ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how magic can affect everyday conceptions of reality, and how magic can be an analytical category as well as a valuable source of knowledge. The study of magic is central to the discipline of anthropology. Anthropologists have studied magic extensively, even when other social science disciplines have dismissed it as bizarre or peripheral, but it has not always been fully understood. Magic is an art that stems from a universal process of mind that has been systematically undermined and undervalued in Western cultures. The exclusion of a sustained theoretical discussion of magic may reflect the overwhelming influence of sociological theories that ‘exiled spirits to the margins of human experience, rendering them more the results of psychological aberrations than culturally understandable constructs’. The chapter also presents an overview on the key concepts discussed in this book.
