Magicians have dazzled audiences for many centuries; however, few researchers have studied how, let alone why, most tricks work. The psychology of magic is a nascent field of research that examines the underlying mechanisms that conjurers use to achieve enchanting phenomena, including sensory illusions, misdirection of attention, and the appearance of mind-control and nuanced persuasion. Most studies to date have focused on either the psychological principles involved in watching and performing magic or “neuromagic” - the neural correlates of such phenomena. Whereas performers sometimes question the contributions that modern science may offer to the advancement of the magical arts, the history of magic reveals that scientific discovery often charts new territories for magicians. In this research topic we sketch out the symbiotic relationship between psychological science and the art of magic. On the one hand, magic can inform psychology, with particular benefits for the cognitive, social, developmental, and transcultural components of behavioural science. Magicians have a large and robust set of effects that most researchers rarely exploit. Incorporating these effects into existing experimental, even clinical, paradigms paves the road to innovative trajectories in the study of human behaviour. For example, magic provides an elegant way to study the behaviour of participants who may believe they had made choices that they actually did not make. Moreover, magic fosters a more ecological approach to experimentation whereby scientists can probe participants in more natural environments compared to the traditional lab-based settings. Examining how magicians consistently influence spectators, for example, can elucidate important aspects in the study of persuasion, trust, decision-making, and even processes spanning authorship and agency. Magic thus offers a largely underused armamentarium for the behavioural scientist and clinician. On the other hand, psychological science can advance the art of magic. The psychology of deception, a relatively understudied field, explores the intentional creation of false beliefs and how people often go wrong. Understanding how to methodically exploit the tenuous twilight zone of human vulnerabilities – perceptual, logical, emotional, and temporal – becomes all the more revealing when top-down influences, including expectation, symbolic thinking, and framing, join the fray. Over the years, science has permitted magicians to concoct increasingly effective routines and to elicit heightened feelings of wonder from audiences. Furthermore, on occasion science leads to the creation of novel effects, or the refinement of existing ones, based on systematic methods. For example, by simulating a specific card routine using a series of computer stimuli, researchers have decomposed the effect and reconstructed it into a more effective routine. Other magic effects depend on meaningful psychological knowledge, such as which type of information is difficult to retain or what changes capture attention. Behavioural scientists measure and study these factors. By combining analytical findings with performer intuitions, psychological science begets effective magic. Whereas science strives on parsimony and independent replication of results, magic thrives on reproducing the same effect with multiple methods to obscure parsimony and minimise detection. This Research Topic explores the seemingly orthogonal approaches of scientists and magicians by highlighting the crosstalk as well as rapprochement between psychological science and the art of deception.

Using the works and theories of Carl Gustav Jung and the astrologers Alan Leo, Dane Rudhyar and Liz Greene, this volume provides a cultural history of psychological astrology in the twentieth century, demonstrating the prevalence of ‘magic’ in modern culture through its presence in astrology. Astrology’s links to psychology are akin to those in wider culture, such as the exploration of the unconscious by writers and artists. The dominant form of astrology in the twentieth century was psychological astrology, a form principally influenced by the work of the psychologist Carl Gustav Jung. Through in-depth exploration of the three major astrologers of the period (Alan Leo, Dane Rudhyar and Liz Greene) and their psychological innovations, this volume considers whether psychology was used by astrology as a survival strategy to legitimise magic in the modern world and whether the result was ‘an astrology that has lost its magic’. Chapters consider the survival of magic in the modern world, the history of astrology as a psychological subject and astrology’s relationship to modernity, as well as a fundamental exploration of the nature of astrology. Ultimately arguing that the existence of psychological astrology represents a form of living magic, this book will be of interest to researchers, scholars and postgraduate students studying Jung and analytical psychology, magic, astrology and alchemy, and culture in the twentieth century more broadly.

With the rise of virtual reality, augmented reality, the internet of things and more, customers are more engaged, more involved, and easier to reach than ever;while being inundated with increasing amounts of marketing material. This straightforward guide takes you through these new technologies and shows how to leverage them to reach new markets.

Power Your Witchcraft with the Celestial Magic of Talismans Filled with advanced planetary and zodiacal magic, this book shows you how to make talismans—materialized spells that are continually and perpetually operating for your benefit. It teaches you how to encapsulate a wish and charge it with the energies of the elements, spirits, and archetypes of the gods. You will also learn the best times to generate these magical artifacts using planetary hours, days, and astrological auspices. With this comprehensive explanation of celestial magic, you can make a charmed life possible for yourself, your loved ones, and even potential clients. A companion to Spirit Conjuring for Witches and Elemental Power for Witches, this book covers the mansions of the moon, the planets, and the zodiac signs. Frater Barrabbas also explains astrological decans and a new, elemental division of the zodiac signs called astrological septans. Through this book's rituals, you can work celestial magic and fashion a battery of specific talismans to help build the life you have always dreamed of having.

Defining 'magic' is a maddening task. Over the last century numerous philosophers, anthropologists, historians, and theologians have attempted to pin down its essential meaning, sometimes analysing it in such complex and abstruse depth that it all but loses its sense altogether. For this reason, many people often shy away from providing a detailed definition, assuming it is generally understood as the human control of supernatural forces. 'Magic' continues to pervade the popular imagination and idiom. People feel comfortable with its contemporary multiple meanings, unaware of the controversy, conflict, and debate its definition has caused over two and a half millennia. In common usage today 'magic' is uttered in reference to the supernatural, superstition, illusion, trickery, religious miracles, fantasies, and as a simple superlative. The literary confection known as 'magical realism' has considerable appeal and many modern scientists have ironically incorporated the word into their vocabulary, with their 'magic acid', 'magic bullets' and 'magic angles'. Since the so-called European Enlightenment magic has often been seen as a marker of primitivism, of a benighted earlier stage of human development. Yet across the modern globalized world hundreds of millions continue to resort to magic - and also to fear it. Magic provides explanations and remedies for those living in extreme poverty and without access to alternatives. In the industrial West, with its state welfare systems, religious fundamentalists decry the continued moral threat posed by magic. Under the guise of neo-Paganism, its practice has become a religion in itself. Magic continues to be a truly global issue. This Very Short Introduction does not attempt to provide a concluding definition of magic: it is beyond simple definition. Instead it explores the many ways in which magic, as an idea and a practice, has been understood and employed over the millennia. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Updating and expanding the materials from the first edition, Anomalistic Psychology, Second Edition integrates and systematically treats phenomena of human consciousness and behaviors that appear to violate the laws of nature. The authors present and detail a new explanatory concept they developed that provides a naturalistic interpretation for these phenomena -- Magical Thinking. For undergraduate and graduate students and professionals in cognitive psychology, research methods, thinking, and parapsychology.

Faith Through the Prism of Psychology introduces readers to the structure and function of the inherent ability of our Self to invest objects with reality — existentialization (EXON). The author moves away from traditional ideas of existence and faith, arguing that it is an inherent ability of an individual mind to invest entities (both objective and subjective) with reality. The book treats faith as a psychological ability of the mind to upgrade the existential statuses of imaginary entities, such as ghosts or gods; the working of faith is operationalized and analyzed in empirical psychological studies. It presents a new model of investing objects with existence, with such structural elements as the belief in object permanence (BOP), magic/ordinary distinguisher (MOD), magic/trick distinguisher (MTD), imaginary/perceived distinguisher (IPD), BOP defense mechanism (BOP/DM) and realities distinguisher (RD). It will be essential reading for anyone interested in existence from psychology, philosophy, art, theology or psychotherapy backgrounds.

The Psychology of Screenwriting is more than an interesting book on the theory and practice of screenwriting. It is also a philosophical analysis of predetermination and freewill in the context of writing and human life in our mediated world of technology. Drawing on humanism, existentialism, Buddhism, postmodernism and transhumanism, and diverse thinkers from Meister Eckhart to Friedrich Nietzsche, Theodor Adorno, Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard and Gilles Deleuze, The Psychology of Screenwriting will be of use to screenwriters, film students, philosophers and all those interested in contemporary theory. This book combines in-depth critical and cultural analysis with an elaboration on practice in an innovative fashion. It explores how people, such as those in the Dogme 95 movement, have tried to overcome traditional screenwriting, looking in detail at the psychology of writing and the practicalities of how to write well for the screen. This is the first book to include high-theory with screenwriting practice whilst incorporating the Enneagram for character development. Numerous filmmakers and writers, including David Lynch, Jim Jarmusch, David Cronenberg, Pedro Almodóvar, Darren Aronofsky, Sally Potter and Charlie Kaufman are explored. The Psychology of Screenwriting is invaluable for those who want to delve deeper into writing for the screen.

These books provide an invaluable reference for teachers of psychology. The plethora of teaching strategies and techniques discussed should serve to improve the quality of their teaching. For those who teach high school, college, and graduate students in psychology, education, and the social sciences, these volumes present immediate practical applications and rich sources of ideas. They contain the collective experiences of teachers who have successfully dealt with students' difficulty in mastering important concepts about human behavior. Volume 1 addresses teaching strategies for courses that make up the core of most psychology curricula; introductory psychology, statistics, research methods, and the history of psychology. Volume 2 discusses teaching physiology, perception, learning, memory, and developmental psychology. Volume 3 deals with teaching personality, abnormal clinical-counseling, and social psychology. Each volume contains a table listing the articless in that volume and identifying the primary and secondary courses in which each demonstration can be used.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The Great Escape for the Great War: the astonishing true story of two World War I prisoners who pulled off one of the most ingenious escapes of all time. FINALIST FOR THE EDGAR® AWARD • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, NPR • “Fox unspools Jones and Hill’s delightfully elaborate scheme in nail-biting episodes that advance like a narrative Rube Goldberg machine.”—The New York Times Book Review Imprisoned in a remote Turkish POW camp during World War I, having survived a two-month forced march and a terrifying shootout in the desert, two British officers, Harry Jones and Cedric Hill, join forces to bamboozle their iron-fisted captors. To stave off despair and boredom, Jones takes a handmade Ouija board and fakes elaborate séances for his fellow prisoners. Word gets around, and one day an Ottoman official approaches Jones with a query: Could Jones contact the spirit world to find a vast treasure rumored to be buried nearby? Jones, a trained lawyer, and Hill, a brilliant magician, use the Ouija board—and their keen understanding of the psychology of deception—to build a trap for their captors that will ultimately lead them to freedom. A gripping nonfiction thriller, The Confidence Men is the story of one of the only known con games played for a good cause—and of a profound but unlikely friendship. Had it not been for “the Great War,” Jones, the Oxford-educated son of a British lord, and Hill, a mechanic on an Australian sheep ranch, would never have met. But in pain, loneliness, hunger, and isolation, they formed a powerful emotional and intellectual alliance that saved both of their lives. Margalit Fox brings her “nose for interesting facts, the ability to construct a taut narrative arc, and a Dickens-level gift for concisely conveying personality” (Kathryn Schulz, New York) to this tale of psychological strategy that is rife with cunning, danger, and moments of high farce that rival anything in Catch-22.