66 Science Religion and Reality 



and shallow beliefs, carried out in a simple and monotonous 

 technique. This was already indicated in the definition of magic 

 given above when in order to distinguish it from religion we described 

 it as a body of purely practical acts, performed as a means to an end. 

 Such also we have found it when we tried to disentangle it from 

 knowledge and from practical arts, in which it is so strongly 

 enmeshed, superficially so alike that it requires some effort to 

 distinguish the essentially different mental attitude and the speci- 

 fically ritual nature of its acts. Primitive magic — every field 

 anthropologist knows it to his cost — is extremely monotonous and 

 unexciting, strictly limited in its means of action, circumscribed in 

 its beliefs, stunted in its fundamental assumptions. Follow one 

 rite, study one spell, grasp the principles of magical belief, art and 

 sociology in one case, and you will know not only all the acts of 

 the tribe, but, adding a variant here and there, you will be able to 

 settle as a magical practitioner in any part of the world yet fortunate 

 enough to have faith in that desirable art. 



I. The Rite and the Spell 



Let us have a look at a typical act of magic, and choose one 

 which is well known and generally regarded as a standard per- 

 formance — an act of black magic. Among the several types 

 which we meet in savagery, witchcraft by the act of pointing 

 the magical dart is, perhaps, the most widespread of all. A pointed 

 bone or a stick, an arrow or the spine of some animal, is ritually, 

 in a mimic fashion, thrust, thrown, or pointed in the direction of 

 the man to be killed by sorcery. We have innumerable recipes 

 in the oriental and ancient books of magic, in ethnographic de- 

 scriptions and tales of travellers, of how such a rite is performed. 

 But the emotional setting, the gestures and expressions of the 

 sorcerer during the performance, have been but seldom described. 

 Yet these are of the greatest importance. If a spectator were 

 suddenly transported to some part of Melanesia and could observe 

 the sorcerer at work, not perhaps knowing exactly what he was 

 looking at, he might think that he had either to do with a lunatic 

 or else he would guess that here was a man acting under the sway 

 of uncontrolled anger. For the sorcerer has, as an essential part 

 of the ritual performance, not merely to point the bone dart at his 

 victim, but with an intense expression of fury and hatred he has 

 to thrust it in the air, turn and twist it as if to bore it in the wound, 



