Magician's State

Contextual Quote

"Let me say that again, people even like being enchanted. Prove me wrong.

As Ioan Couliano writes in Eros and Magic in the Renaissance (invoking Giordano Bruno), everything and everyone is manipulable. Everyone.

He continues:

“We see that the goal of Bruno’s magic is to enable a manipulator to control both individuals and crowds. Its fundamental presupposition is that a big tool for manipulation exists—Eros in the most general sense of the word: that which we love, from physical pleasure to things probably unsuspected, in passing, by wealth, power, etc…. Magic action occurs through indirect contact (virtualem et potentialem), through sounds and images which exert their power over the senses of sight and hearing.”

Couliano, writing in the early 1980s, understands the utility of such magical power as a tool of the nation state and easily imagines a day in which the police State will give way to the “magician State.”

- Michael Martin [1]