amorphous_constellation
Well-Known Member
So, as I just started reading 'the golden bough,' this thread question is what springs to mind as I read into its very useful descriptions of historical sympathetic magic, though the author of course stated that he believed that there was something primitively erroneous about it
The actual work/method of Jesus seems to fit pretty well, to me, with any other approach to magic that diverse peoples around the earth practiced, as per the golden bough description. From the remote tribal magician giving birth to a rock from his shirt to help a women in childbirth, to a magician inducing sickness in himself to 'reattach the stomach' of a sick man, to a sufferer of jaundice trying to transmit his sickness back to yellow birds and the sun where it naturally belongs, this is all basically the same as the sin which accumulates in man, which then is transmitted from humans to the crucifixion of Jesus.
I'm sure the book with eventually touch on just this, but I'm curious as to how you might see it as a believer. The bible is notable in banning 'magic,' though by this, it seems to have largely meant divination as opposed practices that acted a symbolic palliative. When sympathetic magic is described, it needn't actually include divination at all, as it can deal with blinder forms of cause and effect without any prediction occurring, whether the magic is of the homeopathic or contagious type (the two sub-headings of sympathetic magic). Thus, many biblical and modern spiritual practices might actually fall into a magical locus, including prayer, mediation, fasting, or sacrifice of any kind
The actual work/method of Jesus seems to fit pretty well, to me, with any other approach to magic that diverse peoples around the earth practiced, as per the golden bough description. From the remote tribal magician giving birth to a rock from his shirt to help a women in childbirth, to a magician inducing sickness in himself to 'reattach the stomach' of a sick man, to a sufferer of jaundice trying to transmit his sickness back to yellow birds and the sun where it naturally belongs, this is all basically the same as the sin which accumulates in man, which then is transmitted from humans to the crucifixion of Jesus.
I'm sure the book with eventually touch on just this, but I'm curious as to how you might see it as a believer. The bible is notable in banning 'magic,' though by this, it seems to have largely meant divination as opposed practices that acted a symbolic palliative. When sympathetic magic is described, it needn't actually include divination at all, as it can deal with blinder forms of cause and effect without any prediction occurring, whether the magic is of the homeopathic or contagious type (the two sub-headings of sympathetic magic). Thus, many biblical and modern spiritual practices might actually fall into a magical locus, including prayer, mediation, fasting, or sacrifice of any kind