Rationalist folklore and anthropological skepticism

Edward Clodd

1840 – 1930

Edward Clodd was an English banker and rationalist writer who applied evolutionary anthropology to the critical study of religion, animism, and primitive magic, arguing in works such as Animism: The Seed of Religion (1905) that supernatural belief systems were survivals of pre-scientific thought rather than genuine spiritual realities. A founding member and president of the Folklore Society and chairman of the Rationalist Press Association, he occupied the skeptical counterpart to the esoteric mainstream, providing a materialist framework for analyzing the same magical and religious phenomena that occultists sought to revive. His documentation of primitive magic and folk belief, even when dismissive of their validity, preserved important comparative data for the study of esotericism.