The University of Exeter in England has announced a new master’s degree program that will explore the history and impact of magic and witchcraft on society and science. The course, which will start in September 2024, is the first of its kind in the UK and aims to challenge the assumptions that the west is the place of rationalism and science, while the rest of the world is a place of magic and superstition.
Magic and the occult in different disciplines
The MA in Magic and Occult Science is a multidisciplinary program that will draw on history, literature, philosophy, archaeology, sociology, psychology, drama and religion to show the role of magic on the west and the east. The course will also analyze the occult in literature, philosophy, archaeology, sociology, psychology, drama and religion.
The course will offer modules such as dragons in western literature and art, the legend of King Arthur, paleography, Islamic thought, archaeological theory and practice, the depiction of women in the Middle Ages and the philosophy of psychedelics.
The program will be led by Professor Emily Selove, who said: “A recent surge in interest in magic and the occult inside and outside academia lies at the heart of the most urgent questions of our society. Decolonization, the exploration of alternative epistemologies, feminism and anti-racism are at the core of this program.”
Magic and the occult in contemporary culture
The course comes amid a growing interest in folklore, witchcraft, tarot and crystals, which has been understood as a reaction to the decline of organized religion. The 2022 census found a rise in the number of people identifying as pagans and wiccans in the UK, while shamanism was the fastest-growing religion.
Selove said that magic is a part of our everyday life, citing rituals such as wearing jewellery considered to be lucky or representing a point of contact with a distant person or thing, touching wood or not shaving to avoid jinxing the team on match day.
She said: “Responsible scholars would do well to take this seriously.”
Magic and the occult in academic research
Selove said that the MA in Magic and Occult Science will reexamine “the assumption that the west is the place of rationalism and science, while the rest of the world is a place of magic and superstition”, including how it underpins western culture and how its relationship with the natural world can bring new perspectives to climate breakdown.
She said there was a “growing acknowledgment” in academia that texts dealing with magic or occult subjects have been “systematically neglected by scholarship” in medieval and early modern history, literature and religion as well as the history of science and philosophy.
The course will also acknowledge “the profound debt of western culture and science to the Arabo-Islamic world, a history that has been erased in creating our false picture of the west as uniquely rational”, Selove said.
The course will be housed at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at Exeter University.
