Warts and All: Francis Bacon’s Account of a Cure by “Sympathetic Magic”

When Francis Bacon – a key figure of the Scientific Revolution in Britain – travelled France as an adolescent, he was puzzled by a number of strange experiences. As mentioned in my video on Bacon’s views on “natural magic”, one such experience involved his dream which seemed to predict the unexpected death of his father … Read more

Prize Draw: Win a Copy of Justinus Kerner’s Biography of Mesmer!

Thanks to the generosity of Dr. Clare Mingins, I’m pleased to offer not one but three (!) copies of a fascinating book as a prize for the latest draw, into which all current and new supporters on Patreon (at the “Galileo” level and above) will be entered. Franz Anton Mesmer, the Discoverer of Animal Magnetism … Read more

“Stigmata Science: Naturalizing Supernatural Wounds.” Guest Post by Kristof Smeyers

Kristof Smeyers is a historian of nineteenth- and twentieth-century religion and folklore, currently focusing on so-called supernatural phenomena within European Christianity. He is writing a PhD on stigmata in Britain and Ireland as member of the Religious Bodies research team at the University of Antwerp. He previously worked as a research assistant in the Archaeology of … Read more

“Paracelsus: An Alchemical Life”

The Swiss Renaissance physician and natural philosopher Theophrastus von Hohenheim (aka Paracelsus) has been praised as a ‘father’ of modern toxicology by some, and derided as a self-evident pseudoscientist and charlatan by others. Aspects of his supposed and actual ideas have been claimed by humanistic proponents of holistic medicine as well as by Nazism, and … Read more

Religion and the Marginalization of the ‘Empirical Occult’ in East Asia and the West: A Call for Cross-Cultural Collaborations

When the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine in London was still in existence, it was widely regarded the international flagship of medical history and attracted some of the brightest scholars and students from all around the world. One of the people I met there around a decade ago was Yu-chuan Wu from … Read more

Medical Astrology: How to Read Richard Napier’s Casebooks. By Joanne Edge

Dr. Joanne Edge specialises in late-medieval and early modern European social and cultural history, with an emphasis on medicine and the ‘occult’ sciences: divination, magic and astrology. She did her undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at the University of London, and held a four-year postdoctoral position as Assistant Editor on the Casebooks Project at the University … Read more

What is the Historical Study of Science and Magic Good for?

Christian Jarrett, an editor at Aeon magazine, approached me after reading my response to a Japanese newspaper query on ghost beliefs in the West last year to commission a short article on a similar topic. I was happy to comply, and my Aeon piece on the hidden history of hallucinations and visions went online in … Read more

An Occult Nobel Laureate: New Book on French Physiologist and Psychical Researcher Charles Richet

There’s certainly no shortage of books on the modern occult produced by academic historians, English literature scholars and other humanities researchers. However, it’s no secret that I feel that much of this literature is characterized by a sadly lax and superficial engagement with primary sources, and methodological aspects of empirical approaches to alleged parapsychological phenomena … Read more

Patreon Prize Draw: Win a Copy of Alison Winter’s Mesmerized. Powers of Mind in Victorian Britain

In keeping with mesmerism and hypnotism as the themes of the last prize (a copy of Adam Crabtree’s From Mesmer to Freud), I selected Alison Winter’s seminal study Mesmerized. Powers of Mind in Victorian Britain for the next draw. Published in 1998 by University of Chicago Press, Winter’s meticulously researched study continues to set the … Read more

A Categorical Mistake: ‘Science’, ‘Magic’ and ‘Religion’ in the Middle Ages. By Joanne Edge

Dr. Joanne Edge specialises in late-medieval and early modern European social and cultural history, with an emphasis on medicine and the ‘occult’ sciences: divination, magic and astrology. She did her undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at the University of London, and held a four-year postdoctoral position as Assistant Editor on the Casebooks Project at the University … Read more