This collection of six essays by four leading scholars arose out of a project funded by the Australian Research Council (2012–2016). It examines the much understudied topic of the role that images and iconography play in the understanding of ancient magical papyri, with particular – but not exclusive – reference to Coptic texts. Within this limited purview, it nonetheless broaches an entirely new, burgeoning field of study.

Following a brief introduction, Johnston's ‘“Magical Images:” an Esoteric Aesthetics of Engagement’ proposes that ‘interpretations of magical papyri had privileged the study of the written texts rather than undertaking sustained analysis of the abundant iconography’ (p. 2). He engages readers in a wide-ranging discursive dialogue on ‘Esoteric Aesthetics’ and its relationship to understanding ancient images. Although not clearly defined until later (p. 18), Johnston initially writes that ‘the term “esoteric” was selected to describe the holistic, ontological and relational aspects of aesthetic engagement presupposed by broader subtle ontological or correspondent relations’ (p. 8). This somewhat obtuse conceptual approach, grounded in a specialised philosophy of aesthetics, is ultimately justified by the coherency of his striking final essay. Following comparisons of Mandaean and Coptic images to Cubism and Cubist, Johnston further writes more practically on Egyptian terms for ‘image’ (twt, ‘resemblance’; sšmw, ‘ritual image’; and nfrw, ‘image as bodily presence’), a philological approach that is complemented more fully by K. Dosoo's essay.

J. Kindt's ‘Evoking the Supernatural: Text and Image in Graeco-Egyptian Magical Papyri’ engagingly offers two case studies (PGM II and PGM XXXVI), exploring drawn images in the Greek magical papyri as forms of visual communication. She keenly observes that ‘[i]n these documents the boundary between text and image thus remained fluid, pointing to the fact that they operated not only as instructions through the medium of language but also on the visual level’ (p. 33). Kindt builds upon the acute realisation that the so-called magical charaktēres – ‘graphic signs that may resemble traditional letters of the alphabet without, however, being identical to them’ (p. 32) – stood above the system of esoteric voces magicae (often incomprehensible mystical formulas), just as magical words stood above meaningful text; she thus identifies in magical images a kind of secret language of their own. She notes that magic images are not just handbook illustrations, but ‘point to the material dimension of ancient magic’ (p. 34), so that ‘both text and image are equally carriers of religious meaning’ (p. 34). Without saying as much, images thus stand at the apex of an imbedded hierarchical tradition within magico-mystical texts:

Each of these betrays an increasingly higher esoteric expression of communication. In the end, Kindt's lasting contribution is her observation that magical images often play a role in the enactment of the spell involved (p. 40). What is missing is any mention of the widespread iconography of magic gems, a category of documents that more than any other medium combines all of the ingredients of the hierarchical schema described, the most significant of which would be the poignantly graphic itself.

Gardner's two essays that follow, ‘The Heidelberg Magical Archive: a Discussion of its Origins, Context and Purpose’ and ‘An Archive of Coptic Handbooks and Exemplars for the Making of Amulets and the Enacting of Ritual Power from the Tenth Century (P. Heid. Inv. Kopt. 680–683 and 685–686)’, comprise nearly 90 pages of high-levelled and detailed analysis of Coptic archival material. In the first essay he establishes links among the group of MSS P. Heid. Inv. 678 to 686, all purchased in 1930, and positions their ritual contents within the context of the wider body of Coptic magical texts, with many lists, diagrams, tables and relevant images. Gardner's second essay explores in detail five of the Heidelberg manuscripts. Both of these studies stand at the heart of the volume in that they deal with the specific iconography (with excellent photos) as well as details of the manuscripts’ contents. Beyond the fact that the documents are all Coptic, the focus on codicological matters proves relevant to both ancient Greek and Latin book production and comparative magic overall. Coptic magical texts are particularly rich in iconography, and they play an invaluable role in the study of supernatural images as found within the heritage of written amulets and spells. Therefore, the texts offer a pertinent corollary to the study of the kindred iconography of Graeco-Egyptian magical spells, although their images are considerably different – indeed sui generis – from those of the Greek language tradition, as Johnston's final chapter makes clear.

Dosoo, in ‘Two Body Problems: Binding Effigies in Christian Egypt and Elsewhere’, writes at considerable length and erudition on the ancient practice of ‘voodoo dolls’ – a sociological misnomer he rightly dismisses as stereotyping ‘voodoo kitsch’. He covers not only the modern sociological phenomenon but surveys also all the terminology from Greek kolossoi to Sanskrit valagá- and kr̥ty ̂ā, from Akkadian ṣalmu to Coptic Egyptian touōt. He finishes with three ‘case studies’ of the use of magic effigies in late Christian sources. To the many references to Greek terminology one can add the use of the rare to zōgraphēma (R. Kotansky, Greek Magical Amulets [1994], 48.11), found on a silver phylactery in reference to ‘the picture of the god’ (a reference to a surrounding Ouroboros or to an image now lost).

Johnston, in ‘Image Play: On Angels and Insects’, offers a veritable tour de force on how to interpret, in a variable way, the unusual image of P. Heid. Inv. Kopt. 686, fol. 4r, final page. Usually understood as a depiction of Michael, based on the Coptic words at the foot of the archangel reading, MICHAĒL, GABRIĒL, RAPHAĒL, SOURIĒL, Johnston proffers rather convincingly that the figure is a depiction of a winged moth at its various stages of chrysalis and larval development from a caterpillar. With a rich discussion of the positive valence that insects carry in ancient Egyptian lore, Johnston adopts what he calls ‘epistemological pluralism’ (p. 186) in examining this and other images on the papyrus sheet (twin spiders and a grub). His interpretation turns on its head how one is to view and interpret the very aesthetics of iconographic imagery. In this sense, Johnston returns to the more philosophical discourse of the ‘Esoteric Aesthetics’ of his first essay.

This book is really something. At first, it is easy to get lost in the jargon and tedium of detail. But in the end the six chapters form a cohesive whole that affords a groundbreaking introduction to a field of study deserving much closer scrutiny. The arrangement of essays forms a kind of ‘ring-composition’ – especially with Johnston's first and last essays – inviting readers to go back and reread the chapters from the start. As in the case of the film Arrival (2016, dir. Denis Villeneuve), one does not know at first viewing what is past and what is future. As one's presuppositions are turned upside down, readers, like the screener of the film, begin to explore in their minds what exactly has been portrayed. The book thus resembles the magic Ouroboros that devours its own tail; one can see it is both beginning and end in itself, and readers can engage with the individual essays at any time by jumping in the middle, front or end, just like a magic palindrome.