Behind the Crystal Ball:: Magic, Science and the Occult from Antiquity Through the New Age - Hardcover

Aveni, Anthony

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0812924150 ISBN 13: 9780812924152

Publisher: Crown, 1996

Synopsis

From ancient times to the present, magic and science have always been intertwined. In this fascinating book, astronomer/anthropologist Anthony Aveni conducts a whirlwind tour of occult practices--from astrology, alchemy, and phrenology to psychokinesis, crystals, and channeling--and finds that many of magic's ancient rites have been revived and reexamined in the New Age.

About this title

About the Author

Anthony Aveni, Ph.D., is the Russell B. Colgate Professor of Astronomy and Anthropology at Colgate University.

From the Inside Flap

times to the present, magic and science have always been intertwined. In this fascinating book, astronomer/anthropologist Anthony Aveni conducts a whirlwind tour of occult practices--from astrology, alchemy, and phrenology to psychokinesis, crystals, and channeling--and finds that many of magic's ancient rites have been revived and reexamined in the New Age.

Reviews

Titles on science and spirituality are usually targeted at readers interested in new scientific paradigms. This informative but stacked-deck history of science and magic (the latter a discipline that Aveni defines broadly enough to include kundalini yoga), however, presupposes a readership that embraces a scientific-materialistic worldview that sees little or no sense in the pursuit of so-called magical practices. Aveni, who teaches astronomy and anthropology at Colgate, seems eager to understand the motives of the magically inclined, but his tone can be condescending or flippant ("the seeming mumbo-jumbo magic of Kabbalism"). He offers a whirlwind tour that covers, among other matters, the complicated cures of the ancients, the rise of alchemy in medieval times, 19th-century occultism and New Age phenomena from channeling to UFO abductions to near-death experiences. His reach is so broad that he fails to cover any one subject in significant depth, meanwhile exhibiting a lack of scale and discrimination?for instance, by following up a mention of a modern-day innovation like magnet-therapy with a discussion of the venerable practice of tai chi. Aveni does a solid job of explaining the basic principles of magic (e.g., that like cures like), and he ultimately concludes that, to its practitioners, magic is an expression of deeply held religious beliefs. In his wonderful book Conversing with the Planets, Aveni sensitively explored astronomy's roots in astrology; that sensitivity is sorely lacking here.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

For an anthropologist and astronomer, Aveni (Conversing with the Planets, 1992, etc.) displays an encouraging though sometimes excessive openness of mind about things magical in this dash through the history of Western mysticism and hokum, from the Gnostics to the alchemists to the New Age. While he recognizes the many benign uses of magic--as religion, as ritual, as epistemology--Aveni is also far too accepting of the innumerable abuses. Pulling the usual flea-bitten rhetorical rabbits out of his hat (science is limited, magic is nonempirical, etc.), he clumsily seeks to excuse all manner of mountebanks and charlatans: ``When we compare magic's by-laws to those of science, it becomes very clear why the two constitute ways of knowing that are totally at odds with one another concerning both what knowledge is valid and how that knowledge gets passed on.'' Yet as Aveni acknowledges, the two have sometimes become entwined. Further, he believes that as science supposedly becomes less rational (cf. quantum mechanics), it will once again meld with magic. Interestingly, while science changes constantly, magic has altered very little over the centuries, with old beliefs constantly ``being rediscovered and dressed up in brand-new clothing.'' Though Aveni's erudition is impressively vast, he doesn't know when to rein it in, as he hies off after even the most obscure flummeries. Yet he manages to slight both non-Western magic and the history of science. In short, this is one of those works that seem both too long and too incomplete. Certainly, it is far removed from the benchmark history of mysticism, Charles Mackay's entertaining 19th- century classic, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Still, saw this book in half, suspend some of Aveni's credulity, and presto chango, you just might conjure up a highly readable book. (illustrations, not seen) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Aveni visits subjects, such as numerology and astrology, that science has dispelled rationally if not socially. For readers intrigued by the social contexts of such obscure quackery as hapatoscopy (divination of portents found in livers), he crafts an engaging set of stories. Loosely arranged chronologically, with side trips into the use of magic and miracles in Christian theology, the trail begins with Greco-Roman beliefs. After discussing Pliny's writings, Aveni describes the heyday of the occult during the Dark Ages, with its tarot cards and alchemists transmuting lead into gold. The Age of Enlightenment may have diminished, but never entirely displaced, vogues for the supernatural, which, as with enthusiasms for mesmerism and spiritual mediums, lends Victorian society a number of strange stories. With the persistence in our era of belief in paranormal phenomena and its techno-variant, UFOs, Aveni ends a presentation that definitely fills a need for libraries needing a general (and skeptical) overview of the occult. Gilbert Taylor

If you enjoyed Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces (Princeton Univ., 1989), you'll probably like Aveni's new work. Aveni (astronomy and anthropology, Colgate Univ.), who has appeared in episodes of Unsolved Mysteries and A & E's Ancient Mysteries and has been listed as one of the country's ten best university professors by Rolling Stone magazine, offers a whirlwind survey of occult practices from ancient Mesopotamia to the present. He explores the changing relationship throughout history among mysticism, magic, religion, and their offshoots, touching on such subjects as science, astrology, alchemy, phrenology, psychokinesis, crystals, and channeling along the way. Aveni argues that to dismiss magic as poppycock is to dismiss a large part of our past and something that satisfies a basic need of our psyche. To do so is to believe falsely that we can forget the past and live only in the present. Well written with extensive notes; recommended for public and academic libraries.?James Olson, Northeastern Illinois Univ. Lib., Chicago
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Crown
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0812924150
• ISBN 13: 9780812924152
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 406