§ 8 Indirect or “Sympathetic” Magic
The use of charms, rites and spells, having been established in one department—say, hunting—may be extended to others by analogy, and is confirmed there in the same way, namely, by still doing one’s best. Having obtained the charms and learnt, or invented, the rites and spells, one applies them, but at the same time makes war or love as cunningly as one can, cultivates one’s garden, drives a bargain, and so forth, and ascribes all good results to the Magic. At first, I suppose, all such action was direct, discharged at the person or thing to be influenced. To slay an enemy a bone of a dead man was pointed, or a crocodile’s tooth hurled, in his direction (though, probably, not in his sight). To keep off evil Magic a wish was expressed—“Never sharp barn catch me”;140 or to drive away a pest a command was issued, as in Borneo: “O rats, sparrows and noxious insects, go feed on the padi of people down river.”141 But a time came when Magic began also to be carried out by practices indirect and purely dramatic, rites performed and spells recited not at the person or thing to be affected, but upon some substitute, or representative, or symbol; and this must have happened pretty early; for dramatic Magic is met with in Australia. To this sort of Magic belong the widely-diffused methods of operating upon the image of a man or anything assigned to stand for him, or upon hair-clippings, remains of food, or footprints instead of himself; or of tying knots to bind, or untying them to release a curse. With spells the indirect method is less common, but remarkable examples of it occur at a low level of culture. The Yabim of New Guinea, to promote the growth of their taro, tell a story: “Once upon a time, a man labouring in his field complained that he had no taro-shoots. Then came two doves flying from Paum. They had devoured much taro, and they perched upon a tree in the field, and during the night vomited up all the taro. Thus the man got so many shoots that he was even able to sell some of them to other people.”142 Here, then, a mere story of a wish fulfilled is substituted, as a spell, for the wish itself, and expected to have the same effect upon the crop; and as that is, indeed, true, any failure of it is no more liable to be detected. But such practices seem to us sillier and less promising even than direct Magic. What can be the meaning of them?
The indirectness of a rite makes it more mysterious and magical, and that is a recommendation. Moreover, its dramatic character gives an imaginative satisfaction, which must suffice to initiate such pantomime again and again. Amongst ourselves many people are prone to dramatise every situation of their lives; to act in imagination their loves, their revenges, their opportunities of self-display, and to derive satisfaction from such imaginations even to the weakening of their will—satisfaction without effort or danger. But although this impulse may initiate pantomimic magic, it can hardly maintain it in the absence of any deeper satisfaction. The belief in its efficacy, again, once established, the effect of suggestion upon a victim of black Magic (who by some means is acquainted with what has been done against him) may have consequences that seem to verify the rites; but this can only happen when a belief in the efficacy of such practices already prevails. The power of suggestion depends upon the belief; it cannot create the belief. We must fall back upon coincidence. If, indeed, immediate and complete coincidence were requisite, if, when one practised on an enemy’s life, nothing less than his speedy death would do, coincidences might be too rare to give the requisite confirmation. But if some less injury will be acceptable, and if it need not follow immediately; if a delay of not merely two or three days, but two or three months will bring the event within the limits of satisfaction; and if the degree of injury may vary from death to a bad fall, or some failure in hunting on the victim’s part, or a quarrel with his wife; if even (as often happens) a misfortune to any one of his family may suffice—the confirmatory coincidences will be tolerably frequent. There must, of course, be many disappointments; but these count for little, because the particular practice is supported by a general belief in Magic; because men desire to believe and are afraid to disbelieve; because failures are explained by some error in performing the rites, or by the counteraction of superior Magic, or by the intervention of hostile spirits.
Special reasons for practising and believing in indirect operations of black Magic are their greater secrecy and, therefore, greater safety, and greater gratification of the love of cunning: which last (I think) explains much of the elaboration that marks these performances.
In the development of indirect Magic, very many of its practices seem to involve one or other of the assumptions often called the principles of sympathetic Magic, namely, Mimesis and Participation: (1) that to operate upon a likeness or representation, or by analogy, affects the person, or object, or process imitated or represented as if it were directly assailed; and (2) that a part or appurtenance of any one may, in any magical undertaking, be substituted for the whole. Among savages these principles (as has already been said) are only latent forms of procedure, tacitly assumed, not formulated, and cannot have been the source of the practices, but must gradually have been established by them; but when notions of scientific arrangement came into vogue, they were discovered and explicitly stated by the early physicians and alchemists, in whose thoughts Magic and Science were not clearly differentiated.
It has been supposed that these principles are natural consequences of the laws of the association (or reproduction) of ideas. According to the “law of similarity,” an idea of one thing often makes us think of another that resembles it: hence the thought of an enemy is supposed to make me think of an image of him, or the sight of his image makes me think of him. According to the law “of contiguity,” any two things having been seen or thought of together, thereafter the thought or sight of one of them makes me think of the other: hence the thought of an enemy makes me think of his footprint, or his footprint reminds me of him. Possibly. But must there not have been a long preparation of ideas before the thought of an enemy awakens in me these particular associations rather than many others? And if they should occur to me, how do the laws of association explain my astonishing belief that to put his image in the fire, or to thrust a thorn into his footprint, or to dig it up, carry it home and put it in the oven, will make him lame or afflict him with some wasting disease? There must be some system of ideas to determine these particular judgments.
Some, again, suppose that savages cannot distinguish similarity from identity, part from whole; so that an image appears to them to be in earnest the same thing as a man, or his nail-parings the same as himself. Yet it is certain that in their work-a-day life they do make these distinctions, and that otherwise they could not get on at all. If, then, in certain cases, and in Magic (which is all that concerns us now), they act or speak as if unable to draw such distinctions, it must be from an acquired incapacity in that connection; just as in some cases they suffer from an acquired incapacity to recognise that their beliefs are contradicted by experience; that is to say, some fixed idea or dissociation prevents them from comparing the facts; though sometimes it may be merely that customary forms of speech hinder the expression of distinctions that really exist among their ideas.
It has been suggested that the supposed force of mimetic Magic rests upon the belief that as a man’s shadow or reflection implies his presence, so does his image. And we shall see that, in some cases, this explanation is not far from the mark, though it cannot serve for all cases; inasmuch as the image operated upon in any rite need not be a likeness (of course it never is)—a stick will serve, if declared to stand for the victim; and, moreover, his presence is not needed in carrying out rites that act at a distance. What truth there is in this view has been better expressed by Prof. Yrjö Hirn:143 namely, that a unity or solidarity exists between all persons and things that stand to one another in a relationship of contact or similarity, on account of a certain magical virtue; and that this solidarity is not destroyed by any breach of physical continuity. To take away a man’s cloak, or a lock of his hair, or a remnant of his food, does not interrupt the magical continuity which contact has established with the man: something of him, his virtue, remains with it. And in the same way an image of him contains something of his virtue; for to the immature mind, images or pictures are nothing but radiations or decortications of the thing itself, an efflux, like the Epicurean εἴδωλα. Hence the bones of a saint and his picture convey his virtue to a devotee by the same process: both are conductors of some emanation from himself. There is much truth in this theory.
When Animism is called in to explain Magic, this virtue or emanation of a man is apt to be explained as his soul, or part of it. A savage dislikes being photographed, lest you should take away his soul. M. Jounod says the Bantu regard a photograph as “an unsheathing of soul”;144 Mr. Dorsey says no Dakota would have his portrait taken lest one of his souls [out of four] should remain in the picture, instead of going after death to spirit-land;145 Mr. Carl Lumholtz says the Papagoes refused to be photographed, lest part of themselves should be taken away, and remain behind after death.146 And it is a trick with some sorcerers to keep a looking-glass, in which they pretend to catch the souls of their dupes; and, of course, shadows and reflections are frequently confounded with the soul. So if the use of an image in Magic does not imply the presence of the man himself, generally it does imply the presence of a very important part of him. And this explanation is strengthened by an apparent exception; for some Malays, when they make an image of an enemy to compass his destruction, think it necessary before operating to coax his soul into it by a potent spell.
“Hither, Soul, come hither!
Hither, little one, come hither!
Hither, bird, come hither!
Hither, filmy one, come hither!”147
Must we not infer that these Malays have in some way lost the common belief, and so are put to this extra trouble?
If it be asked how this account of the matter can justify the use of a stick or stone instead of a man’s image, merely assigning it to represent him, the reply (I think) is that the stick is a symbol. Since images are never much like the man, and may be unlike in all degrees, the stick is a sort of limiting case. A symbol is always the remainder, or reminder, of something that once had intrinsic value, as an image, shadow, or reflection has by being or participating in the man’s soul. Besides, it is perhaps a tacit assumption of Magic (as in other departments of life—including Philosophy), “that whatever for one’s purpose it is necessary to assume, is real or true”: the situation demands it.
As to the magical continuity between a man and whatever has been in contact with him, the belief in it may with some confidence be derived from the fact that it retains his odour; and when an animistic explanation is required, it is naturally thought that this odour is his soul or soul-stuff, as the savour of a burnt-offering is its soul-stuff that regales the gods.
Belief in the participation of an image, or part or appurtenance of a man in the man himself, or in his virtue, or in his soul, must give to rites of black Magic a great deal of the subjective satisfaction which is a secret motive of all Magic. The images, or nail-parings, or what not, identify the man to be attacked; they fix the wizard’s attention, vivify his imagination, direct the spell whom to strike (as a dog is set upon a trail), and heighten the joy of imaginary revenge.
There are, however, many cases usually classed as “sympathetic Magic” that cannot without great violence be explained in this way; and I complain of the epithet “sympathetic,” as applied to all indirect Magic, that it implies this explanation. Consider the Mandan buffalo-dances, the hunting dance and the mating dance; these are imitations or dramatic representations of the hunting of buffaloes and of their mating, which they are designed to prosper: can such dances be interpreted as the efflux or decortications of the future hunt or mating? Or, again, the story of the muræna (quoted above, p. 101) and its resuscitation by the rising tide—is this a radiation of the budding of the taro which it is expected to expedite? Such cases, which are pretty numerous, must be understood upon some other ground than “participation.”
Many rites and observances seem to depend upon the notion of favourable or unfavourable currents of invisible power, which may be taken advantage of, or influenced, to obtain one’s ends, in hunting, or in obtaining rain, or in fertilisation of animals or crops. It is good to plant seed, or begin any undertaking, when the moon is waxing, or the tide rising; for these events show that the set of the current is favourable to increase or prosperity. Again, one may incite the current or strengthen it, as in bringing on rain by throwing water in the air, or by leaping to help the crops to grow. To instigate or assist in such ways the ongoings of Nature is not the same thing as to cause the event: a rain-wizard does not pretend to procure rain in the dry season; the times of ploughing, sowing, reaping (whatever rites may accompany them) are not decided by Magic. Much pantomimic Magic may be best understood as attempting to set up such currents of causation rather than as directly causative. Since instances of cause and effect are observed to repeat themselves, a pantomimic murder, or a hunting dance, or fertility-rites, may be considered as setting an example which Nature is expected to follow: the muræna-spell promotes vitality by merely describing an example of reinvigoration. The Kai of N.E. New Guinea hold that if a man, by falling on a stump of bamboo in the path, wounds himself to death, it is because a sorcerer, having obtained something infected with his victim’s soul-stuff, has spread it over a pile stuck in the ground, and pretended to wound himself upon it and to groan with pain.148 The belief implies that such practices are in vogue; and they seem to rely upon the assumption that “what happens once will happen again”; and that who shall repeat the disaster is determined by the presence, among the conditions, of something belonging to the victim in default of himself. It is not by sympathy or participation that the “something infected with his soul-stuff” acts; but by contributing to reinstate as far as possible all the circumstances of a cause like the cause of the man’s death.
In other cases an exemplary cause may be constituted by the substitution of similars that do not imply participation. Dr. Haddon tells us that in the western islands of Torres Straits149 the Kuman vine breaks up in dry weather, and the segments look like human bones; hence they are employed in Magic. Similarly red ochre or some other stain may be used instead of blood, so that a skeleton may be coloured with it as a means of keeping it alive. In Chinese popular religion, before setting up a new idol, it is first carried to the temple of an older one, who is besought to let a portion of his soul-stuff transmigrate into the new one; then, carried to its own temple and enthroned, its hands, feet, eyes, mouth, nose and ears are smeared with blood, or with red paint, to open its senses and bring its soul into relation with the outer world.150 Such a substitution of similars is true in one sense; red paint is a substitute for blood as colour: Magic requires that it shall also be a substitute in other ways; and, therefore, it is so. Thus, down and feathers thrown into the air in Australian rain-rites are a substitute for clouds; in Mandan hunting-rites, men disguised in buffalo-skins are a substitute for buffaloes; and thus, by substitution, a cause can always be constituted which, once having been set to work, Nature is constrained to repeat the operation.
Ought we not, then, to recognise two kinds of indirect Magic—the sympathetic, and what may be called the exemplary?151
The rise of the wizard as a professional authority introduces many changes into magical practice, and decisively alters its social importance. He sometimes experiments in new rites and spells or in new versions of the old ones; he decides some matters arbitrarily, as in imposing taboos on food; generally, he develops the art in the direction of his professional interests, learning to conjure, act, ventriloquise, suggest, hypnotise, and to provide excuses for failure; he begins to train novices, form a school and establish a tradition which influences the whole life of his tribe. How far arbitrary elements enter into rites it is impossible to say, until some one shall discover (as some one may) marks by which to distinguish them. Meanwhile, there may be many rites, or ritual elements, that cannot be explained on any known principles of Magic, because in fact they are arbitrary: still, such things must usually be an imitation of other magical practices. Prof. Leuba suggests, probably enough, that rites may sometimes be adopted to relieve excitement, such as the dancing of women when the men are at war.152 It was the custom (e. g.) of Araucanian women; and as they danced, they swept the dust away with their fans, and sang: “As we sweep the dust away, so may our husbands scatter the enemy.” If this was arbitrarily invented, it was by analogy with much mimetic Magic: they set an example of what should happen and confirmed it with a spell.153