Nature of Magic

This book examines how and why practitioners of nature religion - Western witches druids shamans - seek to relate spiritually with nature through 'magical consciousness'. 'Magic' and 'consciousness' are concepts that are often fraught with prejudice and ambiguity respectively. Greenwood develops a new theory of magical consciousness by arguing that magic ultimately has more to do with the workings of the human mind in terms of an expanded awareness than with socio-cultural explanations. She combines her own subjective insights gained from magical practice with practitioners' in-depth accounts and sustained academic theory on the process of magic. She also tracks magical consciousness in philosophy myth folklore story-telling and the hi-tech discourse of postmodernity and asks important questions concerning nature religion's environmental credentials such as whether it as inherently ecological as many of its practitioners claim.