Chapter 5 turns to attempts by French missionaries and envoys to convert the ruler of the most powerful state in Southeast Asia, King Narai of Ayutthaya, in the 1680s. It first lays out the setting into which these proselytisers arrived, playing particularly close attention to the elevation of the king in both divinised and righteous modes and his relationship with the sangha. It then shows how the commercial and administrative functioning of the kingdom pulled in sources of outside strength, which promoted the relevance of religious diplomacy. In the 1680s, a Greek adventurer, Constantine Phaulkon, became the most powerful officer at court, and he fashioned an image to the French of a ruler ripe for conversion, giving rise to a series of embassies received in Versailles and Ayutthaya. The French sought to enhance their prestige through the use of astronomical–astrological science and had a chance at a healing miracle in the 1660s. If this failed the French could take comfort from the fact that Narai was somewhat restless within his ceremonialised role, had tense relations with the Buddhist monkhood, was a cosmopolitan attracted to French culture, and was concerned to maintain the good will of Louis XIV. Some even portrayed him (mistakenly) as moving towards deism.

According to Augustine, the limits of human autopsy restricted certain modes of knowing which relied on detailed observations. This claim unites Augustine’s criticism of the power of daemons and of astrology to predict the future. The minute calculations that astrology requires are beyond human sense perception (Conf. 7.6.9–10; Doctr. chr. 2.23.34; Civ. 5.1–6), so are the tricks used by daemons which Augustine equates to abilities specific to animals, such as the olfactory skill of dogs (Div. 3.7; cf. Civ. 9.15). This chapter examines the influence of a variety of texts on Augustine’s thought, including Ambrose’s Hexaemeron, Cicero’s De divinatione, and Apuleius’ De deo Socratis. I argue that Augustine consistently focuses his rhetoric against pagan divination on the limits of human sense perception through a unique combination of criticisms, inspired by both the Christian and the classical canons.

Chapter 5 is structured according to the uses for which noble clients commissioned magic. The range of uses is broader than the five identified for other social classes and they have therefore been grouped under three wider ambitions: political or social advancement; money; and practicalities. By structuring the discussion in this way we are able to interrogate the motivations behind the upper classes’ use of magic, and investigate the role it played in elite culture. The conclusion of this discussion is that the few aristocratic magic cases that survive are indicative of a wider culture of use

This chapter focuses on how and when elite persons employed magicians; what sort of relationship was enjoyed between employer and employee; and how such relationships were allowed to continue in a courtly context. Through the course of this discussion we see that the culture of magic use among the elite was substantially different to that of society more broadly. For example, whereas generally the lower classes had a ‘pay per use’ arrangement with service magicians, upper classes were more in the habit of keeping magicians as part of their household, normally requesting the services from a cleric on retainer. The implications of this, and other habits peculiar to the elite, are explored in some detail.

Chapter 1 focuses on the most common demands placed on magic by wider society during the late medieval and early modern periods. This chapter acts as the foundation for the rest of the book: it cements the idea of magic as a useful tool that could be employed for mundane or everyday purposes. It also establishes what these purposes generally were, using a statistical approach to gauge the popularity of certain services. As such, Chapter 1 is divided into sections covering the primary demands made on magic, including healing and unwitching; theft and goods recovery; love magic; and treasure hunting. Under each of these sections their fluctuating popularity is explored, as are the methods used to bring about the desired outcome.

Chapter 4 examines the musical activities of Herbert’s elder brothe, Edward, first Lord Herbert of Cherbury (c.1582–1648). Cherbury’s musical activities are regularly overlooked by scholars interested in his work as a philosopher, historian, or diplomat. Yet music played an important role in his self-fashioning as a ‘Citizen of the world’, and these Stoic cosmopolitan ideals shaped his work as a diplomat and as a philosopher. In his philosophical work, Cherbury repeatedly turns to musical ideas to understand the nature of truth as a ‘harmonising’ of our faculties with the world. Most remarkably, evidence suggests that his philosophical ideas influenced his work as a composer: founded on the mathematical and astrological principles of harmony, his lute compositions attempted to express in a deeply personal and private music his relationship to the wider cosmos. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the echo poems composed by both brothers, demonstrating how the musical idea of resonance between the microcosm and the macrocosm informs their poetry.

In monarchical courts, religious rituals and celebrations have often been crucial moments bringing courtiers into contact with the monarch and society at large. There was no specific ‘court religion’ at the Roman court; rather, the household religious practices of emperors and resident members of his court were not differentiated from those in aristocratic households, and individual emperors and courtiers could choose their cult practices. However, certain rituals and festivals within the imperial house were still court occasions, especially the rites connected with the toga virilis ceremony and the Saturnalia. Furthermore, religious rituals in the civic spaces of Rome brought the emperor and members of his court into contact with the populace at large. Roman ideas about the divine realm included ideas about divination. As a result, astrologers and other individuals claiming expertise in divination at times had great power and influence at court.

The fourth chapter traces Philip K. Dick’s adaptations of ancient East Asian cosmology to structure America’s ethnically heterogeneous future in the emergent North Atlantic world order. Dick finds inspiration in I-Ching, an ancient Chinese system of divination that arose to combat chaos in an era of warring states. Dick’s references to China in The Man in the High Castle belongs to a career-long hunt for devices that might delay the decay of traditional forms of belonging. The I-Ching must be distinguished, however, from the magic aerosols and hand-cast ceramics that appear elsewhere in the Dick canon, for it offers a means with which to imagine a culturally coherent America. Thanks to the I-Ching, three archetypal forms of totality—American suburbia, European totalitarianism, and Third World primitivism—that remain irreconcilable in Now Wait for Last Year constitute a functioning amalgamation in High Castle. Along the way, I place Dick’s interest in the I-Ching in an intellectual tradition at least as old as Hegel, which posited that the Chinese, putatively never afflicted by Cartesian dualism, retained access to a sense of totality foreclosed to Europeans and North Americans.

While scholars have outlined the general characteristics of ancient Mesopotamian commentaries from the first millennium BCE, much work remains to be done in examining the outliers among these compositions and what they can tell us about this important tradition. In an effort to better understand these outliers, we consider two of the few Mesopotamian commentaries that are extant in multiple copies. Focusing on celestial-divinatory commentaries, which are the best attested genre of commentary in Assyria and Babylonia, this chapter begins by introducing celestial-divinatory commentaries and the source text upon which most seem to comment, the omen series Enuma Anu Enlil (“When (the Gods) Anu, Enlil, (and Ea)”). The bulk of this contribution then considers the commentary on Tablet 14 of Enuma Anu Enlil and the exegetical series Šumma Sîn ina Tamartišu (“If the Moon at Its Appearance”), which are both atypical celestial-divinatory commentaries extant in multiple copies. We ask how the commentary on Enuma Anu Enlil 14 and Šumma Sîn ina Tamartišu interpret and relate to their source texts, how copies of these compositions are associated with one another, why these exegetical texts may have been copied in the first place, and how they may have been used in antiquity. Our analysis illuminates important, understudied aspects of both of these compositions while noting how the features therein should alter our conception of Mesopotamian commentaries on the whole.

Magic was not new to medieval Britain, but traditions of learned magic that reached Britain from the Islamic world in the twelfth century transformed perceptions of the political importance of magic. The figure of Merlin, confabulated by Geoffrey of Monmouth, represented an ideal royal counsellor with mastery of the occult arts. This chapter explores Britain’s reputation for magic from the Roman era onwards and introduces the various occult traditions introduced to Britain the Middle Ages, including the harnessing of occult properties through natural magic, the use of ritual magic to summon spirits, Kabbalism, alchemy, astrology, occult prophecy, and witchcraft. All of these occult traditions had the potential to play a role in politics, whether as threats to be feared by governments or as ‘supernatural technologies’ that were potentially attractive to rulers.

Gregory of Nazianzus also had stars in his eyes. Some seventy years before Nonnus depicted Demeter having a horoscope cast for Persephone, in both sermons and theological poetry Gregory was setting the agenda for a Christian understanding of astrology. It was a project that deeply influenced the discourse of Nonnus’ epics, not just on the stars but also on temporality. For, in Gregory’s hands, astrology opened a broad vista onto the theological conflicts of the post-Nicaean era, and the active heritage of Greek learning in Christian culture. The collection of hexameter poems known as the Aporrhēta in Greek (and Poemeta Arcana in Latin) – the ‘ineffable’, or ‘secret’ matters – takes on astrology as a subject for debate along with such weighty topics as the Cosmos or the Soul, which gives an immediate indication of astrology’s importance in Gregory’s thinking; but it is first in one of his Theological Orations, the sermons which were one primary cause of Gregory being known in Byzantium simply as ‘The Theologian’, that we will trace the significance of looking at the heavens for Gregory’s understanding of how a Christian inhabits time.

The majority of works written in Early Modern Morocco in the natural sciences remain in manuscript, which has made them difficult to access and evaluate. The chapter takes up astronomical, medical, and alchemical works to discuss the types of approaches scholars in Morocco used and the nature of the questions in which they were interested. Drawing on recent work in the field, it demonstrates that the occult sciences, including lettrism, were part and parcel of this project and that Moroccan scholars produced innovative syntheses and commentaries throughout the period in consideration.

The majority of works written in Early Modern Morocco in the natural sciences remain in manuscript, which has made them difficult to access and evaluate. The chapter takes up astronomical, medical, and alchemical works to discuss the types of approaches scholars in Morocco used and the nature of the questions in which they were interested. Drawing on recent work in the field, it demonstrates that the occult sciences, including lettrism, were part and parcel of this project and that Moroccan scholars produced innovative syntheses and commentaries throughout the period in consideration.

Records of how to select people date back 3,000–5,000 years and there are supposed incidences in the Bible. There remain, to this day, an interest and belief in astrology despite there being little evidence that place and time of birth relate to any major individual difference factors. There is also still an interest in graphology, which is the belief that the dramatic differences in writing between individuals is an importantly and stable marker of personality or motivation. Study after study show there is no validity in handwriting analysis. The situation with regard to phrenology is different. The Victorians believed that the shape of the head reflected the shape of the brain which was primarily responsible for individual differences. The fanciful connect between head shape and brain location and psychological characteristics has however been revived by neuroscience and fMRI scanning. Similarly, the idea that body shape and build was a strong marker of personality has been discredited, but the modern interest in BMI and WHR has shown that these are indeed markers of different kinds of behaviour.