In the digital age, an obscure nineteenth-century book called Malay Magic has become an unexpected sensation, downloaded thousands of times by readers around the world who have discovered in its pages a fascinating and detailed account of the supernatural beliefs, ritual practices, and magical traditions of the Malay Peninsula. The book's unlikely popularity reveals both the enduring human fascination with magical thinking and the ways that the internet can resurrect forgotten texts and give them entirely new audiences and meanings. Written by Walter William Skeat and published in 1900, Malay Magic was the product of years of fieldwork among Malay communities during the British colonial period. Skeat meticulously documented an extraordinarily rich tradition of magical practice that encompassed everything from rice planting ceremonies and fishing ri ...