“Magic” is notoriously difficult for scholars to define. There isn’t really any objective definition of it, because “magic” means different things to different people, and different cultures will interpret different things as “magic.” Scholars’ definitions of magic therefore tend to be context-dependent. What distinguishes “magic” from religion and from science? It overlaps with both categories, especially in the Middle Ages, when the lines between religion, magic, and science were very thin. Sometimes “magic” is defined by what its supernatural source allegedly is, sometimes it is defined by what the practitioner intends to do with it, sometimes by the methods that are used, sometimes by degrees of all three. One of the typical qualities of “magic” is that it’s stigmatized, if not straight-up otherized. The word “magic” itself originally referred to the Magi, Zoroastrian priests (as in the ones that went to visit Baby Jesus), and it had a sinister connotation in Greek. Magic is what those weird people over there do. So, Radcliffe Edmonds defines “magic” as “non-normative” ritual behavior — basically, magic is whatever a given culture thinks is too weird to be religion or science.
Magic isn’t religion or science, it’s a secret third thing. It’s whatever practices, superstitions, and beliefs don’t fit neatly into either category.
The medieval conception of magic was actually pretty rigid. In Magic in the Middle Ages, Richard Kieckhefer writes:
Broadly speaking, intellectuals in medieval Europe recognized two forms of magic: natural and demonic. Natural magic was not distinct from science, but rather a branch of science. It was the science that dealt with ‘occult virtues’ (or hidden powers) within nature. Demonic magic was not distinct from religion, but rather a perversion of religion. It was religion that turned people away from God and towards demons for their help in human affairs. —Richard Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages.
Put another way by Benedek Láng in Unlocked Books:
Medieval commentators understood magic in one of two ways. The first magic as another, socially disapproved form of religion. If the approach was condemnatory, magic was seen as a perversion of religion, one that also operated with ritual tools, but one that, instead of abiding by the true aims of religion, tended to turn to demonic forces. The second tradition associated magical practice with science, and often presented it as an alternative, or mistaken (even bastard) science, emphasizing — in contrast to demonic intervention — the occult powers, natural forces, universal sympathies, and secret correspondences that it utilizes. —Benedek Láng, Unlocked Books: Manuscripts of Learned Magic in the Medieval Libraries of Central Europe.
So, there’s your answer!
Demonic magic is fairly self-explanatory; it involved calling upon the power of demons in order to accomplish specific tasks. “Natural magic” sought to classify plants, stones, planets, animal parts, times of day, and other natural things according to a complex system of “correspondences,” so that each set of things would line up to produce or support a particular magical effect. For example, a love spell would need to be performed under the influence of Venus and on a Friday in order to work. “Natural magic” frequently overlapped with early herbal medicine; the medicinal effects of the chemicals in the plants were interpreted as being magical. According to Kieckhefer, natural magic was ironically more empirical that the “scientific” literature of its day, because it emphasized an experimental approach, whereas the scientific literature of the day instead pointed to ancient authorities like Aristotle or Galen, whose theories were incorrect.
Theological authorities rejected the dichotomy between demonic and natural magic, because they insisted that all magic necessarily came from demons, no matter how innocent the practitioner was:
At the time, those who engaged in ceremonial magic would have been aware of two considerable problems with its public reputation. One was that in practice it overlapped with witchcraft as some of its texts contained rites designed to gain power over others and to injure or kill them. […] The other and larger problem was that mainstream Christian theology completely rejected the distinction between witchcraft and ceremonial magic, holding that all magical operations were effected (or apparently effected) by demons, and magicians therefore entered into a pact with those whether they realized it or not. —Ronald Hutton, The Witch: A History of Fear from Ancient Times to the Present.
In this instance, the definition of magic is dependent entirely on where the magician’s supernatural power comes from, as opposed to the magician’s intentions or methods. No matter how pure the magician may be, all magic is automatically demonic by default, because if it were not demonic, it would be orthodox.
A specific example that could shed some light on medieval ideas of magic is the Ars Notoria, one of the oldest in the “Solomonic” series of grimoires (magic books). Unlike later grimoires, the Ars Notoria doesn’t involve demons at all. It consists mainly of prayers, designed to impart an entire university education’s worth of knowledge directly into the practitioner’s mind, almost like the spiritual equivalent of downloading a skill into one’s brain in The Matrix. The prayers are contained within beautiful diagrams called notae, which are intended to be objects of contemplation, acting like a lightning rod that would draw the divine powers into the magician’s mind, so that the magician will magically receive knowledge of the liberal arts (rhetoric, grammar, arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy, etc.) and be able to retain it forever. In a time when books were prohibitively expensive, university education was available only to a privileged few, and developing expertise in any subject took decades, that was a tempting offer. The Ars Notoria was very popular in the Middle Ages.
A page from the earliest known version of the Ars Notoria, from the thirteenth century. Photo by me.
The only role that spirits play in this text is as intermediaries who descend from God to impart the requested knowledge to the practitioner. The practitioner recites the secret names of angels who are associated with the specific disciplines that the practitioner wants to learn, and recites the prayers, which ask God to send the angels to impart the knowledge. Justin Sledge, the host of the ESOTERICA channel on YouTube, describes it as “rigorously, even athletically Christian, specifically Catholic in nature. The fasts are Lenten in quality, the prayer cycle mirrors the prayer hours, the orations and prayers could just be lifted right out of the text and wouldn’t appear magical in the least.” The only apparently “magical” features of the text are the mysterious angelic names and the striking, cryptic diagrams; the rest is standard Catholic liturgy with the innocent aim of acquiring wisdom and virtue (instead of forcing people to fall in love, or getting rich, or selfish stuff like that).
And yet, despite the Notoria’s distinctly Christian character, it was still condemned by clerical authorities. Láng writes,
Official Christianity saw the magical reinterpretation of its own prayers as an intolerable abuse, refused to accept the notory art as a holy procedure, and found its aims—intellectual and mental perfection—dangerously ambitious. Nonetheless, its condemnations rarely turned into actual prosecutions […], a fact that explains how a number of high-quality manuscripts survived. —Benedek Láng, Unlocked Books: Manuscripts of Learned Magic in the Medieval Libraries of Central Europe.
Use of the Notoria is not in and of itself worthy of persecution, but it is not officially sanctioned Catholic liturgy either, no matter how much it may look and sound like Catholic liturgy in isolation. So, what makes it magic? Part of it is the weird diagrams, and part of it is the equally-weird secret names of angels (both of which are very old magical techniques, the history of which stretches all the way back to Antiquity). But another big part of it is agency on the part of the practitioner: If one has the power to compel God Himself to do what one wants, then one is working magic, regardless of what the ritual itself consists of. The Notoria therefore seemed to some medieval commentators, including Thomas Aquinas, as something of a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It appears innocuous, but it is not.
I personally like this definition of magic as being based on agency. Magic gives the practitioner direct control over supernatural forces, which they can manipulate according to their own will, rather than passively praying to supernatural beings who may or may not deign to follow through (which is what characterizes normative religion). There’s some flaws in this definition, but it’s a good benchmark, especially because it helps explain why magic is considered threatening by those in power.
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