Magic and Religion. Lang Andrew
no gods at all.
Just as magic thus reaches its highest power, according to Mr. Frazer, where there is most religious competition (while the reverse should be the case by his theory), so religion flourishes most in Australia, exactly where, by Mr. Frazer's theory, the circumstances are most unfavourable to religion and most favourable to magic. Magic, by the hypothesis, must prosper most, its fallacy must be latest discovered, it must latest give place to religion, where it appears to be most successful, and vice versâ. Yet Mr. Frazer assures us that in Australia magic flourishes alone, where every circumstance demonstrates its failure; and religion begins to blossom precisely where magic must seem to its devotees a relative success.
Before examining this apparent inconsistency, let us note Mr. Frazer's inadvertent proof that his irreligious Australians are religious. One part of the business of magic is to produce rain in season, sun in season, and consequently an abundant food supply.84 The Dieri of Central Australia need especially excellent magic. 'In a dry season their lot is a hard one.' Having no religion, they ought, of course, to work by mere materialistic magic, like the Arunta.85 But they, oddly enough, 'call upon the spirits of their remote ancestors, which they call Mura Mura, to grant them power to make a heavy rain,' and then men inspired by the Mura Mura work magic, or pray in sign-language, as you please.86 Now the Mura Mura, the rain-givers, by evidence which Mr. Frazer himself has published, is 'a Good Spirit,' not a set of remote ancestral spirits. The witness is Mr. Gason, 'than whom' (says Mr. Frazer's authority, Dr. Stirling) 'no man living has been more among blacks or knows more of their ways.' If on this excellent evidence the Australian Dieri call for rain to a good spirit, then they have religion, which Mr. Frazer denies. But if Mr. Siebert, a German missionary, is right (and Mr. Frazer, as we saw, prefers his view to that of Mr. Gason), then the Mura Mura are only ancestral spirits.
Yet to demand the aid of remote ancestral spirits by prayer is religion. In fact Mr. Frazer had said of the powerful beings of the Southern Australians 'it does not seem that these spirits are ever worshipped.'87 But prayer is worship, and the Dieri pray, whether to a good spirit or to ancestral spirits, potent over the sky, and dwelling therein. If this is not religion, by Mr. Frazer's own definition, namely 'a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man, which are believed to direct and control the course of nature,' what is religion?88 Yet in Australia 'nobody dreams of propitiating gods or spirits by prayer and sacrifice,' says our author.89 None the less they 'call upon the spirits of their remote ancestors, which they call Mura Mura, to grant them power to make a heavy rain.' After ceremonies magical, or more prayers in sign-language, the Mura Mura 'at once cause clouds to appear in the sky.'90 They see the signs which their worshippers are making. Here then we have prayer to 'powers superior to man' (whether to the Good Spirit or to ancestral spirits), and that, on evidence collected by Mr. Frazer, occurs in a country where, fourteen pages earlier, he had assured us that 'nobody thinks of propitiating gods or spirits by prayer and sacrifice.' Sacrifice, happily, there is none; the Dieri have not degenerated to sacrificing human victims like the Greeks.
The scene is Central Australia, where 'the pitiless sun beats down for months together out of a blue and cloudless sky on the parched and gaping earth.' Consequently rain-making magic must perpetually prove a failure. Therefore, I presume, the Dieri have been driven into religion by discovering the fallacy of magic. This would be a logical argument, but Mr. Frazer's argument is the converse of what I suggest and contradicts his theory. He dubiously grants the existence of possible faint 'germs of 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… It is worth observing that in the same regions 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.'91 Now, according to Mr. Frazer's whole argument, the confessed failure of magic is the origin of religion.92 But in Central Australia, where magic notoriously fails most conspicuously to supply water and vegetation, magic flourishes to the entire exclusion of religion, except among the Dieri. On the other hand, in South-Eastern Australia, where magic, if practised, is abundantly rewarded by more water and more vegetation, there these proofs of the success of magic are 'probably the cause' of the germs of religion. But, by Mr. Frazer's hypothesis, what must be the apparent success of magic in securing 'a more plentiful supply of food' ought to encourage the belief in magic, and prevent religion from even germinating. On the other hand, the successful result of magic (for to what else can a people of sorcerers attribute the better food supply?) has been 'probably the cause' of the first germs of religion. How can these things be?
All this time one tribe of Central Australia, the Arunta, remains resolutely godless 'in spite of all temptations to join denominations' of a religious character. For the Arunta live in the worst country, the most rainless, and therefore their magic is most manifestly a failure. Yet, unlike the natives of South-Eastern Australia (where magic is most successful), the Arunta cling to magic, and have developed no religion. If so, as of all rain-making magic theirs is about the most unsuccessful, they must be very stupid, or they would detect the failure, and fly to religion, 'a quiet haven after a tempestuous voyage.' The Arunta are very far from stupid; they have the most complete and adequate of savage metaphysics. If, then, they have not approached superior powers, in face of the failure of their magic, it may be that they have tried and discarded religion. 'Religion for the women and the children, magic for men' appears to be the Arunta motto: not so very uncivilised! This I suggest because Mr. Frazer tells us that at the initiatory rites of the Arunta 'the women and children believe that the roaring noise' of the wooden slat, tied to a string and swung about, is 'the voice of the great spirit Twanyirika.'93 A great spirit (above all if spelled with capital letters) is rather a religious conception. 'This spirit, the women are told, lives in wild and inaccessible regions… Both uninitiated youths and women are taught to believe in the existence of Twanyirika.' So write Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, our only sources.94
A brief note is all that these inquirers give in their copious book to the great spirit. 'This belief,' they say, 'is fundamentally the same as that found in all Australian tribes.' Now in the tribes reported on by Mr. Howitt, the spirit whose voice is the sound of the slat or bull roarer called the tundun, and by other names, is the son or other deputy of Baiame, or some such powerful good being, Mungan-ngaur, Pirnmeheal, Bunjil, Noorele, or by whatever style he may be called. One of his duties is to superintend the Bora, or mysteries of the tribes. The Wiraijuri believe that their type of Twanyirika was destroyed, for misconduct, by his superior, Baiame. This sinful great spirit was called Daramulun, but in other tribes Daramulun is apparently the superior, and goes on existing. He is, says Mr. Howitt, 'the Great Master,' 'the Father,' the sky dweller, the institutor of society, the power whose voice 'calls to the rain to fall and make the grass green.' He is the moral being for whom 'the boys are made so that Daramulun likes them' – a process involving cries of nga ('good'), so says Mr. Howitt. His attributes and powers (where he is supreme) 'are precisely those of Baiame,' who, by Mr. Ridley and many others, is spoken of as a maker, if I may not say creator. It was in 1854, two years before publishing his 'Gurre Kamilaroi' (in which 'Baiame' was used for 'God'), that Mr. Ridley asked a Kamilaroi man, 'Do you know Baiame?' He said, Kamil zaia zummi Baiame, zaia winuzgulda ('I have not seen Baiame; I have heard, or perceived him. They hear him in the thunder'). Among this tribe Daramulun was not the superior; he was 'author of disease and medical skill, of mischief and wisdom also; he appears in the form of a serpent at their assemblies,' like Asclepius and the American Hobamok.95 Though Mr. Ridley is a missionary, I venture to cite him, because his evidence goes back nearly fifty years, to a time when the blacks had less contact with Europeans. Moreover, Mr. Ridley is corroborated by Mr. Howitt and other laymen, while Mr.