THE RELATIONS BETWEEN MAGIC AND ANIMISM
§ 1. THE QUESTION OF PRIORITY
Magic and Animism now everywhere flourish side by side, or in confused
association, and, by those who believe in them, are not discriminated
as they may be by a spectator. As to their origin, we have seen that
both of them are prehistoric; it is useless to inquire about it amongst
believers (who can only tell you that they learnt these things from
their forefathers), or to look for any sort of direct proof. In Chapter
IV. I mentioned general considerations in favour of the priority of
Magic; but said nothing of the opposite opinion, that Animism is prior
and Magic derivative: an opinion held by many and, amongst them, by
Wundt, whose treatment of the problem claims attention.
Prof. Wundt holds that the idea of the soul is older than Magic
and has three principal sources: (1) the gebundene Seele, or
Körperseele (consciousness as an attribute of the body), is
immediately given, without the need of any reflection, as a result of
perception-associations; for thinking, feeling and willing are constant
elements of a living body.[261] The influence of this idea is seen
in the practices of making offerings to the dead at their tombs, of
preserving the body itself, of treating the blood and various parts of
the body as vehicles of the soul, the use of hair and nail-parings in
sorcery, and so forth. By contact, this soul can be transfused into
other things. But the freie Seele, a being differing from and opposed
to the body, is suggested (2) by breath and by the cessation of the
body’s living functions with the last breath—the Hauchseele; and also
(3) by dreams and visions—the Schattenseele. This third conception
gradually subordinates the other two, and has the chief part in the
development of Animism and Mythology.[262] As to sorcery (Zauber), it
is, at first, always attributed to the human will; inasmuch as this is
the original type of causation. Ordinary events raise no question of
causes for the Naturmensch; but only extraordinary occurrences do so,
such as sickness and death. Even pain or death from wounds is a matter
of course, for the antecedents are visible to him; but pain or death
from sickness has no such customary antecedent; so to explain them he
imagines an enemy who can operate at a distance by sorcery. Sorcery he
conceives of as an operation of one soul upon another; either directly,
or indirectly by various appliances, such as pantomimic injury by means
of an image. Pantomime is at first believed to affect the victim’s
soul, and so to cause sickness in his body; but the oftener such rites
are repeated, the more the intervention of the soul is obscured. For
in many-linked associations, especially where the first and last links
stand as means and end, the middle links are apt to disappear; and
since these are, in this case, ideas about the soul, there remains,
after their loss, the indefinite idea of some incomprehensible action
at a distance by means of the pantomime: it is then no longer Sorcery
but Magic. Similarly, a fetich, or a talisman or amulet (which differs
from a fetich only in not being the object of a cult), originally owes
its power to an indwelling spirit, but may degenerate into a magical
object.[263] Magic, therefore, is always derivative and secondary; and
Animism is entirely independent of Magic.[264]
This theory is worked out with Prof. Wundt’s usual comprehensiveness
and methodical clearness; and the exposition abounds with interesting
discussions; but it has not convinced me. The Körperseele, as an
attribute of the body, is, surely, not a soul at all. Customary
perception of other men interpreted by self-consciousness, with the
habitual treatment of others (and of ourselves by others) as conscious
bodies—making it difficult to conceive that a corpse is really
dead—no doubt influences animistic rites; for even though the soul
seen in dreams may be believed to live, having the consciousness of
its former body in dreamland, yet some consciousness seems to remain
with the body in the grave. Many rites performed at a tomb, however,
may also be understood in relation to a belief that the soul, though
having a separate existence as seen in dreams, still desires to
reinhabit its body, or to protect its buried treasures, and therefore,
though its new home be far away, frequently returns and haunts the
neighbourhood of its tomb, and will certainly return if summoned.
But it is not until the soul seen in dreams has become an object of
popular belief, that any idea can be formed of a body-soul—or more
properly of a soul within the body, and thence of a soul-stuff of the
body—which leaves the body at death (and under other conditions) as
the vehicle of consciousness. This soul-stuff which leaves the body at
death may easily come to be identified with the breath, but not until
the discussion of dreams has given rise to the belief in a separable
soul. The fact that in cold weather the last breath (or any other!)
may appear for a moment as a vapour, and is never seen again, cannot
by itself suggest a separate persistent existence like that of the
soul; and over a considerable part of the earth such a vapour is seldom
formed by the breath. The Körperseele and the Hauchseele, therefore,
are not independent sources of Animism, but are entirely dependent for
their imaginary existence upon the Schattenseele, upon the growth of a
belief in a separable soul as seen in dreams.
As to Sorcery, it may be defined as Magic practised with the aid of
spirits; and since its existence implies that a belief in spirits and
their influence has already formed itself, it may also be believed to
operate, in the first place, on the souls of its victims and so, in the
second place, on their bodies. Then, as Prof. Wundt explains, a process
of retrogradation sometimes occurs, in the course of which the spirits
are forgotten, and only the mechanical rites remain as a residuum of
bare Magic. Similarly, a fetich sometimes becomes a merely magical
talisman or amulet. This is hardly disputable; but it does not prove
that the degeneration of Sorcery is the _only_ source of Magic, or
that Magic has not (for the most part, indeed,) another, independent
origin. The issue is difficult to argue upon the ground of facts,
because magical practices are of such high antiquity. If, for example,
one should urge that the intichiuma ceremonies of the Arunta are not,
so far as we have evidence, designed to operate by spiritual power upon
the souls of the emu or the witchettygrub, but directly to promote by
Magic the fertility of these objects, it might be replied that such,
indeed, may be their present character, but that the original intention
must have been to promote fertility by first influencing their souls,
and that this has been forgotten. Or, again, if one should point to
the little stones—tied up in bark and believed by the Kaitish to be
stores of evil Magic—as having no mark of the fetich, no character
to indicate that their power is due to spirits, so that they seem to
be merely magical, the answer would be ready, that by long use and
retrogradation they may have ceased to be fetiches, but that a good
theory requires them to have been of that nature aforetime. Thus any
case of apparently bare Magic may be treated as a residuum of lapsed
Animism; or, should its origin be recent and ascertainable, it may
still be said to have been constituted by analogy with such residua.
We are driven, therefore, to rest the argument upon the psychological
conditions of such beliefs. Is the nature of the human mind, so far
as we can interpret it at the savage level, such that the belief in
Animism necessarily precedes and (later) gives rise to the belief in
Magic; or is it possible to indicate conditions that may independently
give rise to Magic? According to Prof. Wundt, as I have said, Sorcery
precedes Magic and, at first, is always attributed to human volition,
because this is the original type of causation. Contrary to Hume’s
doctrine (he says), the ordinary course of events does not excite in
the savage the idea of causation, or the need of explanation. Customary
series of events belong to those matter-of-course properties of things
which he, eben wegen ihrer Regelmässigkeit, unmöglich hinweg denken
kann.[265] It is the unusual occurrences—accidents, storms, drought
(where rain is much desired) and especially sickness and death—that
awaken in him the need of causal explanation. He is accustomed to pain
from wounds, where he sees the conditions on which they always follow;
but the pain of disease has no such antecedents, and he supplies the
gap in routine by free associations, imagining that this pain also
must be the work of some enemy. For in the regular course of events
there is for him only one region in which an effect appears notwendig
verknüpft mit dem Vorausgehende: namely, that of his own voluntary
actions. The connexion is, indeed, only a matter of fact; but it
includes the sensations and feelings of his own power über den Eintritt
des Ereignisses. This, as Berkeley saw (says Prof. Wundt), is the
true origin of the notion of causality; though the true principle of
causality requires the elimination of this subjective ground of its
origin.[266]
It is true, of course, that the savage has no definite idea of the
principle of causation; but he has obscure ideas of all its chief
marks—the need of some antecedent for every event, regularity of
connexion, and proportionality; and probably, in the depths of his
mind, the abstract principle has made some progress toward maturity.
(_a_) The ground or source of such ideas, according to Hume, is
customary experience; and that such experience includes its own
causation (and, therefore, needs no explanation) is proved by Prof.
Wundt’s contention that it is the unusual which first demands causal
explanation; because there the familiar causation is missing; so that
the savage tries to fill up the lacuna, as best he can, according to
the type of what is usual. But (_b_), according to Prof. Wundt, there
is in the regular course of events only one region in which the idea of
causation (though illusory) first arises: namely, our own actions, in
which we are aware of our own power over the beginning of the event.
And no one, I suppose, doubts that the notion of power is derived
originally from the consciousness of our own exertions[267]: read, by
sympathy, into the actions of other men and animals and, by empathy,
into the movements of trees, stones, winds and waters. All this,
however, occurs so early in the individual and in the race (probably
in the higher animals) that, before the need of causal explanation is
felt, the world is seen as if pervaded by forces, which are manifested
in _every_ usual course of events and not merely in voluntary actions.
Again (_c_), power is only one character of the primitive belief in
causation: another, not less important, is uniformity; and the study
of our own actions is notoriously unfavourable for the discovery of
uniformity. Without any obvious reason for it, our visceral activities
can hardly be controlled at all; compound reflexes (such as yawning,
sneezing, laughing, weeping) are very imperfectly controlled; our
habitual actions, once started, go on of themselves, and often
begin without (or contrary to) our wishes, especially gestures and
expressions; in fatigue control flags, in disease is often lost;[268]
we do not always give the same weight to the same motives, nor fulfil
our intentions whether good or bad. But if the relation of will to
action is not apparently uniform, it cannot be seen to be necessary;
so that volition is generally regarded as the peculiar region of
caprice. This is very important in Animism. But, further (_d_), were
the connexion between volition and movement more constant than it is,
it would still be most improbable that ideas of causation should be
chiefly drawn from our consciousness of it; for the interest of action
lies not in the mere control of our own movements, or power over the
beginning of events, but in the attainment of our ends; and there is
no department of nature in which the failure of connexion is nearly
so impressive. It is because of this failure that the savage becomes
fascinated by ideas of magical and (later) of spiritual aid. Finally
(_e_), no control is exercised by the will over pain—headache, colic,
rheumatism, etc.; yet we are told that the savage, when so afflicted,
refers his sufferings at once to the will of some enemy operating at
a distance. Such inferences are not primitive, but the result of a
long growth of superstitions. Among Australian aborigines, disease
and natural death are generally believed to be caused by the magical
practices of an enemy, not merely by his will.
We are not, then, obliged to infer that, because volition is the
type of necessary connexion, Sorcery, or any other form of Animism,
preceded Magic. On the other hand, there are conditions that may have
given rise independently to a belief in Magic. The savage has frequent
experience of regular trains of event which, for want of analytic
ability, he does not clearly understand, but which exist in his mind
as types determining his apprehension of other sequences. When two
interesting events happen about the same time, the later recalls the
earlier; because the impression of the earlier, having been deep,
perseverates, and is apt to be re-excited by almost any occurrence.
An association is then formed between them, and obtains as strong a
hold upon the mind as less interesting ones can by many repetitions.
The man judges them to be connected; and expects the coincidence to
repeat itself as usual occurrences do; and the more vividly the more
he desires or fears it. Such expectations, together with the idea of
invisible force and the oppression of mystery, by degrees establish
the belief in Magic. Probably no traveller amongst wild peoples, or
observer of the unsophisticated at home, will think that too much
stress is here laid upon the power of coincidence to create general
expectations. Even the Chaldean priests (we are told) had grasped but
imperfectly the idea of causation. “When two events had been noticed
to happen one after another, the first was the cause of the second.
Hence their anxiety to record the phenomena of the heavens and the
occurrences that took place after each.”[269] The Egyptians, says
Herodotus, “whenever a prodigy takes place, watch and record the
result; then, if anything similar ever happens again, they expect
the same consequences.”[270] They had merely reduced to a system the
universal practice of unanalytic minds.
§ 2. MAGIC AND RELIGION
The origin of Magic, then, is independent of Animism; and in the
history of human thought Magic probably preceded Animism as an
imaginary agent in the explanation and control of interesting and
obscure events. Sir J. G. Frazer, in the _History of the Kingship_ and
in the _Magic Art_,[271] says that Magic, as a means of gratifying
one’s desires, is prior to Religion conceived of as a means of
attaining one’s ends by the propitiation of spirits. This is a much
narrower contention than that Magic is prior to Animism (which perhaps
he does not maintain), and it is proportionally more defensible. Whilst
the priority of Magic to Animism seems to me to have some low degree
of probability, the priority of Magic to Religion, as the propitiation
of spirits, seems probable in a much higher degree; since we have
plain information that both the Australians and the Indians of Guiana
practise Magic extensively and also believe in ghosts and spirits
without propitiating them.[272]
On the other hand, Sir J. G. Frazer’s explanation of _how_ Religion
superseded Magic is questionable. He conjectures “that a tardy
recognition of the inherent falsehood and barrenness of magic set
the more thoughtful part of mankind to cast about for a truer theory
of Nature and a more fruitful method of turning her resources to
account. The shrewder intelligences must in time have come to perceive
that magical ceremonies and incantations did not really effect the
results which they were designed to produce,” and the wizard inferred
that, “if the great world went on its way without the help of him
or his fellows, it must surely be because there were other beings,
like himself, but far stronger, who, unseen themselves, directed its
course.”[273] To these he addressed himself, and sought by prayer what
he had formerly hoped to obtain by Magic. Such is Sir J. G. Frazer’s
suggestion, offered tentatively, and (surely) not agreeing well with
the facts which he has set before us. For he has shown that no amount
of experience can discredit Magic, generally, in untutored minds; that
certain kinds of Magic are sometimes pushed into the background by
Religion, but never forgotten; whilst other kinds of Magic become fused
with Religion itself and constitute an essential factor in its rites;
so that they are indeed few who can be said to have betaken themselves
to Religion _instead_ of Magic. Besides, the only ground upon which
a penetrating mind, that had discarded Magic as discredited by
experience, could resort by preference to the worship of spirits must
be that experience showed prayer and sacrifice to be more efficacious
than Magic in attaining our ends. Is there reason to think that (lucky
coincidences apart) this has ever happened? Must we not rather say
that, whether one relies on Magic or on Religion, experience of failure
counts for almost nothing? So many excuses are at hand.
The matter presents itself to me in this way: at first, belief in Magic
arises as a means of obtaining good and averting evil. Grounded, as Sir
E. B. Tylor says,[274] in the desire “to discover, to foretell, and to
cause events,” it is irresistibly attractive by its power of increasing
one’s confidence, of making sure.
Secondly, at some stage after the rise of Animism, religious practices
are added to the magical, to make assurance doubly sure, just as one
magical practice may be added to another, a rite to a spell. At this
stage, there is no sense of opposition between Magic and Religion.
That, in fact, they are opposed in their nature, as an invariable
to a capricious force, even if this difference were appreciated by
savages, need not prevent their co-operation; for Magic is known to
be a tendency that may fail of the effect desired, either by the
counteraction of superior Magic, or by imperfection in the rites; and
one sees no reason why a spirit should not be supplicated to supplement
the imperfect rites, or to frustrate the superior Magic. To supplicate
the intervention of spirits, once they are fully believed in, is an
act so simple and natural, that we may wonder how it should ever be
omitted where Animism prevails. For what can be more spontaneous
than to ask the aid of one’s father or friend, and why not ask the
spirits disembodied as freely as those in the flesh? In Melanesia not
every ghost is worshipped (as not having _mana_); but a man in danger
may call upon his father, grandfather or uncle: his nearness of kin
being sufficient ground for it.[275] Certainly: and that this is not
always done where ghosts are rife can only be because it is believed
that the less one has to do with them the better! Probably, this
consideration restrains for ages the early impulses to pray. Primitive
man anticipates the advice of Confucius: “Pay all respect to spiritual
beings, but keep them at a distance.”[276]
Thirdly, certain forms of Magic come, after a time, to be
discountenanced or punished: black Magic, because it is anti-social
and criminal; other forms of Magic, when carried on by private
practitioners, because they infringe the monopoly of supernatural
power that has now been claimed by dynasties and priesthoods; or (in
other words) because the public gods are jealous of all competitors.
Legitimate Magic has now been incorporated with Religion. And the
power of Religion becomes greater than that of Magic without Religion,
not only by the support of the influential classes, but also because
Religion, whether as worship of the public gods or as sorcery or
devil-worship, afflicts the human mind with peculiar terrors; and,
again, because Religion, should it clarify morally and æsthetically,
appeals more and more to the affections—to the family affections
and to loyalty. The impersonality of pure Magic sets it (as it does
Science) at a great disadvantage in this competition.
Finally, whilst the failures of Magic always need to be excused,—as
by a mistake in the rites or by the opposition of stronger
Magic,—Religion brings with it a new excuse for failure, namely, the
caprice of the spirits or gods propitiated. At their pleasure they
may reject the prayers and sacrifices. Persistence in such conduct on
their part is sometimes met by banishment, deprivation of rank, or
other punishment—the civilised methods of China; at other times by
praying louder and sacrificing more extravagantly, in the style that
culminated in Mexico together with the power of barbaric priesthood.
Still the gods may be obdurate; and, probably, to excuse the failure
of propitiation by the caprice of the gods was, from the first, looked
upon as an eligible device:[277] not observing that the caprice of the
gods was incompatible with the security of their worshippers; and,
therefore, in conflict with that desire of security which is the root
of the whole supernatural structure, whether magical or religious. This
conflict must have consequences.
Religion, then, very probably, is of later growth than Magic; but
whether Animism, as a belief in separable (or separate) spirits, human
or other, is later or not than Magic, there is insufficient evidence.
At any rate, their origins are independent. Perhaps my own preference
for the priority of Magic depends, partly at least, on the convenience
of that view in arranging the following considerations.
§ 3. IDEAS AND PRACTICES OF MAGIC ADOPTED BY ANIMISM
(_a_) Fundamental in Magic, wherever practised, is the idea of force,
invisible and intangible, which can operate at a distance without any
visible or tangible vehicle. The idea may have been formed (as we have
seen) by analogy with several natural phenomena, such as the wind,
radiant heat, sound, odour, and it is involved in a savage’s beliefs
concerning the efficacy of charms, rites and spells. When a man dies,
he lies speechless and motionless, no longer exerts his accustomed
force in any way; but, if seen in a dream, he still speaks and acts,
perhaps wrestles with the dreamer. Here, then, is that force which
had deserted the body: it is visible and tangible in dreams only, or
perhaps sometimes by twilight; or to gifted seers, or to dogs or pigs.
The force exerted by the ghost or spirit is the same thing as force
magical, except in one character: its action is capricious, depending
on the good or ill will of the ghost or spirit; whereas purely magical
forces have uniform tendencies. Magic, then, prepares and partially
develops this idea of mysterious force, without which the appearance of
a dead man in a dream, after his body has been buried or burnt, would
have no reality or practical consequences for the living. Comparison
with shadows and reflections could not lend reality to dreams; for they
require the presence of the body, and themselves have no mechanical
significance. Their association with the spirit or ghost probably
follows the use of their names to describe the dream-imagery, which
cannot at first have a name of its own. The same names being used for
shadow or reflection and for spirit or dream-soul, the things are in
some measure identified; and then the idea of force may be associated
with shadows and reflections; so that the falling of a shadow upon a
man may injure or slay him.
Magic-force and spirit-force being the same thing, the question whether
_mana_ is a magical or animistic notion is misleading. It will be
conceived of by different tribes in one way or the other, according to
the relative prevalence in one or the other tribe of the animistic or
of the magical mode of explanation.
(_b_) It is reasonable to expect that, as the ghost-theory spread, the
magical force of things should sometimes be conceived of as spiritual;
so that amulets and talismans would come to be regarded as owing their
virtue either to a controlling spirit, or to an indwelling spirit
peculiar to each: in the latter case the charm is a fetich. When a
charm is thus considered, its efficacy is no longer expected to be
uniform, but depends on the mood of the indwelling or controlling
spirit. The fact that its efficacy, though formerly presumed to be
uniform, never was so, favours the new interpretation; and this having
been accepted, a cult (or a discipline) of the spirit is apt to follow.
Thus the magician becomes a sorcerer or a priest.
In North Central Australia, short sticks or bones are used for pointing
at an enemy and directing magical force against him. Only the Guangi
and other tribes of the Gulf coast manufacture dead men’s bones
(femur or fibula) into pointers; but these are traded southward, and
are considered more potent than other pointers.[278] A stick, then,
is the primitive talisman, often “sung” with a spell in Alcheringa
words, which the operator himself does not understand; and it acts by
pure magic. The dead man’s bone is more potent, at first perhaps only
because it is more oppressively gruesome and terrifying; we are not
told that it carries the power of its former owner’s ghost; but how
near the thought must be! In South-East Australia, pointing with the
bone (human fibula) is very common; in pointing you name your victim
and say how he is to die; but that the efficacy of the rite does not
depend upon a spirit is shown by this, that, when pointing, you tie a
cord of human hair (attached to the bone) tightly around your upper
arm, in order to drive blood into the bone. In other rites, however, in
which the fat of a dead man is used, the ghost of the dead is believed
to assist the operation; for a man’s fat, especially kidney-fat, is
the seat of his prowess and other virtues.[279] An easy extension of
ideas by analogy would interpret a rite in which a dead man’s bone is
used, and which is on that account more potent, as owing its superior
potency to the assistance of the dead man’s ghost. It seems easy;
but resistance to the progress of explanation is not peculiar to the
civilised mind.
Again, in South-East Australia, a _bulk_—a pebble, usually black
and roundish—is carried by wizards as a powerful talisman. A native
dreamt of seeing two ghosts by his camp fire, and, on waking, found
a _bulk_ where they had stood.[280] How could such an impressive
experience fail to raise a belief in a connexion between ghosts and
_bulks_: both so attractive to the imagination, and alike mysterious
and powerful? Many such situations must strongly indicate an extension
of the ghost-theory, once it has been formed, to explain the influence
of charms and rites. A time comes with some tribes when the activity
and ubiquity of spirits is so much a matter of course that every
mysterious power is apt to be ascribed to their presence. If a person
or thing was originally taboo, either by inherent virtue or by force
of a spell or curse—a talisman dangerous to every one who violated
its sanctity—Animism explains the danger by the wrath of a protecting
spirit. A boundary having long been taboo, a spirit is imagined to
protect the boundary, and becomes the god Terminus. Diseases, at first
attributed to Magic, are later explained by Animism; so that whilst an
Australian wizard is content to suck a magically implanted stone or
splinter from his patient’s body, a priest of the Dyaks, having sucked
out a similar object, calls it a spirit.[281] The wonder is that at
this stage of thought any purely magical power can survive.
(_c_) An Omen is regarded as giving warning of some event, although
between event and omen there is no traceable connexion—in this
resembling many magical operations; and at first omens may have
been always so conceived of, and only by degrees distinguished from
charms and spells. But in most parts of the world omens have come to
be treated as divine or spiritual premonitions; and the marks which
distinguish omens from the rest of Magic are such as to favour a growth
of the belief that they are sent by spirits. This subject, however, is
so extensive that a separate chapter must be given to it.
(_d_) Inasmuch as spells addressed to any object tend to the
personification of it, the personified object may, as the ghost-theory
gains strength, acquire an indwelling or controlling spirit, and the
spell addressed to it may become a prayer. Not that this is the only
way in which prayer may originate; for (as remarked above) nothing can
be simpler or less in need of explanation than the invoking of the
spirit of one’s relatives (the ghost-theory having been established) to
help one or, at least, not to persecute. Indeed, it is not unreasonable
to suppose that this was often attempted, and not persisted in for
want of obtaining an answer; so that a long tentative age preceded
the settled custom of prayer. Nor is it easy to see how belief in
the efficacy of prayer (beginning in this way) could ever have been
established, unless it were confirmed by coincidence—just like
Magic. However, the earliest form of prayer and of spell (whichever
may have been the earlier) being the same—a simple expression of
desire—whence prayer and spell have been differentiated, it may be
impossible to decide whether a given ejaculation belongs to one class
or to the other. Thus Mr. R. W. Williamson tells us that, amongst the
Mafulu of New Guinea, when fishing in the river Aduala, the fishers,
after forming a weir, but before fixing their net, all join in a sort
of prayer or invocation to the river: “Aduala, give us plenty of
fish that we may eat well.”[282] But he expressly says that, whilst
they believe certain parts of the river, such as a waterfall or deep
pool, to be haunted by spirits, they do not believe this of the river
itself,[283] and that generally their Animism is very backward. The
ejaculation, therefore, seems to be a spell. Compare with it the Jakun
spell to bring monkeys within shooting distance:
“Come ye down with souls enchanted,
Monkeys, by my spells enchanted.”[284]
If, then, the original form of prayer and of spell is often the same,
the sole difference between them lies in the intention of the speaker.
One of the Kurnai, to stop the gales, cried: “Let the West Wind be
bound,”[285] and this is evidently a command and a spell; but if he
regarded the wind as controlled by a spirit, a change of tone would
make it a prayer. Still, whether with the spread of Animism a spell
shall become a prayer, must depend upon whether the spirit addressed is
believed to be the more easily importuned or coerced.
The taboo that often attaches to the names of the dead and of other
spirits may easily have been derived from the magical practice of
summoning by name, or of naming the victim of a rite. To call a living
man by name draws his attention and often brings him to the spot; a
magical naming is (from the temper of Magic) uniformly effective; so
that to avoid such control names are kept secret; and when ghosts are
believed in, naming has the same power over them and is, therefore,
extremely dangerous. Hence, in Sorcery (a dangerous art), to introduce
the names of spirits into spells is to secure their presence and
assistance: and, in prayer, to use the true name of the spirit or god
addressed may be indispensable; the worshipper’s intention is not
enough.
(_e_) With the spread of Animism, magical rites often become religious.
This may occur by simply adding the invocation of a spirit to a magical
rite (as a spell may be added) in order to strengthen it—the two
actions remaining quite distinct; or some degree of fusion may take
place, obscuring more or less the original character of the practice.
The Kai (Papuans of northern New Guinea) “make rain” by muttering
a spell over a stone, and at the same time calling upon Balong and
Batu to drive away Yondimi, a woman who holds up the rain; and when
rain enough has fallen, they strew hot ashes on the stone, or put it
in the fire, to stop the rain.[286] The animistic invocation, being
omitted from the process of stopping the rain, seems to be merely
adscititious to the making of it. Again, “When rain is badly wanted
in the Oraon country, the Oraons of each village fix a day for the
rain-making ceremony. On the morning of the appointed day, the women
of the village, with the wife of the village priest or Pahan at
their head, proceed to the village spring or tank, and there, after
ablution, each woman fills her pitcher with water, and all proceed
in a body to a sacred pipar-tree.... On their arrival at the sacred
tree, all the women simultaneously pour the water in their pitchers
over the root of the tree, saying ‘May rain fall on the earth like
this.’ The wife of the village priest now puts marks of vermilion,
diluted in oil, on the trunk of the tree. After this the women depart,
and the Pahan or village priest proceeds to sacrifice a red cock to
the god Baranda at the spot.... In this case, apparently, by direct
alliance, sacrifice and the anointing of the tree with vermilion have
been superimposed upon what was once, perhaps, purely a ceremony of
imitative magic.”[287] Mr. Warde Fowler tells us that an ancient
Iguvian document contains instructions for the lustration of the
people before a campaign: the male population assembled in its military
divisions; around the host a procession went three times; at the end of
each circuit there was prayer to Mars and to two female associates of
his power, to bless the people of Iguvium and to curse their enemies:
and he observes that religion has here been imposed upon the original
magic-ceremony. For the idea must have been that, by drawing a magic
circle around the host, it would be protected in the enemy’s country
against hostile magic by being rendered holy. “A later and animistic
age would think of them (the soldiers) as needing protection against
hostile spirits, of whose ways and freaks they were, of course,
entirely ignorant.” Hence the prayer to Mars.[288]
Similarly, rites connected with seed-time and harvest, originally
magical, become religious, as beliefs grow up in spirits of the rice,
or corn, or vine, or in gods of agriculture or fertility. Thus, as
magical power is the same thing as spiritual power, magical practices
may be not merely the antecedents but even the foundations of religious
practices. Long after the development of Animism, magical practices
are maintained by natural conservatism; if priests exist, they try,
of course, to annex such practices to the worship of their god; and
if the annexation is accomplished, whether by priestly management or
by a popular movement, no incongruity may be felt for a long time
between the uniformity of Magic and the caprice of Animism; the whole
celebration is called Religion, and becomes suffused with religious
feeling.
§ 4. RETROGRADATION
On the other hand, in all these cases, the animistic interpretation
of the power of fetiches, omens, prayers, rites, whether original
(as Prof. Wundt holds) or acquired, may be lost, and a magical
interpretation alone remain. For one’s mind becomes so engrossed with
objects or practices (such as fetich-things or prayers) that are
regarded as necessary to the gratification of any masterful desire,
that not only irrelevant ideas, but any ideas not indispensable to the
connexion between the objects or practices and the gratifications,
may be forgotten; and as objects or practices acquire interest in
themselves, even the gratifications formerly desired may be forgotten.
Just as such means as money or books, business or study, may become
ends to the exclusion of further enjoyments, so images or rites, at
first subsidiary to the obtaining of demonic aid in love or revenge,
may be cared for with a fervour that excludes the thought of any
intervening means to those ends (especially such means as a capricious
spirit who may fail one), and may even be employed under a vague fear
or discomfort in the omission of them, when no particular purpose is
any longer remembered. On the principle of least effort, we attend only
to what is necessary.
(_a_) A saint’s finger-joint may at first be treasured as a fetich
having the power of the saint to save from shipwreck; after a time
it may be carried as an amulet without any thought of the saint’s
interposition; whilst the evil to be averted is more and more vaguely
imagined. Seeing that spiritual and magical agencies are the same
invisible, unintelligible force, how easy to interchange them!
(_b_) Similarly omens, from being divine messages, each relating to
a particular undertaking, may come to be merely occurrences that
encourage or discourage a man, or a tribe, at any time; because, by
tradition, they are lucky or unlucky. Or practically the same result
may be reached by philosophy: as with those Stoics who explained that
omens are prophetic not as sent by the gods, but as involved in the
same procession of fatal events. Fate, before any laws of nature had
been discovered, was nothing but all-comprehensive Magic: which left
out or mediatised the gods, because, in a philosophical consideration
of the world, they are worse than useless.
(_c_) As to prayers, in any rational conception of them, the form
of words conveying them cannot matter to a god, as long as they are
piously meant and devoutly meditated. Yet everywhere there has been a
tendency to reduce them to strict formulæ, any departure from which
may, it is feared, impair their efficacy. So far as this occurs, their
operation is magical; they have become spells. Such is the result of
custom, with mental inertia too dull to think; of an irreligious
temperament, getting quickly through an uncongenial task; of a
superstitious unimaginative spirit, afraid to omit any traditionary
means of safety and for whom a praying-wheel is the way of peace. To
rob prayer of its religious meaning, there is the ever-present example
of the magical spells that operate by their own force. A form of words,
whether magical or supplicatory, that has been among the antecedents
of a time of peace or of gain, seems to be amongst its causes, and is
repeated that such a time may continue. Of the countless cases in which
prayers have degenerated into spells, none is more instructive than
the one recorded by Dr. Rivers in his account of the dairy-ritual of
the Todas. The prayers offered during this ritual are uttered in the
throat, so that the words are undistinguishable; and they are divided
into two parts: first, a list of sacred beings and objects mentioned
by sacred names, much of it unintelligible; and, secondly, a petition
for the protection and welfare of the buffaloes: the former is now
the more important; the latter is apt to be slurred over, or perhaps
omitted.[289] Of the Roman public prayers, Mr. Warde Fowler says:
“The idea that the spoken formula (derived from an age of Magic) was
efficient only if no slip were made, seems to have gained in strength
instead of diminishing, as we might have expected it to do with
advancing civilisation.”[290] To justify the belief in formulæ it may
be asserted that the gods themselves prescribed them: an excuse for
the superstitious dread of altering what is traditionary, and for the
persuasion that the form itself has mysterious virtue.
(_d_) That other religious ceremonies, repeated from age to age, have
the same tendency as prayers to become dead forms from which the
spirit of communion or devotion has departed—though under favourable
conditions it may return from time to time—is too well known; and
if in their emptiness they are still believed somehow to serve their
purpose, it can only be as magical rites. One may be surprised to find
at what an early stage of culture this tendency is fully realised.
William Ellis, the celebrated missionary, says of the people of
Raiatea: “The efficacy of their [religious] services consisted in
the rigid exactness with which sacred days were kept, and religious
ceremonies performed, without the least regard to the motives and
dispositions of the devotees.... In their idol-worship, however costly
the sacrifice, and however near its close the ceremony might be, if
the priest omitted or misplaced any word in the prayers, or if his
attention was diverted by any means so that the prayer was broken,
the whole was rendered unavailing: he must prepare other victims and
repeat his prayers over from the commencement.”[291] How this concern
for details must be a relapse into magical notions may be read in the
account of rites to stop the rainfall in Torres Straits; where (we
are told) if the wizard omit any detail, the rain continues.[292]
Perhaps the notion of the perfect definiteness of causation (though not
consistently adhered to in other matters) arose from this meticulous
anxiety of superstition: it also, however, furnishes excuses for
failure both to priests and wizards.
(_e_) In Magic there must be something deeply satisfying to the
average mind: it precedes Religion, supplies the basis and framework
of religious practices, and remains when Religion is in ruins; and
when people change their Religion, they retain their Magic. Among
the Fijians,[293] those who were Christianised lost their dread of
witchcraft last of all the relics of their heathenism. Among the
Cherokees, “Gahuni, like several others of their Shamans, combined the
professions of Indian conjuror and Methodist preacher.”[294] In Norway,
after the general acceptance of Christianity, Lapland witchcraft was
still valued. The victory of the insurgents at Stiklestad, where
St. Olaf fell, was thought to have been due to the magic armour of
reindeer-skin that Thore Hund had brought from Lapland; though all St.
Olaf’s men wore the cross upon helmet and shield.[295]
Since then the spiritualising of Magic and the despiritualising of
Religion are both real processes of evolution, it may be difficult,
or even impossible, to say of any given magical practice, without
particular knowledge of its history, whether it is primitive or
residuary. Sir E. B. Tylor writes: “Charm formulas are in very many
cases actual prayers, and as such are intelligible. Where they
are merely verbal forms, producing their effect on nature and man
by some unexplained process, may not they, or the types they were
modelled on, have been originally prayers, since dwindled into mystic
sentences?”[296] The circumstances of each case must guide our
judgment. What shall we say, for example, of the addresses to spirits
in Melanesia, where it is difficult to find in any dialect a word for
prayer, “so closely does the notion of efficacy cling to the form of
words employed”?[297] Are spells there rising into prayers, or prayers
sinking back into spells?
§ 5. SPIRITS KNOW MAGIC, TEACH IT, AND INSPIRE MAGICIANS
Ghosts know Magic, because they knew it in the flesh; and, by analogy,
similar knowledge is likely to be attributed to spirits that are
reputed never to have been in the flesh. As fear exalts all the powers
of a ghost above his former reach, it may be expected to raise his
magical powers, especially if he had already been famous in that way.
And, generally, it does so; but, exceptionally, we read that, among
the Lengua Indians (west of the Paraguay), whilst any man may attempt
Magic, professional “witch-doctors” are numerous and powerful; yet they
are not credited with extraordinary powers after death.[298] Elsewhere,
however, the dead magician does not forget his art. Where Shamanism
prevails and the power of Magic or Sorcery attains its greatest social
importance, the spirit of a dead shaman makes some advance toward
deification. Among the Buryats, dead shamans are worshipped with prayer
and sacrifice.[299] According to the _Kalevala_, the famous collection
of Finnish poetry, in Tuonela (Hades), whither all dead shamans
descend, their wisdom and magical power accumulate, exceeding that of
any living adept; so that even Väinämöinen, the wizard hero, goes down
to learn there the magical words he does not know.[300]
Spirits, knowing Magic, also teach it, and make magicians and prophets.
In South-East Australia, the profession of wizard may be hereditary in
the eldest son; or obtained through initiation by another wizard—(a
corpse is dug up, its bones pounded for the neophyte to chew; he is
plastered with excrement, etc., till he becomes frenzied, his eyes
bloodshot, his behaviour maniacal);[301] or a man may become a wizard
by meeting a spirit who opens his side and inserts quartz-crystals,
etc.; or by deriving power from Daramulun; or by sleeping at a grave,
where the deceased opens him, and takes out and replaces his bowels.
Here we have a list of the most usual ways in which magical powers
can anywhere be acquired—by inheritance, by tuition, by the aid of
ghosts or spirits; and it suggests the hypothesis that at first the
magic art was inherited, or learnt from a former wizard; and that, with
the growth of Animism, it became in some cases preferable, because
more impressive (and cheaper), to acquire it from a ghost or spirit.
For this is more probable than that, at the early stage in which
Animism exists in South-East Australia, retrogradation should have
taken place; so that the making of wizards, formerly ascribed only to
spirits, should in some cases have been remitted to inheritance or to
professional tuition. That in spite of the greater prestige that may
attach to a diploma obtained from spirits, the right of practising by
inheritance or by tuition often still persists, though, no doubt, due
in part to dull conservatism, may also be understood by considering
family and professional motives. There are heavy fees for teaching
witchcraft, besides the profits made in some tribes by selling the
control of familiar spirits; the profession is lucrative, and a wizardy
family has an interest in its monopoly; which must be impaired,
if any man who loses himself in the bush may come back with some
cock-and-bull story about a ghost and his new metaphysical insides, and
straightway set himself up with the equivalents of a brass plate and
red lantern. Among the Boloki on the Congo, the careers of blacksmith
and witch-doctor are open only to the relatives of living adepts. At
least, practically (but for a few exceptionally cunning and rascally
interlopers who creep and intrude and climb into the fold), the office
of witch-doctor is hereditary: a father trains his son, and will
train (for a large fee) any youth whose family has already produced a
witch-doctor. But a candidate without family connexion is told that
he must first kill by witchcraft all the members of his family, as
offerings to the fetich of that branch of the profession to which he
aspires.[302]
Not only the spirits of primitive Animism, but likewise the gods of
maturer Religions, know and teach Magic. In the Maori mythology,
Tumatauenga, one of the first generation of gods, determined
incantations for making all sorts of food abundant and for controlling
the winds, as well as prayers to Heaven suited to all the circumstances
of human life; and the god Rongotakawin, having shaped the hero
Whakatau out of the apron of Apakura, taught him Magic and enchantments
of every kind.[303] Prof. Rhys tells us that the Welsh god Mâth ab
Mathonwy, or Math Hên (the ancient), was the first of the three great
magicians of Welsh Mythology; and he taught Magic to the culture
hero, Gwydion ab Dôn, with whose help he created a woman out of
flowers.[304] The Teutonic equivalent of Gwydion is Woden, or Othin;
and he too was a magician, “the father of spells,” who acquired his
wisdom by gazing down into the abyss, whilst he hung nine nights on
the tree, an offering to himself (and in other ways); and, in turn, he
teaches Siegfried the omens.[305] He also taught the northern people
shape-changing, and by spells controlled fire and the winds.[306] In
Egypt Magic was taught by Thoth, in Babylonia by Merodach, and in Japan
by Ohonomachi the earth-god. Indeed, whence, unless from divine beings,
could this precious wisdom be obtainable?
Spirits also inspire or possess the magician, so that through him,
as their mouthpiece or instrument, prophecies are uttered or wonders
wrought. We have seen that in South-East Australia the rites of
initiation to wizardry by a wizard, without the aid of spirits, cause a
candidate to become frenzied or maniacal. With the growing fashion of
animistic interpretation, such behaviour is (along with insanity) put
down to possession by a spirit. The common beliefs that a man’s soul
can slip in and out of him and that a man may reincarnate the spirit
of an ancestor, facilitate this idea of possession. Dreams concerning
spirits also promote the belief that a miracle-monger owes to them
his supernatural powers. The Tunguses of Turnkhausk say that the man
destined to be a shaman sees in a dream the devil performing rites, and
so learns the secrets of his craft. Among the Trans-Baikal Tunguses,
he who wishes to become a shaman declares that such or such a dead
shaman appeared to him in a dream, and ordered him to be his successor;
and he shows himself crazy, stupefied and timorous. The Yakut shaman
is preordained to serve the spirits, whether he wishes it or not: he
begins by raging like a madman, gabbles, falls unconscious, runs about
the woods, into fire and water, injures himself with weapons. Then an
old shaman trains him.[307] On the Congo, a man may become a wizard
by claiming to be the medium of a dead man; and a medium falls into a
frenzy, shouts, trembles all over, his body undulates, sweat breaks
out, foam gathers on his mouth, his eyeballs roll: he speaks an archaic
language if he knows one.[308] In Santa Cruz (Melanesia), prophecy
is practised by men whose bodies are taken possession of, and their
voices used, by ghosts: they foam at the mouth, writhe, are convulsed
as if in madness; and the mad, too, are believed to be possessed.[309]
Similarly the Pythoness: the behaviour of the possessed is everywhere
the same. But as the same behaviour marks the youth training for
a wizard before the theory of possession or inspiration has been
adopted, it is plain that the animistic theory does not create the
phenomena, but is merely, at a certain stage of thought, the inevitable
explanation of them.
Facility of falling into frenzy may be the test of fitness for
wizardry; the Bokongo professor who trains a pupil, beats his drum,
shakes his rattle, and tries to drive the fetich-power into him; if the
pupil remains stolid, he is disqualified; but if he sways to the music
of the drum, jumps about like a madman, etc., he passes.[310] These
antics at first astonish the beholder, strengthen the faith of patients
in the witch-doctor, and of the witch-doctor in himself, and often have
a sort of hypnotic fascination for both him and them; and they gain in
value under Animism by being also proofs of supernatural assistance or
control: and being an essential mark of the adept at certain stages of
the art’s development, they are sometimes induced by rhythmic drumming,
singing and dancing, sometimes by fastings or drugs.
“Black Magic” is, at first, merely the use of Magic for anti-social
purposes; very early a distinction is recognised between wizards
who cause disease and those who cure it.[311] “Black” and “white”
wizards are sometimes at open strife.[312] When tribal gods come to be
recognised, “black” wizards are those who are assisted or inspired by
inferior gods or demons, who may be opponents and rivals of the high
gods. Hence the same god who, whilst paramount, aids or inspires in an
honourable way, may, if deposed or superseded, become the abettor of
Black Magic—as happened to our own gods, and to others, before and
after the coming of Christianity; for the ancient divine sources of
power and prophecy became devils and witch-masters. The magicians of
our Middle Ages, of whom Faustus is the type, were “black” and, in the
spirit of Shamanism, pretended to rule the devils; but, overshadowed by
Christianity, they—at least in popular belief—bought their power at a
price.
§ 6. SPIRITS OPERATE BY MAGIC
Spirits may operate through men whom they possess, or by their naked
soul-force, or by words (that is, by spells), or by merely thinking:
(_a_) When a man is possessed by a spirit, it is the soul-force of that
spirit which has entered him and taken command of his voice or limbs;
and we have seen that this soul-force is the same as force magical.
The spirit’s action is the same as that of the _bugin_ or wizard, who
boasted of having entered a horse and galloped off.[313]
(_b_) By Animism, prior to philosophical reflection, the spirit is not
conceived of as strictly incorporeal; its force, which is magical, is
quasi-mechanical. Hence, in South-East Australia, spirits can carry off
a man in a bag[314] (made, no doubt, of bag-soul-stuff). But spirits
may act upon a man very effectually without being mechanically felt;
as among the Ekoi, where ghosts are either good or bad, and generally
a good goes with a bad one to counteract his malevolence; but should a
bad one wander forth alone, and should a man without the gift of seeing
ghosts (which depends upon his having four eyes) run against it in the
street, the ghost will not step aside, but strikes the man in the face;
who then has lock-jaw, and dies.[315] As we have reason to believe that
this is not the natural ætiology of lock-jaw, the ghost’s action is
plainly magical: like that of the corpse-candle which, not long ago, on
a slope of Plinlimmon one rainy night, a man inadvertently ran against,
and was “struck down dead as a horse.”[316] The mere apparition of a
ghost (at least, to any one who has not four eyes) is magical. The
sending of a bird as an omen is magical.
This immediate power of the gods is nowhere shown more emphatically
than in their metamorphoses: that these are sometimes wrought by
spells or other enchantments proves that the operation is magical.
Australian wizards transform themselves into kangaroos and other
animals; and, in Arunta mythology, in the earliest Alcheringa (period
of mythical ancestors), the Ungambikula—so called from having arisen
out of nothing—with stone knives cut men out of rudimentary masses
of unorganised matter (inapertua), and then transformed themselves
into little lizards.[317] So this sort of self-conjuring may be said
to begin at the beginning; and it cannot be necessary to accumulate
examples of metamorphosis.
Several explanations of this belief in the possibility of changing
the form of one’s body, or of having it changed by others, have been
offered: none perhaps entirely satisfactory. We are not here concerned
with the passing of a soul from one body to another—from a man into
a wolf or into a serpent, or conversely: given the conception of a
separable soul, that is easy to understand. What has to be explained
is the belief in a magical change of the body itself, as in the common
European superstition that a man may turn into a wolf, and back again,
like Sigmund and his son in the _Volsung Saga_. It has been pointed
out (i) that the savage may observe striking changes in nature: as
in the shape of clouds and smoke, the burning of wood into flame,
smoke and ashes, the evaporation of water; the turning of eggs into
caterpillars, reptiles, birds, or of a chrysalis into an imago; the
appearance of worms in putrefying bodies, and so forth.[318] With
such facts before him, why should not the savage imagine himself also
capable of transformation? (ii) Dream-images, too, pass one into
another in a marvellous way. (iii) Since men are often called by the
names of animals, how easy to suppose that, at times, they may really
be those animals. How easy to confound a man with his Totem. In many
savage dances, animals are imitated, and the imagination-belief in
the reality of the pantomime grows very strong. (iv) The savage,
when his imagination has been excited, is not clever at penetrating
conjuring tricks and disguises; and some men, at first for their own
ends, may have disguised themselves as animals and passed as animals;
and in support of this explanation it may be observed that the animal
into which men transform themselves is oftenest the most feared in
their neighbourhood—the wolf, leopard, or tiger; and, of course,
one case believed in, others follow by analogy. The mere report of
such an happening might generate belief by force of fear. (v) In a
wild country, a man (say one who is pursued) often disappears and is
indiscoverable; so that he may seem to have turned into a kangaroo,
or a stone, or a tree that appears in his place, as Daphne hid
successfully in a laurel-thicket: or if such an occurrence did not
originate the belief in metamorphosis, it may have helped to confirm
it. (vi) In mental disease, the patient sometimes believes himself to
be some kind of animal, and acts accordingly: perhaps as a result of
the popular belief, but doubtless also confirming it.[319] Weighing all
these hypotheses, I lean to the view that, starting from the fact (as
ground of analogy) that astonishing changes are observed in nature and
in dreams, the belief in metamorphosis as a magical operation rests
chiefly upon the deceptions and confident assertions of wizards that
they can, and do, change their form, supported by their reputation for
wonder-working and by the fears of their neighbours. Now, if wizards
can change their shapes, of course the gods can.[320]
(_c_) Spirits and gods are known to use amulets and talismans, not
invented by poets as symbols, but prized as the instruments of their
power, as an enchanter values his wand. Such are the caduceus of
Hermes, the cestus of Aphrodite, Thor’s hammer Mjölnir, Woden’s spear
Gunguir and his wishing staff. The gods of Egypt and Babylon also wore
charms. Since chieftains are frequently magicians, and also become
gods, it follows that the gods are magicians; though, indeed, as Grimm
observes, their power is to be called miraculous rather than magical.
But Magic, being the highest power known to men, and the most desired,
is of course attributed to spirits and to gods.
The most extensive powers of spirits, however, depend on the use of
words or spells. The hero of the Western Isles of Torres Straits,
Kwoiam, employed magical formulæ.[321] The gods and demigods of the
Maories carried out their extraordinary adventures by the power of
incantations. Maui, by incantations, fishes up dry land from the bottom
of the sea, and turns his brother-in-law into a dog; Tawhaki and
his brother Karahi, by incantations, make themselves invisible, and
avenge their father Hema upon his enemies; and so forth.[322] Celtic
and Teutonic deities worked wonders by songs and spells. Isis was the
greatest enchantress that ever lived. She made from the spittle of Ra
a serpent that bit and poisoned him; and then she healed him by an
incantation, having first compelled him to reveal to her his name, to
the knowledge of which the god himself owed his power over gods and
men; so that she obtained the mastery over all the gods.[323]
As spells, when used by men, may be more efficacious when muttered and
whispered than when spoken aloud, so they may retain their power when
silently wished or thought; and it is the same with spirits: to control
events it may be enough for them to think. And this belief emerges at
no very high level of Animism; it needs no philosophical instruction
in the mysterious energy of ideas. The Sia Indians (North Mexico) have
a Cougar Society, which meets for a two days’ ceremonial, before a
hunting expedition, to propitiate the cougar (puma), because he is the
great father and master of all game. He is believed to draw all kinds
of game to him by sitting still with folded arms and mentally demanding
their presence; and by the same means he sends game to whomsoever he
favours.[324]
Apparently, then, Magic is an art antecedent to the existence of
spirits and ready for their use; and they stand in the same relations
to it as men do. Animistic usages are originally magical—spells,
rites, metamorphoses; and all animistic ideas are magical, except
one—the capriciousness of spiritual agency.
§ 7. SPIRITS ARE CONTROLLED BY MAGIC
The savage imagination having created out of dreams and other strange
experiences a world of invisible and powerful beings who may be
friendly or hostile,—so human that they must be accessible to prayers,
but often turn a deaf ear to them—must desire sacrifices, yet often
reject them—capricious and inscrutable—it became necessary, in
order to restore confidence in all the relations of life, that their
caprice should somehow be overcome; and to accomplish this three
ways were open: first, to increase the prayers and sacrifices until
their importunity and costliness should prove irresistible—and this
way led to all the magnificence and to all the horrors of religious
rites; secondly, to work upon the fears or vulnerability of spirits by
beating, starving, slaying, banishing or degrading them; or, thirdly,
to constrain them, as men are often constrained, by magical rites and
formulæ. From the beginning this necessity is felt.
The constraint of spirits by fear or violence is characteristic of
Fetichism. The wizards of the Congo catch spirits in traps; or drive
them into animals, which they behead; or spear them in some dark
corner, and then exhibit their blood upon the spear-head. Passing from
the Congo through many ages of progress, we arrive in China, and find
that in time of drought, if the city-god neglects to put an end to it,
he is first of all entreated; but that failing, his idol is stripped
naked and put to stand in the sun; or an iron chain is hung round his
neck—the mark of a criminal—till rain falls; or he may be dethroned
altogether.[325] With such crude practices, however, we are not now
concerned.
The control of spirits by Magic, especially by spells—or by other
spirits who, in turn, are controlled by spells—is in its earlier form
characteristic of Shamanism: indeed, it is the essence of Shamanism;
though, of course, in many shamanistic tribes, having intercourse with
peoples of different culture, other beliefs, ascribing independent
or even superior power to spirits, are often found. Spirits may be
so completely subdued by spells as to excite little fear. Among the
Yurats and Ostyaks, the shamans treat their spirits without ceremony,
and even buy and sell them.[326] So do the Esquimo angekoqs. In
Greenland, “all phenomena are controlled by spirits, and these spirits
are controlled by formulæ or charms, which are mainly in possession of
the medicine-men, although certain simple charms may be owned and used
by any one.” Hence, “nothing like prayer or worship is possible”;[327]
for why supplicate spirits whom you can command? “The rule of man—not
of all men, but of one specially gifted (the shaman), over Nature,
or over the superior beings who direct her, is the fundamental idea
of Shamanism.”[328] The shaman’s power depends on knowledge of the
names, natures and origins of all things and spirits, and of the words
that control them; but also on his own extraordinary personality, as
manifested in orgiastic frenzy. Megalomania, the vain imagination of
being a “superman,” is generally characteristic of magicians. Nothing
can be more contrary than this attitude to what most of us understand
by Religion.
One condition of the prevalence of Shamanism among any people, or group
of peoples, seems to be the absence from among them of chieftains
who have attained to any high degree of political power, and the
consequent non-existence of authoritative gods. Hence it spreads
throughout the tribes of Northern Europe and Asia, from Finland to
Kamtchatka, and with a less intensive sway amongst the Indians of North
and South America. Under such conditions the shaman is subordinate to
no one in this world; nor, therefore, in the spirit-world. But where
there are authoritative chiefs, authoritative gods correlative with
them are approached by an order of men who are priests rather than
magicians—that is to say, are regarded as dealing less in magic than
in prayer and sacrifice. And this state of affairs is apt to give rise
to increasing pomp and extravagance of rites, to which there is no
visible limit; so that in some cases, as in Ashanti and Mexico, worship
became homicide, and a sort of national insanity was established. For
from such practices there results no security in the satisfaction of
desire; the caprice of the gods cannot by such means be overcome; their
appetite grows by what it feeds on, and so does the fanaticism of the
priesthood.
Now, in political affairs something similar happens: the caprice of
despotic rulers becomes intolerable; and, in some countries, submission
to their tyranny has amounted to a sort of national insanity. Elsewhere
devices have been adopted to limit the power of rulers. Avoiding
assassination or revolution, it has been found possible to impose upon
a king restraints derived from his own sanctity and divine power. One
such device has been to surround him with innumerable taboos which,
at length, prevent him from doing anything. It is true that the
ostensive reason for this was not the limitation of his power, but
the preservation of his vitality, upon which hung the welfare of the
whole world; and probably this was, at first, the conscious purpose;
but one effect of it was to limit his power, and the utility of
this was its natural sanction. There are many cases in human life in
which a great advantage has been gained for the race by means which
were intended by the conscious agents to have an entirely different
result.[329] In several countries, where the king has been bound by
taboos, another man has by some pretext usurped his power; so that this
way of restraining despotism is not a good one. But in Japan, where
it had been adopted by a political people, the Tycoon, who succeeded
to the power of the taboo-burdened Mikado, himself fell at last under
equivalent restrictions, whilst affairs were directed by his ministers.
Such is the natural tendency of this device amongst positivists, like
the Japanese; elsewhere it may transfer the regal power to warriors or
to priests.[330] Another way of restraining the king is to establish
the principle that he rules by the laws, and that laws, though made
by himself, cannot be altered. And this may have been the purpose
of the unchangeableness of the laws of the Medes and Persians; and
according to the _Book of Daniel_[331] it was used in this way; though,
certainly, the older authority of Herodotus[332] shows that, in some
cases, the king’s advisers could find a way out for their master. Our
own forefathers were no doubt the wisest people that ever lived; and
their plan was to acknowledge fully the divinity that doth hedge a
king, to declare that, in fact, he could do no wrong, and then to visit
all the iniquities of government upon his ministers.
If kings need restraint, much more do invisible gods: and many nations
have sought to limit their prerogative, either by Magic or by legal
fictions which, in relation to gods, can have only a magical operation.
Whilst the tone of the _Rigveda_ is truly religious (though even there
“the idea is often expressed that the might and valour of the gods is
produced by hymns, sacrifices and especially offerings of soma”), “in
the Yajurveda the sacrifice itself has become the centre of thought and
desire, its correct performance in every detail being all-important.
Its power is now so great that it not only influences but compels
the gods to do the will of the officiating priest.”[333] In Egyptian
rites of sacrifice and prayer, the kind of victim and the manner of
slaying and cutting it up were minutely and unchangeably decreed. “The
formulas accompanying each act of the sacrificial priest contained
a certain number of words, whose due sequence and harmonies might
not suffer the slightest modification even by the god himself, under
penalty of losing their efficacy. They were always recited with the
same rhythm, according to a system of melody in which every tone had
its virtue, combined with movements that confirmed the sense and worked
with irresistible effect; one false note, a single discord between the
succession of gestures and the utterance of the sacramental words, any
hesitation, any awkwardness in the accomplishment of a rite, and the
sacrifice was vain.”[334] But if all was in order, the god was bound to
grant the petition. Babylonian religious ceremonies “had for the most
part the same end and object as the magical text used with them; they
were not so much a communion with the deities of heaven, as an attempt
to compel them by particular words to relieve the worshipper from
trouble, or to bestow upon him some benefit.” Ceremonies, therefore,
were useless unless accurately performed in word and deed; “ritual was
a sort of acted magic.”[335] These accounts of the religious ceremonies
of the highest barbaric civilisations are almost in the same words
as William Ellis uses in his account of worship at Raiatea about the
beginning of the nineteenth century; except that Ellis does not say
that the Polynesian gods were bound to grant the requests so presented.
Accordingly, I have treated the Raiatean example under Retrogradation,
and those of Egypt and Babylon as cases of half-conscious policy. No
doubt both retrogradation and policy were present in all cases; but it
seems reasonable to suppose that the latter predominated where order
was more settled (an analogue of the order required in heaven) and
thought was better trained.
One may wonder why a magical ritual should be preferred and trusted
rather than genuinely devotional worship; since it must, in fact, just
as often result in disappointment. But, first, as to the priesthood,
an elaborate ritual, difficult to carry out, is favourable to their
power, because only professionals can execute it; so that they must
necessarily be employed; and the more elaborate and exigent it is,
the more necessary they are. But, then, the more attention the
ritual demands, the less there is to spare for thinking of the gods.
Secondly, as to the people, since the failure of worship in attaining
our ends may be due either (animistically) to the caprice of the gods
or (magically) to an error of the priest, it is not surprising that
men should trust the specialist whose education is well attested
rather than the god whose character is inscrutable. Thirdly, a magical
ritual appeals to the expectation of uniformity, the sole ground
of confidence concerning the future, and therefore what men most
desire. Nevertheless, the religious form of the rites (though empty of
religious feeling) is maintained; partly, because the whole political
and ecclesiastical fabric rests upon the animistic tradition; partly,
because Animism has such hold upon men’s minds that a few remain
devout; whilst even those who regard the rites as magical do not
perceive that magic is the antithesis of religion and rigidly excludes
it. Only a few natural positivists and philosophers regard public
worship as merely a political institution.
The idea of a transaction by which the gods are legally bound—so
much help for so much worship—may be present in all magical ritual;
but in some religions the analogy of human relations according to law
is explicitly extended to the relations of men with gods. The Jewish
religion was based on a covenant; and, according to some theologians,
so is the Christian. It has often been said that Roman religion implied
a belief in legal obligation imposed upon the gods by rites duly
performed; and Mr. Warde Fowler, who thinks more highly than some have
done of the genuineness of religious feeling amongst the Romans, at
least in private worship, yet says that in the _vota publica_ we find
something like a bargain or covenant with the deity in the name of the
State.[336] Legal obligation implies effectual sanctions that may be
brought to bear upon transgressors, gods or men; and at a low stage
of Animism, when no spirit exceeds the rank of demon, there may be no
incongruity in bringing to reason a recalcitrant spirit by stopping
his rations or maltreating his image; but when high gods have obtained
the homage of men, to punish _them_ calls for great audacity or very
subtle management. The Chinese have managed the matter to admiration.
The Emperor of China acknowledged himself subject to the spirits of
Earth and Heaven; but he himself was the son of Heaven, and all other
spirits were subject to him. He ruled alike over the dead and the
living. He made deities and appointed them their functions; promoted
them and distributed amongst them titles of honour, if they did good
works; or, if they failed in their duties, degraded them. In the _Pekin
Gazette_ one finds “the deities figuring, not occasionally but very
frequently, in every department of official business, and treated much
as if they were highly respectable functionaries of a superior order,
promoted to some kind of upper house, whose abilities and influence
were nevertheless still at the service of the State.”[337] Nowhere has
the unity of Church and State been so completely realised, and the
_pax deorum_ so conclusively established. One may interpret the facts
at discretion: an animist may accept them literally and seriously; a
devotee of Magic may regard decrees in the _Pekin Gazette_ as spells
that have coercive power in the spirit-world; a Confucian mandarin
will think that an excellent plan has been devised for enlisting the
superstitions of the simple-minded in support of law and order. We may
suppose that for him Animism is but an episode in the history of human
thought.
Another way of excluding spiritual caprice, which we might suppose to
have been discovered by philosophers, but which appears to be older
than what we usually call “Philosophy,” is to subordinate the gods to
Fate. The idea has been attributed to the astronomers or astrologers
of Babylon that Fate must be above the gods as the constant heaven of
the fixed stars is above the planets:[338] an analogy characteristic
of magical thought. But the roots of the idea of Fate are much
older and wider spread in the slow, steady growth of the belief in
uniformity, which is the common ground of Magic and Science; and (as
I have said) before laws of nature had been discovered, Fate was an
all-comprehensive Magic. Fate reduces the gods to the status of wheels
in a machine; omens and oracles, instead of being sent or inspired
by the gods, are also part of the machinery, and may point to their
destruction; prayers and sacrifices are other parts of the machinery
and, at most, may be a means of assuaging the anxiety of one’s own
heart. A stern way of envisaging the world: but it gives not only
security against the gods, but also resignation and tranquillity.
Philosophical Christianity regards the actions of God as always
manifested, in the physical order, through “second causes,” or, in
other words, in “the laws of nature”; and, in the spiritual order,
as always observing the moral laws that are the principles of divine
Reason; in either case there can be no variableness nor shadow of
turning.
Magic, like Science, believes in uniformities of nature, and seeks
by a knowledge of them to control events; but Magic is so eager to
control events that it cannot wait to learn the true uniformities;
it is not moved, like Science, by curiosity as to the truth, but by
blind desire for present results. The cult of spirits seeks to control
events not by knowledge of their natural causes, but by appealing to
hyperphysical causes, and it resembles the belief in Free Will, by
which men hope, through the influx of some unknown energy, to escape
the bondage of their own vices: for Kant rightly treated “Freedom” as
a cosmological problem, the supposed intervention of a cause that is
transcendent and not in the course of nature. The intervention of Free
Will (whether divine or human) is sought in order to avert injurious
fortune, to realise our personal or social schemes more quickly and
cheaply than our own efforts can, to avoid the consequences of our own
actions, amongst which is bondage to our own vices: for all these, give
us variability, miracle, caprice. But to foresee and control events
physical or social, including the conduct of others, to be confident
in the effects of our own actions according to our purposes, and in
the stability of our own character: for all these, there must be
uniformity. In the long run the latter considerations determine our
thoughts; and the necessity of uniformity to a rational life may be one
cause of our belief (so far out-running the evidence) in uniformities
of causation and of space-relations and of all that we mean by natural
law.
FOOTNOTES:
[261] _Mythus und Religion_, pp. 78, 79.
[262] _Op. cit._, p. 125 _et seq._
[263] _Op. cit._, p. 202 _et seq._
[264] This was also Spencer’s opinion, _op. cit._, § 133.
[265] _Op. cit._, p. 263.
[266] _Op. cit._, p. 267.
[267] See above, pp. 100 and 119-24.
[268] Hume, _Inquiry_, § vii.
[269] A. H. Sayce, _Religion of the Ancient Babylonians_, p. 398.
[270] Book II. p. 82; Rawlinson’s Translation.
[271] Vol. I. ch. iv.
[272] But see the footnote at p. 235 of _The Magic Art_, I.: “faith
in magic is probably older than the belief in spirits.” In the same
note, a passage in Hegel’s _Philosophy of Religion_ is referred to as
anticipating the doctrine of the priority of Magic to Religion. The
passage, as translated in an appendix (pp. 423-6), shows, however,
no conception of Magic as akin to natural law, as it is described in
several passages of _The Golden Bough_, but treats it as a belief in
any human being “as the ruling power over nature in virtue of his
own will.” This is rather an anticipation of Prof. Wundt’s doctrine
concerning Sorcery; which Hegel seems not to have distinguished from
Magic. I need hardly add that a belief in any human being as the ruling
power over nature in virtue of his own will has never been discovered
in any part of the world.
[273] _Op. cit._, pp. 237-9.
[274] _Primitive Culture_, I. 116.
[275] R. H. Coddrington, _The Melanesians_, p. 125.
[276] H. A. Giles, _Chinese Literature_, p. 202.
[277] Animism gave the priest another excuse for the failure of rites
(besides those enjoyed by a mere magician), namely, that during, or
since, the celebration some fresh offence against the gods had been
committed.
[278] Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, pp.
453, 463.
[279] A. W. Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp.
359-361-367.
[280] Howitt, _op. cit._, p. 378.
[281] E. B. Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, II. p. 148.
[282] _The Mafulu_, p. 193.
[283] _Op. cit._, p. 272.
[284] Extract from a spell in Skeat’s _Malay Magic_, p. 571.
[285] Howitt, _op. cit._, p. 397.
[286] J. G. Frazer, _The Belief in Immortality_, p. 288. For similar
instances see the same work, pp. 335 and 375.
[287] Sarat Chandra Roy, “Magic and Witchcraft on the Chota Nagpur
Plateau,” _J.R.A.I._, XLIV. p. 330. I have slightly altered the last
sentence, which seems to have been misprinted.
[288] _Religious Experience of the Roman People_, p. 215.
[289] _The Todas_, pp. 30, 213.
[290] _Religious Experience of the Roman People_, p. 286. But whether
we should expect the idea to weaken with advancing civilisation must
depend upon whether intelligent belief in the gods was increasing.
Perhaps this was not the case at Rome.
[291] _Polynesian Researches_, II. pp. 144 and 157 (1st ed.).
[292] _Reports of the Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits_, VI. p.
199.
[293] Thomas Williams, _Fiji and the Fijians_, p. 209.
[294] J. Mooney, “Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees” in _Am. B. of
Ethn._, VII. p. 314 (1885-6).
[295] _Heimskringla, St. Olaf’s Saga_, chs. cciv. and ccxl.
[296] _Primitive Culture_, II. p. 273 (2nd ed.).
[297] Codrington, _The Melanesians_, p. 145.
[298] S. H. C. Hawtrey, “The Lengua Indians,” _Journal of the Royal
Anthropological Institute_, 1901.
[299] “Shamanism,” _Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute_,
XXIV. (1894-5).
[300] Comparetti, _The Traditionary Poetry of the Finns_, p. 184.
[301] Howitt, _op. cit._, p. 404. Is this type of the neophyte’s
behaviour, which is conformed to on certain occasions by magicians
and inspired priests in every age and country, itself conformed to
the natural type of insanity or epilepsy; and, if so, consciously or
unconsciously?
[302] J. H. Weeks, _Among Congo Cannibals_, pp. 145 and 276.
[303] Grey, _Polynesian Mythology_, chs. i. and vii.
[304] _Origin and Growth of Religion as illustrated by Celtic
Heathendom_, p. 225.
[305] _Corpus Poeticum Boreale_, pp. 24, 34, 181, 196.
[306] _Heimskringla Saga, Yuglingasaga_, chs. xvii.-xviii.
[307] “Shamanism,” _Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute_,
X., XIV. p. 85.
[308] Weeks, _Congo Cannibals_, p. 265.
[309] The fullest and most dramatic account of such possession may be
found in Williams’ _Fiji and the Fijians_, p. 190. See below, p. 243.
[310] Weeks, _Primitive Bokongo_, p. 215.
[311] Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, pp.
480-8.
[312] “Shamanism,” _Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute_,
XXIV. p. 130.
[313] Howitt, _op. cit._, p. 374.
[314] _Ibid._, p. 437.
[315] P. A. Talbot, _In the Shadow of the Bush_, p. 230.
[316] G. Borrow, _Wild Wales_, ch. lxxxviii.
[317] Spencer and Gillen, _op. cit._, p. 388.
[318] H. Spencer, _Principles of Sociology_, § 55.
[319] E. B. Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, I. 308 _et seq._
[320] In a paper on _Leopard Men of the Naga Hills_, read at a meeting
of the R.A.I. (December 9, 1919), Mr. J. J. H. Hutton reported that
such men do not change into leopards; but sometimes their souls
involuntarily pass into them. If the leopard be injured or killed he
whose soul was in it suffers or dies—when he hears of it. Such men are
not feared, because their leopards do very little harm.
For this reason (I suppose) the belief is not exploited by wizards, who
have no use for innocent superstition, and it remains pure folklore.
There may not be any connexion between this animistic doctrine of human
souls possessing animals and the magical doctrine of shape-changing. If
they are connected, it is easy to see that in a certain atmosphere of
popular philosophy, if shape-changing were believed in, the possession
theory might be accepted as the true explanation upon merely being
proposed. Indeed, it would make intelligible such a case as this: a
man’s leopard is seen on the skirts of the village; but he himself is
known to be in his hut.
Animistic explanation does not always follow culture: Europe adheres to
shape-changing. Yet in the _Volsung Saga_ the superstition is already
degenerate: Sigmund and his son change into wolves by putting on
wolf-skins belonging to two were-wolves whom they find asleep. This is
a rationalisation—disguise as a step toward change. An earlier step is
to say a man who would change must put on a belt of wolf-skin.
[321] Haddon, _Reports of the Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits_,
V. p. 329.
[322] Grey, _op. cit._, “Legends of Maui and Tawhaki.”
[323] Wiedemann, _Religion of the Ancient Egyptians_, pp. 54-8.
[324] M. C. Stevenson, “The Sia,” _Am. B. of Ethn._, XI. p. 118.
[325] W. Grube, _Rel. u. K. d. Chinese_, p. 132.
[326] “Shamanism,” _Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute_,
ch. xxiv. p. 133.
[327] Stephánsen, _My Life with the Eskimo_, p. 391.
[328] D. Comparetti, _The Traditional Poetry of the Finns_, p. 26.
[329] _Natural and Social Morals_, ch. ii. § 4.
[330] See many examples in J. G. Frazer’s _Taboo and the Perils of the
Soul_, ch. i.
[331] Ch. vi.
[332] III. p. 31.
[333] Macdonell, _Sanskrit Literature_, pp. 73 and 183.
[334] Maspero, _The Dawn of Civilization_, p. 124.
[335] A. H. Sayce, _Religion of the Ancient Babylonians_, p. 319.
[336] _Religious Experience of the Roman People_, p. 202.
[337] Alfred Lyall, _Asiatic Studies_, essays on _The State and
Religion in China_. In a milder form this system has been adopted by
Japan; W. E. Aston, _Shinto_, p. 237.
[338] Franz Cumont, _Astrology and Religion_.