Magic: A History

I bought this book expecting a history of magic, but what it really is, is basically a history of human beliefs and mythologies told through the lens of what we can learn from archeological discoveries, many of them burials and tombs. From Kurgans in the steppes, to Stonehenge, the author meticulously describes the various finds in excavations all over Northern, Western, and Eastern Europe, from the Celts to Catal Höyük.It's a blast to read with the photos and graphics of finds and artifactsn included with the text, but it's incredible to listen to as an audiobook too - except that listening to it makes me want the hardcopy book while I'm driving so I can look at the photos! lol!I love this book so much that I took it out of the library as an ebook (multiple times) and as an audiobook (multiple times), and eventually I bought a hardcopy paperback edition.If you love those PBS, History Channel, and Discovery Channel archeological series where they excavate archeological sites, you will love this book.Yes, is about magic, but it's about magic from 40,000 years ago in the ice age, up until the 20th century. It's about the oldest religion of all, predating all monotheistic organized religions - predating organized religion in general. And to explore that, there's no better way than to look at the beliefs of humans from times long past, the things that were buried with them, the objects that were considered important for their journey into the afterlife.It's fascinating and very detailed. I've read it multiple times and keep going back to it. This is truly a book about The Old Ways, the Oldest Ways, if you will, with none of the condescension of so much of 20th century archeology/archaeologists. It's written with respect for the people as they were in the time that the artifacts were created, and by that I don't mean they're is moral relativism, more that there isn't any morality injected into it at all, just pure description.So, yes, to will read about the tens of horses that were killed and buried with important ice age horse nomadic people in their tombs. If you can't read that without getting upset - and, I admit, my heart breaks a little for those horses - then this is NOT the book for you.Magic throughout history hasn't been the age of Aquarius white witch stuff of the 60s, 70s and beyond. Humans have done a lot of need up stuff throughout our evolution - and throughout the evolution of our ideas about God's, goddesses, and the forces of nature which ancient man could not understand the way that we do now, with all our scientific knowledge and technology of now. (I mean, organized monotheistic religions of the last two thousand years have done spectacularly horrible things in the name of their god(s), so this really should not come as any great surprise.)I also appreciate the inclusion of archeao-astronomy (astroarcheology?) - the inclusion of the information about how burials, tombs, kurgans, mounds, etc line up with astronomical phenomena - solstices, equinoxes, other night sky features. It is incredibly fascinating. What a great book.

The information is very very detailed and certainly thorough, but very dry and difficult to slog through. I felt more like I was reading a college textbook than an interesting guide. I continue to read through and skip around, but I don't think I stayed interested enough to learn about the subject.

Five stars.

A review of the history of mystical beliefs. I failed to find interesting or provocative ideas.

Dr. Gosden has overall written an excellent book describing a variety of magical practices in human society from across most of the globe since prehistory. It is not so academic as to be unreadable to the average reader, but well researched to be deserving of consideration by other academics in his own and related fields. Gosden also does an excellent job of describing his understanding of the relationship between religion, science, and magic, and how they have been balanced and integrated by various societies over thousands of years.Before I get into my quibbles, I listened to this as an audio book, and I give Clarke Peters a 5 star performance. For anyone who watches Midsomer Murders, he's in the episode about the Ballad of Midsomer.Where the book is lacking...The book is a rather unbalanced in the timeline and is very reflective of the author's own background. Ancient history and prehistoric archaeological finds take up a hefty portion of this book. Once we reach the age of the printing press, though, Gosden starts skimming through a variety of topics such as European witchcraft, alchemy, and pretty much anything after the 1400s. Considering the amount of detail put into his description of Gobleki Tepe, it is almost baffling that so little time is spent on topics such as spiritualism. This is not to say that it isn't there (it is), but it's almost brushed aside in passing, as an "Oh yeah, that existed. Moving along..." He also completely skips over the Indian sub-continent and Hinduism; while he does explain why (it is rather vast and daunting), I still think he could have provided at least an example while still noting that there was an awful lot being left out.To be sure, he cannot go into detail about everything. But, given the detail dumped on the reader about these earlier archaeological excavations (and I'm sure that was a small smattering of what is available), the lack of comparative detail on the last 400 years leaves the book feeling unbalanced and missing something. I also think it somewhat weakens his thesis regarding the need for a modern magical practice in the face of various environmental disasters facing us from climate change (he explain this much better than I ever could)While that seems like a major criticism, the book is still very good and definitely worth a read if it is a topic you're interested in. Despite its flaws, the rest of it is good enough to keep it at 4 stars. You will definitely come away having learned something and, even if you disagree with his thesis, at least a better understanding of how people have interacted with the world around them since there were people.

I’ll never read this. Words are crammed onto each page and the font is faint. It’s exhausting.

This is an outstanding book. Critical reviews are missing what it offers. No, it's not actually a "history of magic," and it's not light reading. But it's an indispensible piece of the puzzle.Gosden's chief interest is in ancient archaeology. Much of what he covers was unknown before around 2000, and will rewrite history books to de-center Europe and re-connect the West to the rest of Asia/Africa/Europe.Gosden does a lot of speculating about meanings and functions of archaeological finds - this may not age well. But this is a crucial read for anyone interested in the study of magic, religion, science, and/or anthropology.Five stars for this intriguing book. If you want a more conventional "history of magic," see Michael Bailey's Magic & Superstition in Europe.

Chris Gosden’s History of Magic is an enjoyable read, covering all of human history but asking us to reconsider the importance of magic. Although a sizeable book, its scope necessitates that centuries and cultures are sketched briefly. But even in areas where I am knowledgeable and am aware of what has been omitted, I cannot argue with the authors editorial choices. Doubtlessly the reader will be sufficiently interested to dig deeperWritten primarily from the point of view of archeology (but by no means limited to it), we delve into the unknowable past with a reliable guide. The author emphasises his model of an ideal trinity of magic, religion and science, which is useful, though sometimes obscures understanding. There is no universal description as to what constitutes “magic” rather than participation, so many diverse and unrelated practices fall under the same umbrella. At times it is unclear how descriptions of ancient settlements and cultures are strictly pertinent to the history of magic, though the thread of magic make this knowledge more interesting (making me wonder if magic is also being used as a sweetener to help teach archeology).There are minor areas I would disagree with the authors POV, for example, conjuring tricks and illusions are a part of “high magic” as much as, say, demonology. I also believe the role of art, legends and literature are vital to understanding magic, but maybe the author fears that these vital constituents reduce magic to make believe.We are not asked to be credulous to anything peddled as magic, but to explore the limits of our understanding. The author identifies the apparent disenchantment of the world (as exemplified by science) with our current ecological crisis. While I accept the argument, it does not necessarily follow that greater magical awareness will cure such ills. Indeed magical awareness also gives license to violence and exploitation, as shown by the the Aztecs and others. Similarly combat and malefic magic are under represented as they somewhat go against the books message that magic is beneficial. While examples of irrational superstition are given, the psychology of superstition is not explored.While not the first authority to present magic as useful, it still felt novel to read a reliable history that does not ridicule its subject.

The book explores magical practices in different parts of the world going back to the last Ice Age. My main criticism of the book would be the author's excessive relativism when it comes to comparisons between magical practices and modern science, which he is keen to present as having commensurate logical and rational validity. Still a worthwhile read with lots of interesting information.

I enjoyed this book hugely, and was amazed both by the author's erudition and by the easy and compelling way he tells the story. And what a story! I found my imagination opened to the most ancient human activities as revealed by archaeology, tens of thousands of years before anything was written down and long before the emergence of formal religion, let alone science.The author's belief that magic must be regarded as a vital human creative habit, alongside religion and science (and having porous boundaries with both those activities) is surely brilliantly proven through the descriptions he gives, from the deepest antiquity right up to our own time. I really appreciated the author's "tone" too, respectful, compassionate and non-dogmatic. My only, and very slight, regret is that inevitably there is little about one of the purest forms of everyday magic, namely music.This is a book to make anybody wonder deeply. It certainly had that effect on me

The aim of producing a book that effectively covers the history of magic from alchemy to witchcraft, from the Ice Age to the present, is indeed an ambitious one. In my view, this book fails to hit the mark.The author apparently recognises that some of the terms he adopts have been used to mean many different things to many different people over some period (page 33) but, unlike most modern authors publishing in this field, the author does not define the terms he uses. This leads to unusual usages. For example, the author appears to use the word ‘witchcraft’ to mean harmful/malicious magic throughout the book and appears to present that connection as fact.There appear to be issues with the balance struck between the amounts of space given to discussion of various matters. For example, ‘Learned Magic in the Medieval World’, arguably one of the most important areas of influence on all that came after in the west, is dismissed in less than four pages. In contrast, discussion contrasting Arthur Conan Doyle and Houdini receives three pages. Archaeology, understood to be the author’s actual area of expertise, is lauded over three pages even though it has little relevance to the remainder of the work. The author presents Crowley’s definition of Magick in full twice (pages 395 and 405) but makes no mention of anyone else’s definition of magic. He does not give a concise definition of his own usage of the word magic but does say that his definition emphasizes human connection with the universe and relates to participation.The book appears to draw principally on secondary sources for its information. There appears to be little or no distinction drawn between fact and the author’s opinion so arguably rendering it potentially of little use to those who are not already familiar with the matters discussed.In the section on ‘Modern and Future Magic’ the author lists the ‘Organizations promoting magic’ as the Rosicrucians and Freemasons, the Ordo Templi Orientis, Wicca, Paganism and Chaos Magic. Simple reliance on secondary sources might suggest that this list is incomplete.Towards the end of the book the author, rightly in my view and I understand in the view of some others, makes a passing comment that it is difficult to use magic from someone else’s culture. Yet the author has made no mention of this anywhere previously in the book, the previous comments about such issues discuss only the possible anger of folk in the cultures from whom the magic is appropriated. The observation as to possible difficulty in trying to adopt the magic traditions of another culture suggests that the author has sourced some accurate views regarding current magical practices, but this does not seem to be reflected by most of the book.The author states that a new magic is needed for the twenty first century and that it needs to run alongside science. Whilst that too is, in my opinion, true, the reasons the author gives are not in my opinion sound. The first reason given is that the structure of Golden Dawn and similar organisations and their descendants are hierarchical. Whilst some do appear to be hierarchical, that is not true of all. This suggests to me that the author may be unfamiliar with most if not all contemporary magical organisations. This view is supported by the fact that his discussion of modern magic talks of Crowley, and mentions Gardner in passing, but discusses no contemporaries of Crowley, nor any magicians who came after. Somewhat amusingly, the author appears to criticise Crowley and Gardner, claiming that ‘histories emphasize’ them, ‘slanting the narrative so that all history revolves around them’ (page 408). Yet it is arguable that it is the author who is slanting the history in that way. Even simple resort to secondary sources would reveal that there were and are others who had and have a significant impact on western magic.In my opinion folk who want to know more about the history of magic at any level would do better to look to the work of the likes of Lynn Thorndike and Richard Kieckhefer (neither of whom are mentioned in the bibliography) and the books by various authors in the Pennsylvania State University Press’s series ‘Magic in History’.The aim of producing a history of magic from alchemy to witchcraft, from the Ice Age to present, was worthy but unfortunately that aim is not, in my view, achieved. The author’s associated apparent intention, alluded to towards the end of the book, of helping to make magic more understandable, accessible and applicable to more folk living in the world today is not assisted by this book but it is certainly an aim that is to be applauded, encouraged and supported.

Very good analysis of the history of magic, with a valuable touch of cynicism. Didn't quite like the final chapter.