Published just a year before his seminal Le Sommeil et les Rêves (1861), this book by French scholar L. -F. -Alfred Maury (1817–1892) examines the complex history of occult philosophy. A librarian by profession, Maury was widely published in geography, archaeology, medicine, law, psychology and bibliography as well as history, and was a well-known figure in Parisian intellectual circles. In this 1860 publication Maury considers the relationship between science and magic, purporting to demonstrate how people have been 'elevated' from the darkness of supernatural belief into the light of modern science. The book is divided into two parts. The first examines the traditions of magic and astrology in the ancient civilisations of Persia, Greece, Babylon, Rome, and the Orient, and the influence of Christianity on magic. The latter half includes an investigation of possible explanations, considering magic in relation to drugs, dreams, hallucinations, somnambulism, and the imagination.
