The first Societas Magica conference proved a great success, both academically and socially.  Its small scale, its campus location (which prevented the participants from slipping out of sessions and into local tourist attractions), and the healthy mixture of seasoned scholars, recent recipients of the PhD, and graduate students, were among the major factors which ensured this success.

But more than anything else, it was the thematic unity and common interests which made all the sessions interesting and thought-provoking. For someone like myself, with a background in  ancient history and a deeper knowledge of ancient and medieval Jewish magic, this was an opportunity to hear interesting papers on issues with which I already was at least partly familiar (including the biblical stories of Elijah and Elisha, late-antique Neoplatonism, and Christian Kabbalah), and on topics which were entirely new to me (including modern paganism, the works of Ernesto de Martino, and Descartes' dreams).  Moreover, all the sessions were conducted in truly academic spirit, with incisive comments and lively discussions but no  acrimonious bickering, and the social events (at least those I did not miss because of my own jet-lag!) were characterized by a relaxed and friendly atmosphere.

Thus, the only improvement I could suggest, for the next conference of the Societas Magica, would be to try to attract more scholars working on non-Western magic, including the Ancient Near East, India, China, and other regions and periods.  Such an opening up of our intellectual horizons will further enrich all the participants in this conference, and shed even more light on the cross-cultural similarities and differences of the magical texts and practices we all find so interesting.

Gideon Bohak / Tel-Aviv University

Assembling forty-five scholars from seven countries, six provinces and seven states, the conference "Magic: Frontiers and Boundaries" (held 11-15 June 2008 at the University of Waterloo’s REV Conference Centre) kicked off with a broad, conceptual keynote talk on the Coptic magic of late antiquity by Professor Marvin Meyer (Chapman University) which set the stage for the rest of the conference. The brainchild of Claire Fanger (Societas Magica) and David Porreca (UW, Classical Studies), the objective of our SSHRC-funded gathering was to examine the hows and whys of defining human religious, philosophical or even scientific activity as "magical" across time and space. Magic is a slippery concept: the closer you examine it, the more elusive it seems...

Braving Waterloo’s sometimes stifling heat, participants heard rigorous and enlightening papers arranged according to a rough chronological/conceptual order. Highlights ranged from Professor Gideon Bohak (Tel Aviv University) presenting his exploration of all 140,000 fragments from the Cambridge University Library’s Genizah collection for magical texts, to Dr Marco Pasi’s (University of Amsterdam) presentation of nine "Theses on Magic" which both summarized the general thrust of the conference and provided a functional definition of magic: essentially a Western concept which can’t be applied to other cultures without significantly altering its semantic space.

Thursday evening’s keynote presentation by Professor Richard Kieckhefer (Northwestern University) presented his findings on the geographical concentration of witch trials in the late 15th-century, while on Friday, Tanya Luhrmann (Stanford University) treated conference participants with an overview of her fieldwork on people’s relative receptiveness to mystical experiences.

Throughout the conference, a remarkable atmosphere of conviviality and open communication prevailed. Feeling at once like an academic meeting, a gathering of friends and a party, this conference represented the best of what such events can offer to the scholarly community and the world at large.

David Porreca / University of Waterloo