Magic in bingo

Abstract

Author looks at the popular American pastime of BINGO. This game is the ideal for an anthropological study of magic because not only is the game based on pure chance, with a lot of hope on the part of the participants, but the participants themselves represent a wide range of people. Magic is used by people to try to influence the outcome of situations or events over which they have no physical control. In the games author attended, there was an adequate representation of both sexes, a wide range in ages, a good mixture of ethnic backgrounds, and a fairly good array of social classes in attendance. Even with all of this variation present, there was one common factor: magic. Although not everyone practiced magic, of those who did, there was no apparent domination of anyone type of practitioner. In this paper author describes the various kinds of magic practices being utilized and discusses the sequence of their occurrence.