A wizard’s tribesmen, of course, believe him to possess knowledge absurdly in excess of the reality. He boasts of it as the foundation of his power over nature or over spirits; often as a supernatural gift of spirits whom he has visited, or who have visited him, and who have initiated him; or else as secret traditionary lore. It is by knowledge of human nature that he rules his fellows; and he asserts that knowledge of the names and origins of things and of spirits gives him the same control over them. In Mr. Skeat’s Malay Magic, incantations addressed by a miner to spirits or to metals, adjuring the spirits to withdraw from his “claim,” or the grains of metal to assemble there, contain the intimidating and subduing verse:
“I know the origin from which you sprang!”
The same compelling power was employed—if we may trust the Kalevala—by Finnish wizards; for “every thing or being loses its ability for evil, as soon as some one is found who knows, who proclaims its essence, its origin, its genealogy.” “Tietaja, which etymologically signifies wise, or learned, is ordinarily used for magician.”[423] It was by profound science that mediæval magicians were believed to control demons; and anybody celebrated for science was suspected of sorcery: such as Grosseteste, Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, Aquinas, and Raymond Lulli; whose reputation supported the credit of such men as Paracelsus and John Dee.
The fine arts in their rudiments owe much to the wizards. Incantations in verse often reach a high pitch of lyric fervour. The words rune, carmen, laulaa bear witness to the magic of poetry. Virgil and Taliessin have been famous for more than natural gifts; that one by superstitious repute, and this by his own vaunting.[424] Dancing and pantomime were cultivated for their magical virtues. Primitive carving and painting are in many cases undertaken in order to influence the spirits, or the animals, or the natural powers they represent; and if Magic was the motive of the recently discovered animal paintings dating from the old Stone Age, its efficacy in encouraging art at that remote period rivalled that of religious patronage in some later ages.
(2) In most tribes the wizard needs great force of will and persistency of purpose—whether from deliberate choice or from infatuation with the profession—to carry him through the severe training that is often exacted from candidates for the office; great audacity and courage to impel and sustain him in the practice of his art, pestered by taboos and (the sorcerer especially) always beset by supernatural terrors and often by more real dangers; and unusual presence of mind to extricate himself from very embarrassing situations. It is true that, in some cases, where the office of wizard is hereditary, or may be assumed by alleging the favour of spirits, or some other underhand device—perhaps upon the evidence of visions, or by mere fraud, or by a mixture of both—we hear little of really serious initiatory rites; but often these formalities are very painful or very expensive. Among the Arunta, there are three classes of wizards: the first and second, made by spirits, undergo no severe trial—except the boring of a hole in their own tongues and the keeping of it open, as evidence of a professional story about spirits who slew them with spears, cut out their entrails and replaced them with a new set and certain magic stones. But the third class are initiated by two wizards of the first and second class, who pretend to force crystal stones[425] into their bleeding bodies from the front of the leg up to the breast bone, into the crown of their heads and under the nail of the right forefinger. This they must suffer in perfect silence, three times a day on three consecutive days, with other tortures, followed by various taboos; and, after all, they do not stand as well with the tribe as those whom the spirits have initiated.[426] Can there be any doubt that the initiatory rites of the third class represent the older magical custom, and that the fabulous initiation by spirits is an overgrowth of Animism? There are clear motives for the change; since the latter method is easily carried out by oneself, is far less painful, and is more stimulating to the imaginative belief of the laity, and therefore more imposing. For the inverse change there are no motives. And therefore, probably, wizards of the third class are really less competent than the others; for the man who, after the new spirit-path has been opened up, still prefers the old road through pain and privation must be (comparatively) an unimaginative, dull, honest, inferior fellow.
Old wizards of the Warramunga, receiving a new candidate for the profession, allow him during the process no rest; he must stand or walk until quite worn out, when he scarcely knows what is happening to him; deprived for a long time of water and food, he becomes dazed and stupefied.[427] In the western islands of Torres Straits, a novice was taken into the bush by his instructor, who defæcated into a shell full of water and made him drink it with his eyes open; next he must chew certain fruits and plants, which made his inside bad and his skin itch; then shark’s flesh, and, finally, the decomposing flesh of a dead man full of maggots. He became very ill and half frantic. Few cared to undergo these rites; some gave up the undertaking; some died of it.[428] In British Guiana, an aspirant to wizardry undergoes long fasts, wanders alone in the bush (full of terrors to the timid Indian), and accustoms himself to take large draughts of tobacco-juice mixed with water, which cause temporary insanity.[429] Across the watershed to the S.W., the office of medicine-man is hereditary; yet Waterton reports that probationers have to endure exhausting ordeals and tortures.[430] The severe training of the Bantu witch-doctor kills many novices.[431] Under such conditions, only men of unusual force of will, or constancy of infatuation (qualities not always easy to discriminate), can become wizards. Preparatory ritual for the office of shaman among the Buryats of Siberia is elaborate, expensive and intimidating: a candidate of poor family is helped by the community to get animals for sacrifice and objects necessary for the rites; but many shrink from the trial, “dreading the vast responsibility it brings; for the gods deal severely with those who have undergone consecration, and punish with death any serious mistake.” There are nine degrees in the profession, each requiring a special initiation.[432] Thus, in many cases, the ordeal of initiation turns away the weak and incompetent, and keeps up the wizardly profession at a high level of resolution and endurance. In more sophisticated societies a similar result is obtained by the belief that the attainment of magical powers depends upon the undergoing of prolonged austerity in study, or in privations and tortures, which give a mystical right to supernatural power: the superstition upon which Southey raised The Curse of Kehama—least unreadable of his romances.
As for the courage that may be requisite for carrying on the wizard’s practices, when he is the terror of his neighbours, their attitude towards him varies, in different tribes, from the tamest toleration to murderous antagonism. Thus, in the western islands of Torres Straits, Professor Haddon never knew the sorcerers mobbed or violently put to death on account of their magical practices.[433] In New Caledonia, when a sorcerer causes a general famine, the people merely make him presents to procure a return of plenty.[434] Among the Todas, a man who is the victim of a sorcerer pays him to have the curse removed.[435] In such cases, effrontery is all the sorcerer needs. On the other hand, near Finsch Harbour in New Guinea, a dangerous sorcerer is often put to death; and so he is amongst the neighbouring Kais.[436] Such in fact is the more general practice;[437] and the wizard, carrying on his profession at the risk of his life, must be supported by the sort of fearlessness that criminals often show.
Confronted with supernatural dangers, the sorcerer’s need of courage must depend upon the sincerity of his own belief in them: a matter to be discussed in the fourth section of this chapter. If his professions are veracious, the attitude of such a man toward spiritual powers cannot be sustained by any ordinary daring. In the N.W. Amazons the shaman is the only one of his tribe who dares go alone into the haunted forest. Zulu doctors, who specialise as “heaven-herds,” fight the Thunderstorm with spear and shield until he flees away.[438] Everywhere the sorcerer fights the demons of disease with reckless valour. On the Congo he drives them into some animal, and then cuts its head off. In North America he intimidates, quells and exorcises them with furious boasting. In Siberia, to capture the fleeting soul of a patient, he follows it over land and sea and into the regions of the dead. The Innuit of Greenland acknowledge Sedna as the supreme Being and the creatress of all living things; yet their angakoq subdue even her: one lures her from Adlivun with a magic song; whilst another, as she emerges, harpoons her with a seal-spear, which is then found to be smeared with blood.[439] To obtain assistance from even the highest spirits the wizard deceives them; or to slay an enemy he usurps their powers. The Malay avenges himself by making an image of his victim in a shroud, and praying over it as over the dead; then he buries it in the path to his victim’s house, and says:
“Peace be to you, ho prophet Tap, in whose charge the earth is!
Lo I am burying the corpse of (name of victim)
I am bidden by the prophet Mohammed,
Because he (the victim) was a rebel against God.
Do you assist in killing him.
If you do not kill him,
You shall be a rebel against God,
A rebel against Mohammed.
It is not I who am burying him.
It is Gabriel who is burying him.
Do you grant my prayer this day:
Grant it by the grace of my petition within the fold of the creed La ilaha, etc.”[440]