12 Quotes by Lionel Snell

Religion seeks to lift us from everyday matter towards spirit, while magic seeks rather to bring spirit down into everyday matter. While religion often reflects a ‘quest for meaning’, magic is more about ‘sowing seeds of meaning’.

We shall see that magic does not deny truth, it positively embraces truth as a crutch to assist belief, but it equall embraces falsehood – and that makes it unacceptable in scientific culture. Magic embraces goodness, but it also embraces evil – and that makes it disreputable in religious eyes. Magic embraces beauty and it also embraces ugliness – and that can make it seem kitsch or ‘cheesy’ in artistic eyes.

Instant gratification is no more essential to magical culture than bigotry to religious culture or psychopathy to science, and yet times of magical revival do go hand in hand with a rise in individualism.