One might suppose that the audacity of blaspheming could rise no higher than this; but an Egyptian woman, when in labour, was taught to declare herself to be Isis, and to summon the gods to her help. “Should they refuse to come, ‘Then shall ye be destroyed, ye nine gods; the heaven shall no longer exist, the earth shall no longer exist, the five days over and above the year shall cease to be; offerings shall no more be made to the gods, the lords of Heliopolis, etc.’”[441] If the facts were not before us, it would be incredible that a fixed purpose of obtaining supernatural aid should thus exclude from the mind all thoughts of the divine attributes and of one’s own insignificance.
(3) What motives impel a man to adopt this strange and hazardous profession, or sustain him amidst all the dangers and disappointments of exercising it? In the first place, some men are oppressed by a vocation toward wizardry; just as amongst ourselves some men have an irresistible vocation to be poets, though that way poverty stares them in the face. To ordinary people these seem to be cases for the asylum. Yet we may understand the “votary of the Muses” by considering that the poet, as the master of rhythm, the treasurer of tradition, the arbiter of fame, has had a necessary place in the ancient culture of the tribes, and greatest in the noblest tribes. A tribe that produces poets has an advantage in the struggle of life; and, accordingly, a strain of poet-blood is bred in the tribe, and shows itself in a certain number of youths in each generation. I think the same must be true of wizards. They are often “called”; the Altaians believe that no man of his free will becomes a shaman.[442] Like poets, they are sacred and possessed. They are also very useful: their functions in several ways overlap those of the poet, as in cherishing traditions; and often they themselves are poets. They give confidence to their fellows amidst the awful imaginary dangers of savage life. Their nervous temperament may raise the vital level of a tribe. They keep alive the beliefs in taboo and the like mysterious dangers, on which savage order and morality depend; and in many cases they become leaders and chieftains. In this way, belief in Magic and Animism seems to have been the necessary scaffolding of social life.[443] And were this all, the utility of wizards would be clear. But they often do so much and such horrible mischief, prohibiting every improvement and spreading general terror, that it is difficult to judge, in such cases, whether their activities leave a balance of good or of evil. Perhaps sometimes the evil may exceed, and a tribe may degenerate and perish of it. On the whole, however, there is certainly a balance of good, especially by leadership at early stages of social development; and this accounts for the flourishing from age to age of the wizardly profession, and for the attraction it has for those of wizardly blood who enter it, because it promises to satisfy an innate disposition. Even in a civilised country, this disposition still, in a few people, manifests itself in the old way; but for the most part has been “sublimated” into other professions. Of course that which attracts the neophyte of wizardry is not the utility of the profession, any more than the youthful poet is allured by the utility of poetry. That which appeals to the wizard of inbred genius is (besides the indulgence of his personal powers) the mystery of wizardry; which excites in his soul a complex, consisting chiefly of curiosity as to the unknown powers that control nature and spirit, the fascination of fear in approaching them and an exaltation of self-consciousness at the prospect of attaining superhuman wisdom and authority. The article on Shamanism,[444] which I have cited so often, describes the shaman as sometimes profoundly convinced that he was chosen for the service of the spirits; and says that some feel a compulsive vocation, and endure persecution for their faith; they cannot help shamanising. One is mentioned as having been gifted with a sensitive nature and an ardent imagination, he had a strong belief in the spirits and in his own mysterious intercourse with them.
Men of such a temperament, I take it, distinguishing themselves above others when every man practised magic or sorcery, founded the profession, and are always its vital nucleus, though in time they may become but a small proportion of its members. Under sincere infatuation they established its observances—the fastings, sufferings, austerities, visions and frenzies of initiation, whether into magical knowledge or spiritual possession; the working of themselves up, whilst officiating, into the orgiastic intoxication in which they felt their own greatness and dominated their audience; and they discovered some of the modes of operating by drugs and suggestion and some real remedies. But the profession, once formed, soon had attractions for a very different sort of man, impelled by very different motives; who saw in it the road sometimes to wealth, always to reputation and power. Since, amongst very primitive people there is little wealth to collect, and sometimes (as we have seen) remuneration of magical services is neither given nor expected, the earlier of these motives must have been the love of causing wonder and fear, of the power which their fellows’ fears conferred and of the reputation which consequently spread far and wide. In Mota (Melanesia) a man in control of magical virtue will render services without reward, merely to add to his reputation for the possession of mana.[445] At first they seem to have had no privileges, but power acquires privilege: so that, among the Warramunga, wizards are free from sexual taboos;[446] in Guiana no tribesman dares refuse the sorcerer anything, not even his wife;[447] among the Boloki, the sorcerer is never charged with injurious witchcraft and, therefore, is never in danger of the ordeal.[448]
Sometimes, indeed, the wizard may not be respected in private life, but only in the exercise of his office. Fear and wonder, in fact, do not always entirely blind the eyes of neighbours to his shortcomings. Spencer and Gillen tell us that the Magic of distant places, being the less known, is the more feared.[449] The Rev. J. H. Weeks even says that on the Congo the village medicine-man is seldom engaged at home; for the people know that his fetich cannot protect him or his from harm and, therefore, hire some one from another village of whom they know less.[450] Similarly, a tribe is apt to fear its own adepts less than those of another tribe of lower culture, whose ways are less known and more mysterious: as Malays fear especially the Jakuns;[451] formerly the Swedes the Finns, and the Finns the Lapps; the Todas the Kurumba;[452] and in Macedonia Mohammedan monks enjoy a far higher reputation for Magic than the Christian.[453]
Still, the wizard, whether of home or foreign growth, becomes necessary in every crisis of life, at birth and marriage, in misfortune, sickness and death; in every undertaking—hunting, agriculture or commerce; and by his omens and auguries may determine war and peace. After his own death, he may sometimes look forward to being deified. With such powers, surrounded by intimidated and dependent crowds, and often enjoying a long career of conscious or unconscious imposture, he seems to himself, as to others, a “superman”; his Selbstgefühl rises to megalomania, and his boasting becomes monstrous and stupefying.
(4) The more to impress the imagination of all spectators and enhance his reputation, the wizard usually affects a costume, or behaviour, or strange companionship of animals, that distinguishes him from the rest of his tribe. Not always; for Miss Czaplicka[454] says that in Siberia the shaman is in everyday life not distinguished from others, except occasionally by a haughty demeanour; but the rule is otherwise. A. W. Howitt[455] relates that one Australian medicine-man obtained influence by always carrying about with him a lace-lizard four feet long; another cherished a tame brown snake; and an old woman kept a native cat (Daysurus): “familiars” that correspond to the black cats and goats of our own witches. The Arunta medicine-man bores a hole in his tongue, appears with a broad band of powdered charcoal and fat across the bridge of his nose and learns to look preternaturally solemn, as one possessing knowledge hidden from ordinary men.[456] In the forest of the upper Amazons, the medicine-man does not depilate, though the rest of his tribe do so to distinguish themselves from monkeys; and he attempts to present in his costume something original and striking.[457] In S. Africa, too, the witch-doctor’s dress is often very conspicuous. So it is throughout history: the thaumaturgist, by his wand, robes, austerities, demeanour, advertises himself as a man apart from the crowd. Rites of initiation mark this superiority: as tribal initiation separates a man from women and boys, so the wizard’s initiation makes him a “superman.”
(5) Such a temper cannot endure opposition, and is jealous of rivalry; the man whom it actuates lives in constant fear of failure and discredit and is, therefore, full of suspicion and cruelty. In S. Africa, professional hatred is pushed to its last limits amongst magicians. They test their colleagues, steal each other’s drugs, or pray to the gods to make their rival’s art inefficient.[458] The savage sorcerer looks with no kindly eye upon the European; who, too plainly, possesses extraordinary Magic. Captain Whiffen says[459] of the sorcerer amongst the South Amerinds, who has much knowledge of poisons, that to maintain his reputation, if he has declared that he cannot cure a patient, he poisons him. Of the sorcerer of the Lower Congo, Mr. Weeks says, that “his face becomes ugly, repulsive, the canvas on which cruelty, chicanery, hatred and all devilish passions are portrayed with repellent accuracy.”[460] An extreme case perhaps; but, leading up to it, there are all degrees of rancour and malignity toward those who hinder our ambitions; and it can only be in exceptional magicians that megalomania is reconcilable with considerateness and magnanimity.
(6) Since the greater part of the wizard’s practice is imposture (whether he believes in himself or not), he must be an actor; and his success must greatly depend on the degree in which he possesses the actor’s special gifts and temperament: an audience must be a stimulus to him and not a check; he exhibits himself not unwillingly. To the shaman, Miss Czaplicka tells us,[461] an audience is useful: though the presence of an European is depressing. A Chuckchee shaman without a sort of chorus considers himself unable to discharge his office: novices in training usually get a brother or sister to respond to their exercises. And, indeed, a wizard’s exhibitions often provide without design the same sort of social entertainment as those of an actor. 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.
But there are two kinds of actors; and they correspond well enough with the two kinds of wizards already described—the vocational and the exploitative. 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 others study their part and determine beforehand exactly what tones, gestures, expressions are the most effective reinforcement of every word, and thereafter carry out upon the stage in cold blood the whole dramatic lesson which they have taught themselves. Perhaps more common than either of these extreme types is the actor who begins by studying under a sort of inspiration, and after experimenting for a few nights, repeats what he has found to answer best. We need not consider those who can do nothing but what they have been taught by others. Well, the wizard by vocation probably behaves like the first kind of actor: enters upon any office to which he may be called in exclusive devotion to his task; works himself into a frenzy, groans, writhes and sweats under the possession of his demon; chants incantations in an archaic tongue; drums and dances by the hour, and falls into speechless trance—according to the professional pattern—all in what may be described as dramatic good faith. By native disposition and by practised self-suggestion he obtains a temporary dissociation. The opposite sort of wizard, exploiting the profession, sees all this, and imitates it with such improvements as he may be able to devise. Of the intervening crowd of charlatans, who mingle self-delusion with deceit in all possible proportions, no definite account can be given.