Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft
September 1, 2024
Dendup Chophel
In a Bhutanese village with established religious pluralism, shamanic mediumship serves as both a formulaic, mimetic retention of history and an indeterminate, fluid improvisation. Mediums become sites for multisensory communicative dramas between ontologically distinct but relational spirits who negotiate their standing with the community. The phenomenal and phantasmal beings remain present in the village lifeworld, entangled in an ethics of care requiring dedication from both spirits and community. The paper unpacks the poetics, poiesis, and politics of metaphorical, cryptic, silent, and gestural codes through which charismatic mediums reinforce social order, examining how the lifeworld of Chungsekha village is lived, experienced, and discursively reconstructed through phantasmal and multisensory dialogues.
Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft
September 1, 2022
M. Fletcher
Liber Israfel, an invocation of the Egyptian god Thoth, is a key text in Aleister Crowley's literary corpus, forming the basis of a theory of magical invocation in his work Magick in Theory and Practice and used extensively in his personal magical practice. A precursor of Liber Israfel played a role in events leading to the reception of The Book of the Law, the founding text of Thelema. Despite its significance, the text has received little scholarly attention. While it is recognized as indebted to a ritual by Crowley's mentor Allan Bennett, a comprehensive analysis of its iterative composition is lacking.
Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft
December 1, 2025
Lilith Dorsey
Over the past two decades, the online presence of African Traditional Religions (ATRs) and Afro-Magick has grown and shifted significantly since Douglas E. Cowan's 2005 book Cyberhenge. Drawing on decades of personal practice and study of Vodou in Haiti and Benin and Voodoo in New Orleans, the author—an engaged priestess, teacher, and community member—analyzes key innovations and catastrophes affecting these traditions. The piece offers an insider perspective on how digital spaces have transformed the practice, representation, and community dynamics of these religions, highlighting both opportunities and challenges that have emerged in the internet age.
Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft
December 1, 2023
Stewart Clelland, Paul Ferguson
An English translation of Book II of the early modern German ritual magic manual The Book of Abramelin the Mage is provided, based on a newly discovered manuscript. This translation is the first complete English version of a longer, distinct text that differs from the two previously available English translations and more closely resembles the version in the earliest known manuscript.
Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft
June 1, 2012
Frank Klaassen
Modern psychological conditioning and ethnographic studies of contemporary magic can illuminate how medieval ritual magic affected its practitioners. A classroom experiment on dream divination, combined with analysis of primary medieval magical texts, suggests that these rituals produced genuine subjective experiences in practitioners. Understanding these experiences as psychologically conditioned phenomena allows greater sympathy with medieval copyists and practitioners and reveals subtle organizational patterns in the texts themselves.
Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft
December 1, 2011
Marco Pasi
Aleister Crowley's effort to reinterpret occult practices through a naturalistic and psychological lens conflicted with his self-conception as the founder of a new religion. Examining his views on spiritualist phenomena, yoga, and magic reveals that Crowley saw his life as a continuous arc of spiritual development. Although he absorbed the influence of authors like William James and Henry Maudsley to modernize traditional occult interpretations, he stopped short of fully naturalizing or psychologizing magic.