Magical Thinking Past and Present
In 2018, medieval historian Professor Sophie Page co-curated the exhibition Spellbound: Magic, Ritual and Witchcraft at the Ashmolean Museum. For this exhibition, works were commissioned by artists Annie Cattrell and Katharine Dowson to make connections between past and present ideas and experiences of magic. Magical Thinking Past and Present supported Sophie Page’s further collaborative work to continue exploring ideas about magical thinking and the medieval cosmos.
Then In Now
Commentary from Annie Cattrell (Artist)
Then in Now is an artwork made by combining a series of short filmic notations and observations. It acts as a visual and auditory compilation of my thoughts, imaginings and responses to some of Sophie Page’s published texts, hearing her speak about her research and observing her interpretations of medieval manuscripts at the Wellcome Library, London.
Then in Now suggests a distilling and editing of some of these experiences and an exploration of medieval ideas, as seen through the lens and context of now. During my conversations with Sophie, I was struck by the certainty and complexity of medieval thinking about the cosmos. The cosmological understanding of how the universe operated seemed to permeate into everyday medieval life, the lives and behaviour of the people at that time. Their highly imaginative and detailed beliefs can be encountered in surviving manuscripts that show beautifully hand painted illustrations and mesmerising written descriptions.
LinkStill from ‘Then in Now’
Then in Now was made by observing the ceaselessness and behaviour of elemental phenomena, such as natural and candle light, tidal waters, wobbling spume in combination with specific human gestures and actions of disquiet, such as intentionally spilling candle wax and throwing stones into still water. These filmed and edited juxtapositions are intended to reappraise the continuity and timelessness of medieval thinking in the here and now.
The individual films are captured in real-time, slow motion and time-lapse camera settings. The auditory sequences are of sound frequencies such as music, bird song and the snapping of a twig. This overlaying of diverse sounds is intended to amplify the visual, giving it further intensity of focus, atmosphere and perceptual possibilities.
LinkStill from ‘Then in Now’
Commentary from Sophie Page (Historian)
The manuscript we see in the opening sequence of Then in Now is an intriguing fifteenth-century compilation (Wellcome MS 517) of diverse occult experiments to manipulate cosmic powers. There are instructions for summoning demons, acquiring a flying horse, and learning the secret of invisibility. In her film, Annie captures the slow process of leafing through several hundred pages to find magical instructions that were deliberately concealed by their owners among texts on medicine, gardening, wine and poetry. Some readers of this manuscript have left more hostile signs of their scrutiny: cut out pages, scrawled through spirit names and accusatory notes: ‘This is not worthy of the faith’.
LinkManuscript from the opening sequence in ‘Then in Now’
Practitioners of magic texts were conscious of the risks of their unorthodoxy but were nonetheless driven by a curiosity about the cosmos and how to harness its powers. Medieval people thought that the earth rested at the still centre of a dynamic cosmos, enclosed within multiple transparent spheres in continuous circular movement. Some parts of this cosmos could be felt, known and manipulated by humans, while others were the source of vaguer speculation and debate. The sphere of fire, for example, could be associated with the light and heat of a candle flame. Fire was important for cooking and as a weapon in warfare, but it also evoked the sufferings of the damned.
LinkStill from ‘Then in Now’
Ascending further into the celestial spheres, the Moon’s qualities provoked imaginative associations in occult texts: in alchemy with the metal silver, in magic with fertility, while for astrologers the Moon ruled over fools, magicians and fishermen. At the furthest reaches of the medieval cosmos ideas about its nature became increasingly speculative. The crystalline sphere was a medieval innovation to explain a reference in Genesis to waters above the firmament. Some scholars thought it had icy solidity, others that its matter was fluid, luminous and transparent. Then in Now teases out the sense of stillness, texture and movement in the medieval universe with glass spheres, candle flames, sky, sun, and images of water.
Bewitched
Commentary by Sophie Page (Historian)
Bewitched is a mirrored glass heart that sits on a traditional black wooden base as if it is a specimen in a museum. The blown glass heart is silvered on the inside and the red braid on the black base acts as a protective ring around the heart. Gazing at its undulating mirrored forms, the image of the viewer is distorted to seem surreal and otherworldly.
Katharine Dowson conceived the idea of a glass heart for the exhibition I co-curated, Spellbound: Magic, Ritual and Witchcraft at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford in 2018. In her installation Concealed Shield the heart evokes a protective shield within the home against outside malignant forces. When Katharine accepted a residency and commission from UCL in 2019-20, the heart became a starting point for our conversations.
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Bewitched: side view
Medieval people believed that the heart was the seat of the soul, the conscience and the passions. In ritual and imagery the heart was a sympathetic substitute for the whole individual, which made it suitable for rituals of devotion and magic. Votive wax hearts left at saints’ tombs deputised for the suffering individual, while some wealthy men and women requested that their hearts be removed from their bodies after death and buried separately to aid their soul’s salvation. The heart was also linked to the sense of vision because beauty was thought to strike the heart of the lover through the eyes.
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Bewitched: view from above
The link between the gaze and the heart was important, and the silvering of the glass heart in Bewitched evokes the tradition of ritual magic in which shiny objects such as mirrors, bottles and swords were used to divine the future, dissolve the boundaries between humans and the spirit worlds and trap demons. For example, a fifteenth-century magic experiment commands demons to pour their virtue into a mirror so that anyone who looks into it is instantly inflamed with love.
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Bewitched: side-view
Witchcraft theorists thought that men and women suffering from extremes of emotion were particularly vulnerable to temptation because demons promised to help them in return for the surrender of their souls. Bewitched assembles the contradictory and provocative meanings of the medieval heart: devotional, romantic, divinatory and demonic.
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Bewitched: side-view
