Word: magics
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Magic Rites. Among the superstitious Kikuyu, the British have learned, very little can be accomplished without magic rites. The Mau Mau forced horror-struck natives to violate tribal taboos, and so bound them to the movement by cutting them off from all else. Some of the grisly Mau Mau oath-taking rites called for copulation with sheep, eating the flesh of exhumed corpses or drinking the "Kaberi-chia cocktail," a blend of semen, menstrual blood and sheep's blood...
...transport planes headed for India with automatic weapons, heavy mortars and mountain howitzers. British transports brought in Bren and Sten guns. France promised arms and helicopters. In New Delhi, U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Galbraith hailed the airlift of arms, but warned, "I hope no one will imagine they will work magic,'' because "the great task remains with the Indian army...
...corollary wish to be somebody else. In The Big Green Book, Poet Robert Graves, using only 338 words, tells of little Jack, who lives with his unfriendly aunt and uncle because his parents are dead. One day Jack teaches his keepers a lesson. He finds a green book of magic spells, turns himself into a sly old man, and beats greedy aunt and uncle in a high-stakes card game. In fact, he wins about $200,000 and all their worldly possessions. Then he reappears as little Jack, and the grownups are so relieved that all live happily ever after...
...Masters but serves as Crowell-Collier's talent scout in rounding up other writers. Among them: Critic Mark Van Doren, Playwright William Saroyan, Poets John Ciardi, Conrad Aiken and Muriel Rukeyser. That mistress of creepy grownup prose, Novelist Shirley Jackson (The Lottery), has written a sunlit winner, Nine Magic Wishes. Erskine Caldwell, the drugstore Rabelais, has "dumfounded" Crowell-Collier with a primer described as "amazingly gentle." The usually dour Playwright Arthur Miller offers Jane's Blanket, which he outlines thus: "A little girl named Jane sadly watches her big pink blanket grow smaller and smaller while she grows...
...Vatican Curia that is insulated from the problems of non-Italian Catholics. The liberals also want to play down the hierarchical, juridical concept of the church, under which, says one French archbishop, "the bishop is reputed to be a sort of prefect, priests functionaries, sacraments residues of magic rites, religion a group of laws to which one suits himself because of a feeling of exterior discipline and from which one escapes without understanding their true value, as happens with the laws of the state...