keronline.blogg.se

Very much so and it explains his success.

So there’s the idea that the religious authorities over the centuries have withheld secret knowledge and this is hugely potent. But, even though it’s bogus there is still that central message of secret materials transmitted by God which is at the heart of Christianity and Judaism. The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses originated in the 18th century. Even 2,000 years ago there were rumours and manuscripts circulating in the Middle East which were reported to be other texts of messages that Moses had received, but which weren’t included in the Torah or the Old Testament. The Old Testament is made up of the first five books of Moses as received from God. Like a lot of the grimoire tradition they claim Biblical origins. There are some grand claims for your next book, The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses by Joseph Peterson. But actually all the traditions are linked up. In other words her thesis crumbles because as a specialist in Germany she is only studying German material. What they show you is that essentially they are no different from grimoire traditions elsewhere. So, any historian scholar who doesn’t read German can finally understand what the German grimoire traditions are all about. Its value is all the translations of texts from German. It sounds like you’re sceptical of her views what’s the value of the book for you? Obviously the books she wrote are coloured by the Second World War and the Nazi regime and it’s difficult to know to what extent she held these anti-German views before. Her view is that there is something specific in the German make-up which had led to centuries of fascination with magic. She also wrote a seminal book on the Doctor Faust legends. Yes, Elizabeth Butler wrote a series of books just after the Second World War.

Your next book, Ritual Magic, is all about the Germans. Waite thought that many grimoires were complete nonsense at best and downright diabolic at worst. My definition of a grimoire is essentially a book of magic which contains conjurations and spells. There’s a lot of talk of grimoires in there – can you explain what they are? There’s also the whole idea of the crisis of faith in the second half of the 19th century. Once you could translate it you could start practising it. The cracking of the hieroglyphs had led to a boom in knowledge about Egyptian magic. There was a whole fascination at the time with Ancient Egypt – the excavations by the French, the Germans and the British. It’s the first real organised group of ritual magicians who practised magic as a religion rather than as an aspect of science. He was one of the early members of the Golden Dawn which grew up in the late 19th century. Yes, Waite is a very interesting character. Your next choice is The Book of Black Magic and of Pacts. Even Newton was interested in it, because scientists knew so little that any form of experimentation that could help them understand was a good idea. For 2,000 years scientists were exploring aspects of magic to help them with their work. Well, because it screwed up the whole idea of there being some sort of linear progression. So why was it that reviewers at the time weren’t happy with his theory? “When you look at the history of science you find magic is central right up until the 18th century.” To a certain degree, magic and science had exactly the same aims. His idea was that the basis of science is experimentation and a lot of learned magic is actually about trying to discover the secrets of the natural world. What did he see as the link between magic and science? But Thorndike came along and said, actually, when you look at the history of science you find that magic is central to it right up until the 18th century. There were three stages of human intellectual development from magic to religion to science. Also, when Thorndike was writing in the early 20th century, there was this academic notion of societal progress as a linear progression. He used so many extracts from original sources. It’s not a book where you read all eight volumes in a row, but it has a huge wealth of information from a polyglot scholar who spent decades researching his subject. Yes, some cultures put oral knowledge above written works as a means of transmitting the truth, but when you record something in writing it’s preserved, so it doesn’t get corrupted by oral tradition.Īnd what is it about this book that really grabs you? The History of Magic and Experimental ScienceĪnd there’s this idea that books and magic go hand in hand, books being a way for people to record their secrets. Foreign Policy & International Relations.