Introduction

This chapter explains the analogical characteristic of magical consciousness. It then outlines the contours of the problem of psychic unity in anthropology and its consequences for a study of magic. Many anthropologists reacted to the Enlightenment ideal of psychic unity based on analytical and critical reasoning and logical thought. The chapter illustrates a more encompassing version of psychic unity through a poem called 'Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird' by American poet Wallace Stevens. It shows that the blackbirds lead the reader, through the metaphorical world of imagination, into an expansive awareness that is characteristic of magical consciousness. In a dialogue with Levy Bruhl, Evans-Pritchard argued that natives make very acute analyses of situations that supplemented ideas about magic, often in the form of witchcraft in African and other contexts, with notions of natural causation.