Magic in the Modern World

Contents

Introduction, Edward Bever and Randall Styers

Magic and the Making of Modernity

Chapter 1, “Bad Habits, or, How Superstition Disappeared in the Modern World,” Randall Styers

Chapter 2, “Descartes’ Dreams, the Neuropsychology of Disbelief, and the Making of the Modern Self,” Edward Bever

Chapter 3, “Why Magic Cannot Be Falsified by Experiments,” Benedek Láng

Chapter 4, “Witches as Liars: Witchcraft and Civilization in the Early American Republic,” Adam Jortner

Magic in Modernity

Chapter 5, “Loagaeth, q consibra a caosg: The Contested Arena of Modern Enochian Angel Magic,” Egil Asprem

Chapter 6, “Babalon Launching: Jack Parsons, Rocketry, and the ‘Method of Science,’” Erik Davis

Chapter 7, “Manning the High Seat: Seidr as Self-Making in Contemporary NorseNeopaganisms,” Megan Goodwin

Chapter 8, “Reviving Dead Names: Strategies of Legitimization in the Necronomicon of Simon and the Dark Aesthetic,” Dan Harms

Selected Bibliography

Notes

List of Contributors

Index

“Perhaps the main value of this collection is not so much in each individual contribution, but in adding a great deal of scholarly weight to the voices increasingly challenging the 'disenchantment' theory of the history of magic, and establishing contemporary magical practices as subjects worthy of scholarly study.”

—John Rimmer, Magonia Review of Books