Books Worth Your Time, Vol. 2

Medieval magic, eternal returns, and the old gods of Britain

We tend to divide intellectual activity into two categories: the stuff the makes sense, and everything else. We give that second category many different names: woo, flim-flam, pseudoscience, etc. And most of us would place magic firmly in the flim-flam category. Anthony Grafton’s Magus shows that this was not always the case. At various points in history, the learned magus was a staple in royal courts. These magi practiced anything from astrology to proto-robotics.