The DOI matches its Crossref record.
‘These Were my Ceremonies, These my Rites’: Magical Summoning in Johannes Kepler’s Somnium
Abstract
This essay examines the relationship between supernatural motifs and scientific theories as presented in Johannes Kepler’s Somnium (1634), a work that tackles geocentrism by ironically describing the lunar-centric viewpoint held by the inhabitants of the moon. In this essay, Swinford analyses the Somnium's representation of magical summoning and travel between the moon and the earth to demonstrate the connections Kepler draws between magic and the practices of astronomical observation. The essay argues that Kepler’s complex treatment of such motifs calls for a reevaluation of the role played by medieval mysticism in the development of modern science.
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Metadata
- Authors
- Swinford, D.
- Corresponding author
- Swinford, Dean
- ORCID
- Swinford, Dean
- Venue
- The Mediaeval Journal
- Publisher
- Brepols Publishers NV
- Published
- 2012-01
- Volume
- 2
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 61-78
- ISSN
- 2033-5385 (ISSN-L)
- 2033-5393
- OpenAlex
- W2538524318
- Semantic Scholar
- 86ff11c502ed936faa8596b159217d60d7802649
- Cited by
- 0
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 0.00
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- The Mediaeval Journal (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Historical Philosophy and Science
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Religious studies › Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Literature and Literary Theory › Renaissance Literature and Culture
- Keywords
- Johannes Kepler, Somnium, geocentrism, astronomical observations, medieval mysticism, early modern science
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How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: ‘These Were my Ceremonies, These my Rites’: Magical Summoning in Johannes Kepler’s Somnium. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1484/j.tmj.1.102772
- The paper
- Swinford, D. (2012). ‘These Were my Ceremonies, These my Rites’: Magical Summoning in Johannes Kepler’s Somnium. The Mediaeval Journal. https://doi.org/10.1484/j.tmj.1.102772
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
