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
The man who, in Europe or elsewhere, makes use of {78} spells to
injure individuals, or even of the Evil Eye, is practising magic: he
is doing an antisocial act. The man who defends himself with a
gesture, with spells, or by loading his body with amulets, is not
doing an antisocial act; he is simply protecting himself. But is he
practising religion or magic? Be it remembered here that a man may
have the Evil Eye without knowing it. Pius the Ninth, Vicar of Christ,
was reputed to have the Evil Eye. Nothing was so fatal as his
blessing; the faithful quailed at his glance and doubtless protected
themselves with amulets. So the Boloki of the Congo hold that “one can
have witchcraft without knowing it.”[78.1] In these cases there can
be no antisocial intention. Among the Thonga of South-Eastern Africa a
common procedure is to point at one’s enemy with the index-finger.
This is antisocial: it is witchcraft. Before they go to war a ceremony
is performed by an old woman, naked and in a state of ritual purity,
over the warriors, and an incantation is muttered, to enable them to
kill their foes.[78.2] This may not be antisocial; but is it anything
else than magic? True, the men murmur prayers to their ancestral
spirits for help; but then religion is penetrated with magic. Even
Professor Durkheim admits that he cannot show a solution of continuity
between them; the frontiers between their respective domains are often
undefined, unfixed.[78.3] At all events he cannot say where the one
ends and the other begins.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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