Ariel Glucklich

Part 1 of this book is excellent. It gives an overview of the history of the scholarly effort to understand magic. The rest of the book describes the author's own ideas about magic (it's a psychological experience of "unique intimacy with natural and social environment"). So think how things melt together when on a drug-induced high; it's that lack of discrete boundaries that make having a magical experience possible.

There may be something to that, but in my opinion it misses the primary question. Whatever the scholarly explanation is, the ordinary person expects a magic ritual/spell to "work", and not just give you a warm fuzzy feeling about how everything in the world is all of one piece. He suggests that asking if magic works is beside the point, but I rather believe that those who have sought out these services, usually in circumstances of stress and crisis, would not agree. They are hoping for results -- healing, money, love, revenge, justice, something -- and are not likely to be satisfied with a psychedelic water color running all into itself. So he leaves untouched whether any of the magic rituals he witnessed actually resulted in anything tangible. And that's a shame.… (more)