Scan barcode
A review by greeniezona
Grimoires: A History of Magic Books by Owen Davies
informative
slow-paced
4.0
Another incredibly dense nonfiction book for another one of my hyper-fixations. It admittedly took me eight hundred years to read this, because it wasn't exactly the book I was looking for, but there was so much fascinating information here that I kept going back.
This is a MASSIVE sprawling history of magic books, mostly those playing around the edges of Christian mythos, but with interesting comparisons to other systems of folk magic both associated with other major religions and not. How all of these interacted with changing technologies (like the printing press), changes in the power structure of The Church (The Inquisition, The Reformation, etc.), colonialism, influences of neighboring religions, etc.
SO MUCH INFORMATION. A reference I'll be happy to keep on my shelves.
This is a MASSIVE sprawling history of magic books, mostly those playing around the edges of Christian mythos, but with interesting comparisons to other systems of folk magic both associated with other major religions and not. How all of these interacted with changing technologies (like the printing press), changes in the power structure of The Church (The Inquisition, The Reformation, etc.), colonialism, influences of neighboring religions, etc.
SO MUCH INFORMATION. A reference I'll be happy to keep on my shelves.