Defining Magic: A Reader (Critical Categories in the Study of Religion)

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Furthermore, a consensus has emerged amongst anthropologists and religious studies specialists that deciding where religion (e. This is also shown in our 85 per cent graduate job rates, where students are now being employed at above the average salary for their industry. This involved rigorous spiritual discipline, encyclopaedic knowledge, articulated ceremonials, and the craft of handling matter according to its occult, etheric properties.

Recent interpretations (Stephens 2002; Silverblatt 2004) suggest that the reasons for this lie in an attitude of scepticism and inquisitiveness as well as a novel bureaucratic rationality, which began to pervade early-modern European society. Cookies collect information about your preferences and your devices and are used to make the site work as you expect it to, to understand how you interact with the site, and to show advertisements that are targeted to your interests. Indeed, scholarship based on immersion in concrete socio-cultural settings has, from its inception, recognised magic as an existential resource people draw upon ‘to compensate for the uncertainties of chance and to forearm against bad luck’ and ‘create confidence, enhance hopes and anticipations’, as fieldwork pioneer Bronislaw Malinowski wrote describing vernacular propitiatory agricultural spells amongst Trobriand islanders (1935: 217, 246).Taking a closer look at the various “magicians” mentioned in our text, one wonders, however, whether there is a semantic bond that holds them together – he classifies, among others, Zoroaster, mythological figures from Homer (the Sirens, Circe, Teiresias), the Thessalians, Orpheus, Osthanes, Greek philosophers (Pythagoras, Empedocles, Democritus, Plato), Moses and the Jews, and even the Gallic druids as experts in the field. These activities were quite distinct from the sphere of religion understood as the worship of the Gods. The passage presented here stems from the beginning of Book 30, which forms part of a set of twelve books treating botany, pharmacology and medicine (Books 20 to 32) and, in particular, of five books on remedies made from animals (Books 28 to 32).

Defining Magic is the first volume to assemble key texts that aim at determining the nature of magic, establish its boundaries and key features, and explain its working.Dr Matteo Benussi, Department of Humanities, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Dorsoduro 3484/D, Venice, Italy. Instead of Mock, you can use create_autospec, which intended to create Mock objects with specification. Categories like ‘primitivism’ and ‘barbarity’ would not get us very far in exploring magic, not only because anthropologists consider such evolutionist concepts inherently misleading and derogatory, but also because all types of societies, including ones characterised by highly complex technology, organizations, and scientific knowledge, appear to have room for magic. Though scholars agree that late modernity has witnessed a resurgence of organised religions as well, magic, with its experimental, do-it-yourself character, appears particularly well-aligned with the post-secular spirituality of the twenty-first century. Practitioners of some branches see their practices as having very little in common with other branches.

People who throw accusations of appropriation around on an erroneous or false basis only serve to assist those who wish to dismiss the concept. Coral Garden and their magic: a study of the methods of tilling the soil and of agricultural rites in the Trobriand Islands. Access options Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. Down on his luck, his mother suggested he approach Henry Stone’s TK Records, a Miami-based independent powerhouse best known for cultivating the rise of disco with genre-defining hits such as Rock Your Baby by George McCrae (which topped charts in the UK, the US and across Europe), Ring My Bell by Anita Ward (another massive No 1 in Britain and the US), and an avalanche of hit records by KC and the Sunshine Band.Defining Magic' is the first volume to assemble key texts that aim at determining the nature of magic, establish its boundaries and key features, and explain its working. Orientalism, as literary and cultural critic Edward Said labeled this phenomenon, has its roots in the sense of the "other" found in the earliest definitions of magic (notably the Magi as Persian foreigners) and in the Renaissance penchant for Egyptian, Hebrew, and Arabic materials. Modern popular magic has appeared in the realm of entertainment, generally as a plot device in stories and movies, as tricks aimed at children, and as mysterious sleight-of-hand illusions in magic shows that delight the audience’s sense perceptions and challenge their reasoning ability.