IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview: 

#1 I was once in a trance while gazing at the stars in eastern Bali. I felt myself falling through space, and between the constellations below and the constellations above drifted countless fireflies, their lights flickering like the stars.

#2 I had traveled to Indonesia on a research grant to study magic, and I had been a professional sleight-of-hand magician for five years back in the United States. I had spent some months in London, England, exploring the use of sleight-of-hand magic in psychotherapy.

#3 The focus of my research shifted from questions regarding the application of magical techniques in medicine and ritual curing to a deeper consideration of the relation between traditional magic and the animate natural world. I came to recognize that it was through the agency of such rumors that the sorcerers were able to maintain a basic level of privacy.

#4 The traditional or tribal shaman acts as an intermediary between the human community and the larger ecological field, ensuring that there is an appropriate flow of nourishment from the landscape to the human inhabitants and back to the local earth.

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