BENEDICT, BAGOBO CEREMONIAL, MAGIC AND MYTH 205 



ular type that I wanted to buy from Datu Yting; but he informed 

 me that he could not sell it because it had become an Had and 

 was already hung on the wall for the gods, and that it would make 

 him very sick to let it go. Accordingly, I dropped the subject. 

 Some time later the old man came to me and intimated that he 

 might possibly sell me that spear ; that there was a chance of his 

 finding a bawi that would nullify the effect of the sacrilege, "for 

 there is medicine for everything, Senora," he added, "medicine for 

 everything." 333 



Magic, as a Bagobo apprehends it, is either a potency inherent 

 in certain objects or in several elements properly combined, as a 

 drug or a fetish ; or it is the dynamic power of a ceremony whose 

 effect is sure ; or it is an indirect suggestion that sets in motion a 

 train of mental images leading to a fixed response — it may be a 

 manikin, a formula, a significant action, or any one of a hundred 

 things which is chosen to give the initial suggestion for the train 

 of associations that it is desired to produce. An instance of such 

 indirect suggestion is the washing of chickens and goats as a charm 

 to call the rain. 



Following the natural clustering of charms and magical arts as 

 handled by the Bagobo, I shall attempt to make a rough grouping 

 under psychological motives, rather than with regard to human in- 

 terests, such as war, courtship, etc. Obviously, such groups will 

 overlap, and often a magical method may be considered as belong- 

 ing, indifferently, to one or to another class according to the point 

 of view ; yet even a tentative classification is convenient when hand- 

 ling a large amount of miscellaneous magical material. 



We may say, then, that charms and magical rites will work out 

 the desired end in one or more of four ways: 



a). By actual defense magically placed; 



b). By substitution, or the psychological principle of association 

 by resemblance (Frazer's "homoeopathic magic," in part); 



c). By association by contiguity (Frazer's "contagious magic," 

 in part); 



d). By inherent virtue, including fetishes and much of the native 

 materia laedica. 



333 Cf. the same idea in Indian magic. "Brahmans can accomplish all tilings in this 

 world by means of ceremonies." Somadeva: op. cit., p. 85. 



