History of magic
The history of magic chronicles the emergence and persistence of ritual practices across human societies aimed at coercing or appeasing supernatural agencies to achieve practical ends, such as protection, healing, or divination, through means like spells, amulets, and invocations that lack empirical validation but reflect deep-seated causal intuitions about hidden forces.[1] These traditions originated in prehistoric and ancient contexts, with extensive documentation from Mesopotamia featuring incantation texts and demon-averting bowls designed to bind malevolent spirits, alongside Egyptian apotropaic artifacts like the Eye of Horus employed to safeguard against evil.[2][3] In the classical Mediterranean world, magic syncretized diverse influences, as evidenced by Greco-Egyptian papyri compiling spells for love, harm, and theophany that drew from Hellenistic, Jewish, and indigenous sources, often operating in tension with philosophical critiques from figures like Plato.[4] Medieval Europe inherited and adapted these via Arabic translations and Christian grimoires, viewing magic as operable through angelic or demonic intermediaries, though ecclesiastical authorities frequently condemned it as illicit.[5] The Renaissance witnessed a intellectual resurgence, propelled by the 1463 translation of the Corpus Hermeticum—later recognized as a second-century CE fabrication rather than primordial Egyptian lore—which inspired natural magicians like Marsilio Ficino and Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa to posit a prisca theologia uniting occult virtues of the cosmos with human agency via talismans and sympathies.[6][7] This era's occult philosophy blurred boundaries with proto-science, yet fragmented amid confessional strife and rising skepticism.[8] Subsequent decline accelerated during the Enlightenment, as mechanistic philosophies and experimental rigor—exemplified by the Royal Society's empirical turn—eroded credence in invisible influences, reclassifying magical claims as superstition or fraud, though residual folk practices endured into the industrial age.[9][10]