Ah, thank you for joining us. Welcome to Outward Unleashed, how you doing, Karl?

I'm doing fine. Thank you for having me.

My pleasure entirely. Maybe you could just tell us what it is you do, what keeps you busy.

Many things, but I think what we have to talk about is something that I would call almost an

obsession of mine, and that's magical anthropology. I think that some other people have coined that

also, but I did early on in my life sort of come up with the idea of a specific anthropology that

deals with magic, how people throughout history and in different cultures have, you know,

resonated with and the relationship with magic and such. And the more you scratch the surface,

the more you find that it's incredibly integrated, I would argue even on a genetic level,

and historically it's been with us all along. And even in these times, which are sort of

hyper rational, hyper empirical, we are completely immersed in magical thinking, magical behavior,

ritual thinking, et cetera, et cetera, regardless which culture we're from.

Fascinating. So how are you using the word magic here? Are we referring to sort of pulling

bunnies out of hats? So is this a word for the supernatural, perhaps?

Yeah, I'm more on the supernatural strain, but even that, you know, it's so hard to define,

because everyone has, you know, their own terminology and it's often biased and influenced by

religions. So you have to, they're basically in my mind, two different ways of approaching

the definition. And I'm sure you're aware of Alistair Crowley, who was such a prime mover

in bringing, you know, the supernatural kind of magic into the 20th century or modern times.

And you know, he came up with this definition that magic is the science and art of causing change

to occur in conformity with will. And that's a pretty stripped definition. It means that, you know,

if I want to see a film, I go to a cinema and I buy a ticket, you know, those are the rituals

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