Magic in the Air: How Intellectuals Invented the Myth of a Mythless Society
…ope, Mexico, and the United States to participate in “shamanic” trance workshops under her leadership. My grandmother inspired me to become a scholar, but I was always skeptical of spirits, and moreover I was doubly skeptical of the notion that the modern Western world had lost its magic. I found myself shifting gears and looking at America and Europe through the eyes of an outsider—with the same sort of gaze often leveled at non-Europeans. When I…
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