ABSTRACT

Reviving a criticism expressed by the Lollardy, radical reformed Christians in England classified Catholic rituals as magic. A conceptual analysis of magic is a challenging task, in spite of the vast literature on the topic referred to European and extra-European phenomena and cultural constructs, authored by anthropologists, ethnography experts, historians of science, occultists, historians of ideas or historians tout court. century later, the popularity of these practices induced Giordano Bruno to initiate his own treatise on the divine, the physical and the mathematical magic with a survey of the ten meanings of magic and magician in his time. Even when it has a coherent underlying theory, the approach of magic to existence is dynamic; its scope is operating in the world. The contemporary success of literature and films on magic confirms another reason of its endurance: magic relies on the indestructible human hope to overcome the distance between aspirations and the actual capacities to fulfill them.