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MAGIC

A. Contagious Magic.

Hair, nail-pairings, etc. , scalp-lock , saliva , luck-ball , footprints , clothes , rag bushes and pin-wells , personal 'ornaments' , food , cannibalism , sympathetic relations between persons , couvade .

B. Homoeopathic Magic.

Plants , rain-making , wind-making , increase of plants , and of animals , luring animals to be caught , human effigies to injure or kill people .

Stones and metals , colour , bones, teeth, claws, etc. , lucky pig , amulets against the evil eye , luck-bone .

A. Public Magic.

B. Private Magic.

Folk-remedies , love-charms , nefarious magic .

Training of sorcerers and societies of magicians .

FETISHISM

May be any object , a symbolic charm with sympathetic properties , a sign or token representing an ideal notion or being , habitation of a spiritual being , vehicle for communication of a spirit , instrument by which spirit acts , possesses personality and will , may act by own will or by foreign spirit , spirit and material object can be dissociated , worshipped, sacrificed to, talked with , petted and ill-treated .

MAGIC

As knowledge increases, mankind learns more and more about the world and the processes of nature, but even at the present day the vast majority of white men possess only a rudimentary amount of this knowledge; indeed, most so-called educated people have very vague ideas concerning the physical universe in which they live. Such being the case, it is not surprising that primitive peoples have very confused notions concerning these matters, and, as the result of false inductions concerning the causes of phenomena, they seek to accomplish ends by means that we recognise as inadequate. 'It is plain,' as Dr. Jevons points out , 'that as long as man is turned loose as it were amongst these innumerable possible causes with nothing to guide his choice, the chances against his making the right selection are considerable.' Further, 'no progress could be made in science until man had distinguished, at any rate roughly, possible from absolutely impossible effects , and had learned to dismiss from consideration the impossible. It might be expected that experience would suffice of itself to teach man this essential distinction, but the vast majority of the human race have not yet learned from experience that like does not necessarily produce like: four-fifths of mankind, probably, believe in sympathetic magic.'

The instances of sympathetic magic as Dr. Hirn points out are naturally divided into two main classes which, broadly speaking, correspond to the two types of association, contiguity and similarity, and as in psychology it is often difficult to decide whether a given associative process has its origin in a relation of contiguity or in one of similarity, so it is often an open question to which group a given superstition is to be assigned. We will start from the facts that are simpler and easier to explain.

A. Contagious Magic.

This belief explains why a magician, wishing to influence or act upon some particular individual, desires to obtain some portion of his body or something actually connected with him. A few hairs from the beard, a lock of hair, some nail-parings, a drop of blood from the nose which has fallen to the ground, and which has not been rendered impalpable by effacing it with the foot, are used by Basuto sorcerers , and indeed by workers of magic everywhere. A few of the examples collected by Mr. Hartland will suffice to demonstrate the universality of this belief. In some parts of England a girl forsaken by her lover is advised to get a lock of his hair and boil it; whilst it is simmering in the pot he will have no rest. In certain parts of Germany and Transylvania the clippings of the hair or nails, as well as broken pieces of the teeth, are buried beneath the elder tree which grows in the courtyard, or are burnt, or carefully hidden, for fear of witches. Patagonians burn the hairs brushed out from their heads, and all the parings of their nails for they believe that spells may be wrought upon them by any one who can obtain a piece of either.

The potency of the hair is shown in the beliefs about the long narrow beaded band which is used to tie up the hair of a Musquakie woman . This, though a talisman when first worn, becomes something infinitely more sacred and precious, being transfused with the essence of her soul; any one gaining possession of it has her for an abject slave if he keeps it, and kills her if he destroys it. A woman will go from a man she loves to a man she hates if he has contrived to possess himself of her hair-string; and a man will forsake wife and children for a witch who has touched his lips with her hair-string. The hair-string is made for a girl by her mother or grandmother and decorated with 'luck' patterns; it is also prayed over by the maker and a shaman. The scalp-lock ornament worn by the Musquakie men is kept with great care as it helps to protect the soul. As the tearing out of the scalp-lock makes the soul at its root the slave of the one obtaining it, so the possession of its ornament and shield, which has absorbed some of its essence, gives the possessor the ability to send the rightful owner brain fever and madness .

In the South Sea Islands it was necessary to the success of any sorcery to secure something connected with the body of the victim. Accordingly a spittoon was always carried by the confidential servant of a chief in the Hawaiian Islands to receive his expectorations, which were carefully buried every morning. The Tahitians used to burn or bury the hair they cut off, and every individual among them had his distinct basket for food. As Mr. Hartland points out , the custom, everywhere practised, of obliterating all trace of the saliva after spitting, doubtless originated in the desire to prevent the use of it for magical purposes, and the same desire led to the extreme cleanliness in the disposal of fouler excreta which is almost universally a characteristic of savages. Thus this belief has been one of the most beneficial of superstitions.

It is not essential that the object to be operated upon should have formed an actual part of a person, for something associated with that person, such as something habitually worn or used, is sufficient, or as in the case of the luck-ball just cited, the association may be as remote as that between an author and a piece of the paper of a book he has published.

Earth from a man's footprints, on account of its close contact with the person, has acquired the virtues of a portion of his body. Widely spread in Germany is the belief that if a sod whereon a man has trodden--all the better if with the naked foot--be taken up and dried behind the hearth or oven, he will parch up with it and languish, or his foot will be withered. He will be lamed, or even killed, by sticking his footprint with nails--coffin nails are the best--or broken glass ; but these are also the practices of Australian or other savages. To quote only one example from Australia , sharp fragments of quartz, glass, bone, or charcoal are buried in the footprints of the victim or in the mark made in the ground by his reclining body. They are supposed to enter the victim, and rheumatic affections are very frequently attributed to them.

Clothes, from their intimate association with the person, have naturally attained a prominent place among the instruments of witchcraft. In Germany and Denmark no portion of a survivor's clothing must on any account be put upon a corpse, else the owner will languish away as it moulders in the grave. To hang rags from the clothing of a dead man upon a vine is to render it barren. 'Probably,' as Mr. Hartland suggests, 'it is only a different interpretation of the same belief which alike in Christian, in Mohammedan, and in Buddhist lands has led to the ascription of marvellous powers to the clothes and other relics of departed saints. The divine power which was immanent in these personages during life attaches not merely to every portion of their bodies but to every shred of their apparel' . An illustrative parallel can be taken from the Pacific. The red feathers which adorned the sacred girdle worn by the Tahitian kings were taken from the images of the gods. The girdle 'thus became sacred, even as the person of the gods, the feathers being supposed to retain all the dreadful attributes of power and vengeance which the idols possessed, and with which it was designed to endow the king.' So potent was it that Mr. Ellis says it 'not only raised him to the highest earthly station, but identified him with their gods.'

It is conceivable, as Mr. Hartland suggests , that uneducated folk might argue thus: if an article of my clothing in a witch's hands may cause me to suffer, the same article in contact with a beneficent power may relieve pain, restore me to health, or promote my general prosperity. Hence the practice of throwing pins into wells, of tying rags on bushes and trees, of driving nails into trees and stocks, of throwing stones and sticks on cairns, and the analogous practices throughout the world, suggest that they are to be interpreted as acts of ceremonial union with the spirit identified with well, tree, stock, or cairn . In the British Islands the sanctity of the well or bush was subsequently annexed by the missionaries who took up their abode beside them, and thus we find the wells or trees called after certain saints and the healing power attributed to the latter, whereas the holiness and efficacy of the wells were in the vast majority of cases, if not in all, pre-Christian .

Objects are worn or eaten so that by induction the individual may acquire their properties. Thus the Red Indian hunter wears ornaments of the claws of the grizzly bear, that he may be endowed with its courage and ferocity, and the Tyrolese hunter still wears tufts of eagle's down in his hat, to gain the eagle's keen sight and courage. 'Look,' writes Casalis , 'at those strange objects hanging from the necks of our little black friends. There is a kite's foot in order that the poor child may escape misfortune with the swiftness of the kite in its flight. Another has the claw of a lion in order that his life may be as firmly secured against all danger as that of a lion; a third is adorned with the tarsus bone of a sheep, or an iron ring, that he may oppose to evil a resistance as firm as iron, or as that little compact bone without marrow which could not be crushed between two stones without difficulty.'

The eating of certain kinds of food, more especially of the flesh of animals, would similarly have a very potent effect; thus among the Dyaks , young men sometimes abstain from eating the flesh of deer, lest they should become timid. The Abipones of Paraguay 'detest the thought of eating hens, eggs, sheep, fish, or tortoises, imagining that these tender kinds of food engender sloth and languor in their bodies and cowardice in their minds. On the other hand they eagerly devour the flesh of the tiger , bull, stag, boar, anta and tamandua , having an idea that, from continually feeding on these animals, their strength, boldness, and courage are increased.'

B. Homoeopathic Magic.

It would be easy to give a large number of examples to illustrate homoeopathic magic, but a few will suffice. Thus the Euphrasia, or eye-bright, was, and is, supposed to be good for the eyes, on the strength of a black pupil-like spot in its corolla . The yellow turmeric, or saffron, cured jaundice. The roots of roses or their slips, with their knots removed and set amongst broom, will bring forth yellow roses .

When it was wished to cause rain to fall in Murray Island, Torres Straits, the rain-maker scooped a hole in the ground, and lined it with leaves and placed in it a rude stone image of a man which had previously been anointed with oil and rubbed with scented grass; then he poured the decoction of minced leaves of various plants mixed with water over the image--the image being so laid in the hole as to point to the quarter from which the rain was expected. Earth was heaped over the image and leaves and shells placed on the mound, and all the while the rain-maker muttered an incantation in a low sepulchral tone. Four large screens composed of plaited coco-nut leaves were placed at the head, foot, and sides of the grave to represent clouds; on the upper part of each was fastened a blackened oblong of vegetable cloth to mimic a black thunder-cloud, and coco-nut leaves, with their leaflets pointing downwards, were suspended close by to represent rain. A torch was ignited and waved lengthwise over the grave; the smoke represented clouds and the flames mimicked lightning, and a bamboo clapper was sounded to imitate thunder.

The rain was supposed to come when the decoction round the image was rotten. The incantation consisted of enumerating various aspects of certain forms of clouds. Rain could be made in this manner only by one section of the community, and amongst these one or two men had a much greater reputation than the others .

This may be taken as an example of a typical rain-making ceremony, in which all the phenomena of a thunder shower are imitated.

If a native of Mabuiag, in Torres Straits, required rain he went to the rain-maker and asked him to make some. The latter might reply, 'You go and put some more thatch on your house and on mine too'; this was to keep out the forthcoming rain. The rain-maker painted the front of his body white, and the back black. This was explained by my informant thus: 'All along same as clouds, black behind, white he go first,' or he painted his body with black spots to make the clouds come separately; when they congregated, the rain fell. The rain-maker put 'medicine' in his right hand and waved it towards his body and chanted an incantation. To stop the rain the rain-maker put red paint on the crown of his head, to represent the shining sun, and ruddled his body all over. He then lay doubled up and was closely surrounded with three mats, so that no wind could penetrate to him. Finally he burnt some leaves on the sea-shore close to the water, on a rising tide; the smoke represented the clouds, and as it was dissipated so they disappeared, and as the encroaching sea washed away the ashes, so the clouds were scattered .

In the island of Muralug certain old men could raise a wind by very rapidly whirling a thin bull-roarer attached to a long string. More wind could be obtained by climbing to the top of a tree and performing there. In this case the noise made by the bull-roarer imitated that produced by a gale of wind .

Examples of the magical increase of plants are found in the 'yam stones' placed in their gardens by various Papuans, which by their rounded shape suggest the actual tubers .

As references are given on pp. 41-44 to magical practices for the increase of animals, further examples need not be added here, their object being to provide plenty of food for the community. It was for the same reason that images of fish, turtle, and dugong were made by the islanders of Torres Straits and taken with them when they went fishing, with the idea that the image lured the real animal to its destruction; and men of the dugong clan who were symbolically decorated made mimetic movements with a dead dugong to constrain others to come and be caught .

Many magical practices and beliefs are difficult to classify as either contagious or homoeopathic magic; they may even be a mixture of both. Such is the belief in the power of names or words, talismans and amulets, divination, and various practices of public and private magic. These will be dealt with under separate headings.

If power can be exerted over men by the use of their names, it is only reasonable to believe that spirits and deities can be similarly influenced. Torres Straits islanders believe that a local bogey or a spirit-girl can be summoned by being mentioned by name , as the witch of Endor brought up the spirit of Samuel. Dr. Frazer gives examples to show that people have believed that gods must keep their true names secret, lest other gods or even men should be able to conjure with them; even Ra, the great Egyptian god of the sun, declared that the name given him by his father and mother 'remained hidden in my body since my birth, that no magician might have magic power over me.' This probably was one reason why the real name of supreme Gods was known but to a chosen few; one instance will suffice. To the Mohammedans, Allah is but an epithet in place of the Most Great Name; for, according to a Moslem belief, the secret of the latter is committed to prophets and apostles alone. Another reason is that the utterance of these secret names gives tremendous power, for those who know the Most Great Name of God can, by pronouncing it, transport themselves from place to place at will, can kill the living, raise the dead to life, and work other miracles.

Even among such backward people as the Australians, certain of the medicine-men or sorcerers were bards who devoted their poetic faculties to the purposes of enchantment, such as the Bunjil-yenjin of the Kurnai, whose peculiar branch of magic was composing and singing potent love charms and the arrangement of marriages by elopement spells .

'Eat not the bread of him that hath an evil eye' is just as much a maxim to-day as it was in the time of Solomon, and Mr. Elworthy says in Naples, at the appearance of a person having this reputation, a cry of 'Jettatore!' is passed, and even in a crowded street it causes an instantaneous vanishing of everybody--a rush up entries, into shops, or elsewhere. Ever since the establishment of the religious orders, monks have had the special reputation of possessing the fatal influence. The last Pope but one, Pius the Ninth, was firmly believed to have had the evil eye. A Roman would candidly say: 'Nothing succeeds with anybody or anything when he wishes well to it. When he went to St. Agnese to hold a great festival, down went the floor, and the people were all smashed together. Then he visited the column to the Madonna in the Piazza di Spagna, and blessed it and the workmen; of course, one fell from the scaffold the same day and killed himself' .

The commonest of all ancient Egyptian amulets, except the scarab, was 'the Eye of Osiris,' as it is called by us. These mystic eyes were worn equally by the living and the dead as amulets; it being natural, from the associations of homoeopathic magic, that representations of the eye itself should have been considered potent amulets against its malign influence. All the peoples round the Mediterranean employed representations of eyes as amulets. In Syria and Cairo necklaces composed of flat glass eyes are sold to the present day, and eye-designs protect the clothes, horse trappings, and many of the objects of daily use of the Moors .

Plutarch declares that the objects that are fixed up to ward off witchcraft or fascination derive their efficacy from the fact that they act through the strangeness and ridiculousness of their forms, which fix the mischief-working eye upon themselves.

It was this firm belief, says Elworthy , which led to the design of those extremely grotesque figures, of which the ancient Romans were so fond; indeed, anything that was ridiculous or indecent was supposed to be a corrective to the harmful influence of fascination. Amulets which protect against this power are of three classes: Those the object of which was to attract upon themselves the harmful glance ; charms worn or carried secretly; and written words of Scripture, Koran, and other sacred writings, or cabalistic figures and formulae .

It would take too long to describe all the objects that are employed to counteract the evil eye in Italy alone. The following may be mentioned: fish, snakes, and various other animals, tigers' teeth, keys, a hunchback . A single pendent horn, whether of coral, shell, or metal is extremely common, as are miniature hands, these frequently have all the digits closed up except the index and little finger, which are fully extended. This is a potent gesture, and a Neapolitan's right hand is almost constantly in that position pointing downwards, just as the hand-charms are made to hang downwards, as a prophylactic against unknown or unsuspected attacks . Dr. Westermarck has recently given an illuminating description of the use and representations of the hand against the evil eye in Morocco.

Any object may be used in divination: thus in Europe, as in Torres Straits , a stick may be dropped to indicate a direction to be taken; or coins may be spun or dice thrown. Divination by means of skulls was common in Torres Straits ; in this case the spirit of the dead person was supposed to give the required advice. Haruspication, or divination by means of certain viscera, was largely employed by the Romans, and I have several times seen a pig's liver used in Borneo for the same purpose . In these instances the message, as indicated by the state of the particular viscus, was obtained from a deity. Other examples and varieties of divination are given by Tylor .

Magic may be employed for public purposes or for private ends. In the former case it is almost invariably for the public weal, in the latter it is most frequently nefarious.

A. Public Magic.

In other tribes to the north similar ceremonies exist, but they are less elaborate and sometimes of the simplest description. The headman of the white cockatoo totem group and his son spent the whole of one night 'singing' the cockatoo. In the Wara tribe on the shore of the Gulf of Carpentaria a man of the rain-group goes to a pool, and, taking care that no women or strangers are in sight, bends down over and 'sings' the water; then he takes some up in his hands, drinks it, and spits it out in various directions. After that he throws water all over himself, and after scattering some all round he returns quietly to his camp, and rain is supposed to follow . There is very little difference between this act and ordinary individual magic, the essential distinction being that the man in this case makes rain by virtue of rain being his totem, it being a function of human male members of the totem group to increase their totem.

When the totemic system falls into decay there seems to be a tendency for the old magical ceremonies which had for their purport the increase of the totem, to be performed by certain families, rather than by groups of men; this appears to be associated with the growth of property in land, so that in time the performance of certain ceremonies is restricted to a single man, who transmits the right to his son, and they alone of the community have this duty. There is nothing to distinguish men with these rights from ordinary sorcerers who practise definite departments of magic.

B. Private Magic.

Individuals frequently practise magic for private ends, of which the objects to be attained may be perfectly legitimate or even praiseworthy, but more frequently recourse is had to magical practices for harmful purposes.

The following account recently published by Mrs. J. Gunn is so characteristic that I quote it nearly verbatim. In North Australia any one can 'sing magic,' even lubras , but of course the wise old magic men do it best. It never fails with them, particularly if they 'sing' and point one of the special 'death-bones' or 'sacred stones' of the tribe. Generally a black fellow goes away quite by himself when he is 'singing magic,' but very occasionally a few men join together, as they did in the case of 'Goggle Eye.' When enough magic has been 'sung' into the bone, it is taken away to the camp, and very secretly pointed at the unconscious victim. The magic spirit of the bone runs into the man who is pointed at, and gradually kills him. Of course the man who has been 'sung' must be told somehow, or he will not get a fright and die. There are many ways of managing this; one very good way is to put the bone where he will be sure to find it, in his dilly-bag, or near his fire, or through the handle of his spear; but the man who leaves the bone about must, of course, be very careful to destroy his own tracks. 'Goggle Eye,' after he had found the bones lying about, knew exactly what was going to happen to him, and of course it did. His throat got very sore, and he grew so thin and weak that he could hardly stand. A man can be cured by magic men charming the 'bone' away again; but 'Goggle Eye' was old, and, what was worse, he was getting very cross, and too fond of ordering people about, so the black fellows thought it would be the best plan not to cure him, and a few more sneaked away into the bush and 'sang' some more bones, and pointed them at him to make quite sure about his dying. Poor old 'Goggle Eye' suffered dreadfully; no native would help him except his blood-brother, because they were afraid of the curse coming to them. Some said they would like to help, but that if they made 'Goggle Eye's' fire for him, their own would never burn again. Nobody could even carry his food to him. Soon after, at 'fowl sing out,' or cockcrow, he died.

Most forms of magic can be performed by anybody provided he knows what to do; but there are specialists in magic, who, by us, are variously termed medicine-men, magicians, sorcerers, wizards, witches, wise women, and the like. Their lore is transmitted orally to their disciples, who may or may not be their own children. Magical powers may be due to the mere accident of birth, as for example in the European belief in the therapeutic gifts of the seventh son of a seventh son. In some cases the sorcerer has to undergo a rigorous training, often being subjected to painful or loathsome ordeals; by these means the weaklings are eliminated, and those who persist have their character and fortitude strengthened, and they gain increased respect from their fellow-men. Further, in Australia and elsewhere, the medicine-man is not always a 'doctor'; he may be a 'rain-maker,' 'seer,' or 'spirit-medium,' or may practise some special form of magic.

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