Journal Focuses on Western Learned Magic as an Entangled Tradition

The latest issue of the journal Entangled Religions focuses on the topic ‘Western Learned Magic as an Entangled Tradition’.

The magazine’s introduction states:

‘The articles assembled in this special issue of Entangled Religion represent the analytical fruits of a workshop on ‘Western learned magic as an entangled tradition’ that was held at the Center for Religious Studies (CERES) at the University of Bochum on September 14–15, 2019. The aim of the workshop was to explore the textual-ritual tradition of Western learned magic from an interdisciplinary, longue-durée and cross-cultural perspective. The study of Western learned magic has hitherto been scattered across many different fields of research—such as Egyptology, Classical Studies, Medieval Studies, Arabic, Jewish and Byzantine Studies, Early Modern History and the Study of Western and Contemporary Esotericism—, and the workshop therefore brought together eight acclaimed scholars who have worked on relevant source material from Antiquity to the twenty-first century. All participating scholars were asked to interpret and compare their sources from a bird’s eye perspective that takes in the entire history of Western learned magic and with a particular focus on ritual dynamics. The goal was to highlight cross-cultural and inter-religious routes of transmission as well as the ‘entangled rituals’ that tend to manifest in scripts of Western learned magic as a consequence of their manifold transmission routes and influences (see Otto 2016, 201–2). The same research foci guided the composition and reviewing process of the articles assembled in this special issue.’

Read on!

https://er.ceres.rub.de/index.php/ER/article/view/10457/9977.

Frater Lux Ad Mundi

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