§ 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.