The End of Magic

Abstract

For a variety of reasons, scholars of religions no longer find it useful to compare religion and magic. According to the worst misconception, magic compels natural or supernatural forces to obey human will, whereas religion acts by supplication to a god who may or may not respond. With the rise of symbolical interpretations of magic, this distinction has stopped making sense. If the magical act is a form of expressive speech, which is not compelling but meaningful, then magic and religion become two types of one phenomenon: a symbolic rationality in relation to the sacred. Due to the fact that the magical experience can exist anywhere—a dentist's office as much as a hunting expedition—it is the subjective aspect of magic that should interest us most. Magical “empathy” can become the new subject of inquiry, the extension of the magical experience into daily life. The study of magic must combine the history of embodied experience—the ground of interrelatedness—and its articulation in concrete cultural forms.

Index

“…So magical thinking takes on greater power than analysis and observation, and outcomes are controllable beyond the hard work of analysis and tracking. 10 Magical thinking often occurs when "mental activity is too little differentiated for it to be possible to consider ideas or images of objects by themselves apart from the emotions and passions which evoke those ideas or are evoked by them." 11 Even though this is clearly irrational and clinically associated with primitive thought, this type of thinking does exist in the market culture.…”

Myth and the market: An introduction

“…While Freud thought myth to be instructive, Marx (1843Marx ( /1970 sought to expose it as a dangerous illusion, while for Barthes (1972) it was inscribed into consumers' everyday use of objects, nurturing invidious ideologies such as the marketing concept (Brownlie and Saren 1997), advertising (Williamson 1978;Goldman 1992) and 'green' marketing (Peattie and Crane 2005). Maybe we are all iconoclasts now, belonging to a less credulous age, believing ourselves to be outside or beyond the numinous and the magical (Glucklich 1997), observing the beliefs and practices of those who do with detached knowingness and perplexed amusement. This take on myths continues in recent critiques that seek to 'expose the myth' of the marketing concept, advertising, 'sustainable' marketing, GNP growth, etc.…”

Bear spends time in our dreams now: Magical thinking and cultural empathy in multicultural counselling theory and practice

“…Magical thinking has been given considerable attention generating numerous resources for exploration and study (Serban;1982;Brown, 1993;Glucklich, 1997;Stevens, 2001;Subbotsky, 2010). In summarizing the components of magical thinking in alternative and contemporary medicine, Stevens (2001) emphasizes its five key elements: (1) Forces in nature that are separate from and operate independently of any spiritual beings and from those identified by science; (2) Forces that are energized by a mystical power that exists in varying degrees in all things;…”