The allure of knowledge

TO SEND REVIEW COPIES, CONTACT THE BOOK REVIEWS EDITOR AT DVBARRETT@FORTEANTIMES.COM

Magic, Science and Religion in Early Modern Europe

Mark A Waddell

Cambridge University Press 2021

Pb, 232pp, £19.99, ISBN 9781108441650

Reading Mark Waddell’s excellent book brought back to mind the time I gave a tour of my workplace for some self-declared members of the “skeptical” community.

“Well, I just don’t understand,” pronounced the most vocal member of the group, “why you have anything on alchemy in a history of science library.”

That gentleman would really hate this book; those with a more open mind will be enthralled by it.

Although written to be a student coursebook, this is no dry chronology of the period 1400 to 1750. Instead, Waddell sets out to show how magic, religion and natural philosophy (to give the more period-specific term than science) were concepts that overlapped and intermingled with each other, regardless of more recent “never-the-twain-shall-meet” categorisation of knowledge modern “skeptics” prefer.

Such interconnectedness is to Waddell one of the four major strands that underpin the early modern European mind he sets out to explore: the others being the allure of knowledge from classical antiquity, the changing nature of the relationship between God and nature, and the puzzle of the hidden workings of the Universe.

All of these strands come into focus from the outset. In his first chapter, Waddell illustrates how the drive to rediscover lost knowledge was predicated on the desire to bring truth seekers as close as possible to God.

Such an ambition underpinned the translation of the supposed ancient Egyptian knowledge of Hermes Trismegistus, the ancient Jewish lore of the Kabbalah and even John Dee’s conversations with angels. In Waddell’s words such a search promised “both the wisdom of antiquity and the promise of new innovations to come”.

Such a search could angels. Could the less educated be more easily fooled by darker forces? Perhaps, but even here, Waddell argues that the darker side of magic was used to support the search for God; if witches were proved to be entering into pacts with the Devil – especially during a time when God’s authority and even existence was starting to be questioned – then existence of the Devil therefore made it easier to prove God’s authority, and if need be, existence too.