Question

rehistoric; 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 considerat

le; 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.

ve. 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-stu

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 thi

s 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 Regelm?ssigkeit, unm?glich 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

ions 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

, 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 up

gic and

ng 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

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 e

d and averting evil. Grounded, as Sir E. B. Tylor says,[274] in the desire "to discover, to foretell, and

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?

r 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 sor

imes 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

an or other, is later or not than Magic, there is insufficient evidence. At any rate, their origins are independent. Perhaps my own pr

actices of Magic

rce 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 consequenc

otion is misleading. It will be conceived of by different tribes in one way or the other, according to t

rit, 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 f

st 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 th

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

lways 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

ted 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, amo

wn with sou

my spells en

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 pray

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

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 cerem

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

etrogr

relevant 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 t

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 vagu

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 event

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 unin

ple 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 o

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 Chris

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 cas

Magic, teach it, a

g 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 adva

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 fami

him Magic and enchantments of every kind.[303] Prof. Rhys tells us that the Welsh god Math 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 D?n, 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

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 ov

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

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

its opera

sess, or by their naked soul-force, or by wor

ommand of his voice or limbs; and we have seen that this soul-force is the same as force magical. The spirit's

her 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

selves 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 ma

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

phrodite, Thor's hammer Mj?lnir, 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 ma

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 enchantres

his 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 propitiat

hey stand in the same relations to it as men do. Animistic usages are originally magical-spells, rites,

are control

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

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

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 formul? 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)

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

t 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 tran

st 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

pare 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.

gressors, 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 occasi

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; om

d causes," or, in other words, in "the laws of nature"; and, in the spiritual order, as always observing the mora

rgy, 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,