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| Theories Regarding the Nature of Magic |
Theories Regarding the Nature of Magic
According to Sir James George Frazer, author of The Golden Bough (1890), magic and religion are one and the same thing, or at least are so closely allied as to be almost identical.
Frazer’s anthropologist successors in the early twentieth century, most notably Malinowski and Marcel Mauss, regarded magic as entirely distinct from religion. Magic possessed certain well-marked attributes that could be traced to mental processes differing from those from which the religious idea springs, they said. The two had become fused by the superimposition of religious rites upon magic practice.
It has also been said that religion consists of an appeal to the gods, whereas magic is the attempt to force their compliance.
Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss, in Greatness and Decline of the Celts (1934), argue that magic is essentially traditional. Holding that the primitive mind is markedly unoriginal, they explain magic as an art that did not exhibit frequent changes among primitive peoples, and was fixed by its own laws. Religion, they claim, was official and organized; magic, prohibited and secret.
Frazer believed all magic was based on the law of sympathy— the assumption that things act on one another at a distance because of their being secretly linked by invisible bonds.
According to Sir James George Frazer, author of The Golden Bough (1890), magic and religion are one and the same thing, or at least are so closely allied as to be almost identical.
Frazer’s anthropologist successors in the early twentieth century, most notably Malinowski and Marcel Mauss, regarded magic as entirely distinct from religion. Magic possessed certain well-marked attributes that could be traced to mental processes differing from those from which the religious idea springs, they said. The two had become fused by the superimposition of religious rites upon magic practice.
It has also been said that religion consists of an appeal to the gods, whereas magic is the attempt to force their compliance.
Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss, in Greatness and Decline of the Celts (1934), argue that magic is essentially traditional. Holding that the primitive mind is markedly unoriginal, they explain magic as an art that did not exhibit frequent changes among primitive peoples, and was fixed by its own laws. Religion, they claim, was official and organized; magic, prohibited and secret.
Frazer believed all magic was based on the law of sympathy— the assumption that things act on one another at a distance because of their being secretly linked by invisible bonds.
He divided sympathetic magic into homeopathic magic and contagious magic. The first is imitative or mimetic and may be practiced by itself, but the second usually necessitates the application of the imitative principle. Well-known instances of mimetic magic are the forming of wax figures in the likeness of an enemy, which are then destroyed in the hope that he will perish. This belief persisted in European witchcraft into relatively modern times. Contagious magic can be seen in the primitive warrior’s anointing the weapon that caused a wound instead of the wound itself, believing that the blood on the weapon continues to feel part of the blood on the body. (See also Powder of Sympathy) L. Marillier divided magic into three classes: the magic of the word or act; the magic of the human being independent of rite or formula; and the magic that demands a person of special powers and the use of ritual. A. Lehmann believed magic to be a practice of superstition, founded in illusion.
