magicreligious

Magicreligious, also encountered as magic-religious or magico-religious, is a cross-disciplinary category used in anthropology, sociology, and religious studies to describe beliefs and practices that fuse magical techniques with religious authority to influence perceived supernatural forces. The label signals a continuum rather than a sharp division between magic and religion, recognizing that many societies integrate ritual, belief, and social authority in ways that blend instrumental aims with moral or cosmological meanings.

Historically, the term appears in mid-20th-century ethnography and theory as scholars contrasted magic as a means to secure specific outcomes with religion as a broader system of meaning and obligation. In practice, magicreligious behavior often centers on healing, divination, protection, weather control, success in overses or warfare, and rites of passage. Practitioners may be shamans, witches, sorcerers, priests, or ritual specialists who operate within or alongside organized religious structures. Rituals commonly involve charms, spells, or invocations performed in conjunction with sacred symbols, sacred objects, or sanctioned ritual spaces.

Analysts emphasize that many societies do not separate magic from religion; rather, they form integrated belief networks in which supernatural causation is appropriated through ritual authority and communal norms. Contemporary scholarship frequently treats magicreligious phenomena as part of broader folk or popular religion, or as manifestations of syncretism, pragmatic religion, or ritual economy.

Examples cited in the literature include healing cults, divination practices, and protective rites across various cultures, where magical techniques operate within religious frameworks to legitimate social order and individual welfare. The term remains a historical descriptor within a wider vocabulary that now often uses more specific ethnographic labels.