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Odor and Power in the Americas: Olfactory Consciousness from Columbus to Emancipation

Introduction: hic sunt dracones 1. The history of truth: recovering ancient wisdom 2. The history of error: exorcizing Paganism 3. The error of history: imagining the Occult 4. The truth of history: entering the Academy Conclusions: restoring memory.

Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture

This paper examines patterns in the placement of apotropaic objects and materials in high- to late-medieval burials in Britain (11th to 15th centuries). It develops an interdisciplinary classification to identify: (1) healing charms and protective amulets; (2) objects perceived to have occult natural power; (3) 'antique' items that were treated as possessing occult power; and (4) rare practices that may have been associated with the demonic magic of divination or sorcery. Making comparisons with amulets deposited in conversion-period graves of the 7th to 9th centuries it is argued that the placement of amulets with the dead was strategic to Christian belief, intended to transform or protect the corpse. The conclusion is that material traces of magic in later medieval graves have a connection to folk magic, performed by women in the care of their families, and drawing on knowledge of earlier traditions. This popular magic was integrated with Christian concerns and tolerated by local clergy, and was...

/pdf/magic-for-the-dead-the-archaeology-of-magic-in-later-57l1xhskil.pdf

Magic for the Dead? The Archaeology of Magic in Later Medieval Burials

1. The historiography of Mesopotamian science 2. Celestial divination in context 3. Mesopotamian genethlialogy: the Babylonian horoscopes 4. Sources for horoscopes in Babylonian astronomical texts 5. Sources for horoscopes in the early astrological tradition 6. The scribes and scholars of Mesopotamian celestial science 7. The classification of Mesopotamian celestial inquiry as science.

https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/aestimatio/article/download/25728/18874

The Heavenly Writing: Divination, Horoscopy, and Astronomy in Mesopotamian Culture

Preface Prologue. The Darwinian legacy 1. The neo-Darwinian paradigm 2. Natural selection and evoked behaviour 3. Cultural selection and acquired behaviour 4. Social selection and imposed behaviour 5. Selectionist theory as narrative history Epilogue. Sociology in a post-Darwinian world.

The Theory of Cultural and Social Selection

PART I. INTRODUCTION: THE SCOPE OF THE STUDY PART II. THE MAGIC OF THE HEAVENS PART III. THE MAGIC OF THE EARTH PART IV. THE MAGUS

The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe

Rather than focusing on the well-rehearsed facts of Columbus' achievements in the New World, Valerie Flint looks instead at his imaginative mental images, the powerful "fantasies" that gave energy to his endeavours in the Renaissance. With him on his voyages into the unknown, he carried medieval notions gleaned from a Mediterranean tradition of tall tales about the sea, from books he had read, and from the "mappae mundi", splendid schematic maps with fantastic inhabitants. After investigating these sources of Columbus' views, Flint explains how the content of his thinking influenced his reports on his discoveries. Finally, she argues that problems besetting his relationship with the confessional teaching of the late medieval church provided the crucial impelling force behind his entire enterprise. As Flint follows Columbus to the New World and back, she constantly relates his reports both to modern reconstructions of what he really saw and to the visual and literary sources he knew. She argues that he declined passively to accept authoritative pronouncements, but took an active part in debate, seeking to prove and disprove theses that he knew to be controversial among his contemporaries.

Valerie Irene Jane Flint

Papers

The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe

The imaginative landscape of Christopher Columbus

Fragmens du Dernier Voyage de la Pérouse ed. and tr. by J. Dunmore (review)