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<em>Victorian Occultism and the Making of Modern Magic: Invoking Tradition</em>, by Alison Butler

2014; Indiana University Press; Volume: 56; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2979/victorianstudies.56.2.323

1527-2052

Willburn,

Gothic Literature and Media Analysis

Reviewed by: Victorian Occultism and the Making of Modern Magic: Invoking Tradition by Alison Butler Sarah Willburn (bio) Victorian Occultism and the Making of Modern Magic: Invoking Tradition, by Alison Butler; pp. xiii +225. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, £67.00, $105.00. Alison Butler’s Victorian Occultism and the Making of Modern Magic provides a detailed history of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (founded in 1888) and its influence on making magic modern. Organized into seven chapters, this volume both provides a history of the influences on Victorian magic, including ancient Egyptian mystery religions, masonry, and Rosicrucianism, and looks at some of its distinctive features, such as a collective ethos, the equality of women and men among magic practitioners, and its interaction with other Victorian occult groups such as theosophy and spiritualism, as well as at its appeal for the middle class. Taking the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn as a principal case study, Butler’s work redresses the critical gap in attention paid to “occultism’s lineage and its roots in the history of Western magic” (x). The first chapter focuses on William Wynn Westcott, Dr. William Robert Woodman, and Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, its founders, and the first Golden Dawn temple in London dedicated to Isis-Urania. Butler points out that this organization was extremely influential and that “most, if not all Western magical societies … either trace their origins back to the Golden Dawn, or proudly proclaim their reliance on the Order for their magical doctrine” (16). Butler goes on in chapter 2 to explain that Victorian magic relies on the idea of “invented tradition,” including influences from Renaissance esotericism, Cabala, and the work of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (17). In fact, Butler clearly establishes that Victorian magic, like its Renaissance predecessor, involved a process of synthesizing discrete influences into a new magical system. These influences included, most prominently, Masonic ritual, Rosicrucianism, and the rituals associated with ancient Egyptian magic. Butler’s fourth chapter continues this focus on synthesis by looking at nineteenth-century innovations in the world of magic: “The Golden Dawn picked up the thread of Western magic, as it was introduced in the nineteenth century by Barrett and his Magus; then expanded upon by Hockley’s spiritualism, Levi’s occultism and Mackinzie’s bizarre blend of fringe Masonry and practical magic. To this, the Order added the ‘Eastern’ elements touted by Blavatsky, namely reincarnation, and the Neoplatonism and Hermeticism expressed in the esoteric Christian works of Kingsford” (124). Butler also emphasizes that the influence of Helena Blavatsky and Anna Kingsford involved a blending of religion and science and the equal admission of men and women. She further notes the wide appeal of this organization in the late nineteenth century and connects its popularity to other contemporaneous movements, including spiritualism and theosophy. Later chapters examine the contents of two occult libraries: the mid-Victorian occultist Frederick Hockley’s library and the Golden Dawn’s Westcott Hermetic Library. Hockley’s library “contained hundreds of books and manuscripts on topics such as astrology, mesmerism, cabala and magic,” and over one thousand items in total (126). The Westcott Hermetic Library is smaller, containing 286 items, with more of a focus on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century sources on “cabalistic, Rosicrucian, Hermetic, and Neoplatonic texts” (130). Both libraries held works by the novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton and share broader similarities. But they [End Page 323] also differ, partly due to the date of their founding and also to their respective functions: one a library designed for private use and the other designed for use by multiple constituents. Given the many valuable critical accounts of occult reading and literature we’ve seen in recent decades, such as in the work of J. Jeffrey Franklin and others, it would have been interesting if Butler had engaged more broadly with this secondary scholarship within literary studies. Chapter 6 includes an adept manuscript account of astral travel described by Annie Horniman in the Gerald Yorke Collection, another Victorian occult collection. Butler provides a sound discussion of this 1898 manuscript and its account of astral travels to planets including Venus and Mars. This account is not dissimilar, in structure or in...