Books by Bernd-Christian Otto
This book presents the story of a unique collection of 140 manuscripts of ‘learned magic’ that wa... more This book presents the story of a unique collection of 140 manuscripts of ‘learned magic’ that was sold for a fantastic sum within the clandestine channels of the German book trade in the early eighteenth century. The book will interpret this collection from two angles – as an artefact of the early modern book market as well as the longue-durée tradition of Western learned magic –, thus taking a new stance towards scribal texts that are often regarded as eccentric, peripheral, or marginal. The study is structured by the apparent exceptionality, scarcity, and illegality of the collection, and provides chapters on clandestine activities in European book markets, questions of censorship regimes and efficiency, the use manuscripts in an age of print, and the history of learned magic in early modern Europe. As the collection has survived till this day in Leipzig University Library, the book provides a critical edition of the 1710 selling catalogue, which includes a brief content analysis of all extant manuscripts. The study will be of interest to scholars and students from a variety of fields, such as early modern book history, the history of magic, cultural history, the sociology of religion, or the study of Western esotericism.
http://www.springer.com/de/book/9783319595245
http://www.palgrave.com/de/book/9783319595245
“This is a tremendously valuable contribution to the study of a pivotal period in the development of modern magic. Undoubtedly, it will become a standard point of reference not only in understanding Enlightenment magic, but also the transmission and transformation of medieval and renaissance traditions. It is also a highly useful bibliographic tool. On that ground alone, no library of modern magic traditions should be without it.” (Frank Klaassen, Associate Professor of History, University of Saskatchewan, Canada, and President of Societas Magica)
“This book will provide a valuable resource for the increasing number of scholars working in the field of post-medieval literary magic.” (Owen Davies, Professor of History, University of Hertfordshire, UK)
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This book (my revised dissertation) analyses the history of the concept of 'magic' spanning about... more This book (my revised dissertation) analyses the history of the concept of 'magic' spanning about 2,500 years. Following an introduction discussing the problem of academic definitions of 'magic' in general, the book presents the comprehensive history of the concept of 'magic' for the first time, from its origins in antiquity to the 20th century. Polemic texts with an external perspective are included in equal measure along with authors that described and understood themselves as 'magicians' in Western cultural history.
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Edited volumes by Bernd-Christian Otto
Fictional Practice: Magic, Narration, and the Power of Imagination, 2021
To what extent were practitioners of magic inspired by fictional accounts of their art? In how fa... more To what extent were practitioners of magic inspired by fictional accounts of their art? In how far did the daunting narratives surrounding legendary magicians such as Theophilus of Adana, Cyprianus of Antioch, Johann Georg Faust or Agrippa of Nettesheim rely on real-world events or practices? Fourteen original case studies present material from late antiquity to the twenty-first century and explore these questions in a systematic manner. By coining the notion of 'fictional practice' , the editors discuss the emergence of novel, imaginative types of magic from the nineteenth century onwards when fiction and practice came to be more and more intertwined or even fully amalgamated. This is the first comparative study that systematically relates fiction and practice in the history of magic. For more information see https://brill.com/view/title/60410?language=en
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Religious Individualisation: Historical Dimensions and Comparative Perspectives, 2020
This volume brings together key findings of the long-term research project ‘Religious Individuali... more This volume brings together key findings of the long-term research project ‘Religious Individualisation in Historical Perspective’ (Max Weber Centre for
Advanced Cultural and Social Studies, Erfurt University). Combining a wide range of disciplinary approaches, methods and theories, the volume assembles over 50 contributions that explore and compare processes of religious individualisation in different religious environments and historical periods, in particular in Asia, the Mediterranean, and Europe from antiquity to the recent past.
Contrary to standard theories of modernisation, which tend to regard religious individualisation as a specifically modern or early modern as well as an essentially Western or Christian phenomenon, the chapters reveal processes of religious individualisation in a large variety of non-Western and pre-modern scenarios. Furthermore, the volume challenges prevalent views that regard religions primarily as collective phenomena and provides nuanced perspectives on the appropriation of religious agency, the pluralisation of religious options, dynamics of de-traditionalisation and privatisation, the development of elaborated notions of the self, the facilitation of religious deviance, and on the notion of dividuality.
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Magic has been an important term in Western history and continues to be an essential topic in the... more Magic has been an important term in Western history and continues to be an essential topic in the modern academic study of religion, anthropology, sociology, and cultural history. 'Defining Magic' is the first volume to assemble key texts that aim at determining the nature of magic, establish its boundaries and key features, and explain its working. The reader brings together seminal writings from antiquity to today. The texts have been selected on the strength of their success in defining magic as a category, their impact on future scholarship, and their originality. The writings are divided into chronological sections and each essay is separately introduced for student readers. Together, these texts - from Philosophy, Theology, Religious Studies, and Anthropology - reveal the breadth of critical approaches and responses to defining what is magic. CONTRIBUTORS: Aquinas, Augustine, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Dennis Diderot, Emile Durkheim, Edward Evans-Pritchard, James Frazer, Susan Greenwood, Robin Horton, Edmund Leach, Gerardus van der Leeuw, Christopher Lehrich, Bronislaw Malinowski, Marcel Mauss, Agrippa von Nettesheim, Plato, Pliny, Plotin, Isidore of Sevilla, Jesper Sorensen, Kimberley Stratton, Randall Styers, Edward Tylor
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History is one of the most important cultural tools to make sense of one’s situation, to establis... more History is one of the most important cultural tools to make sense of one’s situation, to establish identity, define otherness, and explain change. This is the first systematic scholarly study that analyses the complex relationship between history and religion, taking into account religious groups both as producers of historical narratives as well as distinct topics of historiography. Coming from different disciplines, the authors of this volume ask under which conditions and with what consequences religions are historicised. How do religious groups employ historical narratives in the construction of their identities? What are the biases and elisions of current analytical and descriptive frames in the History of Religion? The volume aims at initiating a comparative historiography of religion and combines disciplinary competences of Religious Studies and the History of Religion, Confessional Theologies, History, History of Science, and Literary Studies. By applying literary comparison and historical contextualization to those texts that have been used as central documents for histories of individual religions, their historiographic themes, tools and strategies are analysed. The comparative approach addresses circum-Mediterranean and European as well as Asian religious traditions from the first millennium BCE to the present and deals with topics such as the origins of religious historiography, the practices of writing and the transformation of narratives.
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Special Issues by Bernd-Christian Otto
Entangled Religions 14/3, 2023
I edited a special issue of the journal Entangled Religions (Bochum) on the topic 'Western Learne... more I edited a special issue of the journal Entangled Religions (Bochum) on the topic 'Western Learned Magic as an Entangled Tradition'. It includes contributions by Michael Noble, Sophie Page, Owen Davies, Dirk Johannsen, Henrik Bogdan, and myself. My contribution "Conjuring Planetary Spirits in the Twenty-First Century: Textual-Ritual Entanglements in Contemporary 'Magic(k)'" deals with Frater Acher and his unique 'Arbatel experience'. All articles are open access: https://er.ceres.rub.de/index.php/ER/issue/view/323.
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Papers by Bernd-Christian Otto
Religiographies , 2023
Who is Hans Thomas Hakl, the man behind the Octagon library? Based on 10 hours of semi-structured... more Who is Hans Thomas Hakl, the man behind the Octagon library? Based on 10 hours of semi-structured qualitative interviews conducted in March 2021, the project “Hans Thomas Hakl: Three Lives in One” presents for the first time an extensive biographical account of the entrepreneur, scholar, publisher, book collector, and spiritual seeker Hans Thomas Hakl. As much of Hakl’s work was driven by a “respect for the honest - I might even say honourable - losers in the clash of world views” and thus a strong interest in marginalised and disputed topics, authors, and ideas, many of which manifested in the Octagon library, Hakl himself became somewhat of a disputed figure. This article hence aims at portraying a nuanced and multifaceted picture of the founder of the Octagon library, which seeks to transcend one-sided political or ideological perspectives.
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Entangled Religions , 2023
This article illustrates textual-ritual entanglements in Western learned magic across almost two ... more This article illustrates textual-ritual entanglements in Western learned magic across almost two millennia through an analysis of Frater Acher's Arbatel experience. Frater Acher is a contemporary practitioner of 'magic(k)' who, between 2010 and 2013, performed a series of conjurations of six planetary spirits inspired by an early modern manual of learned magic named Arbatel. Frater Acher combined the Arbatel with ritual techniques from numerous further contexts, among them the late ancient Greek Magical Papyri, the Clavicula Salomonis tradition, Paracelsianism, Hermeticism, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, theurgy, modern imagination techniques, as well as chaos 'magic(k)'. As a consequence, Frater Acher's Arbatel experience-as he frames his ritual diaries published online-reveals a strikingly entangled ritual that illustrates the breadth, depth, and complexity of Western learned magic, as well as its manifold entanglements across time and space. His diaries also demonstrate that, even while following largely formalistic premodern scripts of learned magic, contemporary practitioners may nonetheless display a high degree of flexibility, creativity, and innovation. The article closes by reflecting on whether it is likely that such strategies were also present in premodern practitioner scenarios. In doing so, it calls for taking the-extensive but hitherto almost completely neglected-data of experience reports by contemporary practitioners of 'magic(k)' into account when interpreting premodern sources of learned magic. As a consequence, this is the first systematic attempt to compare and juxtapose premodern and modern interpretations and mindsets of practitioners of learned magic. It is thus also the first scholarly article that aims at elucidating a premodern manual of learned magic through reading and analysing the experience report of a contemporary practitioner.
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Entangled Religions , 2023
The introduction to this special issue outlines the concept of Western learned magic and suggests... more The introduction to this special issue outlines the concept of Western learned magic and suggests to analyse it as an entangled tradition, thus calling for an interdisciplinary, transcultural and transreligious perspective on its history. A working heuristic of seven different types of entanglement in the history of Western learned magic is proposed, whereas special emphasis is placed on processes of ritual hybridisation. Entangled rituals are one of the most unique characteristics of Western learned magic and often mirror millenia-long processes of textual-ritual transmission across numerous cultural and religious boundaries. Inspired by this working heuristic of different types of entanglement in the history of Western learned magic, the introduction summarises the six contributions to this special issue. These contributions represent the fruits of a workshop on Western learned magic as an entangled tradition that was held at the Center for Religious Studies (CERES) at the University of Bochum on September 14-15, 2019.
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Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology , 2022
The published version of my entry "magic" for the Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology (https://on... more The published version of my entry "magic" for the Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9781405165518), which was discussed previously on academia.edu. I wish to thank everyone for their valuable suggestions. In case you are interested in the full PDF, please drop me a note.
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The first three pages of my contribution to the anthology Fictional Practice: Magic, Narration an... more The first three pages of my contribution to the anthology Fictional Practice: Magic, Narration and the Power of Imagination (Leiden: Brill 2021), co-edited with Dirk Johannsen. In case you are interested in the full text, please drop me a note.
The purpose of this concluding chapter is to summarise and synthesise the findings of the entire volume, to weave red threads through the material discussed therein, and to discuss three different types of relationships between fiction and practice that manifested in the history of Western learned magic. Section 1 discusses cases in which fiction has informed practice. Section 2 reverses the perspective and assembles cases in which practice has informed fiction. Section 3 focuses on cases in which the boundaries between fiction and practice are blurred, concluding with unique types of ‘fictional practice’ that seem to have emerged as a culmination of this phenomenon. Assuming that the case studies assembled in the volume are representative of the history of Western learned magic at large, the chapter finally discusses various arguments for a historical trajectory that led to a heightened degree of fiction-practice entanglements from the nineteenth century onwards.
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Fictional Practice: Magic, Narration and the Power of Imagination, 2021
The first three pages of the introduction to the anthology Fictional Practice: Magic, Narration a... more The first three pages of the introduction to the anthology Fictional Practice: Magic, Narration and the Power of Imagination, edited together with Dirk Johannsen (Leiden: Brill 2021). In case your are interested in the full text, please drop me a note.
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Religious Individualisation Historical Dimensions and Comparative Perspectives, 2020
How should we conceptualise religious individuality and dividuality in a historical and comparati... more How should we conceptualise religious individuality and dividuality in a historical and comparative perspective?
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Religious Individualisation. Historical Dimensions and Comparative Perspectives, 2020
This article analyses the schism of a contemporary grouping of 'learned magic', the Illuminates o... more This article analyses the schism of a contemporary grouping of 'learned magic', the Illuminates of Thanateros (IOT), which took place in the early 1990s and is often referred to as the 'Ice Magick War'. After embedding the IOT's background doctrine – Chaos Magick – within the overall history of 'Western learned magic', its foundation is interpreted as a fascinating attempt at 'institutionalising religious individualisation'. Even though the IOT created grade structures, stipulated prearranged teaching documents and ritual scripts, and engaged in group events and rituals, its founders were well aware of the implications of group formation and did their best to construe the IOT as an embodiment of what Chaos Magick was in total standing for: "a current of eclecticism and a rejection of the principles of absolutism, guruship and totalitarianism" (Carroll 1997). Against this backdrop, the Ice Magick War and the schism that arose out of it seem to illustrate the tension between a strikingly individualist, anti-hierarchical, anti-dogmatic agenda on the one hand and competing dynamics of dogmatisation, authoritarianism, secrecy and power abuse on the other – and may thus point to inherent ambivalences in the notion of 'institutionalising religious individualisation'.
This is the final version published in Martin Fuchs et al. (eds.), Religious Individualisation. Historical Dimensions and Comparative Perspectives, Berlin: de Gruyter 2020, 759-96. In contrast to the version previously uploaded on academia, the final version includes novel insights based on a first-hand interview with Ralph Tegtmeier...
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Hermes Explains: Thirty-Five Questions about Western Esotericism, 2019
My contribution to Hermes Explains: Thirty-Five Questions about Western Esotericism. Celebrating ... more My contribution to Hermes Explains: Thirty-Five Questions about Western Esotericism. Celebrating the 20-year anniversary of the chair for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents at the University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2019...
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Die Perfektionierung des Menschen, 2018
For a lecture series in Erfurt, I spoke and wrote about the idea of perfection (self-deification,... more For a lecture series in Erfurt, I spoke and wrote about the idea of perfection (self-deification, apotheosis) in 20th century magick.
I can only provide the first three pages for the time being. In case you are interested in the full text, please drop me a note.
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In: Sophie Page and Catherine Rider (eds.), The Routledge History Handbook of Medieval Magic, Lon... more In: Sophie Page and Catherine Rider (eds.), The Routledge History Handbook of Medieval Magic, London: Routledge 2018, 37-47.
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Die Geheimnisse der oberen und der unteren Welt: Magie im Islam zwischen Glaube und Wissenschaft, 2018
This is my afterword to an amazing volume on 'magic' in Islam: Die Geheimnisse der oberen und der... more This is my afterword to an amazing volume on 'magic' in Islam: Die Geheimnisse der oberen und der unteren Welt: Magie im Islam zwischen Glaube und Wissenschaft, Leiden: Brill 2018, edited by Sebastian Günther and Dorothee Pielow. The volume is groundbreaking with its 115-page foreword and erudite bibliographical and terminological appendices. I can only provide the first three pages of the article for the time being - in case you are interested in the full text, please drop me a note.
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This is a forthcoming encyclopaedia article on the figure of 'Maitreya-Christ' and its reception ... more This is a forthcoming encyclopaedia article on the figure of 'Maitreya-Christ' and its reception in 20th and 21st century Western esotericism. It will appear in: Egil Asprem (ed.), Dictionary of Contemporary Esotericism, Leiden: Brill forthcoming. In consultation with Egil Asprem, it is here provided as a preprint version, which is also archived at ContERN Repository for Self-Archiving (CRESARCH). See https://contern.org/cresarch/cresarch-repository/
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Uploads
Books by Bernd-Christian Otto
http://www.springer.com/de/book/9783319595245
http://www.palgrave.com/de/book/9783319595245
“This is a tremendously valuable contribution to the study of a pivotal period in the development of modern magic. Undoubtedly, it will become a standard point of reference not only in understanding Enlightenment magic, but also the transmission and transformation of medieval and renaissance traditions. It is also a highly useful bibliographic tool. On that ground alone, no library of modern magic traditions should be without it.” (Frank Klaassen, Associate Professor of History, University of Saskatchewan, Canada, and President of Societas Magica)
“This book will provide a valuable resource for the increasing number of scholars working in the field of post-medieval literary magic.” (Owen Davies, Professor of History, University of Hertfordshire, UK)
Edited volumes by Bernd-Christian Otto
Advanced Cultural and Social Studies, Erfurt University). Combining a wide range of disciplinary approaches, methods and theories, the volume assembles over 50 contributions that explore and compare processes of religious individualisation in different religious environments and historical periods, in particular in Asia, the Mediterranean, and Europe from antiquity to the recent past.
Contrary to standard theories of modernisation, which tend to regard religious individualisation as a specifically modern or early modern as well as an essentially Western or Christian phenomenon, the chapters reveal processes of religious individualisation in a large variety of non-Western and pre-modern scenarios. Furthermore, the volume challenges prevalent views that regard religions primarily as collective phenomena and provides nuanced perspectives on the appropriation of religious agency, the pluralisation of religious options, dynamics of de-traditionalisation and privatisation, the development of elaborated notions of the self, the facilitation of religious deviance, and on the notion of dividuality.
Special Issues by Bernd-Christian Otto
Papers by Bernd-Christian Otto
The purpose of this concluding chapter is to summarise and synthesise the findings of the entire volume, to weave red threads through the material discussed therein, and to discuss three different types of relationships between fiction and practice that manifested in the history of Western learned magic. Section 1 discusses cases in which fiction has informed practice. Section 2 reverses the perspective and assembles cases in which practice has informed fiction. Section 3 focuses on cases in which the boundaries between fiction and practice are blurred, concluding with unique types of ‘fictional practice’ that seem to have emerged as a culmination of this phenomenon. Assuming that the case studies assembled in the volume are representative of the history of Western learned magic at large, the chapter finally discusses various arguments for a historical trajectory that led to a heightened degree of fiction-practice entanglements from the nineteenth century onwards.
This is the final version published in Martin Fuchs et al. (eds.), Religious Individualisation. Historical Dimensions and Comparative Perspectives, Berlin: de Gruyter 2020, 759-96. In contrast to the version previously uploaded on academia, the final version includes novel insights based on a first-hand interview with Ralph Tegtmeier...
I can only provide the first three pages for the time being. In case you are interested in the full text, please drop me a note.
http://www.springer.com/de/book/9783319595245
http://www.palgrave.com/de/book/9783319595245
“This is a tremendously valuable contribution to the study of a pivotal period in the development of modern magic. Undoubtedly, it will become a standard point of reference not only in understanding Enlightenment magic, but also the transmission and transformation of medieval and renaissance traditions. It is also a highly useful bibliographic tool. On that ground alone, no library of modern magic traditions should be without it.” (Frank Klaassen, Associate Professor of History, University of Saskatchewan, Canada, and President of Societas Magica)
“This book will provide a valuable resource for the increasing number of scholars working in the field of post-medieval literary magic.” (Owen Davies, Professor of History, University of Hertfordshire, UK)
Advanced Cultural and Social Studies, Erfurt University). Combining a wide range of disciplinary approaches, methods and theories, the volume assembles over 50 contributions that explore and compare processes of religious individualisation in different religious environments and historical periods, in particular in Asia, the Mediterranean, and Europe from antiquity to the recent past.
Contrary to standard theories of modernisation, which tend to regard religious individualisation as a specifically modern or early modern as well as an essentially Western or Christian phenomenon, the chapters reveal processes of religious individualisation in a large variety of non-Western and pre-modern scenarios. Furthermore, the volume challenges prevalent views that regard religions primarily as collective phenomena and provides nuanced perspectives on the appropriation of religious agency, the pluralisation of religious options, dynamics of de-traditionalisation and privatisation, the development of elaborated notions of the self, the facilitation of religious deviance, and on the notion of dividuality.
The purpose of this concluding chapter is to summarise and synthesise the findings of the entire volume, to weave red threads through the material discussed therein, and to discuss three different types of relationships between fiction and practice that manifested in the history of Western learned magic. Section 1 discusses cases in which fiction has informed practice. Section 2 reverses the perspective and assembles cases in which practice has informed fiction. Section 3 focuses on cases in which the boundaries between fiction and practice are blurred, concluding with unique types of ‘fictional practice’ that seem to have emerged as a culmination of this phenomenon. Assuming that the case studies assembled in the volume are representative of the history of Western learned magic at large, the chapter finally discusses various arguments for a historical trajectory that led to a heightened degree of fiction-practice entanglements from the nineteenth century onwards.
This is the final version published in Martin Fuchs et al. (eds.), Religious Individualisation. Historical Dimensions and Comparative Perspectives, Berlin: de Gruyter 2020, 759-96. In contrast to the version previously uploaded on academia, the final version includes novel insights based on a first-hand interview with Ralph Tegtmeier...
I can only provide the first three pages for the time being. In case you are interested in the full text, please drop me a note.
Matthias Heiduk, Klaus Herbers and Hans-Christian Lehner (eds.), Prognostication in the Medieval World. A Handbook, Berlin: de Gruyter 2020 (in print).
All contributions strive for interpreting the material from a comparative perspective and with a particular focus on ritual dynamics, thus highlighting intercultural and religious routes of transmission as well as fascinating types of 'entangled rituals'. The contributions will be published in a special issue of online journal Entangled Religions, guest-edited by Bernd-Christian Otto.
14 - 15 September 2019 | CERES | Ruhr-Universität Bochum
https://aktuell.uni-erfurt.de/2017/05/29/nachgefragt-esoterik/
https://www.bild.de/regional/leipzig/buecher/die-geheimnisvollen-zauberbuecher-der-albertina-53227622.bild.html
https://www.swr.de/swr2/programm/sendungen/impuls/swr2-impuls/-/id=1853902/did=19788918/nid=1853902/sdpgid=1443046/1uez9l6/index.html
https://www.srf.ch/kultur/gesellschaft-religion/religion-bei-harry-potter-viele-magische-motive-lassen-sich-auf-die-bibel-zurueckfuehren
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLfrRZl9s0c
http://www.zeit.de/wissen/geschichte/2017-08/magie-zauberei-zaubersprueche-europa-schriften-sammlung-leipzig-forschung/komplettansicht