In Renaissance Europe, magic was performed by clergymen, scientists, and philosophers, while twentieth-century occultists, guided by a keen interest in scientific discoveries, moved in a grey area between science and magic producing ambiguous yet highly successful concepts such as ‘animal magnetism’, ‘mesmerism’, or ‘psychic energy’.

The fascination with occult knowledge and mystical powers derived from nonmainstream or foreign sources persists in the West in astrological charts in newspapers, theories of interplanetary aliens and government conspiracies to hide them, occult rituals in some New Age religions, and interest in traditional practices that have an esoteric flavour, such as feng shui (geomancy, the traditional Asian practice of aligning graves, homes, and temples with cosmic forces). Notably, spirit rappers, mediums who “conversed” with spirits who replied by knocking on a table, were easily exposed as the ones doing the knocking.In any case, scholars have argued that magical spirituality should not be considered any less genuine just because religionists do not ‘sit in pews’ nor ‘believe in systematic theologies’ (Partridge 2005: 2). While all types of occult practices and knowledges are learned with varying degrees of mastery, Western ceremonial magic, being based on written bodies of tradition and often socialised through relatively organised communities, offers an ideal case study of magic as a set of techniques for the transformation of both the self and the world.

Practitioners of some branches see their practices as having very little in common with other branches. Stanley Tambiah (1990: 8-11) has argued that, given the prestige of Hellenic traditions in Western academia, a separation between magic and religion ended up influencing Victorian anthropologists such as James Frazer.It is impossible to omit the role of anthropology itself in construing the idea of magic that was to become dominant in the modern era. De Martino investigated the vernacular magic-based emergency procedures, most prominently spells and ecstatic dances (Tarantella), activated in these cases. The positive sentiments left Alex Scott-Whitby, leader of the Architecture and Physical Design Cluster, thrilled with the recognition. The latter group encompassed novel professional figures as diverse as besuited stage illusionists, proponents of a disenchanted version of magic as pure entertainment and skill, and erudite scholars of ‘native trickery’: early anthropologists (Jones 2017).

Yet explaining clearly what the many tropes associated with the concept of magic have in common is easier said than done. In the Gospel According to Matthew, the Magi who appeared at the birth of Jesus Christ were both Persian foreigners of Greco-Roman conception and wise astrologers.Caldwell embraced hip hop as much as hip hop embraced him – What You Won’t Do for Love became Do for Love by Tupac. Ceremonial magic is a type of magic that depends heavily on book learning; precise, complicated ritual; and intricate sets of correspondences. He said, "The journal is a highly regarded voice telling our graduating students how good they are, raising the aspirations of our current students to achieve even better next year. Orientalism, as literary and cultural critic Edward Said labeled this phenomenon, has its roots in the sense of the "other" found in the earliest definitions of magic (notably the Magi as Persian foreigners) and in the Renaissance penchant for Egyptian, Hebrew, and Arabic materials. Edmonds III is the Paul Shorey Professor of Greek in the Department of Greek, Latin, and Classical Studies at Bryn Mawr College.

x86_64" , "console" : "ttyS0,115200" , "no_timer_check" : true , "nofb" : true , "nomodeset" : true , "ro" : true , "root" : "LABEL=cloudimg-rootfs" , "vga" : "normal" }, "ansible_date_time" : { "date" : "2018-10-25" , "day" : "25" , "epoch" : "1540469324" , "hour" : "12" , "iso8601" : "2018-10-25T12:08:44Z" , "iso8601_basic" : "20181025T120844109754" , "iso8601_basic_short" : "20181025T120844" , "iso8601_micro" : "2018-10-25T12:08:44. Indeed, many of the traditions associated with magic in the Classical world derive from a fascination with ancient Middle Eastern beliefs and are concerned with a need for countermagic against sorcery. In her contribution to this volume, Greenwood proposes the concept of “magical consciousness” as an ancient, “intrinsic” and imaginal “mode of mind” and a “holistic engagement with material and non-material realities”. Phenomena such as witchcraft ‘epidemics’, urban lore on zombie labour, or occult-related conspiracy theories are, the Comaroffs submit, ‘symptoms’ of occult economies ‘waxing behind the civil surfaces’ of development. The case of ceremonial magic and its revival will allow the reader to appreciate the modernity of magic.As people from Latin America, to central Africa, to Mongolia, to the US and Europe become engulfed in urbanization, capitalist markets, and dreams of social mobility, ideas about the occult gain currency. The term ‘occult economies’ thus indicates people’s ‘recourse to the occult in situations of rapid social transformation, under historical conditions that yield an ambiguous mix of possibility and powerlessness, of desire and despair, of mass joblessness and hunger amidst the accumulation, by some, of great amounts of new wealth’ (1999: 283): it is easy to see why although the Comaroff’s main focus is Africa, their approach has been applied to multiple contexts across the global South.