By: Eric Colleary
Updated: April 16, 2022
Many libraries and special collections often hold magic-related items even if it wasn’t a planned area of collecting. Early books collections often include works on alchemy, illusion, spectacle, witchcraft, legerdemain, juggling, gambling, pickpocketing, etc.
One of the challenges in library catalogs is finding genre terms and subject headings that reflect the wide range of possibilities but are also helpful for researchers in locating rare books in your collections.
Here are a few options you might consider from authorized subject headings and genre terms from the Getty Thesaurus and the Library of Congress:
This is my preferred genre term for flagging items in the catalog relating to magic as performance. This covers everything from sleight of hand to cons to tricks involving various types of illusion for purposes of entertainment. For this heading, the performance may make superficial reference to the occult science in its performances, but isn’t intending to represent any form of occultism, religion, spiritualism, or conjuring. You might consider using this term, and then a more specific genre term like those below as appropriate.
Con artists, confidence men and women, grifters, scam artists, and the practice of scamming.
Works on performance of sleight of hand or tricks involving various types of illusion for purposes of entertainment. Not to be confused with works on the use of charms, spells, etc., believed to have supernatural power to produce or prevent a particular result considered unobtainable by natural means.
Risking money or other valuable stakes on the outcome of contests or other events whose outcome involves chance and is thus uncertain.
This term is specifically for the study and practice of ritual activities intended to control or influence human or natural events through the invocation of external and impersonal mystical forces beyond the ordinary human sphere; typical ritual activities include the manipulation of special objects and the recitation of spells.
Range of studies, theories, and practices involving a belief in and knowledge or use of supernatural forces or beings, the goal of practice being the manipulation or subversion of natural laws to achieve some desired purpose.
A subgenre of occult sciences or magic (occult science) that specifically relates to spell books and incantations.