Bücher der Reihe Magic in History

An English translation, with accompanying introduction, commentary, and notes, of the medieval treatise on astrological magic known as Picatrix, a guide for constructing magical talismans, mixing magical compounds, summoning planetary spirits, and determining astrological conditions.

Sorcery or Science? examines how two Sufi Muslim theologians who rose to prominence in the western Sahara Desert in the late eighteenth century, S¿di al-Mukht¿r al-Kunt¿ (d. 1811) and his son and successor, S¿di Müammad al-Kunt¿ (d. 1826), decisively influenced the development of Sufi Muslim thought in West Africa.Known as the Kunta scholars, Mukht¿r al-Kunt¿ and Müammad al-Kunt¿ were influential teachers who developed a pedagogical network of students across the Sahara. In exploring their understanding of "the realm of the unseen"-a vast, invisible world that is both surrounded and interpenetrated by the visible world-Ariela Marcus-Sells reveals how these theologians developed a set of practices that depended on knowledge of this unseen world and that allowed practitioners to manipulate the visible and invisible realms. They called these practices "the sciences of the unseen." While they acknowledged that some Muslims-particularly self-identified "white" Muslim elites-might consider these practices to be "sorcery," the Kunta scholars argued that these were legitimate Islamic practices. Marcus-Sells situates their ideas and beliefs within the historical and cultural context of the Sahara Desert, surveying the cosmology and metaphysics of the realm of the unseen and the history of magical discourses within the Hellenistic and Arabo-Islamic worlds. Erudite and innovative, this volume connects the Islamic sciences of the unseen with the reception of Hellenistic discourses of magic and proposes a new methodology for reading written devotional aids in historical context. It will be welcomed by scholars of magic and specialists in Africana religious studies, Islamic occultism, and Islamic manuscript culture.

Examines a series of powerful artifacts traditionally associated with King Solomon, largely via extra-canonical textual sources--Solomon's ring, bottles to contain evil forces, the so-called Solomon's knot, a shamir, and a flying carpet--and traces their varying cultural resonances.

This volume aims to sift through the polemics to make sense of religious belief and practice in late antiquity. It aims to describe the mechanisms of ritual with semiotic terms, so that we can better see how they worked and how they affected the social identities of their followers.