It would be my pleasure,

I don't mean to unfairly put down any of these great scholars.
I'm actually quite happy that they didn't always know what to
do with magic. The mistakes of a great scholar lead to the better
answers of their students. These folks were not specialists on
magic so one shouldn't expect them to get magic entirely "right",
if that's even a good way to put it.

Frances Yates obviously has had much ink spilled in reply to her
popularizations of Renaissance Magic. She did a wonderful job
of giving an overview of the "Hermetic Tradition" but in her haste
and breathless enthusiasm often mischaracterized, ignored or
cherry-picked evidence. But to paraphrase Christopher Lehrich
(author of "The Occult Mind" and a book on Agrippa) she was
often wrong in interesting, productive, useful, instructive ways.
Her views on Pico have been criticized by Copenhaver and Farmer,
her vision of Bruno as magus has given way to Bruno as philosopher
(but see Stephen Clucas "Simulacra et signacula" on what's left for
Bruno's magic). Her arguments about magic and the history of science
have received a most thorough going-over. See for instance Brian
Vickers' "Frances Yates and the Writing of History." In terms of theory
of esotericism see "Beyond the Yates Paradigm" by Wouter Hanegraaff.
Her theories on Dee and the RC have been in part defended by Akerman,
see "Rose Cross over the Baltic." I haven't read the recent biography...

Gershom Scholem of course gave us the Kabbalah as we know it, but
in order to do so he had to present it as a "mysticism" compatible with
the scholarly and religious prejudices of his time. As Moshe Idel has
shown in his "Kabbalah: New Perspectives" Scholem had to gloss over
the magical, practical, ecstatic, theurgic elements of Kabbalah, which
were considered "irrational superstitious," in favor of the mystical and
theosophical elements which seemed more worthy of study at the time.
Since Scholem the study of Jewish Magic has bloomed. There are some
interesting historiographical studies on Kabbalah and Jewish Mysticism
now, see also Joseph Dan's book on Scholem's Major Trends 50 years
later.

E.R. Dodds is one of the best examples of a great classicist who had
absolutely no sympathy for magic. His studies of Proclus made some
important advances toward studying the sophisticated neoplatonic
ontology, but unfortunately Dodds' blind spot concerning theurgy (he
rejected it as a superstition and basically magic despite Iamblichus'
clear arguments to the contrary) prevented him from understanding the
deep connections between ontology, theurgy, and magic in Proclus. He
threw out the baby with the bathwater and as a result studies on neo-
Platonism and theurgy were set back by decades. It's not until the 70s
and the researches of the likes of John Dillon and Gregory Shaw that
we see neoplatonic magic and theurgy come into better focus. Although
Dillon still agrees with Dodds that "Theurgy is basically magic," whatever
Iamblichus may have intended when he defined the terms! Scholars who
take a view that finds a more religious category for theurgy, or at least
see it as part of the larger Neoplatonic philosophical and mystical project,
include Van den Berg, Majercik, Uzdavinys, Struck, Janowitz. Theurgy in
Pseudo-Dionysius is beginning to be studied without the negative bias
that kept Christian scholars from taking PD's use of the term "Theurgy"
seriously. See the studies by Gregory Shaw, Sarah Wear, Dylan Burns,
Sarah Coughlin, Charles M. Stang, Peter Struck.

Kristeller was a great historian of renaissance philosophy, and I don't
actually have much of a bone to pick with him, but he followed some of
the errors of his day. See "Kristeller Reconsidered" for deconstruction,
and also Craven's historiographical account of how Renaissance
Historians did selective readings of Pico in order to support their pet
views-- "Pico della Mirandola, Symbol of his Age." Copenhaver does
some excellent work in "de-Kanting" Pico--that is to say, debunking the
modernist projections folks have thrown onto Pico to make him heroic
according to our contemporary standards, rather than his own concerns.

does that help? feel free to ask me any specific questions and I'm happy
to dig up more references. I hope that in this clarification I have dispelled
any sense that I have a negative view of the contributions of any of these
scholars.

On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 4:10 AM, nagasiva yronwode, YIPPIE Director <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

hi Ted,

Ted Hand <[log in to unmask]>
> ...We've got a cottage industry going in cleaning up
> after the mistakes of great scholars like Yates, Dodds,
> Scholem, Kristeller, etc. who didn't get magic right.

would you mind briefly explaining what these great scholars
got wrong about magic? I gather if you've got a cottage
industry this might be too great a question to address in
so limited a venue as this email list, but if you would
not mind a very brief overview i'd really appreciate it.

There's a large literature after Frances Yates which does mo

thanks,

nagasiva yronwode ([log in to unmask]), Director
YIPPIE*! -- http://www.yronwode.org/
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*Yronwode Institution for the Preservation
and Popularization of Indigenous Ethnomagicology
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