By Emma Poynter.
Western culture is entrenched in a history of magical tradition. We are all at least vaguely familiar with ideas of magic from the past – images of witches, potions, fortune-tellers, and astrologers come to mind. What links these forms of magical practice is an attempt to explain what is happening around us; a peasant boy falling ill and dying with seemingly no explanation naturally must have been the wicked will of the old woman who lives on the outskirts of the village, rather than our retrospective ideas that the cause of his death may have been to do with the water from which he was drinking, as it was shared with excrement and dead sheep. Historian Keith Thomas calls magic a ‘primitive belief’, and justifiably too – magic has traditionally been a crude attempt to explain what is happening around us.
However, this theory does not quite add up. There is an undeniable fascination with magic and supernatural experience within 21st century culture. We are able to accept magic within fictitious enclosure. Take the enormously popular ‘Buzzfeed: Unsolved Supernatural’ and Weeping Angels from Dr Who, for example. Whilst we accept that these are largely works of fiction, ties with legend make them feasible to the modern eye. The lines between reality and illusion continue to blur with phenomena such as Derren Brown and psychedelic drug use; these engage with a sense of otherworldly happenings. Whilst escapism is now the primary use of magic in modern times, rather than an attempt to explain what is happening in the world around us, it is clear that a sense of magical tradition has transformed from 15th century demonic possession into something that is intrinsic to modern culture. 11-year olds still look out for their Hogwarts letter, despite convincing themselves it is fiction, after all.
Enter Max Weber, a German sociologist. In a lecture he gave in 1918, he claimed that the world had become ‘disenchanted’ through the process of modernity. Weber studied many topics over the course of his academic career, having been raised in a studious family. It was his opinion that, all things considered, magic had been lost through the process of modernity, and thus provided a distinguishing factor for when the ‘modern’ age began. Weber was right in a lot of ways. Potions taken in secret were no longer a necessary measure to take when tried and tested medicine existed,for example. However, Weber failed to sense that magic was a force that was able to change with modernity, perhaps because modern experience is so different from the solemnity used in the past. It became changed through the 19th century into something that we recognise today.
The 19th century famously saw the advent of modernity. Progress had been exceedingly slow up until this point, and suddenly each decade was almost unrecognisable from its predecessor. The world shifted to a strictly codified one where wealth and poverty both seemed to play out in their extremes. There was a large boom of scientific discovery, from Darwinism to Germ Theory. There was a sudden increase in rights, with factory, education, and emancipation acts coming into force and threatening the homogeny of the traditionally wealthy. Moreover, the lower class slowly decelerated their churchgoing, humble lives, instead choosing to participate in newly accessible leisure activities, like taking trips to the seaside on the train.
Magic managed to survive in this rapidly changing world. A new emphasis on leisure, for instance, facilitated the creation of clubs to practice such activities as hypnosis and séance. An increasingly literate and educated population would travel to listen to lectures on mesmerism, a trance-like force first demonstrated by Franz Mesmer. Magical practice in Victorian Britain also at times seemed a characteristic of the modern epoch itself: servant girls were amongst the vulnerable and were able to appear to channel the spirit of dead kings, suggesting that the boundaries of social hierarchy could be tested by supernatural goings on. Furthermore, authors capitalised off of magical phenomena, with ghost stories becoming increasingly popular. Attempts to domesticate magic within fiction therefore only sensationalised it, making it a popular and accessible form of entertainment for upper classes, and for those who were joining the ranks of the middle class in increasing volumes.
In conclusion, magic has undergone an enormous transformation from how it existed in medieval times and before, to us now in the 21st century. It has become something that is not used for explanation in real terms (although I will be the first to admit my fear of ghosts that occupy the Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park) but rather something that is used for recreation. Fear and thrill bridge the unexplained, even if in rationalised circumstances. Weber therefore made an error in his theory: the modern world is still enchanted, even if the parameters in which we accept magic has vastly changed since long-ago centuries.
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