Magic

A History: From Alchemy to Witchcraft, from the Ice Age to the Present

By: Chris Gosden

Narrated by: Clarke Peters

Over the last few centuries, magic has developed a bad reputation - thanks to the unsavory tactics of shady practitioners and to a successful propaganda campaign on the part of religion and science, which denigrated magic as backward, irrational, and "primitive". In Magic, however, the Oxford Professor of Archaeology Chris Gosden restores magic to its essential place in the history of the world - revealing it to be an enduring element of human behavior that plays an important role for individuals and cultures. From the curses and charms of ancient Greek, Roman, and Jewish magic, to the shamanistic traditions of Eurasia, indigenous America, and Africa; from the alchemy of the Renaissance to the condemnation of magic in the colonial period and the mysteries of modern quantum physics - Gosden's startling, fun, and colorful history supplies a missing chapter of the story of our civilization.

Drawing on decades of research around the world - touching on the first known horoscope, a statue ordered into exile, and the mystical power of tattoos - Gosden shows what magic can offer us today and how we might use it to rethink our relationship with the world. Magic is an original, singular, and sweeping work of scholarship, and its revelations will leave a spell on the listener.

©2020 Chris Gosden (P)2020 Tantor

Not what I was expecting..

This should really have a better title and description. I started this thinking I would learn about magic throughout history in a sense of the origins and practices of ancient to modern magic, but this is more of a historical description of ancient rituals, which they conceived as being magical. This book goes much farther into ancient practices and less into the magical aspects. It's a great book in terms of learning about ancient humans and their development of burial rituals and how they likely saw themselves as connected to the lands they lived in, but for a book with this title, I'd have expected a lot more about theoretical magic in those times and less about their society. When the book FINALLY gets to more modern magic, it still speaks more of science and its development. maybe it gets into more magic in the last couple chapters, I don't know, I couldn't finish it.

Helpful academic overview of magical history

The author is an academic and most of the book is really solid from the stand point of academic history and archaeology. When it comes to more modern magic though, it's clear that the author has no connection to magic or practicioners at all, but speaks from a place of authority to say what magic is and how it should be practiced, all from the viewpoint of Western academia. Do yourself a favor and skip the last few chapters, but most of the book is worth a listen.

not magic - more like superstition

Boring. Spent more time saying what he was going to say than actually saying it. I swear it seemed like 2 hours of introduction before any content at all. Then it seemed every single chapter repeated the pattern of more intro than content. By then I had little patience and couldn't make it through much more. I skipped around and bit and got so sick of the phrase "triple helix of science, religion, and magic." Barely any concrete examples used, just a lot of jargon filler. Not one thing mentioned would I call magic. Just astrology, superstition, and utter nonsense. May be of interest to cultural anthropologists, but definitely not intended for a popular audience.

Great content! Narration...not so much.

The content of this book was quite interesting. The narration was not easy for me to get through. It was halting, at times stumbling, and there were many, MANY mispronunciations of the terms I was familiar with (many others I was not familiar with, so I can't speak to those). I selected this version of the book mainly because I wanted to hear how worldwide terms were pronounced properly, but I do not have much confidence right now that what I heard is in fact accurate. Some of the Spanish, Hebrew, and Chinese words were off - a few of my other languages are not well enough developed to know for sure if they were accurate, but it did seem that a least a few of them were accented oddly.

Another minor point, no fault of the narrator's though - as a former audiobook technical editor myself, whomever did the tech editing for this book didn't adjust levels very well (if that was attempted). It was very obvious to me where different reading sessions were sized together, and while that typically doesn't bother me, each session seemed to feature different degrees of halting speech and/or levels of energy. To some degree, those can be adjusted during editing for a smoother and more pleasant listening experience. I'd highly recommend that be done if this book is re-recorded in the future. (And have the reader be more familiar with the text and pronunciations before recording as well!)

All in all, I learned a lot from this book, and found the tracing of magic through time and across cultures to be quite fascinating. As the author wisely noted, there is a lack of attention to southeast Asian practices here, but that was only because there was just too much material available to do it justice in an overview work like this. I hope another book which covers that region is written to round out this historical survey of magic.

Well done with the content! I do recommend this book if you're interested in such types of material.

Fascinating overview of international archeology

Wide-ranging overview of international archeology and the discoveries suggestive of magical rites through all of history. Author is an Oxford professor of archeology. Discussion is detailed and fact-based but without being stuffy. Also decent sketch of recent magical societies and trends. Performance was oddly paced, as if the reader was reading the text for the first time and had a hard time finding the start of each next line, but it didn’t detract much from my enjoyment of the book - voice is engaging.

very little detail about Magic practice, mindset, or impact

Performance:
I enjoyed the readers presentatand cadence.

story:

Cons:
The book is more of a collection of facts around magic and not really about magic. It feels more like a collections of brief YouTube videos in book form.

Pros:
Even though they don't contribute to an understanding of magical development there are a lot of interesting facts in the book.
the last 2 hours of the book also contains interesting opinions on magic and its impact. I wish the whole book was more like that.

Outstanding Readable Survey of Recent Scholarship

Great survey of recent archaeology and interpretations. Major focus on archaeology of Asia Minor and the Asian Steppes and how it pertains to all of Eurasia. Not likely to to be the final word, but a good overview of where we're at in 2020.

Magic/Religion/Science - Gosden sees them as a perpetual triad, not a linear sequence. Science is found in prehistoric times - and magic in modern.

This book lends itself to "dropping in" - each section can stand on its own as well as part of a larger flow.