Opening the Gate

Unlocking yourself releases heat that flows to all extremities,bringing forth a heightened awareness of life and your connection to the environment, There's a moment of oneness in everything, a close kind of warmth that snuggles and smothers simultaneously, releasing with it a cry of fear and liberation, I am free and chained at the same time

In the confrontation of opposites, there is the fusion of the similar, which creates a cycle of entropy, as the polar opposites turn on the similar and turn on themselves a cycle that never stops and reveals in its intricacies everything falling apart to come back together again

The inner worlds are revealed by the outer world unlocked by the people who can understand that its not all in your head there's real meaning and power in the symbols you hold so dear. There's liberation in the facing of fear and fear in the liberation you achieve for the unknown calling on and on that you come forth and face the consequences of your choices.

Liberation and Tradition

The value of any transcendent tradition should be found within its liberating qualities. A tradition, of any sort, has no other ultimate value. The use of tradition for tradition's sake is a perversion, a tool of suppression.

From The UnderWorld Initiation (affiliate link) by R.J. Stewart

I've just started reading this book, but I found this paragraph to be tantalizing because of what it says that a magical tradition should do, i.e. provide some form of liberation or freedom through the magical work a person does. That theme is present in a variety of different occult subgenres. Chaos magic advocates for it, as does Thelema, but the danger within any subgenre is the blind adherence to tradition because that's the way it's been done and that's how we should do it.

The idea of examining a tradition or practice of any kind for its liberating qualities is something I agree with, because ideally any magical working you do will be meaningful in a personal way that improves your life by freeing you of limitations either imposed on you by other people or self-imposed due to your own circumstances. When a tradition fails, it is because it actually imposes limitations in the form of dogma and non-questioning. It's easy to fall into those traps, particularly if you are in a group setting and want to "belong" to the group, but when such belonging becomes the priority, the liberation the tradition might offers falls to the wayside in favor of trying to fit into what you think others want.

One of the reasons I've pushed for experimentation with magic is to get out of such group think dynamics. Its good to work with people, when you do so with a spirit of inquiry and acceptance that the experience one person has doesn't need to apply to everyone else, to be valid and useful for that person. Experimentation encourages the idea that magic is best experienced in an environment where a person can try an idea out without getting shut down. When people try to shut you down, it is usually because they feel threatened by your desire to liberate your preconceptions by challenging them through experience. They may feel that by challenging your own preconceptions, you challenge their own, but this is projection on their part, done as a way of preserving a cherished image they want to cling to, without recognizing that the value of experience is that it allows us to shatter what we hold onto, in order to discover how much it may have held us back.

The Spiritual Tipping Point

I think of magic as a process that's akin to a tipping point, a spiritual tipping point. With magic, you're stacking the odds in your favor, and focusing on creating a very specific outcome. Part of how that works is that you create a tipping point where the amount of resistance against the desired outcome tips to the desired outcome, because enough action has been put toward the outcome that the resistance is a less viable option. This kind of approach to magic is useful in long term scenarios, where you're trying to achieve a specific outcome but you recognize it might not occur right away. A good example is a job hunt. When you're hunting for a job, you have to do a number of activities that will help you get the job. you need to fill out applications, network, develop a resume, go to job interviews, and do other related activities. When you add magic into the mix the focus is on using magic to help you get a job that you want, but in order to accomplish this, you know it could take a little while, because you're dealing with a number of people who are also job hunting. Those people, along with employers, create a resistance field. For the magic to work you have to specify not only what you want, but also how you'll turn that resistance into momentum. How I have approached this in the past is simple: I'll do a magical working for the job or create an entity to help me get it and part of what fuels the spell or entity is the activities I do that are related to the job hunt. They create a momentum that starts to create a tipping point.

Possibilities become reality when there is enough momentum behind them that reality tips in their favor. So with the job hunting example, multiple actions done in conjunction with magic can create a tipping point where the desired possibility becomes reality because the other possibilities, or field of resistance, doesn't have enough momentum to sustain itself against the dedicated momentum you've built up on multiple fronts.

Personally I prefer to employ the tipping point approach to any situation where I know I'll already be spending a decent amount of time working toward achieving the outcome through mundane means. The spiritual tipping point just makes it happen a bit sooner, and it always works, because its done on the understanding that what you accomplish will occur, and you're just helping to make it inevitable with everything you are doing to create it.

What you can learn from Pop Culture characters

I study pop culture characters in comics, cartoons, shows, books, etc., because of what I can learn about them, in terms of character development, attributes, correspondences, and how you can apply all of that to your own magical work. There's a lot of detail that's put into a character, in terms of origin, history, personality and all of these details are useful not only for developing a pop culture magic working, but really for developing an eye toward the kind of detail that can be necessary to pull off a good magical working. With a pop culture character, the details that go into the development of the character are ones that help make that character memorable to the people watching the show or reading the book or comic the character is in. If you want to create a compelling character you need to develop all of those details, because they will all help draw the interest of the audience.

How does that apply to magic? If you're creating a magical entity you want to be as detailed as possible in the creation of it. What are its characteristics and mannerisms? What is its origins, its special abilities etc.? Those details can bring that entity to life for you, and empower the magical work you do.

But lets look beyond entities to other forms of magical work. I find that paying attention to the details is essential to being successful with magical work. When I put a magical working together, I try to think of the details as part of the narrative of a story I'm writing. By taking lessons from pop culture, I've been able to put those details into focus in my magical work, so that I don't leave any loopholes in what I'm trying to accomplish.

The Process of Magic Radio show

The latest radio show is on the Process of Magic. I discuss why the process of magic is important, answer a question about energy, and provide a couple of examples. For the next radio show I'll be interviewing Crystal Blanton. It'll be a two part show.

Listen to internet radio with Experimental Magic on Blog Talk Radio

Patterns of Reality

"Mind patterns could be 'woven' like cord patterns, and these mind patterns were what 'move' spells. Different coloured threads indicated different kinds of consciousness, and their physical arrangements had to be projected into equivalent Inner patterns of power" -- From Magical Ritual Methods (affiliate link) by William Gray I pulled this quote while doing a bit of research for Neuro Space/Time Magic. The concept is interesting, using different colored threads to represent specific patterns of thought and being. I was once part of a ritual where we used silver threads to create a tesseract matrix of time. The thread represented the journey to access temporal possibilities, but what I find interesting with this concept isn't even that, but rather how the mind can be organized into different states that can then be evoked using a simple prop such as a colored thread, and a pattern or shape to bring it forth.

This concept can be replicated with other methods as well, such as using an alphabet of desire to embody different states of consciousness and patterns of reality. The key, however, is to recognize how you will actually use a specific state of being to change a pattern of reality you are in. Lets say you are doing a habitual behavior that you want to change. You are aware of it, and you can name it, and provide a symbol/shape to embody it. Now you could take this embodied shape and destroy it, but would that really solve your problem?

An alternate approach would be to devise a symbol and/or shape that represented a desired state of mind/being that you could use to counteract the habitual behavior. Ideally, this symbol/shape could even be the same color of the initial symbol you developed to represent the habitual behavior. Thus when you started to do the habitual behavior, you could visualize the shape and letter of that state, and even vocalize it. Then you could change the shape and letter to the new state of being, even as you also changed the vocalization, imprinting the new behavior on the habit, in order to change it into the new behavior.

All of this I got from a quote by Gray. If you haven't read his books, give them a try. They offer a lot to any occultist lucky enough to find them.

Deadpool as a memetic virus

One of my favorite comic book characters is Deadpool. Since the very beginning he's actually been a favorite character for a lot of readers and at the same time he's a bit more than that, and also something that Marvel didn't expect in terms of popular interest. Deadpool's popularity has grown enough that he's gotten multiple comic books and even a possible movie deal. The character is fascinating in his own right, breaking the fourth wall frequently and at the same time playing with a lot of comic book tropes in terms of hero and anti-hero concepts. There's enough character development to keep him interesting, but a lot of the focus is on his humor, self-destructiveness, and the healing factor that keeps him alive despite it all.

Why do I think of Deadpool as a memetic virus? In part, I think of him as this because of how much his character has come to pop up in video games, comics, etc., and in art because he breaks the fourth wall frequently. I see him as an agent of chaos (which can be good). More than that I see him as a sticky character, which is to say he stands out in the minds of the readers in ways other characters don't.

Having been familiar with the various iterations of the character, since he was first invented, its interesting to see how he's evolved from a comic book villain to something more than a comic. I find tracing the history of such entities can be useful for learning if you'll work with them, as well as understanding just how they've changed due to popularity and interest.

Why magic isn't a bunch of categories or labels

I think sometimes people try too hard to boil magic down to categories. You ask someone what type of magic s/he practices and you get a long list list of categories such as Chaos Magic, Postmodern Magic, Shamanism, Ceremonial Magic, etc. Add in magical lodges the person belongs to and you've got another set of categories (made into Acronyms) such as TOPY, OTO, OSOGD, GD, Etc.,I see these categories applied to the future of magic as if that can be boiled down to a specific type of magical practice. I'm guilty of this too. I talk about experimental magic as a label of some kind, as a way of trying to differentiate what I'm doing from what others are doing and labeling their practice as. Yet at some point it becomes a haze of semantics and the question that arises is: Are you doing anything with all of this anyway or just armchairing it?

On some level there's a necessity for labels and categories, to be able to provide some vocabulary for the discussions, but when we get obsessed with it, it ends up becoming some kind of circle jerk indulged in for the sake of trying to prove who is cooler than thou or who's the most elite occultist out there, or whatever. We all want to stand out and how better to do it than come up with some crazy ass term that sounds cool and might even mean something up if we get through the semantic haze.

But I like my magic simple. Yes, I want to experiment with it, but I also want it to be something other people will do and understand without having to throw in a lot of specialist jargon. So I'll use a definition where applicable, and otherwise keep the focus on doing the magic.

Time Dilation Experiences

Time dilation is one of the experiences that's always fascinated me. I suspect just about every person has experienced time dilation. Time dilation is the experience of time either slowing down or speeding up. For example, if you've done a magical ritual before and you've felt like hours passed when perhaps only a half hour passed, you've experienced time dilation. Or if you've raced for a bus and felt like time sped up around you, you've also experienced time dilation.

When I do space/time magic, I like to warm up, as it were, using time dilation techniques. they are techniques that help to push the mind out of the linear frame of thinking it is used to, while prepping it for opening the doors of consciousness to explore time from a non-linear perspective. One of my favorite exercises to use comes from Jean Houston's Book The Possible Human (affiliate link). In this exercise you visualize time as a yard stick with past, present, and future occupying 12 inches each. Then what you do is take the past and give it 12 more inches, while having six inches off the present and future, and focus on experiencing a perception of time where most of the perception is on the past.

You can do the same exercise with the future, giving it 24 inches, and giving the past and present 6 inches each, or apply it to the present. Now you'll note that this is still a fairly linear perception of time, but the point of the exercise is to loosen up your habitual perception of units of time.

Time dilation is the first step toward experiencing and accepting that time isn't a constant and that we have influence on it. The usefulness of doing a time dilation exercise, whether in daily work, or just before you do a space/time working is that it'll push you outside the digital measurements of time we've come to rely on so much. And learning to activate time dilation at will can actually help out in those everyday situations, as well, because it teaches you to rely less on external measurements of time and more on internal awareness. You can apply that internal awareness toward shaping time around you, like in the time sphere working I discuss in Space/Time Magic.

Time dilation frees us of the automation of time, challenges us to question the measurements and schedules of others and shows us a glimpse of what time could be, if we are open to altering our perceptions of it.

Some thoughts on protection magic

Each day I do meditation to ground myself, but part of the meditation also involves sustaining protective magic as part of the grounding aspect. Protection from what? Protection from external influences, or internal beliefs, or a combination of the two, or some dastardly wizard out to get me, because of something I said or did? I've seen several books on protection and reversal magic, where someone throws something at you and you say, "I'm rubber and you're glue." I've always found it interesting that people will buy the books and put so much effort toward protecting themselves and then I'm reminded I do daily work that essentially acts as a protection.

I think protection is important, to one degree or another. For some people, who have a need for drama, protection may be especially important as a way to protect against the magic someone else might do toward them. Whether someone is doing magic or not is a question, because for such people there is a suspicion that it's all in their heads. On the other hand, there are legitimate cases where another magician will try to mess with you for whatever reason and it pays to have protection against those people. Setting up your home with wards and reinforcing them can pay off, when someone comes knocking on your door with a desire to put the hurt on you.

But for the majority of times that I really think about magical protection, it's really for potential mundane disasters. Car accidents, natural disasters etc. It's magic you do for that eventual day when something comes up that's out of your control and the only thing you can do is hope what you've put into place will turn it aside enough to make sure you walk away.

There's always a place for protection, so long as we don't let it stop us from experiencing the world. Protect yourself, but also challenge yourself.

How I use paintings in my magical work

I use paintings in a lot of my magical work. I'm currently working on one now, which is a self-evocation piece. The majority of my paintings tend to be used for entity work of one form or another, but I also have used some of them for specific spell work, like when I created a painting for an astrological alignment that was occurring. I find that paintings provide me an opportunity to align myself with particular events, people, etc. and express that alignment as well.

This is a painting I did a while back for my work with Elephant. It's obviously not a literal painting of an elephant, but it is an expression of my connection to elephant and at the same time functions as a portal to connect with the primal energy that represents elephant.

This is a picture that represents the spider queen of time. It's fairly abstract, because it's actually focused on representing the web she weaves, but it works to convey that web as well as provide a gateway to it.

This is a painting I did for Bune to thank him for his aid in my wealth magical workings. It's his goetic seal, but it's personalized because of the painting. Any work I do involves using this painting.

As you can see paintings are an important tool in my work. I find that the creative expression puts me into the right frame of mind to do magical work, and that the space I create via my paintings is useful for shaping the magic I need to do.  Do you use any art in your magical workings, and if so how?

Where research fits into experimentation

Research is an integral part of experimentation for magical work. When I'm working on a project, writing a book, or looking at working with a pop culture icon or brand, I do a lot of research. Whether its researching the history of a character, or reading up on neuroscience, I know that to get an accurate understanding of what I want to work with I need to do research that will support my experimental work. An experiment is defined, in part, by the information you have available to you, as well as by the desired outcome you want to accomplish. An experiment can't be structured effectively until you've examined relevant information that can provide an understanding of what you'll be working with.

When I first began my experimentation with neurotransmitters I'd already done my research by finding out what they were and how they worked in the brain. I couldn't have developed a neurotransmitter entity technique if I didn't already have some information on what to look for and what to potentially expect. My real test was sharing the technique with other people who hadn't necessarily done the same research. When they got similar results, that told me that the technique was sound, but also that the research had paid off, because I was able to provide enough information to help people work with the neurotransmitters effectively.

Magical experimentation doesn't occur in a void. Every magician I know who experiments isn't just coming up with something off the top of their heads They are researching information, looking up what others have done, and putting together a technique to experiment with, based in part on the research they've done.

What about you? What research do you do, in order to improve your magical work?

Some experiments I'm working on

I'm currently working on some different experiments. Some of these are in concept phase, while others are being developed as practical applications. All of them represent ongoing work I'm involved in. 1. Neurotransmitter work: I've been working with neurotransmitters as entities for over 7 years now. The current work I'm doing has involved working with multiple neurotransmitters at the same time, for purposes such as emotional regulation, healing, and related work. I'm writing about this work in Neuro-Space/Time Magic.

2. Web of Space/Time: This is my system of space/time magic. I've been working on it for a while now and its partially related to the work I've been doing with movement and space, as well as exploring time's role in navigating space. There's also some work with possibilities in imaginary time. I'm writing a thorough explanation in Neuro Space/Time Magic.

3. Movement/space work: I've been exploring how to use movement as a form of magical work and expression for a while now. It's another of those current projects that's focused on the book, but also focused on working with the body as the main form of magical expression.

4. Brandscapes: This has been inspired by the class I'm teaching on pop culture magic. At this point it's a concept, but one I want to explore further as a way of working with a company entity in a purposeful, and focused manner.

These are a few projects that are on my mind. What about you? What's something interesting you are experimenting with in your magical work?

Radio show on Magical Groups

Here's the latest radio show on magical groups. Take a listen, and leave a comment, if you agree, disagree etc.

Listen to internet radio with Experimental Magic on Blog Talk Radio

Credibility, causality, and magic

When I think about causality and magic, one realization I have is that trying to make the causality of magic credible is really trying to apply a different model of thinking that may not fit magic. Magic doesn't really operate on Scientific laws of cause and effect. It has its own rules, and those rules involve a different angle and take on causality, as magic applies to it. Trying to fit magic into some box or hole of another discipline isn't useful, if you are strictly applying that discipline to magic as an explanation of it. It can be useful to draw on concepts and practices from other disciplines in your magical work, but that's a different post altogether. Wanting magic to fit some kind of scientific, rational explanation is really taking the wonder out of magic, in my opinion. Even in my own work of defining magic, I've never really tried to fit it into another discipline, so much as I've tried to explore my own experience of it. And when I think about it, magic is really about experiences. Yes it can be a technology, and an art, etc., but its more than that. It's experiences and its stepping into a frame of mind that is willing to accept those experiences and find meaning where most people wouldn't. It's not about credibility in the standard sense of the word, because such ideas of credibility are based off specific disciplines that try to structure the experience of the world in very specific ways, different from magic And to be fair, magic also is about structuring experience in a very specific way.

My point is this: Trying to approach the causality of magic in terms of credibility as derived from other disciplines doesn't work too well, because there's a predisposition to view magic as some kind of primitive activity done by people who don't know any better.

We do know better however. We know that magic works and we can even explain how it works, but the explanation we provide won't necessarily fit within the accepted perspectives of other disciplines. Nor does it need to. If the result occurs consistently, the process works and that's all the credibility you need. The causality is involved in the process and your understanding of that process is a large part of the causality of magic, and how it's bringing desired change into your life.

Book Review: The Emerald Tablet (Affiliate link) by Dennis William Hauck

This book provides a good explanation of the seven stages of alchemy and how they can be applied to a person via psychology. The author does have a tendency to mix in some inaccurate history and also tries to connect alchemy to UFOS, but even with those flaws, this is still a useful book for someone wanting to learn about alchemy and begin applying some of the concepts to his/her life. I recommend it primarily for the explanation of the seven stages of alchemy, which you can apply to your life via your own internal work.

Radio interview with Jaymi Elford

I just finished interviewing Jaymi Elford about her Tarot Business. We had a couple callers cal in at the last minute and I apologize to them, but if they wish to contact her with questions, please visit her website. Jaymi offers Tarot Readings, Tarot Classes, and Tarot pouches which can hold your tarot cards. She's also writing a book on cutting edge Tarot techniques. To learn more about her, please visit her website.

You can listen to the radio show interview below. Next week's topic will be Magical Groups and will air on Friday June 10th at 2:30pm.

Listen to internet radio with Experimental Magic on Blog Talk Radio

Use what you got

Use what you got. That's one of my mantras when it comes to magical work, and what it means is use everything at your disposal that helps you accomplish your goal. If you feel fear or worry about a situation where you need a result, then use that worry and fear to push for the result. Don't suppress it, or try and clear it away. That will make those emotions stronger and will also tell reality you don't want the result. Make it part of your process, part of the equation that helps you accomplish your goal. Make those emotions your friends, helping you achieve your result, bringing you success because you've used them to write large the possibility that will be the new reality, the new you. Use what you got, because what you have is always a resource. It only becomes a problem if you make it a problem. Knowing how to take your unease and make it your ally is really about learning how to hold on to yourself in the face of resistance and discover what it is you truly value and desire. In knowing that you can make informed choices, and practice magic that is effective because everything you have is turned toward making it work.

Use what you got, because it is what you have...Use all the discord, every thought, every emotion, every fear, worry, and whisper...make it your own, make it your success.

Book Review: Advanced Magick for Beginners (affiliate link) by Alan Chapman

As I read this book, what I found myself thinking was that while I found the exercises useful and some of the author's points salient to what he was trying to teach, there was also an odd mixture of push button magic (we don't need to know how it works) and traditional perspectives, which actually in a way fits, but also reveals what I'd consider problematic about this book. There's a tendency to stick with tried and true in occultism and this book fits that tendency. The decrying of asking how magic works fits with the traditional perspectives the author takes toward evocation and other practices and ironically defeats his criticisms of occult culture, because he ends up embodying what he is critiquing.

Is it a good book? I'd say there is some useful information here, and that an occultist will benefit from exploring the ideas. At the same time, what would be the most useful exercise for this book (and really any other book in general) is to question everything the author says, and also don't buy the push button, we don't need to know how it works model. If we don't need to know why it works, why write a book on the subject?

The Microbot approach to sickness

I've been sick lately, a weird kind of flu where my temperature has gone below the usual temp. It's not a fever, but the result is I still feel sick. Never being a person to turn aside opportunity, I've been working on a technique to deal with illness that I've been using for a little while now. It's worked to actually stop a fever in the past from developing, and in this case has been used to mitigate the current sickness and speed up the healing. The technique is based off a video game called Microbots. In that game you are a microbot sent into a body to heal it by getting rid of the virus that is in the body. The developers of the game created a stunning environment that looks like the biology of the body. Useful for visualization purposes if you're doing work to contact neurotransmitters, but also useful if you want to combat a fever or flu, especially if you want to use the microbot for that purpose.

When I feel sickness coming on, or in this latest case, when I'm in the midst of experiencing it, I'll meditate before resting and create a health servitor that will go in and start combating the sickness, while also offering support to the natural systems already in place. My microbot servitor is equipped to not just fight the sickness, but also comes with healing tools that can be used to heal the body, where needed.

I like drawing on pop culture for inspiration, and the microbot game has proven to be the perfect inspiration for this work, because its provided a model of internal work I can use with my body. It demonstrates the importance of drawing on such inspirations for your magical work. I can't say I've found anything else that provides such a useful tool for health and healing work. I'm going to continue experimenting with it, and will be sure to share details either here, or in Neuro-Space/Time Magic.

Magic as a technology

I tend to approach aspects of magic as a technology and/or a process. I don't think magic as a whole can be boiled down to a set of tools or processes, but I think the actions can be examined as a process and form of technology, and that there is benefit in doing this. The benefit is the ability to personalize your approach to magic, based off understanding it as a process, and knowing what can be manipulated in that process. It interests me that I find what I consider to be a willful ignorance on the part of some occultists. There's this tendency to argue that you don't need to know how magic works and that examining magic as a technology debases the practice...as if somehow it's better to not really know or ask how it works. I think such ignorance is wasteful, and of no real value to someone practicing magic.

I don't think of magic as a science, but I do find value in the process and in understanding what factors will lead to a consistent result. And not surprisingly this has resulted in what I'd consider to be consistent results. Viewing magic as a process and technology doesn't necessarily take the magic out of magic or the mystical experiences away from it. But what it does do is provide structure for your experiences, as well as a way of recording them. And it is odd that the same proponents that argue that you don't need to know how magic works, also argue that you need to keep a journal in order to review the magical work you've done. If that isn't examining how magic works, I'm not sure what is, but I will say that knowing how magic works makes your practice a lot more focused.

The Adjustment Bureau

I recently watched the Adjustment Bureau, an intriguing movie that looked at predestiny, free will, and chance, from a perspective where human beings lived fairly pre-destined lives, lived according to a plan, and were monitored by "angels" who would insure they didn't deviate from the plan. The angels monitored the time line of the person by checking a tablet and seeing if the actions of the person deviated from the plan, and if they did, the angels, would make adjustments, either to the choices the person could make, or to his/her thought processes. Pretty interesting concept... I tend to approach possibilities in a similar kind of way. I'll use tarot cards, sigil webs, or other such representations to manipulate possibilities, aligning specific ones with my time line, in order to make adjustments that bring the right possibility into reality. I don't even always rely on tools. Tools, such as Tarot, make it easier to conceptualize space/time possibilities, because they act as representations of what you're trying to manipulate. But it is also possible to interact with the possibility field directly. It involves entering an altered state of mind, where you are receptive to those possibilities and can understand how they can fit into your space and time , as well as being able to keep up with the changes that occur to the possibility field, if you align possibilities into your space and time.

The ability to interact with time non-linearly, whether through tools, or through an altered state of mind, is a lot like the concept of the adjustment bureau. You aren't necessarily making a lot of big changes, so much as you are making adjustments with possibilities. Some possibilities are easier to bring into alignment, while others will require more effort. It depends on how likely the possibility will turn into reality, as well as what other possibilities you'll need to bring into alignment to make it happen. They key is to remember to be flexible in your work...don't push it too hard. Let the possibilities flow over you, and open yourself to the expression of them in your life, but only bring them into alignment when you are ready to handle the consequences.

Book Review: A Cognitive Theory of Magic (Affiliate Link) by Jesper Sorenson

This is a dense read with a lot of academic jargon. If you aren't familiar with conceptual blending or cognitive theory, I recommend reading up on those before reading this work. The other area where this book suffers is the lack of examples. The author does draw on some anthropological examples, but for the most part he obsfucates what he is trying to explain. It doesn't help that he is relying on the anthropological work of other academics, as opposed to doing some of that work himself. With that said, a careful reading of the material will provide you with an explanation of how magic seems to work, from a cognitive perspective. It's an interesting reading and the author has some intriguing ideas about how magic works from a temporal/spatial perspective, but I'd recommend reading this book carefully and in short doses, to really get where he's coming from.

3 out 5