Tenskwatawa, the Indian prophet, healed 

 the sick and kept evil spirits away from 

 his people with his medicine fire and his 

 sacred beans. We can imagine common 

 objects having qualities besides those we 

 discover through our senses. A gift from 

 a beloved person, for example, or a 

 trophy may do to us what a duplicate 

 bought in the market could not do. But 

 are these magical qualities in the objects 

 or in the persons who feel and imagine 

 and believe? And do people really be- 

 lieve in such magic? We have only to 

 ask ourselves why it is that one flag, one 

 statue, one building, arouses in us a par- 

 ticular set of feelings — but not in other 

 people. Or why another flag or picture 

 or house arouses in us quite different 

 feelings. Does something come into us 

 out of those stones or does something stir 

 within? 



I ouitmith Annual Report of the Bureau of Kilinnlugy 



MAGIC PARAPHERNALIA 



it is but a sliort step to the idea that suffering or pain results from offending 

 some unseen power or spirit. If you eat forbidden fruit, you will suffer. If 

 you violate a taboo — for example, if you drink from a sacred spring or cross 

 an imaginary line that you should not cross — you will be made to suffer. 

 This idea is like the invading-spirit theory of sickness, except that it attempts 

 to explain why the spirit or spirits should choose a particular victim. Sick- 

 ness is thus considered the wages of sin. 



The theory appears reasonable — if we grant the assumptions. According 

 to this view, a sick person needs first to find out what sin he has committed 

 and then to make his peace with the tormenting gods or spirits. Millions of 

 people with all kinds of backgrounds and with many different kinds of 

 religious views look at sickness in very much this way, even where an ill- 

 ness clearly follows a physical injury or a fall. 



We find, however, that eating forbidden food and performing forbidden 

 acts bring evil results among some parts of the human race, but not among 

 others. We find also that some sicknesses, like rain, strike good people and 

 wicked people without discrimination. Of course we can save our theory 

 by saying that "good people" who are smitten only seem to be good — that 

 they are really being punished for their secret sins. Obviously that kind of 

 argument does not get us very far. Like the spirit theory of sickness, it does 

 not let itself be checked. 



328 



