The emotionalist approach to magic is associated with the English anthropologist Robert Ranulph Marett, the Austrian Sigmund Freud, and the Polish anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski. [215] In the early 1960s, the anthropologists Murray and Rosalie Wax put forward the argument that scholars should look at the magical worldview of a given society on its own terms rather than trying to rationalize it in terms of Western ideas about scientific knowledge. [224] Their ideas were heavily criticised by other anthropologists, who argued that they had set up a false dichotomy between non-magical Western worldview and magical non-Western worldviews. [225] The concept of the magical worldview nevertheless gained widespread use in history, folkloristics, philosophy, cultural theory, and psychology. [226] The notion of magical thinking has also been utilised by various psychologists. [227] In the 1920s, the psychologist Jean Piaget used the concept as part of his argument that children were unable to clearly differentiate between the mental and the physical. [227] According to this perspective, children begin to abandon their magical thinking between the ages of six and nine. [227] Gilchrist, Roberta (2012). Medieval Life: Archaeology and the Life Course (Reprinted.). Woodbridge: Boydell Press. p.xii. ISBN 9781843837220 . Retrieved 8 March 2017. Magic was practiced by both the literate priestly hierarchy and by illiterate farmers and herdsmen, and the principle of heka underlay all ritual activity, both in the temples and in private settings. [57]

The word ‘magic’ evokes a vast array of associations: from the solemn, white-bearded sage, endowed with mystical power in fairy tales and fantasy films, to sinister witches and sorcerers surrounded by grimoires, occult sigils, potions, and astrological charts; from ‘cunning folk’ healers, combining incantations and herbal remedies, to stage magicians asking us, with a wink, to let our senses be deceived. Yet explaining clearly what the many tropes associated with the concept of magic have in common is easier said than done. The concept has been used in association with divergent practices such as folk medicine, divination, palmistry, necromancy (communication with the dead), astrology, alchemy, spiritualism, occultism (the study of hidden or paranormal things), illusionism, neo-paganism (the worship of natural forces, often modelled after ancient religions), and New Age spirituality. To complicate things, the field of magic as the term is commonly understood – including amongst many of its practitioners – has come to incorporate elements that elsewhere would fall under the category of ‘religion’, such as Kabbalah (a Jewish mystical tradition) or Yoga (a set of spiritual doctrines emerged from within Indic Dharmic faiths). A plausible working definition of magic, loose enough to accommodate at least most of the nuances associated with it, may describe it as a set of activities and technologies intended to manipulate invisible or immaterial agencies and energies, not recognised by science, to an advantageous end. However, there are risks inherent in defining such elusive a subject as magic.

Why Ritual Magic?

a b Ritner, R.K., Magic: An Overview in Redford, D.B., Oxford Encyclopedia Of Ancient Egypt, Oxford University Press, 2001, p 321 Price, Simon (1999). Religions of the Ancient Greeks (Reprinted.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. p.115. ISBN 978-0521388672. a b c d e Kindt, Julia (2012). Rethinking Greek Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521110921. Russell, Jeffrey Burton (1972). Witchcraft in the Middle Ages. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. pp.6–7. ISBN 0801492890.

Waldau, Paul; Patton, Kimberley, eds. (2009). A Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion, Science, and Ethics. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-13643-3. Another, related danger inherent in the vocabulary of magic is connected to its usability in non-Western contexts. For instance, let us take the Islamic notion of siḥr, usually translated as magic or sorcery. Siḥr partly resembles Christian understandings of magic as unorthodox dealings with the occult, and therefore illegitimate and sinful. However, alongside familiar items like goetia (commerce with demons) and astrology, siḥr also includes slander, malicious gossip, the ‘charismatic seduction of crowds’ (Knight 2016: 16), and other arts of deception which would not be considered ‘magic’ in most Western understandings. When it comes to magic, nuance risks easily getting lost in translation.Hanegraaff, Wouter (2012). Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521196215. Gosden, Chris (2020). Magic: A History: From Alchemy to Witchcraft, from the Ice Age to the Present. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Helman-Ważny, Agnieszka; Ramble, Charles, eds. (2023). Bon and Naxi Manuscripts. De Gruyter. ISBN 978-3110776478. In ancient Roman society, magic was associated with societies to the east of the empire; the first century CE writer Pliny the Elder for instance claimed that magic had been created by the Iranian philosopher Zoroaster, and that it had then been brought west into Greece by the magician Osthanes, who accompanied the military campaigns of the Persian King Xerxes. [86]