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Hello and welcome to Spectator Books Podcast.

I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor for The Spectator,

and this week I'm very pleased to be joined by Chris Gossenden, who is the Professor of European Archaeology at the University of Oxford,

and the author of a new book which covers a huge area of history and a huge area of geography and which tells us the story of the history of magic, from alchemy to witchcraft, from the Ice Age to the present. Chris, welcome. Now, this is a huge book. It's a huge kind of subject. Can you start, because you do start in the book, by saying,

you know, what you mean by magic? Because obviously, we're not talking Paul Daniels and the

great Suprendo here, are we? Unfortunately not in some ways. I'm a great fan of all that sort of stuff.

No, we're talking about slightly more metaphysical magic, I would say.

So my definition of magic is it's to do with the human participation in the universe,

so that we feel if we're in a magical mindset, that we can affect the universe in various different ways through speaking, through acting, through doing a

whole range of things, which wouldn't necessarily be allowed for in a scientific paradigm,

but equally the universe can affect us through the movements of planets, through a whole range,

the actions of spirits, a whole range of things.

So it posits a sort of radical two-way movement between us and the universe as a whole.

Is it different in character from, I mean, obviously we affect the universe when we design

things, when we affect machines, when we, you know, I mean, we shape the world

around us in a non-magical way as we'd see it. And equally, that idea of man's participation

and interchange with cosmic forces is something that seems to be at the basis of religion.

Now, you do draw a distinction between magic, science and religion, and you talk about

them being in a relationship. Can you explain a bit how you kind of connect them? No, absolutely.

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