Zeitschriftenartikel zum Thema „Witchcraft – Drama“

Puppets, a kind of wooden figure whose movements are manipulated by artists, were frequently used in ancient Chinese singing and dancing activities and dramas. The uniqueness of substituting human beings for puppets has drawn tremendous attention from scholars. However, despite previous research on the long development process of puppet dramas, a considerable number of details remain neglected, and behind these details lies an abundance of complicated religious factors. Therefore, this paper uses several fragments as entry points in terms of puppet dramas’ modeling, materials, craft, rites, function, artists, organization, and other aspects to comprehensively analyze the influence of witchcraft, Daoism, and Buddhism on China’s puppet dramas. This research first unveils that a ferocious appearance and mahogany as a material, both used in puppets, are outer manifestations to reveal the magical power of witchcraft. Next, the rites performed in Li Yuan Jiao using ritual puppets were characterized by mystery in their implication and ambiguity in their religious sect, which was related to the attempt to hide their notorious identities as wizards on the part of the artists. Third, general puppet artists enjoyed a fairly high social status, conferred by their semi-religionist identity and the puppet dramas’ historical status. Finally, the improvement in the puppet-making process and the emergence of skeleton-style puppets embody the secularization of the spread of Buddhism.

AbstractIn this paper I approach the efflorescence of witchcraft-sorcery concerns in post-colonial Africa through the personal experiences of Délé, a Nigerian friend and research assistant. At one level, the witchcraft-sorcery incidents offer illustrations of the rural-urban conflict situations that the Comaroffs and other Africanists have written about in recent years. Yet at another level I read Délé's texts for what they are, the chronicles of a real-life drama in which he plays the tragic hero's role. As a storyteller, Délé recalls events in which the actors' virtues, vices, and emotions constantly mirror our own experiences of what people can turn out to be as they progress through life. In Délé's case I perceive such a progression in his shift from a virtue-centred Catholic upbringing in rural Ìséyìn to a more prayer/power-centred aládúrà-Pentecostalism in Lagos, when recently the spectres of mágùn sorcery and witchcraft began to close in on his marriage, livelihood and health. Délé's tale compels me, as a friend and correspondent with a different view of the world, to reconsider the morally universalising aspects of what it entails to be human. I attempt this from the triple perspective of Délé's ancestral roots in traditional Yoruba religion, his attraction towards aládúrà-Pentecostalism in a failed nation-state, and his nostalgia for the missionary Catholicism through which our friendship first developed.

In the fallen world, communities (patterns of interaction) are endlessly dying and being born. The historian's job is to specify what, at a given moment, is changing into or being annihilated by what.In the fall of 1589, ten-year-old Jane Throckmorton pointed to the old woman who had settled into a seat in her family's cavernous stone hearth and cried out, “Looke where the old witch sitteth … did you ever see … one more like a witch then she is?” With those words the child set in motion a four-year-long drama that culminated in the hanging of three of her neighbors from their fenland village of Warboys in north Huntingdonshire. Within weeks after the executions, Jane's father and uncle, with the help of a trial judge and the local parson, published their version of this tragic story in a pamphlet that now resides in the British Library.After Jane Throckmorton and her sisters had shared symptoms such as violent sneezing and grotesque seizures for several weeks, and two medical doctors at Cambridge had suggested the possibility of witchcraft, Gilbert Pickering—a relative from Northamptonshire—arrived at the Warboys manor house to conduct numerous experiments with Jane and her neighbor, Alice Samuel. His intention was to demonstrate that the old woman was the cause of the girl's symptoms. In February 1590 one of the sisters was taken to the Pickering home in Northamptonshire where the results of further experiments were recorded for eventual inclusion in the pamphlet.

Resumen: En el presente artículo nos proponemos dar un paso más en la indagación sobre la brujería en la literatura hispánica, abordando en esta ocasión la narrativa histórica española desde 1970 hasta nuestros días. Las novelas seleccionadas han sido Retrato de una bruja de Luis de Castresana; La herbolera de Toti Martínez de Lezea; Ars Magica de Nerea Riesco; Las maléficas de Mikel Azurmendi y Regreso a tu piel de Lus Gabás. En un trabajo en gran parte descriptivo, se presentarán estos cinco relatos, resaltando los aspectos más llamativos que tratan sobre la brujería y las tesis que se vierten sobre este fenómeno y sobre la caza de brujas. Por tanto, se facilita al lector una panorámica acerca de los textos que ahondan en esta temática y se muestra que, en la actualidad, sigue muy vigente el interés por estas prácticas y su persecución, debido a lo complejo y controvertido del asunto y al drama que se vivió en los siglos XV, XVI y XVII, y que estos escritores han querido reflejar.Abstract: This article attempts to take a further step towards the investigation of witchcraft in Hispanic literature, now dealing with the Spanish historical narrative from 1970 to the present day. The novels that have been selected for such purpose are Luis de Castresana’s Retrato de una bruja, Toti Martinez de Lezea’s La herbolera, Nerea Riesco’s Ars Magica, Mikel Azurmendi ‘s Las maléficas and Luz Gabás’ Regreso a tu piel. In this article, which is mainly descriptive, these four stories will be presented highlighting the most remarkable aspects dealing with witchcraft together with the theses given about this phenomenon and the witch hunt. Therefore, the reader is offered an overview of the texts that delve into this subject and shows that, today, the interest in these practices and their prosecution is still alive not only thanks to the complexity and controversy of this matter, but also due to the tragic events that took place in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, which these writers have tried to reflect in their books.

Female monasticism and the conversion of the Jews were both major concerns for the ecclesiastical establishment, as well as for Italian ruling elites, after the Council of Trent (1545–1563). Hence, the monachization of baptized Jewish girls acquired a unique symbolic significance. Moreover, during this period cases of demonic possession were on the rise, and so were witchcraft accusations. This article explores a case from late sixteenth-century Mantua in which Jewish conversion, female monachization, demonic possession and witch-hunting all came into play in a violent drama. Drawing on unpublished documents as well as on chronicles and hagiographies, the article elucidates the mental toll that conversion and monachization took on the Jewess Luina, who later became known as Sister Margherita. It delineates her life, which culminated with her diagnosis as a demoniac, and analyzes the significance that this etiology held for the energumen—whose affliction was attributed to her ongoing contacts with Jews—and for Mantua's Jews. The article argues that the anxiety provoked by suspicions that a formerly Jewish nun reverted to Judaism was so profound, that it led to the burning at the stake of Judith Franchetta, the only Jew ever to be executed as a witch in the Italian peninsula.

In ancient periods, there was the tendency to label a woman as mad or hysteric if she behaved in a strange manner. The reason was that, since at those times women were considered to be inferior creatures, their bodies were thought to be degraded easily. Accordingly, in the medieval period, hysteria was linked to distress in the womb, which would affect the whole body easily. In that sense, in this period hysteria was only associated with women. Especially ancient Greeks believed that hysteria occurred due to not having enough sex or orgasms. Therefore, according to them the cure for this ailment was getting married and having a satisfying sexual life. However, in the dark Middle Ages, hysteria started to be related to witchcraft, rather than sexual dissatisfaction. It was still linked to women only, but this time they were believed to be possessed by the Devil if they showed any disturbances or symptoms of hysteria. With the developments in science and technology, the understanding of hysteria changed from being associated with unfulfilled sexual drives or spirit possession to being a result of having psychological scars due to mental traumas or repressions. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to reflect the changing understanding of hysteria through female characters from 20th century American drama.

Before I begin to offer my analysis of what the Encyclopedia of the Reformation tells us about Reformation studies, I should first explain my role in its production. I have been one of six senior editors, responsible for what was loosely termed “social history and popular religion.” Four of the other editors have been in charge of specific geographic areas, and David Steinmetz has been in charge of theology, so I have generally thought of my role as the editor for “other.” That meant “my” articles began with “alchemy” and ended with “women,” including in between entries on such topics as capitalism, death, divorce, drama, Jews, miracles, music, polygamy, printing, science, sexuality, and time. I was in charge of fewer entries than most of my coeditors–102 out of 1200–but more words, as I ended up with nearly all the longest articles. That alone, I think, indicates the clear acceptance of one “new approach,” an approach picked up by the marketing department at Oxford, whose banner head describes the Encyclopedia as “the definitive reference on society in early modern Europe.” It was also noted at a very early editors' meeting, where one of the consulting editors commented—not exactly with dismay, but not exactly with triumph either—“do you realize we've given witchcraft more words than Luther?”

This paper aims to examine the concept of “death” in William Shakespeare's Macbeth and Arthur Miller's The Crucible in an analytical method as these two plays are filled with murder, executions, and assassinations. These plays show the subject of death in classical and modern drama by the two famous playwrights. The paper is divided into two parts: the first part tackles Shakespeare's Macbeth in (1606) and how the idea of death occupies a great place as the hero falls dead in the end. The second discusses Miller's The Crucible and the tragic events that put to death many people, fearing to spread the thoughts of communists in America. It also reveals people who are hung, crushed, and stifled by society powers, which filled its citizens' minds with certain myths, witchcraft and superstitions that may be against ethics and honor. The concept of “death” will be analyzed in two methods, the first one is a symbolic, spiritual, method while the second is a physical method. These two methods will examine the main characters. The death is the main feature that includes the heroes of selected plays to achieve nobility and perception. Consequently, this paper attempts to show how the dramatists succeed in providing a moral and human lesson to readers around the world, as well as changing this terrible truth of murder into something highly meaningful that it is a step towards the eternal life.

The north-eastern state of Assam is very rich in terms of diverse arts. Revolutionary great men in Assamese literature, culture, society and spiritual life The contribution of Shrimant Shankardev is unforgettable. His great works made this Strengthened the feeling of social and cultural unity in the area. He wrote Ramayana and translated Shrimad Bhagwat into Brajavali language.Vaishnavism in the North-East for propagation, Shankardev started Bargeet, Kirtan, Ankiya Naat (Bhaona) etc. Composed. There are two main forms of dance here – Bihu dance and Satriya dance. bihu dance The identity of Assam has become. All children and elders participate in this. Bihu dance is performed on the occasion of the festival. Bihu song also on this occasion are sung. The central theme of Bihu songs is love. Apart from this, in Assam many folk dances are prevalent. There are many art forms here in the form of songs, dance, drama etc. are present. Shankardev gave birth to many art forms, including dramatic art and mask art was prominent. Folk plays played an important role in the background of the Neovaishnav movement and its propagation. Folk theaters performed by women are also popular in Assam. Women express their feelings through these folk dramas. Assam also has a rich tradition of folk songs. Bihu is the representative folklore in this region. Through which the common people's passion, hope, Aspirations, joys and troubles take shape. The folk song 'Haidang' of Sonowal Kachari tribe is sung only by men. Various body movements and dance along with songs are the specialty of Haidang. Rabha community of Assam is very rich in terms of folk songs. The folk songs of Miri or Mising tribe are called 'Oi Neetom'.The life and culture of the people of this community has developed in the valley of Brahmaputra and Subansiri rivers. The communities here have a rich heritage of folklore. The folk tales here are full of supernatural incidents. Assam has been considered the center of Tantra-Mantra, witchcraft and spirituality. Therefore, Tantra-Mantras are included in folk tales. Apart from this, idioms and proverbs are also available in abundance.

AbstractThis paper explores the ambiguous role of magic in the controversy over the draining of the fens, the last bastion of wilderness in seventeenth-century England. In what now looks like an early form of environmentalist resistance to the destruction of these wetlands, opponents of the drainage accused the undertakers of invoking diabolical aid in their audacious efforts to tamper with God’s creation. Evidence of this mentality can be found in both William Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Ben Jonson’s The Devil is an Ass. Via a close reading of Jonson’s comedy, this paper navigates the confluence of magic, technology, and “projection” in the ideological debate surrounding the fens. Just as the traditional Vice figures (Iniquity and Pug) find themselves out-devilled by Jacobean Londoners, the play dramatizes the appropriation and displacement of a residual poetics of enchantment by the emergent discourses of economics and applied engineering. A tendency to equate magic with hydro-engineering technology may have been encouraged by John Dee’s involvement in the project. Drawing on an unpublished manuscript in the Ashmole collection at the Bodleian Library, this paper seeks to uncover the extent and impact of Dee’s role in the drainage. Advocates of the drainage, however, not only denied any supernatural involvement but also counterattacked by accusing their opponents of credulity and magical thinking. They characterized the native fen-dwellers as superstitious heathens and cast a scathing eye on local folklore depicting the fens as a demon-haunted wasteland. In pro-drainage documents, the proposed draining of the fenlands becomes tantamount to an exorcism, purging the rural backwaters of paganism and witchcraft. Wetlands management will now be conducted through applied engineering rather than magical incantations. A little known Jacobean ballad, “The Powte’s Complaint” (c. 1619) revives these animistic tropes to protest the fen’s destruction. Jonson’s play may explain why this tactic was doomed to fail and why this poem has been forgotten. As the credibility of magic eroded in the mid-seventeenth century, opponents of the drainage instead sought to stir up public resentment against the foreignness of the Dutch under-takers rather than their supposed collusion with supernatural forces. Jonson’s own projection that the drainage was an impossible con (like alchemy) would prove inaccurate. Nevertheless, The Devil is an Ass stands as the one of the most ecologically-engaged texts in the canon of early modern English drama.

The most prominent monster in Khmer horror cinema, the ap, is originally a creature of folklore and is traditionally depicted as a woman's glowing head connected to exposed, floating entrails. I begin with an overview of the ap's historical origins in Khmer folktales about female transgression and witchcraft. I then discuss the ap's reemergence in Gothic horror film following the Khmer Rouge genocide of 1975–1979. In film, unlike in folklore, the ap is depicted as an innocent woman who was violated and then denied justice from her insular rural society; her assumption of a monstrous spectral body serves to make visible and undeniable the otherwise invisible violence exacted upon her. In staging dramas of reckoning and unburial, I argue, ap film in twenty-first-century Cambodia performs the typically Gothic work of using folklore and the supernatural to speak about otherwise unspeakable past trauma.

The fate of Veronika of Desenice, a Medieval lady who was tried (and subsequently acquitted) in the first witchcraft trial on Slovenian soil, has been a profound source of inspiration for Slovenian folklore and culture since the 15th century. Over time, it has gradually evolved into one of the culture’s most enduring and canonical motifs. An impressive array of more than 25 texts, spanning various genres such as dramas, operas and novels, has emerged in the modern era, which has its beginnings in Slovenia 1848. In this article, I aim to examine the use of the motif of Veronika in modern texts, and elucidate the transformation of the narratives associated with it over time. The article specifically investigates the shifting focus on different aspects of the story, and the evolving techniques employed in its re-telling. Approximately half of these texts came into existence before the Second World War, while about five were produced during the period of communist Yugoslavia, with the remaining works originating in the era of independent Slovenia. In addition, several of these texts were written by authors in exile. Drawing upon this extensive material, the study presents an exploration of the similarities and differences in the portrayal of Veronika of Desenice in changing circumstances, with a particular emphasis on works from the eras of communist and independent Slovenia.

In the late seventeenth century, the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s government built its own provincial navy of several vessels to secure its coastline from French, Indigenous, and piratical threats. While the creation of provincial navies would become a regular hallmark of English colonization throughout the Atlantic world, this fleet’s flagship – the sloop Mary – and its crew would become major players in various transatlantic dramas ranging from the Glorious Revolution to the Golden Age of Piracy to the Salem Witchcraft Trials. Overall, Mary’s short service history not only gives us a novel maritime lens through which we can examine traditionally-well studied events in early American history, but also highlights the long-ignored role of Anglo-American provincial naval forces in shaping the first British Empire. À la fin du dix-septième siècle, le gouvernement de la colonie de la baie du Massachusetts a construit sa propre marine provinciale de plusieurs navires pour protéger ses côtes contre les menaces posées par les Français, les Autochtones et les pirates. Alors que la création de marines provinciales allait devenir une caractéristique de la colonisation anglaise dans le monde de l’Atlantique, le navire amiral de cette flotte – le sloop Mary – et son équipage allaient devenir des acteurs importants dans divers drames transatlantiques, y compris la Glorieuse Révolution, l’Âge d’or de la piraterie et les procès des sorcières de Salem. Dans l’ensemble, la courte histoire de service maritime du Mary nous offre non seulement une nouvelle optique maritime à travers laquelle il est possible de considérer les événements traditionnellement bien étudiés des débuts de l’histoire américaine, mais elle souligne également le rôle longtemps ignoré des forces navales provinciales anglo-américaines dans la formation du premier Empire britannique.

MAGIC, SCIENCE, AND RELIGION IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE by Mark A. Waddell. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2021. x + 220 pages, including an annotated bibliography and index. Paperback; $25.99. ISBN: 9781108441650. *For decades, it has been commonplace among historians of science to recognize the essential interconnections between Christianity and the early origins of the natural sciences, even if some non-historians continue to struggle to relinquish the more titillating revival of a conflict between them. The reality is that the social and intellectual history of theology and natural philosophy have vast overlapping boundaries. The history of the modern natural sciences is no less continuous with the ideas and practices of magic, alchemy, and astrology. While Enlightenment sensibilities chafe at the notion, historical research, much in the same vein as studies in "Science and Religion," is incontestable. Mark A. Waddell's brief introduction to the subject quickly brings the reader into this consensus without sacrificing the nuance needed to avoid oversimplification. *The strongest chapters are in the first half of the book, where Waddell introduces the Renaissance interest in Hermetic philosophy (chap. 1), then newly discovered among ancient texts (though not so ancient as they were first thought to be). The author proves to be a practiced communicator, able to simplify and condense a range of philosophical principles. He also succeeds in connecting philosophies with the perennial social problems and questions of ordinary human experience. In this way, he is consistent with a long line of scholars writing on the subject, from Keith Thomas's, Religion and the Decline of Magic (1971) forward. The subject of witchcraft and demonology (chap. 2) is treated as the manifestation of social anxieties within European culture more generally. *The broadest principle of magic is covered in chapter 3, "Magic, Medicine, and the Microcosm," in which Waddell explains the overarching analogy between the greater universe out there and our mundane existence down here. This forms the basis for both astrology-based medicine (noting concordances between either herbs or organs with their astrological counterparts and using them to heal) or judicial astrology, which sought to understand the past and map the future by virtue of astrological motions. And Waddell presents this as a normal part of early-modern thinking among churchmen and commoners alike. *The second half of the book covers topics which may be more easily recognized as parts of modern natural science: Galileo, Copernicus, Boyle, and Newton. Chapter 4, "A New Cosmos," uses a most creative and pedagogically sensitive introduction to the radical proposal of a world system in which the earth is not motionless and at the center of the universe. Waddell uses the demotion of Pluto from planetary status in 2006 and the subsequent public backlash, and asks the reader to imagine, a fortiori, how the public might react to an even greater disruption of received astronomical dogma, however empirically informed. Waddell returns again in chapter 5, "Looking for God in the Cosmic Machine," to ancient philosophy, showing how Epicurean atomism presented an old philosophical problem anew in the philosophies of René Descartes and Pierre Gassendi, focusing on the question of the nature of the soul. Here the continuity of ancient and new philosophies is maintained, illustrating the ongoing development and connected history between modern natural science, magic, and religion. *That continuity might have been better represented with more emphasis on the philosophy of Aristotle and scholasticism. While Aristotle's philosophy is discussed in several places throughout the book, such as in the discussion above on the soul, a dedicated chapter would have been appropriate given the dominance of Aristotle in Western intellectual culture from the end of the thirteenth century through the end of the seventeenth. This weakness of the book was evident in chapter 6 in the section on Francis Bacon and the inductive method. Waddell says, "Bacon founded his ideas about experience and experiment on what is known as inductive reasoning, or induction … In choosing to focus on singular observations, Bacon was of course doing exactly what Aristotle taught his students not to do" (p. 166). *Aristotle never gave such instruction. In fact, Aristotle describes induction in his Posterior Analytics, Book I, in the first sentence: "All teaching and learning of an intellectual kind proceed from pre-existent knowledge … Similarly with arguments, both deductive and inductive: they effect their teaching through what we already know, the former assuming items which we are presumed to grasp, the latter proving something universal by way of the fact that the particular cases are plain" (Barnes translation, 1975). *Waddell misses that Bacon's emphasis on induction was not novel except in emphasis. The new science was an extension of old principles newly revived. *This introduction closes with a coda, extending briefly into the Enlightenment. This section is handled a little too quickly, but well enough to present some of the subtleties necessary to link it to its past. Not only does he present how Enlightenment intellectuals were embarrassed by Newton's alchemical adventures, but how the mechanical forces of modern science themselves still betray underlying occult qualities that formerly traveled under other names. *The author often used the word "problematic" (over twenty times) throughout the book: for example, in the sentence, "It is important to note that, however problematic the idea of a mechanical universe might have been, it did not disappear." The author uses the word so often, it is unclear if he merely means something less specific, like "challenging," as in "difficult to absorb" in one's concepts of the natural world, or more narrowly as something that violates social and political norms. Since Waddell in other places in the book seeks to contextualize these events of four hundred years ago within a modern idiom, it is at least plausible that he wishes us to connect the intensity of the social dramas of today with those past events. If so, an explicit recognition of that would have been helpful to the reader. *This book is suitable for an undergraduate course in the history of science, especially if flanked by primary source readings under the guidance of the instructor. A person with no background in the subject would also find this an accessible entry point into the subject, from which they could move on to more detailed studies, such as those noted in the bibliography. *Reviewed by Jason M. Rampelt, History of Science and Medicine Archivist, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260.

Introduction Magic has a long and controversial history grafted through the occult, entertainment, and cultural mythology. Its agency, when thought of as a mechanism of storytelling, reconciles an oscillation between natural and unnatural phenomena in as much as magic has historically been weaponised against “society’s most marginal members” (Marshall). Yet there is no substantial investigation of magic in metamodern theory that considers the nature of magical power a critical component of a metamodern affect in contemporary art. As such, this article will argue that magic in this regard positions the idea into the affectual state within two structures of experience. While metamodern thought prescribes an ontological approach through what Vermeulen prompts as a structure of feeling (Vermeulen 2017), this article proposes a more complex assessment of affect in metamodernism by adding a ‘structure of reason’ where both assessments of an oscillation between singularity and relativism are determined from magic. In this, where a structure of feeling is assessed through an ontological approach to interpret an emotional affect, a structure of reason uses an epistemological approach to establish a knowledge-based affect. Further, this article proposes the affectual considerations of magic as a magical power from affect to invite new ways to consider both reason and feelings within the subject, most notably through recent contributions of UK artist Damien Hirst and Australian artist Shaun Wilson. From witches to vampires, and sorcerers to wizards, these actors of magic, across the state, institution, and local partisan, have historically conjured fear and trepidation (Flint), and fascination (Leddington): most recently in popular cinema, literature, and gaming of magical realism. Yet the comprehension of magic in contemporary society, from films to books to fashion, has integrated, on the one hand, a commercialisation of branding magic through popular culture, and, on the other hand, the socialising of magic, whether festive or occult-based national holidays, celebrations, cosplay, and other socially orientated gatherings. These, of course, hark back to the narrational elements of folklore firmly integrated within cultural social practice. Yet how can magic and affect be thought of as acting together in contemporary art outside of associations from the occult and unnatural powers? Affectual discussions after modernism from Deleuze, Foucault, and Derrida, and after postmodernism from Gibbons, van der Akker, and Vermeulen, connect a similarity by way of agreement that affect is a relational phenomenon prompted by experience. Whether this be a postmodern, post-structuralist, deconstructionist, or even a post-postmodern context, magic as a condition of affect offers a way to understand affect from a different perspective than previously debated. However, there are several considerations for magic in affect that this article will address throughout that affords a suitability for metamodernism than, say, other branches of modernity such as postmodernism, which structurally lacks the ability for the arts to consider magic as an affectual experience in ways that metamodernism can accommodate. Herein exist three variations of magic for metamodernism: the magician who engages such power as an affectual actor; the presence of a magical power as an affectual state; and the condition of a magical power as an affectual experience. In this sense, magic is a term that this article will argue is about the condition of a magical power in metamodern affect, as represented in Figure 1. As relativism and singularity surmount an affectual structure, magic is argued to be a conduit between affect and an assessment of a metamodern oscillation, which is between an ontology and an epistemology. Fig. 1: A diagram of Metamodern Affect and Magic. (Used with permission) Furthermore, the inclusion of magic into the modelling of metamodern affect as a formalism achieves two key points. The first is to reconfigure the term from its semantic heritage to otherwise be part of an affectual process. The second is to examine this process to understand magic as a condition of affect, which enables what kind of assessment such mechanisms will determine the affectual structure through experience. If, say, magic was thought of as an agent of experience from an oscillation, then magic in this sense functions as the effect of an oscillation, but not as a starting point or, to be precise, an unrelated stand-alone mechanism. For magic to exist in this modelling proposal, it needs to be a condition from an oscillation to a structured assessment of experience. If accepted debates (Gibbons) about affect after postmodernism indicate that a structure of feeling, and, for that matter, metamodernism, is indicative of how an assessment of feelings can be derived through lived experience, an epistemological reading gives an assessment of reason through experience that, in art, enables the viewer to justify emotions through logic to form an understanding of knowledge from experience. Debates across other fields, such as psychology, philosophy, anthropology, and critical theory, have located magic in these three affectual areas paramount to emotions, non-reality, and reason. R.G. Collingwood, for example, argued that “magic is the evocation of emotions needed for practical life” (Collingwood 77). Collingwood’s “magic in the basic phenomenological sense” is one that “refers to any practice in which we evoke and sustain emotions for a practical purpose” (Greaves 277). Likewise, Sartre also referenced two key terms, which differed between “magic” and “magical image”, and contrasted between images imprinted through imagination, which he describes as “caught in its own snare” (Sartre 76-77). Similarly, the Sartrean perspective of magic identifies as the acts of imagination to be enacted through reality in a sense of totality from freedom. Other perspectives, such as both Patrick and Chin’s discussion of magical realism and Morton’s causality of realist magic as an object-oriented ontology, or OOO for short, typifies the extent of recent academic debates surrounding magic favouring ontological structures. Yet for metamodernism, work such as Kapferer’s claim that “magic, sorcery and witchcraft are at the epistemological centre of anthropology” (Kapferer 1) offers insight into considering both ontological and epistemological structures in a metamodern affect, where his debate gives a nod to how a structure of reason can offer artists a way to create work with magic as a condition that detaches from archetypal representations of magic; that is to say, causal narrative associations such as ‘a witch cast a spell’ or ‘the apple made Snow White sleep’, thus discussed in mainstream thought about magic. Moreover, an epistemological and ontological reading of magic reconciles the differentiation of the agent, the effect, and the condition through an affectual experience. An example of an ontological assessment will be considered in recent works of the former Young British Artist (YBA) Damian Hirst, who mines an ontological approach to art through a type of aesthetic-driven meta-romanticism. As Vermeulen describes the YBAs as “concerned first and foremost with dominant discourses of the present, such as capitalism, consumerism, patriarchy, institutional racism, simulation and mediation” (Vermeulen, “Snap!”), Hirst, the leader of the movement from the early days of his 1988 student exhibition Freeze, imbued issues of life and death, mortality, consumerism, and irony in his art none more postmodern than his 1999 goliath sculpture Hymn, an upscaled bronze “exact replica of Humbrol Limited’s Young Scientist Anatomy Set” (Davis). Yet an affectual turn in art gestated since the 2000s warrants a different reading of Hirst's work outside of a late postmodern assessment of the “end of history” (Fukuyama). His return to painting in the late 2010s through the Veil and Cherry Blossom series abandoned the once critique of consumerism and the ironic to become what Hirst describes as the need to “make paintings that were a celebration” (Hirst). In particular, within postmodern art, there are no capabilities of ‘celebration’ in assessing the subject, and this is what this article argues as the affectual turn for Hirst to create dialogue of an oscillation from a metamodern ontology and, thus, an affectual condition of magic. Prior to the recognised debates of Metamodernism in the 2010s, assessment of Hirst’s work was described as “post-romanticism” (Moscovici), while Luke White’s Marxist considerations in 2009 argued that “Hirstean sublime marks the return of the disavowed violence inherent to capital” (White 2), further adding that “it is subject, not to an ontology, but to a Derridean hauntology” (White 59). Yet neither of these comments address what we now understand as a metamodern oscillation, and thus remain in contrast to the turn of Hirst in later series, making the point that there are two eras of Hirst – before the affectual turns of 2015 and afterwards. While the staples of critique about Hirst’s work continue to focus on, mainly, financial conversations and the artist's personal wealth, these considerations, in fact, have nothing to do with the artefacts produced as subjective art forms, and as such will be ignored altogether. In the context of metamodernism, the Hirst critique as retrograde protests about his wealth and success are more like the whining about a perceived banality of late postmodern conceptual art than they are about a critique of the artefacts themselves. Moreover, this article considers the dearth of arts critique about Hirst’s work since the late 1980s as limited at best in establishing commentary about affect – ranging from arguments from a Marxist, critical theory, phenomenological, and postmodern perspective – and instead argues that a metamodern reading of his art forms provides a more sober contextualisation of the subject, and by and for the subject. Insofar as magic has a place in this debate, the access of experience by the subject from oscillation contextualises an affectual condition, placing the viewer of Hirst’s recent art as both the magician and the witness to magic from an affectual experience. Hirst’s 2021 Sea Paintings series of photo-realistic monochromatic oil on canvas paintings splattered with free-throw gestural marks depict representations of photographs of specific coastal sites in Britain. On reading these works, there is a direct relationship with the wider seascape tradition in painting, especially familiar in examples of maritime romanticism. Fig. 2: Damian Hirst, Okta. (Used with permission) The melancholic drama of seascapes such as Turner’s Snow Storm – Steam Boat of a Harbour’s Mouth, August Friedrich Kessler’s Seascape 1866, and Ivan Aivazovsky’s Shipwreck all play into a history of schools of thought that propel Hirst into the same kind of historical ontology. The cataclysm of nature’s power over human activity enacts a commonality among seascape traditions, where the Sea Paintings series remove human form to continue the tragedy and drama of the seascape's formalism. When considered through oscillation, of drama and isolation, absence and presence, and history and post-history, these meta-references loaded within the seascape tradition impact on the experience from magic to derive an ontological assessment as a structure of feeling. By virtue of the tradition it represents, Sea Paintings are a deeply ontological experience where both the magical power as an affectual state and a magical condition as an affectual experience play out as a process embedded between the subject and the viewer. This demonstrates a way to consider magic as a procedural step in defining the experience of contemporary art as a metamodern exchange from oscillation to a structure of feeling. Fig. 3: Shaun Wilson, The Black Period Cantos XIII. (Used with permission) In similarity, an epistemological assessment from magic to a structure of reason is considered in Shaun Wilson’s 2022 monochromatic The Black Period Cantos video artworks. They represent part of the wider series The Black Period, which includes video and painting art forms as digital combines of both physical and non-fungible token artworks of the same image. “All [of these] exist as a multimodal mechanism, but simultaneously function independently of each other’s influence without dominance” (Wilson, “Affordances” 3). Each Canto takes their subject from the ongoing slow cinema series 51 Paintings Suite, which recreates the poses of characters from black plague-era German religious paintings as a collective of twenty short-form videos, composited with roundel and rectangle shapes reconfigured from individual paintings from other The Black Period series artefacts. Like the Sea Paintings, echoes of romanticism form the compositional subject but are contrasted by the intervention of the roundel and diptych paintings as if ‘block heads’ of the depicted characters. The epistemological reading of this assessment is supported by the artist’s statement “to contribute to current Metamodern debates by creating a structure of reason through an epistemological approach to metamodern affect” (Wilson). The contested artworks forgo an ontological structure of feeling to instead create a structure of reason. This article argues that the difference in reading such an assessment is prompted by the interventions of the roundel and rectangle shapes, which contrast with the surrounding cinematic frame. While Hirst also uses interventions of paint splatters randomly flung at the Sea Paintings, these interventions still warrant a structure of feeling. First, the contrast between these gestural marks and the photo-realistic backgrounds is of the same aesthetic, and second, by the intentions of the artist “to make paintings that were a celebration” (Hirst). Learning from this, aesthetic disruption is a determining factor of magic when connecting to either a structure of feeling or reason. These disruptions in The Back Period Cantos enable magic to be assessed at an epistemological level, where the properties of reason enable a jolt for the viewer out of romanticism and into a state of reason. If, say, the cinematic backgrounds were void of colour field disruptions, the emotive response to such images then would lend itself ontologically to a romanticism, given that much of the composition and characters reposed from the German source paintings imbue the hallmark ontological signposts of sincerity, tragedy, and, in the case of the German Romanticism school of painting, reference material to medieval representation. Yet by the disruptions of the colour field images at a disruptive sublimity of aesthetic consideration, and the meta-references of the shapes being appropriations of the physical enamel on linen paintings made in the wider The Black Period series, the presence of meta references in the compositions moves away from feelings as an ontology, but instead to epistemological reason and knowledge by this contrasted aesthetic merger. Here, magic derives an affectual structure to reason based on aesthetic, contrasting in as much as it does by the introduction of meta disruptions. Conclusion This article has discussed the metamodern affect in terms of a process that builds on existing debates about ways to experience art through the subject. It has established two key points. First, that magic is a term that moves away from its semantic history to be a mechanism that prescribes both ontological and epistemological assessments of metamodern affect to experience art. Second, that these assessments are derived from a condition of metamodern affect, represented in the recent art of Damien Hirst and Shaun Wilson. These mentioned artefacts are discussed in a way that has demonstrated a reading of these artworks that connects metamodernism to an ever-evolving understanding of how the subject can be assessed, and thought about when considering feelings and reasons to inform the subject through creative practice. Where existing metamodern literature has focussed on ontological readings of this process, especially through a structure of feeling, this article has expanded such debate by also considering a structure of reason in these assessments. Simultaneously, such assessments are proposed to include magic as a central condition from oscillation, which signifies a more complex and broader understanding of how affectual structures in metamodernism can process the experience of art. Magic in this sense becomes a condition of metamodern affect, like a magical power, yet without the mechanical mythology of unnatural phenomena or the agency of magical beings. The broader implications for magic when used in this type of semantic still respect the historical legacy of its heritage, while simultaneously distancing this history by a plausible theoretical application used to model metamodern thought. The assessment by which magic has been discussed throughout this article brings about an understanding of its history and rational application, capable of considering a robust way to explain contemporary art through emotive and rational structures that otherwise would be disparate in both thinking about and approaches to art. Metamodernism in this regard provides a contemporary debate in oscillation by which magic has been employed to amplify these differences without dominance or influence from one or the other. Magic, when thought of as a mediator from this condition, becomes a useful mechanism to engage with that this article considers enabling a better way of assessing art in contemporary times. The oscillation of relativism and singularity as ‘before affect’ and the affectual structures as ‘after affect’ are regulated by magic, which the working model of metamodern affect in Figure 1 demonstrated through a grounded conceptuality. Looking beyond such would certainly invite further discussion into other affectual structures for the metamodern, in what future discussion could derive from other philosophical branches for metamodernism, including phenomenology, axiology, and ethics that I will further explore in future research. The inclusion of magic into metamodern thought brings a new way to understand magic, which, whilst still a condition of experience, detaches from its historical understandings and assumptions. Viewers of metamodern art, in this sense, are both the magicians and witnesses of magical powers through affect. Both identities engage the structure of experience by using magic as a procedural step in this condition. What this signifies is a new way to understand magic and art within metamodern affect. In the work of Hirst and Wilson, there are numerous connections to affectual magic, as previously discussed, that integrate ways of assessing affect to create a more enriching way to experience these artefacts. Readings of Sea Paintings situate magic in the ontological experience from an assessment of a structure of feeling based on the ontology of the British and German seascape traditions. Readings of The Black Period Cantos demonstrated the use of affectual magic as an epistemological assessment of a structure of reason from the interventions of colour field abstractions and meta references disrupting the romanticised cinematic subject. 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