The End of Magic (review)

This book simultaneously accomplishes two things. First, it provides a description of magical practices in Banaras, India, through the presentation of 39 case studies. Second, it reviews the history of theories about magic as a background for the author's own phenomenological musings about this little-understood complex of practices. Since Hindi contains a number of words (e.g., jādū-tonā, totakā, mūth, tantra-mantra) that are all subsumed under the English term magic, Glucklich correctly assumes a relativist position, stating that "there is no one objective and universal standard of truth" (p. 7) by which to judge magical acts. But there are universal questions that can be asked: "What is magic, what does magic do, and why do people believe in magic in the face of experience" (p. 7)? To answer these questions, he surveys the history of scholarship on magic from James Frazer's Golden Bough to the most current scientific studies.

Most anthropologists, according to Glucklich, attempt to explain away magic as a matter of belief. In India, however, "belief" is only a small part of the picture, since magic is something that is done but not thought about to any significant extent. It is, then, not simply an act of the intellect, but it is, rather, intuitive. Echoing Frits Staal ("The Meaninglessness of Ritual," Numen 26:2-22, 1979), then, Glucklich claims that magic is therefore empty of meaning. Arguing also against the notion that magic is "supernatural," Glucklich suggests that magic is, in fact, "natural" and relational, not causal, as many theories purport (p. 13). His viable alternative is that "magic is a unique and subjective state of mind that often defies accurate description because it transcends meaning" (p. 22). In this sense, magic is not a category of actions that can be defined in nominal terms. The noun magic should thus be avoided because it implies an objectively verifiable thing in the world; rather, we should talk about the phenomenon adjectivally, as a magical attitude or consciousness.

Because the author understands magic as relational, he is more sympathetic to Durkheim's discussion of magic as social modes of association and Malinowski's description of the magical rite's mimetic effect than he is to Frazer, Tylor, or Freud, who all more or less dismissed the claims of magicians and their clients. Interestingly, Glucklich sides with Jung, whose own approach was somewhat experiential and phenomenological in that he did not dismiss the opinions of practitioners themselves. Although the author does not really define how he is using the term phenomenology, it is clear that he means to focus on the subjective and experiential dimension of magical performances.

Glucklich's own theory is in sympathy with symbolic approaches to the study of magic, such as those expounded by Lévi-Strauss and Tambiah. Yet even symbolic approaches do not adequately account for the occult claims of magicians. As he states, "the social sciences simply have no methods for inspecting extraordinary causal claims, which they regard as superfluous to the real purpose of magic" (p. 65). A new science is necessary, he claims, to take into serious account the musings of magicians. This has been difficult in the West because of a lingering sense of Cartesian dualism, which does not allow us to get beyond the philosophical split between mind and body. Although very few serious scholars cling to the dichotomy today, Glucklich is certainly justified in pointing out that our epistemological baggage hinders us from perceiving the magical act as one that straddles the nature/culture divide and transcends mind/body dualism. Magic has to be understood as a series of interrelationships cloaked in the cultural understandings of the people involved in the act.

From this point of view, Glucklich is able to suspend judgment and present a series of examples that he either observed himself or that had been recounted by people in Banaras who participated in some specific rite. The examples lead him to posit four "conditions" of magic...