CTS: the Warburg Institute

Personal Experience

After getting myself hopelessly lost from the Euston station, I arrived at class at the Warburg Institute. To be honest I had no clue what to expect coming here, if anything, a simple museum visit. Once I found the group from being ten minutes late, we had a briefing of the history of the Warburg and the contents inside it. At first, I was completely uninterested in what we were learning about until the guide mentioned their collection of ‘Science and Magic’ texts. Essentially these texts are how ancient magics, like astrology or alchemy, evolved into our modern astronomy and pharmaceuticals. Hearing this, I wanted to explore this library as much as I could. Looking into a few file cabinets, I grew more excited from the discovery of their witchcraft and sorcery section. (these topics have a special interest to me) Sadly, we stayed nowhere near as long as I wished, and we moved onto the actual museum visit down the street. As we walked, we soon found out, the gallery was closed and therefore, the class ended early. I found this to be a blessing in disguise because I had lots of work to do on our upcoming assignments. In the future, I see this as a perfect place to collect research for assignments and personal work.