{"id":757,"date":"2018-06-26T08:25:29","date_gmt":"2018-06-26T08:25:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/?p=757"},"modified":"2018-06-26T12:54:50","modified_gmt":"2018-06-26T12:54:50","slug":"just-out-of-reach-magic-opacity-and-unknowability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/?p=757","title":{"rendered":"Just out of reach: magic, opacity, and unknowability"},"content":{"rendered":"

Theodoros Kyriakides and Richard Irvine.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Eynhallow (Land of the Finn Man) by Leila Thomson (above). Tapestry at the Orkney Library, Kirkwall.<\/em><\/p>\n

Eynhallow frank, Eynhallow free
\nEynhallow stands in the middle of the sea
\nA roaring roost on every side
\nEynhallow stands in the middle of the tide<\/p>\n

\u2013 traditional Orkney rhyme<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cBut what do you mean by magic?\u201d There\u2019s a long pause in the conversation; the anthropologist wonders whether they\u2019ve asked the wrong question. \u201cWell I suppose I mean\u2026 well, magic\u2026 like Eynhallow.\u201d To those familiar with Orkney, this small \u2018holy island\u2019 is rich in stories: once upon a time a coming-and-going island, rising from the sea only to disappear, until it was won over from the shape-shifting finfolk<\/em> by the use of holy salt. Still the island retains an uncanny quality: in 1990 two people were said to have disappeared into thin air after 88 were counted off an excursion ferry to the uninhabited island and only 86 were counted back on.<\/p>\n

But it is not only the stories surrounding Eynhallow that make it a figure of magic. It is also the sense of it being simultaneously proximate, yet remote. It looms near, just between Rousay and the Orkney Mainland; and yet, surrounded by the elemental forces of the \u201croaring roost\u201d<\/a> \u2013 the riptides rushing past, the meeting point of the great energies of the Atlantic and the North Sea \u2013 it seems inaccessible. It fits perfectly with another explanation of the qualities of magic offered during conversation in Orkney: \u201ca sense of wonder\u2026 but just out of reach\u201d.<\/p>\n

The question \u201cWhat do you mean by magic?\u201d is not a straightforward one. In fact, it is a question which can easily be turned back onto the anthropologist working on the topic. If you are someone just going about your daily routine, this is of course a very valid response to someone trying to research your beliefs and practices. Curiously enough, the fact that magic is such an open category makes this a rich question for our research in Nicosia and Orkney. Magic means different things for different people: magic for some might denote spells. For others, it is a quality of the landscape. For others, psychic readings. For others, Harry Potter movies. In other words, the question \u201cwhat do you mean by magic\u201d, far from suggesting that \u2018magic\u2019 is an irrelevance, indicates the polysemy \u2013 the rich and varied range of meaning \u2013 this word has acquired in modernity.<\/p>\n

At the same time, this question reveals the enigmatic stance people adopt in the presence of the suggestion of magic: it is, in this sense, a topic \u201cjust out of reach\u201d, surrounded by opacity and uncertainty. In The Empty Seashell<\/em><\/a>, an ethnography of witchcraft in Indonesia, Nils Bubandt writes that \u201cthe fundamental unknowability of the other\u201d often acts as a prerequisite to the manifestation or suspicion of witchcraft. Witchcraft is hence emergent from the fact that we cannot \u2018see through\u2019 the intentions of others. On the one hand, such witchcraft is indented in the workings of a society: it proceeds through specific instances, practices, rituals and social structures. On the other hand, the forms of magic which emerge within our fieldwork showcase how magic in contemporary societies takes multiple forms, reflecting the pluralism of beliefs and habits.<\/p>\n

Here, we encounter a different kind of \u201cunknowability\u201d to once again use Bubandt\u2019s term of choice. To return to Orkney, on the island of Rousay ideas of \u2018magic\u2019 in the landscape are attested to by the many stories which surround the Neolithic chambered cairns and standing stones. The folklore attached to these places is rich and well recorded. Yet, importantly, many layers of unknowing intervene in any given \u2018encounter\u2019 with the storied landscape: Protestant Christian attempts to rid the populace of superstition; population displacement due to clearance and emigration; population change due to incomers from beyond Orkney; secularisation. None of these strips the landscape of its potency, but each contributes to its sense of being \u2018out of reach\u2019.<\/p>\n

Working back through these layers to understand the occluded landscape seems to generate new forms of interaction: for example, given the closure of the island\u2019s kirks and the decline of island churchgoing, it is not altogether surprising that an archaeological site should become the setting for an island wedding rather than the kirk. Meanwhile, in recent decades modern standing stones have joined their ancient counterparts. The work involved in quarrying and erecting such stones makes this by no means a flippant undertaking, though neither is it a phenomenon that in all cases can be taken too seriously. Modern stones might be said to be \u201cwatching over us, helping us as they\u2019ve always done\u201d, but in another case might be said to have been erected more playfully, a landmark to direct tourists to what was built as a holiday home.<\/p>\n\n\t\t