Magical thinking is the brain's way of handling complexity and, judging by the survival or humankind, it has done a pretty good job.

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

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'.

A distinction was drawn between the scientific use of language - where a word is chosen for the meaning it has - and the magical use of language for the meaning a word conveys or transports

Religious culture is the one that defines a game and sets the rules; Scientific culture is the one that tests the rules; Arts culture is the one that breaks the rules; and Magical culture is the one that plays by the rules, but knows it is "just a game".