As animistic interpretation prevails in any society, so that the marvels of Magic come to be attributed to spiritual causes, magicians tend to become sorcerers, and, being thus associated with spirits, may not be easily distinguishable from priests. Among the Buryat a shaman was a priest, as knowing the will of the gods and directing sacrifices, but he was also an exorcist and diviner.[396] The great majority of those who deal with spirits rely, more or less openly, upon both coercion and propitiation: but we may say generally that an officiant is a sorcerer so far as he depends upon coercing spirits by Magic; a priest so far as he relies upon propitiating them by prayer and sacrifice. The sorcerer is aggressive and domineering toward supernatural powers; the priest professes humility. In any case the character of a cult is liable, in course of time, to change from one side to the other; and at the same time, two men may officiate in the same rites and, at heart, one of them may be a priest and the other a sorcerer. Custom gives the name of priest to him who, when a certain stage has been reached in the development of Animism, when gods are recognised, serves and sacrifices to the more public and reputable spirits. A conflict then breaks out between him and the sorcerer. Whilst magic-beliefs greatly strengthen chieftainship, religion, without impairing the magical sanction, reinforces it with other ideas, and therefore has a political advantage. A god is often the ancestor of the king and the ground of his sovereignty; and the king himself, or his brother, may be high-priest. The priesthood acquires commanding dignity; it shares the culture of the highest social rank, and may become almost the sole repository of learning and art. Wizards then lose their place in the sun. The beneficent practice of wizardry (or White Magic) is more or less incorporated with religious rites; the maleficent practice (or Black Magic) is forbidden and punished: under polytheism because “it is destructive to human life or welfare”; under monotheism, as offensive to God.[397] The sorcerer is outlawed, and betakes himself to the secret performance of unholy rites in dark and unwholesome circumstances. He may be in full antagonism to the official gods, invoking demons or old down-trodden gods not yet forgotten by the people, and, in the service of demons, inverting and profaning the rites of public worship. But to forbid and punish the black art is to punish crime, not to persecute Magic as such; whose beneficent practices still flourish under another name. Prof. Yrjö Hirn has shown that, during all the ignorant and superstitious prosecutions of witches in Europe, the public religious ceremonies and observances were permeated by magical ideas.[398] In spite of the antagonism between priest and sorcerer, there is not the full opposition between Religion and Sorcery that exists between Animism and Magic—between