[1060] Ibid., pp. 549, 674.
[1061] Howitt, Nat. Tr., pp. 580, 596, 604, 668, 670; Spencer and Gillen, Nat. Tr., pp. 223, 351.
[1062] Howitt, p. 557.
[1063] Ibid., p. 604; Spencer and Gillen, Nat. Tr., p. 351.
[1064] Howitt, p. 611.
[1065] Howitt, p. 589.
[1066] One may compare these ascetic practices with those used at the initiation of a magician. Just like the young neophyte, the apprentice magician is submitted to a multitude of interdictions, the observation of which contributes to his acquisition of his specific powers (see L'Origine des pouvoirs magiques, in Hubert and Mauss, Mélanges d'histoire des religions, pp. 171, 173, 176). The same is true for the husband and wife on the day before and the day after the wedding (taboos of the betrothed and newly married); this is because marriage also implies a grave change of condition. We limit ourselves to mentioning these facts summarily, without stopping over them; for the first concern magic, which is not our subject, and the second have to do with that system of juridico-religious rules which relates to the commerce of the sexes, the study of which will be possible only in conjunction with the other precepts of primitive conjugal morality.
[1067] It is true that Preuss interprets these facts by saying that suffering is a way of increasing a man's magic force (die menschliche Zauberkraft); from this expression, one might believe that suffering is a magic rite, not a religious one. But as we have already pointed out, Preuss gives the name magic, without great precision, to all anonymous and impersonal forces, whether they belong to magic or religion. Of course, there are tortures which are used to make magicians; but many of those which we have described are a part of the real religious ceremonies, and, consequently, it is the religious state of the individuals which they modify.
[1068] Preuss, Der Ursprung der Religion und Kunst, in Globus, LXXXVIII, pp. 309-400. Under this same rubric Preuss classes a great number of incongruous rites, for example, effusions of blood which act in virtue of the positive qualities attributed to blood and not because of the suffering which they imply. We retain only those in which suffering is an essential element of the rite and the cause of its efficacy.
[1069] Nor. Tr., pp. 331 f.