Intuitive Magicians
Anthropology has traditionally been concerned with the translation of cultures usually of non-Western small-scale or developing societies but this book is an anthropological study of a Western magico-spiritual counter-culture commonly termed Paganism. Paganism is an umbrella term for a number of diverse groups and practices, and ranges from various forms of high magic sometimes called ceremonial magic or 'Western mysteries' , through witchcraft or wicca, druidry, and the Northern magical...
Paganism and the New Age
How do magical practices fit into the general religious counterculture The period following the Second World War has seen a burst of religious creativity that has been noted by a number of authors on new religious movements NRMs for example Nelson 1987 Robbins 1991 . In such sociological analyses,9 counter-cultural movements or cults - such as those within the occult subculture - have been defined as 'religious movements which draw their inspiration from elsewhere than the primary religion of...
Preface
This is a study of certain ideas, philosophies, practices and groups within the Western esoteric tradition in the last decade of the twentieth century. I explore, through issues concerning magical identity, gender, and morality, aspects of what magicians term the 'otherworld'. The otherworld is a spiritual domain that is said to co-exist with the ordinary everyday world it is at one and the same time primordial and also flowing through time, space and within the individual. My analysis develops...
The Magical Subculture in London
'Talking Stick' is an informal discussion forum that is held twice a month when a large group of a hundred or so magicians gather in the upstairs meeting room of a central London pub near the British Museum. Nearby stands the empty Centrepoint building, which occupies a site that, according to magical lore, was cursed by the notorious magician Aleister Crowley. On one occasion when I attended one such meeting the atmosphere in the room was hot and smoky, but also charged with expectation, for...
High Magic The Divine Spark Within
Magical practice is essentially concerned with a sustained and regular interaction with otherworldly reality, and a magical training helps a magician construct an alternative framework for experiencing that reality. The main emphasis in this chapter is on my training as a high magician. My participant observation was concerned with the elementary stages of a high magic apprenticeship, and it involved what Tanya Luhrmann has termed the 'interpretive drift' - the slow shift of interpreting...
Beyond a Western Rationalist View of Magic
When it comes to the study of magic, a positivist paradigm has been common in the social sciences generally. Anthropologists working on magic and related subjects such as spirit possession and exorcism have searched for alternative explanatory and theoretical frameworks. Bruce Kapferer, in a study of Sinhalese exorcism rituals 1991 1983 , takes a phenomenological orientation that gives full weight to the understanding of human experience and does not give preference to rationalist social...
Training of a High Magician Learning a Magical Language
My initial contact with a high magic Order2 came through an advertisement in an occult magazine. I contacted the organizer, duly filled in an application for membership,3 and arranged to attend my first monthly study session of the Kabbalah. The headquarters of the magical lodge is a semi-detached house in a respectable leafy suburb of London. The lodge is well-painted and has a neat front garden. I had arrived rather early, so I parked my car and watched for other magicians to arrive. A...
Otherworldly Reality
Most human societies have some conception of otherworld s4 or a mode of reality alternative to everyday experience, which may be where the ancestors reside. Otherworldly reality is experienced through a shift in consciousness. It involves trance states and 'opening up' to a rich imaginative inner world that is often initially created during childhood. The clinical psychologist Richard Noll 1985 draws a comparison between shamanism and Western magic and asserts that both seek to control the...
Ritual and Otherworldly Reality
Individuals' experiences and expectations of the otherworld are often arbitrary and unstructured until they are shaped by the process of engaging with a specific magical tradition and training see Chapters 3 and 4 . Ritual is an important part of most magical traditions, because it is seen to be a holistic healing space from the everyday world where the magician can contact her or his inner world and the wider forces and energies of the cosmos. Alan Richardson expresses the essence of magical...
Anthropology and Magic
The early anthropologist Edward Tylor saw the magical arts in civilized European societies as survivals from a barbarous past 1871 . A similar view was taken by Sir James Frazer, who maintained that magic was the first stage in the evolution of the human mind, and that both magic and religion which grew from the mistakes of magical thinking would eventually be superseded by science 1993 1921 . Frazer worked on Tylor's view that magic was based on the association of ideas, and developed the...