![]() ![]() Magic was a force of immense psychological power that dominated our ancestors’ lives and still dominates the lives of many people today. I do not, of course, mean that magic really works but people really believed it worked and really believed they were capable of doing it – which, in cultural terms, makes magic about as real as something can get. Magic as fiction is an important component of our culture but magic is also a real historical phenomenon that is part of our culture as well. I suspect this is a large part of the appeal of the Harry Potter books to many people, because Rowling mixes just enough historical information about magic to sustain the interest of the intellectually curious reader, making her magical world much more compelling than the often lazily conceptualised fictional magic of ‘sword and sorcery’ high fantasy. Having said that, it is impossible not to admire the internal consistency of Rowling’s fictional world of magic and the immense depth of knowledge that went into creating it. ![]() I am not a Harry Potter fan, and this exhibition particularly interested me because I am a historian of magic rather than because I enjoy the work of J. Today I visited the British Library’s major exhibition Harry Potter: A History of Magic. ![]()
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