Based on research spanning five decades, Brian Copenhaver's ambitious work covers a long time frame and a big subject. Its central argument is that until the Enlightenment, educated people in the West almost always believed in magic (in some sense) and that this belief had philosophical foundations. The book begins with a critique of the historiography of magic over the last century and a bit, before taking us from the origins of magic (as a concept), through Renaissance figures such as Marsilio Ficino, then on to the Enlightenment and a present-day coda. The historiographic critique is important. Copenhaver traces this from James George Frazer's monumental Golden Bough (1890, but much expanded by its 1906–1915 third edition), then through other notables, including Aby Warburg, Lynn Thorndike, Frances Yates and Daniel Pickering Walker. His aim is to provide a corrective for these still-influential accounts, notably Frazer's evolutionary model in which magic is replaced by religion, religion by science. Likewise, Copenhaver challenges Yates's narrative linking post-medieval enthusiasm for magic with a rediscovered Hermetic tradition. This, he argues, is ‘a distortion, if not an illusion’, which he carefully dismantles (p. 224). He feels a closer affiliation to Walker, whose Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella (1958) offers an explanation of why Marsilio Ficino and others pursued magic and demonstrates that their work gave it a philosophical foundation, countering Frazer's simplistic characterization of magic as primitive.

Although written as a history from antiquity to the Enlightenment, the narrative places particular emphasis on the Renaissance, with Ficino, the last great voice of Neoplatonism and one of the most influential premodern writers on magic, taking centre stage. Copenhaver immerses the reader in the intellectual and literary world of Ficino and other philosophers, with the consideration of classical and medieval writers coming through their pens, as Aristotelian, Neoplatonic and (to a far lesser extent) Hermetic ideas came together in a rich mix. The changing availability of ancient and medieval texts – Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus and other Neoplatonists, the Aristotelian commentators, among others – was crucial to these developments, he shows. The discussion is at once illuminating and bewildering in its rich tapestry of ideas, particularly once one appreciates that that there has never been a single easily definable ‘magic’. Like religion, it has remained flexible, able to adapt and absorb.

The book builds to some considerations about the repudiation of magic during the Enlightenment. Copenhaver shows that magic was being written about well into the seventeenth century and beyond, though less so by eminent intellectuals. From this period, new ways of ‘seeing scientifically’, including the proliferation of pictorial sources, ‘eventually, after much hesitation, chased the dragons out of natural history and purged it of magic’ (p. 299). At the same time, Francis Bacon, Gabriel Naudé and others assimilated natural magic rather than eliminating it. Come the eighteenth century, however, magic was more completely eliminated from natural philosophy following a larger crisis of confidence in the principles of Aristotelian philosophy. The unseen did not disappear, but was no longer considered ‘occult’ in the pejorative sense that adhered to the word. After Leibniz, occultism vanished from philosophy.

Words are crucial to this narrative – the right words said, or written, by the right person in the right way. This applies as much to Copenhaver's discussion of the historiography of magic as to his analysis of historical texts. This book is a lesson in the textual analysis of philosophical works, in the care needed with terminology and definitions, the word ‘magic’ being an obvious case in point. It is not so concerned with those performing magic (although some of these authors may have done so), although it does consider some of the phenomena that aroused philosophical interest: the effects of rhubarb, the evident action at a distance of the torpedo (the fish), the nature of amulets. I might like to know more in a practical sense about who was doing what, when and how, but this is not Copenhaver's intention, as he makes clear.

The philosophical aspects – ongoing speculation as to the mechanisms of astrological and magical causation, the distinction between signification and causation, the attempt to differentiate natural from demonic magic – are covered well. Any prospective reader might, however, benefit from some grounding in the literature to follow Copenhaver's highly condensed narrative. Prior knowledge seems to be assumed in many places, although the extensive bibliography is in itself a valuable assemblage of key sources.

Copenhaver writes with a confidence justified by his long track record, of which this is a rich synthesis. There are many illustrations, although they are of varying quality and used rather disappointingly, placed within the text but rarely referred to, leaving the reader at times unsure of what they are adding to the argument. Nevertheless, this is a significant work that brings together decades of thinking about an important subject for the history of science and helps to cast it in a new light. It is grand in scope and ambition, seeking a big picture that provides a convincing account and critique of writings about magic over a long period.