40
Views
14
CrossRef citations to date
0
Altmetric
ARTICLE

MAGIC AND SPACE

Pages 309-321 | Published online: 15 Mar 2010

  • 1 Because magic has so often come to be associated with conjuring tricks, magical shows, and the “black art,” we may lose sight of the fact that it is a complex and influential world view which claims to be able to affect men's lives at all levels. Most believers in magic or the occult emphasize the good that magic can do. Those who practice magic I will call magicians or magi, and trust that you will be able to overcome the stereotype of an old man, with a long beard, dark starred cloak, wand, and long pointed hat.
  • 2 N. Rescher, Conceptual Idealism (Bristol: Basil Blackwell, 1973), p. 8.
  • 3 The attempts to pry apart space from substance and to assert that space and its properties can be significant by themselves in the laws of human behavior have been termed the spatial separatist theme. Such attempts result in a nonrelational view of space; R. Sack, “A Concept of Physical Space in Geography,”Geographical Analysis, Vol. 5 (1973), pp. 16 34; and R. Sack, “The Spatial Separatist Theme in Geography,”Economic Geography, Vol. 50 (1974), pp. 1 19.
  • 4 Sack (1974), op. cit., footnote 3.
  • 5 Yi-Fu Tuan, “Space and Place: Humanistic Perspective,” in C. Board et al., eds., Progress in Geography, Vol. 6 (London: Edward Arnold, 1974), pp. 213–52, esp. p. 241; and E. Relph, “The Phenomenon of Place,” unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Toronto, 1973, especially p. 55.
  • 6 I have used Mauss' first two categories and incorporated his third principle, antipathy, within them; M. Mauss, A General Theory of Magic (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972), especially Chapter 3, section 3.
  • 7 Mauss, op. cit., footnote 6, p. 63.
  • 8 Mauss, op. cit., footnote 6, p. 64.
  • 9 Mauss, op. cit., footnote 6, p. 64.
  • 10 Mauss, op. cit., footnote 6, p. 65.
  • 11 Mauss, op. cit., footnote 6, p. 65.
  • 12 Mauss, op. cit., footnote 6, p. 68. I take this definition to include both “like produces like, similia similibus evocantur, and like acts upon like, and, in particular, cures like, similia similibus curantur.”
  • 13 Mauss, op. cit., footnote 6, p. 68. Sometimes these need only be imagined or seen in the mind's eye. Imagination in the sense of visualization plays an important role in magic.
  • 14 Mauss, op. cit., footnote 6, p. 68.
  • 15 A critique of the “no-action-at-a-distance” position of normal science is in M. Bunge, Causality (Cleveland: Meridian Books, 1963), pp. 58–62; a discussion of this topic in the social sciences is in Sack (1973), op. cit., footnote 3.
  • 16 Mauss, op. cit., footnote 6, pp. 65–66.
  • 17 Mauss, op. cit., footnote 6, p. 67.
  • 18 M. Foucault, The Order of Things (New York: Vintage Books, 1970), p. 17.
  • 19 Foucault, op. cit., footnote 18, chapter 2.
  • 20 Foucault, op. cit., footnote 18, p. 18.
  • 21 Foucault, op. cit., footnote 18, p. 19.
  • 22 Foucault, op. cit., footnote 18, p. 19.
  • 23 Foucault, op. cit., footnote 18, p. 21.
  • 24 Foucault, op. cit., footnote 18, p. 25.
  • 25 Foucault, op. cit., footnote 18, p. 26.
  • 26 Foucault, op. cit., footnote 18, p. 26, quoting Paracelsus, Die 9 Bücher der Natura Rerum (Works, ed. Suhdorff, Vol. IX, p. 393).
  • 27 L. Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science (New York: Columbia University Press, 1923), Vol. 1, p. 304.
  • 28 Theophany in the history of Western attitudes toward nature is discussed in C. Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), pp. 209–12, 238–39, and 282.
  • 29 Glacken, op. cit., footnote 28, pp. 203–04. According to Glacken “God is revealed in the Scripture; His works are also visible in the world. The book of nature is contrasted with the Bible, the book of revelation, the former, however, [was thought by most as] being of a lower order than the latter because God is revealed in His word but only partly so in His works because he is a transcendent God.” To men like Sibiude, however, the book of nature was all-sufficient, composed of creatures in which “a creature is a letter written by the finger of God, and many creatures, like many letters, make up a book” (p. 239), and was superior to the Scriptures because “it cannot be falsified, destroyed, or misinterpreted; it will not induce heresy, and heretics cannot misunderstand it” (p. 239).
  • 30 “Attentive sense” is C. Webb's phrase; Glacken, op. cit., footnote 28, p. 239.
  • 31 Foucault, op. cit., footnote 18, pp. 32–33.
  • 32 The sources upon which Western magic drew are complex and often obscure; L. Thorndike, The Place of Magic in the Intellectual History of Europe (New York: AMS Press, Inc., 1967).
  • 33 Glacken, op. cit., footnote 28, pp. 112–13.
  • 34 C. McIntosch, The Astrologers and Their Creed (London: Hutchinson and Co., 1969), p. 119.
  • 35 M. Graubard, Astrology and Alchemy (New York: Philosophical Library, 1953), p. 253.
  • 36 Graubard, op. cit., footnote 35, pp. 252–53.
  • 37 F. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (New York: Vintage Books, 1969), p. 132, referring to Agrippa, De occulta philosophia.
  • 38 Thorndike, op. cit., footnote 27, Vol. 2, p. 105.
  • 39 K. Seligmann, The Mirror of Magic (New York: Pantheon Books, Inc., 1948), p. 382.
  • 40 Seligmann, op. cit., footnote 39, pp. 397–98. The body was divided into regions; McIntosch, op. cit., footnote 34, p. 57. Each region was assigned to one of the twelve zodiacal signs: the head to Aries, the face to Taurus, the shoulders and hands to Gemini, the breast to Cancer, the belly to Leo, the hips to Virgo, under the navel to Libra, the genitals to Scorpio, the loins to Sagittarius, the knees to Capricorn, the calves to Aquarius, and the feet to Pisces.
  • 41 A great deal of attention was given to the art of memory before the advent of large libraries, note cards, and xerox machines.
  • 42 Yates, op. cit., footnote 37, p. 266.
  • 43 M. Kline, Mathematics and the Physical World (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1959), p. 29. The Pythagoreans knew of five regular solids. They associated earth with the cube (for stability), water with the icosahedron, fire with the tetrahedron (simplest and lightest), air with the octohedron, and to the dodecahedron they assigned a mystery; H. Red-grove, Magic and Mysticism (New York: University Books, 1971), p. 18. The Pythagoreans also believed ten was ideal because it is the sum of one, two, three, four, and so they looked for ten heavenly bodies to reflect it. With one earth, the five planets, the sun, moon, and stars, they needed one more, which they found in an invisible “counter earth.”
  • 44 Seligmann, op. cit., footnote 39, p. 344.
  • 45 For instance, several passages in Genesis tell how Abraham, with the help of 318 slaves, rescued the captive Lot. Since the Lord was on Abraham's side, why were so many men needed?“To this Gematria answers that the sum of the name of Abraham's majordomus, Eliezer, … of Damascus is three hundred and eighteen and that Abraham [therefore] defeated the four kings … with the help of one man.” Seligmann, op. cit., footnote 39, p. 348.
  • 46 The origin of this early form of pharmacy has been traced to China; C. LaWall, Four Thousand Years of Pharmacy (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1927), p. 19.
  • 47 A. Wootton, Chronicles of Pharmacy (London: Macmillan, 1910), Vol. 1, p. 185.
  • 48 J. Mater, “The Curious Doctrine of Signatures,”Modern Pharmacy (1943), pp. 6–7.
  • 49 F. Yates, The Art of Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), p. 172.
  • 50 Yates, op. cit., footnote 49, p. 370.
  • 51 Yates, op. cit., footnote 49, chapter 6.
  • 52 Yates, op. cit., footnote 49, p. 144.
  • 53 Yates, op. cit., footnote 49, pp. 357–59.
  • 54 R. Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism (London: The Warburg Institute, 1949), p. 8.
  • 55 Wittkower, op. cit., footnote 54, p. 7.
  • 56 Wittkower, op. cit., footnote 54, p. 7.
  • 57 Wittkower, op. cit., footnote 54, p. 113.
  • 58 Such a view would be untenable without the sustaining belief that “the harmonic perfection of the geometrical scheme represents an absolute value, independent of our subjective and transitory perceptions.” Wittkower, op. cit., footnote 54, p. 7.
  • 59 R. Taylor, “Architecture and Magic: Consideration on the Idea of the Escorial,” in D. Fraser, H. Hibbard, and M. Lewine, eds., Essays in the History of Architecture Presented to Rudolf Wittkower (London: Phaidon Press, 1967), pp. 81–109.
  • 60 S. Moholy-Nagy, Matrix of Man (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1968), pp. 66–67. Outside of the West innumerable towns were planned for magical purposes.
  • 61 The following descriptions based on the translation of The City of the Sun found in H. Morley, Ideal Commonwealths (New York: Colonial Press, 1901), pp. 141–79.62 The City of the Sun as a memory device is discussed in Yates, op. cit., footnote 49, pp. 377–78. Yates also (p. 370) has the following comparison of the City of the Sun with the magical city of Adocentyn described in Picatrix (an occult text written in Arabic around the twelfth century). “In that magical city there was a castle with four gates, on which were images into which Hermes Trismegistus had introduced spirits. Compare this with the four gates and roads of the City of the Sun. On the summit of the castle was a lighthouse which flashed over the city the colours of the seven planets. Compare this with the seven planetary lamps always burning in the temple of the City of the Sun. Around the circumference of Adocentyn, Hermes had placed magic images, ‘ordered in such a manner that by their virtue the inhabitants were made virtuous and withdrawn from all wickedness and harm.’ Compare the celestial images in the City of the Sun which, we have suggested, had a similar function. In the midst of Adocentyn was a great tree which bore the fruit of all generation. Compare the control of generation in the City of the Sun. And, in the passage in Picatrix describing the City of Adocentyn, Hermes Trismegistus is also said to have built a temple to the Sun.”
  • 63 These matters are discussed in J. Michell, The View Over Atlantis (New York: Ballantine Books, Inc., 1969); and J. Michell, The City of Revelation (New York: Ballantine Books, 1972). Michell discusses the function of the original magical language.
  • 64 Geomancy in the Western literature seems never to have been discussed as an “earth science” as in China, but rather as a game of divination played with dots or pebbles. The “old straight tracks” are discussed in Michell (1969), op. cit., footnote 63.

Reprints and Corporate Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

To request a reprint or corporate permissions for this article, please click on the relevant link below:

Academic Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

Obtain permissions instantly via Rightslink by clicking on the button below:

If you are unable to obtain permissions via Rightslink, please complete and submit this Permissions form. For more information, please visit our Permissions help page.