"The overall movement of modernity is a passage from magic to technology".

"Magic represents an effort to transform miracle-working into a permanent ability of man. . . .
     "The modern enterprise of a conquest of nature has the same project as magic. . . . it reconnects with late antiquity by bypassing the Christian Middle Ages.  The latter was little tempted by magic, which the Bible forbids. . . .
     "Contrary to what is often said, magic has nothing medieval about it.  To the contrary, in this area the Middle Ages represented a step back.  Its revival is one of the traits of modernity.  It was tied to the rediscovery by the Florentine Renaissance of pagan Neoplatonism, which gave it philosophical dignity. . . . In a general way, the Renaissance was not an age of the progress of rationality; rather, it was accompanied by a rebirth of credulity.  'The Renaissance was occultist, that is why the University classifies it among the eras of progress.'  The century of Enlightenment was also that of charlatans, of Cagliostro, Mesmer, the Rose-Croix or Masonic sects.  Without speaking of the complicity between socialism and occultism throughout the nineteenth century.
     "The overall movement of modernity is a passage from magic to technology, which took over for the discredited magic."

     Rémi Brague, The kingdom of man:  genesis and failure of the modern project, trans. Paul Seaton (Notre Dame, IN:  University of Notre Dame Press, 2018), 53-55.