Contemporary magical practices: An empirical “case” (part 2)

The article continues the description of the state and development of the magical in the contemporary secular society. The absence of an established sociological tradition of conceptual understanding and empirical study of the magical explains the division of the text into two parts. The fi part presents a reconstruction of the stages of the “magical renaissance” as a stable social-cultural phenomenon in contemporary history and identifi the most obvious and signifi features of esoteric practices, which determined their current mass manifestations with a set of easily ‘readable’ social functions and as only pretending to be traditional and even archaic. This article notes both the interdisciplinary nature of the magical (hence numerous borrowings of sociology from anthropological, religious and cultural approaches) and the imbalance of its conceptual understanding (relatively coherent systematization of structural elements and need-based-functional capabilities of magical practices) and empirical description in sociology. The objective lack of quantitative and qualitative empirical studies of the magical is only partly explained by methodological problems, since the very object of interest eludes us (as vague, fragmentary and denying unifi notions). The article presents an attempt to “map” this object based on the simple content analysis of search results for the queries “esoterics”, “magic” and “ritual” on three most popular marketplaces for “inputs” and attributes for esoteric practices - Wildberries, “Masters Fair” and Avito. It turned out that three web-sites diff not only in the ratio of the most popular magical “tools” (available goods for urban secular practices on Wildberries; authentic-professional and therefore signifi more expensive goods for the “initiated” on the “Masters Fair”; the most popular social-psychological consultations under the guise of magical rituals on Avito) but also in the dominant functions of their “magical” (accordingly, a mosaic of aesthetically attractive attributes of diff directions, which can satisfy any consumer demand; assistance to practicing magicians to make their “rituals” eff and safe for all involved; social-psychological support for people in diffi life situations through “an appeal to the other world”).