In Part 2 of The Mechanics of Magick: Drumming, Trance, and the Brain, we follow rhythm from the sacred road into the war road and the modern machine. This episode examines war drums, military cadence, synchronized movement, crowd power, ritual physiology, propaganda, slogans, media framing, algorithmic repetition, moral-emotional contagion, and the illusory truth effect. The argument is not that rhythm is evil. The argument is that rhythm is morally flexible and powerful. It can heal, gather, strengthen, command, manipulate, or capture depending on the world built around it. The drum teaches us to hear the visible pulse first, so we can recognize the hidden drums of the modern world: the chant, the slogan, the feed, the notification loop, the soundtrack, the repeated frame, and the rhythm that trains attention before thought has time to speak.
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Rhythm, Marching, Synchrony, and the Group
BodyMcNeill, William H. Keeping Together in Time: Dance and Drill in Human History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995.
Use for dance, drill, marching, synchronized movement, and “muscular bonding.” This is one of the best historical anchors for the claim that moving together in time can help bind human groups through the body. It belongs in the war drum, marching, military cadence, procession, and crowd-power material.Wiltermuth, Scott S., and Chip Heath. “Synchrony and Cooperation.” Psychological Science 20, no. 1 (2009): 1–5.
Use for the claim that synchronized action can increase cooperation. This supports the argument that marching, chanting, dancing, and acting in time can alter group attachment and behavior.Hove, Michael J., and Jane L. Risen. “It’s All in the Timing: Interpersonal Synchrony Increases Affiliation.” Social Cognition 27, no. 6 (2009): 949–960.
Use for interpersonal synchrony and affiliation. This supports the softer social-bonding side of rhythm: people who coordinate timing can feel more connected.Tarr, Bronwyn, Jacques Launay, and Robin I. M. Dunbar. “Music and Social Bonding: ‘Self-Other’ Merging and Neurohormonal Mechanisms.” Frontiers in Psychology 5 (2014): 1096.
Use for music, synchrony, bonding, self-other merging, endorphins, and why rhythmic group activity can feel socially powerful. This belongs in both crowd sections and the “operator as instrument” material.Reddish, Paul, Ronald Fischer, and Joseph Bulbulia. “Let’s Dance Together: Synchrony, Shared Intentionality and Cooperation.” PLOS ONE 8, no. 8 (2013): e71182.
Use as extra support for synchrony and cooperation. Good optional source if you want more than Wiltermuth and Heath.Ritual Physiology, Crowd Arousal, and Collective EffervescenceKonvalinka, Ivana, Dimitris Xygalatas, Joseph Bulbulia, Uri Schjødt, Else-Marie Jegindø, Sebastian Wallot, Guy Van Orden, and Andreas Roepstorff. “Synchronized Arousal Between Performers and Related Spectators in a Fire-Walking Ritual.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108, no. 20 (2011): 8514–8519.
Use for the strongest fire-walking physiology source. This is the study showing synchronized arousal between active ritual performers and related spectators. It supports the claim that intense ritual fields can show up in bodies, not only in symbols.Xygalatas, Dimitris, Ivana Konvalinka, Joseph Bulbulia, and Andreas Roepstorff. “Quantifying Collective Effervescence: Heart-Rate Dynamics at a Fire-Walking Ritual.” Communicative & Integrative Biology 4, no. 6 (2011): 735–738.
Use as a shorter interpretive companion to the PNAS fire-walking study. Good for the phrase “collective effervescence” and for explaining shared heart-rate dynamics in accessible language.Xygalatas, Dimitris. Ritual: How Seemingly Senseless Acts Make Life Worth Living. New York: Little, Brown Spark, 2022.
Use for ritual, pain, synchrony, group bonding, arousal, and embodied social meaning. This is useful when moving from older ritual containers into modern crowd and spectacle.Hobson, Nicholas M., Juliana Schroeder, Jane L. Risen, Dimitris Xygalatas, and Michael Inzlicht. “The Psychology of Rituals: An Integrative Review and Process-Based Framework.” Personality and Social Psychology Review 22, no. 3 (2018): 260–284.
Use for ritual as emotion regulation, performance regulation, social bonding, and formalized action. This supports the “ritual does things, it does not merely represent things” argument.War, Crowds, Mass Movements, and Collective IdentityLe Bon, Gustave. The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. 1895.
Use carefully. Le Bon is historically important for crowd psychology, but outdated and often elitist. Good as a historical source on crowd fear and mass suggestion, but balance it with modern social psychology.Canetti, Elias. Crowds and Power. New York: Viking Press, 1962.
Use for a literary-philosophical treatment of crowds, power, command, fear, and collective bodies. Good for atmosphere and conceptual framing, not as a modern experimental source.Hoffer, Eric. The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1951.
Use for mass movements, fanaticism, belonging, identity, resentment, sacrifice, and the psychology of ideological devotion. Use carefully; it is sharp and useful, but not a modern empirical study.Tajfel, Henri, and John C. Turner. “An Integrative Theory of Intergroup Conflict.” In The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations, edited by William G. Austin and Stephen Worchel, 33–47. Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole, 1979.
Use for social identity theory, in-groups, out-groups, belonging, status, and group comparison. This supports the claim that slogans and group language do not only communicate ideas; they also mark identity.Tajfel, Henri. Human Groups and Social Categories: Studies in Social Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
Use as a broader social-identity source. Good for group belonging, categorization, prejudice, and in-group/out-group dynamics.Propaganda, Symbols, Slogans, and Mass CommunicationLasswell, Harold D. Propaganda Technique in the World War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1927.
Use for propaganda as symbolic management, war messaging, enemy construction, morale, and the manipulation of attitudes through stories, reports, images, rumors, and other significant symbols. This is a core Part 2 source.Lasswell, Harold D. “The Theory of Political Propaganda.” The American Political Science Review 21, no. 3 (1927): 627–631.
Use for the clean definition: propaganda as the management of collective attitudes through significant symbols. This is perfect for the slogan/crowd/media rhythm sections.Ellul, Jacques. Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes. Translated by Konrad Kellen and Jean Lerner. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965.
Use for propaganda as a modern social technique, not merely lies. Ellul belongs in the “modern machine” argument because he treats propaganda as environmental, repetitive, social, technological, and tied to belonging.Bernays, Edward. Propaganda. New York: Horace Liveright, 1928.
Use for public relations, engineered consent, mass persuasion, and the management of public opinion. Good supporting source, especially if you want advertising and PR to sit beside political propaganda.Herman, Edward S., and Noam Chomsky. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. New York: Pantheon Books, 1988.
Use if you want a media-system critique: institutional filtering, agenda power, elite framing, and consent formation. This is useful for Part 2 but has a more political-economy angle than the rhythm/trance argument.Media Framing, Agenda-Setting, and Repeated AttentionMcCombs, Maxwell E., and Donald L. Shaw. “The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media.” Public Opinion Quarterly 36, no. 2 (1972): 176–187.
Use for agenda-setting: media may not tell people exactly what to think, but it can influence what people think about and how important issues feel. This fits the “repetition trains attention” argument.Entman, Robert M. “Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm.” Journal of Communication 43, no. 4 (1993): 51–58.
Use for framing: selecting certain aspects of reality and making them more salient. This supports the section on media frames as secular ritual structures that define problems, causes, moral judgments, and remedies.Gitlin, Todd. The Whole World Is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980.
Use if you want a historical case study on media framing and protest movements. Good optional source for how movements get shaped, simplified, or distorted by media attention.Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. New York: Viking Penguin, 1985.
Use as cultural/media theory support for entertainment, spectacle, image, and public discourse. Useful for the “modern machine” angle, but more essayistic than experimental.Repetition, Familiarity, and the Illusory Truth EffectHasher, Lynn, David Goldstein, and Thomas Toppino. “Frequency and the Conference of Referential Validity.” Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 16, no. 1 (1977): 107–112.
Use for the classic repetition/familiarity basis of the illusory truth effect. This supports the claim that repeated statements can gain perceived validity because they become easier and more familiar to process
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