Summary of David Abram's The Spell of the Sensuous

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 I was once in a trance while gazing at the stars in eastern Bali. I felt myself falling through space, and between the constellations below and the constellations above drifted countless fireflies, their lights flickering like the stars.

#2 I had traveled to Indonesia on a research grant to study magic, and I had been a professional sleight-of-hand magician for five years back in the United States. I had spent some months in London, England, exploring the use of sleight-of-hand magic in psychotherapy.

#3 The focus of my research shifted from questions regarding the application of magical techniques in medicine and ritual curing to a deeper consideration of the relation between traditional magic and the animate natural world. I came to recognize that it was through the agency of such rumors that the sorcerers were able to maintain a basic level of privacy.

#4 The traditional or tribal shaman acts as an intermediary between the human community and the larger ecological field, ensuring that there is an appropriate flow of nourishment from the landscape to the human inhabitants and back to the local earth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Jun 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822528765

IRB Media

With IRB books, you can get the key takeaways and analysis of a book in 15 minutes. We read every chapter, identify the key takeaways and analyze them for your convenience.

Book preview

Insights on David Abram's The Spell of the Sensuous

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

I was once in a trance while gazing at the stars in eastern Bali. I felt myself falling through space, and between the constellations below and the constellations above drifted countless fireflies, their lights flickering like the stars.

#2

I had traveled to Indonesia on a research grant to study magic, and I had been a professional sleight-of-hand magician for five years back in the United States. I had spent some months in London, England, exploring the use of sleight-of-hand magic in psychotherapy.

#3

The focus of my research shifted from questions regarding the application of magical techniques in medicine and ritual curing to a deeper consideration of the relation between traditional magic and the animate natural world. I came to recognize that it was through the agency of such rumors that the sorcerers were able to maintain a basic level of privacy.

#4

The traditional or tribal shaman acts as an intermediary between the human community and the larger ecological field, ensuring that there is an appropriate flow of nourishment from the landscape to the human inhabitants and back to the local earth.

#5

The traditional magician derives her ability to cure ailments from her more continuous practice of healing or balancing the community’s relation to the surrounding land. Disease is often conceptualized as a sort of systemic imbalance within the sick person, or as the intrusion of a demonic presence into his body.

#6

The most sophisticated definition of magic that circulates through the American counterculture is the ability to alter one’s consciousness at will. In tribal cultures, however, this definition takes on a different meaning. The traditional magician cultivates an ability to shift out of his or her common state of consciousness in order to make contact with the other organic forms of sensitivity and awareness with which human existence is entwined.

#7

The magician’s relationship with nonhuman nature is most evident when we consider the background of her practice. The magician’s intimate relationship with nonhuman nature becomes most evident when we attend to the easily overlooked background of her practice.

#8

The first shift in my preconceptions came when I was staying with a balian, or magic practitioner, in Bali. I had been provided with a simple bed in a separate building, and early each morning the balian’s wife came to bring me a small but delicious bowl of fruit.

#9

I began to see the logic in the balian’s