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| magic and modernity interfaces of revelation and concealment: Magic and Modernity Birgit Meyer, Peter Pels, 2003 This is the first book to explore comparatively how magic—usually portrayed as the antithesis of the modern—is also at home in modernity. |
| magic and modernity interfaces of revelation and concealment: Magic and Modernity Birgit Meyer, Peter Pels, 2022 Magic and Modernity is the first book to explore comparatively how magic--usually portrayed as the antithesis of the modern--is also something that is at home in modernity. Magic and modernity are rarely regarded as belonging together. Evolutionism regarded magic as quintessentially unmodern. Although psychologists and romantic artists have sometimes declared magic to be a human universal, few modern scholars in the humanities and social sciences have studied how modern culture and institutions incorporated and even produced magic. This book is the first to adopt a comparative approach to the study of magic as something that has a place in modernity, and that helped to constitute modern society at local and global levels. The essays in this collection contribute to recent discussions in anthropology, cultural studies, comparative literature, history, and sociology that increasingly question the extent to which modern self-conceptions are accurate reflections of a state of affairs in the world rather than cultural interventions. |
| magic and modernity interfaces of revelation and concealment: Magic's Reason Graham M. Jones, 2017-12-06 In Magic’s Reason, Graham M. Jones tells the entwined stories of anthropology and entertainment magic. The two pursuits are not as separate as they may seem at first. As Jones shows, they not only matured around the same time, but they also shared mutually reinforcing stances toward modernity and rationality. It is no historical accident, for example, that colonial ethnographers drew analogies between Western magicians and native ritual performers, who, in their view, hoodwinked gullible people into believing their sleight of hand was divine. Using French magicians’ engagements with North African ritual performers as a case study, Jones shows how magic became enshrined in anthropological reasoning. Acknowledging the residue of magic’s colonial origins doesn’t require us to dispense with it. Rather, through this radical reassessment of classic anthropological ideas, Magic’s Reason develops a new perspective on the promise and peril of cross-cultural comparison. |
| magic and modernity interfaces of revelation and concealment: Magic Owen Davies, 2012-01-26 Defining 'magic' is a maddening task. Over the last century numerous philosophers, anthropologists, historians, and theologians have attempted to pin down its essential meaning, sometimes analysing it in such complex and abstruse depth that it all but loses its sense altogether. For this reason, many people often shy away from providing a detailed definition, assuming it is generally understood as the human control of supernatural forces. 'Magic' continues to pervade the popular imagination and idiom. People feel comfortable with its contemporary multiple meanings, unaware of the controversy, conflict, and debate its definition has caused over two and a half millennia. In common usage today 'magic' is uttered in reference to the supernatural, superstition, illusion, trickery, religious miracles, fantasies, and as a simple superlative. The literary confection known as 'magical realism' has considerable appeal and many modern scientists have ironically incorporated the word into their vocabulary, with their 'magic acid', 'magic bullets' and 'magic angles'. Since the so-called European Enlightenment magic has often been seen as a marker of primitivism, of a benighted earlier stage of human development. Yet across the modern globalized world hundreds of millions continue to resort to magic - and also to fear it. Magic provides explanations and remedies for those living in extreme poverty and without access to alternatives. In the industrial West, with its state welfare systems, religious fundamentalists decry the continued moral threat posed by magic. Under the guise of neo-Paganism, its practice has become a religion in itself. Magic continues to be a truly global issue. This Very Short Introduction does not attempt to provide a concluding definition of magic: it is beyond simple definition. Instead it explores the many ways in which magic, as an idea and a practice, has been understood and employed over the millennia. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable. |
| magic and modernity interfaces of revelation and concealment: Revelations Brian Rappert, 2024-12-16 From tabloid headlines to scientific discoveries to investigative documentaries, the claim that truth is being revealed is commonplace today. Such attention-grabbing claims can conjure allure, sell products, launch careers, cement authority and much more besides. And yet, despite the familiarity of revelation-talk, this notion has been subject to limited academic theorizing to date outside of matters divine. Revelations sets out to examine how the making available through revealing is accomplished as well as the implications of revealing. In other words, it is concerned with how revelations are realized and what is realized through them. Central to the argument will be treating attempts to make available as processes that can entail mix – that is, as processes that combine treating truth as publicly demonstrable but also as beyond simple verification, as alternately intelligible but also as unknowable. In taking the pervasive appeal to revealing as its topic, and through drawing inspiration from a range of disciplines, this book should appeal to a variety of audiences, including those interested in secrecy, conspiracy, expertise, celebrity, science and technology. |
| magic and modernity interfaces of revelation and concealment: Magic in the Modern World Edward Bever, Randall Styers, 2017-04-18 This collection of essays considers the place of magic in the modern world, first by exploring the ways in which modernity has been defined in explicit opposition to magic and superstition, and then by illuminating how modern proponents of magic have worked to legitimize their practices through an overt embrace of evolving forms such as esotericism and supernaturalism. Taking a two-track approach, this book explores the complex dynamics of the construction of the modern self and its relation to the modern preoccupation with magic. Essays examine how modern “rational” consciousness is generated and maintained and how proponents of both magical and scientific traditions rationalize evidence to fit accepted orthodoxy. This book also describes how people unsatisfied with the norms of modern subjectivity embrace various forms of magic—and the methods these modern practitioners use to legitimate magic in the modern world. A compelling assessment of magic from the early modern period to today, Magic in the Modern World shows how, despite the dominant culture’s emphatic denial of their validity, older forms of magic persist and develop while new forms of magic continue to emerge. In addition to the editors, contributors include Egil Asprem, Erik Davis, Megan Goodwin, Dan Harms, Adam Jortner, and Benedek Láng. |
| magic and modernity interfaces of revelation and concealment: The Emergence of Modern Hinduism Richard S. Weiss, 2019-08-06 A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. The Emergence of Modern Hinduism argues for the importance of regional, vernacular innovation in processes of Hindu modernization. Scholars usually trace the emergence of modern Hinduism to cosmopolitan reform movements, producing accounts that overemphasize the centrality of elite religion and the influence of Western ideas and models. In this study, the author considers religious change on the margins of colonialism by looking at an important local figure, the Tamil Shaiva poet and mystic Ramalinga Swami (1823–1874). Weiss narrates a history of Hindu modernization that demonstrates the transformative role of Hindu ideas, models, and institutions, making this text essential for scholarly audiences of South Asian history, religious studies, Hindu studies, and South Asian studies. |
| magic and modernity interfaces of revelation and concealment: Philosophical Perspectives on Esotericism Olli Pitkänen, 2024-11-12 This volume offers the first systematic philosophical study of esotericism and late modern philosophy. It addresses fundamental philosophical questions related to esotericism and reveals that esoteric ideas have had decisive impact on countless important philosophers, even if this fact has been neglected in contemporary philosophy. The first part of the book is dedicated to substantial and methodological questions. What is philosophy, what is esotericism, and how should we think about their relationship? The second section is more historically oriented, and it is divided in two parts. Part I is concerned with German romanticism and idealism, with a specific focus on the influence of esotericism on Hegel and Schelling, as well as the connection between romanticism and Kabbalah in the work of Gershom Scholem. Part II explores esotericism in phenomenology, pragmatism, and post-idealism, specifically in the work of William James, Martin Heidegger, Henri Bergson, and Roy Bhaskar. Philosophical Perspectives on Esotericism will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of religion, history of philosophy, and religious studies. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license. Funded by: Kone Foundation |
| magic and modernity interfaces of revelation and concealment: The Anthropology of Magic Susan Greenwood, 2020-05-28 Magic is arguably the least understood subject in anthropology today. Exotic and fascinating, it offers us a glimpse into another world but it also threatens to undermine the foundations of anthropology due to its supposed irrational and non-scientific nature. Magic has thus often been 'explained away' by social or psychological reduction. The Anthropology of Magic redresses the balance and brings magic, as an aspect of consciousness, into focus through the use of classic texts and cutting-edge research. Suitable for student and scholar alike, The Anthropology of Magic updates a classical anthropological debate concerning the nature of human experience. A key theme is that human beings everywhere have the potential for magical consciousness. Taking a new approach to some perennial topics in anthropology - such as shamanism, mythology, witchcraft and healing - the book raises crucial theoretical and methodological issues to provide the reader with an engaging and critical understanding of the dynamics of magic.Join the live discussion on Facebook! |
| magic and modernity interfaces of revelation and concealment: Regimes of Ignorance Roy Dilley, Thomas G. Kirsch, 2015-10-01 Non-knowledge should not be simply regarded as the opposite of knowledge, but as complementary to it: each derives its character and meaning from the other and from their interaction. Knowledge does not colonize the space of ignorance in the progressive march of science; rather, knowledge and ignorance are mutually shaped in social and political domains of partial, shifting, and temporal relationships. This volume’s ethnographic analyses provide a theoretical frame through which to consider the production and reproduction of ignorance, non-knowledge, and secrecy, as well as the wider implications these ideas have for anthropology and related disciplines in the social sciences and humanities. |
| magic and modernity interfaces of revelation and concealment: Astrology and Popular Religion in the Modern West Nicholas Campion, 2016-04-15 This book explores an area of contemporary religion, spirituality and popular culture which has not so far been investigated in depth, the phenomenon of astrology in the modern west. Locating modern astrology historically and sociologically in its religious, New Age and millenarian contexts, Nicholas Campion considers astrology's relation to modernity and draws on extensive fieldwork and interviews with leading modern astrologers to present an invaluable contribution to our understanding of the origins and nature of New Age ideology. This book challenges the notion that astrology is either 'marginal' or a feature of postmodernism. Concluding that astrology is more popular than the usual figures suggest, Campion argues that modern astrology is largely shaped by New Age thought, influenced by the European Millenarian tradition, that it can be seen as an heir to classical Gnosticism and is part of the vernacular religion of the modern west. |
| magic and modernity interfaces of revelation and concealment: Coping with Versnel: A Roundtable on Religion and Magic , 2023-05-25 Henk Versnel’s work on ancient religion has been seminal. For his 80th birthday, a group of scholars assembled to celebrate and analyze his oeuvre. What have been his most important insights? What will he bequeath to the 21st century? Specialists hold up to the light the main strands of Versnel’s scholarship, and he reacts to their praise and critique. An introduction that seeks to contextualize this oeuvre, and a bibliography of Versnel’s publications, round out the picture of a scholar who has put his stamp on the study of ancient religions and magical practices, and who has promoted the field in many ways, especially as the driving force behind Brill’s flagship series Religion in the Graeco-Roman World, of which this fittingly is the 200th volume. |
| magic and modernity interfaces of revelation and concealment: Magic: The Basics Michael D. Bailey, 2017-07-28 Magic: The Basics is a concise and engaging introduction to magic in world history and contemporary societies. Presenting magic as a global phenomenon which has manifested in all human cultures, this book takes a thematic approach which explores the historical, social, and cultural aspects of magic. Key features include: attempts to define magic either in universal or more particular terms, and to contrast it with other broad and potentially fluid categories such as religion and science; an examination of different forms of magical practice and the purposes for which magic has been used; debates about magic’s effectiveness, its reality, and its morality; an exploration of magic’s association with certain social factors, such as gender, ethnicity and education, among others. Offering a global perspective of magic from antiquity through to the modern era and including a glossary of key terms, suggestions for further reading and case studies throughout, Magic: The Basics is essential reading for anyone seeking to learn more about the academic study of magic. |
| magic and modernity interfaces of revelation and concealment: Magical Thinking Stuart McWilliams, 2011-12-08 Examining how scholarly writing has contended or conspired with discourses of enchantment from the Middle Ages to the present. |
| magic and modernity interfaces of revelation and concealment: Islamicate Occult Sciences in Theory and Practice , 2020-11-16 Islamicate Occult Sciences in Theory and Practice brings together the latest research on Islamic occult sciences from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, namely intellectual history, manuscript studies and material culture. Its aim is not only to showcase the range of pioneering work that is currently being done in these areas, but also to provide a model for closer interaction amongst the disciplines constituting this burgeoning field of study. Furthermore, the book provides the rare opportunity to bridge the gap on an institutional level by bringing the academic and curatorial spheres into dialogue. Contributors include: Charles Burnett, Jean-Charles Coulon, Maryam Ekhtiar, Noah Gardiner, Christiane Gruber, Bink Hallum, Francesca Leoni, Matthew Melvin-Koushki, Michael Noble, Rachel Parikh, Liana Saif, Maria Subtelny, Farouk Yahya, and Travis Zadeh. |
| magic and modernity interfaces of revelation and concealment: Political Magic Christopher F. Loar, 2014-06-05 Political Magic examines early modern British fictions of exploration and colonialism, arguing that narratives of intercultural contact reimagine ideas of sovereignty and popular power. These fictions reveal aspects of political thought in this period that official discourse typically shunted aside, particularly the political status of the commoner, whose “liberty” was often proclaimed even as it was undermined both in theory and in practice. Like the Hobbesian sovereign, the colonist appears to the colonized as a giver of rules who remains unruly. At the heart of many texts are moments of savage wonder, provoked by European displays of technological prowess. In particular, the trope of the first gunshot articulates an origin of consent and political legitimacy in colonial showmanship. Yet as manifestations of force held in abeyance, these technologies also signal the ultimate reliance of sovereigns on extreme violence as the lessthan-mystical foundation of their authority. By examining works by Cavendish, Defoe, Behn, Swift, and Haywood in conjunction with contemporary political writing and travelogues, Political Magic locates a subterranean discourse of sovereignty in the century after Hobbes, finding surprising affinities between the government of “savages” and of Britons. |
| magic and modernity interfaces of revelation and concealment: The Long Life of Magical Objects Allegra Iafrate, 2019-07-01 This book explores a series of powerful artifacts associated with King Solomon via legendary or extracanonical textual sources. Tracing their cultural resonance throughout history, art historian Allegra Iafrate delivers exciting insights into these objects and interrogates the ways in which magic manifests itself at a material level. Each chapter focuses on a different Solomonic object: a ring used to control demons; a mysterious set of bottles that constrain evil forces; an endless knot or seal with similar properties; the shamir, known for its supernatural ability to cut through stone; and a flying carpet that can bring the sitter anywhere he desires. Taken together, these chapters constitute a study on the reception of the figure of Solomon, but they are also cultural biographies of these magical objects and their inherent aesthetic, morphological, and technical qualities. Thought-provoking and engaging, Iafrate’s study shows how ancient magic artifacts live on in our imagination, in items such as Sauron’s ring of power, Aladdin’s lamp, and the magic carpet. It will appeal to historians of art, religion, folklore, and literature. |
| magic and modernity interfaces of revelation and concealment: The Lovelorn Ghost and the Magical Monk Justin Thomas McDaniel, 2013-12-01 Focusing on representations of a famous ghost and monk from the late eighteenth century to today, Justin Thomas McDaniel builds a case for interpreting modern Thai Buddhist practice through the movements of these transformative figures. He follows embodiments of the ghost and monk in a variety of genres and media, including biography, drama, ritual, art, liturgy, film, television, and the Internet. Sourcing nuns, monks, laypeople, and royalty, McDaniel shows how relations with these figures have been instrumental in crafting histories and modernities, particularly local conceptions of being Buddhist, and the formation and transmission of such identities across different venues and technologies. |
| magic and modernity interfaces of revelation and concealment: The Palgrave Walter Benjamin Handbook Nathan Ross, 2025-02-26 Walter Benjamin is one of the most influential authors in contemporary humanities, exerting a deep fascination for students and garnering scholarly interest in a variety of fields, such as history of philosophy, literature, film and media studies, political science, religion, architecture, art and history. This Handbook provides students and scholars with a guide to Walter Benjamin’s work that explores each of these areas in depth while also giving the reader a chance to discover connections to other areas of thought. In order to do justice to the complexity of Benjamin’s thinking, this volume includes international scholars from a variety of academic disciplines, and is organized such that a dialogue emerges between them. Each section presents an argument for the integration of its subject into the whole, demonstrating that what might seem specialized and esoteric actually intersects with the problems and questions of the other sections. |
| magic and modernity interfaces of revelation and concealment: Fantasy and Belief Danielle Kirby, 2014-09-19 Religion and spirituality are being transformed in our late modern and secularising times. New forms of belief proliferate, often notable for not being limited to traditional systems of reference or expression. Increasingly, these new religions present worldviews which draw directly upon popular culture - or occulture - in fiction, film, art and the internet. Fantasy and Belief explores the context and implications of these types of beliefs through the example of the Otherkin community. The Otherkin are a loosely-affiliated group who believe themselves to be in some way more than just human, their non-humanity often rooted in the characters and narratives of popular fantasy and science fiction. Challenging much current sociological thinking about spirituality and consumption, Fantasy and Belief reveals how popular occulture operates to recycle, develop, and disseminate metaphysical ideas, and how the popular and the sacred are combining in new ways in today's world. |
| magic and modernity interfaces of revelation and concealment: Witchcraft in Russia and Ukraine, 1000–1900 Valerie A. Kivelson, Christine D. Worobec, 2020-11-15 For any serious scholar of Russian and Ukrainian witchcraft and magic, this volume is a 'must read.'... Scholars of folklore and popular culture also will find much of value.― Folklorica This sourcebook provides the first systematic overview of witchcraft laws and trials in Russia and Ukraine from medieval times to the late nineteenth century. Witchcraft in Russia and Ukraine, 1000–1900 weaves scholarly commentary with never-before-published primary source materials translated from Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian. These sources include the earliest references to witchcraft and sorcery, secular and religious laws regarding witchcraft and possession, full trial transcripts, and a wealth of magical spells. The documents present a rich panorama of daily life and reveal the extraordinary power of magical words. Editors Valerie A. Kivelson and Christine D. Worobec present new analyses of the workings and evolution of legal systems, the interplay and tensions between church and state, and the prosaic concerns of the women and men involved in witchcraft proceedings. The extended documentary commentaries also explore the shifting boundaries and fraught political relations between Russia and Ukraine. |
| magic and modernity interfaces of revelation and concealment: The Modern Supernatural and the Beginnings of Cinema Murray Leeder, 2017-01-10 This study sees the nineteenth century supernatural as a significant context for cinema’s first years. The book takes up the familiar notion of cinema as a “ghostly,” “spectral” or “haunted” medium and asks what made such association possible. Examining the history of the projected image and supernatural displays, psychical research and telepathy, spirit photography and X-rays, the skeletons of the danse macabre and the ghostly spaces of the mind, it uncovers many lost and fascinating connections. The Modern Supernatural and the Beginnings of Cinema locates film’s spectral affinities within a history stretching back to the beginning of screen practice and forward to the digital era. In addition to examining the use of supernatural themes by pioneering filmmakers like Georges Méliès and George Albert Smith, it also engages with the representations of cinema’s ghostly past in Guy Maddin’s recent online project Seances (2016). It is ideal for those interested in the history of cinema, the study of the supernatural and the pre-history of the horror film. |
| magic and modernity interfaces of revelation and concealment: Islam, Youth, and Modernity in the Gambia Marloes Janson, 2013-10-28 This monograph deals with the sweeping emergence of the Tablighi Jama'at - a transnational Islamic missionary movement that has its origins in the reformist tradition that emerged in India in the mid-nineteenth century - in the Gambia in the past decade. It explores how a movement that originated in South Asia could appeal to the local Muslim population - youth and women in particular - in a West African setting. By recording the biographical narratives of five Gambian Tablighis, the book provides an understanding of the ambiguities and contradictions young people are confronted with in their (re)negotiation of Muslim identity. Together these narratives form a picture of how Gambian youth go about their lives within the framework of neoliberal reforms and renegotiated parameters informed by the Tablighi model of how to be a 'true' Muslim, which is interpreted as a believer who is able to reconcile his or her faith with a modern lifestyle. |
| magic and modernity interfaces of revelation and concealment: Vernacular Worlds, Cosmopolitan Imagination Stephanos Stephanides, Stavros Karayanni, 2015-09-01 This collection addresses broad questions of ethics and aesthetics in the framework of vernacular cosmopolitanism. With a common anthropological focus, the essays map literary and artistic practices involving cross-cultural transactions shaped by social forces, institutions, and the multiple mediations of the imagination. Some essays are based on community-based fieldwork, while all encompass an affective immersion in the places we inhabit, and the claims these make on the body’s intelligibility. The authors consider the role of artists, writers, and literary scholars as cultural actors in a variety of settings, grassroots, regional, trans-regional, and global. Topics include: the role of social and cultural activism; the problematic dimensions of national belonging; the plurality of knowledge-systems and inter-language environ-mental learning in South Africa; the vernacular imagination in Papua New Guinea Anglophone fiction; pulp fiction and chick lit in India; transformative artistic motifs of Australia’s nomadic Tiwi community; life writing as a reconfiguring of postcolonial or cosmopolitan paradigms; southern African supernatural belief-systems and the malign magic of the global economy; Canadian First Nations literature read against the struggle for self-determination by India’s castes and scheduled tribes; feral animals in relation to the indigenous exotic; and the imbrication of the vernacular, national, colonial, and cosmopolitan in perceptions of homecoming in the eastern Mediterranean. The collection as a whole thus provides manifestations of poesis in relation to theory and praxis and articulates perspectives that expand, challenge, strengthen, and renew the potential for growth in contemporary world literature and culture. |
| magic and modernity interfaces of revelation and concealment: The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Buddhism Michael K. Jerryson, 2017 The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Buddhism offers a comprehensive collection of work by leading scholars in the field. They examine the historical development of Buddhist traditions throughout the world, from traditional settings like India, Japan, and Tibet, to the less well known regions of Latin America, Africa, and Oceania. |
| magic and modernity interfaces of revelation and concealment: The Magical Imagination Karl Bell, 2012-02-23 Innovative history of the popular magical imagination and ordinary people's experience of urbanization in nineteenth-century England. |
| magic and modernity interfaces of revelation and concealment: Conjuring Asia Chris Goto-Jones, 2016-07-04 The promise of magic has always commanded the human imagination, but the story of industrial modernity is usually seen as a process of disenchantment. Drawing on the writings and performances of the so-called 'Golden Age Magicians' from the turn of the twentieth century, Chris Goto-Jones unveils the ways in which European and North American encounters with (and representations of) Asia - the fabled Mystic East - worked to re-enchant experiences of the modern world. Beginning with a reconceptualization of the meaning of 'modern magic' itself - moving beyond conventional categories of 'real' and 'fake' magic - Goto-Jones' acclaimed book guides us on a magical mystery tour around India, China, and Japan, showing us levitations and decapitations, magic duels and bullet catches, goldfish bowls and paper butterflies. In the end, this mesmerizing book reveals Orientalism as a kind of magic in itself, casting a spell over Western culture that leaves it transformed, even today. |
| magic and modernity interfaces of revelation and concealment: Divination Patrick Curry, 2016-05-13 Divination is any ritual and its associated tradition performed in order to ask a more-than-human intelligence for guidance. A universal human practice, it has received surprisingly little academic attention. This interdisciplinary collection by leading scholars in the field is dedicated to fascinating new insights into divination and oracles arising from recent work in anthropology, religious studies, history and classical studies. Central importance is given to the practical and theoretical perspectives of diviners as well as scholars of divination; several contributors are both. This book explores philosophical issues such as the nature of divinatory intelligence, the relationship between divinatory and metaphorical truth, the primacy of ontology over epistemology, the importance of reflexivity in scholarly studies of divination, and astrology as the principal Western form of divination. The ethnographic and historical examples range from contemporary Nigeria, urban Cuba, Mayan Guatemala and the shamanic cultures of the circumpolar Arctic to classical Greece and ancient Judea. |
| magic and modernity interfaces of revelation and concealment: Magical Capitalism Brian Moeran, Timothy de Waal Malefyt, 2018-07-16 This volume of essays examines the ways in which magical practices are found in different aspects of contemporary capitalist societies. From contract law to science, by way of finance, business, marketing, advertising, cultural production, and the political economy in general, each chapter argues that the kind of magic studied by anthropologists in less developed societies – shamanism, sorcery, enchantment, the occult – is not only alive and well, but flourishing in the midst of so-called ‘modernity’. Modern day magicians range from fashion designers and architects to Donald Trump and George Soros. Magical rites take place in the form of political summits, the transformation of products into brands through advertising campaigns, and the biannual fashion collections shown in New York, London, Milan and Paris. Magical language, in the form of magical spells, is used by everyone, from media to marketers and all others devoted to the art of ‘spin’. While magic may appear to be opposed to systems of rational economic thought, Moeran and Malefyt highlight the ways it may in fact be an accomplice to it. |
| magic and modernity interfaces of revelation and concealment: Africa's Social and Religious Quest Randee Ijatuyi-Morphé, 2014-01-30 This well-crafted book probes the key dimensions of Africa’s existential predicament. This study takes an integrative approach to religion, society, and civilization; eschews dichotomies; and broadly defines and re-signifies life and wholeness as a true end of Africans’ quest today. |
| magic and modernity interfaces of revelation and concealment: Enchantments of Modernity Saurabh Dube, 2020-08-11 The notion of modernity hinges on a break with the past, such as superstitions, medieval worlds, and hierarchical traditions. It follows that modernity suggests the disenchantment of the world, yet the processes of modernity also create their own enchantments in the mapping and making of the modern world. Straddling a range of disciplines and perspectives, the essays in this edited volume eschew programmatic solutions, focusing instead in new ways on subjects of slavery and memory, global transformations and vernacular and vernacular modernity, imperial imperatives and nationalist knowledge, cosmopolitan politics and liberal democracy, and governmental effects and everyday affects. It is in these ways that the volume attempts to unravel the enchantments of modernity, in order to approach anew modernity's constitutive terms, formative limits, and particular possibilities. |
| magic and modernity interfaces of revelation and concealment: Shadowing the Anthropocene: Eco-Realism for Turbulent Times Adrian Ivakhiv, 2018 A spectre is haunting humanity: the spectre of a reality that will outwit and, in the end, bury us. The Anthropocene, or The Human Era, is an attempt to name our geological fate - that we will one day disappear into the layer-cake of Earth's geology - while highlighting humanity in the starring role of today's Earthly drama. In Shadowing the Anthropocene, Adrian Ivakhiv proposes an ecological realism that takes as its starting point humanity's eventual demise. The only question for a realist today, he suggests, is what to do now and what quality of compost to leave behind with our burial. The book engages with the challenges of the Anthropocene and with a series of philosophical efforts to address them, including those of Slavoj Zizek and Charles Taylor, Graham Harman and Timothy Morton, Isabelle Stengers and Bruno Latour, and William Connolly and Jane Bennett. Along the way, there are volcanic eruptions and revolutions, ant cities and dog parks, data clouds and space junk, pagan gods and sacrificial altars, dark flow, souls (of things), and jazz. Ivakhiv draws from centuries old process-relational thinking that hearkens back to Daoist and Buddhist sages, but gains incisive re-invigoration in the philosophies of Charles Sanders Peirce and Alfred North Whitehead. He translates those insights into practices of engaged Anthropocenic bodymindfulness - aesthetic, ethical, and ecological practices for living in the shadow of the Anthropocene. |
| magic and modernity interfaces of revelation and concealment: Key Terms in Material Religion S. Brent Plate, 2015-12-17 Material religion is a rapidly growing field, and this volume offers an accessible, critical entry into these new areas of research. Each key term uses case studies and is accompanied by a color image – an object, practice, space, or site. The entries cut across geographies, histories, and traditions, offering a versatile and engaging text for the classroom. Key topics covered include: - Icon, ritual, magic, gender, race - Sacred, spirit, technology, - Space, belief, body, brain - Taste, touch, smell, sound, vision Each entry demonstrates in clear and jargon-free prose how the key term figures prominently in understanding the materiality of religion. Written by leading international scholars, all entries are linked by the ways materiality stands at the forefront of the understanding of religion, whether that comes from humanistic, social scientific, artistic, curatorial, or other perspectives. Brent Plate brings his expertise and extensive teaching experience to the comprehensive introduction which introduces students to the themes and methods of the material cultural study of religion. Key Terms in Material Religion provides a much-needed resource for courses on theory and method in religious studies, the anthropology of religion, and the ever-increasing number of courses focused on material religion. |
| magic and modernity interfaces of revelation and concealment: Unsettled Janet McIntosh, 2016-04-26 Honorable Mention for the 2018 American Ethnological Society Senior Book Prize Honorable Mention for the 2017 Victor Turner Prize for Ethnographic Writing presented by the American Anthropological Association In 1963, Kenya gained independence from Britain, ending decades of white colonial rule. While tens of thousands of whites relocated in fear of losing their fortunes, many stayed. But over the past decade, protests, scandals, and upheavals have unsettled families with colonial origins, reminding them that their belonging is tenuous. In this book, Janet McIntosh looks at the lives and dilemmas of settler descendants living in post-independence Kenya. From clinging to a lost colonial identity to pronouncing a new Kenyan nationality, the public face of white Kenyans has undergone changes fraught with ambiguity. Drawing on fieldwork and interviews, McIntosh focuses on their discourse and narratives to ask: What stories do settler descendants tell about their claim to belong in Kenya? How do they situate themselves vis-a-vis the colonial past and anti-colonial sentiment, phrasing and re-phrasing their memories and judgments as they seek a position they feel is ethically acceptable? McIntosh explores contradictory and diverse responses: moral double consciousness, aspirations to uplift the nation, ideological blind-spots, denials, and self-doubt as her respondents strain to defend their entitlements in the face of mounting Kenyan rhetorics of ancestry. |
| magic and modernity interfaces of revelation and concealment: Believing in Bits Simone Natale, Diana Walsh Pasulka, 2020 Believing in Bits advances the idea that religious beliefs and practices have become inextricably linked to the functioning of digital media. How did we come to associate things such as mindreading and spirit communications with the functioning of digital technologies? How does the internet�s capacity to facilitate the proliferation of beliefs blur the boundaries between what is considered fiction and fact? Addressing these and similar questions, the volume challenges and redefines established understandings of digital media and culture by employing the notions of belief, religion, and the supernatural. |
| magic and modernity interfaces of revelation and concealment: Anthropology and Cryptozoology Samantha Hurn, 2016-11-03 Cryptozoology is best understood as the study of animals which, in the eyes of Western science, are extinct, unclassified or unrecognised. In consequence, and in part because of its selective methods and lack of epistemological rigour, cryptozoology is often dismissed as a pseudo-science. However, there is a growing recognition that social science can benefit from engaging with it, for as as social scientists are very well aware, ’scientific’ categorisation and explanation represents just one of a myriad of systems used by humans to enable them to classify and make sense of the world around them. In many cultural contexts, myth, folk classification and lived experience challenge the ’truth’ expounded by scientists. With a reflexive, anthropological approach and drawing on rich empirical and ethnographic studies from around the world, this volume engages with the theoretical and methodological issues raised by reported sightings of unrecognised animals. Bringing into sharp focus the anthropological value and challenges for methodology posed by beliefs about unclassified creatures, Anthropology and Cryptozoology: Exploring encounters with mysterious creatures will be of interest to anthropologists, sociologists and geographers working in the fields of research methods, anthrozoology, mythology and folklore and human-animal interaction. |
| magic and modernity interfaces of revelation and concealment: Constructing Tradition Andreas Kilcher, 2010-10-05 This volume of conference proceedings investigates the various ways and patterns with which esoteric writings and groups establish their own tradition. This involves concepts of origin and memory, ways of legitimising esoteric tradition as well as techniques and practices of knowledge transmission in esotericism. |
| magic and modernity interfaces of revelation and concealment: Religion in the Emergence of Civilization Ian Hodder, 2010-08-30 This book presents an interdisciplinary study of the role of spirituality and religious ritual in the emergence of complex societies. Involving an eminent group of natural scientists, archaeologists, anthropologists, philosophers, and theologians, this volume examines Çatalhöyük as a case study. A nine-thousand-year old town in central Turkey, Çatalhöyük was first excavated in the 1960s and has since become integral to understanding the symbolic and ritual worlds of the early farmers and village-dwellers in the Middle East. It is thus an ideal location for exploring theories about the role of religion in early settled life. This book provides a unique overview of current debates concerning religion and its historical variations. Through exploration of themes including the integration of the spiritual and the material, the role of belief in religion, the cognitive bases for religion, and religion's social roles, this book situates the results from Çatalhöyük within a broader understanding of the Neolithic in the Middle East. |
| magic and modernity interfaces of revelation and concealment: Sorcery or Science? Ariela Marcus-Sells, 2022-03-07 Sorcery or Science? examines how two Sufi Muslim theologians who rose to prominence in the western Sahara Desert in the late eighteenth century, Sīdi al-Mukhtār al-Kuntī (d. 1811) and his son and successor, Sīdi Muḥammad al-Kuntī (d. 1826), decisively influenced the development of Sufi Muslim thought in West Africa. Known as the Kunta scholars, Mukhtār al-Kuntī and Muḥammad al-Kuntī were influential teachers who developed a pedagogical network of students across the Sahara. In exploring their understanding of “the realm of the unseen”—a vast, invisible world that is both surrounded and interpenetrated by the visible world—Ariela Marcus-Sells reveals how these theologians developed a set of practices that depended on knowledge of this unseen world and that allowed practitioners to manipulate the visible and invisible realms. They called these practices “the sciences of the unseen.” While they acknowledged that some Muslims—particularly self-identified “white” Muslim elites—might consider these practices to be “sorcery,” the Kunta scholars argued that these were legitimate Islamic practices. Marcus-Sells situates their ideas and beliefs within the historical and cultural context of the Sahara Desert, surveying the cosmology and metaphysics of the realm of the unseen and the history of magical discourses within the Hellenistic and Arabo-Islamic worlds. Erudite and innovative, this volume connects the Islamic sciences of the unseen with the reception of Hellenistic discourses of magic and proposes a new methodology for reading written devotional aids in historical context. It will be welcomed by scholars of magic and specialists in Africana religious studies, Islamic occultism, and Islamic manuscript culture. |
| magic and modernity interfaces of revelation and concealment: Subjects of modernity Saurabh Dube, 2017-01-20 This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. This book thinks through modernity and its representations by exploring critical considerations of time and space. Drawing on anthropology, history and social theory, it investigates the oppositions and enchantments, the contradictions and contentions, and the identities and ambivalences spawned under modernity. Crucially, it understands these antinomies not as errors, but as constitutive elements of modern worlds. The book questions routine portrayals of homogeneous time and antinomian blueprints of cultural space, while acknowledging the production of time and space by social subjects. Instead of assuming a straightforward, singular trajectory for the phenomena, it views modernity as involving checkered, contingent and contended processes of meaning and power, which have found heterogeneous historical elaborations over the past five centuries. Bringing together past and present, theory and narrative, it sows the historical, ethnographic and methodological deep into its critical procedures, offering an innovative understanding of cultural identities and imaginatively exploring the relationship between history and anthropology. |
What are magic numbers and why do some consider them bad?
Oct 13, 2023 · However magic numbers are also sometimes used for in-memory data structures, like ioctl() calls. A quick check of the magic number before processing the file or data structure …
Shroomery - Magic Mushrooms (Shrooms) Demystified
We help spread accurate information about magic mushrooms so people can make informed decisions about what they put in their bodies. You can learn about the effects of shrooms and …
Shroomery - Growing Mushrooms
Learn how to grow magic mushrooms, gourmet mushrooms, and medicinal mushrooms easily and cheaply at home.
Shroomery - Magic Mushroom Dosage Calculator
Jun 13, 2023 · Magic Mushroom Dosage Calculator Roughly estimates a dosage in grams based on the species and potency of the mushroom, whether or not it's dried, and other factors. I …
Shroomery - Gallery
Gallery of shrooms growing and picked from the wild. If you want help identifying your own finds, please use our Mushroom Hunting and Identification forum.
python - How to pass the script path to %run magic command as …
Aug 22, 2021 · Magic commands such as %run and %fs do not allow variables to be passed in. The workaround is you can use dbutils as like dbutils.notebook.run(notebook, 300 ,{}) Share
Shroomery Message Board
Discuss magic mushrooms and other hallucinogens, get cultivation advice, and learn about the psychedelic experience.
Plot inline or a separate window using Matplotlib in Spyder IDE
Mar 30, 2015 · Magic commands such as %matplotlib qt work in the iPython console and Notebook, but do not work within a script. In that case, after importing: from IPython import …
How to send a Wake-on-LAN magic packet using PowerShell?
Jul 4, 2022 · Here is the working PowerShell one-liner I am using to send a WakeOnLan packet: '01-23-45-67-89-AB' | Set-Variable 'mac'; [System.Net.NetworkInformation ...
Explaining Python's '__enter__' and '__exit__' - Stack Overflow
Using these magic methods (__enter__, __exit__) allows you to implement objects which can be used easily with the with statement. The idea is that it makes it easy to build code which needs …
What are magic numbers and why do some consider them bad?
Oct 13, 2023 · However magic numbers are also sometimes used for in-memory data structures, like ioctl() calls. A quick check of the magic number before processing the file or data structure …
Shroomery - Magic Mushrooms (Shrooms) Demystified
We help spread accurate information about magic mushrooms so people can make informed decisions about what they put in their bodies. You can learn about the effects of shrooms and …
Shroomery - Growing Mushrooms
Learn how to grow magic mushrooms, gourmet mushrooms, and medicinal mushrooms easily and cheaply at home.
Shroomery - Magic Mushroom Dosage Calculator
Jun 13, 2023 · Magic Mushroom Dosage Calculator Roughly estimates a dosage in grams based on the species and potency of the mushroom, whether or not it's dried, and other factors. I …
Shroomery - Gallery
Gallery of shrooms growing and picked from the wild. If you want help identifying your own finds, please use our Mushroom Hunting and Identification forum.
python - How to pass the script path to %run magic command as …
Aug 22, 2021 · Magic commands such as %run and %fs do not allow variables to be passed in. The workaround is you can use dbutils as like dbutils.notebook.run(notebook, 300 ,{}) Share
Shroomery Message Board
Discuss magic mushrooms and other hallucinogens, get cultivation advice, and learn about the psychedelic experience.
Plot inline or a separate window using Matplotlib in Spyder IDE
Mar 30, 2015 · Magic commands such as %matplotlib qt work in the iPython console and Notebook, but do not work within a script. In that case, after importing: from IPython import …
How to send a Wake-on-LAN magic packet using PowerShell?
Jul 4, 2022 · Here is the working PowerShell one-liner I am using to send a WakeOnLan packet: '01-23-45-67-89-AB' | Set-Variable 'mac'; [System.Net.NetworkInformation ...
Explaining Python's '__enter__' and '__exit__' - Stack Overflow
Using these magic methods (__enter__, __exit__) allows you to implement objects which can be used easily with the with statement. The idea is that it makes it easy to build code which needs …
