Two Types of Magic in One Tradition? A Cognitive-Historiographical Case Study on the Interplay of Narratives and Rituals

Abstract

Magic has a long tradition as a literary topos in the European history of religion. From antiquity onward, scholarly theories and poetic descriptions have suggested magic as a transhistorical and substantive phenomenon, while its alleged historical performances mostly turn out as attributions meant to marginalize or exclude rival parties. Until the modern institutionalization in occult orders, the self-declared magician had, with few exceptions, remained a fictional character, portrayed in varied ways depending on literary or scholarly genre (see Daxelmüller and Otto). In modern day literature, two contradictory types seem to stick out in particular. On the one hand, there is the classical "Faust-type" of character: people skilled in occult knowledge and with high ambitions, learned in the dark arts of performing rituals to evoke demons or craft instruments. The source of their power is a coalition with demonic, non-human entities or, as a heritage of modern occultism, the use of "cosmic" or "spiritual" energies that are channelled by the trained magician-like in Harry Potter's wand-based magic. On the other hand, there are the archetypal "Merlin-type" characters in present-day fantasy literature, who are magical beings themselves. Their

The Prophet and the Sorcerer: Becoming a Cunning-Man in Nineteenth-Century Norway

“…Møller 1980;Amundsen 1995;Holck 1996), while Eilev Olsen was referred to as a prototypical practitioner of popular magic (e.g. Hodne 2008;Johannsen 2013). Still, their actual practices were strikingly similar.…”