The history of magic. From pagan shamanism and medieval alchemy to modern witchcraft. Gosden K.

Humanity from time immemorial has practiced magic for a wide variety of purposes - to protect itself from numerous threats of the cruel primitive world, to honor the memory of the ancestors, to get a good harvest or to cope with pain and fear. Magic permeated all the spheres of the life of ancient people, but gradually, with the development of religion, and later - science, began to get out of everyday life and acquired a bad reputation. In his book, Oxford professor of archeology Chris Gosden returns magic her important place in world history. On numerous archaeological sources and ancient texts, he shows that magic, unlike religion and science, formed a person’s special relationship with the outside world, and therefore magical practices - fortune -telling, superstitions, love spells and much more - even today are present in our life.

from the curses and charms of ancient Greek and Roman magic to the shamanistic traditions of the indigenous peoples of America, Africa and Eurasia; From the alchemy of the Renaissance to the riddles of modern quantum physics - an amazing, exciting and colorful “history of magic” complements the missing head of the history of our civilization and shows why magic is needed today.