On the so-called magical gems of late antiquity, there are some elements of iconography and names which are certainly or possibly derived from older Egyptian traditions. However, there proper study is beset with problems. The scholars working on them often derive their knowledge of Egyptian matters from second hand, and theories once proposed tend to be perpetuated uncritically. The paper demonstrates the problems inherent in this approached by dwelling on two case-studies. One concerns the so-called Pantheos (which should better be called polymorphic deity), where the Egyptian background is clear but more precision about meaning and accompanying formulae is needed. The other concerns the cock-headed and snake legged figure often called Abrasax, where proposals for an Egyptian background are rather problematic

Straddling the millennia, in another era of great social transformation and uncertainty, the Harry Potter series emerges as a kind of postmodern Bildungsroman, charting a young person’s development (or Bildung) through a complex world of magic and reality. The advent of Harry Potter coincides (perhaps not coincidentally) with the emergence of a postmodern condition, in a world transformed by globalization and by mass media’s penetration of the remotest regions of the globe, where the assurances of a previous era no longer hold true. Magic adds greater wonder to the stories, but also provides a strategy for making sense of the world. The magical world of wizards, house elves, trolls, dragons, and Dementors, inter alia, constitutes a kind of meta-world, a realm just beyond the senses of most Muggles but which is intimately related to our own, often terrifyingly real, world (as is movingly portrayed in “The Other Minister” chapter of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince). J.K. Rowling’s powerful reversal of the notion of destiny—in showing that what some call fate is precisely the result of individual choices, whether it was Harry’s direction to the sorting hat (“Not Slytherin!”) in The Sorcerer’s Stone, or Voldemort’s self-fulfilling prophecy in choosing to kill Harry—offers powerful evidence that “the way of the world” is frequently what we make of it, a valuable lesson for students and teachers alike.

Author and occultist Michael P. Bertiaux (born 1935) is an influential character in the revival of western magical tradition that began in the late 1960ies. In this interv iew he discusses the connection between occultism and art, his views on several occult societies and the attraction of Voodoo in the western world.

There is a concept of magickal celebrity and talismanic power that still follows Aleister Crowley, even 60 years after his death, and many people have claimed some form of linkage, be that philosophical, via claimed bloodline, via a demonstrated (or claimed) lineage of initiation or training, via telepathic contact etc. This paper contrasts some of the claims of Amado Crowley, who portrays himself as psychic link, pupil and biological son of Aleister, with the work of Kenneth Grant, who was Aleister’s pupil, literary executor and secretary, is possibly a distant relative of Crowley and runs a magical order based on Crowley’s work.

John of Morigny is one of a scant handful of fourteenth-century authors who admit to using several kinds of magic including necromancy, yet the evidence offered by his major work, the Flowers of Heavenly Teaching, about late medieval construction of of these darker magical categories remains largely unexplored. This article takes a closer look at evidence in this text for John's construction of nigromantia, in particular the middle ground of the nigromancia that was on occasion construed as licit, or at least not as sinful as practices involving deliberate and conscious demonic invocation. A revised and expanded version of this paper was later published as chapter 4 in Rewriting Magic (Penn State, 2015).