Mana
Mana, in Austronesian languages, means "power", "effectiveness", "prestige". In most cases, this power and its source are understood to be inexplicable, its semantics are language-dependent. The concept is significant in Polynesian culture and is part of contemporary Pacific Islander culture, its study was included in cultural anthropology—specifically, the anthropology of religion. Links were seen between mana and earlier phases of Western religion: animism at first, followed by pre-animism. According to the POLLEX Project, a protoform for "mana"—noted in historical-linguistic convention as *mana-"—existed in Proto-Oceanic, the precursor of many Pacific languages. Although the path through the tree from Proto-Oceanic to a specific language is not always clear, the word and concept are thousands of years old. According to linguist Robert Blust, "mana" means "storm, or wind" in some languages. Blust hypothesized that the term meant "powerful forces of nature such as thunder and storm winds that were conceived as the expression of an unseen supernatural agency.
As Oceanic-speaking peoples spread eastward, the notion of an unseen supernatural agency became detached from the physical forces of nature that had inspired it and assumed a life of its own." Mana is a foundation of the Polynesian worldview, a spiritual quality with a supernatural origin and a sacred, impersonal force. To have mana implies influence and efficacy—the ability to perform in a given situation; the quality of mana is not limited to individuals. In Hawaiian and Tahitian culture, mana is a spiritual energy and healing power which can exist in places and persons. Hawaiians believe that mana may be gained or lost by actions, Hawaiians and Tahitians believe that mana is both external and internal. Sites on the Hawaiian Islands and in French Polynesia are believed to possess mana—for example, the top rim of the Haleakalā volcano on the island of Maui and the Taputapuatea marae on the island of Raiatea in the Society Islands. Ancient Hawaiian believed that the island of Molokaʻi possesses mana, compared with its neighboring islands.
Before the unification of Hawaii by King Kamehameha I, battles were fought for possession of the island and its south-shore fish ponds which existed until the late 19th century. A person may gain mana by pono. In ancient Hawaii, there were two paths to mana: violence. Nature is dualistic, everything has a counterpart. A balance between the gods Kū and Lono formed, through. Kū, the god of war and politics, offers mana through violence. Lono, the god of peace and fertility, offers mana through sexuality. In Māori, a tribe with mana whenua must have demonstrated their authority over a territory. In Māori culture, there are two essential aspects of a person's mana: mana tangata, authority derived from whakapapa and mana huaanga, defined as "authority derived from having a wealth of resources to gift to others to bind them into reciprocal obligations". Hemopereki Simon, from Ngāti Tūwharetoa, asserts; the indigenous word reflects a non-Western view of reality. This is confirmed by the definition of mana provided by Maori Marsden who states that mana is:Spiritual power and authority as opposed to the purely psychic and natural force — ihi.
According to Prof. Margaret Mutu mana in its traditional sense means:Power, ownership, influence, respect derived from the god. In terms of leadership Ngāti Kahungunu legal scholar Carwyn Jones comments that, "mana is the central concept that underlies Māori leadership and accountability." He considers mana as a fundamental aspect of the constitutional traditions of Māori society. According to the New Zealand Ministry of Justice: Mana and tapu are concepts which have both been attributed single-worded definitions by contemporary writers; as concepts Maori concepts they can not be translated into a single English definition. Both mana and tapu take on a whole range of related meanings depending on their association and the context in which they are being used. In contemporary New Zealand English, the word "mana", taken from the Māori, refers to a person or organisation of people of great personal prestige and character; the increased use of the term mana in New Zealand society is as a result of the politicisation of Maori issues stemming from the Māori Renaissance.
Missionary Robert Henry Codrington traveled in Melanesia, publishing several studies of its language and culture. His 1891 book The Melanesians: Studies in their Anthropology and Folk-Lore contains the first detailed description of mana. Codrington defines it as "a force altogether distinct from physical power, which acts in all kinds of ways for good and evil, which it is of the greatest advantage to possess or control", his era had defined animism, the concept that the energy in an object derives from a spiritual component. Georg Ernst Stahl's 18th-century animism was adopted by Edward Burnett Tylor, the founder of cultural anthropology, who presented his initial ideas about the history of religion in his 1865 Researches into the Early History of Mankind and developed them in volumes one and two of Primitive Culture. In Tylor's cultural anthropology, other primates did not appear to possess culture. Tylor did not try to find evid
Necromancy
Necromancy is a practice of magic involving communication with the dead – either by summoning their spirit as an apparition or raising them bodily – for the purpose of divination, imparting the means to foretell future events or discover hidden knowledge, to bring someone back from the dead, or to use the dead as a weapon, as the term may sometimes be used in a more general sense to refer to black magic or witchcraft. The word "necromancy" is adapted from Late Latin necromantia, itself borrowed from post-Classical Greek νεκρομαντεία, a compound of Ancient Greek νεκρός, "dead body", μαντεία, "divination by means of"; the Classical Greek term was ἡ νέκυια, from the episode of the Odyssey in which Odysseus visits the realm of the dead and νεκρομαντεία in Hellenistic Greek, rendered as necromantīa in Latin, as necromancy in 17th-century English. Early necromancy was related to – and most evolved from – shamanism, which calls upon spirits such as the ghosts of ancestors. Classical necromancers addressed the dead in "a mixture of high-pitch squeaking and low droning", comparable to the trance-state mutterings of shamans.
Necromancy was prevalent throughout Western antiquity with records of its practice in ancient Egypt, Babylonia and Rome. In his Geographica, Strabo refers to νεκρομαντία, or "diviners by the dead", as the foremost practitioners of divination among the people of Persia, it is believed to have been widespread among the peoples of Chaldea and Babylonia; the Babylonian necromancers were called manzazuu or sha'etemmu, the spirits they raised were called etemmu. The oldest literary account of necromancy is found in Homer’s Odyssey. Under the direction of Circe, a powerful sorceress, Odysseus travels to the underworld in order to gain insight about his impending voyage home by raising the spirits of the dead through the use of spells which Circe has taught him, he wishes to question the shade of Tiresias in particular. The Odyssey's passages contain many descriptive references to necromantic rituals: rites must be performed around a pit with fire during nocturnal hours, Odysseus has to follow a specific recipe, which includes the blood of sacrificial animals, to concoct a libation for the ghosts to drink while he recites prayers to both the ghosts and gods of the underworld.
Practices such as these, varying from the mundane to the grotesque, were associated with necromancy. Rituals could be quite elaborate, involving magic circles, wands and incantations; the necromancer might surround himself with morbid aspects of death, which included wearing the deceased's clothing and consuming foods that symbolized lifelessness and decay such as unleavened black bread and unfermented grape juice. Some necromancers went so far as to take part in the mutilation and consumption of corpses; these ceremonies could carry on for hours, days, or weeks, leading up to the eventual summoning of spirits. They were performed in places of interment or other melancholy venues that suited specific guidelines of the necromancer. Additionally, necromancers preferred to summon the departed based on the premise that their revelations were spoken more clearly; this timeframe was limited to the twelve months following the death of the physical body. While some cultures considered the knowledge of the dead to be unlimited, ancient Greeks and Romans believed that individual shades knew only certain things.
The apparent value of their counsel may have been based on things they knew in life or knowledge they acquired after death. Ovid writes in his Metamorphoses of a marketplace in the underworld where the dead convene to exchange news and gossip. There are several references to necromancers – called "bone-conjurers" among Jews of the Hellenistic period – in the Bible; the Book of Deuteronomy explicitly warns the Israelites against engaging in the Canaanite practice of divination from the dead: 9When thou art come into the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do according to the abominations of those nations. 10There shall not be found among you any one who maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or who useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, 11or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. 12For all who do these things are an abomination unto the LORD, because of these abominations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee.
Though Mosaic Law prescribed the death penalty to practitioners of necromancy, this warning was not always heeded. One of the foremost examples is when King Saul had the Witch of Endor invoke the Spirit of Samuel, a judge and prophet, from Sheol using a ritual conjuring pit. However, the so-called witch was shocked at the presence of the real spirit of Samuel for in I Sam 28:12 it says, "when the woman saw Samuel, she cried out in a loud voice." Samuel questioned his reawakening asking, "Why hast thou disquieted me?" Saul did not receive a death penalty but he did receive it from God himself as prophesied by Samuel during that conjuration – within a day he died in battle along with his son Jonathan. Some Christian writers rejected the idea that humans could bring back the spirits of the dead and interpreted such shades as disguised demons instead, thus conflatin
Burning Tower
Burning Tower is a fantasy novel by American writers Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. It is a sequel to The Burning City, set some years, it was published in 2005. The three main characters are Sandry, a Lord of Tep's Town, Sandry's cousin Regapisk a Lord, Burning Tower, a daughter of Whandall, the main character of the previous book. Regapisk is an incompetent Lord and his family arrange for him to be shanghaied to become an oarsman on a coastal ship. Sandry and Burning Tower are romantically linked throughout the book. Large flightless birds attack trading caravans, he is sent by the Lords with the caravan, of which Burning Tower is a part, to discover the source of the birds. They travel to the southern city of Condigeo and to Crescent City, defeating terror bird attacks along the way. In Crescent City, they are joined by Regapisk; the three of them travel on to the high-magic city of Aztlan. The authors researched Aztec culture for the book, many aspects of the culture depicted in the book are based on that research.
This is explained in a brief note at the end of the book. Mentioned is that within the described timeline, the terror birds continued to exist until long after humans spread through the Americas. McFadden, Bruce. Geology 35: 123-126. Doi:10.1130/G23186A.1 PDF fulltext
Collectible card game
A collectible card game called a trading card game or many other names, is a kind of strategy card game, created in 1993 and consists of specially designed sets of playing cards. These cards use proprietary artwork or images to embellish the card. CCGs may depict anything from fantasy or science fiction genres, horror themes, cartoons, or sports. Game text is on the card and is used to interact with the other cards in a strategic fashion. Games are played between two players, though multiplayer formats are common. Players may use dice, card sleeves, or play mats to complement their gameplay. CCGs can be played with or collected, both. A CCG is played using a starter deck; this deck may be modified by adding cards from booster packs, which contain around 8 to 15 random cards. As a player obtains more cards, they may create new decks from scratch; when enough players have been established, tournaments are formed to compete for prizes. Successful CCGs have thousands of unique cards extended through expansion sets that add new mechanics.
Magic: The Gathering, the first developed and most successful, has over 18,000 distinct cards. By the end of 1994, Magic: The Gathering had sold over 1 billion cards, between the time period of 2008 to 2016 sold over 20 billion. Other successful CCGs include Yu-Gi-Oh! which sold over 25 billion cards as of March 2011, Pokémon which has sold over 25 billion cards as of March 2018. Other notable CCGs have come and gone, including Legend of the Five Rings, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Vampire: The Eternal Struggle, World of Warcraft. Many other CCGs had little or no commercial success. Digital collectible card games have gained popularity, spurred by the success of Hearthstone. DCCGs do not use physical cards and instead use digital representations, with newer DCCGs foregoing card images altogether by using basic icons. A collectible card game is defined as a game where players acquire cards into a personal collection from which they create customized decks of cards and challenge other players in matches.
Players start by purchasing a starter deck, ready to play, but additional cards are obtained from randomized booster packs or by trading with other players. The goal of most CCGs is to beat your opponent by crafting customized decks that play to synergies of card combinations. Refined decks will try to account for randomness as well as opponent's actions, by using the most complementary and efficient cards possible; the exact definition of what makes a CCG is varied, as many games are marketed under the "collectible card game" moniker. The basic definition requires the game to resemble trading cards in shape and function, be mass-produced for trading and/or collectibility, have rules for strategic gameplay; the definition of CCGs is further refined as being a card game in which the player uses his own deck with cards sold in random assortments. If every card in the game can be obtained by making a small number of purchases, or if the manufacturer does not market it as a CCG it is not a CCG. CCGs can further be designated as dead games.
Dead games are those CCGs which are no longer supported by their manufacturers and have ceased releasing expansions. Living games are those CCGs; this means that new expansions are being created for the game and official game tournaments are occurring in some fashion. Card games that should not be mistaken for CCGs: Deck-Building Games - Construction of the deck is the main focus of gameplay. Collectible Common-Deck Card Games are card games where players share a common deck rather than their own personal deck. No customization of decks nor trading occurs, no metagame is developed. There is little to no interest in collecting the cards. Non-Collectible Customizable Card Games are those games where each player has their own deck, but no randomness occurs when acquiring the cards. Many of these games are sold as complete sets. A few were intended to have booster packs; this category may be referred to as an ECG, or Expandable Card Game. This category includes LCGs. Living Card Games - LCGs are a type of non-collectible customizable card game, a registered trademark of Fantasy Flight Games.
They don't use the randomized booster packs like CCGs and instead are bought in a single purchase. LCGs are known for costing much less; each CCG system has a fundamental set of rules that describes the players' objectives, the categories of cards used in the game, the basic rules by which the cards interact. Each card will have additional text explaining that specific card's effect on the game, they generally represent some specific element derived from the game's genre, setting, or source material. The cards are illustrated and named for these source elements, the card's game function may relate to the subject. For example, Magic: The Gathering is based on the fantasy genre, so many of the cards represent creatures and magical spells from that setting. In the game, a dragon is illustrated as a reptilian beast and has the flying ability and higher combat stats than smaller creatures; the bulk of CCGs are designed around a resource system. The cards which constitute a player's deck are considered a resource, with the frequency of cards moving from the deck to the play area or player's hand being controlled.
Relative card strength is balanced by the number or type of resources needed in order to play the card, pacing after that may be determined by the flow of car
Unicorn
The unicorn is a legendary creature, described since antiquity as a beast with a single large, spiraling horn projecting from its forehead. The unicorn was depicted in ancient seals of the Indus Valley Civilization and was mentioned by the ancient Greeks in accounts of natural history by various writers, including Ctesias, Pliny the Younger and Cosmas Indicopleustes; the Bible describes an animal, the re'em, which some versions translate as unicorn. In European folklore, the unicorn is depicted as a white horse-like or goat-like animal with a long horn and cloven hooves. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, it was described as an wild woodland creature, a symbol of purity and grace, which could be captured only by a virgin. In the encyclopedias, its horn was said to have the power to render poisoned water potable and to heal sickness. In medieval and Renaissance times, the tusk of the narwhal was sometimes sold as unicorn horn. In the twenty-first century, the unicorn holds a place in popular culture.
It is used as a symbol of fantasy or rarity. A number of seals depicting unicorns have been found from the Indus Valley Civilisation; these have been interpreted as representations of aurochs—a type of large wild cattle that inhabited Europe and North Africa—or derivatives of aurochs, because the animal is always shown in profile, indicating there may have supposed to have been another horn, not seen. Unicorns are not found in Greek mythology, but rather in the accounts of natural history, for Greek writers of natural history were convinced of the reality of unicorns, which they believed lived in India, a distant and fabulous realm for them; the earliest description is from Ctesias, who in his book Indika described them as wild asses, fleet of foot, having a horn a cubit and a half in length, colored white and black. Ctesias got his information while living in Persia. Unicorns on a relief sculpture have been found at the ancient Persian capital of Persepolis in Iran. Aristotle must be following Ctesias when he mentions two one-horned animals, the oryx and the so-called "Indian ass".
Strabo says. Pliny the Elder mentions the oryx and an Indian ox as one-horned beasts, as well as "a fierce animal called the monoceros which has the head of the stag, the feet of the elephant, the tail of the boar, while the rest of the body is like that of the horse. In On the Nature of Animals, quoting Ctesias, adds that India produces a one-horned horse, says that the monoceros was sometimes called cartazonos, which may be a form of the Arabic karkadann, meaning "rhinoceros". Cosmas Indicopleustes, a merchant of Alexandria who lived in the 6th century, made a voyage to India and subsequently wrote works on cosmography, he gives a description of a unicorn based on four brass figures in the palace of the King of Ethiopia. He states, from report; when it finds itself pursued and in danger of capture, it throws itself from a precipice, turns so aptly in falling, that it receives all the shock upon the horn, so escapes safe and sound". A one-horned animal is found on some seals from the Indus Valley Civilisation.
Seals with such a design are thought to be a mark of high social rank. Medieval knowledge of the fabulous beast stemmed from biblical and ancient sources, the creature was variously represented as a kind of wild ass, goat, or horse; the predecessor of the medieval bestiary, compiled in Late Antiquity and known as Physiologus, popularized an elaborate allegory in which a unicorn, trapped by a maiden, stood for the Incarnation. As soon as the unicorn sees her, it falls asleep; this became a basic emblematic tag that underlies medieval notions of the unicorn, justifying its appearance in every form of religious art. Interpretations of the unicorn myth focus on the medieval lore of beguiled lovers, whereas some religious writers interpret the unicorn and its death as the Passion of Christ; the myths refer to a beast with one horn. The unicorn figured in courtly terms: for some 13th-century French authors such as Thibaut of Champagne and Richard de Fournival, the lover is attracted to his lady as the unicorn is to the virgin.
With the rise of humanism, the unicorn acquired more orthodox secular meanings, emblematic of chaste love and faithful marriage. It plays this role in Petrarch's Triumph of Chastity, on the reverse of Piero della Francesca's portrait of Battista Strozzi, paired with that of her husband Federico da Montefeltro, Bianca's triumphal car is drawn by a pair of unicorns; the Throne Chair of Denmark is made of "unicorn horns" – certainly narwhal tusks. The same material was used for ceremonial cups because the unicorn's horn continued to be believed to neutralize poison, following classical authors; the unicorn, tamable only by a virgin woman, was well established in medieval lore by the time Marco Polo described them as "scarcely smaller than elephants. They have the hair of feet like an elephant's, they ha
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction set in a fictional universe inspired by real world myth and folklore. Its roots are in oral traditions, which became literature and drama. From the twentieth century it has expanded further into various media, including film, graphic novels and video games. Fantasy is distinguished from the genres of science fiction and horror by the absence of scientific or macabre themes though these genres overlap. In popular culture, the fantasy genre is predominantly of the medievalist form. In its broadest sense, fantasy consists of works by many writers, artists and musicians from ancient myths and legends to many recent and popular works. Most fantasy uses other supernatural elements as a main plot element, theme, or setting. Magic and magical creatures are common in many of these worlds. An identifying trait of fantasy is the author's reliance on imagination to create narrative elements that do not have to rely on history or nature to be coherent; this differs from realistic fiction in that realistic fiction has to attend to the history and natural laws of reality, where fantasy does not.
An author applies his or her imagination to come up with characters and settings that are impossible in reality. Many fantasy authors use real-world mythology as inspiration. For instance, a narrative that takes place in an imagined town in the northeastern United States could be considered realistic fiction as long as the plot and characters are consistent with the history of a region and the natural characteristics that someone, to the northeastern United States expects. Fantasy has been compared to science fiction and horror because they are the major categories of speculative fiction. Fantasy is distinguished from science fiction by the plausibility of the narrative elements. A science fiction narrative is unlikely, though possible through logical scientific or technological extrapolation, where fantasy narratives do not need to be scientifically possible. Authors have to rely on the readers' suspension of disbelief, an acceptance of the unbelievable or impossible for the sake of enjoyment, in order to write effective fantasies.
Despite both genres' heavy reliance on the supernatural and horror are distinguishable. Horror evokes fear through the protagonists' weaknesses or inability to deal with the antagonists. Elements of the supernatural and the fantastic were a part of literature from its beginning. Fantasy elements occur throughout the ancient Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh; the ancient Babylonian creation epic, the Enûma Eliš, in which the god Marduk slays the goddess Tiamat, contains the theme of a cosmic battle between good and evil, characteristic of the modern fantasy genre. Genres of romantic and fantasy literature existed in ancient Egypt; the Tales of the Court of King Khufu, preserved in the Westcar Papyrus and was written in the middle of the second half of the eighteenth century BC, preserves a mixture of stories with elements of historical fiction and satire. Egyptian funerary texts preserve mythological tales, the most significant of which are the myths of Osiris and his son Horus. Folk tales with fantastic elements intended for adults were a major genre of ancient Greek literature.
The comedies of Aristophanes are filled with fantastic elements his play The Birds, in which an Athenian man builds a city in the clouds with the birds and challenges Zeus's authority. Ovid's Metamorphoses and Apuleius's The Golden Ass are both works that influenced the development of the fantasy genre by taking mythic elements and weaving them into personal accounts. Both works involve complex narratives in which humans beings are transformed into animals or inanimate objects. Platonic teachings and early Christian theology are major influences on the modern fantasy genre. Plato used allegories to convey many of his teachings, early Christian writers interpreted both the Old and New Testaments as employing parables to relay spiritual truths; this ability to find meaning in a story, not true became the foundation that allowed the modern fantasy genre to develop. The most well known fiction from the Islamic world was The Book of One Thousand and One Nights, a compilation of many ancient and medieval folk tales.
Various characters from this epic have become cultural icons in Western culture, such as Aladdin and Ali Baba. Hindu mythology was an evolution of the earlier Vedic mythology and had many more fantastical stories and characters in the Indian epics; the Panchatantra, for example, used various animal fables and magical tales to illustrate the central Indian principles of political science. Chinese traditions have been influential in the vein of fantasy known as Chinoiserie, including such writers as Ernest Bramah and Barry Hughart. Beowulf is among the best known of the Nordic tales in the English speaking world, has had deep influence on the fantasy genre. Norse mythology, as found in the Elder Edda and the Younger Edda, includes such figures as Odin and his fellow Aesir, dwarves, elves and giants; these elements have been directly imported into various fantasy works. The separate folklore of Ireland and Scotland has sometimes been us
Magic (supernatural)
Magic is a category in Western culture into which have been placed various beliefs and practices considered separate from both religion and science. The term had pejorative connotations, with things labelled magical perceived as being primitive and Other; the concept has been adopted by scholars in the study of religion and the social sciences, who have proposed various different—and mutually exclusive—definitions of the term. The term magic derives from the Old Persian magu, a word that applied to a form of religious functionary about which little is known. During the late sixth and early fifth centuries BCE, this term was adopted into Ancient Greek, where it was used with negative connotations, to apply to religious rites that were regarded as fraudulent and dangerous; this meaning of the term was adopted by Latin in the first century BCE. Via Latin, the concept was incorporated into Christian theology during the first century CE, where magic was associated with demons and thus defined against religion.
This concept was pervasive throughout the Middle Ages, when Christian authors categorised a diverse range of practices—such as enchantment, incantations, divination and astrology—under the label magic. In early modern Europe, Italian humanists reinterpreted the term in a positive sense to create the idea of natural magic. Both negative and positive understandings of the term were retained in Western culture over the following centuries, with the former influencing early academic usages of the word. Since the nineteenth century, academics in various disciplines have employed the term magic but have defined it in different ways and used it in reference to different things. One approach, associated with the anthropologists Edward Tylor and James G. Frazer, uses the term to describe beliefs in hidden sympathies between objects that allow one to influence the other. Defined in this way, magic is portrayed as the opposite to science. An alternative approach, associated with the sociologists Marcel Mauss and Émile Durkheim, employs the term to describe private rites and ceremonies and contrasts it with religion, which it defines as a communal and organised activity.
Many scholars of religion have rejected the utility of the term magic, arguing that it is arbitrary and ethnocentric. Throughout Western history, there have been examples of individuals who engaged in practices that their societies called magic and who sometimes referred to themselves as magicians. Within modern occultism, there are many self-described magicians and people who practice ritual activities that they term magic. In this environment, the concept of magic has again changed being defined as a technique for bringing about changes in the physical world through the force of one's will; this definition was pioneered by the influential British occultist Aleister Crowley. The historian Owen Davies stated that the word magic was "beyond simple definition"; the historian Michael D. Bailey characterised magic as "a contested category and a fraught label". Scholars have engaged in extensive debates as to how to define magic, with such debates resulting in intense dispute. Throughout such debates, the scholarly community has failed to agree on a definition of magic, in a similar manner to how they have failed to agree on a definition of religion.
Among those throughout history who have described themselves as magicians, there has been no common understanding of what magic is. Concepts of magic serve to demarcate certain practices from other, otherwise similar practices in a given society. According to Bailey: "In many cultures and across various historical periods, categories of magic define and maintain the limits of and culturally acceptable actions in respect to numinous or occult entities or forces. More they serve to delineate arenas of appropriate belief." In this, he noted that "drawing these distinctions is an exercise in power". The scholar of religion Randall Styers noted that attempting to define magic represents "an act of demarcation" by which it is juxtaposed against "other social practices and modes of knowledge" such as "religion" and "science"; the historian Karen Louise Jolly described magic as "a category of exclusion, used to define an unacceptable way of thinking as either the opposite of religion or of science".
Within Western culture, the term "magic" has been linked to ideas of the Other and primitivism. In Styers' words, it has become "a powerful marker of cultural difference", it has been presented as the archetypally non-modern phenomenon. Among Western intellectuals in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, magic was seen as a defining feature of "primitive" mentalities and was attributed to marginal groups and periods; the concept and term "magic" developed in European society and thus using it when discussing non-Western cultures or pre-modern forms of Western society raises problems, as it may impose Western categories that are alien to them. While "magic" remains an emic term in the history of Western societies, it remains an etic term when applied to non-Western societies. During the twentieth century, many scholars focusing on Asian and African societies rejected the term "magic", as well as related concepts like "witchcraft", in favour of the more precise terms and concepts that existed within these specific societie
