maps and magic in renaissance europe

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Maps and magic in Renaissance Europe

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Maps and magic in Renaissance Europe

Vesa-Pekka HervaUniversity of Oulu, Finland

AbstractContextual and interpretive approaches have broadened perspectives on historical cartography since the 1980s, but maps still continue to be understood as a means of encoding and communicating spatial information and ideas. These established approaches to maps, however, are embedded in modernist assumptions and may misrepresent the function and meaning of maps, especially in contexts such as Renaissance Europe. This article considers the meaning of the magical associations and aspects of Renaissance maps from a relational perspective. It is argued on historical and theoretical grounds that maps engaged, and were recognized to engage, directly with the workings of the world and thus exercised causations of a magical kind. The explicit magical associations of cartography waned towards the end of the 17th century, but the magic of maps became hidden rather than lost in the process.

Keywords cartography, magic, maps, relationality, Renaissance

In the dark recesses of our mind we all believe in image magic (Gombrich, 1948: 182).

Introduction

For a long time, the history of European cartography was written in positivistic and technocentric terms, but a diversity of critical, contextual and interpretive approaches has emerged since the 1980s. Traditional scholarship represented the history of map-making as a gradual improvement of cartographic techniques, which resulted in more accurate and ‘better’ maps, whereas theoretically informed approaches have recognized that maps and map-making are embedded in broader socio-cultural contexts. This means that maps do not simply describe spatial relationships in some neutral manner, but also make statements about and reproduce cultural, social, political, ideological and religious relationships (e.g. Harley, 1989; Livingstone, 1992; Turnbull, 1993; Withers, 1999).

Corresponding author:Vesa-Pekka Herva, Department of Archaeology, PO Box 1000, FIN-90014, University of Oulu, Finland. Email: [email protected]; [email protected]

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Journal of Material Culture15(3) 323–343

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Contextual and interpretive approaches have considerably expanded the current understanding of early modern geography and cartography, but the implications for the nature and functionality of historical maps are not entirely clear. The present article aims to grasp that issue, focusing specifically on the esoteric and magical aspects of maps in Renaissance Europe (c. 1450–1650, pace Woodward, 2007b). Perhaps the most obvious expression of such aspects is the occasional incorporation of astrological and calendar information into maps (Figures 1 and 2), but esoteric associations can also be less explicit (see Livingstone, 1988, 1990; Mangani, 1998; Ehrensvärd, 2006: 88–9). Maps and magic may appear as odd bedfellows but, as will be seen later, this relationship makes sense against the Renaissance understanding of the world. Yet, while the esoteric and magical underpinnings of (some) maps have been recognized, the full implications of this asso-ciation remain to be appreciated.

This article has two objectives. The first is to reassess the significance of the esoteric and magical aspects of Renaissance cartography. It is argued that the esoteric and magical

Figure 1. A map showing astrological relationships between the planets. From Andreas Cellarius, Harmonia Macrocosmica (1661), Plate 15. Courtesy of the Heidelberg University Library.



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were more deeply embedded in maps and map-making than is presently recognized. This proposal does not deny practical functions and uses of maps, but it does suggest that the general understanding of Renaissance maps and map-making might benefit from a degree of reorientation. Second, the article reconsiders how maps work. The emphasis here is on the functionality of the broadly symbolic dimensions of maps. These include, but are not limited to, the said esoteric and magical dimensions. For instance, maps have arguably contributed to such processes as the transformation of the geographically loosely defined medieval monarchies into modern states with absolute boundaries (Biggs, 1999) – but what is the mechanism through which maps performed such tricks?

This article is ultimately an exercise in thinking outside the box when considering Renaissance and other maps. The argument is overtly theoretical and draws inspiration from material culture studies rather than conventional document-based cartographic his-tory, which means, first, that the focus is not really on particular maps or their uses and, second, that the aim here is not to ‘prove’ the association between maps and magic through a meticulous study of historical documents. Rather, the article pursues new interpretive

Figure 2. The northern stellar and terrestrial hemisphere. From Andreas Cellarius, Harmonia Macrocosmica (1661), Plate 26. Courtesy of the Heidelberg University Library.




perspectives on early modern maps on a more general level. The basis of this reconsidera-tion lies, on the one hand, with the challenging of some apparent ‘givens’ about maps and how people relate to the material world around them. On the other hand, maps are consid-ered against, and as embedded in, the broader dynamics of the Renaissance world. In brief, then, the article discusses the relationships between people, maps and the world.

Magic is a famously difficult concept. In this article, ‘magic’ is used to denote certain forms of thought and practice in the Renaissance world and, more generally, as a short-hand term for non-mechanical and non-communicative means of manipulating the world. The concept of magic has obvious historical relevance in the Renaissance context, as will be discussed later, but modern views on the nature of (early modern) magic are miscon-ceived in many ways and for various reasons (Henry, 2008: 8–9). An important point here is that magical aspects of maps are not necessarily expressed in any readily per-ceived manner. Saiber’s (2003) discussion of the esoteric meaning of the apparently decorative ornaments in two of Giordano Bruno’s works on geometry is a case in point. Bruno does not explain his ornaments but Saiber’s close examination reveals that they were associated with a broader understanding of how the celestial and terrestrial spheres and mathematics were interlinked.

Alfred Gell’s (1998) work on the agency of art has inspired the present article, which seeks to apply his idea on the ‘practical mediatory role’ of art to Renaissance cartography. Ultimately, however, this article derives its theoretical basis from relational thinking which, as it is understood here, basically maintains that relationships between things determine the identities and properties of things, that is, define what things ‘are’ in a par-ticular context (e.g. Ingold, 2006; see also Gell, 1998: 122–6). This perspective provides a means for rethinking not only the significance of the esoteric and magical in early mod-ern cartography but also the dynamics of human relationships with the material world in both Renaissance Europe and beyond. Relational thinking therefore binds together the discussion of Renaissance maps and the more general issue of how maps work.

Magic in the Renaissance and beyondVarious forms of Renaissance thought and practice, such as astrology and alchemy, can be considered magical in the broad sense that they operated with powers and mecha-nisms of causation which, in the modern view, would be regarded as supernatural and non-existent. Some forms of magic involved interaction with spirits, angels and demons, but that was certainly not the case with all magic. Capturing astral powers in amulets, for instance, required special knowledge and techniques, but such pursuits appropriated per-fectly natural, even if hidden (‘occult’) properties and powers of things (see Goodrick-Clarke, 2008: 40–1; Henry, 2008: 8–9).

Learned magic in the Renaissance was associated with broader intellectual develop-ments, especially the rediscovery and popularization of Hermetic texts which were largely Neoplatonic works deriving from Late Antiquity but mistaken for ancient (Egyptian) wisdom. The Hermetica and other esoteric traditions, such as the Jewish Kabbalah, influ-enced a variety of scholars, including Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola,



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Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, John Dee, Paracelsus and Giordano Bruno. Ultimately, the vogue of magic and esotericism in the Renaissance was rooted in the Platonic revival and general fascination with the ancient world. There were some novel aspects to Renais-sance magic and esotericism, along with clear continuities with earlier traditions; ele-ments of Renaissance-style esotericism also survived well beyond the Scientific Revolution and into modern times (see Bailey, 2007 and Goodrick-Clarke, 2008, on Renaissance and Western magic and esotericism).

Historians are increasingly interested in the study of magical arts and esotericism but, for a long time, modern preconceptions have tended to result in the misrepresentation of magic in the Western world (Henry, 2008: esp. 8–14). Magic is commonly associated with superstitions and the supernatural, but such associations are quite unhelpful when it comes to understanding the nature and function of magic in the Renaissance world, where straightforward divisions between, for instance, the natural and the supernatural were not drawn in the same way as they are today (Henry, 2008: 8–9). Furthermore, of course, the very identification and ‘purification’ of such categories as nature and culture is something of a modernist illusion rather than a useful classification of real-world things (see further Latour, 1993).

Theoretically informed approaches to magic have been developed, especially in anthropology, and they range from the evolutionary idea of magic as a failed science to views stressing, for example, the social and communicative functions of magic (see fur-ther, Glucklich, 1997: 17–64; Bailey, 2006). Glucklich (1997) provides an understanding of magic that frames particularly well the attitude towards magic adopted in this article, both in the context of the Renaissance and in more theoretical terms. In his view, magic is not about belief, superstition or the supernatural in any conventional sense. ‘Magic’, he says, is ‘based on a unique type of consciousness: the awareness of the interrelated-ness of all things in the world by means of a simple but refined sense of perception’ (p. 12). Magic, then, is not some esoteric force but a mode of bonding and ‘being one’, so to speak, with a richly interconnected world.

Representation and imitation have often been identified as important to various magi-cal practices (e.g. Lewis, 1986). The specific idea of mimetic magic was introduced by Frazer (1993[1922]) and, after decades of neglect, has recently been rehabilitated by Taussig (1993), Gell (1998) and others. Furthermore, the ‘technic’ nature of magic has been emphasized again and the boundaries between magic and other practices or catego-ries blurred (e.g. Gell, 1988). This revival of old ideas, however, does not imply retreat to some outdated understanding of magic more generally. Rather, Gell and others make the point that images really can do things – exercise agency – and that causation comes in many forms and is not limited to mechanistic cause–effect relationships. Magic, in Gell’s (1988) view, ‘has not disappeared, but has become more diverse and difficult to identify’ (p. 9). He concludes that:

The propagandists, image-makers and ideologues of technological culture are its magicians, and if they do not lay claim to supernatural powers, it is only because technology itself has become so powerful that they have no need to do so. And if we no longer recognize magic explicitly, it is because technology and magic, for us, are one and the same. (p. 9)




Maps: from saying to doing

There is considerable variation in scholarly views of what maps are about, but they can roughly be divided into two groups. Conventional objectivist approaches are founded on the belief that maps are concerned with representing, and thus conveying, information about spatial relationships between things, whereas interpretive approaches regard maps as text-like representations which are not (only) about the world ‘out there’, but (also) about the broader context of map-making and the people involved in it (e.g. Robinson and Petchenik, 1976; Harley, 1989; Wood, 1992). This is a very broad generalization, of course, and may seem a little unfair especially towards the more dynamic and nuanced approaches developed over the last decade or so (e.g. Pickles, 2004). It is also true that not all ideas about historical maps fit into this scheme (e.g. Tolias, 2007: 637–42; Dora, 2008). Carruthers (1998: 230–1), for instance, proposes that the medieval map of a mon-astery complex known as the ‘Plan of St Gall’ could be understood as ‘a meditation machine’ and thus broadly comparable to Oriental mandalas.

Generally speaking, however, maps are considered to ‘say’ something. For Harley (1989), ‘maps are a cultural text’ (p. 7) and ‘maps state an argument about the world and they are propositional in nature’ (p. 11). While critical to Harley’s interpretations of maps, Pickles’s (2004) contention that ‘the map is a coded message’ (p. 52) is essentially similar to the Harleyan view; a main difference is that Pickles regards the formation of cartographic meanings as a more dynamic process than Harley. These examples serve to illustrate a very basic point: the functional basis of maps, and ultimately the reason for map-making, is thought to lie with the ability of maps to convey information – of what-ever kind (geographic, economic, social, etc.), in whatever specific form, and irrespec-tive of how exactly they accomplish this aim. The general purpose of maps is therefore considered to be fairly transparent, even if the particular uses and meanings of specific maps are not necessarily self-evident. Additionally, and theoretical treatments of maps notwithstanding, actual case studies often operate with rather conventional notions of what early modern maps were made and used for, despite occasional exceptions (e.g. Dora, 2008). Thus, estate maps appear as documents for recording economic information for certain practical purposes (e.g. Kivelson, 1999: 85–6) and ‘decorative’ maps in Renaissance palaces feature as ideological statements in a (quasi-) cartographical guise (e.g. Partridge, 1995; Fiorani, 2007).

The established approaches clearly imply that maps are intended to be looked at rather than, say, hidden in a sealed box or stroked in a pitch-dark room, which is quite under-standable as maps are images and lack mechanical functions. The conclusion seems inevitable, therefore, that maps operate in the domains of the mental, symbolic and social, whereas axes, hammers and other such ‘truly practical’ artefacts can be used, and are intended to be used, to manipulate the external material world in a more concrete and direct manner. ‘Maps have the power’, King (1996) contends, ‘to shape our view of the world’ (p. 21, emphasis added), which basically suggests that maps do whatever they do by saying something and thereby manipulating minds – there is no causal link between a map and the world, but the former is connected to the latter only through visual likeness or symbolic association.



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The purpose of these comments is not to downplay the significance of the visual aspect and broadly communicative function of maps but to expose the dualistic and mechanistic undercurrents in the present understanding of historical cartography. These dualistic and mechanistic assumptions are first and foremost products of the modern world, and their projection onto a Renaissance context can be quite problematic. It is quite possible, due to this modernist bias, that the visual and communication-related aspects of early modern maps have been over-emphasized (cf. Gombrich, 1969: 123; Errington, 1991: 270; Ouzman, 2001), which in turn encourages pursuing new perspec-tives on the functions and meanings of Renaissance cartography. This rethinking can also cast new light on how maps work more generally. It is, of course, a commonplace notion today that maps are ‘active’ and ‘constitutive’ of the world that they represent (e.g. King, 1996; Biggs, 1999; Craib, 2000; Pickles, 2004), but the mechanism through which maps do what they are said to do is not entirely clear.

To begin with, consider Casti’s (1998) approach to the workings of maps. She describes maps as self-referential systems that do not simply copy empirical data, but ‘produce additional meanings that affect the very perception observers have of the places that fall under their cognitive scrutiny’ (Casti, 1998: 10). This train of thought goes some way towards explaining, for instance, how maps contributed to the development of the abso-lute boundaries between modern territorial states (cf. Biggs, 1999). Casti’s semiotic approach is ultimately based on rather conventional ‘mentalist’ views of how maps work, whereas Lopes’s (2004) discussion of ‘directive pictures’ comes a little closer to the view advocated in this article. Lopes proposes that pictures can directly guide action rather than convey information in any conventional sense, although he argues that the directive property is limited only to certain kinds of pictures. Gibson’s (1986: 254, 258, 284) eco-logical psychology makes a similar but more general claim in regarding visual represen-tations as external aids for extending the human perceptual system. The work of Gibson also informs this article through its eradication of the organism–environment and subject–object dualisms, which in turn carries various implications regarding the under-standing of human relationships with artefacts, including maps. Before embarking on that discussion, however, I first want to turn to Renaissance maps.

Maps in the RenaissanceMore than a thousand medieval world maps are known, but these mappae mundi were not ‘proper’ geographical maps; rather, their function ‘was primarily to provide a visual narrative of Christian history cast in a geographical framework, not to communicate geographical or cosmographical facts’ (Woodward, 1985: 519). The interest in geogra-phy and geographical maps began in the early 15th century when Ptolemy’s Geograph-ica was translated into Latin, and its printed editions were circulating widely among the humanists south and north of the Alps by the mid-15th century (Cosgrove, 2001: 102; Clark, 2005: 38–40; Edson, 2007: 114–5). While the 15th century saw the beginning of Italian map printing and trade, the importance of these activities grew only in the next century, roughly at the same time that the scholarly interest in cosmography also increased




(Woodward, 1996: 38–9). Originally, there was no clear-cut division between the roles of scholar, artist and engraver in map-making, but specialization emerged with the develop-ment of the map trade (Rees, 1980; Woodward, 1996: 38–9).

In the 15th century, maps were either highly public or very specialized, but they became more widely available and affordable by the later 16th century – it has been estimated that the number of maps in circulation increased from a few thousand to mil-lions between 1400 and 1600 (Woodward, 1996: 2, 38–9; 2007a: 11). A different devel-opment also took place in the later 16th century: the first ‘modern’ atlas, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum by Abraham Ortelius (1527–98), was published in 1570 (Mukerji, 2006: 660–1). Overall, maps were made and used for various practical and symbolic purposes in the Renaissance (Woodward, 2007b). Sea charts and estate maps could serve straightforward practical purposes (although they were not always put to that use, see Baigent, 1990: 64, 67), but maps also accumulated in the libraries of scholars and antiquarians because collect-ing and ‘curiosity about geography’ were part of Renaissance scholarship and intellec-tual life (Woodward, 1996: 88–93; Mukerji, 2006: 559–60; Tolias, 2007). Maps found their way into the cabinets of curiosities which ‘were structured as a microcosm of cre-ation, ordered by sympathy, allegory and correspondence’ (Thomas, 2004: 15) and thus ‘intended to provide a microcosm of universal knowledge’ (Woodward, 1996: 88; see also Tolias, 2007: 640) (Figure 3). Engagement with maps also afforded ‘pleasure and

Figure 3. A Renaissance cabinet of curiosities. Engraving from Ferrante Imperato, Dell’historia naturale (1599). Courtesy of Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.



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joy’ and religious–spiritual contemplation (Kagan and Schmidt, 2007: 677–9). Display function was integral to Renaissance maps. Different kinds of cartographic representa-tions and perspective pictures of landscapes embellished palaces and town halls, and prints of maps could also be on display in private houses (Schulz, 1987: 120–1; Woodward, 1996: 88–93; Quinlan-McGrath, 1997; Cosgrove, 2001: 123–5; Fiorani, 2007).

Cartographic representations became without doubt a part of everyday life as a result of map publishing and trade over the course of the Renaissance (Woodward, 1996: 2) but that does not imply a general disenchantment with maps – not least because the Renais-sance perceptions of the world had little to do with the post-Enlightenment mechanistic worldview (see later). In other words, the development of cartographical theory and practice did not eradicate the esoteric dimensions of maps in any straightforward manner. Rather, esoteric philosophies seem to have informed even the work of such highly promi-nent 16th-century cartographers as Gerard Mercator (1512–94) for whom, apparently, ‘resolving different modes of vision through the mathematics of spherical projection was as much a spiritual as a geopolitical act’ (Cosgrove, 2001: 113). Given that maps appeared in various forms and in various contexts, it makes no sense to generalize the perceptions of maps in the Renaissance too far. As Schulz (1987) soberly observes, in later 16th-century Italy, some maps and perspective pictures apparently ‘overcame metaphys-ics’, but mural maps in particular show that ‘the contest between a rational and a mystical view of the world that dominated the period’s intellectual life was never resolved’ (p. 122).

Relationality, magic and image in Renaissance EuropeThe magical dimensions of maps were embedded in the Renaissance understanding of the world, and make sense in this context. The Renaissance worldview revolved around the idea of a ‘microcosmism’ which, while not unfamiliar in the Middle Ages, became more significant only with the revival of Neoplatonic thought (Debus, 1977: 33–4; Mills, 1982: 242–3). The cosmos was conceived as an animate, organism-like entity and all things in that cosmos were connected to each other by sympathy, analogy and resemblance (Mills, 1982: 242; Livingstone, 1988: 277; Thomas, 2004: 8). Astrology is probably the most well-known aspect of this Renaissance view of the cosmos. In Thorndike’s (1955) words: ‘during the long period of scientific development before Sir Isaac Newton pro-mulgated the universal law of gravitation, there had been generally recognized and accepted another and different universal natural law, which … was astrological’ (p. 273). Astrology, however, was not a separate discipline but had to be understood as embedded in the broader vision of the thoroughly networked universe, where knowledge about the correspondences and interconnections between entities was central to understanding everything, from minerals to botany and to human physiology and psychology (Figures 4 and 5) (Thomas, 1971: 337–8). Rather than being obscure or marginal superstitions, such notions were generally accepted and of considerable authority (Thomas, 1971: 337; Newman and Grafton, 2001). Ideas about the animate and networked universe did not operate only on some abstract or purely intellectual level but affected the understanding of ordinary everyday things as well. Stones, for instance, were taken to grow in the earth,




as suggested by fossils with their organic shapes and by the small pores in transparent stones that were considered to be inner organs (Mills, 1982: 244).

The ideas of relatedness and ‘connectionism’ are also at the heart of the esoteric and magical dimensions of Renaissance cartography. Astrology, for instance, was central to geographical knowledge, and by extension to map-making, because the heavenly bodies influenced the sub-lunar world (Figure 5). Celestial forces did not determine human destiny because people were capable of shaping their lives and their worlds, but nonethe-less they did have a direct influence on people and geography by determining the com-position and distribution of earthly matter (Sack, 1976: 314; Livingstone, 1988: 274–8). Consequently, astrology and esoteric philosophies, which appear broadly nonsensical to us today, constituted an integral part of scientific thought and practice well into the 17th century (Vickers, 1984b; Livingstone, 1988; Cosgrove, 1990; Debus, 1998; Bailey,

Figure 4. A Renaissance vision of the cosmos. From Robert Fludd, Utriusque Cosmi Majoris (1617). Courtesy of Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.



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2007: 200–6; Henry, 2008). This is illustrated by the fact that the Royal Society set out to study the relationships between celestial and political events around the mid-17th century (Livingstone, 1990: 361). In addition to scientists, elite and common people alike adhered to the power of celestial forces. Whereas kings and generals could consult experts, such as Tycho Brahe (1546–1601) and Johannes Kepler (1571–1630), for their astrological skills, common people resorted to almanacs and horoscopes (Cosgrove, 2001: 119–20; Clark, 2005: 44). The Church always had a problematic relationship with astrology and various forms of (what is today understood as) Renaissance magic for its own reasons (Thomas, 1971: 425–40; Henry, 2008: 11–12), but Pope Paul III Farnese (r. 1534–49), for example, is known for his trust in astrology (Quinlan-McGrath, 1997: 1060).

The Renaissance world could be acted upon by means of both mechanical and magi-cal arts (Livingstone, 1988: 277–8). While a broad spectrum of philosophies from purely mechanical thinking to mystical traditions flourished in the Renaissance, occult forces were more or less unanimously accepted as operating in the world, even though there was no consensus about the nature of such forces; some regarded occult forces

Figure 5. Planetary influences illustrated on the title page of Leonard Digges’s almanac, A Prognostication Everlasting of Right Good (1592). Courtesy of Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.




as supernatural and demonic in origin, whereas others considered them to be entirely natural (Vickers, 1984b; Kieckhefer, 1994: 820; Henry, 2008). In any case, ideas of non-mechanical causation and action at a distance were commonly held. Renaissance magic did not comprise a separate or unified tradition, and the conventional conceptions of Renaissance magic are in many ways mistaken, but the most important point here is that (natural) magic was a rational and legitimate way of studying and understanding the world and its dynamics, and magic was also associated with such pursuits as mathemat-ics and the mechanical arts (e.g. Debus, 1977: 33–73; Henry, 2008). Magic was based on knowledge and observation rather than irrational belief, and it was about the natural, albeit hidden (‘occult’), properties of things (Henry, 2008: 8–9). In general, then, the magical arts of the Renaissance can be understood as the knowledge of, and ability to manipulate, the occult networks that linked all things in the cosmos (Debus, 1977: 51–5; Katz, 2007: 26–7; Henry, 2008).

Visual images were central to the Renaissance worldview (Westman, 1984: 180–99) and images were also the basis for the magical function of maps. Renaissance thinking invested representations with power and regarded picture-making as an ontological act (Cosgrove, 1990: 350; see also Barasch, 1997: 10–24). This, of course, made perfect sense in a world where sympathy, analogy and resemblance bound all things together:

For if the visual symbol is not a conventional sign but linked through the network of correspon-dences and sympathies with the supra-celestial essence which it embodies, it is only consistent to expect it to partake not only of the ‘meaning’ and ‘effect’ of what it represents but to become interchangeable with it. (Gombrich, 1948: 176)

To paraphrase Vickers’s (1984a: 95) description of Renaissance word magic, a visual image did not merely stand for what it represented, but was equivalent to it, and to manipulate one was to manipulate the other.

Image magic is relevant here not only because maps are pictures, but especially because no straightforward division between maps and other pictures was drawn in the Renaissance and the former frequently functioned as ‘art objects’ and display items (Alp-ers, 1987). Links between art and maps existed on several levels. Map-makers were often artists as well, and the cartographic terminology of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance indicates that maps were conceived as portrayals of the earth (Rees, 1980: 62, 65). Renaissance map-making and landscape painting, being both informed by Ptolemy’s Geographica and the discovery of linear perspective, were also concerned with the same principles and problems of representation, projection, geometry and mathematics (Rees, 1980: 60–2, 67–8; Edson, 2007: 119–20). It seems reasonable, on that basis, that the magical qualities associated with pictures in general were also properties of maps in one form or another.

Map magic in theoryImage magic was a characteristic of Renaissance thinking, but its deeper understanding requires theoretical consideration, and Gell’s (1998) anthropological theory of art provides



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a point of departure for this endeavour. Gell argues that shared properties establish a bond that allows mutual influence between an object and its representation (p. 99). Thus, ‘the action of making a representational image, of any kind, involves a kind of binding, in that the image of the prototype is bound to, or fixed and imprisoned within, the index’ (p. 102). Harrison (2003), following Gell, writes that ‘if the “appearances” of agents are held to be material parts of those agents, then having access to their image is much the same as having access to a physical part of them’ (p. 315). This train of thought proposes that maps can be used to manipulate the places they represent, but questions still remain about the mecha-nism of influence between maps and places. How exactly did maps allow the manipulation of places? And what exactly did maps manipulate anyway? Addressing these questions takes us back to the subject–object dualism and Western metaphysics.

Although problematic in many ways, the mechanistic worldview with its linear cause–effect relations still dominates Western thought (see further, e.g. Pylkkänen, 2007). The mechanistic worldview represents the ‘real world’ as composed of bounded and autonomous physical entities. Physical things are believed to have a fixed identity that is determined by their physical constitution and unrelated to their relationships with other things; that is, ontological priority is given to things over relationships between them and form over process (see further, Goodwin, 1988; Ingold, 2006; Manzotti, 2006). The mechanistic worldview obviously rejects the reality of action at a distance and there-fore the kind of causal relationship between representation and object proposed earlier.

The mechanistic worldview builds on ‘the logic of inversion’ through which ‘beings originally open to the world are closed in upon themselves, sealed by an outer boundary or shell that protects their inner constitution from the traffic of interactions with their surroundings’ (Ingold, 2006: 11). Recent explorations into relational ontology, by con-trast, propose that the identity and properties of all entities are generated through their involvement in the world and determined by the relationships that these entities maintain (Gell, 1998: 99–101; Järvilehto, 1998; Bird-David, 1999; Ingold, 2000, 2006). Causation is therefore not limited to linear cause–effect relationships and the identity of a thing can be altered by manipulating the relationships that the thing is endowed with.

It is a tenet of relational thinking that there is no clear boundary between people (or other organisms) and the world around them. An organism and its environment do not constitute two distinct systems that interact with each other, but only one indivisible and dynamic organism–environment system (Gibson, 1986; Clark, 1997; Ingold, 2000; Oyama et al., 2001). Artefacts therefore extend a human organism outwards and expand its bodily–perceptual–cognitive capacities; artefacts are like external organs that consti-tute an integral part of physiological–cognitive processes (Clark and Chalmers, 1998; Day, 2004; DeMarrais et al., 2005; also cf. Turner, 2004).

Maps and other visual representations can be regarded as external aids of perception, a means for the ‘education of attention’ (Gibson, 1986: 254, 258, 284). Pictures manipu-late perception directly by guiding attention – rather than transmitting information in a cognitivist sense – and thus afford new ways of connecting with the environment and re-organizing human–environment relations (Järvilehto, 1994: 205; Ingold, 2000: 130–1; also cf. Lopes, 2004). In brief, maps and pictures reveal the world rather than describe it. This is ultimately the mechanism through which maps perform their ‘magical’ function: they mediate the perception and understanding of what the world is like, how it is




constituted, and how people relate with it. Maps manipulate the relationships that are constitutive of things and consequently things ‘as such’. Thus, maps can (be used to) exercise action at a distance.

Maps and magic before and after the decline of magicMagic in Renaissance Europe is often thought of in intellectual terms, but it also took material forms and influenced material practices. Renaissance architects, for instance, endorsed the idea that numbers, shapes and sounds resonated with the cosmic order and thus had to be taken into account in designing the built environment (Sack, 1976: 317–9; also cf. Lilley, 2004). While it is difficult, as Sack notices, to distinguish magical motives of certain architectural and spatial arrangements from aesthetics ones, astrological and magical concerns may sometimes have shaped planning more than is usually recognized. Sack (1976) cites cases of medieval and Renaissance buildings which were intended to resonate with celestial influences: ‘We have evidence that rooms, houses, memory the-atres, theatres, and churches were in part deliberately designed as giant talismans to be in sympathy with the heavens and to magnify and channel the effluvia’ (p. 317).

Maps can also be considered a form of practical magic. Magical and esoteric associa-tions of Renaissance maps are sometimes explicit – as is the case, for example, with the incorporation of astrological information into maps (see Figures 1 and 2) – but it would be unwarranted to classify maps as ‘magic-related’ and ‘not magic-related’ on that basis because the magical and esoteric associations of things in the Renaissance world may not be readily apparent today (cf. Saiber, 2003). To illustrate this point, coordinates and pro-jection grids seem to have served symbolic rather than practical purposes in the Renais-sance (Woodward, 2007a: 13), and ‘by Leonardo’s time the cartographic grid had become in its own right a talismanic symbol of Christian authority’ (Edgerton, 1987: 11). Ulti-mately, however, maps were magical not by virtue of some special designs and symbols, but because their representational content connected them causally with the relationally constituted cosmos of the Renaissance.

While it may be impossible to reconstruct the perceptions and uses of specific maps in specific contexts, it seems likely on the basis of the historical and theoretical discus-sion that the potential ability of maps to interfere with the workings of the world was recognized in the Renaissance. Furthermore, this discussion allows comprehension of the magical function of Renaissance maps at a general and ‘semi-concrete’ level. The map galleries in papal and princely palaces and governmental buildings comprise prob-ably the most illustrative example of the magical functions of maps (two of which will be discussed later) not least because mural maps retained their association with esoteric thinking in a particularly clear way (Schulz, 1987: 122).

The maps displayed in palaces and governmental contexts operated on several levels in that they expressed elite interests in scholarship and were a form of conspicuous con-sumption, intended to impress the viewers and convey a message of control over lands (Schulz, 1987: 120–1; Quinlan-McGrath, 1997: 1087, 1089, 1092–3; Cosgrove, 2001: 123–5). It may be of some interest here that the medieval Roman law of possession was based on ‘occupation by virtue of placing one’s body upon a piece of property’ (Greenblatt,



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1991: 27). It could be speculated, then, that in surrounding oneself with maps, for exam-ple in princely and papal map rooms, one was also making some kind of claim for sym-bolic possession of land, which was perhaps partly based on ‘the power of wonder’ (Greenblatt, 1991: 83) evoked by map galleries. Yet maps were not only an expression of control but can also be regarded as a means of control in the relationally constituted world of the Renaissance. That is, maps brought (parts of) the world into a single room through visual representations of that world. Given the ‘causal’ bond between things and their representations, as discussed earlier, maps would have been interchangeable, in some respects, with what they represented. Thus, in some sense, maps would have allowed the manipulation of the world through images of it, although perhaps in a pas-sive rather than active sense (see later).

The relationship between maps and what they represent can also be considered from another point of view. The two-way relatedness between pictures and objects implies that map-making attached (some) properties of the places represented on maps to the maps themselves. The Renaissance world in general, and particular constituents of it, were imbued with extraordinary properties determined by cosmic relationships, and some ele-ments of those properties were captured in maps; maps, in effect, enabled tapping into and appropriating the power inherent in the Renaissance cosmos. Thus, for instance, the paint-ing of ‘the single planet Jupiter among the stars’ in the Sala della Cosmografia of the Palazzo Farnese in Rome may not only document the fact that ‘Jupiter the planet had great influence in making Alessandro Farnese a cardinal’ (Quinlan-McGrath, 1997: 1060), but rather, or in addition, captured and materialized the power of Jupiter and the perceived special relationship between the planet and Alessandro Farnese. Yates (2002[1964]: 79–80) makes a similar suggestion, albeit in a different context, when she discusses the meaning of the enigmatic ‘figure of the world’ described by Ficino in the third book of his De vita libri (1489). There is a passage which Yates takes to refer to a celestial image painted on a bedroom ceiling for channelling cosmic influences, and she concludes that:

The various forms of the ‘figure of the world’ are thus artistic objects which are to be used magically for their talismanic virtue. They are attempting to influence ‘the world’ by favourable arrangements of celestial images, so as to draw down favourable influences and exclude non-favourable ones. In other words, these unfortunately so vaguely hinted at works of art are functional; they are made for a purpose, for magical use. (p. 80)

The power of maps in map galleries is perhaps likely to have been appropriated passively rather than used actively for specific purposes. That is, the very existence of and engage-ment with maps afforded elites a better preparation, ‘psyched them up’, for a variety of activities – in the same way that good health and nourishment improve one’s overall performance. Maps, then, were talismans comparable to Sack’s (1976) argument relating to certain designs of the built environment (also cf. Yates, 2002[1964]: 73–80). The pro-posed magical function of maps is not in conflict with the idea of their display function, but it proposes that the power of maps was targeted also at those who commissioned and possessed maps, not merely to occasional visitors of map galleries. Finally, it is worth noting that map-making itself manipulated magical powers, given that it was in part about the capturing of the ‘extraordinary’ properties of the cosmos.




Maps in map galleries, then, performed their magic at least partly by means of their high visibility and by ‘wrapping up’ rooms and people within them with geographical and cosmological imagery, but seemingly more document-like maps could also have less obvious functions. It has been proposed elsewhere, for instance, that the very making and possessing of maps – and not only the information encoded in them – was a driving force behind the extensive mapping campaign launched by the Crown in 17th-century Sweden (Herva and Ylimaunu, 2010). This proposal recalls Lévi-Strauss’s (1966: 238, 241–2) discussion of the Australian churinga and their relationship with the meaning of Western archives. The churinga, symbolic objects representing ancestors, are hidden in caves and handled only periodically. Lévi-Strauss argues that, just like the churinga, the documents stored in archives are important not only because of their information, which is often available in other forms as well, but also because documents as material things enable connecting with the past in new ways and ‘give a physical existence to history’ (Lévi-Strauss, 1966: 242). Maps, too, would similarly have afforded new ways of connecting with the world by virtue of their making and existence.

It is an established view today that the development of map-making and the linear perspective in the Renaissance were associated with the conceptual separation of the observer from the world and the objectification of the latter (e.g. Cosgrove, 1985: 49–51; Biggs, 1999: 377–8; Ingold, 2000: 230). Maps and perspective art, in other words, made the observer believe that the physical world existed separately and independently from the people inhabiting it. While cartography undoubtedly mediated the emergence of the subject–object division, these considerations suggest that, rather than heralding a new view of the world, map-making was actually embedded in, and may well have drawn authority from, the relational understanding of the world. Maps, then, derived at least some of their power from the more or less clearly conceived notion that images of the world afforded a magical kind of control over the world, although further research on the matter is obviously needed.

The relational view of reality lost its authority in due course, and maps themselves promoted this development due to their ability to objectify the world. Maps, however, did not lose their power but continued to interfere with the workings of the world by restructuring human–environment relations, which is the mechanism that ultimately explains the apparently symbolic functions of maps in causal terms. In guiding attention to certain aspects of the world, maps render the things they map literally more real than the things not shown (see also Schwartz, 1985); that is, maps shape the material world by manipulating the relationships that are constitutive of that world, specifically human perceptions, understandings and relationships with it.

Consider, for instance, the simple fact that maps are composed of, and operate, using lines. Lines on maps separate things from other things and thereby make people regard things in the material world as separate, autonomous and bounded entities (see also Ingold, 2006). There are obviously lines of all kinds in the real world, but they are quite different from lines on maps because maps represent the world as essentially static and thus hide the fact that the real world is continuously changing, its constituents interacting in manifold ways. Lines in the real world, then, are permeable and dynamic and do not mark such absolute divisions between things as they seem to do on maps. Furthermore, maps represent the relationships between things in a purely spatial and geometric



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manner, which does not account for the complex and messy relationships between things in the real world. In this respect, maps would have produced an effect similar to the early modern realistic mode of visual representation, which, as Thomas (2004) observes, implicitly ‘relies on the notion that material things have an unproblematic character which is fully available to the sensory apparatus’ (p. 27).

ConclusionThis article has discussed historical maps in a relational perspective, with a particular refer-ence to Renaissance maps and their magical dimensions. Theoretically informed approaches to historical cartography have shown that maps reflect and reproduce socio-cultural rela-tionships, and the meaning of maps is therefore not limited to their ‘objective’ content. The critical and interpretive perspectives have broadened our understanding of maps, but they have tended not to challenge the very basic assumptions of the functional basis of maps; that is, maps are ultimately thought to be about the information encoded in them.

The established approaches to historical maps are certainly useful for various pur-poses, but they potentially misrepresent the nature and functionality of maps, especially in Renaissance Europe. It has been argued that information theory is ultimately embed-ded in the mechanistic worldview and subject–object dualism, which are theoretically problematic and of questionable relevance in a Renaissance context. The present article has sought to go beyond the referential dimension of maps by reconsidering the relation-ships between maps, people and the world from a relational perspective. Maps were proposed to perform ‘magical’ functions in both an historical and theoretical sense. Historical ‘map magic’ was argued to be based on Renaissance image magic which, in turn, was embedded in the relational understanding of the world, allowing for the manipu-lation of things through the manipulation of the relationships that bound together all things in the world.

However, the ability of maps to interfere directly with the workings of the world can also be defended on theoretical grounds and in a context-independent manner. Maps, in this view, continued to perform magical functions after the explicit magical associations of maps faded away towards the end of the 17th century as relationality is not only of historical, but also ontological, significance. Thus, maps function as instruments of per-ception and thereby restructure human–environment relations. Indeed, it seems likely that maps worked against their own magical associations, which were originally a source of their authority, due to the ‘objectifying’ mode of representation that they made use of. Maps taught people to perceive the world as (if) composed of bounded and static entities with fixed properties, and thus made people relate to the world in a new manner. The magical power of maps, therefore, was not lost but hidden in the post-Renaissance world.

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Antti Lahelma and two anonymous reviewers for reading and commenting upon the manuscript. This paper is part of, or an extension to, my post-doctoral research funded by the Academy of Finland.




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Biographical noteVesa-Pekka Herva is an archaeologist and an Academy of Finland Post-doctoral Fellow (2008–10) at the University of Oulu, Finland. His current research focuses on human–environment relations in the early modern town of Tornio in northern Finland. Other research interests involve visual culture and the Bronze Age Aegean.



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