Imagine this situation.
A well-established manufacturer — let us say a renowned Northampton shoe maker — is proud of its tradition and reputation, but aware of rising costs and flagging sales: it consults a marketing specialist and spends a great deal of money for advice which can be summarized as follows.
“Your image is far too staid and respectable. You should sharpen it up to appeal to a new, younger customer base. Italicize your logo, use brighter colours, employ more young sales staff and add humor and zip to your promotions.”
If challenged to justify such trendy mumbo jumbo, the consultant would probably get a bit huffy and insist that his company works on sound scientific principles.
Pages of statistics, analysis and market research would be produced to justify this claim.
But what if the manufacturer had instead consulted a traditional magician? He would have been advised as follows. “You need to invoke the help of Mercury, because he is the god of commerce.
He is also the god of youth, swiftness, communication, trickery and his magical images use yellow and bright colors.
So add a bit of yellow or bright colour to your logo, italicize it to show swiftness, employ more young people, think more youthfully and put some humor and zip into your promotions.
Most appropriate of all for a god who rules communications — you should create a trendy web site.”
The justification may be quite different, yet the actions prescribed are almost identical. So what is going on?
The book argues that, to really understand magic and its place in our society, it is more helpful to begin by considering it as a different way of thinking rather than as a distinct type of activity.
If you dismiss, say, Jungian psychological approaches to magic because you insist that ‘real’ magic is all about robes, incense, barbaric conjurations and ritual sacrifice, then you are doing no better than someone who insists that scientists are not ‘real’ unless they have hair like Einstein, thick spectacles and white lab coats; or that ‘real’ artists must be penniless; or that ‘true’ religious believers must be dogmatic fundamentalists.
