ABSTRACT
Magical aspiration clearly constitutes a potential avenue of selfempowennent in Renaissance culture, yet the relation of such "protoscientific" endeavour to the process of self and gender definition in the early modem period has not yet received sufficient critical attention. Admittedly the researcher faces here a bewildering complexity of cultural beliefs; Barbara Traister observes that "the study of Renaissance magical theory is enonnously complicated by the imprecision of terminology and by variations in kinds ofmagic,"1 and points out that, compounding the difficulty, the philosophers deliberately obfuscated their discussions of magic because of fear of religious persecution. Recent criticism has focused more on the sexual than the religious anxiety attending magical endeavour, in part through an increased attention to women's involvement in accusations ofwitchcraft;2 yet the magus's role as much as the witch's raises questions about early modem sexuality and sexual anxiety (and indeed the distinction between theurgic and demonic magic remains problematic throughout the period). loan Couliano observes that "At its greatest development, reached in the work of Giordano Bruno, magic is a means of control over the individual and the masses based on deep knowledge of personal and collective erotic impulses"; magic may therefore be regarded as "the distant ancestor of psychoanalysis" and is in fact "merely eroticism applied. "3 Couliano emphasizes the political implications of this manipulation of eroticism, for the "magician of the Renaissance is both psychoanalyst and prophet as well as the precursor of modem professions such as director of public relations, propagandist, spy, politician, censor, director of mass
A revised version of this article appeared as Chapter 1 in Ian McAdam, Magic and Masculinity in Early
communication media, and publicity agent"; Renaissance magical theory, rather than an arcane and irrelevant belief system, evidently constitutes a potentially rich field of inquiry with implications for our current explorations of ideological and social control.
