The study of the texts and formulas of primitive magic
reveals that there are three typical elements associated with the
belief in magical efficiency. There are, first, the phonetic effects,
imitations of natural sounds, such as the whistling of the wind,
the growling of thunder, the roar of the sea, the voices of
various animals. These sounds symbolize certain phenomena and
thus are believed to produce them magically. Or else they
express certain emotional states associated with the desire which
is to be realized by means of the magic.
The second element, very conspicuous in primitive spells, is
the use of words which invoke, state, or command the desired
aim. Thus the sorcerer will mention all the symptoms of the
disease which he is inflicting, or in the lethal formula he will
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describe the end of his victim. In healing magic the wizard will
give word-pictures of perfect health and bodily strength. In
economic magic the growing of plants, the approach of animals,
the arrival of fish in shoals are depicted. Or again the magician
uses words and sentences which express the emotion under the
stress of which he works his magic, and the action which gives
expression to this emotion. The sorcerer in tones of fury will
have to repeat such verbs as "I break—I twist—I burn—I
destroy," enumerating with each of them the various parts of
the body and internal organs of his victim. In all this we see that
the spells are built very much on the same pattern as the rites
and the words selected for the same reasons as the substances
of magic.
Thirdly there is an element in almost every spell to which
there is no counterpart in ritual. I mean the mythological
allusions, the references to ancestors and culture heroes from
whom this magic has been received. And that brings us to perhaps
the most important point in the subject, to the traditional
setting of magic.
2. The Tradition of Magic
Tradition, which, as we have several times insisted, reigns
supreme in primitive civilization, gathers in great abundance
round magical ritual and cult. In the case of any important
magic we invariably find the story accounting for its existence.
Such a story tells when and where it entered the possession of
man, how it became the property of a local group or of a family
or clan. But such a story is not the story of its origins. Magic
never "originated," it never has been made or invented. All
magic simply "was" from the beginning an essential adjunct of
all such things and processes as vitally interest man and yet
elude his normal rational efforts. The spell, the rite, and the
thing which they govern are coeval.
Thus, in Central Australia, all magic existed and has been
inherited from the alcheringa times, when it came about like
everything else. In Melanesia all magic comes from a time
when humanity lived underground and when magic was a
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natural knowledge of ancestral man. In higher societies magic
is often derived from spirits and demons, but even these, as a
rule, originally received and did not invent it. Thus the belief
in the primeval natural existence of magic is universal. As its
counterpart we find the conviction that only by an absolutely
unmodified immaculate transmission does magic retain its efficiency.
The slightest alteration from the original pattern would
be fatal. There is, then, the idea that between the object and
its magic there exists an essential nexus. Magic is the quality of
the thing, or rather, of the relation between man and the thing,
for though never man-made it is always made for man. In all
tradition, in all mythology, magic is always found in the possession
of man and through the knowledge of man or man-like
being. It implies the performing magician quite as much the
thing to be charmed and the means of charming. It is part of
the original endowment of primeval humanity, of the mura-mura
or alcheringa of Australia, of the subterrestrial humanity of
Melanesia, of the people of the magical Golden Age all the
world over.
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