Magic

Category: Fields of research

Magic encompasses beliefs and actions, most often ritualized, that are employed to influence supernatural forces to achieve a specific outcome. Magic and religion are similar and connected, but deserve to be seen as separate phenomena. Superstition is based on magical thinking, although it differs from magic in that the effect (i.e., bad luck follows someone who breaks a mirror) is automatic and not the product of purposeful action, as is the case with magic. Amulets and good luck charms are also based on magical principles, although their effect (bringing good luck and protecting from bad luck) is generalized and not focused on specific outcomes. Various forms of fortune telling and divination are sometimes linked to magic, the difference being that fortune telling only reveals the future and doesn’t directly influence future events, unlike magic. Magic can be performed by regular people, while in some societies, magic is mostly performed by specialized figures such as sorcerers or witches. Hermetic and esoteric magic (known also as high magic) was developed in late medieval and Renaissance times, and is practiced today by “occult” organizations or by neopagan religions such as Wicca. The practitioners of the occult prefer the spelling magick for labeling their practices.

Edward B. Tylor, in his Primitive Culture (1871), argued that the primitive mind blurs the lines between oneself and others and between object and image, and this principle of association forms the basis of the magic thinking and magic. Tylor divided cultural myths into ‘myths of observation’, which recorded facts, and ‘pure myths’, which are purely fictional. Even cultural institutions, like magic, that are the product of the primitive mind that is not able to rationally understand nature, have their usefulness in the evolutionary stage in which they are developed. For example, religious myths and legends are just a symbolic expression and justification of social relations.

James George Frazer’s approach to magic was influenced by Edward B. Tylor, and William Robertson Smith. In the book Totemism and Exogamy, 4 vols. (1887) he argues that primitive people lacked the knowledge of biological reproduction and attributed births to totems, which led to the rules of exogamy and matriarchal and patriarchal family structures. Unlike his intellectual predecessor Tylor, Frazer doesn’t treat the couvade (custom where a man is performing ritualistic “labor” of a child in public, while his wife is giving birth for real outside public view) in terms of agnatic rights over children, but in as manifestation of the principles of homeopathic and contagious magic. These two types of magic are the product of two intellectual laws: the law of similarity (the specific thing that happens to an object or a person is going to happen in the same way to a person or an object that is magically connected to the first one) and the law of contagion or contact (parts that once made a whole will stay magically connected even after the separation). In his The Golden Bough: A Study of Comparative Religion (1890), the main subject is myths of Aryan divine priest-kings who are sacrificed when they get old to reinvigorate life and bring fertility to nature. Frazer adopts Comte’s classification of three evolutionary stages. In the first magical stage, people believe that they can control nature through magic and empathy (that is the stage where they sacrifice kings). In the next religious stage, a scapegoat is sacrificed instead of the king himself, not as a direct magical ritual, but as an offering to the gods who are supposed to bless the people and show mercy. In the final stage of civilization, people separate their lives into areas that are ruled by science and those ruled by religion. Frazer used Tylor’s concept of survivals to show that farmers and other less educated populations in Europe in his time still used practices found in primitive religion and magic. The essence of magical thinking and practice is nearly the same at all times, all over the world. Frazer sees magic as ‘‘the bastard sister of science.’’

Marcel Mauss and Henri Hubert co-wrote A General Theory of Magic (2001, in French 1902a). They explain the nature of magic by studying the concept of mana used in Melanesian and Polynesian societies. In these societies, mana is a mystical force that is the basis of all magical beliefs. They extend the conclusions reached in the study of mana to explain magical beliefs in general. In all societies, people believe in the mystical force that exists in nature and that connects all things and beings in it, and that force is the basis of the action of magic. The power contained in different objects, animals, people, and supernatural beings differs in intensity, and contacts between beings of different levels of magical power carry with them danger. In humans, magical powers are associated with bodily functions, especially with substances that leave the body. However, magic is, in essence, a social phenomenon because it is shaped by social structure and rules. Magic carries a higher level of privacy, secrecy, and mystery than religion, while the effects of magic are more direct, so magic cannot be the basis for the formation of institutionalized religion. Magic is a practical and utilitarian activity, and a primitive form of classification. Magic is the forerunner of practical knowledge and technologies: medicine, metallurgy, botany, astronomy, etc.

Émile Durkheim, in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912), distinguishes between religion and magic. Although magic is derived from religion, magic is aimed at directly causing specific physical effects - positive or negative - which is not the case with religion. In addition, magic is individualistic, and it does not unite individuals into a single moral community, as religion does, i.e., there is no “magic church”.

Bronislaw Malinowski argued that people all over Oceania believed in magic, but they only used it when their technology couldn't guarantee a positive outcome, or in professions with a high risk of personal injury or death, such as open-sea fishing. Magic can be cathartic, as it serves to help the individual cope with his or her uncertainty, anxieties, or fears. According to Malinowski, magic is more closely related to religion than to science. Both magic and religion are used in uncertain situations that give rise to anxiety and emotional distress. The difference is that while magic deals with practical problems, religion deals with general problems and gives meaning.

In the book Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande (1937), Evans-Pritchard studies witchcraft, sorcery, and magic in the Azande population. He rejected Malinowski’s approach to magic and argued that social structures influenced the functions that magic has in some societies. The Azande used practical technical knowledge in raising crops and other everyday tasks, and only in the instances where that everyday practical knowledge failed, did the Azande people turn to the magical way of thinking. Failing crops were often, and illnesses and death were almost always, attributed to conscious sorcery or unconscious witchcraft. There were two types of magical influences. First was witchcraft, which relied on a patrilineally transmitted force named mangu, which was an unconscious supernatural power used to attack others. Another type of magic was sorcery, and it relied on conscious manipulation of materials and formulas for both beneficial and detrimental uses. Witchdoctors and oracles were used to determine who was a witch who caused misfortune. Both women (who constitute a larger proportion of the accused) and men could be witches, and the ones identified were supposed to undo the witchcraft. If the outcome of the process was unsuccessful, blame could be put on a fraudulent witchdoctor, bewitched or unclean oracle, or the fault may be on the victim itself due to his or her own witchcraft. The only consistent thing relating to every outcome of this whole process was that all explanations of outcomes were related to the core belief in magical influences. Not all Azandes were satisfied with these witch-trials, as kings, princes, and other powerful and privileged individuals were the majority of accusers while most accusations fell on privilegedless and helpless individuals. Evans-Pritchard showed that these apparently irrational beliefs could be understood in rational terms of historical power relations between Azandes.

In The Future of Religion (1985), co-authored by Rodney Stark and William Bainbridge, religion refers to the supernatural order, the belief that there are forces that are more powerful and surpass natural physical forces. The main difference between magic and religion is that magic offers specific compensators, and there is no long-term relationship between those who provide magic compensators and their "clients". Turner Bryan, in Religion and Social Theory: A Materialist Perspective (1983), argues that in the age of feudalism, religion was not of equal importance to all classes. The peasantry was mostly indifferent to religion because they mostly practiced a combination of paganism, folk religion, and magic.

For Claude Lévi-Strauss, magic is an expression of its unconscious structure universal for all humans. In the book Mana: the Empty Signifier (1987), Lévi-Strauss states that the fact that the magical concept of “mana” can assume very diverse content proves that mana has to be seen just as an empty signifier. The mana is a third element intervening between the signifier and the signified, the element which would give the language its dynamism and continuity.

References:

Brown, M. F. Tsewa’s gift: Magic and meaning in an Amazonian society (1986);

Durkheim. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (2012, in French, 1912);

Evans-Pritchard, E. E. (1937).Witchcraft, oracles, and magic among the Azande.

Frazer, J. G. The Golden Bough: A study in magic and religion (3rd ed., 12 vols.) (1911);

Malinowski, B. Coral gardens and their magic (2 vols.) (1935);

Malinowski, B. Magic, science, and religion and other essays (1948);

Mauss. A General Theory of Magic (2001, in French, 1902);

O’Keefe, Daniel. Stolen Lightning: The Social Theory of Magic (1983);

Pareto. The Mind and Society (1935, in Italian 1916);

Stark. The Future of Religion: Secularization, Revival, and Cult formation (1985);

- A Theory of Religion (1987);