Magic Works Research Articles

Opera “Ruslan and Lyudmila” by M. Glinka: pages of history and modern times

The article, based on the works of musicologists, literary critics and music critics, examines the history of Glinka's fateful acquaintance with Pushkin, the birth of the opera Ruslan and Lyudmila, the reasons for the failure of its first production and modern directorial decisions of the play. The magical national poem-tale by A. Pushkin “Ruslan and Lyudmila”, despite the attacks of critics, enjoyed great success among contemporaries. Pushkin’s plot attracted Glinka because it opened up a wide scope for his melodic talent. Glinka listened to Pushkin's wishes and created a vivid performance with dance episodes, original stage solutions, lyrical line and emphasized originality of Russian images of Pushkin’s poem. At the same time, Glinka rejected Pushkin's irony, which permeates the poem, and composed a magical work dominated by music. We have a Pushkin plot in the absence of the Pushkin word. Ruslan and Lyudmila have been arguing about the opera for almost 200 years, there are several editions of the music.

‘Something Completely New in Art’

Abstract According to writer and poet Charles Cammell (1890–1968), Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) believed that through his influence and guidance, he could significantly improve an artist’s nascent abilities. Crowley claimed success for the musical achievements of Leila Waddell (1880–1932), the poetry of Victor Neuburg (1883–1940) and the artistic talents of Frieda, Lady Harris, née Bloxam (1877–1962). In 1938, Crowley invited Harris to illustrate The Book of Thoth, his last major magical work, designating her “artist executant.” Their partnership extended far beyond the requirements of the Thoth Tarot paintings: not only did Harris become Crowley’s magical pupil; they formed a strong and enduring friendship that lasted to the end of Crowley’s life. Harris had already achieved moderate success as an artist, but Crowley showed her how she could express esoteric concepts in her paintings, thereby creating “something completely new in art” (Harris to Crowley, Letter, 10 December 1940). Harris’s correspondence with Crowley shows that she eagerly embraced his guidance, determined to manifest the Tarot images in accordance with his vision. At the same time, she applied the same techniques to her own works and came to the realisation that art was the true basis of her spiritual path. Using extracts from Crowley’s and Harris’s correspondence, Crowley’s diary entries, and examples of Harris’s artwork, this article will argue that in the case of Frieda Harris, Crowley did indeed draw out her nascent artistic skills, and in doing so, enabled her to manifest Tarot designs, which on his own admission, “any given card is something beyond anything I had ever contemplated” (Crowley to Harris, Letter, 25 January 1939).

Memory and magic: magical images for improving memory in medieval image magic and in the 17th century manuscript Sloane 3663

This article explores magical images for improving memory described in Latin textual sources of medieval magic. Memory is a rare theme in the sources. The images associated with memory are included in four sources that represent image magic and/or natural magic: De XV stellis, the Latin Picatrix and Liber Mercurii, the Latin forms of which derive from the 12th and 13th centuries, and in an anomymous text that appears in Rudolph Goclenius the Younger’s medico- magical work printed in 1608 and in the seventeenth century manuscript Sloane 3663 in the British Library, as entitle as Erectio siganturae Mercurii. This article argues that the concept of memory should be understood in the frameworks provided by each text and the tradition of learned magic, which differ from the viewpoints of mnemotechnic. In all cases the context of memory is intellectual: it is associated with mental capacities, intelligence, sciences and arts and with the planet Mercury, the ruler of sciences. The concept of memory is loosely connected to philosophical theories, but in practical level the procedures of fabricating images were dominated by approaches of natural magic and medicine.

The Magical Work of Brand Futurity: The Mythmaking of Disney.

The Walt Disney Company has maintained an aggressive approach to brand management for nearly a century. With the acquisition of a number of highly reputable companies, this aggression has become unignorable within the media industry. At the same time, Disney has embraced digital expansionism, culminating with the launch of its own on-demand streaming service, Disney+, in late 2019. The platform's documentary series offer a unique window into this new era of the Disney empire, usefully demonstrating the careful navigation of corporate legacy and history in the creation and maintenance of what I term brand futurity. Thinking critically about the concept of collective imaginaries in the context of the digital and streaming economies, this article argues that these docuseries illustrate Disney's digital corporate strategy as a narrativization of wonderful work and ever-expanding value.

Sculpting Time: Sara Rudner in Her Studio

Sculpting Time: Sara Rudner in Her Studio

Response to “Women, Violence, and Magical Realism in the Fiction of Mohammed Hanif” by Pooja Sancheti

Response to “Women, Violence, and Magical Realism in the Fiction of Mohammed Hanif” by Pooja Sancheti Sanjukta Banerjee, Respondent “The storyteller,” says Irish novelist Colm Tóibín about the process of creating illusion in fiction, “has to deal with reality and all its details to make magic work” (Tóibín interview). The observation could apply to magical realism, especially when explored in relation to world literature in the twenty-first century. It is the understanding of shifting tensions and resonances between local stories, individual sensibilities, and global consciousness, between national interests and world ethics, that can add to the conceptual richness of the idea of world literature. Pooja Sancheti’s analysis of women, violence, and magical realism in Mohammed Hanif’s fiction adds to the [End Page 227] exploration of these relationships. Its highlighting of magical realism’s potential for questioning the limits of realism and the possibility of reading the “abnormal” (4), hidden in plain sight, sets the stage for thinking about the mode’s relevance to foregrounding literature’s role in ceaselessly reexamining all assumptions and polarities. Sancheti argues that magical realism in Hanif’s novels is distinct from the mode’s more conventional iterations insofar as magic in these works has a discrete rather than continuous presence (140). The point brings to mind Valerie Henitiuk’s analysis of the creation of a feminist space in Angela Carter’s feminist novel Nights at the Circus (1984). If Carter’s more conventional magical realism, unlike Hanif’s, thrives on a sustained tension or “antinomy between the magical and the real” (Henitiuk 411), the functions of magic also overlap in their works: much like the antinomy in Carter’s novel that does not get resolved, because “antinomies are inherently not resolvable” (411), in Hanif’s fiction magic “does not provide fanciful and unrealistic potential for an overnight feminist revolution” (Sancheti 151). Therefore, the impact of magic for the reader at large may not depend on its pervasiveness but on the nature of the “antinomic web” (Henitiuk 412) that holds in tension the plural subjectivities of women, elsewhere, everywhere. One reason why magical realism has played an active role in literary decolonization is that many of its texts reconfigure structures of autonomy and agency (Faris 111). Sancheti’s observation that magic in Hanif’s works is brought into play by individuals rather than communities (Sancheti 140) can be instructive for reflecting on these structures, implicating the individual as much as the community, as either self-contained or marked by irreducible duality between the self and the other. Hanif’s attention to the pervasive and differentiated experiences of neoimperialism and its enabling ills, rather than to colonial rule, is of particular interest to me. It brings a diachronic dimension to understanding the continual and changing role of travel, migration, and translation in the rearticulation of the magical in literatures of the world. The confluence of questions around climate, gender, race, and the power of imagination in exposing social values that have been accepted as the norms make studies like this more urgent than ever before. If Hanif’s stories are specific, their concerns are local and universal, and implicate all of us. They remind us that magical realism is a site for artistic and critical explorations in a world that is, as Glissant put it, “sans axe et sans visée.” Works cited Faris, Wendy B. “The Question of the Other: Cultural Critiques of Magical Realism.” Janus Head, vol. 5, no. 2, 2002, pp. 101-19. Google Scholar Henitiuk, Valerie. “Step into My Parlour: Magical Realism and the Creation of a Feminist Space.” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature/Revue Canadienne de Littérature Comparée, vol. 30, no. 2, 2003, pp. 410-27. Google Scholar Tóibín, Colm. Interview with William Atkins. Granta, 24 Mar. 2022, granta.com/interview-colm-toibin/. Google Scholar Copyright © 2022 Canadian Comparative Literature Association / Association Canadienne de Littérature Comparée

Conjuring criminals

ABSTRACTBy compiling official paperwork, bureaucrats in institutional settings effectively make their clients into the particular “types” of subjects best suited to preestablished institutional interventions. The efficacy of such paperwork stems from bureaucrats’ unspoken—and perhaps unacknowledged—belief in sympathetic magic, or a person's ability to transform another person or object by working on a representation of them (in this case, their institutional case file). The practice of sympathetic magic via official paperwork is particularly pervasive in disciplinary settings, like prisons, where institutional imperatives and cultural biases encourage professionals to substitute documentation for face‐to‐face interactions with their clients. How such magic works in practice becomes evident in an examination of case files belonging to adolescents incarcerated in a Brazilian juvenile prison during the first decade of the 21st century. In this case, each document added to an incarcerated individual's case file contributes to transforming him into an irredeemable criminal. [bureaucracy, magic, documents, documentation, crime, criminalization, prison, Brazil]

The Chosen and the Beautiful

The Chosen and the Beautiful

Development of the Trust Issue in the Movie Raya and the Last Dragon

The study discusses the development of Raya’s trust issue in the movie. The qualitative method is applied to analyze the data in this study. The result shows that the protagonist in the film suffers from trust issues. There are two reasons to trigger her trust issue. T. Her friend betrays her. Her friend and her people try to steal her village’s gem. This hurt the protagonist. This protagonist makes her start hard to trust anyone else. Next is trauma. Losing her village, Kumandra leaves her traumatic. She begins to show signs of trust issues. Some signs of her trust issue are overprotective toward Sisu, her beloved dragon, being wary, and keeping distance from others. The protagonist expresses such characters. She fears something terrible which can happen to Sisu. Therefore, she never trusts other people around her. She also distances herself from other people because of wariness. Sisu sees this. Sisu thinks that such a trust issue will make Raya in trouble. Finally, Sisu tries hard to teach Raya to trust other people. They eventually succeed in building Raya’s trust in others, and then a magical work happens as the impact of her trust.

دفن الاعداء في بلاد النهرين

ان دفن الاعداء احد العادات التي لم تتکرر کثيرا بين شعوب منطقة الشرق الادنى القديم وتکاد تقتصر فقط على بلاد النهرين لأسباب عقائدية او سياسية , ويحتوى البحث على معنى مصطلح دفن الاعداء لغة واصطلاحا کذلک الاسباب التي جعلت العراقي القديم يقوم بدفن اعدائه سواء الاجانب منهم او المتمردين الداخليين او حتى بعض الخارجين عن القانون خلال بعض العصور التاريخية المعينة , کذلک وضع الروح التي لم تتلقى مراسم الدفن المناسبة في العالم الاخر وخطورة الارواح غير المدفونة على المجتمع من الناحية العقائدية في فکر الانسان العراقي. کما يتضمن البحث المعاقبون بعدم الدفن نتيجة ارتکابهم لبعض الجرائم وقد کثرت هذه العقوبات خلال العصر البابلي القديم , وقد کان خوف العراقي الشديد من خروج روح الشخص غير المدفون ومطاردته للأحياء سببا رئيسيا لدفن اعدائه خاصة اذا ما کانت المسافة الفاصلة بين موقع المعرکة وبين مدن المنتصر قريبة, وقد ادرک الملوک أهمية الدفن للعدو فجعلوا من عدم الدفن عقابا اضافيا له , ولکن في حال ما استطاع اهل الميت غير المدفون الحصول على جثته وتمکنوا من دفنها يمکن بذلک ان تهدأ الروح وتستقر في العالم الاخر , وقد اتبع العراقى القديم لاعادة دفن الجسد مرة اخرى بعض الطقوس التي يستعين فيها ببعض الاعمال السحرية حيث تهدف الى دفن الروح الهائمة بشکل رمزى فالروح التى لا تدفن تنقلب الى جن الاطيمو (eţemmu) الذى يجلب الامراض المتعددة وتحديدا الامراض الجلدية , کذلک يهدد بتفکيک الاسرة. Burial of Dead Enemies’ Bodies in Ancient Mesopotamia Burial of dead enemies’ bodies is one of the habits that didn’t frequently take place among peoples of the ancient Near East. Such a habit is almost limited to Ancient Mesopotamia for ideological or political reasons. This research paper scrutinizes the meaning of the idiom of burial of dead enemies as well as tackling reasons that made ancient Mesopotamian people bury their enemies whether such bodies are of foreigners or rebels or even some outlaws through some historical ages. Moreover, this paper discusses situation of the spirits which did not receive funeral occasion in the other world as well as indicating danger of such spirits on the society from the religious perspective of the Ancient Iraqian people. Additionally, this research paper discusses situation of those who were punished by not being buried because of committing some crimes. Such penalties increased in number during the Old Babylonian Period. contains. People in ancient Iraq are afraid of the emergence of unburied spirit so they buried the enemies; especially if the distance between battle site and victorious cities was very near. Therefore, kings realized importance of burial for the enemies’ dead bodies, so they made non-burial an additional punishment for those enemies. However, if the families of the un-buried deceased were able to obtain his body and bury it, the spirit would calm down and settle down in the other world. In ancient Iraq, people followed some rituals to bury the body again in which some magical works were performed. A spirit that was not buried turned into a demon (eţemmu) which caused multiple diseases, especially skin diseases. Such unburied spirits could also threaten to break up the family.

Neoextractivism, or the birth of magical realism as world literature

ABSTRACT In recent years, literary criticism has shown increased interest towards the manner in which fiction depicts (neo)extractivism as a set of practices whereby large quantities of natural resources are exploited for export. However, scholars have overlooked the manifestation of this phenomenon in areas and epochs other than post-1945 Latin America. Based on a close reading of two Romanian interwar novels – Cezar Petrescu's Pământ și cer and Mihail Sadoveanu's Nopțile de Sânziene – this article aims to demonstrate that extractive fictions played a decisive role in the emergence of magical realism as a narrative mode whereby the peripheries have left a distinctive mark on the configuration of world literature. My argument follows three consecutive steps: first, I explore how the two novels represent neoextractivism as a mechanism for the destruction of the biocoenosis and the othering of natives; then, I show that the magical, mythical, and supernatural distinguish themselves in the two works as the only instruments able to stop capitalist commodification; lastly, I show that the particular mode of representation the two novels deploy (which I label ‘proto-magical realism’) turns them into the missing link, on a transnational scale, between interwar social and regional fictions and early postwar magical realist works.

MODERN TECHNOLOGIES OF HISTORICAL RESEARCH: CANONS AND IMPROVISATIONS

The author of the article considers the problem of interaction of historian and method in the Ukrainian historiographical field in modern conditions of unprecedented expansion of authorial freedoms. Uncertainty about “how we write history” has not yet been overcome. The dissertations of young authors contain such shortcomings as declarative and pointless presentation of the methods of their research, irresponsible juggling of such “fashionable” names as “comparative analysis”, “prosopography”, “oral history”, “everyday history”. The author notes that research technologies, including methods, are not something that has always been in Clio’s box. Technology arises as a result of the desire of historians to be successful, to realize their curiosity, their abilities, their ambitions. He analyzes specific examples of innovative research and shows the specifics and effectiveness of methods such as microanalysis, rich description, oral history, prosopography. He points to the distinct specificity of methods such as psychoanalysis and mathematical methods, so they are an example of a substantive understanding of the method as a research technology. The article shows that the history of everyday life has acquired citizenship rights in Ukrainian historiography since the late 1990s. The publications of the last few years provide the necessary material to see the difference between traditional historiography and the technology of everyday history on the examples of specific research, as well as to understand how this magic works when the essence emerges “from the little things”. After all, these are special little things. Thanks to the talent of the historian, they reflect the whole world like drops of morning dew. As a result, the author reminds that today not only “truth” but also “technique of execution” is important. Not only deep positions, original statements, but also witty tools, elegant course of thought, rich language, demanding style are components of success.

Designing a magic flask: a new activity for teaching nature of science in both formal and informal learning environments

The magic flask, which is a kind of black box activity, builds an environment for science teachers to discuss nature of science in a formal or/and informal learning environment in the context of the history of science through an explicit-reflective approach. In the activity, the nature of science (NOS) aspects are explicitly addressed and opportunities are provided for high school students to reflect on how these ideas relate to the working principle of the magic flask. This activity could be conducted not only in a science center where the “magic flask” exhibition has introduced but also in a classroom environment where a science teacher presented a video about how the magic flask works. Students, who work a team of three to four, create their own model and test and evaluate it by comparing other models formed by their peers through the engineering design. The Magic flask activity could be assessed through informal questioning and NOS assessment scales. It is a very useful activity since NOS aspects could be discussed explicitly in the formal or informal settings within the history of science while students were actively engaged in an engineering design process.

The Magic of Mercy: A Yom Kippur DDVar Torah

In the standard binary of justice and mercy, we often assume that justice is the mark of order, proportion, and balance, while mercy is disorderly, out of proportion, and imbalanced. The Biblical account of the ancient Yom Kippur ritual casts a different light on the matter, however. It suggests that the orderly machinery of the universe dispenses both justice and mercy. Mercy, too, is part of the architecture of the cosmos, natural and balanced. The synagogue liturgy of Yom Kippur, as it has developed over the centuries, mutes the Bible’s impersonally efficacious account of mercy. It focuses instead on the spiritual, the sacred, and the transformative dimensions of the day. But there is also power and beauty in the notion that magic can be invoked by an act of magic – a mechanical, automatically efficacious act of wiping the slate clean. The ritual of the Azazel was in some sense a “performative” in the philosophical sense – a gesture that did not so much convey a thought as do a thing. Yom Kippur is rightly a time of doubt, anxiety, and terror. The trick is to know the terror, but also let the magic work.

De Frédéric II à Rodolphe II: Astrologie, divination et magie dans les cours (XIIIe-XVIIe siècle), ed. Jean-Patrice Boudet, Martine Ostorero, and Agostino Paravicini Bagliani. Micrologus Library, 85. Florence: Sismel, Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2017, xxi, 432 pp.

One of the most intriguing aspects pertaining to magic and astrology (not the same, of course, but closely related) in the Middle Ages proves to be the constant tension between black and white magic, between authorized magical work and condemnation of magical practices. The Church was in a very difficult situation in this regard, whereas worldly rulers tended to embrace magic much more openly and also pursued astrological operations with the help of hired experts. This entire complex is nicely addressed in the present volume, which contains the papers delivered at a symposium at the Université de Lausanne in October 2014.

Staging Hamlet (2015)

In their thirty-years activity, Marcido Marcidorjs e Famosa Mimosa have been challenging received and ingrained ideas of drama by developing a style capable of reflecting the enormous vacuum of our time, without fearing to be outdated, without having to stick to any agenda but the one dictated by our will to bear witness. Hamlet is still able to fascinate us thanks to its uncommon psychological analysis, one which is surprisingly linear, despite - or should we rather say because of? - the depth and density of the knowledge that it conveys. Hamlet's magic works through its poetry, which is like a scan enabling us to sound the inmost recesses of human action. The storyline, therefore, necessarily becomes a mere pre-text of representation, which, in fact, is almost always the case with us, since we are never content with just telling a story.

Magic in the Cloister: Pious Motives, Illicit Interests, and Occult Approaches to the Medieval Universe by Sophie Page (review)

Reviewed by: Magic in the Cloister: Pious Motives, Illicit Interests, and Occult Approaches to the Medieval Universe by Sophie Page Kathleen Kamerick KEYWORDS Kathleen Kamerick, Sophie Page, medieval magic, Christian magic, Magic in History, Abbey of St. Augustine, monastic magic Sophie Page. Magic in the Cloister: Pious Motives, Illicit Interests, and Occult Approaches to the Medieval Universe. University Park, Pennsylvania: Penn State University Press, 2013. Pp. xi + 232. The late medieval library of the wealthy Benedictine abbey of St. Augustine in Canterbury contained an extraordinary collection of books, one of the largest in England. Its almost two thousand volumes included at least thirty texts that can be called magical. In this library an occult work might occupy its own volume, or form one part of a volume that contained other less problematical genres. Some of this magical literature entered the library through donations from monks: so, for example, one William de Clara brought with him fourteen volumes of scientific works and also the extraordinary Liber de quindecim stellis that explains how to channel the influence of the stars into talismans. A subprior owned three lapidaries describing the occult powers of stones, and another monk endowed the library with texts on geomancy and astrology. The monk known as John of London donated eighty-five volumes that included texts on a wide array of occult practices, including the Ars Notoria, image magic texts, astrology, and many more. St. Augustine’s library clearly distinguished itself by its size, richness, and, as Sophie Page demonstrates, its stunning evidence for the tolerance and even encouragement of the study of magic in a period when magic faced increasing hostility and outright condemnations. Page investigates several issues that this remarkable library presents, among the most crucial being the conditions that allowed these magical texts to become part of monastic life. The monks clearly realized that studying certain works of magic—including some they owned—could be dangerous. She offers several possibilities for understanding the presence of these works in their library, first suggesting that the monks might see their vocation as a protective cloak against magic’s dangers. More surprising is her finding that creative cataloguing in the monastic library created a safe haven for some occult works by shelving them in sections with more orthodox volumes. In addition, certain forms of magic fell through holes in the nets of condemnation issuing from Paris and elsewhere. Magical texts in Arabic, Greek, and [End Page 251] Hebrew, for instance, offered new “knowledge and useful practical arts” (30). Chapter 2 shows how natural magic, as part of the larger study of natural science, found acceptance even as the clouds of suspicion gathered. Page’s detailed study of the contents of certain manuscripts in St. Augustine’s library reveals, for instance, that material on the magical uses of animal parts or instructions for creating marvels can be found alongside subjects like surgery. Four chapters take up specific texts to show how monastic study and devotions could accommodate their magical contents. Chapter 3 examines the Liber Vaccae, translated from a ninth-century Arabic text and bursting with experiments for the magical practitioner to try his hand at. The St. August-ine’s copy was paired with a safer text, the Latin translation of Ibn al-Jazzar’s Kitab al-khawass called De proprietatibus, an immediate context that Page believes allowed readers to see the Liber Vaccae in the “safe context of natural magic” (54) even though it gave instructions for creating rational animals from organic matter. The Liber Vaccae clearly challenged orthodoxy and was widely condemned; its transgressions led to the removal of certain parts in the St. Augustine’s copy, but even so its presence in the library seems daring. In Chapter 4 Page focuses on image magic, deftly examining its various strains in popular and learned traditions. Writings on image magic comprised a distinctive genre among the magical works in St. Augustine’s library, with sixteen separate texts and many more copies and excerpts. Despite fears of idolatry and concerns voiced by thinkers like Thomas Aquinas that magical characters were part of a demonic pact, Page clearly shows how monastic readers could interpret image magic within a Christian context...

Will Merger Magic Work for Hong Kong?

Will Merger Magic Work for Hong Kong?

Clinical trials of integrative medicine: testing whether magic works?

Over the past two decades complementary and alternative medicine treatments relying on dubious science have been embraced by medical academia. Despite low to nonexistent prior probability that testing these treatments in randomized clinical trials (RCTs) will be successful, RCTs of these modalities have proliferated, consistent with the principles of evidence-based medicine, which underemphasize prior plausibility rooted in science. We examine this phenomenon and argue that what is needed is science-based medicine rather than evidence-based medicine.

How does love magic work? The regulation of closeness and affect by magical thinking

Sympathetic magic and attachment theory enable the drawing of a parallel between functions of material possessions that are used in the absence of parents and a romantic partner. The ascribing of magical significance to objects may be a coping strategy facilitated by dispositional anxieties and situational threats. The aim of this research was to examine whether romantic magical thinking (MT) comforts individuals by regulating the perceived distance from a loved one. Study 1 confirmed that perceived closeness mediated the positive association between MT and safe/relaxed emotions. Study 2 revealed that induced MT about a partner’s photograph resulted in increased feelings of this person’s presence, which mediated the link between MT and safe/relaxed emotions. The coping potential of MT is discussed.