from The Pattern Under teh Plough, by George Ewart Evans

 

"The 'magic' (from a functional, practical, and operative view) ... was directed at those parts of the process that could no be reached by the ordinary physical measures the operator took to gain his ends; and one of these parts, as the primitive (sic) instinctively recognized, was that area of his own psyche that was ordinarily inaccessible but which could be aligned by the help of magic to promote his best endeavours in the project he had in hand. Thus the magic was primarily addressed to his hope, his desire, or his conviction that his ends could ultimately be attained."

And then he closes with a reminder that, if you feel the ancient folk ways are irrational and superstitious, to realize that humans are still and always human, and our current irrational beliefs (including modern concepts of race, the veracity of the printed word, the boundlessness of science, etc.) would be difficult for ourselves to detect.