ABSTRACT

In introducing Dr Brain’s excellent translation I am acutely conscious that Professor Lévi-Strauss has not only written about Théorie de la magie at some length but also made it the occasion for a major, if early, statement of position.1 Because this important document has not yet been translated I believe that I shall do the reader of the present work more service by drawing his attention to it rather than attempting something in the nature of an original essay. I shall write of Mauss’s Theory of Magic in the perspective of Lévi-Strauss’s own achievement which, in my opinion, gives it retrospectively its significance for the modern reader.