Geertz Antropologia Dela Magia y La Religion

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An Anthropology of Religion and Magic, I Author(s): Hildred Geertz Reviewed work(s): Source: The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Summer, 1975), pp. 71-89 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/202825 . Accessed: 13/11/2012 11:26
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Journal of Interdisciplinary History VI:I (Summer I975), 71-89.
Hildred Geertz
An Anthropology
of Religion
and Magic, I
The epigraphthat Keith Thomas places at the head of his chapter on witchcraftis fromJohn Selden's TableTalks:"The Reason of a Thing is not to be inquiredafter, til you are sure the Thing itself be so. We commonly are at What'sthe Reasonof it? before we are sure of the Thing."I Selden pursuesthe point with an anecdote about Sir Robert Cotton who was exclaiming over the strange shape of a shoe which was said to have been worn by Moses, or at least by Noah, when his wife, apparentlya much more simple soul, asked: "But Mr. Cotton,
are you sure it is a Shoe ?"
Lady Cotton's question might be put to the central subject matter of Thomas' book: magical beliefs. What could be meant by "magical beliefs"? Do the ideas or attitudesthat he groups together in this way form a unitary "Thing" with a definable "shape"? Is "magic" a distinct type of belief or practice or attitude that can be studied for its prevalence, persistence, or decline? For its uses and ? consequences The nature of "the Thing itself" is a conceptual as well as an can empiricalproblem. We want to know whether culturalparticulars be placed into general categoriesor types such as "magical"and "religious," and whether these types are such that they can be compared across time periods and continents. In the actual situationsin which living men contend with one another and, in contending, speak about such entitiesas "fairies,""witches," and "stars,"and about such activities as "conjuring,""blessing,"and "cursing,"what can an outsider, an inquisitive scholar,mean by such concepts as "belief" and "skepticism"? These are pressing, unsettling, and unsettled questions which go to the heart of both of the disciplinesof culturalanthropology and history. This paper dealsmainly with the view of the natureand function of magical beliefs as it appearsin Thomas' Religionand the Declineof Magic(New York, I97I). In his continuousand ratheropen searchfor relationships among his data, Thomas picks up and examines an
Hildred Geertz is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University and the author of TheJavanese Family (New York, 1961) and, with Clifford Geertz, Kinship in Bali (Chicago, I975).
I
(London, 1689; I856), I39.
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socialand psychological numberof different theories, extraordinary but does not commit himselfto the whole of any single approach. is Nonetheless, runningthroughmost of his discussion a conception a whichcarries of "magic" set off from "religion," distinction as with the study of sociallife, it certaintheoretical concerning implications popularconventionalnotions, and psychologicalmotivations.His reliance thisparticular of classifying on cultural ideaspreway English him to framingcertainquestions about the data in a misdisposes is leadingway. We need to see whether"magic" indeed"theThing itself"thatrequires explanation. to religion," Earlyin the volume thereis a reference "primitive of andelsewhere readthattheEnglish TudorandStuart we timeswere is "primitive peoples."zFor Thomas,the term "primitive" almosta for "magical" both words,for him, have to do with a and synonym one kind of attitudetoward the supernatural, which assumesthe of human accessto spiritual power for the purposeof possibility advancingmundanepersonalfortunes,for fulfillingprivatewishes, promoting partisancauses,or at any rate promoting mattersof and solideveryday immediate physical socialwell-being.He contrasts this type of orientation with "religion.""Religion"is a term that covers the kinds of beliefs and practicesthat are comprehensive, organized,and concernedwith providinggeneralsymbols of life oriented toward and whicharespecific, incoherent, primarily practices and solutions immediate to problems not referable practical providing as schemeof ideas.The distinction he makesit is quite to anycoherent and cultural complexeswhich can be in competition whose fortunes Lawrence rise Stone,in his review may sometimes andfall separately. of Thomas' book, pressesthis opposition even further-perhaps of beyonda pointthatThomaswould accept-and speaks the conflict
"Nearly every primitive religion is regarded by its adherents as a medium for obtaining superatural power. This does not prevent it from functioning as a system of explanation, a source of moral injunctions, a symbol of social order, or a route to immortality; but it does mean that it also offers the prospect of a supernatural means of control over man's earthly environment. The history of early Christianity offers no exception to this rule.... The claim to supernatural power was an essential element in the Anglo-Saxon Church's fight against paganism, and missionaries did not fail to stress the superiority of Christian prayers to heathen charms." (25-26). "Like other primitive peoples, contemporaries believed that curses worked only if the party who had uttered them had been unjustly treated" (506-507).
2
(636-637), as against "magic" which is a label for those beliefs and
clear, and the terms "religion" and "magic" stand for two separable
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MAGIC,
I [
73
Anothercharacteristic "magic"in Thomas'usageis that,as a of meansfor overcomingspecificpractical it difficulties, is necessarily Thisis so important distinguishing a ineffective. for characteristic, him, thatit canalmostbe saidto be partof the definition: magicis to be "If definedas the employment ineffective of to techniques allayanxiety when effective ones arenot available thenwe mustrecognize no that will ever be free of it" (688).Here the contrasting society category cannotbe "religion," who is to say whethera given religious for is practice effectiveor not? Instead,"magic"is now being set over rational would However,effectiveness against empirical technology.4 not be an important issueif magichad not been definedinitiallyas in methodfor solving being pragmatic orientation-asan alternative technical problems. firstcommenton thisset of definitions soundlike simple My may a whichmanyanthropolcommonsense,but in factit reflects concern ogistshavenot found to be merelyobvious-a concernthe theoretical implications which continue to be uncovered.There is a of difference betweenthe ways of conceptualizing significant experience or describing, explaining or events)thatthepeopleunder (orordering, studyuse in livingout theirlives,on the one hand,and,on the other, the ways of conceptualizing that bringsto his experience the scholar of investigation these people and their lives. The first-the beliefs, of andso on heldby themembers thesocietyandhistorical preferences, of underscrutiny-consists ideaswhich are for the most part period takenfor granted, expressed and unexamined, directlyin action.The secondgroup of concepts-those of the researcher himself-are, we
Stone, "The Disenchantment of the World," New York Review of Books (Dec. 2, See Thomas (267): "But even in the years after the Reformation it would be wrong to regard magic and religion as two opposed and incompatible systems of belief. There were magical elements surviving in religion, and there were religious facets to the practise of magic." 4 "But it was above all in connection with the sacraments of the Church that such In the beliefs arose. The Mass, in particular, was associated with magical power.... actual miracle of transubstantiation the 'instrumental cause' was the formula of consecration. Theologians refined this doctrine considerably, but their subtleties were too complicated to be understood by ordinary men. What stood out was the magical notion that the mere pronunciation of words in a ritual manner could effect a change in the character of material objects." (33). "It was this affirmation of the potentialities of human labor which was to encourage men to seek a technological solution to their problems rather than a magical one" (278). 3
I971).
3 ProtestantChristianity."
between "the counterculture magic"and "the officialcultureof of
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fromwithinhisown cultural Theirsource often,butnot necessarily, is Suchimposed are frameworks indispensable, how would else tradition. we discuss comparealienbeliefs?But we need to know always and in when we arespeaking our own conceptual and language when we in arespeaking theirs.When the everyday of our subjects is language we alsoEnglish, may easilybecomeconfused.5 Thomasemploysthe terms"magic"and "religion" various in the ways. Often they are his own words for classifying beliefsand that as Certainly, he shows, many Elizapractices he has unearthed. his would not haveaccepted characterization the natureof of bethans Thosewho performed various rituals he callsmagical, that the magic. or those who were convincedthat some malevolentneighborwas them, did not considerthe techniques ineffective,or overspeaking Nor would they have felt thattheir mereplacebos quellanxiety.6 to
5 Within the field of cultural anthropology, most discussion of this methodological problem has centered around social organization and, to a lesser extent, ethnoscience; that is, in developing categories for distinguishing kinds of social relationships and institutions, and features of the natural world. The literature generated in this area alone has been enormous. A few recent discussions are: Ward Goodenough, Description and Comparison in Cultural Anthropology (Chicago, 1970); David M. Schneider, "What is Kinship All About?" in Priscilla Reining (ed.), Kinship Studies in the Morgan Centennial Year (Washington, D.C., 1972), 32-63; Stephen A. Tyler (ed.), Cognitive Anthropology (New York, I969). Regarding the distinction between magic and religion itself, the debate is even older, more diffuse, and often less sophisticated. A typical statement in this regard, with which I agree, is by D. F. Pocock: "If categorical distinctions of the Western mind are found upon examination to impose distinctions upon (and so falsify) the intellectual universes of other cultures then they must be discarded or, as I have put it, dissolved. I believe 'magic' to be one such category..." ("Foreword" to Marcel Mauss [trans. Robert Brain], A General Theory of Magic [London, 1972]). A lucid disentanglement of the varieties of senses that these two Western categories carry, senses which are frequently in contradiction with one another, as they appear in anthropological writings alone, can be found in Dorothy Hammond, "Magic: A Problem in Semantics," AmericanAnthropologist,LXXII (1970), I349-1356. 6 A passage by Thomas regarding the attitudes of the late medieval theologians toward the efficacy of ritual shows what I mean by his projecting onto them an interpretation which cannot possibly be theirs: "Many later medieval theologians were strongly 'rationalist' in temperament, and preferred to stress the importance of human self-help. They had inherited rites from a more primitive era and they viewed them cautiously. They regarded the sacraments as symbolic representations rather than as instruments of physical efficacy." (47). Although they may have rejected the use of sacraments for satisfaction of immediate desires, they could not have thought of them as merely "symbolic."
language into which, for better or worse, he translateshis material.
to and hope,not takenfor granted, aresubjected therulesof discursive for Thesearehis own frameworks groupingthe data,his own logic.
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and ideaswere fragmentary withoutbasisin a coherentview of the and Sincethesewere ordinary unsophisticated universe. people,they and to doctrine which to referbut they had no organized systematic felt probably no needfor one sincethey did not identifyreligionwith of efforts doctrine-building the at doctrine. anyrate,all intellectual At confinedto those very campswhich were period were apparently as whichwere in creating definition "magic" practices the of engaged heretic,demonic,or fraudulent. impious, In many otherpassages, course,Thomasusesthe terms"reliof that and alliedwordsin the meanings the people gion" and "magic" clearthattheseterms themselves give to them.He makesabundantly on the pointof view of wereusedin manydifferent senses, depending in on the speaker. the attack certain For beliefsas "magical," the senses or or was of "not-religious" "not-reasonable" "not-practical," a from at leastthe fourteenth rhetoric constant of English religious part on. The commoncore of meaningwas alwaysdisapproval, century but what was not so stable,from personto personand from era to era,were the grounds uponwhich thesebeliefswere to be dismissed. the and show thatthroughout periodwhichhe studied, Thomas' data even into our own time, the notion of magicwas a weaponin the that the battles were destroying peaceboth of societyandof religious England mainlyon who by the peopleof TudorandStuart depended of said it, and the persuasiveness the label dependedmainlyon the of behindit. Speaking magical curingtechniques, weightof authority
Thomas says at one point, In the lastresortthe only meansof tellingwhethera curewas magical
or not was to refer it to the authorities-the Church, the Law, and the
the consciencesof its members. Whether or not a particular idea or attitudewas saidto be magical
its If Royal College of Physicians. they permitted employmentthen no scruples needbe felt by laymen.[92]7
was Thomastracesin stunningdetailhow the distinction a virthe peopleof the fourteenth fifteenth and one tuallymeaningless for domains and centuries, how, duringthe ensuingperiod,the semantic out marked in weregradually of magicandreligionandscience being The meaningof the term an increasingly distinctand standard way.
that 7 See also 200, where Thomasdemonstrates the healingof illnessby touchingwas consideredlegitimate when it was the king's sacredperson which was the mediating body, but illegitimateand diabolicwhen a cunning man employed the same means.
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"religion"shiftedfrom signifying"piety"in thought and ritualto in or "doctrine" "creed,"and the issue of belief versusskepticism to theideasthemselves moreandmoresalient. became regard Religious is and skepticism a complexphenomenon, it is by no meansentirely in Westernor recent.What is unusual the modernworld view is the in of skepticism regardto the truth-value one's own of possibility receivedculturalideas. Religious doubt in other times and places concerns a for rather man'scapacity truepiety, or the strength his of claimed controlover the powersthatbe or over the potencyof partidefinedforces-but not whetherany of these cularkindsof culturally couldreallyexistor whetherthey madesense.8 What the Reformation and Enlightenment addedup to in the statusof end-to simplifyoutrageously-wasthe climbin intellectual a conceptionof the natureof religion which stressedthe central and of of doctrine theemptiness ritual. thesame At necessity a coherent in time, in othercircles,therewas an increase the marketvalue of a view of the pursuitof knowledgewhich was empiricist experiand wasanacross-the-board mental. result The of downgrading alternative views of religionandknowledge.The conceptof "magic" Thomas as uses it when he himselfis speakingis a directdescendant these of as a term for some of these downgraded alternatives. controversies, It is not the "decline" thepractice magicthatcriesout forexplanaof of of of formulation whatit was thatneeded My criticism Thomas' restson this:It is not thathe hasimposed own manner his explanation the and of categorizing verbalstatements eventswhich he describes, for that is unavoidable, ratherthat the categories but which he uses whenattempting developcausal to arethoseof someof the hypotheses
8 Cf. Wilfred Cantwell Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion (New York, 1962), which shows that the concepts of "religion" and "a religion" as "doctrine" were developed only since the Enlightenment and questions their cross-cultural applicability. See also Rodney Needham, Belief, Language and Experience (Chicago, 1972), which addresses itself to the concept of "belief" and its appropriateness in comparative studies of human experience. For an empirical example of religious doubt and skepticism as it appears within a non-Western framework, see Melford E. Spiro, BurmeseSupernaturalism (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., I967). 9 "The Protestants were helping to make a distinction in kind between magic and religion, the one a coercive ritual, the other an intercessionary one. Magic was no longer to be seen as a false religion, which was how medieval theologians had regarded it; it was a different sort of activity all together." (76). "At the end of our period we can draw a distinction between religion and magic which could not have been possible at the beginning" (640).
tion, but the emergence and rise of the label "magic."9
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subjects themselves. In doing so, he takes part in the very cultural processthat he is studying. What is perhapseven more important,this way of labeling beliefs carrieswith it a whole philosophy, a particular of view toward the natureof man and workings of society which point influences Thomas' sense of what seems obvious and what seems puzzling in his data. The implications of the notion of "magic" as and "not-religion"and "not-reasonable" "not-effective"for a pictureof what was going on in Tudor and StuartEnglandneed to be spelledout. One of the early winners in the theological and philosophical debatesof that period was the utilitarianview of the natureof human social forms. For all his perceptive discussionof other points of view, in Thomas sees his own world and that of the Elizabethans essentially terms.He takesas the motto for his book a sixteenth-century utilitarian statementby George Gifford: "For this is man's nature,that where he is persuadedthat there is the power to bring prosperityand adversity, in therewill he worship."IOThe difficulties a theory of religiouschange that sees such a statementas worthy of seriousconsiderationare complicated.I want to discussonly one. The main objection to a utilitarian approachis not, as Gifford'squotation might suggest, that man might but be seen as crassand materialistic, that beliefs are to be understood in terms of the needs which they serve, and that these needs primarily are assumedto be individualand, in the final analysis,psychological. Given my own scholarly discipline,it is easier for me to discuss this point in terms of the theoriesof BronislawMalinowski, one of the few anthropologists whose general theoretical approach-as against their scatteredspecific hypotheses-Thomas puts to use.II The reason is that Malinowski'sphilosophicalorientationappearsto be essentially similar to his, though Thomas does not, by any means, accept this early anthropologist'sideas uncritically and wholeheartedly, and in fact raises some important arguments against them. Malinowski's great contribution to the study of religion was methodological rather than theoretical.He stressed,and rightly, that the semanticburden of specific practicesmust be sought through the study of the social context in which they appear,their consequencesin daily life. This focus on actionsobservedin ongoing everydaylife, and on verbal statements in their behavioral context, has become a powerful procedure for
and Io A Discourse the SubtillPractices Devilles by Witches Sorcerers of of (1587), sigs.
B4v-Ci. II Malinowski, Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays (1925) (Boston, 1948); idem, Coral Gardens and Their Magic (London, 1935), 2V.
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of of whose systems discovery the underlying principles thosecultural whose essential ideas have never basic tenets remainunverbalized, into beenarticulated discussable philosophical concepts. of Thefactthatthemeanings a customcanbe illuminated through out in a studyof the rangeof situations which it is carried does not and imply that performances meaningsshould not be necessarily For Malinowski, however,they werejoined: analytically. separated and and Religiousconceptions ritualactswerealmostidentical, magic not referred to certainkindsof ideas,but ratherto certainkinds of What distinguished and magicalfrom religious procedures attitudes. acts was not primarilytheir ideationalcontent, but the purposes towardwhich they were directedand their effects.Magic was, for aimedat achievingshort-term him, those procedures tangiblegoals one'senemy,andreligion referred to rain suchasbringing or defeating those behavior patternswhich were concernedwith long-term, to The and abstract suchasprosperity salvation. failure distinguish ends to the meaningof an actionfromthe actionitselfblindedMalinowski can be the recognitionthat many differentmotivational purposes and servedby the samecustomary performance, that the distinction thosedirected as concerns against betweenactsinformedby ultimate when achievement a blurred of towardimmediate goalsis constantly for is madeto standsymbolically a more generalone. tangiblegood is The only way one canknow whetheror not one is blessed through in one'sdailylife, evenif thesearenot material concrete signsof signs ones the moresubtlebut no less experiential of but prosperity, rather For the Pacificislanders lived, those among whom Malinowski acts which he labelledmagicalwere, like almostall of theiractions, difficulties. with or preventing towarddealing directed specific usually the But he assumed sayingof spellsandthe like canneverhavedirect results,despitewhat the nativesthink. Thus Malinowski practical of acceptedone part of the natives'interpretation their actionsbut thenposedthe following The resulting another paradox part. rejected tried over magicalprocedures question:Why were theseineffective
"The fact remains, of course, that for the devout the sacred value, first and above I2 all, has been a psychological state in the here and now. Primarily this state consists in the emotional attitude per se, which was directly called forth by the specifically religious (or magical) act, by methodical asceticism, or by contemplation." Max Weber (trans. Hans Gerth and C. W. Mills), "The Social Psychology of the World Religions," From Max Weber:Essays in Sociology (New York, I958), 278 (his italics.)
personalmood.IZ
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and over again? Malinowski'sanswer was that they fill a need of the actor, one which the actor himself does not recognize. Among theseocean fishermen,magic was a resorttakenonly when other means failed, when their technical capabilitieswere felt to be inadequateto deal with the task at hand. They never used magic to attempt the impossible, such as flying through the air, nor did they ever use magic for tasks that could be handled simply and directly. However, for dangerousand problematicenterprises,such as deep sea fishing, they would employ charms, incantations, and the like. Malinowski argued from these facts that the magical acts must give the fishermena feeling of added confidence, and that one outcome of their renewed assurance was, indeed, more efficientfishing.I3 Thomas appearsto hold a position similarto that of Malinowski. It is difficultfor the readerto pin down his precisetheoreticalorientation, partly because he attempts to maintain his freedom from the limitations of any particular approach by indicating objections to each theory as he discussesit, and partly becausehis own assumptions about the workings of human societiesand minds remainunexamined. I am aware therefore that the following formulation of Thomas' views about the relationships among beliefs, behavior, and motivation not be accurate.He seems to assumethat, although the origin of may specific practices is historical in that we inherit each assemblage of customs and beliefs from our predecessors,their continued enactment and transmissionto the next generationis to be explained in terms of the satisfactionof needs, either psychological or sociological. Since in this view societal"needs"are mediatedby individualagents-responding, holding attitudes, and acting-such a need-fulfillment theory reducesto a psychological one. Every important custom has its pragmatic or emotional value for some members of the society, or else it falls into disuseand is forgotten. In this light, certain of Thomas' discussions make sense. He suggests, for instance, that before the Reformation the Church was "a limitless source of supernaturalaid, applicable to most of the problems likely to arise in daily life." The theologians of the early Reformation attempted "to dispense with this whole apparatusof assistance." But, he points out, "the problems for which supernatural
13 E. R. Leach, "The Epistemological Background to Malinowski's Empiricism," and Talcott Parsons, "Malinowski and the Theory of Social Systems," both in Raymond Firth (ed.), Man and Culture: An Evaluation of the Work ofBronislaw Malinowski (London,
1957), II9-I37, 53-70.
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the magical remedies of the past had provided some sort of solution were still there-the fluctuations of nature, the hazards of fire, the threat of plague and disease, the fear of evil spirits, and all the uncertainties of daily life" (77). Thomas asks, How was it that men were able to renounce the magical solutions offered by the medieval Church before they had devised any technical remedies to put in their place? Were they now mentally preparedto face up to such problems by sole relianceupon their own resourcesand techniques? Did they have to turn to other kinds of magical control in order to replace the remedies offered by medieval religion? [77] His answer is a carefully qualified yes, and in the ensuing chapters he traces the pervasiveness and popularity of"non-religious" practices for healing and divination which persisted through the fifteenth, sixteenth, and the first part of the seventeenth centuries, despite the continuing attack on them by the Protestant clergy (ISI). Thomas is not entirely convinced, however, that the dearth of technological remedies in itself is a sufficient explanation for the continuing faith in the efficacy of magic (although he clearly considers it a necessary precondition). He suggests that if it were the case that magic was an alternative practical technique which quelled anxiety even though it solved no problems, then the decline in its use after the sixteenth century should have been accompanied by or, better, preceded by increasing human control over the physical world. And he demonstrates that the men of the seventeenth century were not at all more capable of preventing such disasters as sickness, crop failure, or fire until a period long after that in which the prestige and practice of magic had dropped. That finding, he says, shows that shifts in the popularity of reliance on magic cannot be accounted for by any increasing or decreasing degree of controllability or predictability of physical disaster and that other explanations must be sought (656-663). The other explanation that he proposes is that in the seventeenth century there occurred a profound shift in the attitudes of the populace in regard to the efficacy of human efforts to improve their material conditions. The appeal of magic could only be decisively eclipsed when people found a more attractive alternative to the practical aids which the cunning man provided for his clients.It was here that the post-Reformation religion made its great contribution.... The people were now
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taught that their practicaldifficultiescould only be solved by a combination of self-help and prayer to God. [277-278] We are, therefore, forced to the conclusion that men emancipated themselves from these magical beliefs without necessarily having devised any effective technology with which to replace them. In the seventeenthcentury they were able to take this step becausemagic was ceasing to be intellectually acceptable, and because their religion aid. [663] taught them to try self-help before invoking supernatural This was the message that theologians had been attempting to across to the people for centuries, but why it happened at that get time and not before, remains, as Thomas says, "mysterious" (253-279, 663). He believes, however, that he has described what happened, that this new attitude of"sturdy self-reliance" (278) developed and diffused through most of the population, with the result that magical practices lost their popularity, and that only subsequently did the new technologies for dealing with the catastrophes and sufferings of daily existence appear. It was this new attitude, which made magic no longer seem to be a sensible course of action, and which stimulated efforts to find more empirically adequate solutions. Thus the crucial shift for Thomas is attitudinal. During the seventeenth century, he suggests, a growing number of people adopted a new stance toward the problems of practical life, a "frame of mind" of independent and practical optimism, and they relinquished an older psychological orientation of dependence on the aid of superhuman powers. Magical practices are based on the latter attitude. In fact, in Thomas' view, they are an expression of it. To take the problem of witchcraft accusations, which are a special case of the belief in magical influences on material fortunes: Why did some people persist in believing themselves or those close to them to have been bewitched, while others, in the same period, found the idea of bewitching improbable? The anthropologist Robert A. LeVine has discussed at length the theories put forward by Thomas and by Alan MacFarlane in this regard.14 LeVine points out that the reasons which they give are essentially psychosocial hypotheses. LeVine attempts to supplement their arguments by building a hypothetical model of the personality dynamics of the accusers and of the contemporary skeptics. In so doing, LeVine does not question Thomas' basic assumption that
14 LeVine, Culture, Behavior and Personality (Chicago, 1973), 254-270; Macfarlane, Witchcraftin Tudor and StuartEngland (London, I970).
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distincttype of motivation is attached.In LeVine'srecastingof Thomas' suggestions, the context of this particularkind of belief is such that it can be felt to be persuasiveonly to persons for whom the realitytesting capacitiesof the ego are not developed enough to counteract of the daily and immediatepressures anxiety and guilt. In other words, who rejectedas incrediblethe effectiveness witchof those Elizabethans craft and other magical acts must have had stronger egos and more thanthe rest.Carriedto its logical conclusion, individuatedpersonalities such an argumentwould mean that the populationof fifteenth-century England had very few members with what in psychoanalyticterms are mature personalities,while by the twentieth century strong egos would be in the majority. This I find a little difficultto accept. Conceivably, we might define certainkinds of thinking processes as "magical," that is, as a way of orienting oneself toward the facts of one's experience in an unrealisticand ineffective way. Properly defined, this concept would then stand for a universalpsychological mode, one which could be engaged in by all human beings in different degrees.It might even prove to be an empiricalfact that some populations, in certain epochs and certain social situations, used "magical thinking" more than others. But for a person to employ a certain procedure that is conventionally consideredby all around him to be the acceptablething to do in his situation,does not necessarilyindicate that he is motivated by an attitude of self-deception and wishful distortionof reality, even though others, contemporariesor historians, may term that procedure"magical." Anthropological researchto date has been unable to prove that public customary actions and private motivations are necessarilyand directly connected. The range of psychological needs which lead individualsto perform a certainritualhas proven to be broad, and it is impossible to classify ritualsor any other culturalpracticesaccording to their psychological uses. I do not intend to deny the relevance of personal motivation to the understanding of social and cultural and patterns,theirpersistence change,but ratherto stressthe complexity of the connections between them, and the need to keep them analytically distinct,ratherthan to define one in terms of the other.I5
i The classic paper in this regard is Alex Inkeles and D. J. Levinson, "National Character:The Study of Modal Personalityand SocioculturalSystems,"in G. Lindzey and E. Aronson (eds.), Handbook SocialPsychology of (Cambridge,Mass. 1954, 1968), of 418-506, which was basedon extensiveconsideration Russianand Germanmaterials.
notion to which a magicalbeliefsare a distincttype of conventional
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If the performance of a "magical" act is understood by the historian as evidence that the actor has a certain orientation toward experience, and the assumption is made that this disposition is one which any human being is likely to adopt in moments of weakness when other practical solutions have failed, then such magical performanceswould certainlybecome more frequentin historicalpopulations when their life-situations are out of their own control. The reasons that such a correlation of levels of technological capabilities with rates of magical performancescould not be establishedwas that there could be no such simple and direct connection, because the nature of the magical acts themselves had been misunderstoodin the first place. They are neither misguided "technical remedies" (656), nor expressions of a "frame of mind" in which the self is seen as The force behind faith in astrologicalpredictionsor in curing by spells lies not in the severity of danger in the situation, nor in an anxiousneed to believe in an illusory solution to it, but in a conviction within the framework of theirtruth.Thesepracticesarecomprehensible of a historicallyparticularview of the nature of reality, a culturally unique image of the way in which the universeworks, that provides a hidden conceptual foundation for all of the specific diagnoses, prescriptions, and recipes that Thomas describes.The common linking element is not a psychological attitudebut an ontology. The particular beliefs continued to be immune to the skepticalor empiricistonslaught as long as the more general, unarticulatedview of reality remained undisturbed. And conversely, those beliefs that we today consider magical apparently began to lose their popularity when this deeper
LeVine's survey of current anthropological views on the subject, cited above, despite the specific shortcomings in his interpretation of Thomas' data, is one of the clearest and most useful statements of the intricacy of the interconnections among psychological, social, and cultural processes. i6 The a priori binding together of a specific set of conventional concepts with a certain attitude leaves in question why that particular attitude is part of the content of that particular cultural belief. For instance, a serious argument could be made that the attitude of "spirit" that supports the acceptance of magic is not one of dependent selfdeception, nor faith that other beings will come to one's rescue in adversity, but exactly the contrary, that employment of magic implies an attitude of confidence in the taking of direct personal action. The assumption behind spell-saying might be that one's own efforts will have important effects, that the forces of the natural world can be made to do one's bidding. In this view the saying of a spell is no less self-reliant than the switching on of an electric light. Such a direct association of custom and attitude would be equally plausible, but equally in error.
helpless (278).I6
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substratum convictionsabout the natureof the universebegan to fall of The studiesof witchcrafttrialsshow that when the plausibilityof apart. the crime began to waver among the educatedclasses-the clergymen, the lawyers, and the jurymen-then the number of convictions and later the number of persons brought to trial began to drop (452). A specificaccusationof witchcraftmay in fact be a responseto the conflicts within a particularsocial situation, and often may also be an expression of a person's deep psychic anxieties and wishes, but it is always a statement about the nature of a particularexperience-one which makes cognitive sensewithin a receivedstructureof ideas about reality. For a ritualizedaction to be able to allay anxiety, or to express the socially taboo, or to increasefeelings of social solidarity,or whatever other effectsit may have, it must firstappearplausible.Plausibility derives not so much from empirical testing but from the fact that a particularnotion is set within a general pattern of culturalconcepts, a conventional cognitive map in terms of which thinking and willing, of being anxious and wishing, are carriedout. It is this characteristic embeddednessin covert, closed systemsof ideasabout realitythat made the particularbeliefs about fairies and unlucky days and the like so resistantto change.I7They did not draw their main supportfrom the
17 This, essentially, was the burden of Evans-Pritchard's Witchcraft,Oracles and Magic Among the Azande (Oxford, 1937), the single most influential study in the field of magic and witchcraft. Thomas drew on this volume in a different manner than I would have, tending to focus on Evans-Pritchard's more peripheral remarks and to read a psychological theory into it. He mentions those passages in the book in which Evans-Pritchard demonstrated how Azande diviners fooled their clients, how the clients fooled themselves, and how thinking and reacting in terms of witchcraft diverted people's inclinations from more serious active forms of aggression (Thomas, 216, 339, 566, 644). The central thesis of Evans-Pritchard's book was not that the Azande people have a collection of secondary beliefs by means of which they can explain away magical failures and prevent the subversion of their received medical theories through the onslaught of counterfactual evidence (642), nor that the consequences of maintaining this belief system were so valuable for the well-being or equilibrium of the society and the individual that it persisted. Rather, Evans-Pritchard was trying to explore the inner coherence of a complex system of ideas, one in which the peculiar, culturally specific conception of "magic" as an Azande notion forms one of three mutually interrelated concepts (the other two being "oracles" and "witchcraft"). These English terms were adopted by Evans-Pritchard for want of better translations of what he proves to be untranslatable ideas. It is the systematic character of Azande thought which makes it untranslatable, and it is this aspect of Evans-Pritchard's presentation that Thomas ignored. At one point Thomas discusses the terms "sorcery" and "witchcraft" as used by EvansPritchard to gloss Azande terms, and shows that this Azande distinction is of little use in analyzing English culture. The reason is obvious: Azande concepts taken out of context are not exportable, just as Elizabethan ones are not. For an interpretation of Evans-
RELIGION AND MAGIC, I
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needsto believethem.I8 intensityof psychological to I do not havethe scholarly map background drawthe cultural and of conjuration, that guided Elizabethan divination, practitioners in of has Thomas setfortha number elements theiroutlook: exorcism. and was Theuniverse alive,teemingwith active,intelligent, purposeful The who werebothhumanandnon-human. linebetweennonagents humanandhumanenergywas not clear,for a witch and a powerful and betweennatural supernatural curerpartookof both. The contrast not havebeen drawnat all. thatmanyof us takeas self-evident may nor matters werethereanyimpersonal Therewereno morallyneutral as were reversible, when a arrows forcesmovingin the world.Causal the wizardhimself.Time was not linear, dangerous spell damaged a but arrangement movingin onedirection, rather pulsating inexorably What it meansto know and occasions. and of auspicious inauspicious has to gain knowledge("cunning") a peculiarconnotationin such and a cosmos,havingmuch more to do with participation influence with the circumstantial be derivedfrom a historian's acquaintance the and details.It is indistinct negativelystated,stressing differences betweenmodernand thatI may seemto be makinga simplecontrast non-moderncosmologies,when what is really needed is a highly specificpicturewhich sets off the early Englishpopularimage of Morethanthat, and realityfromthoseof othersocieties othertimes.20
than our terms signify.I9 My descriptionlacks the compelling quality of one which might
from modern world views ratherthan the unique qualities.Becauseof
which seesit essentiallyas the elucidationof a world-view, Pritchard's accomplishment see Mary Douglas, "Thirty Yearsafter Witchcraft,Oraclesand Magic," in her Witchmodernversionof Malinowski'sfunctionalism 18 For a sophisticated which, however, assertsthat cognitive plausibilityis a psychologicalprerequisitefor the use of cultural see in practices need-satisfaction, Melford Spiro, "Religion: Problemsof Definition and to in Approaches the Studyof Religion Explanation," MichaelBanton (ed.),Anthropological (London, I966), 85-126. I9 This paragraphhas been pieced together from Thomas' suggestions, scattered through his book. Thomas gives us many probing analysesof the implicit assumptions behind variousspecificpractices,but he tends to equatelogical coherencewith explicit intellectualformulations,and either to stressthe contradictorynatureof these cultural premisesor to lump them together too simply as "magic." resemblancebetween a European 20 For an interestingexample of how a superficial herselfinto an animal)and an apparentnonbelief element (the witch who transforms Western version of the same thing revealsitself to be totally misleading,when the two systemsof ideas are given more carefulstudy, seeJulian Pitt-Rivers, "SpiritualPower in CentralAmerica,"in Douglas, Witchcraft I83-206. Confessions,
craft Confessionsand Accusations(London, I970), xiii-xxxviii.
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what is needed is a set of pictures,for the Englishmenof the Reformation were developing a whole rangeof differentworld views of varying degrees of generality and conscious elaboration. Some of these were fundamentallydifferentfrom the others; some were merely variations on basicagreements.Controversyand choice were characteristic the of time. Much of the controversy, ostensibly about minor details, concerned profound issuesabout the nature of reality. It is a mistake to assume that an attempt to discern the inner structureof culturalsystemscan only be undertakenin simple societies marked by culturalunity, homogeneity, and stability.21Situationsof competing world views are much more common that we would like to think. Much of contemporaryanthropologicalwork is an attempt to develop concepts which, while recognizing the systematically interwoven natureof culturalpatterns,can at the same time handle the facts of internalvariation. Even in a small traditionalcommunity we find people making personal reinterpretations public concepts and of to persuadeothers of their rightness.22 more complex In attempting societies,especiallythose which are undergoing a processof increasing social differentiation,as was happeningin England, the culturalforms are constantlyundergoing diversificationand modification.23 One of the most importantdimensionsof variationand change in
2I See 627, I85. Here Thomas assumes that a structural analysis of the sort carried out by Claude Levi-Strauss can only be applied to materials from homogeneous and stable societies with single coherent cultural systems. Thomas reduces Levi-Strauss' complex theories to a sort of cryptography. There are many other "structural" approaches besides that of Levi-Strauss, but few if any of them necessarily entail as a logical precondition a homogeneous culture. See, for a few rather diverse studies which attempt to discern covert dimensions or culturally conventional models of reality within complex materials: Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckman, The Social Constructionof Reality (New York, 1966); Clifford Geertz, "Ethos, World View, and the Analysis of Sacred Symbol," in his The Interpretationof Cultures (New York, 1973), 126-141; Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structureof ScientificRevolutions (Chicago, 1962; 1970); David M. Schneider, AmericanKinship: A Cultural Account(Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1968); Victor Turner, The Forest of Symbols (Ithaca, 1967). 22 For an example of how a traditional cosmological system can be given an idiosyncratic interpretation by a thoughtful native, see Julian Pitt-Rivers, "Spiritual Power,"
I92.
On variation in the quality of belief within a population see, for example: Spiro, Burmese Supernaturalism,Part II; Clifford Geertz, The Religion of Java (Glencoe, Ill., 1960); R. G. Willis, "Pollution and Paradigms," Man, VII (I972), 369-398; Michael Ames, "Buddha and the Dancing Goblins: A Theory of Magic and Religion," American Anthropologist, LXVI (1964), 75-82; Robert LeVine, "Witchcraft and Sorcery in a Gusii Community," in John Middleton and E. H. Winter (eds.), Witchcraftand Sorcery in East Africa (London, I963), 221-276; Robert LeVine, Culture Behavior and Personality
23 (Chicago, I973), 270-281.
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cultural world views relates the way in which magicand religion to have been contrasted. Thomas sees them, magicalbeliefs and As do practices not presentor derivefrom a coherent,comprehensive, view of the world,although andgeneral ones religious do. If the argumentthatI havebeenpresenting holds-that the ideaswhichhe terms which proceedfrom sucha whole magicalhave underlying premises nor outlook which was, however, neither consciouslyarticulated of elaborated intellectuals the time-then our difference critically by lies mainlyhere. Contemporary of discussion thesebeliefstendedto seethemasindependent notions,andtheirphilosophical underpinnings In and were, by and large, left unattacked undeveloped. contrast, and was an objectof complexargumentation explicit dogma religious Theprocess socialdifferentiation theperiod of of produced, among otherthings,anincreasingly that larger segmentof thepopulation was educated.The fact that these genuinelyliteratepeople were drawn from all levelsof the societyis significant here,for it meantthatthey with the uncultivated were in regularinteraction population.An live in a much more narrowlylimitedcultural world illiterate may thanhis cultivated Forhim the worldof ideasmay oftenbe neighbor. He with few ideasthat been as finiteand unquestioned. is presented of formulareversals accepted fromhisown, andthesearesimple differ tions. Changein ideasis hardfor him to conceiveof, for he is not An pressedto considerbroadalternatives. educatedman inhabitsa as cultural in different situation which ideasappear discussable quite the reachof hisingenuity and He hasaccess theories to beyond objects. and memory.24 experience, of his own personal of andeducation affect nature the cultural which the Literacy map definesa man'sworld, for it bringslargerportionsof that map into and Ideas into question therefore awareness. beginto havean objective become discussable, externalexistence;they testable,systematizable. How these two segmentsof the populace-the educatedand the with is sector not unchanged its experiences thecultivated peoplein by notionsaboutknowledge its midst,for it developsa set of standard on The of andthoughton thebasis thoseexperiences. intelligentsia, the folk. conventional otherhand,entertain imagesof the unsophisticated that and It is in thiscontextof mutualmiscomprehension disapproval
24 Cf. Robin Horton, "African Traditional Thought and Western Science," Africa, XXXVII (I967), 50-71, 155-187; Mary Douglas, Natural Symbols (London, I970).
systematization.
illiterate-see each other is an interestingquestion (666). The illiterate
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who havecontrasting betweensectors the populace of views develops of the natureof knowledgeand learning,that our contemporary culturalconceptof magicalbeliefsas a hodgepodgeof unempirical illusions musthaveemerged. of The writingof histories, asmuchasthe exorcising demons, just of the culturally is a cultural of activity.Recognition specificsources them.I havetried is a firststepin evaluating ourown sorting categories to indicatethat the construct"magic"as used in much of today's its from thinkingaboutexoticbeliefsystemsdraws auraof factualness fromthe socialprestige and its placein our own culture its legitimacy as of the cultivated groupswho employedthe construct an ideological in the past.The sameis truefor the notion that "primitive weapon ways of thought" contrastwith "modern,"a dichotomy which of reducesthe complexities humanlife to a simplenegativeof one's self, in which blackis replaced white and darkgrey by by presumed light grey. The taskconfronting students what is currently of referred as to advancedby "popularculture"of the past has been considerably research. Beforecausal and linksand Thomas' wide-ranging ingenious the thoughtsand actionsof the men chainscan be established among of a particular time, however,we must first thoroughlyunderstand that the special meanings they heldfor them.The underlying patterns of reality, of whichare the of assumptions, cultural conceptions aspects a of constitute frameoutsideof the awareness the actorsthemselves, work within which each person normallymakes sense out of his withinit ready-made construction contains Sucha cultural experience. that alternative of meanings the personmay specifications the various and on his experiences, choicesfor actionthathe may conceive place frameworks of. In complexlydifferentiated societies,the traditional in part by the lack of fit between are constantly being challenged, at with and actual concepts handfordealing experience theready-made frameworks. of individual it, andin partby thepresence contrary Many or can ritualor otherwise, be seenas defensive holdingefforts actions, worldview, while manyotheractions to bolsterup a threatened may and of an abandonment centralpresuppositions, an innovative entail whatwas going adoptionof new ones.Forus to beginto understand on at anyparticular time,we needfirsta circumstantial understanding of to of the hiddenstructure ideasof the time, one which recognizes andmultiplicity. the full theirhistorical uniqueness, specificity, The overall strategyof Thomas'work, and his extraordinary
RELIGION
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as show the way to meetthischallenge: casting wide achievement, by a a research aspossible net overthelifeof theperiod,by studying broad of range of activities,by examiningthousands specificevents and ramifications every of statements, followingout the connotational by salientclusterof ideas.The issuesare broad-the natureof man, of of energy,and thought,of morality, effort,of society,of time,matter, one moment are causation-but the culturalanswersgiven at any of and highlyparticular, thisparticularity the "Thingitself"mustbe at can its full duebeforeour attempts explanation makesense. given

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the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the editors of The Journal of Interdisciplinary History

Journal of Interdisciplinary History VI:I (Summer I975), 71-89.

(London, 1689; I856), I39.

(636-637), as against "magic" which is a label for those beliefs and

between "the counterculture magic"and "the officialcultureof of

language into which, for better or worse, he translateshis material.

tion, but the emergence and rise of the label "magic."9

RELIGION AND MAGIC, I | 79

notion to which a magicalbeliefsare a distincttype of conventional

RELIGION AND MAGIC, I

from modern world views ratherthan the unique qualities.Becauseof

illiterate-see each other is an interestingquestion (666). The illiterate

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