ABSTRACT
If there are critical categories in the study of religion\s, 1 as the title of this series suggests, “magic” certainly qualifies as one. “Magic” is critical in several senses of the word. To begin with, “magic” is a category that for far too long has been used to negatively determine the nature of “religion”. As we will see, “religion” and “magic” are traditionally defined in mutually exclusive terms: “religion” is purified from “magic”, and “magic” is what does not qualify as “religion”. “Magic” is therefore also a critical category in the sense of providing an implicit critique: “magic” is illegitimate religion, unless it is given a positive twist and serves as the positive other to traditional religion – for example, in the case of modern or contemporary “Magick”. Accordingly, “magic” is critical by being a category of distinction: it distinguishes things, practices or ways of thinking from others, including religion, rationality and science. Last but not least, “magic” is a critical category because it has been variously criticized and remains a matter of intense dispute: despite its being a common term in all modern western European languages, there is no unanimously agreed academic definition of “magic”, nor any shared theory or theoretical language – and apparently not even any agreement on the range or type of actions, events, thoughts or objects covered by the category. Accordingly, during recent decades the scholarly validity of the category as such has been vigorously criticized by several scholars, but also emphatically defended by others. In the following, we can only outline some main parameters in the intellectual struggles involved in “defining magic”. Our constant use of the quotation marks when speaking of “magic” is meant to alert the reader to the need to hold one’s breath before joining the chorus of voices who have made pronouncements on the nature and work of “magic”. 2
