Episode 23: Sex Secrets of the Black Magicians EXPOSED: On Magical Thinking

According to Ramsey Dukes, “Magic is a technique by which the human mind attempts to operate upon its world. As such it is similar to Art, Religion and Science, but note that the term ‘its world’ is meant to embrace not only the physical universe but also all phenomena, objective and subjective, which do not respond to direct control.” In this episode we consider Ramsey Dukes’ essay on magical thinking; “Sex Secrets of the Black Magicians Exposed”, commonly abbreviated to S.S.O.T.B.M.E. Well, that was our intention anyway… it takes us a while to meander around the concept of magic, our exposure to the concept of magic and even early aversions to it. Eventually, we discuss Dukes’ model of compass directions differentiating between Art, Magic, Religion and Science, and the modes of thinking associated with each ‘direction’. In this essay, Dukes comes to a similar conclusion to Carl Jung: human thought is comprised of four distinct elements: intuition, observation, logic and feeling. Dukes argues that, “any practical method of thinking demands at least two of these four elements, one to serve as an input of impressions and the other to process them.” Our primary concern in tackling this obscure text is to determine what magic or magical thinking actually is, and whether or not this a relevant term for us to use. References Ramsey Dukes (1974) — S.S.O.T.B.M.E: an essay on magic Black Sabbath — Black Sabbath (1970) — The Wizard Chef (2014) & The Chef Show (2019) Wilfred Owen (1921) — Dulce et Decorum Est Links Altered Mates Website Altered Mates Instagram Music for the show by Si Mulumby A Glimpse of Eternity by Alejandro Tuama Purchase the novel here (hard copy, ebook and audiobook). Listen to the free serialised audiobook here.