talking about Magic in the twentieth century
By bodomgirl
@bodomgirl (1614)
Italy
November 29, 2006 11:45am CST
A further revival of interest in magic was heralded by the repeal, in England, of the last Witchcraft Act in 1951. This was the cue for Gerald Gardner to publish his first non-fiction book Witchcraft Today, in which he claimed to reveal the existence of a witch-cult that dated back to pre-Christian Europe. Gardner combined magic and religion in a way that was later to cause people to question the Enlightenment's boundaries between the two subjects.
Gardner's newly publicized religion, and many others, took off in the atmosphere of the 1960s and 1970s, when the counterculture of the hippies also spawned another period of renewed interest in magic, divination, and other occult practices. The various branches of Neopaganism and other Earth religions that have been publicized since Gardner's publication tend to follow a pattern in combining the practice of magic and religion. Following the trend of magic associated with counterculture, some feminists launched an independent revival of goddess worship. This brought them into contact with the Gardnerian tradition of magical religion, and deeply influenced that tradition in return.
1 response
@marvit79 (341)
• Italy
29 Nov 06
magic is essentially paganism. the belief that there are spirits in the earth, air, water, and fire. that when we pray to these spirits we can accomplish things, and these things we ask for, that we accomplish, come back to us three fold. "white" magic is generally thought of as doing something good. "black" magic is doing something to hurt someone. but most people who practice magic and paganism only want to do good, they want to preserve old ways which do make a lot of sense in retrospect, at least as much sense as christianity. so magic is really based on faith.
