Fictional Practice: Magic, Narration, and the Power of Imagination

Bernd-Christian Otto is Senior Research Fellow at the International Consortium for Research in the Humanities at the University of Erlangen-Nuremburg. His research focuses on the history of magic, where he combines different methodologies such as conceptual history, discourse analysis, social theory, and ritual studies. Dirk Johannsen is Professor of Cultural History at the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages (IKOS), University of Oslo. His research focuses on narrative cultures, literature and popular religion in the nineteenth century, cognitive approaches, and trolls. Contributors are Carole M. Cusack, Owen Davies, Ethan Doyle White, Claire Fanger, Kyle Fraser, Marco Frenschkowski, Christian Giudice, Aðalheiður Guðmundsdóttir, Dirk Johannsen, Ane Ohrvik, Bernd-Christian Otto, Hugh Urban, Justin Woodman, Kateryna Zorya.

List of Figures

Notes on Contributors



Introduction

  Bernd-Christian Otto and Dirk Johannsen



1 Magic as Pollution: Fictional Blasphemies and Ritual Realities in the Roman Period (1st cen. BCE–4th cen. C)

  Kyle Fraser



2 The Medieval Anti-Faust: Stories, Rituals, and Self-Representations in the Flowers of Heavenly Teaching

  Claire Fanger



3 Enchantment and Anger in Medieval Icelandic Literature and Later Folklore

  Aðalheiður Guðmundsdóttir



4 Narratives of the Witch, the Magician, and the Devil in Early Modern Grimoires

  Owen Davies



5 When Ritual Texts Become Legendary Practice and Fiction in Nordic Folklore

  Ane Ohrvik



6 Magic and Literary Imagination in H. P. Blavatsky’s Theosophy

  Marco Frenschkowski



7 The Emergence of Fictional Practice in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn: W.B. Yeats’ Talismanic Poetry

  Dirk Johannsen



8 “My Life in a Love Cult”: Tantra, Orientalism, and Sex Magic in Early Twentieth-Century Fiction

  Hugh B. Urban



9 Drawing Down the Moon: From Classical Greece to Modern Wicca?

  Ethan Doyle White



10 Drinking from Hecate’s Fountain: Kenneth Grant’s Typhonian Trilogies and the Fusion Between Literature and Practiced Magic

  Christian Giudice



11 If One Knows Where to Look, Fiction is Magic: Reading Fictional Texts as Manuals of Magic in Post-Soviet Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus

  Kateryna Zorya



12 “Cthulhu Gnosis” Monstrosity, Selfhood, and Secular Re-Enchantment in Lovecraftian Occultural Practice

  Justin Woodman



13 A Magickal School in the Twenty-First Century: The Grey School of Wizardry and Its Prehistory

  Carole M. Cusack



14 Fictional Practice from Antiquity to Today

  Bernd-Christian Otto



Index