Before scrolling their omniscient portable supercomputers, people looked to the stars to answer their deepest questions about the universe. Then there’s Connecticut-based artist Maureen McCabe, 79, who remained spellbound by the sorcery of tarot card readers, carnival barkers, and voodoo priests for much of her life. Her mixed-media installations and collages on the origins of mysticism are the subject of an engrossing new retrospective, “Fate and Magic: The Art of Maureen McCabe,” at the University of Connecticut’s William Benton Museum of Art through December 14. maureenmccabeartist’s exposure to art began when her mother took her from their home in Quincy, Massachusetts, to the Museum of Fine Arts Boston for weekly art classes. There, she started thinking about the intersection of cultures and became particularly fascinated by the museum’s medieval section. “We were given paper and pencil and told to find something to draw,” McCabe said in an interview in the exhibition’s catalog. ...