In Magic in the Middle Ages Richard Kieckhefer breaks new ground by becoming the first author to discuss how magic was performed between the fall of the Roman Empire and about 1600. He uses mainly secondary sources, although for some areas of research there were so few that he “had to” use manuscripts. This seems a little backwards to me, but there we have it. He writes for an undergraduate audience, although he hopes that others can make use of his work as well. He states that magic is the intersection between science and religion, something he asserts, but does not argue.

There are two main forms of magic, natural magic and demonic magic. Largely, both were practiced by the same people, and in practice there may not have been as large a gap between them as practitioners argued. Indeed, later in the book he says that many people did not see a difference between them at all, and claimed that natural magic worked by way of demons, also.

He also argues that magic is an area where popular culture mingles with learned culture. The majority of magic practitioners were clerics (a problematic term, he argues, but then continues to use it). However, the majority of those executed for using magic were women, especially unmarried women, or healers.

The third crossroads he argues is that magic is a balancing point between reality and fiction. This point was hardest to prove, and he spends the better part of one chapter arguing about whether magic practitioners actually believed their magic was working, or whether they were conmen in it to prey on people’s fears and insecurities. I found this section weak, given that people were executed for magic. I don’t think people would have faked something that could get them killed. As evidence he uses a manuscript that has both magical incantations and obvious tricks such as tying a piece of hair to something to make it appear to move without being touched. It is, I admit, hard to explain this manuscript without believing that the author was a conman, but I think it could be argued that he was trying to hide his arcane knowledge in something innocent sounding in order to avoid prosecution. We know that such knowledge was often hidden in cookbooks, and manuals for healers.

Magical acts could do anything from sew discord between two friends to kill someone to make someone fall in love. It was often suspected when a man could not get an erection, or did not have sons. Other magical acts include becoming invisible, or becoming a cat.

Demonic magic was suspected because many pre-Christian cultures believed their gods could perform magical acts, and these gods were seen as demons. Any successes alleged in pre-Christian writings were seen as proof that demonic magic could work. Calling names of demons, which were often just names of previous gods, was the main trick of the demonic magician.

There was actually a lot of different types of magic, but the majority of them fit under the definition of divination. Trying to know the future or the past made many people a fortune. Trials were held because people divined the answer to who broke into their house, or stole their cow. Many things we think of today as magical were not considered as such by the people doing it. For example, collecting an herb exclusively with the left hand right after sundown was a common practice. The person doing this collecting would believe they were engaged in science, even though today we know that no practical difference exists between an herb plucked at sundown and one plucked at noon. A prayer for a toothache to end begins “Lady Moon” a clear harkening to pre-Christian religion, but most of the prayers were explicitly Christian.

Other things were attributed to magic that clearly are not, such as the function of a magnet, or the power of rhubarb to induce vomiting. The entire Hebrew language was often seen as magic in an overt act of antisemitism. It was generally believed that God taught this language to Adam and Eve, and the language God spoke must have magical powers. This could also mean that Jews who used the language in their services were enacting magical rites. Another anti-Semitic thing was calling witches’ rites shabbats and claiming they took place in a location known as a synagogue.

Although necromancers did use circles, there is little evidence that they viewed these circles as protective. There is evidence that lay persons believed the circles were protective, but this is not the way the necromancer viewed what they were doing.

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