Part 8

The second observation is that the definition ignores the whole of life not occupied by crises. When the Californian Hupa awakes in the morning and sees the dawn, it cannot be said that he is at his wits’ end, that the ordinary and expected has been replaced by the extraordinary and unexpected. What does he do? He {84} greets the dawn with a silent prayer that he may see many dawns, for he regards it as a person who is benevolently inclined to him.[84.1] This surely is religion. The point is met by the further statement that “the religion of a savage is part of his custom; nay, rather it is his whole custom so far as it appears sacred--so far as it coerces him by way of his imagination. Between him and the unknown stands nothing but his custom. It is his all-in-all, his stand-by, his faith and his hope. Being thus the sole source of his confidence, his custom, so far as his imagination plays about it, becomes his ‘luck.’ We may say that any and every custom, in so far as it is regarded as lucky, is a religious rite.”[84.2] In that case religion is much more than the facing of the unknown, the organized effort to face crisis. It is custom coercing man by way of his imagination. A convenient custom coerces by way of their imagination weary women at Tlemcen in Algeria not to sweep out the house for three days at the New Year, so that they may not lose their luck.[84.3] Can we legitimately call this religion? Or take another case. There are people in England who will not utter a boast, or tell a small social fib, without taking the precaution to touch wood. I have known educated women drag a chair across the room to a visitor who had just boasted of immunity from a trifling ailment, in order that she might touch wood. Despite their education, they were coerced by way of their imagination to this little ceremony. There must be thousands of things done merely for luck, and done habitually, by peoples alike in barbarism and in civilization. Some of them probably are relics of a once living belief. About others there is no such presumption; {85} yet they exercise the same constraint. Does that make them religious rites? Does it make even those that once were portions of some living belief, but are so no longer, religious rites now? Of course it is all a matter of definition of terms. But a definition of religion which would include all these would be catholic indeed.

The criticisms in this chapter involve no reflection on the perspicacity of scientific writers who are trying to obtain a clear vision of religion and magic and of their specific differences. But they do aim at illustrating the futility of the attempt absolutely to define anything so fluid and elusive as religion.[85.1] Both religion and magic owe their origin to society; they are born and nurtured in a social atmosphere. Both are concerned with forces mysterious, far-reaching, enveloping and constraining {86} men and things. These forces are not always personal, though their evolution usually takes a personal direction. The means used by both are similar, because the forces are the same, or at least alike. Spell and prayer are very near akin; the one passes insensibly into the other. And the material means common to both are chosen arbitrarily or according to some fancied symbolism, and employed in closely parallel ways. There is, in short, no decided boundary between religion and magic.

The task remains, notwithstanding, of defining the words for the purposes of the following pages. It is hopeless to attempt to harmonize the definitions we have considered. Whatever definition we adopt, it is clear that we cannot so express it as to confine religion within its own bounds, or to outlaw magic from the territory occupied by its rival. Yet a working definition is needed. In framing it regard ought to be paid to the ordinary meaning of the words: the definition must not be arbitrary.

Now the word Magic, by the usage of centuries, is concerned not so much with aim or tendency as with method. It conveys the notion of power, by whatsoever means acquired, wielded by the magician as his own, and not as that of a higher being whose coöperation is only obtained by supplication and self-abasement. Supplication, self-abasement, flattery are the religious means of winning the help of divinities. Where higher beings, whether called gods or devils, or by the more ambiguous title of spirits, are invoked by spell, compliance with the call is not dependent on their goodwill; the command is irresistible; and the procedure is magical. Sacrifice is utilized in both procedures; but it has a very different value in the one and the other. In the one it operates as a communion with the divinity, as a gift to {87} win favour which he is by no means bound to grant, or as an atonement for wrong. In the other it is a condition on the fulfilment of which the desire of him who offers it is accomplished, inevitably and by compulsion. In such a case he who offers the sacrifice is not a worshipper; he is a master of the beings to whom it is offered. True, they are sometimes gods. In the religion of the Hindus “prayers, penances, and sacrifices are supposed to possess an inherent and actual value, in no degree depending upon the disposition or motive of the person who performs them. They are drafts upon Heaven, for which the Gods cannot refuse payment. The worst men, bent upon the worst designs, have in this manner obtained power which has made them formidable to the Supreme Deities themselves.”[87.1] Thus has Southey succinctly stated the belief on which his poem of _The Curse of Kehama_ is built. Here by _prayers_ are meant liturgical _formulæ_, which everywhere tend to degenerate into magical spells. Penances are in the nature of sacrifices. Or they are taboos that preserve and enhance the force and influence of the suppliant. Both alike are a magical process, in the sense in which the word Magic is generally employed. The constraining power of sacrifices was also a tenet of Egyptian religion, at all events in its last ages.[87.2] Have analogous beliefs in the magical powers of a rite even yet disappeared from Christianity?

This then is the sense in which I venture to think the words Magic and Magical should be employed. It is based upon their general, if somewhat vague, usage; and it is therefore intelligible to the ordinary reader without recourse to a special definition. It is substantially that of Professor Frazer, save that it affirms nothing concerning {88} the origin of the power active in magical practices: it simply takes them as they are--again an undeniable convenience. It follows that for our purpose Religion will be confined to cultual systems, whose objects, so far as they are personal, are endowed with free will, are to be approached with true worship, and may or may not grant the prayers of their suppliants. Here also we have common usage on our side, with all its advantages. In this use of the word Religion, where the object is impersonal, or is but vaguely personal, it is none the less treated with reverence and submission, as something transcending man; it is the object of an emotional attitude, actively directed towards it. The object thus, even where it is not personal, tends to become so. Buddhism, in its original form, and similar religions are the product of comparatively high civilizations. The puritan severity of their primitive thought and practice was speedily relaxed; they acquired personal gods, and thus liberated themselves from a rule of life based upon philosophical considerations and the effort to escape without the aid of the higher personalities, of which they despaired, from the evils by which they felt themselves oppressed. In the lower civilizations, as we have seen, no sooner is an impersonal power conceived as acting than it assumes personal characteristics. When once the attention is concentrated upon any manifestation of it, these characteristics, originally vague, are likely to be emphasized, and may grow into true personalities. In magic, on the other hand, the impersonal power does not so readily become thus transformed, because the attention fastens on the personal agent, the magician, rather than on the power by which he operates.

When all is said, however, religion is (ideally, at least) social--that is to say, moral--in its aims and tendencies, {89} whereas magic lends itself to individualist aims. Religion binds the society together by raising the individual above himself, and teaching him to subordinate his desires and actions to the general good; magic has no compunction in assisting to carry out the wishes of the individual, though they may be contrary to the interests of the society as a whole. To that extent it is disruptive, antisocial, immoral; and when thus applied it may be described as Black, or Evil, or Hostile Magic. Here perhaps we find the origin of the opposition between them. So far from religion and magic having been originally hostile, the further we go back into savage life, and presumably, therefore, towards primitive humanity, the more we find them interwoven, indistinguishable. It is only in the advance of civilization, and the consequent evolution of religion and of magic that they become conscious of mutual hostility. When once the separation had begun it would tend to widen. Certain methods and means would be regarded as proper to the one, certain other methods and means as proper to the other, albeit neither of them, not even the highest known and recognized form of religion, has hitherto been able to shake itself entirely free from the methods of the other. This is not incompatible with increasing hostility. The loftier the claims of religion become, the closer its relations with the profoundest thought of mankind, the more awful the sanctions it invokes, the more inevitable, the more irreconcilable the hostility becomes. Family quarrels are ever the bitterest.

III. Development

The discussion has led to some anticipation of the argument. We turn back again to the personal potentiality.

{90}

He for whom the world is full of personal beings and hardly anything else--a universe of objects interpreted in the terms of conscious personality and projected on a background of the Unknown with all its possibilities--he for whom each of those objects, human and non-human, living and not-living, is invested in a greater or less degree with _orenda_, will naturally and instinctively on the one hand avail himself of his own _orenda_, and on the other hand will dread and endeavour to turn to account the _orenda_ of others. But this very endeavour to turn others’ _orenda_ to account is an exercise by prayer or compulsion of his own. I can see no satisfactory evidence that early man consciously entertained any great faith in the order and uniformity of nature. Automatically, no doubt, he assumed that night would follow day and day night, that the winter would follow the summer or the dry season the wet, that the trees would blossom in the spring or after the rains set in, as he had been accustomed to see them. But that was not the result of reflection; it was not an act of faith. So things had always been, and he could not conceive any different course. It was not part of his mental furniture; it was no acquisition of reasoning. It was the very framework of his mind. When he began to reflect he referred these phenomena to the same cause to which he referred his own acts, and the more uncertain and capricious acts of other living beings--to personal will and _orenda_. Even if he had risen to the large conception of the Siouan _wakonda_, that impersonal force must, as we have seen, clothe itself with personality in order to operate. Immediately and for practical purposes the personal will and _orenda_ of himself or some other object were the fount of all causation. They impelled and directed all actions, all means, and were responsible for all effects. If he took aim at his {91} enemy and flung his spear, or whatever primitive weapon served the same purpose; if it hit the man, and he fell; he might witness the result, but the mere mechanical causation, however inevitable in its action, would be the last thing he would think about. Conscious of his own will, of his own effort, of the words, perhaps, with which he had accompanied and directed the spear, he would attribute the result to such causes as these. His own _orenda_ felt in his passion, his will, his effort, and displayed in his acts and words, the _orenda_ of the spear, either inherent in itself, conceived as a personal being, or conferred by its maker, and manifested in the keenness of its point, the precision and the force with which it flies to its work and inflicts the deadly wound--these would be to him the true causes of his enemy’s fall. His _orenda_ is mightier than his enemy’s and overcomes it. So, when the enemy is absent and he cannot visibly reach him, his _orenda_ may yet suffice to accomplish the desired injury. By a psychological process which Dr Marett has subtly analysed,[91.1] he is led to perform in pantomime all the acts of a murder in the absence of the victim, either silently, or to the accompaniment of a chant, or of spoken words. His foe, who is as convinced as himself of the power of such a performance, if it come to his knowledge, falls a victim to the terror it inspires, unless he can call in the aid of some other person, objective or imaginary, whose _orenda_ is more powerful still. Nor would the belief lack vindication even in the case of the victim’s ignorance; for any chance misfortune or sickness would be put down to a hostile _orenda_; and if he did escape, it would be due to his own superior _orenda_.

Thus what we generally call magic or witchcraft is {92} primarily an application of _orenda_. By his _orenda_ a man bewitches his enemy (or, for a consideration, someone else’s enemy), causes rain or sunshine, raises and protects the crops, gains success in hunting, divines the cause of sickness and cures it, raises the dead, spells out the future. His incantations, his gestures, his apparatus--whether of plants, stones, animal products, magical drawings, or whatever else it may be--would be of no avail without this. In Central Australia the Arunta magician arms his “pointing bone” with _arungquiltha_. In Central Africa the Murundi impregnates his magical implements with evil influence by means of his imprecations, his incantations, and his evocation of spirits. That is, he puts into them his _orenda_ or the _mana_ of the spirits: until then they are absolutely powerless and indifferent.[92.1] This influence, this _orenda_, _mana_, or _arungquiltha_, is the nexus--the copula, as it has been called--which links the subject, the magician, to the object, the result.

But man is not the only being who possesses _orenda_. The _orenda_ of his quarry sometimes foils his own. The cicada chirping in the fields ripens the maize for the Iroquois; the _orenda_ of the rabbit controls the snow and fixes the depth to which it must fall. The awful mountain, the treacherous sea, those mighty beings who command the winds, who send forth the storm, who rule in the darkness and mystery of the forest, possess an _orenda_ surpassing man’s. It is useless to pit his _orenda_ against theirs. Therefore he must adopt a different course. He must lay down his _orenda_ and submit it to theirs. This is the literal meaning of the Iroquoian phrase which signifies in modern usage “He habitually prays.”[92.2] He must take such a course as he would to {93} obtain assistance from a human being (say, a powerful chief), or to conciliate an enemy. By gift, by abasement, by abstinence, by self-torture, by cajolery he must win this powerful _orenda_ to his side. Of these efforts abstinence and abasement are negative forms of propitiation. They are perhaps the earliest forms. If our reports be complete (on which we may have our doubts), abstinence is the only form used among the Andaman Islanders, where belief is said to outrun active worship.[93.1] In any case a taboo for propitiatory purposes is very early and very persistent. Not without insight does the poet tell us that Caliban

“Will let those quails fly, will not eat this month One little mess of whelks, so he may ’scape.”

And the modern European has still his Lent, and his Ember Days and Fridays throughout the year. Such abstinence is the laying down and submission of the _orenda_ to those of mightier beings. On the other hand, gift, prayer, cajolery are, properly speaking, an active exercise of _orenda_. The relation of spell and incantation to prayer has already been alluded to. They are often indistinguishable: they shade into one another by the finest gradations. Gifts are not mere self-deprivation. They must be accompanied by rites more or less elaborate, to render them acceptable to the lofty beings for whom they are intended. Or they are part of a bargain; they are the performance on the suppliant’s side which demands a corresponding return on the side of the god. More than one comparatively civilized people has held that sacrifices properly performed not merely incline but compel the gods to grant what their worshipper desires. Gesture-language plays a large part in savage life. A {94} ceremony such as those familiar to us in sympathetic magic--to take only one instance, the sticking of pins into a waxen figure--frequently is, to a large extent, gesture-language: it helps to suggest to the supernatural personages of whose _orenda_ the magician desires to make use exactly what is wanted. It is more than this, of course. It is in part the make-believe which is a relief to overcharged feelings; in part it is the means by which the _orenda_ is conveyed to the object intended to be affected. The concomitant words that form part of the ceremony emphasize the desire. They fill and strengthen the instrument with the _orenda_ of the performer, or of the supernatural personage invoked or compelled to assist; they direct the instrument, considered as a personal being, in the service it is required to fulfil; or they allure, entreat, or command the object at which the rite is aimed.

If the view here taken be accurate, the essential opposition between magic and religion disappears. Nor am I greatly concerned to decide whether of the two developed the earlier. Their origin is the same; they grow from one root. Nay, I should hardly be wrong if I changed the metaphor and said: magic and religion are the two faces of one medal. From the lowest stage of culture to the highest we find them inseparable. Gods were not invented because man proved unequal to the strain of arranging the affairs of the universe by himself; nor has the age of religion been everywhere preceded by the age of magic. “By whatever name it is called,” says Dr Codrington, speaking of the Melanesian _mana_, “it is the belief in this supernatural power and in the efficacy of the various means by which spirits and ghosts can be induced to exercise it for the benefit of men that is the foundation of the rites and practices which can be called religious: and it is from the same belief that everything {95} which may be called magic and witchcraft draws its origin. Wizards, doctors, weather-mongers, prophets, diviners, dreamers, all alike, everywhere in the islands, work by this power. There are many of these who may be said to exercise their art as a profession; they get their property and influence in this way. Every considerable village or settlement is sure to have someone who can control the weather and the waves, someone who knows how to treat sickness, someone who can work mischief with various charms. There may be one whose skill extends to all these branches; but generally one man knows how to do one thing and one another. This various knowledge is handed down from father to son, from uncle to sister’s son [for in many of these islands descent is still reckoned exclusively through the mother], in the same way as is the knowledge of rites and methods of sacrifice and prayer; and very often the same man who knows the sacrifice knows also the making of the weather and of charms for many purposes besides. But as there is no order of priests, there is also no order of magicians or medicine-men. Almost every man of consideration knows how to approach some ghost or spirit, and has some secret of occult practices. Knowledge of either kind can be bought, if the possessor chooses to impart it to any other than the heirs of whatever he has besides.”[95.1]

Here we see, as yet undistinguished, the beginnings of the professional magician and the professional priest. Roughly and provisionally it may be said that the professional magician is he who in the course of the evolution of society, by birth, by purchase, or by study and practice in the conventional methods, has acquired the most powerful _orenda_. Similarly, the professional {96} priest is he who in these ways, or by prayer and fasting, has obtained the favour of the imaginary personages believed to influence or control the affairs of men--who has, in a word, possessed himself of their _orenda_. The union of these two professions in one person is not adventitious; it is probably fundamental; it is at least so general that in describing the society of savages and peoples in low stages of culture observers are often at a loss whether to call their functionaries priests or wizards, exorcists or medicine-men. Consequently, many anthropological writers use the word _shaman_, borrowed from the Tunguz, a tribe of South-Eastern Siberia, and including all four meanings. For in that condition of society the functions of priest and sorcerer and medicine-man are, as Professor Frazer says, “not yet differentiated from each other.” That could not be until, in the course of evolution, religion became severed from magic. Yet it has never become so wholly severed that the primitive connection may not be traced. Priests have become organized into a separate order. Triumphant religions have proscribed the conquered faiths, and have repudiated their practices as magical. Magic has thus become a term of opprobrium. The conquered faiths under repression have carried on their religious worship mixed with magical rites and tending more and more to be degraded, yet never losing all religious elements. Even the magic of the Middle Ages and later, in Europe, if we may trust the confessions of the judicial victims themselves, was mingled with the worship of a being in whom they recognized the devil, perhaps the last avatar of a heathen god; and witchcraft was one of the commonest charges against heretics. On the other hand, not even the highest religions have been able to free themselves wholly from rites strictly parallel to those {97} characterized as magical, by which their followers have striven to compass union with the objects of worship, to avail themselves of the _orenda_ of these objects, to locate it in their own persons or in the images and implements of their cult, to intensify their own _orenda_, and to exercise it for the benefit, spiritual, corporal or pecuniary, of themselves and others.