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The Scientific Theory Of Magic
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Book Synopsis A Cognitive Theory of Magic by : Jesper Sørensen
Download or read book A Cognitive Theory of Magic written by Jesper Sørensen and published by Rowman Altamira. This book was released on 2007 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Magic is a universal phenomenon. Everywhere we look people perform ritual actions in which desirable qualities are transferred by means of physical contact and objects or persons are manipulated by things of their likeness. In this book S rensen embraces a cognitive perspective in order to investigate this long-established but controversial topic. Following a critique of the traditional approaches to magic, and basing his claims on classical ethnographic cases, the author explains magic's universality by examining a number of recurrent cognitive processes underlying its different manifestations. He focuses on how power is infused into the ritual practice; how representations of contagion and similarity can be used to connect otherwise distinct objects in order to manipulate one by the other; and how the performance of ritual prompts representations of magical actions as effective. Bringing these features together, the author proposes a cognitive theory of how people can represent magical rituals as purposeful actions and how ritual actions are integrated into more complex representations of events. This explanation, in turn, yields new insights into the constitutive role of magic in the formation of institutionalised religious ritual.
Book Synopsis A General Theory of Magic by : Marcel Mauss
Download or read book A General Theory of Magic written by Marcel Mauss and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-07-05 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First written by Marcel Mauss and Henri Humbert in 1902, A General Theory of Magic gained a wide new readership when republished by Mauss in 1950. As a study of magic in 'primitive' societies and its survival today in our thoughts and social actions, it represents what Claude Lévi-Strauss called, in an introduction to that edition, the astonishing modernity of the mind of one of the century's greatest thinkers. The book offers a fascinating snapshot of magic throughout various cultures as well as deep sociological and religious insights still very much relevant today. At a period when art, magic and science appear to be crossing paths once again, A General Theory of Magic presents itself as a classic for our times.
Download or read book Magic written by Ernesto De Martino and published by Hau. This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though his work was little known outside Italian intellectual circles for most of the twentieth century, anthropologist and historian of religions Ernesto de Martino is now recognized as one of the most original thinkers in the field. This book is testament to de Martino's innovation and engagement with Hegelian historicism and phenomenology--a work of ethnographic theory way ahead of its time. This new translation of Sud e Magia, his 1959 study of ceremonial magic and witchcraft in southern Italy, shows how De Martino is not interested in the question of whether magic is rational or irrational but rather in why it came to be perceived as a problem of knowledge in the first place. Setting his exploration within his wider, pathbreaking theorization of ritual, as well as in the context of his politically sensitive analysis of the global south's historical encounters with Western science, he presents the development of magic and ritual in Enlightenment Naples as a paradigmatic example of the complex dynamics between dominant and subaltern cultures. Far ahead of its time, Magic is still relevant as anthropologists continue to wrestle with modernity's relationship with magical thinking.
Book Synopsis The Supernatural Science by : David Barreto
Download or read book The Supernatural Science written by David Barreto and published by David Barreto. This book was released on 2019-03-10 with total page 127 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A must-read book that explores mediumship, psychic abilities, witchcraft spells, and even ghosts through the lens of scientific thinking.
Download or read book Magic in Theory written by Peter Lamont and published by Univ of Hertfordshire Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A useful manual for any magician or curious spectator who wonders why the tricks seem so real, this guide examines the psychological aspects of a magician’s work. Exploring the ways in which human psychology plays into the methods of conjuring rather than focusing on the individual tricks alone, this explanation of the general principles of magic includes chapters on the use of misdirection, sleight of hand, and reconstruction, provides a better understanding of this ancient art, and offers a section on psychics that warns of their deceptive magic skills.
Book Synopsis Stolen Lightning by : Daniel Lawrence O'Keefe
Download or read book Stolen Lightning written by Daniel Lawrence O'Keefe and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1983 with total page 598 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An interdisciplinary investigation of the role of magic in human societies, past and present, asserts that magic remains an important element in contemporary civilizations
Download or read book Making Magic written by Randall Styers and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2004 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Randall Styers seeks to account for the vitality of scholarly discourse purporting to define and explain magic despite its failure to do just that. He argues that it can best be explained in light of the European and Euro-American drive to establish and secure their own identity as normative.
Book Synopsis The Occult Mind by : Christopher I. Lehrich
Download or read book The Occult Mind written by Christopher I. Lehrich and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2012-08-24 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Given the historical orientation of philosophy, is it unreasonable to suggest a wider cast of the net into the deep waters of magic? By encountering magical thought as theory, we come to a new understanding of a thought that looks back at us from a funhouse mirror."—The Occult Mind Divination, like many critical modes, involves reading signs, and magic, more generally, can be seen as a kind of criticism that takes the universe—seen and unseen, known and unknowable—as its text. In The Occult Mind, Christopher I. Lehrich explores the history of magic in Western thought, suggesting a bold new understanding of the claims made about the power of various belief systems. In closely interlinked essays on such disparate topics as ley lines, the Tarot, the Corpus Hermeticum, writing and ritual in magical practice, and early attempts to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics, Lehrich treats magic and its parts as an intellectual object that requires interpretive zeal on the part of readers/observers. Drawing illuminating parallels between the practice of magic and more recent interpretive systems—structuralism, deconstruction, semiotics—Lehrich deftly suggests that the specter of magic haunts all such attempts to grasp the character of knowledge. Offering a radical new approach to the nature and value of occult thought, Lehrich's brilliantly conceived and executed book posits magic as a mode of theory that is intrinsically subversive of normative conceptions of reason and truth. In elucidating the deep parallels between occult thought and academic discourse, Lehrich demonstrates that sixteenth-century occult philosophy often touched on issues that have become central to philosophical discourse only in the past fifty years.
Book Synopsis The Psychology of Magic and the Magic of Psychology by : Amir Raz
Download or read book The Psychology of Magic and the Magic of Psychology written by Amir Raz and published by Frontiers Media SA. This book was released on 2016-11-18 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Magicians have dazzled audiences for many centuries; however, few researchers have studied how, let alone why, most tricks work. The psychology of magic is a nascent field of research that examines the underlying mechanisms that conjurers use to achieve enchanting phenomena, including sensory illusions, misdirection of attention, and the appearance of mind-control and nuanced persuasion. Most studies to date have focused on either the psychological principles involved in watching and performing magic or “neuromagic” - the neural correlates of such phenomena. Whereas performers sometimes question the contributions that modern science may offer to the advancement of the magical arts, the history of magic reveals that scientific discovery often charts new territories for magicians. In this research topic we sketch out the symbiotic relationship between psychological science and the art of magic. On the one hand, magic can inform psychology, with particular benefits for the cognitive, social, developmental, and transcultural components of behavioural science. Magicians have a large and robust set of effects that most researchers rarely exploit. Incorporating these effects into existing experimental, even clinical, paradigms paves the road to innovative trajectories in the study of human behaviour. For example, magic provides an elegant way to study the behaviour of participants who may believe they had made choices that they actually did not make. Moreover, magic fosters a more ecological approach to experimentation whereby scientists can probe participants in more natural environments compared to the traditional lab-based settings. Examining how magicians consistently influence spectators, for example, can elucidate important aspects in the study of persuasion, trust, decision-making, and even processes spanning authorship and agency. Magic thus offers a largely underused armamentarium for the behavioural scientist and clinician. On the other hand, psychological science can advance the art of magic. The psychology of deception, a relatively understudied field, explores the intentional creation of false beliefs and how people often go wrong. Understanding how to methodically exploit the tenuous twilight zone of human vulnerabilities – perceptual, logical, emotional, and temporal – becomes all the more revealing when top-down influences, including expectation, symbolic thinking, and framing, join the fray. Over the years, science has permitted magicians to concoct increasingly effective routines and to elicit heightened feelings of wonder from audiences. Furthermore, on occasion science leads to the creation of novel effects, or the refinement of existing ones, based on systematic methods. For example, by simulating a specific card routine using a series of computer stimuli, researchers have decomposed the effect and reconstructed it into a more effective routine. Other magic effects depend on meaningful psychological knowledge, such as which type of information is difficult to retain or what changes capture attention. Behavioural scientists measure and study these factors. By combining analytical findings with performer intuitions, psychological science begets effective magic. Whereas science strives on parsimony and independent replication of results, magic thrives on reproducing the same effect with multiple methods to obscure parsimony and minimise detection. This Research Topic explores the seemingly orthogonal approaches of scientists and magicians by highlighting the crosstalk as well as rapprochement between psychological science and the art of deception.
Book Synopsis Magic, Mystery, and Science by : Dan Burton
Download or read book Magic, Mystery, and Science written by Dan Burton and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "[P.D. Ouspensky's] yearning for a transcendent, timeless reality—one that cancels out physical disintegration and death—figures into science at some fundamental level. Einstein found solace in his theory of relativity, which suggested to him that events are ever-present in the space-time continuum. When his friend Michele Besso passed on shortly before his own death, he wrote: 'For us believing physicists the distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion, even if a stubborn one.'" —from Magic, Mystery, and Science The triumph of science would appear to have routed all other explanations of reality. No longer does astrology or alchemy or magic have the power to explain the world to us. Yet at one time each of these systems of belief, like religion, helped shed light on what was dark to our understanding. Nor have the occult arts disappeared. We humans have a need for mystery and a sense of the infinite. Magic, Mystery, and Science presents the occult as a "third stream" of belief, as important to the shaping of Western civilization as Greek rationalism or Judeo-Christianity. The occult seeks explanations in a world that is living and intelligent—quite unlike the one supposed by science. By taking these beliefs seriously, while keeping an eye on science, this book aims to capture some of the power of the occult. Readers will discover that the occult has a long history that reaches back to Babylonia and ancient Egypt. It proceeds alongside, and frequently mingles with, religion and science. From the Egyptian Book of the Dead to New Age beliefs, from Plato to Adolf Hitler, occult ways of knowing have been used—and hideously abused—to explain a world that still tempts us with the knowledge of its dark secrets.
Book Synopsis Science of the Magical by : Matt Kaplan
Download or read book Science of the Magical written by Matt Kaplan and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-10-25 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "From the author of The Science of Monsters, this engaging scientific inquiry provides a definitive look into the elements of mystical places and magical object--from the philosopher's stone, to love potions to the oracles--from ancient history, mythology, and contemporary culture. Can migrations of birds foretell our future? Do phases of the moon hold sway over our lives? Are there sacred springs that cure the ill? What is the best way to brew a love potion? How do we create mutant humans who regenerate like Wolverine? In Science of the Magical, noted science journalist Matt Kaplan plumbs the rich, lively, and surprising history of the magical objects, places, and rituals that infuse ancient and contemporary myth. Like Ken Jennings and Mary Roach, Kaplan serves as a friendly armchair guide to the world of the supernatural. From the strengthening powers of Viking mead, to the super soldiers in movies like Captain America, Kaplan ranges across cultures and time periods to point out that there is often much more to these enduring magical narratives than mere fantasy. Informative and entertaining, Science of the Magical explores our world through the compelling scope of natural and human history and cutting-edge science."--
Book Synopsis Magic, Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions, Including Trick Photography by : Albert A. Hopkins
Download or read book Magic, Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions, Including Trick Photography written by Albert A. Hopkins and published by DigiCat. This book was released on 2022-09-16 with total page 509 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Magic, Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions, Including Trick Photography" by Albert A. Hopkins. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.
Download or read book High Magic written by U. D. (Frater) and published by Llewellyn Worldwide. This book was released on 2005 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Of course, Magic is Magic wherever. But Ceremonial Magic - with or without a k ending - is perceived as largely European in origin and practice. The Golden Dawn, Aurum Solis, O.T.O were European and even AMORC, B.O.T.A., G.B.G. were mostly European inspired. As valid as these esoteric orders were and are, they are at best schools and the knowledge taught is now widely available. What is key is not the knowledge but the self-accomplishment that comes only through personal experience (otherwise known as ''self-initiation''). The essence of Magic is a simple formula based on the exercise of Will, Imagination, and Gnosis or Magical Trance. It is a ''technology'' and must be mastered like any technology through understanding and practice. Like playing the piano, it takes discipline to continue practicing basic exercises until it all becomes second nature and can function as an art as well. "And, what for? " Not to perform tricks or miracles. Not to wear fancy robes and chant barbarous words. Not to reach high degrees with grand titles in a secret order. No, it is to transform and transmute your own self and thus to become more than you were, not merely to accelerate normal human evolution but to actually move beyond and be a co-creator. And to finally answer those questions: "Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going?" High Magic is an active program for self-discovery and Self-Realization. This book by a famed contemporary German magician self-instructs the student through a series of basic exercises and real magical practices that train the magician through a consistent program combined with examples and explanations. Each step isthorough without extravagance; the program is effective and entirely self-directed (as must be all real learning); the book is encyclopedic in depth and inclusive even of chaos and cyber magic. Tables and Charts simplify the learning process. The system starts with immediate immersion in ritual practice starting with the Kabbalistic Cross and Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram and moves through beginning to advanced levels of Practical Sigil Magic, Ritual Magic, Elemental Magic, the Greater Ritual of the Pentagram, Planetary Magic, the Hexagram Ritual, Mantra Meditation, the Magical Gaze, Magical Trance, the Pan Ritual, Money Magic, Talisman Magic, Moon Magic, Chaos Magic and Cyber Magic. In each case, practice is used to instruct - nothing is presented as ''theory only.'' You will find everything analyzed, explained and justified with refreshing and truly uncommon common sense! The author fully dispels the myths and subterfuges of archaic magical orders and explores the role of the Unconscious Mind, the issues of Religion and Mysticism, the nature of High and Low Magic, the function of Myth and the role of Drama in Ritual, the Magical Nature of Reality and Magical Perception, Dream Work in relation to Magical Training, the Magical Imagination and training for Visualization, Psychic Protection, Invocation and Evocation, the Calling and Movement of Energies, Charging, Paradigm Shifting, what is really means ''to Keep Silent, '' the power of Intention & definition of Magical Goals, the ritual use of Symbols and Gestures, the power of Words, the Magician''s Universe, the magical pronunciation of Hebrew Letters, the Magician''s Tools, Mantric Sigils, the IAO formula, andmuch more. High Magic is as central to Western culture as are science, technology, the rule of law, democracy and the entrepreneurial economy. Its practice and application should be part of your daily life starting now.
Book Synopsis A Scientific Theory of Culture and Other Essays by : Bronislaw Malinowski
Download or read book A Scientific Theory of Culture and Other Essays written by Bronislaw Malinowski and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2015-12-01 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Malinowski presents in this book his definitive statement of the theory of functionalism. As the essential clue to the understanding of human behavior, primitive and civilized, he analyzes the functional principle that culture is an examination of the fundamentals of anthropology for the purpose of constructing a general system to explain the facts of culture by this principle. Originally published 1944. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.
Book Synopsis Magic, Power, Language, Symbol by : Patrick Dunn
Download or read book Magic, Power, Language, Symbol written by Patrick Dunn and published by Llewellyn Worldwide. This book was released on 2008 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All forms of magic are linked to language. As a magic practitioner and a linguist, Patrick Dunn illuminates this fascinating relationship and offers breakthrough theories on how and why magic works. Drawing on linguistics and semiotics (the study of symbols), Dunn illuminates the magical use of language, both theoretically and practically. He poses new theories on the mechanics of magic by analyzing the structure of ritual, written signs and sigils, primal language, incantations across cultures, Qabalah and gematria (Hebrew numerology), and the Enochian vocabulary. This revolutionary paradigm can help magicians understand how sigils and talismans work, compose Enochian spells, speak in tongues for magic, create mantras, work with gematria, use postmodern "defixios," and refine their practice in countless other ways. ""Magic, Power, Language, Symbol" is a unique tour de force that reinterprets the very nature of magic—placing it within the modern sciences of symbolism (semiotics) and language (linguistics). Within this paradigm, Dunn explains something that most other books miss: a logical and scientific understanding of how and why real magic actually works." —Donald Michael Kraig, author of "Modern Magick"
Book Synopsis Seven Brief Lessons on Magic by : Paul Tyson
Download or read book Seven Brief Lessons on Magic written by Paul Tyson and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2019-09-18 with total page 85 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is magic real? Could anything be real that can’t be quantified or scientifically investigated? Are qualities like love, beauty, and goodness really just about hormones and survival? Are strangely immaterial things, like thought and personhood, fully explainable in scientific terms? Does nature itself have any intrinsic value, mysterious presence, or transcendent horizon? Once we ask these questions, the answer is pretty obvious: of course science can’t give us a complete picture of reality. Science is very good at what it is good at, but highly important aspects of human meaning are simply outside of science’s knowledge range. So how might we better relate scientific facts to qualitative mysteries? How might we integrate our powerful factual knowledge with wisdom about the higher meaning of things? This book defines magic as the real qualities and mysteries of the world that science just can’t grasp. It looks at how we came to put magic in the box of subjective make-believe. It explores how we might get it out of that box and back into our understanding of reality.
Download or read book Making Magic written by Randall Styers and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2004-01-15 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the emergence of religious studies and the social sciences as academic disciplines, the concept of "magic" has played a major role in defining religion and in mediating the relation of religion to science. Across these disciplines, magic has regularly been configured as a definitively non-modern phenomenon, juxtaposed to distinctly modern models of religion and science. Yet this notion of magic has remained stubbornly amorphous. In Making Magic, Randall Styers seeks to account for the extraordinary vitality of scholarly discourse purporting to define and explain magic despite its failure to do just that. He argues that this persistence can best be explained in light of the Western drive to establish and secure distinctive norms for modern identity, norms based on narrow forms of instrumental rationality, industrious labor, rigidly defined sexual roles, and the containment of wayward forms of desire. Magic has served to designate a form of alterity or deviance against which dominant Western notions of appropriate religious piety, legitimate scientific rationality, and orderly social relations are brought into relief. Scholars have found magic an invaluable tool in their efforts to define the appropriate boundaries of religion and science. On a broader level, says Styers, magical thinking has served as an important foil for modernity itself. Debates over the nature of magic have offered a particularly rich site at which scholars have worked to define and to contest the nature of modernity and norms for life in the modern world.
