A series which enters the shadowy world of the occult and
finds that in fact it was an essential part of the development of the modern
world.
Science as we know it was born in Europe in the sixteenth
century. It was born with a twin — magic. While some of the greatest minds
of the western world were beginning to understand and control nature by
scientific discovery others were trying to do the same thing using dark
forces. Sometimes the same person did both: Isaac Newton developed the
universal theory of gravitation, but he also spent more than half his career
studying alchemy and believed that divine spirits kept the solar system
running smoothly.
It hasn’t always been easy to tell the difference
between science and magic. To John Dee, court mathematician to Queen
Elizabeth I, looking at Jupiter’s moons through Galileo’s new telescope
or communicating with spirits through an ancient mirror were just two
equally fascinating aspects of the new learning. It is only with hindsight
that we see one as a scientific breakthrough and the other as delusional
mumbo jumbo.
At the centre of this series are the stories of people who
attempted to manipulate the world through occult forces. The characters in
the stories are always colourful; sometimes they seem to have been sincere;
sometimes they were obviously charlatans; sometimes it is hard for us to
tell; sometimes even they themselves found it hard to tell. The occult is
like that.
Their bizarre adventures take place against a background
of arcane and mystical theory; magic was just as well worked out a system as
science. Around each narrative the apparatus of factual television fills in
the detail: the social and historical background, the reasons for belief and
behaviour. The stories give an insight into the very nature of knowledge and
come to some very surprising conclusions.
The look and feel of this series will be a tapestry of
fact, mystery, anecdote, and visual excitement; a varied carnival held
together by a spine of scholarly fact and strong narrative. The world of the
occult enlightenment is as mysterious as any period in history yet it has
never before been visited by television.