
Explore historiography and terminology in the study of magic and religion, examining how terms shape understanding and reveal biases across disciplines.
Explore the intellectual approaches to magic, tracing Hegel’s nature religion and mind–Spirit themes, Tyler's survivals and animism, and Frazer's magic–religion–science evolution, plus criticisms of imperialist bias.
Explore functional definitions of magic and how sociologists Durkheim, Malinowski, and Mauss explain magic's social functions, from beliefs and rites to church, collective confidence, and practical outcomes.
Explore the contested definitions of religion, their western biases, and how scholars like Durkheim and James frame religion as sacred beliefs and personal experience.
Define western esotericism as a contested field, tracing from universal secret teachings to higher knowledge, and outline six core characteristics: correspondences, living nature, imagination and mediations, transmutation, concordance, transmission.
Explore how occult sciences emerged to study hidden natural phenomena, how superstition differs from esoteric currents, and how magic—from the word magus—aims to turn imagination into reality.
Just like Part 1 and 2, Part 3 is one of the entry points to the Academic Study of Magic. In Part 3 of the Foundation in the Study of Magic you will cover the History of the scholarship of magic. Starting with scholars in the 19th century learn how the important minds of the time shaped the study of religion and magic in the modern period. Then in the 20th century you will be shown how the new field of sociology was used to show how magic is useful for cultures around the world. Finally, cap off this lecture with a discussion of how the terms, Religion, Esotericism, Occult, and Magic have a range of meanings and usages historically and for every other lecture in this series.