Magic is not only human in its embodiment, but also in its
subject-matter: it refers principally to human activities and
states, hunting, gardening, fishing, trading, love-making, disease,
and death. It is not directed so much to nature as to man's
relation to nature and to the human activities which affect it.
Moreover, the effects of magic are usually conceived not as a
product of nature influenced by the charm, but as something
specially magical, something which nature cannot produce, but
only the power of magic. The graver forms of disease, love in
its passionate phases, the desire for a ceremonial exchange and
other similar manifestations in the human organism and mind,
are the direct product of the spell and rite. Magic is thus not
derived from an observation of nature or knowledge of its laws,
it is a primeval possession of man to be known only through
tradition and affirming man's autonomous power of creating
desired ends.
Thus, the force of magic is not a universal force residing
everywhere, flowing where it will or it is willed to. Magic is the
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one and only specific power, a force unique of its kind, residing
exclusively in man, let loose only by his magical art, gushing out
with his voice, conveyed by the casting forth of the rite.
It may be here mentioned that the human body, being the
receptacle of magic and the channel of its flow, must be submitted
to various conditions. Thus the magician has to keep all
sorts of taboos, or else the spell might be injured, especially as in
certain parts of the world, in Melanesia for instance, the spell
resides in the magician's belly, which is the seat of memory as
well as of food. When necessary it is summoned up to the
larynx, which is the seat of intelligence, and thence sent forth
by the voice, the main organ of the human mind. Thus, not
only is magic an essentially human possession, but it is literally
and actually enshrined in man and can be handed on only from
man to man, according to very strict rules of magical filiation,
initiation, and instruction. It is thus never conceived as a force
of nature, residing in things, acting independently of man, to be
found out and learned by him, by any of those proceedings by
which he gains his ordinary knowledge of nature.
3. Mana and the Virtue of Magic
The obvious result of this is that all the theories which lay
mana and similar conceptions at the basis of magic are pointing
altogether in the wrong direction. For if the virtue of magic is
exclusively localized in man, can be wielded by him only under
very special conditions and in a traditionally prescribed manner,
it certainly is not a force such as the one described by Dr.
Codrington: "This mana is not fixed in anything and can be
conveyed in almost anything." Mana also "acts in all ways for
good and evil . . . shows itself in physical force or in any kind
of power and excellence which a man possesses." Now it is clear
that this force as described by Codrington is almost the exact
opposite of the magical virtue as found embodied in the mythology
of savages, in their behavior, and in the structure of their
magical formulas. For the real virtue of magic, as I know it
from Melanesia, is fixed only in the spell and in its rite, and it
cannot be "conveyed in" anything, but can be conveyed only
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by its strictly defined procedure. It never acts "in all ways,"
but only in ways specified by tradition. It never shows itself in
physical force, while its effect upon the powers and excellences
of man are strictly limited and defined.
And again, the similar conception found among the North
American Indians cannot have anything to do with the specialized
concrete virtue of magic. For of the ivakan of the Dakota
we read "all life is wakan. So also is everything which exhibits
power, whether in action, as the winds and drifting clouds, or
in passive endurance, as the boulder by the wayside. . . . It embraces
all mystery, all secret power, all divinity." Of the orenda,
a word taken from the Iroquois, we are told: "This potence is
held to be the property of all things . . . the rocks, the waters,
the tides, the plants and the trees, the animals and man, the
wind and the storms, the clouds and the thunders and the lightnings
. . . by the inchoate mentality of man, it is regarded
as the efficient cause of all phenomena, all the activities of his
environment/*
After what has been established about the essence of magical
power, it hardly needs emphasizing that there is little in common
between the concepts of the mana type and the special virtue of
magical spell and rite. We have seen that the key-note of all
magical belief is the sharp distinction between the traditional
force of magic on the one hand and the other forces and powers
with which man and nature are endowed. The conceptions of
the wakan, orenda, and mana class which include all sorts of
forces and powers, besides that of magic, are simply an example
of an early generalization of a crude metaphysical concept such
as is found in several other savage words also, extremely important
for our knowledge of primitive mentality but, as far as our
present data go, opening only a problem as to the relation between
the early concepts of "force," "the supernatural," and "the
virtue of magic." It is impossible to decide, with the summary
information at our disposal, what is the primary meaning of
these compound concepts: that of physical force and that of
supernatural efficiency. In the American concepts the emphasis
seems to be on the former, in the Oceanic on the latter. What I
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want to make clear is that in all the attempts to understand
native mentality it is necessary to study and describe the types of
behavior first and to explain their vocabulary by their customs
and their life. There is no more fallacious guide of knowledge
than language, and in anthropology the "ontological argument"
is specially dangerous.
It was necessary to enter into this probem in detail, for the
theory of mana as the essence of primitive magic and religion
has been so brilliantly advocated and so recklessly handled that
it must be realized first that our knowledge of the mana, notably
in Melanesia, is somewhat contradictory, and especially that we
have hardly any data at all showing just how this conception
enters into religious or magical cult and belief.
One thing is certain: magic is not born of an abstract conception
of universal power, subsequently applied to concrete
^.ases. It has undoubtedly arisen independently in a nurobei of
actual situations. Each type of magic, born of its own situation
and of the emotional tension thereof, is due to the spontaneous
flow of ideas and the spontaneous reaction of man. It is the
uniformity of the mental process in each case which has led to
certain universal features of magic and to the general conceptions
which we find at the basis of man's magical thought and
behavior. It will be necessary to give now an analysis of the
situations of magic and the experiences which they provoke.
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