Stolen Lightning:

...The thing to grasp," says O'Keefe, "is that the accusation of witchcraft is the magical act," and he goes so far as to propose that magic begins in murder...

...of modern society...

...The community is strongest when its members agree to agree about the witch's death...

...The dilemma of the self is to find a middle ground between the excessive dogma of reified institutions of belief and the excessive spontaneity of beliefs largely produced by accusation, rivalry, and protest...

...witch accusations are magic...

...Sacrificing individuals may actually give birth to the social category of the Individual, which sets in motion the process of modeling that al-lows for the emergence of true individu-als...

...It brackets the question of the exis-tence of occult forces and proposes a sociological view of magic that exercises an encyclopedic grasp over previous theories, a tenacious desire for knowl-edge, and an inventive sense of hypothesis...

...He observes that the communal atmosphere of religion provides a nurtur-ing environment for the self, but also understands that the cradle can begin to stifle as the infant grows...

...O'Keefe's view of also captures this evolutionary process, for magical sects may attack both relig-ious and magical institutions in his opin-ion...

...The current neglect of magic as a serious topic of scientific investiga-tion conceals a superstitious fear of magic, and attests to its enduring influ-ence in modern society Modern man is sophisticated enough to recoil at the thought of magic, but he is not sophisti-cated enough to free himself from the desire to believe...

...The ac-cusation process involves on a different level the same symbolic interaction that O'Keefe observes between the indi-vidual, community, and sacrifice...

...But the individual in question is not the accuser...

...The difference is that they accepted magic around them, whereas we deny it...

...Daniel Lawrence O'Keefe's idmira-ble book argues that magic, in stroi:g and weak senses, persists at every leve...

...The his-torical priority of religion over magic is not a simple issue, and O'Keefe tackles it with daring...

...It is perhaps a better idea to maintain a dialectical sense of the relation between religion and magic, which O'Keefe does when he argues that the struggle between them creates the individual and social change...

...it is the witch...

...Anyone with the slightest interest in magic will want to own it...

...What a strange view of witchcraft, which portrays the witch as the vic-timizer and his accuser as the defender of individuality, especially since O'Keefe claims not to believe in witchcraft and understands that it is the witch who is placed on trial and executed by society...

...Perhaps the answer to the self's dilemma must be twofold, and religion and magic are the twin strat-egies of the social system that needs its individuals as much as they need it...

...The rather un-characteristic chapter called "Religion Models Magic for Society" is a jungle of Venn diagrams and tangled logical de-ductions that often succumb to pure polemics and contradictory statements...

...In witchcraft accusations, society inflicts pain on the one whom it has named as an individual, as it seeks to affirm its own cohesion and strength in the unanimous gesture of accusation...

...Both religion and magic, then, sac-rifice individuals for the benefits of so-cial cohesion...

...In-congruously, it seems that the accused witch represents the killing power of so-ciety (and religion), whereas the accuser represents the spontaneity of the indi-vidual, who turns society against itself and casts out its religious and moral en-trepreneurs...

...Magical accusations of witchcraft exhibit the characteristics that O'Keefe assigns to religion...

...In his view, the shamanistic self (his model for the self in general) "experiences pain in its own individuation from the collectiv-ity, by plunging it back into that collec-tivity by sacrificing it to religious repre-sentations .'' This form of self-sacrifice is most characteristic of the higher ethical religions, in particular of Christian sac-rifice...

...The formula is simple," O'Keefe concludes, "witch fears are re-ligious...

...The jacket copy hails it as a revolutionary study akin to the works of Frazer, Freud, and Max Weber, and while time is the best judge of boasts, Daniel O'Keefe has certainly written a rich and impressive book with the potential to be a classic...

...Mauss's category of the person fol-lows this trajectory, tracing the evolution of the persona from the rights and duties given to the individual by society to the formation of the personality...

...but his work begins to show some stress on this score...

...The difference be-tween modern and primitive societies," he says, "is not that they had magic and we do not...

...Tobin Siebers "THERE IS superstition in avoid-ing superstition," Francis Bacon wrote in "Of Superstition...

...Nonetheless, Stolen Light-ning is not a defense of magical belief, nor an expose aimed at those who deny the continued influence of superstition today...

...O'Keefe argues that religion is collec-tive and magic is individual, and .this thesis prepares for a second assertion that religion emerges before magic...

...and this desire lurks in the ideology of skeptics who are afraid to consider magic and who call it the meta-physics of fools...

...This is when magic comes to the self's defense, steal-ing some of the sacred, like Prometheus, to protect man's ego...

...The final test of Mr...

...Apparently, "religion precedes magic but there may be magicians before there are priests...

...Here, as in religion, collec-tive demands threaten to destroy the in-dividual...

...But the sacrifice of the witch, not by himself, but by the society in the heat of a witchcraft craze, is not so different...

...But sacrificial gestures also focus the attention of society and contribute to the emergence of collective representations...

...A case in point is the accusation of witchcraft...

...Debate is the welcome response to a good and controversial book, and O'Keefe's project is admittedly to give a descrip-tive, not a formal, theory of magic...

...Magic exprop-riates religious power and uses it against religion, in order to defend the self against religion, against society, against superego, which at all times threaten to implode the self and snuff it out.'' O'Keefe calls magic the "midwife of the self," but sometimes loses his sense of balance, for magic may also have de-structive effects on the individual...

...The obser-vation is as true today as it was in Ba-con's time...

...O'Keefe's intelligent and enjoy-able book, however, will be whether it can check the superstitious avoidance of magic and open a space for additional scholarly debate on this ancient and en-during problem of mankind.oblem of mankind...

...Although he never states it explicitly, I had the sense that magic grows more religious as it becomes in-stitutionalized...

...None of this is to say that Stolen Lightning wavers in its understanding...

...they may work for the public good at first...