Ritual and belief

by Edwin Sidney Hartland

An example of the intermingling of religion and magic in a different way may also be taken from the same people. “Physical phenomena (as heavy storms), when taking place about the time that a person dies, or is being buried, are regarded as caused by the deceased person; hence when a storm threatens to break during the funeral festivities of a man, the people present will call the beloved child of the deceased, and, giving him a lighted ember from the hearth with a vine twined round it, they will ask him to stop the rain. The lad steps forward and waves the vine-encircled ember towards the horizon where the storm is rising, and says: ‘Father, let us have fine weather during your funeral ceremonies.’ The son, after this rite, must not drink water (he may drink sugar-cane wine), nor put his feet in water for one day. Should he not observe this custom, the rain will at once fall.”^[148.1] The boy’s father, having died, has become a mongoli, that is to say, an ancestral spirit of indefinite powers, who watches over the perpetuation of his family, haunts the forest or the river, inspires mediums to deliver oracles, and visits the village at times in the material form of a crocodile or a hippopotamus to receive offerings of sugar-cane wine and food. His favourite son has influence with him to change his purposes, and exercises that influence by prayer. But to make the prayer effectual in staying the storm, he must use a widely diffused charm against rain—the waving of a brand and abstinence from water.

It is probable, as we have seen, that the early stages of ritual were vague and inchoate. It was adaptable to interpretation as culture progressed, as new beliefs were evolved or imported. Such an example of adaptability has been pointed out by Miss Werner in a rite practised by the Anyanja of British Central Africa when rain is wanted. It is complete in itself, but is now prefaced by an appeal to Mpambe, a quasi-supreme being. “The principal part was taken by a woman—the chief’s sister. She began by dropping ufa [maize-flour] on the ground, slowly and carefully, till it formed a cone, and in doing this called out in a high-pitched voice, ‘Imva Mpambe! Adza mvula’ (Hear thou, O God, and send rain!), and the assembled people responded, clapping their hands softly and intoning—they always intone their prayers—‘Imva Mpambe.’ The beer was then poured out as a libation, and the people, following the example of the woman, threw themselves on their backs and clapped their hands (a form of salutation to superiors), and finally danced round the chief where he sat on the ground.” Then followed the rite in question. “The dance ceased; a large jar of water was brought and placed before the chief. First Mbudzi (his sister) washed her hands, arms and face; then water was poured over her by another woman; then all the women rushed forward with calabashes in their hands, and, dipping them into the jar, threw the water into the air with loud cries and wild gesticulations.” This is obviously a rain-charm, but, as Miss Werner says, it “might be taken as prayer and not magic, if we are to understand the water to be thrown into the air as a sign that water is wanted.” She adds: “Sometimes people smear themselves with mud and charcoal to show that they want washing. If the rain still does not come, they go and wash themselves in the rivers and streams.”^[149.1] The women’s action and cries may be interpreted as addressed to someone or something, though possibly originating merely in excessive emotion and now become traditional. It would be only necessary for the cries to become articulate and the name of Mpambe, or some other name, to be pronounced, to form a genuine invocation, as has happened in the Boloki rite just described. Actually the invocation forms the preliminary of the rite: that may be what, for want of better knowledge, we should call an accident. That it is comparatively recent is shown by the employment of maize-flour. The evolution might easily have taken another course.

Turning to another continent, we may find an example of adaptability of a more elaborate ceremony. The Navaho are in the main an Athapascan people who have wandered down to the sterile plains of New Mexico and Arizona. There, ages ago, they came into contact with the more settled Pueblo tribes. The researches of American anthropologists show the practical identity of certain of their religious rituals with those of their Pueblo neighbours. It would seem that these rituals have been taken over from the latter. This is only natural, seeing that the Navaho came down from the north with an undeveloped culture and organization into a country where new needs were experienced and a higher civilization was met with. But in taking over the rituals they have applied them to purposes different from those of their original performers. The chief aim of the ceremonies as used among the Pueblo tribes is to obtain fertility, and the condition of fertility is rain. This is clear from the use made of corn-meal and corn-pollen. “Pollen is the symbol of fertility, and the rite at bottom is for rain. The Navaho took over the use of the corn and the pollen together with the other features; but the corn no longer served its previous purpose as a prayer for rain and the ripening of the crops: it was used for the cure of disease.”^[151.1] The Dene or Athapascans, of which stem the Navaho are a branch, are a people of migratory hunters. Agriculture would be foreign to them. Their principal ceremonies are concerned with the conjuration of evil spirits and the cure of diseases, which are usually ascribed to the spirits. It was natural that when they borrowed the ceremonies of a settled agricultural community they should imbue them with their own ideas. In their hands the cure of disease “became the fundamental feature of the borrowed rites. A ceremony intended for rain-making would naturally need some alteration in order to serve as a cure of disease.”^[151.2] And it has received it. The fact that they have been able so to adapt the rites probably points to some want of definiteness in the form of the rites at the time they were borrowed.

Another illustration of adaptability is seen in the rites at wells or rocks common all over Europe. What may have been the original cause of the sacredness of a well or a rock, what may have been the original intention of the processions, the dances and the decorations we have of course no means of knowing. We may guess that some peculiarity in the shape of the rock, the sweet or healing waters of the fountain, or some sudden and unexplained or untoward incident first called and concentrated popular attention, and that a precise, intelligible meaning may hardly have been attached to the few and simple ceremonies first performed. In course of time, we may conjecture, ritual and belief were elaborated and defined. However this may be, we know that before the end of paganism—at least in those countries of the west where inscriptions have been preserved—a spirit or god was believed to haunt the place and to preside over the rites of which it was the scene. To him they were addressed, and it was his favour they sought to conciliate. Christianity came and diverted the rites to new objects, not altogether forbidding, but baptizing them, in accordance with the policy enunciated in Pope Gregory’s famous letter to the Abbot Mellitus. All these changes necessitate adaptations of practice. That which at first was formless receives a definite form. That which may have been an indeterminate expression of awe and reverence becomes distinctly worship, though not without elements, often retained to the last, that we should call magical. And the changes in the nominal objects of worship are accompanied by progressive changes in the details of the ritual. Lastly when, as in many cases, official recognition of the ritual is abandoned, and it is left to the unguided superstition of the peasant, it tends to slip back into its original indeterminate condition. Acts are performed or avoided, and ceremonies undertaken, not as worship of a power known and resident on the hallowed spot, but for benefits sometimes precise, more often for luck mysterious, impersonal, half-credited, or from fear of something equally mysterious, but for that reason all the more terrible. Beyond this, the practices linger into a stage, unknown to the savages who began them, where they are performed for pleasure, or else in the hope of monetary gain, by children and adolescents, and die away gradually under the stress of modern life and the influence of the schoolmaster.

The earlier stages of this round may, as we have seen, be observed occasionally in the rites of peoples still in the lower culture. Close observation, accurate analysis and comparison would probably result in finding them more frequently. Meanwhile let us turn to another question.

If I have been right in insisting throughout these essays on the fundamental organic unity of Magic and Religion, I have not denied their gradual separation and opposition at a later stage. They have their common root in the same attitude toward the environment, social and physical. Rite and belief have been elaborated and organized together. For ages during this process magic and religion must have been integral parts of one another, as they are now in many parts of the world. Except in regard to antisocial magic, they have not yet among many peoples begun to feel opposition. But this unity, as civilization progresses, becomes more and more unstable. Where, as is said to be the case in Morocco, civilization has recoiled, magic comes more and more to the front. Though it does so not without protests on the part of those who retain any consciousness of the higher development of religion, still on the whole it is successful in overlaying religion and pushing it into the background. Another people whose religion is in process of degeneration, if Dr Rivers’ opinion be correct, is the Todas. There the magic of the dairy ritual has thrust aside the worship of the gods. In this case, however, the opposition is not open and avowed. The history of the Todas is a blank. We cannot put our finger on one period and say: Here the gods were worshipped and the dairy magic was unknown. We have no records. We can only conclude from an examination of the internal evidence that the gods once played a more prominent part in the life of the community than they do now, but that Toda culture had not so far progressed that magic was not an inseparable part of religion, and that any growth of magic at the expense of religion would have been viewed without misgiving or even consciousness. Even religions where the opposition is most pronounced are themselves by no means pure from magic. All the subtlety, all the rhetoric of theologians may well be needed to rebut the charge of magic against the seven sacraments of the Church. I at least have no intention to risk the curse levelled by the Council of Trent at him who denies their efficacy ex opere operato, and whether or not the minister may be in a state of mortal sin.

In denouncing witchcraft the Christian Church has followed the lead of the Hebrew religion. The Hebrew law against witchcraft was unambiguous, pitiless. “Thou shalt not suffer a sorceress to live”^[154.1] is the grim direction of the oldest Hebrew writing. It is expanded by the Deuteronomist: “When thou art come into the land which Yahwè thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found with thee anyone that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, one that useth divination, one that practiseth augury, or an enchanter, or a sorcerer, or a charmer, or a consulter with a familiar spirit, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For whosoever doeth these things is an abomination unto Yahwè; and because of these abominations Yahwè thy God doth drive them out from before thee.”^[154.2] This is pretty comprehensive. Yet it left many practices within the national religion, recognized as part of it, though essentially magical. The scapegoat I have already mentioned. The ordeal of the water of bitterness, to which a woman suspected by her husband of infidelity was compelled to submit, is equally a magical proceeding.^[154.3] Both are sanctioned, not to say prescribed, by Yahwè; though in their present form the prescriptions may be late. Divination is prohibited, and consultation with familiar spirits or the ghosts of the dead, augury, and the taking of omens. Nevertheless, the children of Israel enquired of Yahwè, and he answered them by dreams; and the high priest divined by means of Urim and Thummim. Teraphim seem to have been amulets—one might almost say fetishes. They are referred to more than once in the Hebrew books. As late as the prophet Hosea they were not merely tolerated but regarded as necessities to the prosperity of the people. “For the children of Israel shall abide many days without king and without prince, and without sacrifice and without pillar (massebah), and without ephod or teraphim. Afterward shall the children of Israel return and seek the Lord their God and David their king, and shall come with fear unto the Lord and to his goodness in the latter days.”^[155.1] The use of the ephod was probably connected with divination, and Yahwè, speaking through the prophet, expressly countenanced not only this, but also the use of teraphim. With growing monotheism they were, however, eventually repressed.

Indeed, a comparison of the passages in which reference is made to various magical practices will suggest that the real reason of the hostility to them arose from their connection with heathenism. They were representative practices of a rival religion. They hindered the concentration of worship on Yahwè at his sole shrine on Mount Zion. On the other hand, the casting out of evil spirits continued unabated and unreproved into New Testament times, and the wearing of personal amulets in the shape of phylacteries persists among the uneducated classes of Jews to the present day and has full rabbinical sanction. Both these practices are uncontrovertibly magical.

Similar considerations inspired mediæval hostility to witchcraft, and continued it with little decrease of intensity into the eighteenth century. Witchcraft was rebellion against the established religion. It was identified with heresy. It involved contempt of the omnipotent priesthood, derogating thus not merely from its reputation, but also its gains. It was believed even to set up a rival god. This belief was an inheritance from primitive Christianity, which looked upon the heathen gods as devils. Every miracle which imposed on the credulity of those ages, if performed by a Christian, was attributed to divine interference; if performed, on the contrary, by a pagan, was with as little hesitation ascribed to Satan and his underlings. In either case nobody doubted the fact of the occurrence, or thought it worth while minutely to examine the evidence. The hostility of the Church to witchcraft had, however, the excuse that the heathen rites were in a large measure magical, and that magic, other than Black Magic, was avowedly practised during pagan times and regarded with toleration, if not complacency. Heathenism died a hard death. Somewhat changed in form it survived for centuries; and many of the heretical sects were more or less impregnated with it.

But all this does not fully account for the horror and hatred felt against magic alike by churchmen and the laity. What gave intensity to the opposition was the dread that magical powers would be used to the disadvantage, the injury, the death of all against whom the magician had a grudge. So persistently did this dread take hold of the imagination that the practice of magic was finally identified with Black Magic, and to be accused of witchcraft meant to be charged with the attempt to injure, and perhaps to slay, one’s neighbours by mysterious, and because mysterious, horrible means. Against proceedings of this kind there was no protection but in hunting out and putting an end to the magicians. This feeling had manifested itself even in pagan times. Both in Greece and at Rome the laws condemned magicians to death.