Stolen Lightning (nonfiction)
Stolen Lightning: The Social Theory of Magic is a book by Daniel Lawrence O'Keefe concerning the origins and development of magic, religion, and the individual.
Principles of magic
Excerpts
My deduction: Magic defends the self against society.
What, then, is magic? if religion is the projection of the overwhelming power of the group, and if magic derives from religion, but sets itself up on a somewhat independent basis to help individuals, and is, at the same time, frequently reported to be hostile toward religion ... the is not the answer apparent? Magic is the expropriation of religious collective representations for individual or subgroup purposes — to enable the individual ego to resist psychic extinction or the subgroup to resist cognitive collapse. Therefore, magic must have something to do with the parturition of individual monads out of the collective whole, and with the separation of subgroups from it.
Reviews
A Los Angeles Times book review called this book "a spectacular synthesis of sociology, anthropology, and psychoanalysis ... a tour de force of accessible scholarship".
The New York Times Book Review said it is "a powerful explication of how deeply magic is embedded in society."
Commonweal classified it as "a potential classic".
In the News
Fiction cross-reference
Nonfiction cross-reference
External links
- Daniel O'Keefe (writer) @ Wikipedia