Search

By equating the traditional mindset with traditional beliefs (in magic, ritual, superstitions, etc.), several studies have consistently shown that such beliefs significantly influence people's political behavior and preferences. While these studies have highlighted the political consequences of a traditional mindset in several countries from the Global South, they nevertheless have little to say as to whether holding superstitious beliefs (e.g., believing in fortune tellers, horoscopes, or lucky charms) has certain political implications for countries in the Global North. In this article, we explore whether the traditional mindset has political consequences even in an industrially advanced Germany. We present an analysis of data from the German General Social Survey (GESIS 2019) showing that superstitious voters have less trust in the political system, are more inclined to think that Hitler would be remembered as a good stateman if he had not perpetrated the Holocaust, that the Nazi regime also had a good side, and that the Jews are different and, in any case, have too much influence. Hence, dissemination of superstitious beliefs could make right-wing populists more electorally appealing and successful than they once were. We believe our findings to be of some importance as they show that if the proliferation of superstitious beliefs continues unchecked, they may transform our political systems in ways that policy makers and democratic forces should strive to avoid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This World Affairs 2023 special issue contains six contributions, including this one, exploring some of the key political consequences of traditional beliefs such as magic and superstition in the developing societies of the Global South as well as in certain industrially advanced societies of the Global North. To show why traditional beliefs matter, we provide an explanation in this introduction for why traditional beliefs exist in developing countries, why they survive in developed countries, and why they may become more popular over time. By utilizing a simple game theoretic approach, we explain why rational people can sometimes increase their payoffs by subscribing to a superstition while superstitious people never gain by switching to rationality. In fact, the superstition—which has no causal connection with the natural course of events—may even yield better results, not only for the individual but also for the group. This is the reason why, in the framework of evolutionary stable equilibrium, superstitious people can demographically dominate an entire population over time. In addition to explaining the existence and the persistence (or the popularity) of traditional beliefs, we highlight the key findings presented in the articles included in this special issue. All of them underline a cardinal point: traditional beliefs matter. They shape electoral behavior, they shape attitudes toward democratic governance, and they influence voters' assessment of political figures and historical events. Precisely because traditional beliefs have such extensive implications for a country's political life, we believe that in the future scholars will have to pay greater attention to such beliefs to have a better understanding of political phenomena and trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rituals, ceremonies and effervescence of the sacred manifest themselves in digital culture not only through the proliferation of new religious cults. They do so through the online actualisation of traditional religious forms but also the spiritual elevation of objects (Houtman & Meyer, 2012), practices (Carolyn, 2014) or ephemeral, playful and dreamlike images (Susca, 2016). In most cases, they involve figures that evoke the most sensitive and immaterial aspects of experience: its flesh (Esposito, 2004; Henry, 2000) and its imaginary (Durand, 1992). This is the actualisation of what Durkheim (2008) called the "social divine". We are thus witnessing the proliferation of a multitude of small churches characterised by a low degree of institutionalisation and a high symbolic and emotional density (Maffesoli, 2020). In this sense, digital sociality acquires a decisive value in transfiguring ordinary life, the realm of the profane, into a mythical and mystical experience, brushing up against the sacred in its wildest form (Bastide, 1975). Indeed, the relationships that emerge from these media landscapes reveal a capacity to associate what is separate in time and space, previously belonging to the spiritual and transcendent orders (Davis, 1999). Thus, the culture of connection and sharing actualises in secular spheres a whole set of symbolic experiences reminiscent of religious mysteries (Campbell, 2012). This imaginary modifies the modern relationship between technology and society according to a paradigm that could be called "technomagic". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes two reports from the Chronicles of Saint Denis about an anonymous monk from Morigny who, in the early fourteenth century, supposedly practiced magic and worshiped demons. On this theme, special consideration is given to reports from the continuation of the Cronica Latina, by William of Nangis, and the Grandes Chroniques de France. This article examines these sources in a comparative manner alongside another text from the same period, written in the first person by John of Morigny and entitled Liber florum celestis doctrine. The evidence suggests that the anonymous author of the Chronicles of Saint Denis is, in fact, John of Morigny. It also verifies that what chroniclers of Saint Denis described as demonic is, according to John, rather an example of devotion and orthodoxy, which opens a space for contradiction and dispute regarding what was understood as "magic" in the Middle Ages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research aims to comprehend how influencers and content creators use humor to create interpretations of a group called "mystical youth." "Mystical youth" refers to young individuals belonging to Generation Z who, through their social media profiles, seek to (re)produce content about spiritualities and sacred practices disseminated since the New Age movement. To conduct this study, we chose to analyze the content of videos created by content creators on the online social media platform YouTube. In doing so, it became evident that laughter and cancellation humor ridicule this community and construct an "ideal type" of a "mystical youth". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay I defend Cassirer's account of mythical culture against a series of critiques raised against his philosophy of mythology. Cassirer has been charged with neglecting the profane dimension of mythical culture and with presenting an inconsistent account of sacred being. In order to make headway on these critiques, I first demonstrate that Cassirer does in fact acknowledge the profane and its place in mythical culture. Through close conceptual and textual analysis, I reconstruct Cassirer's account of the sacred and the profane in "Myth as Form of Intuition" in the second volume of the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. After demonstrating the presence of this distinction in Cassirer's texts, I reconstruct Cassirer's account of the emotive origin of the sacred in mythical culture. Finally, I show how Cassirer's the law of mythical culture is not inconsistent with the sacred, but is a further articulation of the form of sacred being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research focuses on the work of the Umbanda intellectual Lourenço Braga, often quoted in Umbanda literature. The author published books mainly of doctrinal nature, however, he ventured to publish fiction, when he wrote a very interesting novel for the study of the identity construction of Umbanda in the first half of the twentieth century. This papel focuses mainly on the author's eff ort to provide a narrative of Umbanda that draws the attention to the guiding principles of collective action in force in the mid-twentieth century. The magical and religious conflict accounts for an important role both in the doctrinal work and in the novel written by de author. He made his novel as a document for the understanding of the Umbanda identity Project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Settled and spread throughout the archipelago, in a constant search for solutions that allow it to be a religious community in its own right, in a diverse and plural society such as the Canary Islands of the XXI century, the Regla Osha is a religion that has, what can be summarized as very bad press. The objective is to analyze the constant association between the Regla Osha, a religion of Afro-Cuban origin, and the different spiritual and esoteric manifestations not considered as a religion, but as magical-ritual practices in the context of the Canary Islands, as well as its link with criminal practices in the archipelago. The praxis of this religion faces moral, legal, environmental, material, aesthetic and symbolic conflicts to develop its rituals and manifest its beliefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, a growing number of studies have presented, in one way or another, various psychotherapeutic projections of certain spiritual practices of the first Christian monasticism. Now, we believe that in such studies there may be a danger of extrapolating anachronistic terms, questions, and discussions that are unfamiliar to the original context of the Fathers. In order to overcome this difficulty, we will try to elucidate Evagrius Pontic's model of psychospiritual integration through his particular understanding of the effective relationships between grace and nature. This understanding will be reached from the analysis of the notions of magic and phýsis in the two classical traditions that most impacted his work: the Platonic and the Hippocratic. Approaching the Evagrian model in this way will allow us to translate and understand the current interest in its psychospiritual model, in the same terms in which it is formulated by our monastic author. The Evagrian work renews and repeats the Hippocratic and Platonic rejection of magic. The Pontus monk shares with that profane tradition his understanding of magic as an act of impiety towards the divine order inscribed in the phýsis. This rejection of sorcery and magic is integrated by our author into a new Christian synthesis, which strives to avoid any magical or miraculous attribution to grace. Now, to the extent that Evagrius moves away from a magical conception of grace, one can find in his writings a baggage of theoretical-practical knowledge related to psychic-spiritual health. Our author is particularly interested in specifying how the grace operates in the cognitive-emotional dynamics that intervene in the soul healing processes, without magically contradicting or suspending the immanent laws of the phýsis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article attempts to explain what the "magic phase" is within Gilbert Simondon's triphasic theory of culture, and to argue that this would be a genetic condition of creativity and collective reticulation, and in this sense a still underrated focal point of the political dimension of Simondon's philosophy of technics. The strange notion that magic could come to exist again under modern technical networks is briefly discussed in relation to recent and contemporary works of art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To learn about risky sexual behaviour in the socio-cultural framework of the early 20th century, and to identify the gender subjugation and liberation to which Scarlet women were subjected. Methodology: A historical-descriptive literature review was carried out using primary and secondary sources, through a cultural historical approach, which provides relevance to the role of human activity and considers that it transcends the social sphere. The inclusion criteria used were: 1) manuscripts in Spanish, English and Portuguese; 2) works related to scarlet women in the period 1904-1947. The exclusion criteria in the present study were: 1) works not adjusted to the subject of study; 2) duplicate documents; 3) manuscripts not found in full text. Results: Scarlet women were seen as equals in a paternalistic world, represented as the corporeal form of higher deities. They accompanied Aleister Crowley, thus contributing to the evolution of sex magic, centred on sexual fluids and achieving the desires set by any magician. Conclusion: Within the Thelemic religion, scarlet women performed esoteric sexual rites, which led to a deterioration in their lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Orchard wassailing practices, along with other folk traditions have been overlooked by geographers. This paper considers how such practices can engineer spaces of enchantment in otherwise 'disenchanted' spaces. Furthermore, how this form of enchantment is never fixed but relational, unstable and contingent, or 'borrowed'. Having nearly disappeared in the mid-20th century, wassailing has been 're-wakened' for the contemporary world. A surprising feature of these contemporary wassails is that they are often performed in recently planted or restored orchards in suburban areas with little heritage of producing fruit. Spaces usually considered absent of 'enchantment'. Drawing on interviews with organisers of contemporary and 'reinvented' wassails in the south and south-west of England, this research investigates contemporary wassailing practices in such otherwise 'disenchanted' spaces. In doing so it draws attention to the construction of 'magical' atmospheres that combine elements of the religious-spiritual, heritage and fiction enabling a temporary suspension of disbelief. The paper develops upon previous understandings of 'enchantment' in geography and introduces the notion of 'borrowed enchantment' that draws attention to forms of enchantment which are relational, emergent, unstable and contingent to locality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Brazil, Afro-Christian "syncretism" is leaving Christianity behind. Looking toward the near future, it is clear that the predominant religion in Brazil will be nothing more than a dangerous folk magic that depends on the circumstantial situations of each individual. Submitting the magic phenomenon to a logical analysis is the challenge of this work, with the intent of aiding the pastoral ministry of present-day Brazil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates magic as a transversal and interdisciplinary matter. For this case, it is from Frazer, Foucault and Derrida that a roadmap is drawn up to think and settle the conditions of possibility that shape the magical act and that allow it to be thought from the "primitive" practices described by the Scottish anthropologist, going through the episteme of the 16th century to finally reach writing and its understanding as phármakon. This with the aim of outlining, perhaps, the continuities and discontinuities of the inheritance of a magical thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses some interpretations of the mockery and magic in the comedy of Ruiz de Alarcón La cueva de Salamanca, denying the subversive implications of both elements, which have been noticed by some critical studies little attentive to the text of the work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses various theories that exist about thought, especially the theories of James George Frazer in the Golden Branch as a turning point. In this way, it tries to give prominence to the certain aspects of the history of sassanid Persia, which after analyzing through these theories, they show the impact of primitive beliefs in Sassanid age. Creeds that affected in many aspects of their lives, but in this research we only show their role in the commands or decisions, victories, defeats and dreams of the Sassanids that substantially had influenced their domestic and foreign policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The magic rites are divided into oral (spells) and manual (sympathetic rites or symbolic rites, sacrificial rites, healing rites, purification rites), complementary to each other. These rites present a recitative part, λόγος, with formulas and spells, and an operational part, πρᾶξις, with particular gestures, tools and substances. In both cases the word is fundamental because it is the magic tool par excellence, thanks to its evocative and expressive power: it is a creative and pragmatic force that acts directly on reality. This act of speech is expressed either through simple pronunciation, as in the case of oral spells, or through writing, generally on particular objects. The study will attempt investigate the power of the logos in magic rites, the ritual formulas and the different types of written objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the end of the 19th century, the performing arts were developed along with variety shows that newly gaining strength. The caricature was growing in popularity and reach thanks to the expansion of the press and magazines, and also finds a place in live shows by lightning sketch drawings. On the other hand, within the cinema, the discovery of the stop-motion technique allows filmmakers to create tricks on the big screen. The combination of these techniques gives rise to a series of films called "lightning sketch films" which eventually lay the groundwork for the creation of future cartoons. These films are analysed in relation to illustration and its connection to entertainment at the turn of the century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay we disentangle what Jaime Saenz conceives of as the “magic” of La Paz as elaborated in Imágenes paceñas. We analyze magic from three complementary angles. First, we focus on the relationship between magic and unease. This take on magic is associated in the text, in an unexplicit and tangential way, with non-Western culture; that is, the Aymara indigenous. Our second point of entry intersects the first. The version of La Paz that Saenz depicts is moved by unfamiliar cultural forces. As a consequence, it is a product of, and produces, a distinct form of inhabiting characterized by a temporality that troubles that of modernity; this, too, results in a sense of magic. Finally, in our third approach to magic, we analyze the tensions derived from the visual and written registers Saenz combines in this text. In the montage forged between text and photography, writing is employed to maintain somewhat hidden, and for that reason alive, the magical aspects of the city. And so, the author is in part a magician: he reveals something only to distract, all in the name of protecting the very conditions that enable his art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the spiritual search of one of the most original Czech artists of the 20th century. The first part of the text presents a general outline of the author’s views on the matters of God, Satan, Catholicism, the Church, Nature, Occultism, and Mysticism. The radical changes in Váchal’s worldview and the aporias of his concepts are emphasized. An important thread in this part of the text is to show the spiritual connections between Váchal’s beliefs and fears on the one hand and criticism of contemporary civilization on the other. In the second part of the article, the author’s attention was focused on one year of the artist’s life. The art and literary works produced in 1920 were created with unusual intensity and in great moral tension resulting from the fact that he had started an extramarital relationship, but this did not diminish their quality. Apart from introducing the reader to these extraordinary works, the second part of the article examines in detail Váchal’s attitude as a critic of ‘modern’ man: thoughtless and destructive towards nature, cruel towards animals. It also presents the artist’s countercultural project related to the idea of the Book as a literary labyrinth that should be traversed slowly with humility and effort, in spite of the endless rush of modern culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author attempts to reconstruct the spiritual structure that emerges from the literary work of Olga Tokarczuk. In his opinion, the direct context of this structure is a sense of a crisis or even the twilight of contemporary Western culture. For this reason, Tokarczuk seeks a paradoxical synthesis of antinomies which are tearing the modern world apart and which grow out of radically different intellectual, religious and civilisational traditions. Above all, she aims to combine the rational and empirical tradition of the European Enlightenment with prophetic and messianic currents, as well as elements of folk magic. For Tokarczuk, what has become a model of such a fusion is eighteenth-century Podolia, a region in the eastern borderlands of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, where numerous forms of Jewish and Christian mysticism and messianism were born in stormy historical circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of the historical context, the religion and the literary sources is a fundamental approach to define and interpret the figure of the magician in the Greek world. In the aftermath of the wars between Greece and Persia, Greek culture was strongly influenced by Persian culture, but a strong feeling of national identity against the Eastern world developed among the Greeks. Persian culture was considered devoted to the softness of being and pleasure and became the symbol for excellence of moral degradation outside the Hellenic world. The Greek authors' testimonies and opinions on the Persian civilization and on the role of the Magi are to be inserted in this context. The study, through reading of Greek literary sources, will attempt to give a definition of the magician and magic in the Greek world and will deepen the theme of human fragility in the face of uncertainty and inability to face the difficulties of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the article is to present the most characteristic elements of the contemporary Russian discourse on spells. The empirical material used here was based on magical handbooks and spell collections by Natalia Ivanova Stiepanova, who calls herself (coming from a well-known house of folk healers) the Healer from Siberia. The paper explains the genesis of Russian people's sensibility to all signs of esotericism and shows huge popularity of magical practices in contemporary Russia. The paper also highlights mutual relations between magic, science and religion taking place in these areas (nowadays and in the past). The analysis of the material has shown that Russians today are firmly convinced of the existence of charms (bad spells cast with glances or words) which may cause various misfortunes. It is equally popular among them to believe that with the help of appropriate - as suggested by Stiepanova - magical rituals, a bad spell can be undone (got rid of). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the concept of phármakon and its use in Greek epic and tragic poems. Starting with a discussion of the concept of magic and its uses in Greek society in the archaic (from the eighth to the sixth centuries BCE) and classical (the fifth and fourth centuries BCE) periods, including the use of phármakon, an investigation is proposed to show the meanings, as well as the transformations through which the concept of magic passed during the three centuries which separate the production of the ancient texts used by us. Phármakon provides the Hellenic magic tradition with its element of continuity in the archaic and classical periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the magical activity performed by Christian women in Late Antique Gaul. Beyond the invectives of preachers and hagiographers, magic continued to be a widespread activity in Barbarian Gaul, now in Christian hands. In fact, other hagiographical episodes attest that consulting Christian enchanters must have been a common phenomenon and the more frequent practices were potion manufacture, divination, and healing. The anecdotes portray Christian women as incantatores, famous wonder-workers, and their procedures involved traditional techniques, including application of salves and plasters, hanging protective amulets and ligaments about a patient's neck, and dispensing potions. Despite reservations, Gallic bishops allowed much latitude for practicing wonder-workers because they estimated their magical behaviors to be heavenly inspired, while they condemned those of opponents to be demonic and injurious to patients. Hagiographers were particularly interested in publicizing incidents in which Christian enchanters prevailed after their pagan opponents failed. Obviously the main goal was to discourage members of his congregation from relying on pagan healers and promote their own specialist in order to bolster their local churches and their spiritual authority in the immediate environs of their cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The belt has been considered a magical instrument with apotropaic and thaumaturgical value in many civilizations. In the present essay numerous testimonies are gathered to demonstrate that its magical power, very spread in Antiquity, was assumed by the Christians and has lasted until the present time in the garments of the catholic liturgy and in the clothes of monks. In hagiographic literature monks appear frequently competing with the «holy men» of paganism for appropriating the dynamis that emanates from the belt, in contexts that differ little or nothing from those attested in Jewish and pagan sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the charge of enchantment hymns (carmina) laid against Ambrose in the social and political context the basilicas crisis (385-386). A connection might, therefore, be drawn between the political and polemical value of Ambrose's hymns, the accusation of acting contrary to the emperor's wishes and the assimilation of the bishop with a usurper (tyrannus). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution offers a general overview of the topic of magic and slavery with special attention to domestic slavery. Different from the dialectic confrontation on ancient slavery during the second half of the XXth Century, the new interpretative models of the sociology of graeco-roman magic focus on the detailed analysis of the motivations expressed in the sources. These motivations do not reflect an stereotyped behaviour of the social status of the agents: they are rather fluctuating. In this regard, the kind of tensions perceived are not exclusively vertical but, more frequently, they show horizontal tensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the significance and use of the ruins as loca magica in the Roman World, focusing on literary, epigraphical and archaeological sources. As liminal topographies invested of material, aesthetic and metaphorical meanings linked to destruction and death, and dwellings of supernatural powers, it will be demonstrated that ruins appeared as an ideal location for magical activities, mainly oriented to ruin victims' lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper concerns the elusive but compelling evidence for ritual behaviour associated with divination. This practice, as presented in ancient Britannia, appears to have embraced two approaches to the spirits. Reverence for the gods and desire to propitiate them was seemingly seasoned with a fair sprinkling of magic, where the balance of power shifted from spirits to human and where the latter use occult forces to manipulate the former. I begin with a short discourse on the nature of magic, followed by attempts to identify ritualists in the archaeological record. The section on art examines its positioning on cult-objects where it is confined to the parts regularly held by people, raising the question as to whether this contact might have involved transmission of a spiritual «charge» to the holder. There follow observations on particular divinatory practices that include lot-casting; the apparent significance of spoken and chanted words and music; and the evidence for the role played by transformatory experiences, such as visions and dreams. The final section deals with specific attributes, associated with bog-bodies, where there is possible relevance to the paper's central theme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To compose the cultural history of a place it is essential to know how its people enjoy leisure. Celebrations and tastes for certain shows tell a lot about the evolution of a society and its way of managing changes. We will approach those who broke in from the late nineteenth century, such as magic, hypnotism and considered scientific evenings, where Cieza was no exception. All according to the airs of progress that this change of century promised and although it may seem paradoxical, technology and the supernatural were enhanced through outreach and leisure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Realizamos uma interpretação da obra Interface (1995), obra em que Harun Farocki procura compreender seus próprios gestos e ambiente, convocando-nos a fazer seis breves reflexões, que relacionam questões acerca de materialidades fílmicas, magia e montagem no contexto da sociedade industrial. Vem a ser curiosa a forma como cineasta desdobrou seu humanismo crítico. Nele, imagens e palavras ganham intensa horizontalidade e transduções. Um mundo humano, e humanista, girando em um multiverso de códigos movimentados pelas materialidades de mídias em intersecções no contemporâneo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I make an analysis based on narratives about everyday experiences of individuals living in Santiago de Estero, Argentina, mediated by a legendary record; one religious and other sex-generic. In order to do this, work with two mythical figures, firstly students of magic and on the other hand, almamulas. In the first case, I carry out a description of the case and its relationship with the witch, both are essential to understand magic, the representations of sexuality and morality and the pact with the devil. In the second case, I take up the analysis in lathe to women in situation of incest (the almamulas) to understand the possession of their bodies by the sovereign patriarchs, act which involves empowerment and boasting of hegemonic masculine traits. This position determines the expressiveness of practices directed toward other males and the community in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some of the incantations compiled by Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón in his Tratado de las supersticiones y costumbres gentílicas (1629) correspond to the "disseases and sicknesses that come from illicit love affairs", and more precisely, to "harm caused by love and desire". This article analyses those sexual incantations from two points of view: that of ethnopoetics, with the strictly poetic problems emerging from Alarcón's medical and magical incantations, and as an attempt, that of an ethnopsycoanalysis in search of the roots of the death drive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the article is to explore J. Paul concept of fantasy as exposed in the text "On the natural magic of the imagination". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I make an analysis based on narratives about everyday experiences of individuals living in Santiago de Estero, Argentina, mediated by a legendary record; one religious and other sex-generic. In order to do this, work with two mythical figures, firstly students of magic and on the other hand, almamulas. In the first case, I carry out a description of the case and its relationship with the witch, both are essential to understand magic, the representations of sexuality and morality and the pact with the devil. In the second case, I take up the analysis in lathe to women in situation of incest (the almamulas) to understand the possession of their bodies by the sovereign patriarchs, act which involves empowerment and boasting of hegemonic masculine traits. This position determines the expressiveness of practices directed toward other males and the community in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship patient doctor is an essential element for the diagnosis and treatment of persons with health problems, but many times the care is focused on the results of the laboratory exams with the most advanced technologies. To such effects some aspects are analyzed on the introduction of the magic as artistic expression in the interrelation psychologist - patient of the children population, which favors a better therapeutic adherence and higher motivation due to the psychological treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We suggest there are at least three different ways though which we can understand supernatural phenomena: the philosophical/scientific knowledge that provides a physical explanation of reality, the knowledge that allows the interpretation of gods'signs and actions in the world, and the knowledge that is associated to different magical practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research aims at finding, in a comparative perspective, magical aspects of the Igreja Mundial do Poder de Deus (World Church of God's Power) and its leader and founder Valdemiro Santiago. Through an annotated reading of the essay "Sketch of a general theory of magic", by Marcel Mauss and Henri Hubert (2003), we seek to compare the concepts developed by these authors with the practices of the Igreja Mundial do Poder de Deus, its rites, representations, their pastor-magic, and its relation to religious believers that authenticates this exchange magic-religious in a Brazilian Pentecostal church. This attempt to find connections and similarities between magic and Valdemiro Santiago's magic Neopentecostalism (Neo-pentecostalism) seeks greater understanding of this religious social phenomenon that is behind his televised healing events throughout Brazil. As an empirical analysis of behavior, this article seeks to enrich the research with testimonies of believers who have been cured, taken from the official site of the church itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the disease forces to rethink both the individual and the community, it also involves identity theories and practices to contrast it. Yet, some diseases such as the outbreaks of Ebola in Africa can destroy everyday social codes and prevent treatment. This article highlights the relations between Ebola and magic/witchcraft in various African communities in Gabon, Uganda, Congo and Sierra Leone since 1997, and shows how these representations are simply the first step in the interpretation of the disease, followed by its politicization, within colonial and post-colonial remembering, as well as by the survivors' and caregivers' stigma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a new reading of the famous story about black sorceress Juana Garcia that appears in Juan Rodríguez Freyle's El Carnero. It shows how she manipulates basic elements of the colonial bureaucracy that control time and space to perform the trick that allows her adulterous client to get away with her infidelity. One key factor is the periodicity of the fleets connecting Spain to the New World, the so-called “Indies run, " in which the deceived husband travels. Another is Juana's ability to fly that lets her overcome time and space restrictions, and is drawn from the myth of the flying African, which gave slaves the imaginary freedom to escape back to the motherland. With these details Rodriguez Freyle reveals the structure of the Archive from the inside, and how sex and money are at the foundation of that imperial construct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is a review of the exhibition Pamiątka, Zabawka, Talizman / Souvenir, Toy, Talisman, which opened at the Seweryn Udziela Ethnographic Museum in Cracow on 30 June 2013, during the Jewish Culture Festival. The exhibition was curated by Erica Lehrer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The establishment of colonial rule in the Americas encouraged the prosecution there of heretical religious beliefs, and magical or superstitious practices and witchcraft, whether these beliefs and activities were Spanish, indigenous or African in origin. This article examines the prosecutions brought against people for engaging in magic and witchcraft in Tucumán during the eighteenth century, focusing in particular on the accusations brought against women—and especially female slaves—whose cases were examined and judged by the Inquisition in Córdoba, Argentina (where there was a judicial court answerable to the main offices of the Inquisition based at Lima), and on the trials that took place in the secular courts run by the town council authorities. This article draws upon documentary sources found in the Archivo del Arzobispado de Córdoba and the Archivo Histórico de la Provincia de Córdoba (Argentina). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the eighteenth century, magic and witchcraft were used as a means of resolving people's everyday conflicts, anxieties and uncertainties. Practitioners of magic and their clients made use of both public and private spaces, ‘appropriating’ them for purposes very different from those which they were really meant to serve. The performance of magic rituals in public and private spaces meant that both were used as places in which to source ingredients for the rituals themselves. Such spaces were also where potential customers, seeking to avail themselves of sorcery, were directly approached and enticed by its practitioners. The magic rituals performed there were supervised by witches who engaged in magic secretly while professing to reject it in public. Generally, they liked to do their work in places that were symbolically in keeping with the magic they practised, and with the relationships they wished to establish with their clients. In other words, they exploited their chosen milieu for their own particular ends. The people, actively or passively superstitious, who were opposed to a world in which they were expected to obey the accepted norms of moral conduct and in which they found themselves judged harshly by others more submissive to society's rules of behaviour, discovered in witchcraft adaptable ways in which to give expression to their true inclinations while avoiding the risks of openly defying the prevailing views of the society to which they belonged. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the Bible the magicians could duplicate Aaron's feat of turning a rod into a serpent. Bonaventure claims that the serpents are not the effect of direct divine intervention. Peter Abelard claims that this story shows we do not really know how to distinguish miracles from magic happenings. On the other hand, in the Qur'an the magicians do not really manage to duplicate Moses' feat: they only produce fake serpents. Yet, al-Ghaza. IT too does not wish to put much weight on this miracle, precisely because of the general difficulty of distinguishing miracles from magic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1966, the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan publishes Écrits setting an antecedent for his teachings. We consider that this antecedent leaves a very specific proposal for psychoanalysis and a field where the psychoanalyst can make its practice possible: truth as a cause to the subject. However, Lacan warns, from a psychoanalytical science perspective, that we must resist other ways of relationship with truth as a cause. Thus, from his scientific obedience and through a structuralist definition, Lacan also approaches other fields outside the jurisdiction of psychoanalysis: magic, religion, and science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we intend to analyze the trajectory of the protagonist in the short story "São Marcos", which is part of the work Sagarana (1979) by João Guimarães Rosa, from the perspective of the discovery of magic and poetry. João/José moves from the space inhabited by Calango-Frito toward the distant and lonely forest to find himself with nature and realize his rite of passage. The more João/José departs from this space, the more descriptions occupy an important role in the narrative. Time is perceived by the movement of the protagonist in the nature and the space shapes slowly and thoroughly. The description ceases to be an element of the narrative and occupies the center of it, being steeped in minutiae that support the interpretation of the meaning of the narrative and the rite of passage through which passes the protagonist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

That Neopentecostalism using substrate own magical matrix Brazilian religious, no doubt. Researchers like Ari Pedro Oro, Antonio Gouvêa Mendonça and Maria das Dores Campos Machado, for example, have worked this theme under the scrutiny of the Social Sciences. Thus, this brief essay is scope to bring back to the fore, the well-crafted question of the relationship between religion and magic, circumscribed here, the neo-Pentecostalism of the Worldwide Church of God's Power. From the anthropological locus seek to verify, first, the existence of magic in Pentecostal worship, whose focus is the role of the pastor-mage healing ritual in which such practices are more strongly evident, and, secondly, we check through the ethnographic evidence collected in the field, ie, fetishes, magical thinking that permeates the symbolic imagery of the faithful customers, the IMPD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Baphomet, the lasting creation of the French writer Éliphas Lévi, is an icon of the esoteric universe: it is the history's best-known "satanic" image. In an attempt to unravel its rich symbolic composite, an iconographic exegesis will be conducted through the use of analytical psychology, founded by the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung. The origins of Baphomet in alchemy, Kabbalah and Gnosticism will investigated mostly through the application of Jungian concepts such as the collective unconscious and the archetypes. Such analysis will be divided into eight sub-areas, including: the significance of his animal appearance in Christian eschatology, hermaphroditism in psychology and the arcane sciences, the magical qualities of the pentagram and the importance of the caduceus in hermetism. Finally, we conclude that Baphomet is a symbol of the self, the archetype of psychic wholeness. Baphomet aims to be an alternative to the Christian primordial image of self-realization, more inclusive and less repressive than the latter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]