Defining Magic: A ReaderMagic has been an important term in Western history and continues to be an essential topic in the modern academic study of religion, anthropology, sociology, and cultural history. 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. The reader brings together seminal writings from antiquity to today. The texts have been selected on the strength of their success in defining magic as a category, their impact on future scholarship, and their originality. The writings are divided into chronological sections and each essay is separately introduced for student readers. Together, these texts - from Philosophy, Theology, Religious Studies, and Anthropology - reveal the breadth of critical approaches and responses to defining what is magic. CONTRIBUTORS: Aquinas, Augustine, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Dennis Diderot, Emile Durkheim, Edward Evans-Pritchard, James Frazer, Susan Greenwood, Robin Horton, Edmund Leach, Gerardus van der Leeuw, Christopher Lehrich, Bronislaw Malinowski, Marcel Mauss, Agrippa von Nettesheim, Plato, Pliny, Plotin, Isidore of Sevilla, Jesper Sorensen, Kimberley Stratton, Randall Styers, Edward Tylor |
Contents
| 1 | |
Historical Sources | 15 |
Foundational Works of the Academic Debate | 67 |
MidTwentiethCentury Approaches to Magic | 125 |
Contemporary Voices | 193 |
| 263 | |
| 277 | |
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Common terms and phrases
action Alcibiades ancient anthropology astrology Azande behaviour belief cause ceremony Chapter Christian claims cognitive concept of magic cult cultural debate defining magic definition of magic demons discourse distinction divine dragon Durkheim effects Émile Durkheim Encyclopédie Enneads Esotericism Etymologiae Evans-Pritchard example experience explain fact force Frazer Greek Helena Petrovna Blavatsky Horton human ideas individual interpretations James George Frazer knowledge Leeuw Lévi-Strauss Magi magic and religion magic arts magical consciousness magical rites magician Malinowski man’s Mauss means medicine Melanesia mental metonymic mind modern mystical nature notions objects observation occult ofthe one’s oracles particular performance phenomena philosophy Plato Plotinus practices primitive principle relation religious representations ritual sacred scholarly scholars scientific social society sorcerer Sørensen spells spirits Styers supernatural superstition symbolic sympathetic magic Tambiah theoretical things thinking thought tion traditional Tylor universal Western witch witchcraft words Zande Zoroaster