Magic and Mystery: Popular History

What It's About

Magic and Mystery: Popular History is a broad survey of magical and supernatural belief, first published in 1894. Moving chapter by chapter through superstition, magic, fairy and devil lore, faith-healing, theosophy, death and funeral customs, animal magnetism and mesmerism, astrology and alchemy, ghost sightings, and religion itself, it compiles folklore from many cultures and eras into a single accessible volume. The tone throughout is rationalist and often skeptical, typical of the late Victorian appetite for explaining away the supernatural through science and reason, even as it clearly delights in cataloguing the beliefs it debunks.

Key Concepts

Thompson repeatedly draws a line between "black" magic, rooted in belief in supernatural power, and "white" magic, which he treats as an early, fumbling forerunner of science. He treats contemporary Victorian enthusiasms, such as mesmerism, animal magnetism, and ether theories, as a modern continuation of older superstitions rather than something wholly new. Ghost sightings and second-sight are examined alongside folk beliefs about fairies and devils, and the book gives real weight to death and funeral customs as a window into how different cultures have imagined the soul and the afterlife.

About the Author

Alfred Thompson was a British writer working in the late Victorian period. Magic and Mystery reflects the rationalist, often skeptical outlook common among educated commentators on the supernatural at the time, while still treating folklore and popular belief as worth serious documentation.