MAGIC, WITCHCRAFT,

1
MAGIC, WITCHCRAFT, RELIGION
2
What are witchcraft, magic, and religion?

• This page is for those who seek truth about the
  book series Harry Potter. Many think it is just
  harmless fantasy. True it is fantasy, but it is
  laced with witchcraft and demonology as are most
  books like it. Many say it gets children reading
  books who never would do so. I give you this
  tid-bit to ponder on. If your child did not like
  to take medicine and you had a chocolate drink
  with the medicine, plus arsenic in it, would you
  give it to them? You would if you did not know it
  was in there and what arsenic was. It is the same
  scenario with fantasy especially when it is laced
  with the poison of witchcraft.  
• http//www.exposingsatanism.org/harrypotter.htm

3
What is the hegemonic religious worldview in the
US?

• hegemony dominant culture or ideology (taken
  for granted) how people are expected to think
• we consent with the dominant culture when we do
  not ask questions

4
Defining Our Terms Asking Questions is a Place
to Start!

• What is the difference between religion and
  spirituality?
• What is the difference between Fundamentalisms
  and more commonly practiced versions of organized
  religions?
• What is magic? Who practices it?
• What is witchcraft? Who practices it?
• Is Harry Potter evil? Why or why not?

5
ANTHROPOLOGY OF RELIGION THEMES

• Difference Order Power
• Rationality Hierarchy Reproduction
• Community Conflict Fertility
• Modernity Alienation Maturation
• Symbolism Love Death
• Meaning Well-being Tedium
• Relativism Dignity Excitement
• Mimesis Aesthetics Motivation
• Projection Creativity Suffering
• Mediation Playfulness Redemption

6
CO-EXISTENCE OF SEEMINGLY OPPOSITE PROCESSES/
PHENOMENA

• Subjection and Freedom
• Worldliness and Asceticism
• Morality and Desire
• Imagination and Embodiment
• Inwardness and Outwardness
• Origins and Ends
• Order and Chaos
• Structure and Practice
• Cosmos and History

7
4 ARGUMENTS IN ANTHROPOLOGY OF RELIGION

• 1. Religious worlds are real, vivid, and
  significant to those who construct and live in
  them.
• 2. It is important to describe analyze those
  realities for others, grasping their sensory
  richness, philosophic depth, emotional range, and
  moral complexity.

8
ARGUMENTS IN ANTHROPOLOGY OF RELIGION

• The power of religious worlds (their variety
  and competition). Such worlds affect how people
  act, ask questions, and think.
• 4. Religious practices are embedded in-- or
  complicit with--society, regimes of power,
  historical struggles, and modes of production.

9
19TH CENTURY THINKING ABOUT RELIGION

• Edward Tylor, Primitive Culture, 1871
• American anthropologist
• The Belief in Spiritual Beings
• Rationalism and creativity of all humans
• Evolutionary anthropology

10
19TH CENTURY THINKING ABOUT RELIGION

• Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious
  Life, 1912
• French sociologist
• Connection of the moral and religious
• Religion is a natural expression of society,
  reflecting on its own transcendent power
• Religion provides social cohesion, glue of
  mechanical solidarity
• All religions can be understood as true once it
  is seen that they represent society Social
  Facts
• Seeing things religious in practical or secular
  western society
• Structural-functionalist, does not address
  historical change

11
19TH CENTURY THINKING ABOUT RELIGION

• Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of
  Capitalism, 1904
• German sociologist
• Role of religion in formation of Secular
  modernity
• Protestantism and capitalism

12
SHIFTS IN THE 20TH CENTURY

• While 19th c. thinkers saw members of small-scale
  societies buried in superstition, ignorance,
  bliss or folly, anthropologists realized that
  this reproduced an evolutionary model of western
  intellectual superiority, SO
• Rather than compare nonwestern systems with
  western science, anthropologists sought to
  understand religion on a societys terms
  (relativism).

13
SHIFTS IN THE 20TH CENTURY

• Compare western religious practices with
  nonwestern ones
• MAJOR SHIFTfrom explaining the irrational
  exotic religious practices of Others to trying to
  understand the nature of religious practice
  anywhere.

14
Postmodern Questions we can ask in this course

• How is religion a part of everyday social life,
  social structures, and hierarchical relations of
  power?
• How is religionin addition to faith or
  meaning also practice and power?