“Magic in Theoretical Practice”

Christopher I. Lehrich is an American historian of religions. In 2003, he published a monograph on Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim (see Chapter 8); a book with the title The Occult Mind: Magic in Theory and Practice followed in 2007. In The Occult Mind he not only discusses the work of some selected early modern “magicians” (i.e., theoreticians of “magic”), but also some of the main interpretations of their work and interpretations of “magic” in general. Lehrich advocates the interdisciplinary study of (early modern) “magic” and engages wide-ranging (cross-cultural but also theoretical) comparisons. His theoretical agenda is mainly inspired by structuralism (Lévi-Strauss) and post-structuralism (Derrida). In his contribution to the present volume, Lehrich acknowledges the persistent need to define “magic” (which “is not ‘out there’ to find”) and he provides his own definition, the form of which is inspired by Geertz's famous definition of “religion”. Lehrich defends “magic” as a“generalizable” (but not as a universal) category. He also argues for its distinctiveness from both science (including the humanities) and religion and stands up for the value of comparison both for ethnographic and historical work (against suspicions of ethnocentrism and a naïve focus on emic terminology). Lehrich considers the denial of the category “an ethical problem” and points to the problems of implicitly believing that “our” discourses are fundamentally different from those of the people whom we study.