Levitation: The Science, Myth and Magic of Suspension

(Hardback)

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Levitation tells the peculiar story of those who have dreamed, believed, or practiced levitation through history, whether they were successful or not.

Levitation couldbe thought of best as a pre- and parallel history of aviation, but it is not reallyabout flights of the aeronautical kind. Instead, the book tracks the long-standing belief that people can actually float in the air, relatively unaided.Early modern scientists believed in the force of levity as an opposing forceto gravity; traditional societies have held deep-rooted shamanic traditionsof spirit- and dream-flight through storytelling. Ancient religious movementshave long believed in the power of ascetic saints to hover in sublime ecstasy.Magicians and mesmerists have employed the tricks of stage, cinema, andthe enigma of Eastern traditions to convince audiences of their power to liftthrough thought alone. And science-fiction novelists and urban plannershave speculated on floating cities hovering high above the earth. Many artistshave experimented with levitation too, from the Surrealists to Yves Klein.

In this book, Peter Adey explores the idea of levitation within our cultural,scientific, and spiritual lives. From science to illustration, poetry, philosophy,law, technology, and the wider popular, spiritual, and visual imagination,Levitation casts the levitator as a far more vulnerable figure than we mayhave thought.

Reviews

[a] brilliant book . . . Adeys prose rises above academic discourse to create a phantasmagorical cultural history . . . As sly and strange as its subject, Adey's book is an ambiguous, allusive and fascinating manual of unassisted flight, and I only wish I had it to hand when I was a ten-year-old would-be levitator. * New Statesman *
An exploration of the cultural and political meaning of floating and levitating in the air, Levitation is an extraordinary book. Ranging across philosophy, theology, popular culture and science, the book is a sublime revelation of how the air, and what floats in it and on it, have shaped human societies. A mesmerising and beautifully illustrated book. * Stephen Graham, Professor of Cities and Society, Newcastle University *
This wide-ranging and well-illustrated study is not so much about incidents of levitation as about the ideas of floating, rising up and moving through the air, drawing examples from philosophy, religion, magic, science and popular culture . . . Adey writes engagingly as he reveals the remarkable depth and extent of these ideas, how they have become embedded in human society, and how they have manifested or been expressed. * Fortean Times *

Author Bio

Peter Adey is Professor of Human Geography, Department of Geography, Royal Holloway University of London. His previous titles include Air (Reaktion, 2014), Aerial Life: Spaces, Mobilities, Affects (2010) and Mobility (2009).