Carveth Read

“ One cannot read of the shaman’s performance of a pantomimic journey on horseback to the South, over frozen mountains, burning deserts, and along the bridge of a single hair, stretched across a chasm over foaming whirlpools, to Erlik Khan’s abode, and then home again on the back of a flying goose, without perceiving that in the wilds of Siberia such an entertainment, whatever other virtues it may have, supplies the want of theatres and music-halls, and that in such displays a dramatic profession might originate. ”

“ In trying to imagine ourselves in the place of such a man, we must not omit the emotional excitement that determines his judgment. It is the intensity of his desire for success, his anxiety about it, that makes him snatch at, and cling to, whatever may possibly be a means to it: he does not see how it acts, but will take no risks by omitting it. Since what is true of primitive hunting is true of all undertakings—that we know some conditions of success but far from all—and since we are all of us frequently in this position—the wonder is that we resort so little to Magic. ”

“ To understand the “black” wizard, we must turn to the dark side of human nature. That a man should resort to magic or sorcery to avenge himself or his kinsmen, or to gratify his carnality, jealousy or ambition, is intelligible to everybody; but that he should make a profession of assisting others for a fee to betray, injure, or destroy those with whom he has no quarrel, seems almost too unnatural to be credible. ”

“ So much of one’s early life is always forgotten that no one can be sure that he was not inoculated with such notions in childhood; especially when we consider that religious practices, taught before they can be well understood, must often wear a magical habit to a child; and that medicines, whose operations nobody used to understand, were on the same foot with Magic. For my own part, bating the last considerations, I cannot remember ever to have heard in childhood any sort of Magic spoken of except with amusement; yet magical beliefs have always haunted me. With Animism it was otherwise. ”

“ But since in individuals our complex nature varies in all directions, and amongst the rest in the direction of benevolence; and since any organ or quality that varies is apt to continue to do so, and may go on varying even beyond the limits of biological utility; why in human life may not this happen with benevolence (or with any other passion or virtue) ; so that in some men it expands with wonderful richness and beauty even to the sacrifice of themselves—nay, by excessive clemency or generosity, even to the injury of the tribe or of the race? ”

“ Perception, in normal circumstances, is accepted by all as a matter of course or, rather, of necessity: it controls the activities of practical life in hunting and in industry, in making weapons, hoeing the ground, building houses: however, these labours may sometimes be modified or interrupted by the intrusion of beliefs derived from other sources. If a savage sings a spell to his prey, or weapon, or tool, or keeps the head of a slain enemy on a shelf that his victim’s soul may assist him as a slave, he may thereby increase his own confidence in the work of hunting or gardening ”

“ These miracle-mongers sometimes know a hawk from a handsaw. It seems reasonable, then, to assume that wizards have more common sense than other people; since, besides the instruction of common experience, they know in their professional practice (at least in a superficial way) the real course of events, which is concealed from the laity. And, no doubt, of those whose art is deliberate imposture, this is true. But the infatuation of those who are wizards by vocation may be incorrigible by any kind of evidence: especially as to the genuineness of another’s performance. ”

“ Yet Magic often has its revenge upon Animism: enchaining by mysterious uniformities the god himself.
In its own nature Magic comprises qualities that tend to weaken it (at least, to weaken each particular form of it) and to bring about its decline. Magical rites and spells, on whatever scale performed, are things to be repeated, and what is repeated is mechanised and ceases to live. Custom can maintain a practice whilst dispensing with its meaning; slowly the practice (spell or ritual) is slurred and corrupted. Economy, “least effort,” is the enemy of all ceremonial. ”

“ As the gods emerge from the shadow of night and the grave, and are cleansed from the savour of corruption, and withdraw to the summit of the world, they are no longer regarded with the shuddering fear that ghosts excite ”

“ Now, when we turn to the lowest existing savages, they are found to possess, in comparison with apes, a considerable fecundity of ideas; constituting, on the one hand, a good stock of common sense, or knowledge of the properties and activities of the things and animals around them, and of how to deal with them, which enables them to carry on the affairs of a life much more complex and continuous than any animal’s: but including, on the other hand, a strange collection of beliefs about magic and spirits, which entirely misrepresent the course of nature and the effective population of the world. ”

“ It was, no doubt, natural to assume that we first perceive individuals, which now stand clearly before us, and then, having compared them, arrive at general ideas. But if knowledge grows by the assimilation and differentiation of experiences, the class on the one hand and the individual on the other, must be joint products of this process: classes becoming clearer as more and more individuals are discriminated. Classes, or class-ideas never stand before us as individuals do; but the greater part of the meaning of every perception of an individual is the kind of thing it is. ”

“ To understand how the magical and religious beliefs of savages and the play-beliefs of civilised man, having a common source in imagination, are (in spite of strong contrasts) closely allied, we must call to mind the many degrees of intensity of play-belief in ourselves, varying from the momentary entertainment of playing with a child, through many grades of fiction or ceremony, down to a deeply serious frame of mind, a profound movement of dread or compassion that may long outlast our play. A child’s absorption in such beliefs is more intense than ours ”

“ Wealth gives rank, and gratifies not only the greed but also the emulative spirit of the pack. Acquisitiveness is an essential trait of aristocracy, and adhesiveness of its perpetuity. Homespun prudence belongs, in our ancestry, to a more recent stratum of motives; we see it as a blind instinct in squirrels and beavers, a quasi-instinctive propensity in dogs and wolves (who hide food that they cannot immediately devour) ; but it is not known in any anthropoid, and is acquired at some stage by some human races—not by all; for it is not found in many extant savages. ”

“ Some actors are said to identify themselves with their assumed character and situation so profoundly as to substantiate the fiction: concentration of imagination, amounting to dissociation, makes the part they play, whilst it lasts, more real than anything else; and raises them, for that time, in energy of thought, feeling and action, much above their ordinary powers; so that they compel the attention, sympathy and belief of the audience. ”

“ But it gradually becomes supernatural, as the capricious incidents of dream-life are felt to be “uncanny,” as that which occurs only at night is involved in the fears of the night, and as a great cloud of imaginations accumulates about the dead and obscures the simple facts of dream-perception in which the belief originated. This cloud of imaginations, by its mysterious character and by various alliances with Magic, spreads and deepens until it overshadows the whole of human life ”

“ In spite of the human mind’s strong proclivity to Magic, the art, after rising to a maximum power and reputation, in course of time loses its influence, and is to be found festering only in the backwater and stagnant pools of society. Its power is not at the zenith in primitive society, but much later, when there are men in command of great wealth who feel insecure, and turn for confidence to diviners and thaumaturgists, whom they bribe heavily to give what they most desire. But by that time Magic is confused with Animism. ”

“ And what can be more plausible reasoning than to argue that, as solid men eat solid food, ghosts eat ghostly food? “Soul” thus appears as a sort of ghost-substance, or ghost-body. For, in dreams, the departed are seen as if in the flesh; and moreover analogy requires that the ghost consciousness and ghost-force shall have a body of some sort, and, of course, one that will maintain in ghost-land the same relations to other things that the mortal body did in this world. In ghost-land, or shadow-land, or dream-land, the substance of all things is this soul-stuff. ”

“ Success depends upon doing one’s best; therefore upon the will. And Magic often needs courage and resource; but in the development of the art it depends still more upon knowledge; wherein the magician is wont to boast himself. For wizardry is the most reputable faculty of primitive scholarship: to know all spells and rites, the arts of divination and medicine, the ancestry and true name of all dangerous things, which gives control over them: and it is a universal belief that knowledge is power. ”

“ Hence there is a tendency to accept imaginations as perceptions are accepted; and to believe in the efficacy of rites, because the mere performing of them with an imagined purpose makes their purpose seem to be accomplished. When a man of intense and excited imagination makes an image of an enemy, and stabs it, that his enemy may suffer, his action gratifies the impulse to stab, as if he wounded the enemy himself, and revenge seems to be a present fact. Similar intensity of imagination is found in civilised children—greater than in ordinary adults. ”

“ But the roots of the idea of Fate are much older and wider spread in the slow, steady growth of the belief in uniformity, which is the common ground of Magic and Science; and (as I have said) before laws of nature had been discovered, Fate was an all-comprehensive Magic. Fate reduces the gods to the status of wheels in a machine; omens and oracles, instead of being sent or inspired by the gods, are also part of the machinery, and may point to their destruction; prayers and sacrifices are other parts of the machinery and, at most, may be a means of assuaging the anxiety of one’s own heart. ”

“ Thus Sir Everard im Thurn says of the native of Guiana, his dreams are as real as any events of his waking life; his dream-actions are done by his spirit: in dreams he continues to see the dead—that is, their spirits. ”

“ Belief in the participation of an image, or part or appurtenance of a man in the man himself, or in his virtue, or in his soul, must give to rites of black Magic a great deal of the subjective satisfaction which is a secret motive of all Magic. The images, or nail-parings, or what not, identify the man [140] to be attacked; they fix the wizard’s attention, vivify his imagination, direct the spell whom to strike (as a dog is set upon a trail) , and heighten the joy of imaginary revenge. ”

“ Men under a vocation to wizardry, of course, begin with full belief in it. Probably they are possessed by the imaginative and histrionic temperament, which we have seen to be favourable to eminence as a wizard. Their vocation consists in the warm sympathy and emulation with which, before their own initiation, they witness the feats of great practitioners, and which generally imply a stirring of their own latent powers; just as many an actor has begun by being “stage-struck.” [286] A man of such temperament is prone to self-delusion not only as to his own powers, but in other ways. ”

“ The Yakut shaman is preordained to serve the spirits, whether he wishes it or not: he begins by raging like a madman, gabbles, falls unconscious, runs about the woods, into fire and water, injures himself with weapons. Then an old shaman trains him. [307] On the Congo, a man may become a wizard by claiming to be the medium of a dead man; and a medium falls into a frenzy, shouts, trembles all over, his body undulates, sweat breaks out, foam gathers on his mouth, his eyeballs roll: he speaks an archaic language if he knows one. ”

“ All stages of proficiency may be traced from the simple layman who swings a bull-roarer to raise the wind, to the wizard who lives by his art, and is feared by all his tribe and far beyond it, or to the erudite magician who controls the demons and vies with the gods.
Magical things, objects or actions, in their simplest forms, are charms, spells and rites; and since the ends for which they can be used are either to protect oneself or to exert power over other persons or things, each of these kinds of magic-thing may be defensive or offensive. A defensive charm is called an amulet ”

“ One may interpret the facts at discretion: an animist may accept them literally and seriously; a devotee of Magic may regard decrees in the Pekin Gazette as spells that have coercive power in the spirit-world; a Confucian mandarin will think that an excellent plan has been devised for enlisting the superstitions of the simple-minded in support of law and order. We may suppose that for him Animism is but an episode in the history of human thought. ”

“ They are not the invention of savage society; society invents nothing; only the individual invents. They are the invention and tradition of wizards, who keep the secret so far as it is to their advantage: of wizards growing more and more professional, and trading upon the fears and hopes, the anxiety and credulity of their fellows. The spirit of superstition is common to the tribe, but its professional exploitation is the work of those who profit by it. ”