Ritual and belief : $b Studies in the history of religionHartland, Edwin Sidney
Religion
Ritual and belief : $b Studies in the history of religion
Hartland, Edwin Sidney
Ethnopsychology; Magic; Religion; Rites and ceremonies
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 {154} 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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