Real Magic

Etymologically, magic, magus, has to do with having, or harnessing power, which could be real, except the concept of real is much too recent to be closely associated with an old idea such as magic, which increasingly has fallen out of favor with cultural norms by reality-oriented schemes in which the materialism of science and …

Continue reading Real Magic

Soul Possession

It's easy to see how the capitalism of an economy structures the dynamics between people and sociopolitical relationships within a culture, particularly with an emphasis on people and resources in service of production and economic growth, rather than an economy in service of the people. When understood as one of the dynamics driving, not only …

Continue reading Soul Possession

Anima, Soul, Psyche

Being that has soul is living being. Soul is the living thing in man, that which lives of itself and causes life.... With her cunning  play of illusions the soul lures into life the inertness of matter that does not want to live. She makes us believe incredible things, that life may be lived. She …

Continue reading Anima, Soul, Psyche

Divine

To divine something is to appeal to the gods for their power of knowing. To use that power to foretell the future is called "divination." In Giambattista Vico's classic book New Science, he associates the modern sense of God as divine, meaning "blessed" or "holy," back to the pre-Christian or pagan sense of having supernatural powers of …

Continue reading Divine