Despite scholarly opinion, magic still attracts and involves everyone. No disenchantment of the world, as Max Weber announced, really happened. This book follows many others in different fields, warning that the triumphal march of progress is a myth. Storm, who is Professor in Religion at Williams College, explores different sources to unravel the myth of the disenchantment. This book deals with the concept of modernity as the result of a conflict between religion and science. Culture and scholarship are full of myths and they are full of challenging and provocative claims. Unfortunately, often the myths survive while the revisionist attempts fail, because of weak arguments. Storm suggests an alternative key, a ‘trinary formation in which religion is negated by science, which is in turn negated by superstition or magic’ (p. 14). Thus magic has a dynamic function between religion and science.
Provocatively Storm introduces his readers with Marie Curie attending a spiritualist séance in Paris, in 1907: a Nobel laureate, an outstanding scientist, took part in a superstitious practice. Moreover, Storm examines sociological and anthropological surveys about various, persisting beliefs in Europe and America: thus Weber did not mean the end of belief in magic, but his theory was misunderstood. Moreover, Storm responds to science's dismissal of uncertain methods of knowing and to religion's impotence as a guide to a better world.
Relying on several different philosophical and historical patterns, Storm walks through that path, from Giordano Bruno to Alesteir Crowley, with an eye to the German philosophers (Hegel, Jacobi…) in the genesis and development of the disenchantment narratives. Benjamin, the Frankfurt School and Foucault are often mentioned. In that gallery, Max Weber represents the logical outcome of a complex process. Sometimes Storm's stream lacks a more careful consideration of historical perspective and dimension, that seem too nuanced. Ideas and beliefs have a precise birthplace, even if they are similar and common in different ages and cultures. The impact of political decision is underestimated, while it urged deep changes (sometimes). Hence Storm proposes an interesting and acute analysis. His intriguing conclusion is ‘an attempt to undo the myth that there is no myth’ (p. 316). It suggests a new interpretation of an important issue of social and cultural history as well as a broader framework. We need to historicise the myth of modernity and its various incarnations in European social theory and Storm helps us to do so.
