This paper will provide a scriptural and historical explanation for differing trajectories of thought among Sunni and Shiʿi scholars with respect to the legitimacy of the construction and use of Islamic occult items, such as talismans. While both Sunni and Shiʿis condemn certain acts of magic (siḥr), today’s Twelver Shiʿi scholars express more latitude with respect to the practice of certain occult or divinatory arts in comparison with some of the stricter views among the Sunni orthodoxy. This paper will argue for the reasons underlying these differences based on differences in scripture (ḥadīth) and exegesis (tafsīr), theology, religious practice, and historical influences, as well as interactions with modernity. In doing so, it will challenge the popular contemporary assumption that “there is no magic in Islam” or that the Sunni-Salafi voice is the only legitimate voice defining what constitutes Islamic orthodoxy. Special attention will be given to attitudes towards historically central occult text Shams al-Maʿārif al-Kubrā, attributed to Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī al-Būnī, which sits awkwardly between the Sunni and Shiʿi traditions, as well as scholarship on the Rasāʾil Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ, a putatively Ismaʿili Shiʿi text that has struck some as being so outside the purview of their conception of Islam that they deem its ideas to be an inauthentic voice of Islam. Keywords: magic, Islam, talismans, Shams al-Maʿārif, Sunnism, Shiʿism