Law and Magic Blog

Grimoires: A New Book From Owen Davies

I'm currently reading Owen Davies' latest book, Grimoires: A History of Magic Books (2009). It's quite amazing--so much information. He packs quite a lot into each sentence. Among other subjects, he covers the uses and regulation of magic books, both by priests and by magicians. Here's an article about the book from the Guardian.

The Table of Contents:

Introduction 1

1 Ancient and Medieval Grimoires 6

2 The War against Magic 44

3 Enlightement and Treasure 93

4 Across the Oceans 139

5 Rediscovering Ancient Magic 168

6 Grimoires USA 189

7 Pulp Magic 232

8 Lovecraft, Satan, and Shadows 262

Epilogue 278

How Dr. Davies manages to write so much I don't know but I'm happy he does. Check out his other books, among them Haunted: A Social History of Ghosts (2007), Murder, Magic, Madness: The Victorian Trials of Dove and the Wizard (2005), and Popular Magic: Cunning Folk in English History (2007).

Magical Legalism

A four-year-old post from the Volokh Conspiracy, but still mightily interesting...Eugene asks about "magical legalism"--"stories about law or lawyers that are basically set in the real world but with some magical or fantastic twist." He also asks who actually invented this phrase. I wonder if that person ever got back to him.

In the comments are some wonderful suggestions, including Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy stories, a Simpsons Halloween episode, Stephen Vincent Benet's The Devil and Daniel Webster, Wolff & Byrd, and some of Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein's work. I think I'd also throw in James Blish's A Case of Conscience and H. Beam Piper's Little Fuzzy series, which deal with norms if not law. See also this page from TVTropes.

Incidentally, I Googled the term "magical legalism" and I did find a use of the term in a work by Julieta Lemaitre called Legal Fetishism at Home and Abroad. Here's the sentence. "In legal theory the persistent metaphor to describe personal attachment to law is religious: such attachment is described as faith in law, devotion to law, a myth of rights, magical legalism and especially, legal fetishism—the adoration of law as if it were something different from the will of men." Not quite the same meaning as above.

More On Steven Lubet's "Lawyers' Poker"

More on poker: See Michael Webster's review of Steven Lubet's Lawyers' Poker here.

The Magic of the Holidays

"Magical" gifts for the holidays, in addition to the usual fun stuff from magic shops:

The Unemployed Philosopher's Guild offers mugs with "disappearing" logos. Pour in hot liquid and writing on the mug vanishes. Choose from a "civil liberties" mug (various amendments disappear), a Democratic Dream or GOP mug (guess what happens to the map of the U.S.), a Henry VIII mug (ditto for the wives), and a lot of other drinking vessels. The site has other buy-ables too, but I'm partial to mugs. I have the Disappearing Civil Liberties mug. It's great. Hand wash only to preserve the "disappearing" quality.

Restoration Hardware has some magic sets and other gifts in its "toys" section, including a magician's table and a magic wand. I haven't seen the items in person so can't comment on them otherwise.

The DVD sets of the first season of Pushing Daisies, a great series, which is going off the air this year, Arrested Development, another weird, quirky series that failed to find a big following. It features one character, Gob, who's a professional magician. The DVDs of the first season of Night Court, which starred Harry Anderson, a magician turned actor, are available; the second season will be available soon. Anderson, who played a night court judge, did magic tricks on the show occasionally.

Joshua Jay, Magic: The Complete Course in Becoming a Magician (Workman Publishing).

Rick Lax, Lawyer Boy: A Case Study on Growing Up (St. Martin's Press).

And something you may have missed, William Rauscher's biography of spook show specialist Bill Neff, Pleasant Nightmares.

Charles Darwin on Religion and Science

The Times of London online has this overview of Charles Darwin's thoughts on the religion vs. evolution debate. Among Mr. Darwin's statements on the issue were “The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic.” (From his Autobiography). His works are available online.

Internet Resources For Halloween

Finding Dulcinea (a great name for a website) has this guide to Halloween.

Do Bunnies Have Standing?

I was poking around looking for what's available in the area of animal law casebooks (I know, I have entirely too much free time), and discovered Waisman, Frasch and Wagman, Animal Law: Cases and Materials, Third edition (Carolina Academic Press, 2006). Full disclosure: CAP is one of my publishers as well. Apparently there are a couple of other casebooks out there also, although I haven't tracked them down yet. 

In addition, I found this website on animal law, which looks really interesting and up to date, and is maintained by the International Institute for Animal Law. However, the bibliography database lacks a general keyword search function, which would really be helpful. You can only search titles and authors' last names. So researchers might also want to check out the Gonzaga Law Library's animal law research guide here, which although it looks like it hasn't been updated in a while still is very useful. If one uses animals in one's magic act, one might want to make certain one's birdies and/or bunnies have no reason to be text messaging their lawyers backstage.

The Curse of Substantial Similarity

A federal judge has ruled that the Harry Potter lexicon produced by Steven Vander Ark and published by RDR Books took too much from J. K. Rowling's original works to escape the Curse of Substantial Similarity and he zapped it with his magic gavel. He awarded the author and her publishers nearly $7,000 in damages and the injunction they sought. Read more here in a New York Times article. Here's Judge Robert P. Patterson's opinion, which engages in a close reading of both works.

The publisher may appeal the decision. Meanwhile, check out Stanford Law School's page on the case here.

Regulation of Magicians in the Greco-Roman World

I came across this history of magicians in the Greco-Roman world, written by Mathew Dickie and published by Routledge/Taylor and Francis. Although I haven't read it, it includes several chapters on law and magic that look interesting: Constraints on magicians in the Late Roman Republic and under the Empire and Constraints on magicians under a Christian Empire. The title is Magic and Magicians in the Greco-Roman World (2003).

More On Funding Cuts at the Senate House Library

Here's the response I got from Christine Muller at the Senate House Library about the possibility of funding cuts at the Library. She tells me that "there are no plans at present either to remove the Harry Price Library from Senate House Library or to sell it," but that "a recent HEFCE review has decided that the special funding stream for SHL will be cut from £1103K p.a. to £397K p.a. - this represents 16% of SHL's current operational expenditure. A further review by the Colleges of the University of London is now taking place to determine the future mission and funding of SHL." More information about the funding cuts is available at the Senate House Library at http://www.shl.lon.ac.uk and in the latest issue of the Senate House Library e-Newsletter at http://www.shl.lon.ac.uk/newsletter/newsletter_current.pdf. The Library is not asking for donations right now but if people want to make donations they should send them to

David Pearson

Director of ULRLS

Senate House Library

Gower Street

London, England

WC1E 7HU

The Library will use them for the conservation of materials in the Harry Price Library of Magical Literature.

Ms. Muller can be reached at University of London Research Library Services University of London House Malet Street London, WC1E 7HU Tel: 020 7862 8412 email: cmuller@london.ac.uk

Harry Price was the psychical researcher active during the early part of the twentieth century who investigated such sites as Borley Rectory and such people as Stella C, Eileen Garrett, the Schneider Brothers, and Helen Duncan. He gave a large collection of literature on magic and psychic phenomena for safekeeping to the Senate House Library in 1937.

Library donors and users often don't realize that while giving materials to a library is a wonderful thing, that's just the first step in making them available. Such materials have to be cataloged and otherwise prepared, and then they have to be maintained so that users can continue to consult them and enjoy them in future. The maintenance of a collection is one of the hidden, and unglamorous, costs that libraries bear. All of you who aren't spending money at that Starbucks which closed! Spare a thought--and at least four bucks--if not for the Senate House Library, for some magical library, somewhere. It's worthwhile, and it's tax-deductible.