Helen
My own view is influenced by
an obsession with the Egyptian magical-religion;
the Egyptian material leads to different conclusions -
so no radical distinction between religion and magick -
or indeed mysticism and magick
perhaps focussing on magical "activities" rather than some sort of
"essential" definition of magick -
which I've always found unsatisfactory -
personally I've moved away from definitions such as those in Crowley et al -
I'd say maybe ask contemporary magicians what they do -
rather than impose a set of categories on them??
Perhaps be critical about use of the term "shamanic" which imo is often
just a vague euphemism for those who have a taboo about the term magick?
Perhaps read the introduction of a few recent (academic?) works on
Egyptian magick -
I really like Robert Ritner's approach - also Garth Fowden; David
Frankfurter & Jan Assmann
mogg morgan
> Dear all,
>
> First of all, I'm new(ish) to this list, so may I introduce myself -
> my name is Helen Frisby, I'm based in the UK and my
> main research interest at present is the history of death and dying.
>
> In particular at the moment I'm trying to clarify my thinking on the
> magical elements in English folklore. This arises out of my
> recent work on the folklore of death & dying in C19th Yorkshire. Which
> leads onto a request, as I'm struggling to find material on the theory
> of magic and would be grateful for your help.
>
> I've come across Frazer's classification of magic into 'sympathetic'
> and 'contagious', 'positive' and 'negative' (/Golden Bough/), but
> apart from that most scholarly work seems to focus on rationalising
> the workings of magic rather than describing it from the user's
> perspective, eg Mauss's /General Theory of Magic/. I'd be really
> grateful if anybody could please point me toward sources on a similar
> line to that of Frazer - can be earlier or later than Frazer, ideally
> English-based.
>
> With thanks and best wishes,
>
> Helen
>
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