The Place of Enchantment: British occultism and the culture of the modern by Alex Owen, University of Chicago Press, $30, ISBN 0226642011 Reviewed by Simon Ings
AS alchemy birthed physics at the end of the 17th century, so occultism birthed psychology at the end of the 19th century. This, anyway, is the implication of Alex Owen’s The Place of Enchantment, a study of occult practices and groupings during the fin de siècle. Owen’s raw material seems worryingly trivial at first. When, early on in the book, the black magician Aleister Crowley, wearing ritual mask and full highland regalia, scares officials…
