The University of Exeter’s Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies offers “decolonisation… feminism, and anti-racism” in its new Master’s Degree in Magic and Occult Science, the first of its kind in the UK.
The University of Exeter, which is part of the Russel Group of prominent British universities, has announced a Master of Arts in Magic and Occult Science, which may reflect the growing interest in the occult in the increasingly post-Christian West.
Delivered through the University’s Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, which by Exeter’s own reckoning is “one of Europe’s most renowned centres for research and teaching in the Arab and Muslim world”, the one or two-year course costs £12,000, or £24,300 ($29,750) to international applicants.
This gives students the opportunity to “Build interdisciplinary expertise whilst exploring your specific interests within the long and diverse history of esotericism, witchcraft, ritual magic, occult science, and related topics.”
An online prospectus advertising the course illustrates key benefits including an invitation for students to join monthly meetings of the “prestigious Centre for Magic and Esotericism” and the chance to study the course’s core course, “Esotericism and the Magical Tradition”.
Taking in a long run of magic in history, the course explores “magic in Greece and Rome, occult texts in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the history of witchcraft, magic in literature and folklore, deception and illusion, and the history of science and medicine”.
The course is not, apparently, also without a crusading, cultural element. As expressed by Exeter, delivering the course through the Institute puts “the Arabo-Islamic cultural heritage back where it belongs in the centre of these studies and in the history of the ‘West.”
Moreover, it says that students will find “the exploration of alternative epistemologies, feminism, and anti-racism are at the core of this programme.”