Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > Alternative belief systems > Occult studies > Magic, alchemy & hermetic thought
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A Cognitive Theory of Magic (Paperback, annotated edition)
Loot Price: R1,547
Discovery Miles 15 470
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A Cognitive Theory of Magic (Paperback, annotated edition)
Series: Cognitive Science of Religion
Expected to ship within 10 - 15 working days
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Magic is a universal phenomenon. Everywhere we look people perform
ritual actions in which desirable qualities are transferred by
means of physical contact and objects or persons are manipulated by
things of their likeness. In this book Sorensen embraces a
cognitive perspective in order to investigate this long-established
but controversial topic. Following a critique of the traditional
approaches to magic, and basing his claims on classical
ethnographic cases, the author explains magic's universality by
examining a number of recurrent cognitive processes underlying its
different manifestations. He focuses on how power is infused into
the ritual practice; how representations of contagion and
similarity can be used to connect otherwise distinct objects in
order to manipulate one by the other; and how the performance of
ritual prompts representations of magical actions as effective.
Bringing these features together, the author proposes a cognitive
theory of how people can represent magical rituals as purposeful
actions and how ritual actions are integrated into more complex
representations of events. This explanation, in turn, yields new
insights into the constitutive role of magic in the formation of
institutionalised religious ritual.
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