Very Superstitious

[Dave Monroe]

It’s a shame that we owe so much of our understanding of sympathetic
magic to someone whose attitude toward magic was so, in a word,
unsympathetic. In the time since its publication, The Golden Bough has
influenced and inspired everyone from T. S. Eliot to H. P. Lovecraft,
W. B. Yeats to Joseph Campbell. No one before Frazer had so
exhaustively documented the wide variety of shamanistic, magical, and
religious practices throughout the world, nor had anyone sought to so
thoroughly synthesize them into a work regarding the basic structures
of human belief. Yet for all its rigor, Frazer repeated a vicious
refrain throughout: magic is a “spurious system of natural law as well
as a fallacious guide of conduct,” “a false science,” as well as an
“abortive” and “bastard” art.

[...]

It’s no accident that the study of magic and ritual flourished during
the wane of the British empire; the beliefs of native cultures were
collected and studied so they could be corrected. The study of magic
was important, the ethnologist E. E. Evans-Pritchard would later
explain, “not only for the anthropologist but also for the colonial
administrator and missionary, if they wish to show to the peoples whom
they govern and teach that they understand their notions about right
and wrong.” For some, the main reason for studying sympathetic magic
was to eradicate it.

[...]

http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/essays/very-superstitious.php?page=all

Mythology

http://www.thomaspynchon.com/gravitys-rainbow/extra/mythology.html

PISCES

34; Psychological Intelligence Schemes for Expediting Surrender,
housed in The White Visitation; "devoted to psychological warfare" 35;
"concerned with a rather strictly defined, clinical version of truth"
272; Proceedings of the International Society of Confessors to an
Enthusiasm for Albatross Nosology, 712; See also Twelfth House; White
Visitation

http://www.thomaspynchon.com/gravitys-rainbow/alpha/p-q.html

White Visitation

34; former mental hospital located in the fictional town of Ick Regis
on the coast of southern England; now part of SOE; location of PISCES;
D-Wing still has "loonies"; "devoted to psychological warfare" 35;
"they're all wild talents--clairvoyants and mad magicians" 40; 72-74;
described, 82-83; D-Wing, 230; 533; 627

http://www.thomaspynchon.com/gravitys-rainbow/alpha/w.html#white

Victoria Wren

http://v.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Victoria_Wren

http://www.thomaspynchon.com/v/extra/eti.html