has been and continues to be defined, mainly because the term is clearly not going to fall out of use anytime soon, either within the academy or in popular culture. He proposes that scholars take a historical approach, examining how the concept of magic (Magiebegriff) has developed and been received in Western culture. But how should one accomplish this monumental task? His method, in the five hundred pages that comprise the second part of his book, “Historical Analyses,” is to move very selectively through the centuries. The first chapter of Part II deals with classical Greek concepts of magic, and of course the origin of the term itself, derived from the Persian magoi. The second chapter addresses the Roman reception of Greek concepts, while the third turns to Christianity, focusing mainly on Augustine. Otto wants to address what he sees as the foundational moments of certain lines of discourse about magic, so the patristic era is essentially as far as he goes into the long Christian tradition of condemning magic as demonic. For those expecting medieval necromancers or early modern witches, they will find none here. Instead, Otto turns at this point from what he terms the “Ausgrenzungsdiskurs” about magic (ostracizing or condemnatory discourse) to focus in his three subsequent chapters on the “Aufwertungsdiskurs,” meaning positive and valorizing discussions of magic by writers who self-identified as magicians. First he examines the late-antique Greek magical papyri, then the figure of the Renaissance magus, mainly through the work of Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, then major figures of modern European occultism, primarily Aleister Crowley, but also Eliphas Lévi, Madame Blavatsky, and others.

There are problems with this approach. Obviously, when covering the whole of Western history, selectivity is necessary, but huge chunks of the history of magic are left out here. While the Roman reception of Greek concepts of magic gets a full chapter of focused attention, Thomas Aquinas’s reception of Augustine’s condemnation of magic merits only passing reference. Likewise the massive influx of Arab writings on magic in the high medieval period receives slight and scattered coverage. Major early modern demonologists such as Bodin or del Rio are not mentioned at all. Neither are any of the great skeptical writers who ultimately demolished the discourse of magic as demonic terror. One could counter that the lines of transmission from Augustine to Aquinas to early modern demonologists are the most well studied in the history of European magic and do not need reiteration here. This is hardly a slim volume, however, and much of its bulk comes from Otto’s insistence on explicating, often at considerable length, basic aspects of the thought of the much-studied...