§ 7 Totemism and Magic
The identity of a man with his name, as usually assumed by savages, whether his personal or his totemic name, is not itself a magical belief, but an inevitable result of mental association at a low level of intelligence: perhaps earlier than any notions that can properly be called magical. The name of a man, always thought of along with his other properties, seems to be as much one of them as a scar on his neck or any peculiar trait of visage or length of limb. This must be as old as naming. But such a complication of the name with other marks having been formed, it becomes the ground of magic beliefs and practices. To mention the name of a man or spirit insures his presence and participation in any rite, either acting or suffering; or where writing is known, his name on a piece of paper is as good as his nail-parings. The use of the name is not a mere animistic summons (which might be disobeyed), but an immediate instatement of the given individual. Such magic may enter into totemic observances.
The descent of the clan from the Totem-animal, or of the animal from a forefather of the clan, or of both from a tertium quid, involves metamorphosis; and this, again, is not itself a magic idea; for real metamorphoses are common in the life of birds, amphibia, insects, and it would be unreasonable to expect savages to perceive clearly that these are not parallel cases. There is a difference, however, between transformations that may be observed, such as that of a chrysalis into a butterfly, and those that have never been observed, but are merely imagined and asserted. The latter are more mysterious, and mystery is one character of magic. For example, the Witchety-Grub clan among the Arunta have as their mate a bird, the chantunga, which they will not eat because, they say, of old some full-grown witchety-grubs were transformed into these birds.535 This change has a magical character, though no magical agency is assigned. But if any attempt were made to explain how the great change took place, recourse might be had to powers of magic. Even when agency is assigned, it is not always magical. In the earliest Alcheringa the two Ungambikula (“out of nothing”) saw in groups by the shore of the salt water a number of inapertwa, rudimentary men, mere roundish masses, without organs or means of feeding, and these they cut out into men with stone knives, therefore not by magic.536 But, again, a tribe on the Darling River (Wathi-wathi) have traditions concerning Bookoomuri who lived long ago, excelled in Magic, and transformed themselves into animals; and here the magical power is asserted, though the manner of its operation is indefinite. But the Bear clan of the Tshimshians (British Columbia) explain their position by the story that once upon a time an Indian, whilst hunting, met a bear, which took him to its home, where he stayed two years. On returning to his village he looked like a bear; but, having been rubbed with medical herbs, recovered human shape.537 And here the magic is as explicit as in any recipe for a were-wolf, or that fallacious ointment with which Lucius achieved his memorable transformation.
Nor, further, has the prohibition to slay, injure or eat the Totem in the first place any magical significance; for it merely puts the Totem in the position of a clansman. But the situation, being strange and mysterious, acquires a magical atmosphere; and the enforcement of the taboo by penalties is unmistakably magical. The Untmajera (North Central Australia) have a legend of a Beetle-Grub man of former times who ate beetle-grubs, and thereupon broke out in sores, wasted away and died. Or one’s hair may turn grey; or, according to the Samoan belief (not strictly totemistic), the forbidden food may grow inside one into the whole animal or plant to the destruction of its host. Such beliefs, resting on the analogy of poisons and their physiological consequences, are magical imaginations: the taboo has the same character as a conditional curse.
Similarly, the prohibition of marriage within the Totem-clan, if it originated (as I have supposed) with the fusion of Totemism and Exogamy in the customs of various early groups of men and women, is not based on Magic; but the penalties for breaking the taboo are magical. Thus amongst the Euahlayi and their neighbours men and women of the Iguana clan cannot intermarry, though coming from different parts of the country and without any traceable consanguinity; because, if they did, their children, inasmuch as their ancestors on both sides were the same animal, would “throw back” to the form or attributes of the iguana.538 A grotesque anticipation of scientific ideas.
But the most remarkable connexion between Totemism and Magic occurs in those rites by which clansmen in several parts of the world, but especially in Australia, believe themselves able to influence their Totems: when these are edible, to multiply them; when noxious, to drive away or destroy them; or, as with the wind and rain, to control them for the general good. Spencer and Gillen539 give astonishing descriptions of the rites of multiplication (or Intichiuma), carefully prepared and regulated, including disguisings of clansmen in the likeness of the Totems, drawings of the Totems on the ground, dances, incantations and ceremonies, sometimes representing traditional history—by which the tribesmen discharge this function of theirs. They rely chiefly on mimetic (exemplary) Magic which, by dramatising some natural process, brings it into real operation. In identifying themselves with the Totem, they exert their imaginations to the utmost, and to this end may eat a little of the Totem, at other times forbidden. This assumption that by eating a little of any animal, plant or human being, you become one with it, or acquire its qualities, or, further, that two men by eating together of the same food become allied (which is in a manner materially true, but absurdly interpreted), is another of those notions simpler than, and antecedent to, Magic, which provide a base for magical operations.540 These solemnities last for months, and are carried out with conscientious diligence and earnestness: the infatuation is profound and universal. Here, as at most of the higher stages of culture, we find the most intense emotions of which men are capable excited by participation in communal imaginative exercises that have directly, in relation to their expectations, absolutely no result. Indeed, pre-occupation with vain employments tends to exclude all ideas that might be useful, that might lead (e. g.) to the increasing of food by the cultivation of plants or domestication of animals. Sir James Frazer has pointed out that a passage of the rites of the Grass-seed clan, in which grass-seeds are scattered about upon the ground, might have led to cultivation: but the mental state of the clan is unfavourable to cool observation. As for animals, it is some excuse for the backwardness of Australian culture that the Marsupialia do not comprise a single species that would repay domestication. Indirectly and undesignedly these performances have very useful consequences: they annually restore the unity of the tribe assembled from all parts for the great occasion; promote mutual good-will and a spirit of co-operation, for which they afford the chief opportunity; maintain the social organisation and the tradition of customs by increasing the influence of the Headmen, who have a leading part in everything that happens, and on whose authority all order and discipline depend; interrupt the monotony of savage life with variety of interests; stimulate ingenuity, and fill up the time, that might else be wasted in idleness or quarrelling, with artistic and dramatic recreation.
Upon these rites for the multiplication and control of the Totems, Sir James Frazer based his second hypothesis concerning the origin of Totemism, namely, that it was a system of co-operation amongst sections of a savage tribe for the magical supply of food, etc.: the Emu clan multiplying emus, the Kangaroo clan kangaroos, the Witchety-Grub clan witchety-grubs, and so forth.541 But he afterwards reflected that such a design was beyond the conception of savages. And, no doubt, as a plan thought out and deliberately adopted as a whole, most ethnologists would consider it above the capacity of Australian aborigines. But if so—though not more difficult than the invention of the Classificatory Marriage System—it shows what complex arrangements, simulating design, may come into existence by the growth of custom; for the clans certainly do co-operate in the magical supply of food.
Whatever may have been the origin of Totemism the institution seems to have been utilised by some tribes in an ambitious attempt to control all nature by grouping (on very obscure principles, if on any) various classes of phenomena with the Totems, so that one clan or another is responsible for everything. Short of this, it is plainly necessary to control the wind, rain, hail and lightning. The control of an animal Totem is not always benevolent toward the animals themselves. In the Kakadu tribe it is the duty of the Mosquito clan to save the rest from mosquitoes; they make imitation mosquitoes, dance and sing, and imagine they are killing them.542 In North America similar beliefs and practices have been found both for encouraging and for discouraging the Totem, but occasionally and irregularly. The Bird clan of the Omahas, when birds threatened the crops, prevented their devastations by chewing corn and spitting it about over the fields; when mosquitoes were troublesome, the Wind people flapped blankets to raise a wind and blow the pests away; when worms attacked the crops, the Reptile clan (worms and reptiles are confused in primitive Zoology) countermined their approaches by pounding up some of them with a little corn into a soup and eating it.543 The most remarkable American rites for the increase of food—the Buffalo-dances and Corn-festivals of the Mandans—were not totemic, but carried out by the whole tribe. The buffalo hunting-dance to bring the herd within reach, was continued, if necessary, for weeks—in fact until the animals came; so that the Magic was always effectual.