The Anthropology of Magic

172 Pages·2009·3.12 MB·English

by  Susan Greenwood

The
AnThropology
of MAgic

The
AnThropology
of MAgic
Susan Greenwood
Oxford • New York
English edition
First published in 2009 by
Berg
Editorial offices:
First Floor, Angel Court, 81 St Clements Street, Oxford OX4 1AW, UK
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© Susan Greenwood 2009
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form
or by any means without the written permission of
Berg.
Berg is the imprint of Oxford International Publishers Ltd.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 1 84520 670 3 (Cloth)
978 1 84520 671 0 (Paper)
Typeset by Apex CoVantage, LLC, Madison, WI, USA
Printed in the UK by the MPG Books Group
www.bergpublishers.com
conTenTs
Introduction 1
Section one: explaining Magic
1 Mystical Mentality 19
2 Participation: A Key to Understanding Magic 29
3 Magical Connections and Associations 45
Section two: the experience of Magic
4 Magical Consciousness 63
5 A Mythological Language of Magic 75
Section three: practical Magic
6 Webs of Beliefs 97
7 Magic in Everyday Life 111
Section four: working with Magic
8 The Nature of Reality 131
9 ‘Not Only, but Also’: A New Attitude toward Science 145
Index 161

For
Pat Caplan and Olivia Harris

inTroducTion
The study of magic is central to the discipline of anthropology. Anthropologists have
studied magic extensively, even when other social science disciplines have dismissed it
as bizarre or peripheral, but it has not always been fully understood. Due to a scientific
emphasis on reason, the actual experience of magic has often been reduced to terms
and explanations alien to its processes. Many anthropological theories have implicit
assumptions about the ultimate irrationality of magic or of the inferiority of magic
when compared to science, or they reduce magic to its social or psychological effects,
factors that can be understood more readily by the social sciences. But while magic
is often explained precisely by what it is not, magic is at the heart of anthropology
in terms of the issues it raises in relation to human experience, people’s lived realities
and the meaning of science. The time has come to propose another understanding
of magic, and it is the aim of this book to examine magic as an aspect of human
consciousness. I shall show how magic can affect everyday conceptions of reality, and
how magic can be an analytical category as well as a valuable source of knowledge.
Offering a window into human processes of mind, this perspective can illuminate
our understandings of a whole range of situations—from traditional anthropological
contexts of witch beliefs and shamanism to how we conduct science—as well as chal-
lenge our assumptions.
Studying the experience of magic calls for a different anthropological approach.
When I first started my doctoral research in the 1990s, I made the decision to study
magic from the inside, as a practitioner of magic as well as an anthropologist. I
wanted to discover what could be learnt through direct experience. Over the years,
I have explored various approaches to magic with Western magical practitioners,
and I have participated in many witchcraft rituals, trained as a high magician, and
worked with shamans. Each of these activities contributed to my realising the im-
portance of examining an explicitly magical attitude of mind. I have used my experi-
ences of direct insider research on magic as well as those of others to illustrate how
this magical attitude of mind works as a research strategy in my two anthropologi-
cal ethnographies: Magic, Witchcraft and the Otherworld (2000) and The Nature of
Magic (2005).