AbstractWhat is magic? What does magic do? Why do people believe in magic in the face of experience? After living in the Indian city of Banaras and making several trips to tribal areas in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Orissa, the author of this chapter discovered a surprising fact: magic is rarely a simple matter of belief. Few magicians and clients in Banaras ever ask themselves why their...
AbstractPhenomenology and system theory are the foundations of the “magical experience.” They offer a way out of the body/mind impasse. Magic, taken as an experience rather than as a doctrine, is the very consciousness of an overall interactional system that defies the logic of composite parts. The philosophical and anthropological underpinnings of this claim can be found in part in the...