Early History
Until a few centuries ago, most people lived in what they considered a magical universe, and evidence of the practice of magic is found as far back as human prehistory. Among the earliest traces of magic practice are paintings found in the European caves of the middle Paleolithic period. These belong to the last interglacial period of the Pleistocene epoch, named the Aurignacian after the cave dwellers of Aurignac (southern France), whose skeletons, artifacts, and drawings link them with the Bushmen of South Africa.
Until a few centuries ago, most people lived in what they considered a magical universe, and evidence of the practice of magic is found as far back as human prehistory. Among the earliest traces of magic practice are paintings found in the European caves of the middle Paleolithic period. These belong to the last interglacial period of the Pleistocene epoch, named the Aurignacian after the cave dwellers of Aurignac (southern France), whose skeletons, artifacts, and drawings link them with the Bushmen of South Africa.
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| Early History |
In the cave of Gargas, near Bagnères de Luchon, there are, in addition to spirited and realistic drawings of animals, numerous imprints of human hands in various stages of mutilation.
Some hands were apparently first smeared with a sticky substance and then pressed onto the rock; others were held in position to be dusted around with red ocher or black pigment.
Most of the imprinted hands have mutilated fingers; in some cases the first and second joints of one or more fingers are missing; in others only the stumps of all fingers remain.
A close study of the hand imprints shows that they are not those of lepers. There can be little doubt that the joints were removed for a specific purpose; on this point there is general agreement among anthropologists.
A clue to the mystery is provided by a similar custom among the Bushmen. G. W. Stow, in his book The Native Races of South Africa (1905), refers to this strange form of sacrifice. He once came into contact with a number of Bushmen who ‘‘had all lost
the first joint of the little finger,’’ which had been removed with a ‘‘stone knife’’ for the purpose of ensuring a safe journey to the spirit world. Another writer told of an old Bushman woman whose little fingers of both hands had been mutilated, threejoints in all having been removed. She explained that each joint had been sacrificed to express her sorrow as each one of three daughters died.
In his Report on the Northwestern Tribes of the Dominion of Canada (1889), Franz Boas gives evidence of the custom among these peoples. When many deaths resulted from disease, the Canadian Indians sacrificed the joints of their little fingers in order to (they explained) ‘‘cut off the deaths.’’
Among the Indian Madigas (Telugu pariahs), the evil eye was averted by sacrificers who dipped their hands in the blood of goats or sheep and impressed them on either side of a house door. This custom was also known to the Brahmans of India.
Impressions of hands were also occasionally seen on the walls of Muslim mosques in India. As among the northwest Canadian tribes, the hand ceremony was most frequently practiced in India when epidemics took a heavy toll of lives. The Bushmen also removed finger joints when stricken with sickness.
In Australia, where during initiation ceremonies the young Aborigine men had teeth knocked out and bodies scarred, the women of some tribes mutilated the little fingers
of daughters in order to influence their future lives.
Apparently the finger-chopping customs of Paleolithic times had a magical significance. On some of the paintings in the Aurignacian caves appear symbols that suggest the slaying and butchering of animals. Other symbols are enigmatic. Of special interest are the figures of animal-headed demons, some with hands upraised in the Egyptian posture of adoration; others posed like the animal-headed dancing gods of the Bushmen.
In the Marsonlas Paleolithic cave, there are humanlike faces of angry demons with staring eyes and monstrous noses. In the Spanish Cave at Cogul, several figures of women wearing halflength skirts and shoulder shawls are represented dancing around a nude male. These females so closely resemble those of Bushman paintings that they might, if not for their location, be credited to this interesting people. Religious dances among the Bushman tribes were associated with marriage, birth, and burial ceremonies; they were also performed to exorcise demons in cases of sickness. ‘‘Dances are to us what prayers are to you,’’ an elderly Bushman once informed a European.
Whether the cave drawings and wood, bone, and ivory carvings of the Magdalenian or late Paleolithic period at the close of the last ice age are related to magic is a question on which there is no general agreement. It is significant, however, that several carved ornaments bearing animal figures or enigmatic symbols are perforated as if worn as charms. On a piece of horn found at Lorthet, Hautes-Pyrénées, are beautiful, incised drawings of reindeer and salmon, above which appear mystical symbols. An ape-like demon carved on bone was found at Mas d’Azil. Etched on a reindeer horn from Laugerie Basse is a prostrate man with a tail, creeping on all fours toward a grazing bison.
These artifacts strengthen the theory that late Paleolithic art had its origin in magic beliefs and practices—that hunters carved on the handles of weapons and implements, or scratched on cave walls, the images of the animals they desired to capture—sometimes with the secured cooperation of demons and sometimes with the aid of magic spells.
A highly developed magic system existed in ancient Egypt, as in Babylonian (see Semites) and other early cultures. From these cultures the medieval European system of magic is believed to have evolved. Greece and Rome also possessed distinct magic systems that were integrated into their religious practice and thus, like the Egyptian and Babylonian rituals, were preserves of the priesthood.
Magic in early Europe was integral to the various religious systems that prevailed throughout that continent and survived into the Middle Ages as witchcraft. Christians regarded the practice of magic, at least the popular forms practiced in the Pagan culture competing with their religion, as foreign to the spirit of their faith. Thus the Thirty-Sixth Canon of the Ecumenical Council held at Laodicea in 364 C.E. forbade clerks and priests to become magicians, enchanters, mathematicians, or astrologers. It ordered, moreover, that the church should expel those who employed ligatures or phylacteries, because, it said, phylacteries were the prisons of the soul. The Fourth Canon of the Council of Oxia in 525 C.E. prohibited the consultation of sorcerers, augurs, and diviners, and condemned divinations made with wood or bread, while the Sixteenth Canon of the Council of Constantinople in 692 C.E. excommunicated for a period of six years diviners and those who had recourse to them. The prohibition was repeated by the Council of Rome in 721. The Forty-Second Canon of the Council of Tours in 613 said priests should teach people the inefficacy of magic to restore the health of men or animals, and later councils endorsed the church’s earlier views.
Some hands were apparently first smeared with a sticky substance and then pressed onto the rock; others were held in position to be dusted around with red ocher or black pigment.
Most of the imprinted hands have mutilated fingers; in some cases the first and second joints of one or more fingers are missing; in others only the stumps of all fingers remain.
A close study of the hand imprints shows that they are not those of lepers. There can be little doubt that the joints were removed for a specific purpose; on this point there is general agreement among anthropologists.
A clue to the mystery is provided by a similar custom among the Bushmen. G. W. Stow, in his book The Native Races of South Africa (1905), refers to this strange form of sacrifice. He once came into contact with a number of Bushmen who ‘‘had all lost
the first joint of the little finger,’’ which had been removed with a ‘‘stone knife’’ for the purpose of ensuring a safe journey to the spirit world. Another writer told of an old Bushman woman whose little fingers of both hands had been mutilated, threejoints in all having been removed. She explained that each joint had been sacrificed to express her sorrow as each one of three daughters died.
In his Report on the Northwestern Tribes of the Dominion of Canada (1889), Franz Boas gives evidence of the custom among these peoples. When many deaths resulted from disease, the Canadian Indians sacrificed the joints of their little fingers in order to (they explained) ‘‘cut off the deaths.’’
Among the Indian Madigas (Telugu pariahs), the evil eye was averted by sacrificers who dipped their hands in the blood of goats or sheep and impressed them on either side of a house door. This custom was also known to the Brahmans of India.
Impressions of hands were also occasionally seen on the walls of Muslim mosques in India. As among the northwest Canadian tribes, the hand ceremony was most frequently practiced in India when epidemics took a heavy toll of lives. The Bushmen also removed finger joints when stricken with sickness.
In Australia, where during initiation ceremonies the young Aborigine men had teeth knocked out and bodies scarred, the women of some tribes mutilated the little fingers
of daughters in order to influence their future lives.
Apparently the finger-chopping customs of Paleolithic times had a magical significance. On some of the paintings in the Aurignacian caves appear symbols that suggest the slaying and butchering of animals. Other symbols are enigmatic. Of special interest are the figures of animal-headed demons, some with hands upraised in the Egyptian posture of adoration; others posed like the animal-headed dancing gods of the Bushmen.
In the Marsonlas Paleolithic cave, there are humanlike faces of angry demons with staring eyes and monstrous noses. In the Spanish Cave at Cogul, several figures of women wearing halflength skirts and shoulder shawls are represented dancing around a nude male. These females so closely resemble those of Bushman paintings that they might, if not for their location, be credited to this interesting people. Religious dances among the Bushman tribes were associated with marriage, birth, and burial ceremonies; they were also performed to exorcise demons in cases of sickness. ‘‘Dances are to us what prayers are to you,’’ an elderly Bushman once informed a European.
Whether the cave drawings and wood, bone, and ivory carvings of the Magdalenian or late Paleolithic period at the close of the last ice age are related to magic is a question on which there is no general agreement. It is significant, however, that several carved ornaments bearing animal figures or enigmatic symbols are perforated as if worn as charms. On a piece of horn found at Lorthet, Hautes-Pyrénées, are beautiful, incised drawings of reindeer and salmon, above which appear mystical symbols. An ape-like demon carved on bone was found at Mas d’Azil. Etched on a reindeer horn from Laugerie Basse is a prostrate man with a tail, creeping on all fours toward a grazing bison.
These artifacts strengthen the theory that late Paleolithic art had its origin in magic beliefs and practices—that hunters carved on the handles of weapons and implements, or scratched on cave walls, the images of the animals they desired to capture—sometimes with the secured cooperation of demons and sometimes with the aid of magic spells.
A highly developed magic system existed in ancient Egypt, as in Babylonian (see Semites) and other early cultures. From these cultures the medieval European system of magic is believed to have evolved. Greece and Rome also possessed distinct magic systems that were integrated into their religious practice and thus, like the Egyptian and Babylonian rituals, were preserves of the priesthood.
Magic in early Europe was integral to the various religious systems that prevailed throughout that continent and survived into the Middle Ages as witchcraft. Christians regarded the practice of magic, at least the popular forms practiced in the Pagan culture competing with their religion, as foreign to the spirit of their faith. Thus the Thirty-Sixth Canon of the Ecumenical Council held at Laodicea in 364 C.E. forbade clerks and priests to become magicians, enchanters, mathematicians, or astrologers. It ordered, moreover, that the church should expel those who employed ligatures or phylacteries, because, it said, phylacteries were the prisons of the soul. The Fourth Canon of the Council of Oxia in 525 C.E. prohibited the consultation of sorcerers, augurs, and diviners, and condemned divinations made with wood or bread, while the Sixteenth Canon of the Council of Constantinople in 692 C.E. excommunicated for a period of six years diviners and those who had recourse to them. The prohibition was repeated by the Council of Rome in 721. The Forty-Second Canon of the Council of Tours in 613 said priests should teach people the inefficacy of magic to restore the health of men or animals, and later councils endorsed the church’s earlier views.
