Magic

The Greek Magical Papyri 

The earliest written evidence of magic traditions is found in papyrus scrolls and codices composed in Roman Egypt between the second century BCE and the fifth century CE. Through their editing process, these sources have been gathered under the name Greek Magical Papyri (hereafter, PGM). These collections represent different textual traditions circulating in late-antique Egypt and are characterized by religious syncretism. The authors of the PGM were likely Egyptian priests who Hellenized ritual compositions associated with the Egyptian temple cult.[13] While the PGM does not include the term “magic” (mageia), classifying these collected ritual texts as magic is not a wholly modern construction, for the PGM are situated within a broader Egyptian-Greco-Roman context that perceived their content as “magical.”  

The Roman imagination stereotyped Egyptians, alongside Persians, as carriers of ancient, esoteric wisdom. This view created a context in which Egyptian temple priests could reframe and repackage traditional ritual and religious knowledge in ways appealing to Greco-Roman clients who perceived these ritual experts as magoi. This rebranding process preserved temple traditions in a shifting political and religious landscape and contributed to the development of what would later be codified as magic in late antique and medieval sources.  

Written in Coptic, Demotic, and Greek languages, PGM texts offer a range of techniques for transcendence, visions, apparitions, and union with deities as well as for transformation, such as changes in ontological status brought about by acquiring divine knowledge. There are ritual practices for mystical ascent, for conjuring assistant daimones to aid individuals in human struggles, and for summoning gods to perceptual presence; all of which aim to breach the distance separating the human and divine realms, to transcend human limitations. Practitioners sought to weaken the cosmological barriers separating humans from the divine by having gods descend in the material world and appear in perceptual forms, assuming a corporeal presence.[14] Contact with deities granted practitioners secret knowledge and divine power to solve existential and personal problems. 

To illustrate these techniques, consider the case of “Thessalos the Magician,” whose second-century autobiography recounts a quest for superior herbal knowledge that leads him to procedures for divine apparition, similar to those we find in the PGM.[15] Disappointed by the books available to him, Thessalos goes to Egypt to consult the high priests of Thebes. One of the priests promises to summon Asclepius, the god of medicine, and prepares a purified room with a bowl of water positioned before the god’s throne. Thessalos undergoes a three-day purification before entering the room while the priest invokes the god’s name. Asclepius eventually appears in majestic splendor, sharing knowledge about the right astrological timing for preparing herbal remedies.  

While there is no doubt that Thessalos’s account serves as an authorization narrative that claims special status for the herbal text that follows it, it also reflects techniques for divine apparition attested in the PGM: creating ritual tools, arranging specific spaces, using a secret language on sacred materials, and performing actions to compel deities to manifest. The ritual language in the PGM for bringing forth deities includes voces magicae, melodic compounds of vowels and consonants that evoke a sense of opaque power. The rituals also feature charaktêres, nonverbal signs for divine communication, ultimately constituting a secret, power-infused alphabet for addressing the gods.  

Theurgy and Neoplatonism 

Some of the PGM’s content relates to the ritual-philosophical context of theurgy.[16] The term theurgy was introduced in the second century by Neoplatonists via the reception of the so-called Chaldean Oracles, whose verses, composed in hexameters and believed to be the words of the gods, survive in scattered fragments found in the works of Neoplatonist philosophers such as Porphyry (234–305 CE), Iamblichus (245–325 CE), and Proclus (412–485 CE).  

As far as they can be reconstructed, theurgic practices illustrate the entanglement of the soteriological and the magical at the time. Theurgy aims to liberate the practitioner from fate so that, according to the Oracles, the theurgist “does not fall into the herd which is subject to Destiny.”[17] In the Oracles’ layered cosmology, the human soul had descended from its original spiritual home and become trapped in a world of matter governed by fate, and it longs for liberation and reunion with the divine. Theurgy offers several ways to obtain such divine reunion, whether by “working on the gods,” compelling them to fulfill the theurgist’s desires, or having the “gods working” on the theurgists. 

Many of the rituals that theurgists were expected to perform were connected to the magical practices in PGM; yet, the Neoplatonic exponents of theurgy sought to explicitly contrast it with mageia and goeteia. Iamblichus distinguishes techniques seeking to compel the gods, which he labels mageia and goeteia, from the nobler ritual system for the soul’s ascent, namely theurgy.[18] According to Iamblichus, the goal was union with the divine, conjoining the soul with the First Principle. In the Chaldean cosmology, the First Principle is transcendental and atemporal, also referred to as the Father, and it is associated with fire. Union with this cosmic First Principle is achieved by combining intellectual speculation with ritual acts. Theurgy, for Iamblichus, is an intellectual and ethical way of life that includes ritual practices working with divine powers and inviting the divine to act upon the philosopher rather than techniques that compel the gods to fulfill the ritualist’s desires. 

The fragmented nature of the Oracles and other sources from this time makes it challenging to reconstruct what theurgists actually did. Nonetheless, purifications, sacrifices, and the use of special ritual tools were certainly involved. The Oracles’ cosmos was populated by different entities, among which were nasty spirits (daimones) that affect the soul and impede its ascent to the First Principle. According to Fragment 149 of the Oracles, these ambivalent daimones could be exorcised by offering a sacrificial stone, called mnizouris, “while making an invocation.”[19] Theurgists repurposed magical objects like the strophalos or iynx wheel, described as a golden sphere encased in precious stones and engraved with charaktêres.[20] The wheel is attached to a leather strap; when the theurgist whirls it around it makes a special sound that imitates the movements of the planetary sphere, which “sympathetically” attracts celestial spirits. Another technique, rooted in older Egyptian temple practices, also preserved in the Hermetica, centered on creating telestike, or animated statues, by calling gods to dwell within their forms.[21] 

Theurgic practices could produce a state of systasis, union of a soul with a spirit or god. According to Iamblichus, these states were associated with experiences and behaviors like strange bodily and facial movements, immobility, changes in voice, insensitivity to fire, and levitation. Apparitions of light and luminous phenomena were reported, some visible to the person receiving the god, some to the one calling the god forth, and some to everyone present.[22] The proper ascent of the soul, known as anagoge, was enacted through symbolic death, allowing the soul to escape destiny and be drawn upward through the sun’s rays. 

The Rise of Christianity 

At the time when Neoplatonists presented theurgy as a means to liberate the soul, Christianity was gaining acceptance in the Roman Empire. The First Council of Nicaea was in 325 CE. Christian theologians systematized their beliefs and sought to distinguish their Christian identity from so-called pagans. Central to this identity formation was framing the pagans’ beliefs and practices to be idolatrous (Lat: idolatria, Gr. eidolatria)—as was worship of any being other than God (Exodus 22:20)—and to be “superstition” (Lat: superstitio, Gr: deisidaimonia), referring to excessive piety manifesting in obsessive rituals and the belief that humans could create marvels. For Christians, such marvels only occur through the intervention of demonic beings creating illusions and deceiving the senses. They concluded that techniques deemed magic were demonic and should be prohibited. 

Augustine of Hippo greatly influenced how the Christian world would continually portray magic as superstitious, idolatrous, and associated with demonic practices. In the circa 426 CE De civitate Dei (The City of God), Augustine argues that no distinction can be made between theurgy and magic: All such practices are superstitious. Responding to the theurgists, Augustine argues that both “magicians” and “theurgists” are “devotees of the fraudulent rites of demons masquerading under the names of angels.”[23]  

Augustine articulates a comprehensive theory of magic that profoundly influences later conceptions of the term and its practices. For Augustine, both religious and magical rituals are communicative acts, but they are directed at different recipients and carried out through distinct linguistic systems. The voces magicae and charaktêres that theurgists considered powerful tools for the soul’s ascent are signs of a secret code used to forge pacts with demons. Emphasizing this linguistic distinction, Augustine effectively laid the groundwork for a semiotic theory of ritual: Demons are believed to be sentient and responsive beings, and communication with them is possible when the communicator has access to their coded language. Precisely when they employ unfamiliar words and secret alphabets, ritual acts arouse Augustine’s suspicion. The voces magicae and charaktêres—so central to the ritual practices of the theurgists and the Greco-Egyptian magical papyri—emerged as prime examples of the opaque semiotics in demonic communication. 

Despite condemnations of magic as a demonic enterprise, magical practices promising immediate and spectacular access to the divine continued to circulate throughout the Christian world, particularly in monastic and clerical contexts where magic texts were copied and translated. In the Eastern Christian world, attitudes towards magic were complex and multifaceted. The Council in Trullo in 692 CE explicitly urged the eradication of “pagan customs” from all Christian rites and sought to condemn magicians and their clients.[24] Such prohibitions were later elaborated upon by theologians like the twelfth-century Theodore Balsamon who reaffirmed the Church’s opposition to all forms of magic. Yet, demand for magical services persisted across all levels of Byzantine society.[25]  

Meanwhile, in the Western Christian world, magical knowledge was revived through twelfth-century translation efforts, especially from Arabic sources. Ritual texts that taught how to harness the spiritual world began to appear in Latin and vernacular languages. Magic was also adopted as an emic term by insiders and prospective practitioners. The ritual-textual corpus emerging in this context merits particular attention because it has a far-reaching influence on later conceptions and practices of magic. 

By the twelfth century in southern Europe, a range of political, social, and cultural transformations profoundly influenced the theorization of magic and the dissemination of magic texts; these transformations would be influential for centuries. Cultural exchanges between Christian, Islamic, and Jewish traditions fostered a new genre of Latinate texts presenting what scholars today call “learned magic.” These magic texts attracted monks, clerics, and literate court members as readers and as authors, distinguishing learned magic from the “common traditions” of the non-literate and making universities and monasteries favorable environments for producing magic texts.[26]  

One key feature of learned magic was its circulation in proper books rather than through oral lore. Three types of sources can be distinguished: magical handbooks, lists of rituals, and books serving as sacred objects during rituals.[27] Magical handbooks are reference materials for practitioners, outlining general ritual structures, including guidelines for preparing garments, purification procedures, designing ritual spaces, and constructing ritual tools. Some magical handbooks feature theory sections that explain which planetary days and hours are appropriate for specific practices and experiments. Lists of rituals act as “recipe books” presenting straightforward instructions for specific operations while assuming readers’ familiarity with the procedures detailed throughout these handbooks. Finally, the ritual books contain invocations and spirit names and are meant to be consecrated. 

Some of these sources explicitly employ the term “magic” in positive, self-identifying ways to name practices and knowledge related to but distinct from traditional liturgy and Christian cosmology. For example, the prologue of the Liber Iuratus Honorii—a thirteenth-century ritual text offering a complete magical program—defends magic as a legitimate practice and teaches techniques to summon different ranks of spiritual beings including planetary angels, aerial and terrestrial spirits; it even sets out methods to obtain a direct vision of God.[28]  

The desire for direct experience of contact with the divine characterized the clerical and monastic milieus of the Middle Ages, drawing learned magicians in these institutions toward the visionary experiences promised by magic.[29] Learned magic promises access to numinous powers, visionary experiences, personal contact with angels, subjugation of demons, and the manipulation of celestial forces and spiritual entities not typically acknowledged by orthodox Christian cosmology. The supernatural world of the medieval Christian cosmos was dichotomous and straightforward, structured around holy angels and demons, the angels’ fallen counterparts. Learned magic granted access to both.[30] Although encounters with both angels and demons appear in scripture and the lives of saints, angels were considered there to be inscrutable and could not be summoned at will by humans. Angels revealed themselves solely through divine grace bestowed upon particularly pious individuals such as saints and mystics rather than through deliberate ritual acts by magicians. 

Learned magic provides detailed descriptions about how angels, demons, and spirits appear when rituals are duly performed. In tall, luminous, fiery bodies, frightening and awe-inspiring, the planetary angels rapidly descend from the heavens as thunderstorms, like angels in Jewish sources.[31] Angels and demons are assigned names, orders, and ranks correlated with the specific domains of magical operations and results. Angels could be invoked to obtain almost instantaneous total knowledge, and demons could be summoned to generate sexual desire in others or to create illusions and impress spectators. 

These ritual texts were often apologetic about their origins, appearing under impressive pseudepigraphic claims to authorship or as divine revelation, and this in turn authorized the knowledge contained in the books. Two recurrent authorities under which such learned magic texts circulated were Hermes Trismegistus and King Solomon. Hermes links the origins of these practices to ancient Egypt, and he is especially associated with astrology, alchemy, and astral magic. King Solomon, mythologized as the great exorcist who commanded demons to build his temple, is granted authority over demonic magic and the subjugation of spirits.[32] 

Natural and Idolatrous 

The scattered and entangled traditions of magical texts in the Middle Ages can be categorized into four macro categories each dealing with different parts of the cosmos: natural, demonic, angelic, and astral. Natural magic involves the use of herbs, stones, and other natural elements. Theologians were more inclined to consider it legitimate, unlike other forms of magic dealing with spirits of the stars, demonic beings, and ambiguous, frightening angels. Natural magic relies on the principle that nature comprises a network of forces and powers that interact with and influence the visible realm. Knowledge of these hidden natural powers enable the manipulation of the empirical realm without appealing to supernatural beings.[33]  

The demarcation between the natural and the idolatrous occupied Christian theologians and influenced their condemnations of ritual texts that exhibit explicit or implicit signs of interaction with supernatural beings. Echoing prior distinctions, benevolent angels respond solely to God and are separate from the corporeal world; therefore, humans could only intentionally engage with demons, fallen angels inhabiting the earth and air. Discerning, however, whether a given action implied communication with invisible entities or with natural powers was difficult, and certain techniques appeared to do both. 

Drawing on Augustine, the theologian Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), held that not all actions aimed at creating wonders were condemnable, only those that exhibited signs of incomprehensible communication. Inscriptions of charaktêres, spoken and written voces magicae, sacrifices, and invocations using unfamiliar names were immediately suspected to be demonic magic. Yet, manipulating natural substances or making healing or marvel-creating amulets, provided there were no signs of communication with supernatural beings, did not necessarily imply demonic transaction. On one hand, magical texts challenged Christian theologians by undermining the ecclesiastical monopoly on mediating the divine, resolving existential problems, and imparting knowledge. On the other hand, they generated suspicions of idolatry.  

Common people’s understandings often differed from those of the theologians. Reciting a prayer to heal a wound—even if using opaque words that usually generated suspicions—might be perceived as legitimate by a peasant, but a theologian could interpret the prayer and these words as signs of a demonic pact.  

Stars, Talismans, and Astral Spirits 

Contrary to the natural magic domain, which is the sublunary world, astral magic is oriented toward the heavenly spheres. Circulated through translations of Arabic sources, these ritual texts rely on Arabic theories of astral rays, Neoplatonic metaphysics, and cosmology. This vast body of knowledge encompasses diverse ritual practices, some aimed at producing direct visions and contact with astral spirits and others harnessing powers radiating from the stars through talismans that can produce effects in the natural world. 

A talisman (Lat. ymago; Gr. telesma; Ar. ṭilasm) is a human-made object intended to produce changes in the natural world by exploiting the hidden connections between elements of the universe. Constructing a talisman involved knowing the associations between colors, materials, and shapes with specific astral influences.[34] The source of a talisman’s power lies in the rays of the stars that radiate throughout the universe according to divinely imparted causality. Through its material features, the talismans collect these rays, and the practitioner can direct the rays toward a specific goal.[35] The procedures for amulet construction can include suffumigations, inscription of characters, and orations.  

Astral magic includes “rituals of perceptual presence”[36] that summon astral spirits before the practitioner. The spirits appear anthropomorphic, and they manifest through sensory channels. Usually, these rituals include recitation of invocations, inscribed signs, and charaktêres, even the sacrifice of animals. The operator should wear special garments and prepare the ritual location where the astral spirit will appear.[37] These rituals could also include preparing talismans to be placed in the ritual location. Smoke from burned sacrifices was believed to carry prayers to the stars, and the heat from the sacrificial flames served as a vehicle for the astral spirits’ descent.[38]  Upon descending to the ritual location, the spirits were expected to have visible bodies, and practitioners could then ask them whatever they desired. 

Demons and Angels 

In medieval Europe, demonic magic was often labeled necromancy (Lat. nigromantia, meaning “dark divination”); through such magic, demons are conjured to appear before operators and provide responses to their questions and requests.[39] Necromantic practices significantly differed from those of astral magic, partly because of their predominantly Christian liturgical elements that are distinct from Arabic-sourced celestial lore and partly because of their generally different approach to interacting with the spiritual world. Necromancy rituals, particularly the construction of ritual spaces, display significant anxiety about the safety of ritual operators’ bodies; reflecting Christian sensitivity regarding demons affecting and possessing humans. As recounted in Caesarius of Heisterbach’s Dialogue on Miracles (c. 1223), demons are spiritual beings capable of assuming bodies of air and entering the human body and even carrying it away.[40]  

For this reason, the safety of practitioners is paramount, and contact with these entities is controlled by ritual devices such as magic circles surrounding and protecting the practitioner during conjuration.[41] Magic circles are typically traced on the ground with a consecrated ritual knife or sword. Rarely a single circumference, magic circles are a series of concentric circles inscribed with formulas, names, and signs. Magic circles alone are insufficient to summon and constrain the demons who would fulfill operators’ requests; this can only be achieved through God’s grace. Preparation for these summoning rituals requires purifying operators’ souls and bodies through fasting, prayer, confession, and attending Holy Mass.[42] These preparatory phases, which could last days or even months, make practitioners suitable for divine favor, a condition revealed through angelic vision in a dream, reassuring practitioners that grace has been granted for the successful execution of the ritual.[43] 

Necromancy can involve angelic apparitions in preliminary ritual phases, but angelic magic requires a different set of ritual tools and preparations. The desire for interacting with angels is to obtain universal knowledge. Unlike demons who inhabit the physical world and atmosphere and take on corporeal forms, angels dwell united in adoration of God in the spiritual realms of the Empyrean, the highest heaven beyond the fixed stars and the physical cosmos. Angels do not take physical form.  

Angelic magic, typically undertaken by monks and friars, facilitates encounters in dreamlike visions that are essentially spiritual dimensions. Consequently, angelic magic often induces ritual sleep, preceded by extensive mental and physical preparation. The fifteenth-century Majorcan hermit Pelagius devised a noteworthy and elaborate ritual system to establish contact with the guardian angel.[44] Practitioners undergo a period of soul cultivation, involving adjustments in conduct, clothing, and speech, as well as restrictions on social interactions.[45] The operator’s bedroom becomes a ritual site, consecrated by sprinkling it with holy water and fumigated with incense. The operator’s bed is cleaned and infused with pleasant aromas, then surrounded by a circle of blessed candles and another circle of parchments that are inscribed with letters and seals. The angel will appear in dreams.  

The thirteenth-century Ars Notoria, a popular handbook of angelic magic that claims to confer almost instantaneous knowledge of all the arts and all the sciences in the medieval curriculum, solicits angels to grant knowledge and explains elaborate details for operators to purify themselves in anticipation of angelic revelation.[46] The medieval traditions of learned magic circulated in European scriptoria for centuries. Several books on angelic magic and demonic magic end up in the libraries of Renaissance humanists and become primary sources for Renaissance interpretations of magic as a noble philosophical enterprise.  

Despite historiographic claims that the Renaissance is a rupture from the medieval period, Renaissance and early modern magic display strong continuities with medieval magic sources.[47] Evidence for medieval magic books comes largely from Renaissance and early modern manuscript copies, not from the medieval period. British scholar Frances Yates (1899–1981) famously contrasted the “old dirty magic” of the Middle Ages with the philosophically sophisticated practices resulting from the rediscovery of Platonic and Hermetic texts in the fifteenth century.[48] Yates saw Renaissance Humanist scholars, such as Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499), as engaged in a radical renewal and reformation of magic. There were indeed important innovations in the magical traditions in this period. One was an increased attempt to reconcile magic with Christianity, notably Pico della Mirandola’s (1463–1494) “900 Theses on Magic,” a work which also launched the project of Christian Kabbalah.[49] Another was the integration of magical traditions with natural philosophy and the emerging sciences. Besides an emphasis on the traditions of natural magic and astrology, which, in some sense, were always sciences, some Renaissance magicians saw communication with spirits as a path to scientific knowledge. 

Magic in Three Worlds 

Among the most influential Renaissance works on magic is De Occulta philosophia libri tres or The Three Books of Occult Philosophy (1533), a systematization of magic that illustrates Renaissance continuities with medieval traditions and the renewed focus on Platonic cosmology in this period.[50] The author, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486–1535), studied at Cologne and Paris. Agrippa combined intellectual impulses ranging from Renaissance Hermeticism and astrology to Christian Kabbalah. As he explains, the tripartite structure of De Occulta philosophia reflects the cosmos itself, hierarchically organized into the elementary world below the Moon, the celestial world of the planetary spheres, and the intellectual world beyond the fixed stars. Throughout the cosmos, divine virtues emanate from God through the angels to the stars of the celestial world and to the elements, plants, and stones of the elemental world. Magic, Agrippa asserts, provides a system for harnessing divine virtues, enabling the magician to ascend through the worlds and upward to the creator and the First Cause.  

This threefold structure amounted to a classification of three types of magic: natural, celestial, and ceremonial. The first book outlines knowledge of the virtues and powers of terrestrial things, sympathies and antipathies between them, and how the terrestrial draws influx from the stars. This book corresponds to natural magic. While dealing with sublunary causes, it also provides ways to induce visions of supernatural beings. Burning certain narcotic herbs, for example, under “the opportune influencies of Stars” can “make the images of spirits forthwith appear in the Aire, or elsewhere”; other herbs have the power to cast these spirit images away.[51]  

The second book, concerning celestial magic, describes the influences of “the rays” according to “the rules of astrologers” and the “doctrine of mathematicians,” riffing on the theory of rays in Arabic-derived astral magic. Agrippa’s celestial magic also features number symbolism and knowledge of numerical alignments in the universe, which reveal secret correspondences between the celestial and terrestrial worlds and provide a foundation for divination methods. Such correspondences of letters and numbers are also applied in talismanic magic, engraved on talismans to draw down the influences of specific planets. 

The third book centers on demonic and angelic magic. It outlines how to work with the “powers of diverse intelligences, through the sacred ceremonies of religion.” When attempting to summon spirits, emphasis is placed on the magician’s piety and moral status. Fasting, sacrifice, purifications, and consecrations, as well as the construction of seals and the inscription of characters to bind and expel spirits, are central to this art that can provide “gifts from above” in the form of prophecies, oracles, and divine frenzies. The procedures of this third book are well in line with the procedures of medieval demonic and angelic magic. 

Angelic scrying and John Dee's Magical Diaries  

One Renaissance scholar who drew inspiration from Agrippa’s work was the mathematician, natural philosopher, and Elizabethan court advisor John Dee (1527–1608/9). His career illustrates the interconnection of magic with science and religion during his time and highlights the developing practices of angelic invocation.[52]  

Dee’s intellectual development revolved around a central problem: After the Biblical Fall, both humanity and nature had degenerated. To gain knowledge of the world, which is to read the Book of Nature, scholars needed new hermeneutic tools. Dee’s intellectual output came at this fundamental problem from different angles. In his Propaedeumata aphoristica (1558), light is primary, and, due to light’s primacy, astronomy and astrology must be reformed by advances in optics and the metaphysics of light. Monas Hieroglyphica (1564) develops a universal symbol from which all key principles and processes can be derived. In his celebrated Mathematical Preface (1570) to Euclid, Dee advances that mathematics and the metaphysics of numbers are the key to understanding the world.  

Later in his life, Dee sought a different route to gaining knowledge of natural philosophy. Around 1580, he adopted a vernacular tradition of crystal gazing or scrying—from Middle English, descriven, meaning “to see, discern”— to obtain contact with angels through a crystal. Dee did not directly perform the crystal-gazing but enlisted scryers to help him contact and question angels.[53] The resulting conversations between Dee, the scryers, and the angels were diligently recorded in Dee’s diaries. Many of these records survive, providing rare firsthand accounts of angelic invocations.[54] One of Dee’s scryers was the alchemist Edward Kelley, who offered his services to Dee in 1582 and subsequently assisted him for at least five years. Their collaboration exhibits the ritual creativity common in magical traditions that selectively use existing magical texts combined with new revelations and adjustments.  

One early session with Kelley is a good example of Dee’s scrying process. Kelley, peering into the crystal, gives voice to the archangel Uriel who recommends Dee contact the archangel Michael and describes a whole new set of ritual objects by which to do so, including a protective golden seal and a specially built altar. The altar should hold the Sigillum Dei, the Seal of God, that, according to the angel, “is already perfected in a book of thine.”[55] That “book of thine” was the Liber iuratus Honorii, discussed above.[56] The Seal of God—a complex geometrical diagram adorned with divine names and letters and composed of circumscribed and intersecting hexagrams and a pentagram—is part of the first operation of the Liber iuratus that aims to obtain the vision of God. In the Liber iuratus version, the Seal of God is traced on parchment and used in the book’s three summoning operations for planetary angels, aerial spirits, and terrestrial spirits. In Dee’s version, the Seal is to be made in pure wax and put on the altar or Holy Table for angelic invocations. The reception history of the Seal of God, which ranges from the medieval corpus of learned magic to Dee’s angelic magic practice, is characteristic of innovation processes in magical traditions.  

Dee’s angelic conferences resulted in five new magic books that innovatively mix old and new techniques. Among their contents we find knowledge of the angelic or “Enochian” language and alphabet, prayers in Enochian with English translation, a catalogue of angels and spirits ruling various regions of the world and ways of contacting and controlling them.[57] While rooted in medieval traditions, these books constitute an entirely new system of angelic magic that would eventually be rediscovered in the late-nineteenth century and was then practiced under the name “Enochian magic.”  

The Magic of Abramelin 

In the seventeenth century, creative reworkings of medieval magic procedures were the foundation for composing new magical texts that resemble Solomonic magic in structure and rhetoric. The Book of Abramelin contains a revised practice for summoning the guardian angel.[58] Its contents were believed to have been passed down to the book’s author, Abraham of Worms, a Jewish Kabbalist who learned Kabbalah and magic from Abramelin, an Egyptian Jew with whom Abraham of Worms met during a journey in search of esoteric knowledge. In his book, Abraham would dedicate Abramelin’s teachings to his son Lamech. 

The Book of Abramelin contains many kinds of magic. It includes short rituals to address daily troubles and tricks, including how to become invisible and directions for making and using magic squares, a geometrical and numerical method derived from Agrippa’s second book that generates divine correspondences between divine names and numbers, displaying them in square-shaped figures. The core of Abramelin’s teaching is an eighteen-month practice during which the practitioner, alone and secluded in a villa or a tent in the woods, undertakes patterned, structured purificatory ritual phases. The structure of the ritual space is unprecedented. For the first time in the history of magic books, we find instructions for preparing an entire villa that is also a temple, and this structure is sacralized for magical practice during the eighteen-month magical procedure.[59] 

The Book of Abramelin circulated in different versions and languages, including German, French, and Italian. The earliest copies date to the seventeenth century, though eighteenth-century French versions gained popularity in nineteenth-century initiatory societies.[60] One member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, described below, Aleister Crowley, made the Book of Abramelin a cornerstone of his magical system, and he attempted—successfully, in his view—to summon his guardian angel by performing the ritual of Abramelin in his mind, visualizing the temple/villa structure and conducting the ritual while physically on the move, travelling across China.[61] 

The ritual-textual traditions that have occupied us so far provide the raw material for a new multifaceted family of traditions that, for simplicity’s sake, we refer to here as modern ritual magic. Emerging against the massive societal and cultural transformations of the nineteenth century, modern ritual magic is part of a broader development known as occultism, which includes currents such as Spiritualism and Spiritism, Theosophy, and the New Thought movement.[62] Like occultism more broadly, developments in modern ritual magic reflect some of the period’s key concerns: the relationship between science and religion, a focus on personal experience and imagination, and the search for alternative institutional forms dedicated to spiritual exploration and experimentation. This section will pay particular attention to the ways that ritual magicians cultivate the imagination in search of spiritual experiences and the range of new institutional forms developed for cultivating these experiences.  

A pioneer for these developments is the French socialist and the first self-declared occultist Alphonse Louis Constant (1810–1875), better known as Eliphas Lévi. Through works such as Dogme et rituel de la haute magie (1854–1856) and Histoire de la magie (1860), Lévi presents magic as an ancient unbroken wisdom tradition capable of resolving the emerging schism between religion and science to restore the spiritual authenticity of modern man. In this sense, magic is a response to dawning secularization; it is an answer to the experience that vast domains of society, especially the political and scientific, were increasingly separated from religion. Lévi’s knowledge of actual magical traditions, however, was limited, and his claims to represent a magical lineage are a form of invented tradition.[63] Nevertheless, his notion of magic as an ancient wisdom tradition and a spiritual path for the future would influence key individuals and organizations dedicated to magic at the end of the nineteenth century.  

Another influential early figure in this period is Paschal Beverly Randolph (1825–1875), a free Black American who made significant contributions to practical occultism.[64] Randolph had functioned as a “trance speaker” in the context of 1850s American Spiritualism and Mesmerism, giving voice to various spirits who lectured on progressive topics. After travels in Europe and the near East, he distanced himself from the passivity associated with spirit mediumship, and he began to advocate active techniques for practitioners to control their interactions with otherworldly realities. Starting in the 1860s, Randolph published works on a number of such techniques, notably for achieving clairvoyance—defined as “the art and power of knowing or cognizing facts, things, and principles, by methods totally distinct from those usually pursued”—including the use of mirrors and the ingestion of hashish.[65] Much of Randolph’s teachings were based on practices he learned from French Mesmerist and occultist circles in Paris, particularly the pioneering Louis-Alphonse Cahagnet (1809–1885).[66] Randolph’s most original idea was that sex—specifically, the energy released during mutual orgasm between two heterosexual partners—could be utilized for magical purposes, making him an early proponent of sex magic.[67] 

Towards the end of the century, a new generation seeking to consolidate the meaning of “occultism” would turn to older materials such as the PGM and the Hermetica, medieval books of magic, and Renaissance magi like Ficino, Agrippa, and Dee. Pioneering occultists like Lévi, Randolph, and others were heavily shaped by Mesmerism and ideas about somnambulic states and the power of imagination, which is key for understanding how this new interpretation of older magic works. Rather than being a revival of earlier magical practices, this looking back gave rise to new magical traditions that reflected major societal and cultural trends of the late-nineteenth century: the emerging cultural focus on the self and the psyche, a renewed interest in bridging science and religion, and, eventually, the resistance to established Christianity and social norms. Through new organizations like the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, seekers were promised contact with otherworldly beings, the attainment of higher knowledge, as well as the exploration and empowerment of the soul.[68]  

The Golden Dawn 

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which opened its first temple, Isis-Urania, in London in 1888, is the most influential example of the institutionalization of magic. Founded by Freemasons immersed in Victorian occultism, this secret order welcomed both women and men and attracted esteemed upper- and middle-class members. Several creative luminaries became high-ranking Golden Dawn members, including Irish author W.B. Yeats, actress and composer Florence Farr, theater manager Annie Horniman, and the young poet Aleister Crowley (1875–1947).[69] Through the efforts of founding members like William Wynn Westcott (1848–1925) and Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers (1854–1918), the Golden Dawn developed a curriculum for the practice of ritual magic that continues to directly or indirectly influence magical practices into the present.[70] This curriculum promises to facilitate extraordinary experiences ranging from clairvoyant vision to travel on the “astral planes,” where practitioners would encounter angels, demons, and exalted beings.[71] Through this, Golden Dawn magic becomes a fully-fledged path of spiritual self-exploration that would leave its mark on a range of so-called alternative spiritualities and new religious movements throughout the twentieth century.  

The Golden Dawn curriculum is centered on a system of progressive ritual initiations, each grade linked to specific study materials and sequences of exercises. In lower grades, students learn basic esoteric symbolism encompassing the planets, zodiac signs, alchemical symbols, Hebrew letters with numerical values, the kabbalistic Tree of Life, and Tarot. These symbols form a complex system of correspondences structured by “kabbalistic” principles largely borrowed from Éliphas Lévi.[72] The systematic correspondences include colors, numbers, geometrical shapes, and, in later versions of the curriculum, even odors and tastes. The first step in the Golden Dawn’s learning system is to internalize these correspondences and to form structured associations between esoteric concepts, imagery, and a range of sensory impressions and aesthetic forms.  

The second step in the Golden Dawn curriculum introduces students to novel experiential categories like “clairvoyance,” “scrying in the spirit vision,” and “astral travel.” These categories, which form a central part of the Golden Dawn’s experiential training program, are drawn not from medieval or Renaissance sources but from pioneering occultists like Lévi, Randolph, and Emma Hardinge Britten (1823–1899). While “scrying” lets students see into other worlds, “astral travel” enables them to explore these worlds in their astral bodies and interact with beings living in those realms. It must be noted that these states were experienced internally, in the practitioner’s mind. Golden Dawn teachings, however, carefully distinguish these spiritual experiences from mere imagination. A central criterion for discernment was the vividness of the mental imagery: The more vivid the impression, the more likely it was a genuine vision of spiritual worlds and not “imagination” or “fancy.”[73] 

Turning Towards Imagination  

With the appropriate knowledge base in place, Golden Dawn members turn to practical exercises and, eventually, to free exploration of the worlds accessed by these exercises. Unlike earlier traditions, magic in the Golden Dawn largely focuses on exploring individuals’ internal mental worlds rather than evoking and constraining supernatural entities. Surviving materials show that Golden Dawn practices aim to trigger unusual imaginative states through simple relaxation and visualization techniques accompanied by ritualized action sequences and structured engagement with the Order’s symbolically rich material and aesthetic culture.[74] In 1892, Elaine Simpson and Florence Farr instructed initiates in the following way: 

Secure for an hour or for longer absolute freedom from interruption. Then alone, or with one or two Adepti, enter the vault, or a private chamber. Remain in silence and contemplation for several minutes. Rise, and perform the Qabalistic Cross and prayer. Then proceed to contemplation of some object, say a Tarot Trump: either by placing it before you and gazing at it, until you seem to see into it; or by placing it against your forehead or elsewhere, and then keeping the eyes closed; in this case you should have given previous study to the Card, as to its symbolism, colouring, analogies, etc. . . . If the mind wanders to anything disconnected with the card, no beginner will succeed in seeing anything spiritually. Consider all the symbolism of the Tarot Card . . . and then the vision may pass over you.[75]  

Symbolic, practical, and aesthetic training are combined to structure the magician’s imagination. And imagination is fostered by embodied ritual prompts and physical structures such as the “vault,” a purpose-built ritual chamber whose walls and ceiling are painted with esoteric symbols. Imagination is also cultivated by gestures and invocations. The Qabalistic Cross is a sequence of gestures, utterance of divine names, and visualizations that aim to center the practitioner and the ritual space at the center of the cosmos. Tarot cards are deployed as a focus of visualization that activates the rich symbolic associations internalized during practitioners’ training. Eventually, these associations transition into a dreamlike but structured imaginative experience that is appraised and interpreted as a “vision.” 

Imagination-cultivating practices are indeed distant from medieval and early-modern traditions, and leading figures of the Golden Dawn were generally skeptical about earlier techniques for evoking and commanding spirits. While premodern conjuring was certainly known to the founders, members’ circulated instructions sidelined such practices. The limited instructions on conjuring spirits that did enter official Golden Dawn documents were removed in early twentieth-century publications of Golden Dawn materials.[76] Not unlike Renaissance humanists who took an interest in magic, the Golden Dawn was concerned with rehabilitating and sublimating magic, turning it into a form of ritualized introspection and a path to acquire knowledge of the world and the self.  

While the Golden Dawn’s interpretations of magic may be novel, prior magical sources were not completely neglected. Some Golden Dawn members studied manuscript evidence from older magical traditions, and some members, to the best of their ability, published translations and editions of key texts. MacGregor Mathers, one of the masterminds behind the Golden Dawn’s innovations, sparked a wave of interest in spirit conjuring by publishing editions of The Key of Solomon the King (1889) and The Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage (1897). These publications, too, were concerned with rehabilitating and sublimating magic rather than presenting literal version of earlier sources. Mathers, for instance, informs the readers of his Key of Solomon that he has “omitted one or two experiments partaking largely of Black Magic,” and he specifically warns practitioners against “the use of blood” because it could lead them “dangerously on the evil path.”[77] 

Resistance to procedures described as “medieval” or “black magic” contained a moral and class dimension. Golden Dawn member Arthur Edward Waite (1857–1942) made this explicit when he condemned Solomonic magic in the following way: 

To give riches, to kindle love and lust, to discover treasures—as these were the sum of [the Solomonic practitioners’] ambition, so they were the qualifications in chief demand from the spirits. The class of people to whom such considerations would appeal were those obviously … who could not obtain their satisfaction through the normal channels—the outcasts, the incompetent, the ignorant, the lonely, the deformed, the hideous, the impotent and those whom Nature and Grace alike denied.[78] 

Infighting and scandals led the Golden Dawn to schisms after 1900, leaving Waite in control of one of the factions. In line with the condemnation above, Waite replaced magical training entirely with an emphasis on Christian mysticism.[79]

Though the original Golden Dawn collapsed in the early 1900s, offshoots and splinter groups further expanded and developed the system, producing new literature on magic for an eager occult public. New currents of ritual magic would crystalize through schisms, creative reworkings, and reconsolidations of existing materials. The Golden Dawn’s emphasis on self-exploration, inner experience, knowledge from the “astral plane,” and ascent on the Tree of Life becomes a central pillar for a range of alternative spiritual paths in the broader occult and Pagan milieus. This section considers some key twentieth-century developments and what lies on the magical horizon. 

Violet Mary Firth, better known as Dion Fortune (1890–1946), founded the Fraternity of Inner Light in 1924, now named the Society of Inner Light, as a splinter group from one of the continuing Golden Dawn temples.(80) An early adopter of psychoanalysis, Fortune and her works attempt to place magic in conversation with psychology and psychiatry. This new angle was distributed through a steady stream of influential occult non-fiction books such as Sane Occultism (1929), Psychic Self Defense (1930), and The Mystical Qabalah (1935), which remain in print today. Fortune also wrote fiction, and her occult-themed novels—The Secrets of Dr Taverner (1926), The Sea Priestess (1938), and the later Moon Magic (1956)—were important for the popularization of magic. As a result, Fortune has found a broad reception in British occult and Pagan scenes. 

The British-American chiropractor and Reichian psychotherapist Israel Regardie (1907–1985) wrote a range of works popularizing the Golden Dawn. A member of the Golden Dawn offshoot Stella Matutina, Regardie in the late 1930s published some of the Order’s rituals and instructions along with several books on magic and kabbalah. Much like Fortune, who herself introduced Regardie to the works of Freud and Jung, he focused on magic’s relation to psychotherapy.(81) Regardie’s full influence on modern magic would only be felt from the 1970s onwards after the publisher Llewellyn released new editions of his works. The republication of his big book of Golden Dawn materials was particularly instrumental to the revival of Golden Dawn magic—and reactions to the same—that took place from the late 1970s. 

Thelema  

An essential legacy of the Golden Dawn is through Aleister Crowley.(82) Having spent two years as a member of the Order before its dissolution, Crowley went on to found the new religion of Thelema (meaning “Will”), to establish a new magical order called the A\A\, to relaunch the esoteric fraternity Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.), and to completely redefine the practice of sex magic. Crowley’s contributions to modern transformations of magic are truly substantial and far-ranging; three aspects are highlighted below.  

First is his contribution to the scientification of magic. Through the A\A\, Crowley sought to rework Golden Dawn’s magical training into a system of initiation he dubbed “Scientific Illuminism.”(83) The new system’s motto, “the method of science—the aim of religion,” signaled that candidates’ personal experience of magical results must be subjected to rigorous critique by peers, just like scientific experiments. One innovative way to do this was redeploying the system of esoteric correspondences as an instrument for testing and potentially falsifying experience reports because specific operations should lead to specific results; for example, a visionary experience of a certain astrological planet should contain symbolic elements (colors, shapes, odors, numbers, letters, divine names, etc.) belonging to that planet and not contain anything else.(84)  

His second contribution is to what can be called the religionization of magic, the repositioning of magic practices through symbolic, organizational, and discursive registers emulating those of “religion.” While aligning magic with science was important to Crowley, it was more consequential that he set himself up as the prophet of a new religion, claiming he “received” in 1904 a new holy text called Liber AL vel Legis (The Book of the Law). This religion’s central tenet is “Do what thou Wilt shall be the whole of the Law.”(85) Thelema would be institutionalized in organizations such as the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica (Gnostic Catholic Church; E.G.C.) and the O.T.O. It would issue a ranking of canonical texts and authoritative scriptural interpretations and suggest a salvific path in which magic played an essential role. By reframing magic through a new religion, Crowley represents the first significant attempt to separate the practice of magic from Christian interpretations that had persisted since late Antiquity.  

Thelema is, in some sense, a culmination of the persistent experiential dimension of magic. On one hand, Thelema shows how magical operations aiming to produce experiences of presence can result in new revelatory paths when the visionary experiences are invested with prophetic authority;(86) this is what Crowley did with the reception of The Book of the Law and by producing a series of visionary texts called The Vision and the Voice in 1909.(87) On the other hand, Thelema also reframed the experiential dimension of magic ritual as a key religious practice. In Thelema, the liberating moment of self-realization, or knowledge of one’s True Will, is cast as a magical attainment, a personal revelation experience known as the “knowledge and conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel.” The ideal example that Thelemites aspire to is Crowley’s aforementioned experiments with the Book of Abramelin.(88)  

Third, through Thelema, Crowley presented magic as a way of life. In the broadest sense, Crowley defined magic as “the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will,” which means “every intentional act is a Magical Act.”(89) Elaborate ceremonies of ritual magic are set on a continuum of (magical) actions encompassing all of everyday life, encouraging practitioners to think of everyday actions through the lens of magic and the pursuit of Will.  

From the late twentieth century onwards, the Thelemic current gives rise to yet more subcurrents and creative reworkings.(90) One significant example is Kenneth Grant’s Typhonian current. Through nine books published between 1972 and 2002, collectively known as the Typhonian trilogies, Grant expanded on “classic” Thelemic magic by adding elements from Lovecraftian fiction, UFO-lore, Hindu tantras, and the works of Austin Osman Spare, an artist and one-time Crowley associate.(91) Grant’s idiosyncratic work explores techniques like sex magic and lucid dreaming while updating the ontological interpretation of experiences of presence to include a focus on extraterrestrials and entities as described in fiction. 

Modern Satanism, Chaos Magic, Wicca 

Three further magical developments are related to the Thelemic current: the formation of modern Satanism and so-called Left-Hand Path magic, the development of Chaos magic, and the emergence of Wicca. Modern religious Satanism is a complex field with competing factions, but its emergence is tightly linked with occultist magical traditions.(92) The father of modern Satanism, Anton LaVey (1930–1999) explored magic, ritual, and occultism in a series of events at his San Francisco “Black House,” and these events laid the foundation for the Church of Satan. LaVey's approach to magic is secularizing and rationalistic, blurring the boundary between magic and social-psychological techniques of manipulation and self-development. More esoteric takes would eventually emerge from the wider Satanic milieu in groups representing the so-called Left-Hand Path.(93)  

Michael Aquino, initially LaVey’s close collaborator in the Church of Satan, produced a new revelatory text by following the magical procedure that Crowley had used to produce his Vision and the Voice; this procedure, notably, was itself developed by Crowley from the Golden Dawn version of John Dee’s “Enochian” system.(94) Aquino’s resulting text was the Book of Coming Forth by Night (1975), which became the revelatory foundation of another magic-based religious framework embodied in the organization known as the Temple of Set.(95) Unlike LaVey’s secularizing and psychologizing tendency, magicians in the Temple of Set tradition evoke powers and beings that are presented as quite real and irreducible to social or psychological mechanisms, and they aim for a form of apotheosis or divinization of the self. 

Chaos magic can be described as an anarchic magical current emerging in the late 1970s and early 1980s in Britain, primarily around the Thelema-oriented organization called Illuminates of Thanateros (IOT) and the writings of Ray Sherwin and Peter J. Carroll. It is sometimes described as a “postmodern” approach to magic, but chaos magic is never so much a fixed system as an attitude toward magic that emphasizes the pragmatic, the humorous and the irreverent. Chaos magic considers belief to be a tool and, from this, breaks the divides between fiction and fact, magic and art, highbrow esotericism and popular culture.(96) Drawing on modern discourse on Shamanism, chaos magic frequently emphasizes “techniques of ecstasy” as central to magical efficacy.  

Another important trajectory for magic runs through Wicca and its influence on the broader late twentieth-century Pagan scene. Developed by Gerald Gardner in the 1950s, the “witchcraft religion” of Wicca is another form of religionized magic that breaks from Christian frameworks.(97) Combining elements from the Golden Dawn, Thelema, a range of folklore about witchcraft, and notions of a suppressed Pagan religion worshiping a horned god and mother goddess, Wicca is a decentralized practice taught in close-knit covens with no central organization or dogma. This lack of centralization contributes to a high level of innovation in the broader Wiccan movement, giving rise to successive splintering and new currents reflecting unique emphases.(98) Wicca has inspired a sprawling literature on witchcraft, spellcasting, and magical folklore for solitary practitioners. One of Wicca’s historical functions is transmitting ritual templates from modern ritual magic into what are known as Reconstructionist Paganisms (e.g. Ásatrú, Hellenistic, Slavic paganisms) that seek to revive pre-Christian traditions. These reconstructed traditions, in turn, influence and add to contemporary magical practices in the Pagan scene, such as using runes for divination, incorporating techniques like drumming, dancing, and psychoactive agents to induce visionary experiences, and reconsidering the role of sacrifice in the ritual repertoire. 

The Purist Turn  

One final trend that must be mentioned in closing is the so-called purist turn driven by scholar-magicians who, dissatisfied with modern adaptations and syntheses, turn to textual archives to reconstruct “authentic” or “pure” magical practices from old sources. This development began in the 1970s when small publishing houses like Askin Publishers, Element, and Aquarian Press released primary sources of medieval and Renaissance magic; grimoires were coming back into fashion. Daniel Driscoll’s(99) 1977 edition of the Sworn Book of Honorius the Magician (Liber Iuratus) fostered a scholar-like interest in magic books among practitioners. Stephen Skinner published new editions of older printed works on magic like Meric Casaubon’s famous account of Dee’s angel conversations (True & Faithful Relations) and the Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy, spuriously attributed to Agrippa.  

In the 1990s and continuing to the present, several micropublishers have come to specialize in limited craft editions of rare magical materials. David Rankine and Stephen Skinner’s Golden Hoard Press has released a number of books of magic since 2004, many published for the first time; in addition to affordable cloth and paperback versions, the press offers special leather-bound editions for connoisseurs. The market for craft publishing, offering exquisite collector’s editions of magical texts, must be seen in light of the massive increase of access to transcriptions and translations of older magical work that are now disseminated on the internet. For instance, Joseph H. Peterson’s website, esotericarchives.com, has been an invaluable resource for scholar-magicians since the 1990s.(100) The purist turn, combined with increased digital availability of magical sources and the emergence of esoteric craft publishing, has fostered greater interest among practitioners in late-antique, medieval, and early modern magic, reinforcing a bookish image of what it means to be a “scholar-magician.” 

Magic has always been a contested concept shaped by diverse historical, cultural, and religious contexts. This entry explores magic as a dynamic historical concept rather than a cross-cultural comparative category. From the earliest Greek sources, where magos referred to a Persian ritual specialist, through the complex ritual traditions of late Antiquity, medieval learned magic, Renaissance occult philosophy, and evolving contemporary groups and practice, magic consistently involves techniques to breach boundaries between ordinary and extraordinary realms of experience. Whether through the divine apparitions in the Greek Magical Papyri, the theurgic practices of Neoplatonists seeking to escape fate, the angelic conversations of John Dee, or the many vision-inducing techniques of modern and contemporary magicians, magic appeals to practitioners seeking direct transformative encounters with higher entities and realities. 

The historical trajectories of magic as a concept reveal persistent themes. First, magic is a repository for practices that promise access to divine or supernatural knowledge and power, placing magic in tension with established religious authorities who claim exclusive mediation of such realities. Second, the semantic boundaries of “magic” are continually negotiated through dynamics of polemic and apologetic. Third, material and linguistic technologies of magic—from the voces magicae and charaktêres to complex spatial design in rituals—provide procedural knowledge to achieve extraordinary experiences. The Christian appropriation of magic discourse, particularly Augustine’s semiotic theory, established a framework that persisted for over a millennium, separating legitimate religious interaction with the divine from the demonic communication based on the opacity of ritual signs and language. This framework profoundly shaped medieval and early modern magical traditions.  

Renaissance magic exhibits ruptures and continuities with medieval ritual-textual traditions. Scholars like Agrippa and Dee sought to rehabilitate magic as a legitimate philosophical and scientific endeavor. At the same time, the libraries of Renaissance magicians preserved medieval magical handbooks, and these same sources inspired new systematizations of magic. Renaissance magic laid the foundation for transformations during the eighteenth to twentieth centuries when magic was simultaneously dismissed by emerging academic disciplines as primitive superstition and reclaimed by occult movements as ancient wisdom traditions bridging the growing divide between science and religion. Over time, magic was simultaneously separated from a Christian frame of reference and inscribed with new meanings.  

Modern practitioners draw selectively from historical sources and techniques as well as contemporary sensibilities and worldviews. Whether through the Golden Dawn’s emphasis on astral travel, Crowley’s Thelemic religious framework, or contemporary Chaos magic’s playful deconstruction of belief systems, modern magical practice continues to offer structured pathways to non-ordinary experience. The purist turn toward historical reconstruction of authentic magic texts coexists with highly innovative synthetic approaches that blend modern psychology and popular culture or that experiment with ritual matrices from multiple cultural contexts. The digitalization of magic knowledge and growing interest in historical sources suggest that magic will continue to evolve as an object of academic study and a living tradition of practice, and these dimensions will continue to influence one another. Magic remains, as it has always been, a contested and dynamic historical concept. Approaching magic as a historical rather than comparative category allows us to trace complex entanglements of discourse and practice that shape magical traditions and broader conceptions of religion, science, and the self across more than two millennia. 

[1] Julius Pokorny, Indogermanisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch (Francke, 1959), 695; cf. Bruce Lincoln, “The Problem of the Magi,” in Magic and Religion in the Ancient Mediterranean World, 1st ed., eds. Radcliffe G. Edmonds III, et al. (Routledge, 2023), 207–10.

[2] Jan Bremmer, Greek Religion and Culture, the Bible and the Ancient Near East (Brill, 2008), 237–42.

[3] Herodotos, The Persian Wars, Books I-II, ed. and trans. Alfred Denis Godley, Loeb Classical Library 117 (Harvard University Press, 1926), Book I.

[4] Bremmer, Greek Religion and Culture, 241–2.

[5] Amir Ahmadi, “The ‘Magoi’ and ‘Daimones’ in Column VI of the Derveni Papyrus,” Numen 61, no. 5–6 (2014): 484–508.

[6] Sophocles, Oedipus the King and Other Tragedies: Oedipus the King, Aias, Philoctetes, Oedipus at Colonus, ed. Oliver Taplin (Oxford University Press, 2015), 25–28.

[7] Fritz Graf, “Greece,” in Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic, ed. David Frankfurter, (Brill, 2021), 115–138.

[8] Pliny the Elder, Natural History: Volume 1, Books 1–2, ed. and trans. H. Rackham, Loeb Classical Library 330 (Harvard University Press, 1938).

[9] Randall G. Styers, Making Magic: Religion, Magic and Science in the Modern World (Oxford University Press, 2005).

[10] E.g., Wouter J. Hanegraaff, “Reconstructing ‘Religion’ from the Bottom Up,” Numen 63, no. 5–6 (2016): 576–605.

[11] E.g. Bernd-Christian Otto, “Historicising ‘Western Learned Magic,’” Aries 16, no. 2 (2016): 161–240.

[12] For overviews, see Jan N. Bremmer and Jan R. Veenstra, eds., The Metamorphosis of Magic from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period (Peeters, 2002); David Frankfurter, “Ancient Magic in a New Key: Refining an Exotic Discipline in the History of Religions,” in Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic (Brill, 2019), 3–20; David J. Collins, ed., The Cambridge History of Magic and Witchcraft in the West: From Antiquity to the Present (Cambridge University Press, 2015); Louise Nyholm Kallestrup and Stephen A. Mitchell, eds., A Cultural History of Magic, Vols. 1–6 (Bloomsbury, 2025).

[13] See David Frankfurter, “Ritual Expertise in Roman Egypt and the Problem of the Category ‘Magician,’” in Envisioning Magic: A Princeton Seminar and Symposium, ed.Peter Schäfer and Hans G. Kippenberg (Brill 1997), 115–135.

[14] In the ritual to summon Harpokrates to perceptual appearance, the procedure culminates with the apparition of the god in a vault of light and practitioners stepping their feet onto the deity’s feet (PGM IV 930–1114). Also, see Egil Asprem, “On Summoning the Gods to Visual Appearance: Kataphatic Practice in Learned Ritual Magic,” in Oxford Handbook of Psychedelic, Religious, Spiritual and Mystical Experiences, eds. Michiel van Elk and David Yaden (Oxford University Press, 2024), page range not available at time of this publication.

[15] Ian S. Moyer, Egypt and the Limits of Hellenism (Cambridge University Press, 2011), 215–19; Jonathan Z. Smith, Map Is Not Territory: Studies in the History of Religions (University of Chicago Press, 1993), 172–89.

[16] On theurgy see e.g., Ilinca Tanaseanu-Döbler Theurgy in Late Antiquity: The Invention of a Ritual Tradition (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013); Ruth Majercik, The Chaldean Oracles: Text, Translation, and Commentary, Studies in Greek and Roman Religion (Brill, 1989); Sarah Iles Johnston, “Magic and Theurgy,” in Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic, ed. David Frankfurter (Brill 2019), 694–719.

[17] Majercik, The Chaldean Oracles, 107.

[18] Iamblichus, De Mysteriis, eds. and trans. Emma C. Clarke, et al., Society of Biblical Literature Writings from the Greco-Roman World 4 (Brill, 2004), books I–III, and X.

[19] Majercik, The Chaldean Oracles, 105.

[20] Majercik, The Chaldean Oracles, 30; cf. Johnston, “Magic and Theurgy.”

[21] The metaphysical rationale is laid out in Corpus Hermeticum. The philosopher Tat explains that incorporeal forms reflect themselves within corporeal matter, just as bodies appear in mirrors. Statues, therefore, serve as liminal vessels—mirrors of the intelligible world—rendered ritually receptive through telestic rites. As Tat puts it: “Adore the statues, because they, too, possess forms from the intelligible cosmos” (Brian P. Copenhaver, ed., Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius in a New English Translation, with Notes and Introduction [Cambridge University Press, 1992], 62).

[22] Iamblichus, De Mysteriis, book III.6, pp. 133–134 in Clark et. al.

[23] De civitate Dei, book X, ch. 9, in Augustine, The City of God against the Pagans, vol. 3. Bk. viii-xi, ed. Jeffrey Henderson, trans. David S. Wiesen, The Loeb Classical Library 413 (Harvard University Press, 1968), 287.

[24] James C. Skedros, “Canons of the Council in Trullo (692 CE),” in Religions of Late Antiquity in Practice, ed. Richard Valantasis (Princeton University Press, 2000), 289–300.

[25] E.g., Henry Maguire, ed., Byzantine Magic (Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1995).

[26] Richard Kieckhefer, “Rethinking How to Define Magic,” in The Routledge History of Medieval Magic, ed. Sophie Page and Catherine Rider (Routledge, 2019), 15–25; Richard Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, 3rd ed. (Cambridge University Press, 2022).

[27] Damaris Gehr, “Ritual Books of Magic: A First Survey on the Tradition of the ‘liber Sacer’ (Holy Book) and the ‘liber Consecrationis’ (Book of Consecration) in Medieval Sources and Early Modern Manuscripts,” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 57, no. 2 (2022): 284–87.

[28] Gösta Hedegård, Liber Iuratus Honorii: A Critical Edition of the Latin Version of the Sworn Book of Honorius (Almqvist & Wiksell International, 2002).

[29] Barbara Newman, The Permeable Self: Five Medieval Relationships, The Middle Ages Series (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021); Barbara Newman, “What Did It Mean to Say ‘I Saw’? The Clash between Theory and Practice in Medieval Visionary Culture,” Speculum 80, no. 1 (2005): 1–43.

[30] For an overview, see David Keck, Angels & Angelology in the Middle Ages (Oxford University Press, 1998).

[31] Katelyn Mesler, “The Liber Iuratus Honorii and the Christian Reception of Angel Magic,” in Invoking Angels. Theurgic Ideas and Practices, Thirteenth to Sixteenth Centuries, ed. Claire Fanger (Penn State University Press, 2012), 113–50.

[32] For the most recent contribution to Solomonic magic, see Gal Sofer, Solomonic Magic: Methodology, Texts, and Histories (Brill, 2025).

[33] Isabelle Draelants, “The Notion of Properties. Tensions between Scientia and Ars in Medieval Natural Philosophy and Magic,” in The Routledge History of Medieval Magic, ed. Sophie Page and Catherine Rider (Routledge, 2019), 169–186.

[34] For the astral magic genre, see Peter J. Forshaw, “From Occult Ekphrasis to Magical Art: Transforming Text into Talismanic Image in the Scriptorium of Alfonso X,” in Bild Und Schrift Auf “magischen” Artefakten, eds. Sarah Kiyanrad, et al. (De Gruyter, 2018), 15–48; Charles Burnett, “Talismans: Magic as Science? Necromancy among the Seven Liberal Arts,” in Magic and Divination in the Middle Ages: Texts and Techniques in the Islamic and Christian Worlds (Ashgate, 1996), 1–15; Sophie Page, “Image-Magic Texts and a Platonic Cosmology at St Augustine’s, Canterbury in the Late Middle Ages,” in Magic and the Classical Tradition, eds. Charles Burnett and W. F. Ryan, Warburg Institute Colloquia 7 (The Warburg Institute and Nino Aragno Editore, 2006), 69–98.

[35] E.g., Gideon Bohak and Charles Burnett, eds., Thābit ibn Qurra, On Talismans, Ps.-Ptolemy, On Images 1–9, and Liber prestigiorum Thebidis of Adelard of Bath, Micrologus library 106 (Sismel-Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2021).

[36] Andrea Franchetto, Rituals of Perceptual Presence: Space, Material Culture, and Efficacy in Late-Medieval Learned Magic (Stockholm University, 2024).

[37] Franchetto, Rituals of Perceptual Presence, 168–174.

[38] On sacrifices in astral magic, see Sophie Page, “Les sacrifices d’animaux dans le Picatrix Latin,” in Images et magie. Picatrix entre orient et occident, eds Jean-Patrice Boudet, et al. (Honoré Champion, 2011), 187–211.

[39] Lynn Thorndike, ed., “The Commentary by Cecco d’Ascoli,” in The Sphere of Sacrobosco and Its Commentators (University of Chicago Press, 1949), 346; K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, ed., Ioannes Saresberiensis. Policraticus I–IV, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis 118 (Brepols, 1993), 58.

[40] G.G. Coulton, ed., Caesarius of Heisterbach. The Dialogue on Miracles, vol. 1, trans. H von E. Scott and C.C Swinton Bland (George Routledge & Sons, Ltd., 1929), 315–320.

[41] Franchetto, Rituals of Perceptual Presence, 224–36.

[42] The Key of Solomon’s instructions include Confession. See Florence Gal, et al., Vedrai Mirabilia. Un Libro Di Magia Del Quattrocento (Viella, 2017), 373–74.

[43] See the ritual event schema of the Liber Iuratus Honorii in Franchetto, Rituals of Perceptual Presence, 112–115.

[44] Jean Dupèbe, “L’écriture Chez l’ermite Pelagius. Un Cas de Théurgie Chrétienne Au Xve Siècle,” in Le Texte et Son Inscription, ed. R. Laufer (Editions du CNRS, 1989), 113–53.

[45] Robert Amadou, ed., L’Anacrise (Cariscript, 1988); Julien Véronèse, “Le rêve sollicité: un thème de la magie rituelle médiévale,” Sociétés & Représentations 23 (2007): 83–103.

[46] Julien Véronèse, “Magic, Theurgy and Spirituality in the Medieval Ritual of the Ars Notoria,” in Invoking Angels: Theurgic Ideas and Practices, Thirteenth to Sixteenth Centuries, ed. Claire Fanger (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012), 37–78.

[47] For an overview, see Frank Klaassen, The Transformations of Magic: Illicit Learned Magic in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013).

[48] Frances A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, 2nd ed., Routledge Classics (Routledge, 2002), 80–81.

[49] Stephen A. Farmer, Syncretism in the West: Pico’s 900 Theses (1486: The Evolution of Traditional Religious and Philosophical Systems, with a Revised Text, English Translation, and Commentary (Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1998).

[50] Vittoria Perrone Compagni, ed., De Occulta Philosophia Libri Tres (Brill, 1992), 85–86.

[51] Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, trans. John Freake (R.W. for Gregory Moule, 1651), book I, chap. XLIII, p. 86.

[52] See e.g., Nicholas Clulee, John Dee’s Natural Philosophy: Between Science and Religion (Routledge, 1988); Deborah Harkness, John Dee’s Conversations with Angels: Cabala, Alchemy, and the End of Nature (Cambridge University Press, 1999).

[53] For notable precursors to Dee’s experiments, see Frank Klaassen, “Ritual Invocation and Early Modern Science: The Skrying Experiments of Humphrey Gilbert,” in Invoking Angels: Theurgic Ideas and Practices, Thirteenth to Sixteenth Centuries, ed. Claire Fanger (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012), 341–366; Phil Legard and Al Cummins, eds., An Excellent Booke of the Arte Magicke (Scarlet Imprint, 2020).

[54] Meric Casaubon, A True & Faithful Relation of What Passed for Many Yeers Between Dr. John Dee and Some Spirits (1659). For the manuscripts, see British Library, Sloane MSS 3188, 3624–3628, and Cotton Appendix XLVI. Publisher: D. Maxwell for T. Garthwait, London.

[55] Joseph H. Peterson, ed., John Dee’s Five Books of Mystery: Original Sourcebook of Enochian Magic (Weiser Books, 2003), 66–73.

[56] The manuscript 4° Ms. astron. 3 is now housed at the University Library of Kassel includes the Summa Sacre Magice, a medieval magical treatise by Berengarius Ganellus, composed in the early fourteenth century. The Summa comprises several magical handbooks that circulated at the time of Ganellus, including the Liber iuratus Honorii.

[57] Egil Asprem, Arguing with Angels: Enochian Magic and Modern Occulture (State University of New York Press, 2012), 22–27.

[58] Abraham ben Simeon of Worms, The Book of Abramelin: A New Translation, ed. Georg Dehn, trans. Steven Guth (Ibis Press, 2015); S. Liddell Mac Gregor Mathers, The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abra-Melin the Mage (John M. Watkins, 1956).

[59] Andrea Franchetto, “Temporary and Imaginal Sacred Space in the Textual Transmission of Modern Ritual Magic: The Temple of Abramelin (15th–20th Century),” in Modernity and the Construction of Sacred Space, ed. Aaron French and Katharina Waldner, SpatioTemporality 15 (De Gruyter, 2024), 77–101.

[60] See the translation The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abra-Melin the Mage (1900) by the founder of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers.

[61] Andrea Franchetto, “Temporary and Imaginal Sacred Space,” 77–101: Aleister Crowley, The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography, eds. J. Symonds and K. Grant ( Hill & Wang. 1970), 518.

[62] On occultism see e.g. Marco Pasi, “Occult/Occultism,” in Vocabulary for the Study of Religion Online, eds. Robert A. Segal and Kocku von Stuckrad (Brill, 2016); cf. Julian Strube, “Socialist Religion and the Emergence of Occultism: A Genealogical Approach to Socialism and Secularization in 19th-Century France,” Religion 46, no. 3 (July 2, 2016), 359–88 and J. Strube, “Occultist Identity Formations Between Theosophy and Socialism in fin-de-siècle France,” Numen 64, no. 5–6 (2017): 568–595.

[63] As Julian Strube has argued, Lévi’s claim to tradition in fact owed more to utopian socialist milieus, which presented themselves as inheritors of a long lineage of noble heretics. See Strube, “Occultist Identity Formation” and “Socialist Religion.”

[64] J. P. Deveney, ed., Paschal Beverly Randolph: A Nineteenth-Century Black American Spiritualist, Rosicrucian, and Sex Magician (State University of New York Press, 1996).

[65] Paschal Beverly Randolph, Seership! The Magnetic Mirror: A Practical Guide to those who Aspire to Clairvyance-Absolute (Randolph and Company, 1870), 2.

[66] On this milieu see Wouter J. Hanegraaff, “The First Psychonaut? Louis-Alphonse Cahagnet’s Experiments with Narcotics,” International Journal for the Study of New Religions 7, no. 2 (2016): 105–123; Julian Strube, “The ‘Baphomet’ of Eliphas Lévi: Its Meaning and Historical Context,” Correspondences 4 (2016), 37–79. Also, cf. John Warne Monroe, Laboratories of Faith: Mesmerism, Spiritism, and Occultism in Modern France (Cornell University Press, 2008).

[67] Hugh Urban, Magia Sexualis: Sex, Magic, And Liberation in Modern Western Esotericism (University of California Press, 2006).

[68] E.g., Alex Owen, The Place of Enchantment: British Occultism and the Culture of the Modern (University of Chicago Press, 2004).

[69] Alison Butler, Victorian Occultism and the Making of Modern Magic (Palgrave, 2011); Owen, The Place of Enchantment, 51–84.

[70] Egil Asprem, “Contemporary Ritual Magic,” in The Occult World, ed. Christopher Partridge (Routledge, 2014), 382–95.

[71] E.g., Francis King, ed., Astral Projection, Ritual Magic, and Alchemy: Golden Dawn Material by S.L. MacGregor Mathers and Others (Destiny Books, 1987).

[72] Egil Asprem, “Kabbalah Recreata,” Pomegranate 9, no. 2 (2007): 132–53,

[73] See King, ed., Astral Projection, Ritual Magic, and Alchemy.

[74] The so-called Kabbalistic Cross and the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram are two examples of these ritualized sequences of actions. Graham John Wheeler, “A Microcosm of the Esoteric Revival: The Histories of the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram,” Correspondences 8, no. 1 (2020): 5–44.

[75] Farr and Simpson, “Flying Roll IV,” in King, Astral Projection, 71.

[76] See Asprem, Arguing with Angels, 63–68.

[77] S. Liddell MacGregor Mathers, The Key of Solomon the King (Clavicula Salomonis) [George Redway, 1889], vi.

[78] A. E. Waite, The Book of Ceremonial Magic: The Secret Tradition in Goëtia, including the Rites and Mysteries of Goëtic Theurgy, Sorcery and Infernal Necromancy (University Books, 1961 [1st ed., 1912]), 335.

[79] e.g. Robert A. Gilbert, “Waite, Arthur Edward” in Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, eds. Wouter J. Hanegraaff, et al. (Brill, 2006), 1164–1165.

[80] e.g. Alison Butler, “Dion Fortune and the Society of the Inner Light,” in The Occult World, ed. Christopher Partridge (Routledge, 2014), 315–19; Susan Johnston Graf, “The Occult Novels of Dion Fortune,” Journal of Gender Studies 16, no. 1 (2007): 47–56; Anne Parker-Perkola, “Dion Fortune and the Temples of the Numinous,” in Essays on Women in Western Esotericism: Beyond Seeresses and Sea Priestesses, ed. Amy Hale (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), 357–73; Georgia Van Raalte, The Occult Novels of Dion Fortune: Literary Initiations (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025).

[81] See e.g. Christopher A. Plaisance, “Israel Regardie and the Psychologization of Esoteric Discourse,” Correspondences 3 (2015): 5–54.

[82] For biographical detail, see Richard Kaczynski, Perdurabo, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Life of Aleister Crowley (North Atlantic Books, 2010). Also, cf. Marco Pasi, “The Neverendingly Told Story: Recent Biographies of Aleister Crowley,” Aries 3, no. 2 (2003): 224–45. For concerted scholarly treatments, see Henrik Bogdan and Martin P. Starr, eds., Aleister Crowley and Western Esotericism (Oxford University Press, 2012) and contributions to Manon Hedenborg White, ed., “Special Issue: Rethinking Aleister Crowley and Thelema,” Aries 21, no. 1 (2021).

[83] Egil Asprem, “Magic Naturalized? Negotiating Science and Occult Experience in Aleister Crowley’s Scientific Illuminism” Aries 8, no. 2 (2008): 139–65. Also, cf. Marco Pasi, “Varieties of Magical Experience: Aleister Crowley’s Views on Occult Practice,” Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 6, no. 2 (2018): 123–62.

[84] See Asprem, “Magic Naturalized?”

[85] Aleister Crowley, Liber AL vel Legis: The Book of the Law, I:40 (London: O.T.O., 1909).

[86] Cf. Ann Taves, Revelatory Events: Three Case Studies of the Emergence of New Spiritual Paths, (Princeton University Press, 2016).

[87] Aleister Crowley, Victor B. Neuburg, and Mary Desti. The Vision & the Voice with Commentary and Other Papers: The Collected Diaries of Aleister Crowley, 1909–1914 (Samuel Weiser, 1998); Alex Owen, “Aleister Crowley in the Desert,” in A. Owen, The Place of Enchantment, 186–220. Asprem, Arguing with Angels, 85–101.

[88] Henrik Bogdan, “Ars Congressus Cum Daemone: Aleister Crowley and the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel,” Entangled Religions 14, no. 3 (2023).

[89] Aleister Crowley, Magick in Theory and Practice (Lecram Press, 1929).

[90] See Dave Evans, The History of British Magic after Crowley: Kenneth Grant, Amado Crowley, Chaos Magic, Satanism, Lovecraft, The Left Hand Path, Blasphemy and Magical Morality (Hidden Publishing, 2007).

[91] Henrik Bogdan, “Kenneth Grant and the Typhonian Tradition,” in The Occult World, ed. Christopher Partridge (Routledge, 2014), 323–30; Gordan Djurdjevic, India and the Occult: The Influence of South Asian Spirituality on Modern Western Occultism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 91–110,

[92] Asbjørn Dyrendal, et al., The Invention of Satanism (Oxford University Press, 2015).

[93] See e.g. Jesper Petersen and Per Faxneld, eds., The Devil’s Party: Satanism in Modernity (Oxford University Press 2012); Kennet Granholm, Dark Enlightenment: The Historical, Sociological, and Discursive Contexts of Contemporary Esoteric Magic (Brill, 2014).

[94] On this see Asprem, Arguing with Angels, 98–99.

[95] The text has never been conventionally published, but versions are available. Michael A. Aquino, “The Book of Coming forth by Night,” Appendix 2 in idem., The Temple of Set (Draft 11, May 1, 2010), 170–175, archived online at https://archive.org/details/MichaelAquinoTheTempleOfSet (accessed April 29, 2026).

[96] See e.g. C. Duggan, “Perennialism and Iconoclasm: Chaos Magick and the Legitimacy of Innovation,” in Contemporary Esotericism, eds. E. Asprem and K. Granholm (Acumen Publishing, 2012), 91–112; V.M. Meletiadis, “Book Zero” through the Years: The First Two Editions of Peter Carroll’s Liber Null” Aries 25, no. 1 (2023): 25–55; Evans, The History of British Magic After Crowley; B.-C. Otto, “The Illuminates of Thanateros and the institutionalisation of religious individualization,” in Religious Individualisation, eds. M. Fuchs, et. al (De Gruyter, 2019), 759–796.

[97] See Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft (Oxford University Press, 1999).

[98] For an overview, see e.g. Ethan Doyle White, Wicca: History, Belief & Community in Modern Pagan Witchcraft (Sussex Academic Press, 2016).

[99] Daniel Driscoll, The Sworn Book of Honourius the Magician (Heptangle Books, 1977).

[100] Joseph A. Peterson, Twilit Grotto: Archives of Western Esoterica, website, last updated August 28, 2025, https://esotericarchives.com/.

Manuscripts: 

British Library. Cotton Appendix XLVI. 

British Library. Sloane MS 3188. 

British Library. Sloane MSS 3624–3628. 

Universitätsbibliothek Kassel. 4° Ms. astron. 3. 

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———. “Kabbalah Recreata.” Pomegranate 9, no. 2 (2007): 132–53. 

———. “Magic Naturalized? Negotiating Science and Occult Experience in Aleister Crowley’s Scientific Illuminism/La Magie ‘Naturalisée’?” Aries 8, no. 2 (2008): 139–65. 

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