ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by examining the origins and development of the anthropological study of magic to identify factors and mentalities that define magic as a distinctive category of ideas and practices. In continuum, the study of modern magic is addressed from the perspective of the contemporary academic study of Western esotericism to consider how magic has traditionally been treated as rejected knowledge. Furthermore, the survival of magic into the modern era as a participatory worldview is discussed drawing attention to the requirement of a more radical non-intellectualist recognition of magic as an immediate and irreducible element of human experience.
To clarify modern magic as a participatory worldview, Luhrmann and Greenwood’s anthropological studies of modern Western magical practitioners are investigated interpreting magic as a cognitive shift, where both ‘rational’ and ‘ordinary’ and ‘irrational’ and ‘magical’ may converge and be experienced under ritual conditions in a state of ‘magical consciousness’. This debate presenting modern magic in terms of altering phenomenal properties of consciousness is then addressed by examining the fallacy of the concept of altered states of consciousness. As a response, the analytical paradigm of ‘altered pattern of phenomenal properties’ is suggested to properly review consciousness structured through ritual as an interface for the study of modern magic.
