Developing Magical Consciousness: A Theoretical and Practical Guide for the Expansion of Perception

In Developing Magical Consciousness: A Theoretical and Practical Guide for the Expansion of Perception, Susan Greenwood aims to bridge the gulf between Indigenous worldviews and the scientific worldview of the West to offer “an alternative mythological framework for developing Western magical perception” (1) and to exemplify how to develop magical perception. She argues that such perception is a rejected or marginalized form of knowledge in post-Enlightenment Western cultures that individuals can reactivate by learning to orient their consciousness differently. She posits that Australian Aboriginal peoples have an embodied magical worldview rooted in the material environment, which their ancestors shaped in the Dreaming. Her “Prologue: A New Template for Magic” is personal, emotional, and idiosyncratic and signals that Greenwood is writing “anthropology from the heart rather than the head . . . for those inside and outside academic institutions” (1). Among other things, Greenwood discusses Jungian analyst Craig San Roque...