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My Years of Magical Thinking
Understand magical thinking, and you will understand why the 20th century age of reason has lead us to a "post-truth" society. We are taught to deny, demonise or even glamorise magic - rather than ever admit to thinking magically. But it is every bit as fundamental to human nature as science, religion or art . Faced with the growing popularity of alternative healing, astrology and the New Age, people "whatever happened to the Enlightenment?" They assume that "The Enlightenment" marked a break with a superstitious past; it was a forward leap for humanity after which any return to magical thinking would be regressive, or even impossible. It was a forward step, but it began by looking back two millennia to the Classical era, and re-discovering the foundations on which to build a culture of science and humanism that is considered to be the high point in human achievement. The classical era was itself a high point in human culture, but it only spanned five centuries. The following, Roman, era saw a resurgence of magical thinking and laid the foundations for alchemy, astrology, alternative healing, and much of today's magical ideas and practices. Pontius Pilate famously asked "what is truth?" and two thousand years later postmodernist philosophers are raising similar questions. Is the revival of magical thinking just a natural evolution of thought, to be expected after five centuries of rationalism? The author was brought up in the materialist 1950s and educated in that sceptical Enlightenment tradition to become a Cambridge mathematics graduate. Despite that, he became increasingly interested in magic and the occult and is now recognised as an authority on the subject. So how is it possible to shift from our knowledge of scientific reality to an acceptance of magic? The book describes the author's own subjective experience of how that evolved over his lifetime. Parts One and Two outline some of the important influences on his thinking and Parts Three and Four expand on CP Snow's idea of two cultures (Art and Science) to propose four Art, Science, Religion and Magic. Part Five looks at the conflicts and misunderstandings between cultures and reasons why magic gets a raw deal, or is simply denied as a culture. Part Six summarises the case and the Part Seven looks at contemporary trends and assumptions to show that the rise in magical thinking goes far deeper than just the visible popularity of astrology columns and alternative healing. A penultimate chapter provides practical suggestions for those willing to explore the value of magical thinking - or simply wanting to survive in a post-truth world.
308 pages, Hardcover
Published December 1, 2018
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February 29, 2020
Once upon a time theology was the most prestigious topic you could study at university. But as the Enlightenment progressed it was slowly edged out; by the early 20th century Classics, Greek, and Latin were going the same way. Some people were saying that soon anything that wasn't a science would be redundant and the humanities were starting to look very nervous indeed.
Then along came C. P. Snow and brokered a truce between the humanities and the sciences in The Two Cultures, showing that these two cultures were different, but equally worthy. The humanities now seem to be holding their own against the encroachment of science, despite the odd Sokal hoax or two.
And yet... the sciences seem to be getting nervous. People just can't think critically any more. We are entering a post-truth era, nobody respects the experts, conspiracy theories are everywhere, bullshit abounds. Whatever happened to the Enlightenment?
And now here is Lionel Snell to show that there aren't just two cultures. There are four cultures:
Of these four categories, I think we all have a pretty good idea of what we mean by art and science. But magic? Can there really be enough card-sharps to justify magic as a whole separate culture? What Snell means by magic is the same as Aleister Crowley: 'the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with Will' or Dion Fortune: 'the art of causing changes in consciousness at will'. So naturally, the culture of magic includes psychotherapy, advertising, economics, alternative healing, maths, sales, and marketing.
Still not convinced? Science tries to define magic out of existence with a catch-22, saying that magic is anything which breaks the laws of physics, so either magic isn't real or it isn't magic - you really need to drop that definition of magic to understand Snell's argument.
Let's try an example: suppose a young man wants to get a girlfriend. He reads a book of magic, meditates on the goddess and the moon, constructs charms with significant sigils and colours, and then gets laid. Success! Another young man reads a book of psychology, studies seduction techniques, buys clothes of significant colours with significant symbols on them, and then gets laid. Success! As far as Snell is concerned, they both practise magic because they changed the world by first changing consciousness.
Or another example: the placebo effect. This is a magical treatment - since it depends on the patient's mind and beliefs - and yet it is so reliable that it is the baseline against which scientific medical treatments are measured!
OK, so maybe psychology includes a certain amount of 'magic', but maths? Yes, maths. After all: 'the Greeks themselves, who did so much to shape our views of the world and to encourage rational discourse, themselves gagged on the idea that there could exists numbers that could not be written as fractions.' Snell tells an amusing anecdote of how, as a school boy, his class rebelled entirely when first introduced to ' let i be such that i squared = -1'. Such a number could not exist! An imaginary number, if you will. But imaginary numbers, at first a silly thought experiment, as now very useful for understanding electricity and other physical subjects. Presumably in history there was a time when minus numbers met with similar resistance: 'How can you have 'minus three' cows?' So are these numbers true, false, real, not real? Magical culture embraces whatever is useful.
I think religious culture needs a little defining as well. We live in a culture where so many people have now rejected religion that we don't recognise this kind of thinking in ourselves as 'religious'. If we call it political culture, then we can immediately see its attributes: a sense of belonging, a sense of purpose, loyalty and meaning, and a defined group ideology.
Most of the book is a very entertaining ramble around these four cultures, their aims, their values, their perceptions and judgements, and how they interact with each other. Snell is quick to establish that this is magical theory: it's based on whether it feels right to him, not on surveys and regression analysis. It's also fractal. That means that these four cultures are not exclusive. They are more like compass directions than boxes. In the same way that one can be in the northern quarter of a southern city, one's cultural positions are all relative.
So what are these cultures:
Magical culture , as mentioned above includes psychotherapy, advertising, economics, alternative healing, maths, sales, and marketing.
Artistic culture includes music, painting, drama, film, sculpture, dance, crafts, tuning racing motorbikes and anything of that kind which requires subjective judgement.
Religious culture includes religion, politics, spectator sports, brand loyalty, academia and anything which requires extensive references or membership cards.
Scientific culture includes everyone who says 'I'll believe it when I see it!'
Artistic culture aspires to beauty.
Religious culture aspires to goodness.
Scientific culture aspires to truth.
Magical culture aspires to wholeness.
Religious culture is the one that defines a game and sets the rules; Scientific culture is the one that tests the rules; Artistic culture is the one that breaks the rules; and Magical culture is the one that plays by the rules, but knows it is 'just a game'.
Magical culture gets a rough ride from every other culture because of those two reasons: 'wholeness' and 'it's just a game'. Wholeness means embracing both ends of a polarity, so magical culture embraces beauty and ugliness, it embraces truth and lies, it embraces the good and the bad. It recognises that all of these positions are just strategies in a game, but other cultures take their games very seriously.
So, magical culture recognises that when making a film the inclusion of the symbols of a beautiful woman, fast car chase, and massive explosions is very effective at making a film profitable. But in artistic culture they are very bad art!
Magical culture recognises that sometimes it's useful to think of yourself as a soul in a body, and sometimes it's useful to think of your consciousness as an emergent property of your brain. Scientific culture finds this infuriating: only one of these can be true!
Magical culture recognises that we can understand and direct our negative aspects: in religious culture this is selling your soul to demons! (If you are the sort of atheist who already finds religious beliefs silly, then think of this as political culture, and how angry some political types get if they think you're empathising with the enemy.)
Magical culture recognises neither eternal truths nor objective truths - unless they happen to be effective at the moment, which is threatening to religious and scientific cultures. In religious and scientific cultures belief is earned, by authority or by proof, respectively. In magical and artistic cultures belief is a gift, given to the useful or the beautiful.
Artistic culture and Magical culture are subjective.
Religious culture and Scientific culture are objective.
Religious culture judges by the rules of authority; scientific culture by facts observed. Magical and artistic culture allow you to make up your own mind.
So in the case of a healing. Religious culture might pray for healing; if the healing doesn't occur that doesn't do anything to disprove the power of prayer. It is simply God's will that you not heal.
Scientific culture will apply medicine, if certain expected physical responses are observed then the healing has worked.
Magical culture might do a spell for healing, but whether it is a success is down to the opinion of the patient. Perhaps physical healing will occur - success! Perhaps the patient will become reconciled to infirmity or death - success! Perhaps they'll realise the disease was a lesson and learn something - success!
(Artistic culture doesn't come into this example, I'm afraid. I guess if the patient expresses their healing in dance, it's up to the audience to decide if that's worthwhile?)
Snell also associates each culture with a developmental stage in life and civilisation. Babies and infants think magically. They are still figuring out what has agency and what doesn't. So little children, like tribal people, are often animists. They are just beginning to understand language, which can effect the most amazing changes in people around you! Not for nothing do the English words 'grammar' and 'grimoire' share a root, or 'spell' and 'spelling'. The child then progresses through the self-expression of arts culture, the authority-respecting religion culture, up to the adolescent science culture.
I was a bit surprised when Snell described science culture as adolescent - but I must admit it is apt. Who hasn't encountered those 'I love science' types of people: arrogant, argumentative, pedantic, certain that there's nothing left to learn, that they are the end of history. Teenagers, in effect. Science culture thinks of time as linear, so it's both rational and flattering for Science to think of itself as the end of the line.
But magic culture sees time as cyclical, and Snell sees us as entering a new phase of magical dominance in culture (just as he, personally, got interested in magic at university, as he grew out of his dogmatic scientific phase). Just as classical Athens was a scientific culture, which gave way to the magical Romans (I wasn't sure about that either, but he has a good point: they were terribly into astrology, lead-based curses, divination, and being effective), Snell allows the Dark Ages to be artistic (he's not sure on that either, but there was some beautiful architecture and myth from that time), then there's 500 years of religious ascendency and Church dominance before the Enlightenment ushered in another era of Science, which is just about to give way to a new era of magic.
Why do our cultures cycle like this? Because each culture contains within it the seeds of the next culture, and the means of it's own destruction. Each culture has a core, an untouchable abstraction which it thinks of as it's real self, and a wider culture that surrounds it. Each culture rejects and attacks the next culture when it feels itself threatened.
Artistic culture may begin with an individual attempting to express something subjective, but it ends with an authority (whether popular opinion or artistic critic) that determines what is 'good' or 'bad' art. So artistic culture will often attack authority when threatened – think of Dali's distress when he discovered the surrealists were embracing politics, or the love-hate relationship between critics and artists, or the tendency for art snobs to despise any art which has the approval of the great authority: public opinion.
Religious culture begins with an authority determining what is right or wrong (which it inherits from the artistic culture). It also inherits a serious sense of style, which it denies. But consider how often religious wars are fought over points of dress or ritual that seem tiny to outsiders, or how quickly political movements become associated with certain subcultures or music scenes. Once the Authority and the rules are accepted, the game then played by religious cultures is working out how to apply the rules. It creates the schools and trains up the thinkers who are often rigorously rational and logical in applying the rules of the creed. But when those thinkers turn their well-trained minds onto the source of the creed itself, this opens the road to the scientific culture. Religious cultures under threat will then deny reason: just think of the Khmer Rouge executing all the intellectuals as 'enemies of the people'.
Scientific culture may begin with the pursuit of truth, but it also inherits faith, which it doesn't acknowledge at all. But consider, the idea of repeatability and peer approval indicates a strong underlying faith in the existence of objective material reality where the laws of physics remain universal, eternal, and unchanging. 'Core' science might question such a faith, but broader science culture does not. Scientific culture leads to a dearth of meaning. Everything is known, understood, pinned down, and on display. The appeal of magical culture to the jaded scientists is the appeal of nurturing the seeds of meaning once again. The scientific pursuit of truth soon leads into a philosophical tangle about the nature of truth that will give birth to the relativism of magical culture. Scientific culture under threat will refuse to look: just ask any paranormal investigator!
Magical culture will begin by achieving its ends by whatever means are personally effective – the new magician feel exhilaration of his secret success, no need for peer review. But magical culture inherits from scientific culture a reflexive doubt. The magician gives belief as a gift, without waiting for proof, so he's always surprised to receive the proof! I did the ritual perfectly, and I got what I wanted, I can't believe it worked!. And as he gets what he wants, and approaches wholeness, he loses motivation, and his rituals become a mere celebration.
Artistic culture celebrates... and we've completed the circle.
Then along came C. P. Snow and brokered a truce between the humanities and the sciences in The Two Cultures, showing that these two cultures were different, but equally worthy. The humanities now seem to be holding their own against the encroachment of science, despite the odd Sokal hoax or two.
And yet... the sciences seem to be getting nervous. People just can't think critically any more. We are entering a post-truth era, nobody respects the experts, conspiracy theories are everywhere, bullshit abounds. Whatever happened to the Enlightenment?
And now here is Lionel Snell to show that there aren't just two cultures. There are four cultures:
- Arts
- Religion
- Science
- Magic
Of these four categories, I think we all have a pretty good idea of what we mean by art and science. But magic? Can there really be enough card-sharps to justify magic as a whole separate culture? What Snell means by magic is the same as Aleister Crowley: 'the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with Will' or Dion Fortune: 'the art of causing changes in consciousness at will'. So naturally, the culture of magic includes psychotherapy, advertising, economics, alternative healing, maths, sales, and marketing.
Still not convinced? Science tries to define magic out of existence with a catch-22, saying that magic is anything which breaks the laws of physics, so either magic isn't real or it isn't magic - you really need to drop that definition of magic to understand Snell's argument.
Let's try an example: suppose a young man wants to get a girlfriend. He reads a book of magic, meditates on the goddess and the moon, constructs charms with significant sigils and colours, and then gets laid. Success! Another young man reads a book of psychology, studies seduction techniques, buys clothes of significant colours with significant symbols on them, and then gets laid. Success! As far as Snell is concerned, they both practise magic because they changed the world by first changing consciousness.
Or another example: the placebo effect. This is a magical treatment - since it depends on the patient's mind and beliefs - and yet it is so reliable that it is the baseline against which scientific medical treatments are measured!
OK, so maybe psychology includes a certain amount of 'magic', but maths? Yes, maths. After all: 'the Greeks themselves, who did so much to shape our views of the world and to encourage rational discourse, themselves gagged on the idea that there could exists numbers that could not be written as fractions.' Snell tells an amusing anecdote of how, as a school boy, his class rebelled entirely when first introduced to ' let i be such that i squared = -1'. Such a number could not exist! An imaginary number, if you will. But imaginary numbers, at first a silly thought experiment, as now very useful for understanding electricity and other physical subjects. Presumably in history there was a time when minus numbers met with similar resistance: 'How can you have 'minus three' cows?' So are these numbers true, false, real, not real? Magical culture embraces whatever is useful.
I think religious culture needs a little defining as well. We live in a culture where so many people have now rejected religion that we don't recognise this kind of thinking in ourselves as 'religious'. If we call it political culture, then we can immediately see its attributes: a sense of belonging, a sense of purpose, loyalty and meaning, and a defined group ideology.
Most of the book is a very entertaining ramble around these four cultures, their aims, their values, their perceptions and judgements, and how they interact with each other. Snell is quick to establish that this is magical theory: it's based on whether it feels right to him, not on surveys and regression analysis. It's also fractal. That means that these four cultures are not exclusive. They are more like compass directions than boxes. In the same way that one can be in the northern quarter of a southern city, one's cultural positions are all relative.
So what are these cultures:
Magical culture , as mentioned above includes psychotherapy, advertising, economics, alternative healing, maths, sales, and marketing.
Artistic culture includes music, painting, drama, film, sculpture, dance, crafts, tuning racing motorbikes and anything of that kind which requires subjective judgement.
Religious culture includes religion, politics, spectator sports, brand loyalty, academia and anything which requires extensive references or membership cards.
Scientific culture includes everyone who says 'I'll believe it when I see it!'
Artistic culture aspires to beauty.
Religious culture aspires to goodness.
Scientific culture aspires to truth.
Magical culture aspires to wholeness.
Religious culture is the one that defines a game and sets the rules; Scientific culture is the one that tests the rules; Artistic culture is the one that breaks the rules; and Magical culture is the one that plays by the rules, but knows it is 'just a game'.
Magical culture gets a rough ride from every other culture because of those two reasons: 'wholeness' and 'it's just a game'. Wholeness means embracing both ends of a polarity, so magical culture embraces beauty and ugliness, it embraces truth and lies, it embraces the good and the bad. It recognises that all of these positions are just strategies in a game, but other cultures take their games very seriously.
So, magical culture recognises that when making a film the inclusion of the symbols of a beautiful woman, fast car chase, and massive explosions is very effective at making a film profitable. But in artistic culture they are very bad art!
Magical culture recognises that sometimes it's useful to think of yourself as a soul in a body, and sometimes it's useful to think of your consciousness as an emergent property of your brain. Scientific culture finds this infuriating: only one of these can be true!
Magical culture recognises that we can understand and direct our negative aspects: in religious culture this is selling your soul to demons! (If you are the sort of atheist who already finds religious beliefs silly, then think of this as political culture, and how angry some political types get if they think you're empathising with the enemy.)
Magical culture recognises neither eternal truths nor objective truths - unless they happen to be effective at the moment, which is threatening to religious and scientific cultures. In religious and scientific cultures belief is earned, by authority or by proof, respectively. In magical and artistic cultures belief is a gift, given to the useful or the beautiful.
Artistic culture and Magical culture are subjective.
Religious culture and Scientific culture are objective.
Religious culture judges by the rules of authority; scientific culture by facts observed. Magical and artistic culture allow you to make up your own mind.
So in the case of a healing. Religious culture might pray for healing; if the healing doesn't occur that doesn't do anything to disprove the power of prayer. It is simply God's will that you not heal.
Scientific culture will apply medicine, if certain expected physical responses are observed then the healing has worked.
Magical culture might do a spell for healing, but whether it is a success is down to the opinion of the patient. Perhaps physical healing will occur - success! Perhaps the patient will become reconciled to infirmity or death - success! Perhaps they'll realise the disease was a lesson and learn something - success!
(Artistic culture doesn't come into this example, I'm afraid. I guess if the patient expresses their healing in dance, it's up to the audience to decide if that's worthwhile?)
Snell also associates each culture with a developmental stage in life and civilisation. Babies and infants think magically. They are still figuring out what has agency and what doesn't. So little children, like tribal people, are often animists. They are just beginning to understand language, which can effect the most amazing changes in people around you! Not for nothing do the English words 'grammar' and 'grimoire' share a root, or 'spell' and 'spelling'. The child then progresses through the self-expression of arts culture, the authority-respecting religion culture, up to the adolescent science culture.
I was a bit surprised when Snell described science culture as adolescent - but I must admit it is apt. Who hasn't encountered those 'I love science' types of people: arrogant, argumentative, pedantic, certain that there's nothing left to learn, that they are the end of history. Teenagers, in effect. Science culture thinks of time as linear, so it's both rational and flattering for Science to think of itself as the end of the line.
But magic culture sees time as cyclical, and Snell sees us as entering a new phase of magical dominance in culture (just as he, personally, got interested in magic at university, as he grew out of his dogmatic scientific phase). Just as classical Athens was a scientific culture, which gave way to the magical Romans (I wasn't sure about that either, but he has a good point: they were terribly into astrology, lead-based curses, divination, and being effective), Snell allows the Dark Ages to be artistic (he's not sure on that either, but there was some beautiful architecture and myth from that time), then there's 500 years of religious ascendency and Church dominance before the Enlightenment ushered in another era of Science, which is just about to give way to a new era of magic.
Why do our cultures cycle like this? Because each culture contains within it the seeds of the next culture, and the means of it's own destruction. Each culture has a core, an untouchable abstraction which it thinks of as it's real self, and a wider culture that surrounds it. Each culture rejects and attacks the next culture when it feels itself threatened.
Artistic culture may begin with an individual attempting to express something subjective, but it ends with an authority (whether popular opinion or artistic critic) that determines what is 'good' or 'bad' art. So artistic culture will often attack authority when threatened – think of Dali's distress when he discovered the surrealists were embracing politics, or the love-hate relationship between critics and artists, or the tendency for art snobs to despise any art which has the approval of the great authority: public opinion.
Religious culture begins with an authority determining what is right or wrong (which it inherits from the artistic culture). It also inherits a serious sense of style, which it denies. But consider how often religious wars are fought over points of dress or ritual that seem tiny to outsiders, or how quickly political movements become associated with certain subcultures or music scenes. Once the Authority and the rules are accepted, the game then played by religious cultures is working out how to apply the rules. It creates the schools and trains up the thinkers who are often rigorously rational and logical in applying the rules of the creed. But when those thinkers turn their well-trained minds onto the source of the creed itself, this opens the road to the scientific culture. Religious cultures under threat will then deny reason: just think of the Khmer Rouge executing all the intellectuals as 'enemies of the people'.
Scientific culture may begin with the pursuit of truth, but it also inherits faith, which it doesn't acknowledge at all. But consider, the idea of repeatability and peer approval indicates a strong underlying faith in the existence of objective material reality where the laws of physics remain universal, eternal, and unchanging. 'Core' science might question such a faith, but broader science culture does not. Scientific culture leads to a dearth of meaning. Everything is known, understood, pinned down, and on display. The appeal of magical culture to the jaded scientists is the appeal of nurturing the seeds of meaning once again. The scientific pursuit of truth soon leads into a philosophical tangle about the nature of truth that will give birth to the relativism of magical culture. Scientific culture under threat will refuse to look: just ask any paranormal investigator!
Magical culture will begin by achieving its ends by whatever means are personally effective – the new magician feel exhilaration of his secret success, no need for peer review. But magical culture inherits from scientific culture a reflexive doubt. The magician gives belief as a gift, without waiting for proof, so he's always surprised to receive the proof! I did the ritual perfectly, and I got what I wanted, I can't believe it worked!. And as he gets what he wants, and approaches wholeness, he loses motivation, and his rituals become a mere celebration.
Artistic culture celebrates... and we've completed the circle.
October 28, 2018
Like most of Dukes/Snell's books this is not a work of practical occultism insofar as it doesn't lay out exercises or a regimen to practice- it is instead a practical work that posits some underlying theory for how we might approach something as nebulous and interpretive as magic.
I appreciated this book for the dual focus on the question "whatever happened to the Enlightenment" and Snell's autobiographical ruminations on his own development of magical thought via adolescent flirtations with existentialism. That aside, this is a dense work of magical theory that the author has divided in a way that it is just as easy to consult sections as to read the work cover to cover so it isn't exactly a "riveting" read. I wouldn't recommend this as a reader's introduction to Dukes/Snell's work and would instead point towards SSTOMBE (Sex Secrets of the Black Magicians Exposed) for a more readable introduction to his "four cultures" paradigm. (His "four cultures" are magic, art, religion, and science and in both books he outlines the differences and similarities between the four.)
There are points in the book where the author lost me...his example of using different cultures interfaces while walking on the South African veldt was lackluster and his thoughts on trolls and their place in the development of culture caused a lot of mild debates between my wife and I while we were reading the book together.
All that said I really admired this book and it is characteristic of one of the most consistent and creative authors of the last few decades.
I appreciated this book for the dual focus on the question "whatever happened to the Enlightenment" and Snell's autobiographical ruminations on his own development of magical thought via adolescent flirtations with existentialism. That aside, this is a dense work of magical theory that the author has divided in a way that it is just as easy to consult sections as to read the work cover to cover so it isn't exactly a "riveting" read. I wouldn't recommend this as a reader's introduction to Dukes/Snell's work and would instead point towards SSTOMBE (Sex Secrets of the Black Magicians Exposed) for a more readable introduction to his "four cultures" paradigm. (His "four cultures" are magic, art, religion, and science and in both books he outlines the differences and similarities between the four.)
There are points in the book where the author lost me...his example of using different cultures interfaces while walking on the South African veldt was lackluster and his thoughts on trolls and their place in the development of culture caused a lot of mild debates between my wife and I while we were reading the book together.
All that said I really admired this book and it is characteristic of one of the most consistent and creative authors of the last few decades.
January 1, 2018
I regard this as one of the most important books of the past year by one of the most thought-provoking thinkers of the present age. Lionel Snell, better known under his pen name of Ramsey Dukes, has written a series of books on what he calls “magical thinking”, beginning in the 1970s with a book that has since become a cult classic in the esoteric scene, SSOTBME: An Essay on Magic, and continuing with titles like The Little Book of Demons, How to See Fairies, Words Made Flesh, The Good, the Bad, the Funny, and Thundersqueak. In this book he sums up and reflects searchingly on the whole magical world view that he has developed over the past four decades or so. The core of it is his perception that there are four cultures or modes of thinking and operating in the world –science, religion, art and magic – and that these interact in complex ways, so that often we imagine we are thinking scientifically, religiously or artistically when in fact we are thinking magically. Like all of Lionel’s books, this one will leave you perceiving the world differently.
For further info on Lionel’s books see: www.ramseydukes.co.uk
For further info on Lionel’s books see: www.ramseydukes.co.uk
October 22, 2018
My Years of Magical Thinking is a really well done introduction to magical theory/thinking. More of an autobiography interspersed with a variety of examples, in an effort to elucidate a magical framework in a simple, relatable, and jargon-free way, Lionel Snell (aka Ramsey Dukes) presents a four cultures paradigm in the book, which encompasses Magic, Art, Religion, and Science. This turns out to be an incredibly fascinating & useful lens with which one can view cultural and self development, the former on a number of scales.
In some ways Snell’s theory is reminiscent of spiral dynamics, which I’m a big fan of. I also love his clarification that these cultures can more accurately be viewed as directions, which in actuality are inherently fractal, in how each encompasses the whole. “As above, so below”, the occult dictum says. Regardless of one's philosophical persuasion, if approached with an open mind this is definitely a book that can act to broaden one’s perspective. For people already familiar with this line of thinking, I think it’ll only help them more clearly see the interconnected and multilayered nature of reality.
In some ways Snell’s theory is reminiscent of spiral dynamics, which I’m a big fan of. I also love his clarification that these cultures can more accurately be viewed as directions, which in actuality are inherently fractal, in how each encompasses the whole. “As above, so below”, the occult dictum says. Regardless of one's philosophical persuasion, if approached with an open mind this is definitely a book that can act to broaden one’s perspective. For people already familiar with this line of thinking, I think it’ll only help them more clearly see the interconnected and multilayered nature of reality.
July 27, 2017
Nor only required reading for magicians, but for anyone trying to make sense of experience.
You will need to forgive the author's rejection of Plato on strawman grounds, but his schema is still very useful, the examples thoughtful, and the prose peppered with wit and witticism.
You will need to forgive the author's rejection of Plato on strawman grounds, but his schema is still very useful, the examples thoughtful, and the prose peppered with wit and witticism.
September 24, 2023
With this book, Lionel Snell stretches out a hand towards all the travelers behind him on the Path. Those who trust him will find themselves on an entirely different place when they put it down again. This writer has a voice full of wit, playfulness and modesty— a voice that claims nothing. The voice of the magician. The book stands entirely on its own and contains no footnotes, no bibliographical links, and almost no quotes. It is a memoir, a monument, a rewriting of history, a mathematical experiment, and also an act of magic; “fractal” in the sense that it applies the theory it contains on itself (“form follows function”).
October 8, 2017
Realmente fue un gran libro, tengo que empezar por ahí.
El argumento es tan solido y fácil de digerir que la lectura resulta tan interesante y cautivadora que en momentos fue como estar leyendo en estado de trance. Realmente entretenido.
Lionel Snell plantea una idea muy relevantes en nuestros tiempos donde el exceso de información resulta una nueva forma de censura o la percepción se encuentra manipulada por las noticias. Una realidad donde la verdad no es solo una?
En verdad una gran lectura, capaz de cambiar las reglas del juego.
El argumento es tan solido y fácil de digerir que la lectura resulta tan interesante y cautivadora que en momentos fue como estar leyendo en estado de trance. Realmente entretenido.
Lionel Snell plantea una idea muy relevantes en nuestros tiempos donde el exceso de información resulta una nueva forma de censura o la percepción se encuentra manipulada por las noticias. Una realidad donde la verdad no es solo una?
En verdad una gran lectura, capaz de cambiar las reglas del juego.
June 4, 2024
A wonderful book, careful, critical, with comedy too.
A pleasure to read, he has the ability to encapsulate his ideas in an easy to read, and understanding way. He's been called the British Robert Anton Wilson (or maybe RAW is the American Lionel Snell) for good reason, but I feel Snell has a more careful ( gentle?) approach that might be better for anyone who is sceptical.
A pleasure to read, he has the ability to encapsulate his ideas in an easy to read, and understanding way. He's been called the British Robert Anton Wilson (or maybe RAW is the American Lionel Snell) for good reason, but I feel Snell has a more careful ( gentle?) approach that might be better for anyone who is sceptical.
June 22, 2018
Another wonderful book from Uncle Ramsey. This text is an expansion of his 4 cultures model first posited in SSOTBME. Lots to chew on for those inclined to magical, as opposed to artistic, religious, or scientific thinking.
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July 9, 2023I can’t see the point. It seemed to me as if the book is about defining terms and putting situations, concepts, etc into categories ...
May 9, 2025
Technically started this before 2025 but, did not get really into it until January so, I'm adding it now and counting it as a 2025 book. Saw that it was on Kindle Unlimited and was surprised; decided to read it "for free" while I can.
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