Magic and Religion. Lang Andrew
of witchcraft is as the sin of rebellion.' The idea which inspires this text probably is that a person who seeks to obtain his ends by witchcraft is rebelling against the deity or deities through whom alone these ends should be sought. Witchcraft is also an insult and injury to the official priests, who regard the witch as the surgeon regards the bone-setter, or as the geologist regards the 'dowser' or water-finder who uses the divining-rod.
Magic or witchcraft falls into two main classes. The former is magic of the sort used by people who think that things accidentally like each other influence each other. You find a stone shaped like a yam, and you sow it in the yam plot You find a stone like a duck, and expect to have good duck-shooting while you carry the stone about in a bag. In the same way the part influences the whole; you burn some of a man's hair, and so he catches a fever. Imitation works in the same manner; you imitate the emergence of grubs from the larvæ, and you expect grubs to emerge.
All magic of this kind is wrought by material objects, sticks, stones, hair, and so forth, which sometimes have been 'charmed' by songs chanted over them. Among the Arunta of Central Australia, in many respects a backward people, we do hear of an 'evil spirit' influencing the material object which has been charmed.49 We also hear of spirits which instruct men in medical magic. But, as a rule, the magic is materialistic. It really does produce effects, by suggestion: a man dies and a woman is won, if they know that magic is being worked to kill or woo.
The second sort of magic acts by spells which constrain spirits or gods to do the will of the magician. This magic involves itself in religion when the magical ceremonies are, so to speak, only symbolic prayers expressed in a kind of sign-language. But if the idea is to put constraint by spells on a god or spirit, then the intention is magical and rebellious. Though the official priest of a savage god may use magic in his appeal to that deity, he is not a wizard. It is the unofficial practitioner who is a witch, just as the unqualified medical practitioner is a quack. In the same way if a minister of the kirk was clairvoyant or second-sighted that was a proof of godliness and inspiration. But if a lay parishioner was second-sighted, he or she was in danger of the stake as a witch or wizard.
These, briefly stated, are the points of contrast and points of contact between magic and religion. The question has recently been raised by Mr. Frazer, in the new edition of his 'Golden Bough,' whether magic has not everywhere preceded religion. Have men not attempted to secure weather and everything else to their desire by magic, before they invented gods, and prayed to them for what magic, as they learned by experience, failed to provide'?
This question cannot be historically determined. If we find a race which has magic but no religion, we cannot be certain that it did not once possess a religion of which it has despaired. I once knew a man who, as a child, suffered from toothache. He prayed for relief: it did not come. He at once, about the age of eight, abandoned religion. What a child may do, in the way of despair of religion, a childlike race may do. Therefore, if we find a race with magic but without religion, we cannot scientifically say that the race has never possessed a religion. Thus the relative priority of religion or magic cannot be ascertained historically.
Again, all depends on our definition of religion, if we are to pursue a speculation rather airy and unbottomed on facts. Mr. Frazer defines religion as 'a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man which are believed to direct and control the course of nature and of human life.'50 I But clearly this definition does not include all that we usually mean by religion. If men believe in a potent being who originally made or manufactured the nature of things or most things (I am warned not to use the word 'creator'), that is an idea so far religious that it satisfies, by the figment of a supernatural agent, the speculative faculty. Clearly the belief in such a being is a germ whence may spring the ideas of duty towards, and an affection for, the being. Nobody can deny that these are religious ideas, though they do not appeal in Mr. Frazer's definition. The believers in such a being, even if they never ask him for anything, cannot be called irreligious. At a period of his life when Coleridge never prayed, he would have been much and not unjustly annoyed if Mr. Frazer had called him irreligious. A man may believe in God, and yet trust him too utterly to address him in petitions for earthly goods and gear. 'Thy Will be Done' may be his only prayer; yet he does not lack religion. He only lacks it in the sense of Mr. Frazer's definition.
If that definition is granted, Mr. Frazer is prepared to produce a backward race, houseless, without agriculture, metals, domestic animals, and without religion in Mr. Frazer's sense. They have magic, but they have no religion, says Mr. Frazer, who presently informs us that 1 the first-born child of every woman was eaten by the tribe as part of a religious ceremony.'51 So they have a religion, and a bloody religion it is.
That people is the Australian, among whom, 'while magic is universally practised, religion in the sense of a propitiation or conciliation of the higher powers seems to be nearly unknown.'52 'Nobody dreams of propitiating gods or spirits by prayer or sacrifice.'
We are presently to see that Mr. Frazer gives facts which contradict his own statement. But first I must cite all that he says about Australian religion. 'In the south-eastern parts of Australia, where the conditions of life in respect of climate, water, and vegetation are more favourable than elsewhere, some faint beginnings of religion appear in the shape of a slight regard for the comfort of departed friends. Thus some Victorian tribes are said to have kindled fires near the bodies of their dead in order to warm the ghost, but "the recent custom of providing food for it is derided by the intelligent old aborigines as 'white fellows' gammon."'53 Some tribes in this south-eastern region are further reported to believe in a supreme spirit, who is regarded sometimes as a benevolent, but more frequently as a malevolent, being.54 Brewin, the supreme being of the Kurnai, was at first identified by two intelligent members of the tribe with Jesus Christ, but on further reflection they thought he must be the devil.55 But whether viewed as gods or devils it does not seem that these spirits were ever worshipped.56 It is worth observing that in the same districts which thus exhibit the germs of religion, the organisation of society and the family has also made the greatest advance. The cause is probably the same in both cases – namely, a more plentiful supply of food due to the greater fertility of the soil.57 On the other hand, in the parched and barren regions of Central Australia, where magic attains its highest importance, religion seems to be entirely wanting.58 The traces of a higher faith in Australia, where they occur, are probably sometimes due to European influence. 'I am strongly of opinion,' says one who knew the aborigines well, 'that those who have written to show that the blacks had some knowledge of God, practised prayer, and believed in places of reward and punishment beyond the grave, have been imposed upon, and that until they had learned something of Christianity from missionaries and others the blacks had no beliefs or practices of the sort. Having heard the missionaries, however, they were not slow to invent what I may call kindred statements with aboriginal accessories with a view to please and surprise the whites.'59 Sometimes, too, the reported belief of the natives in a great or good spirit may rest merely on a misunderstanding. Mr. Lorimer Fison informs me (in a letter dated June 3, 1899) that a German missionary, Mr. Siebert, resident in the Dieri tribe of Central Australia, has ascertained that their Mura Mura, which Mr. Gason explained to be the Good Spirit,60 is nothing more or less than the ancestors in the 'dream times.' There are male and female Mura Mura – husbands, wives, and children – just as among the Dieri at the present day. Mr. Fison adds: 'The more I learn about savage tribes, the more I am convinced that among them the ancestors grow into gods.'
This is all that Mr. Frazer has here to say about the religious belief of the Australians. He has found, in 'the museum of the past,' a people with abundance of magic, yet with no religion, or not enough to affect his theory that religion was everywhere second in order of time to magic. I am very content to meet him on Australian ground. There we find abundance
Spencer and Gillen, p. 549.
J. Dawson,
A. W. Howitt in
Fison and A. W. Howitt,
See A. W. Hewitt in
See A. W. Howitt in
See Spencer and Gillen,
E. M. Curr,