Magic Science and Religion yj 



made up of stories about his wonderful cures or kills, his catches, 

 his victories, his conquests in love. In every savage society such 

 stories form the backbone of belief in magic, for, supported as they 

 are by the emotional experiences which everyone has had himself, 

 the running chronicle of magical miracles establishes its claims 

 beyond any doubt or cavil. Every eminent practitioner, besides 

 his traditional claim, besides the filiation with his predecessors, 

 makes his personal warrant of wonder-working. 



Thus myth is not a dead product of past ages, merely surviving 

 as an idle narrative. It is a living force, constantly producing new 

 phenomena, constantly surrounding magic by new testimonies. 

 Magic moves in the glory of past tradition, but it also creates its 

 atmosphere of ever-nascent myth. As there is the body of legends 

 already fixed, standardised, and constituting the folk-lore of the 

 tribe, so there is always a stream of narratives flowingfreely from 

 present-day occurrences, frequently similar in kind to those of 

 the mythological time. Magic is the bridge between the golden 

 age of primeval craft and the wonder-working power of to-day. 

 Hence the formulas are full of mythical allusions, which, when 

 uttered, unchain the powers of the past and cast them into the 

 present. 



With this we see also the role and meaning of mythology in 

 a new light. Myth is not a savage speculation about origins of 

 things born out of philosophic interest. Neither is it the result 

 of the contemplation of nature — a sort of symbolical representation 

 of its laws. It is the historical statement of one of those events 

 which once for all vouch for the truth of a certain form of magic. 

 Sometimes it is the actual record of a magical revelation coming 

 directly from the first man to whom magic was revealed in some 

 dramatic occurrence. More often it bears on its surface that it 

 is merely a statement of how magic came into the possession of 

 a clan or a community or a tribe. In all cases it is a warrant of 

 its truth, a pedigree of its filiation, a charter of its claims to validity. 

 And as we have seen, myth is the natural result of human faith, 

 because every power must give signs of its efficiency, must act and 

 be known to act, if people are to believe in its virtue. Every 

 belief engenders its mythology, for there is no faith without 

 miracles, and the main myth recounts simply the primeval miracle 

 of the magic. 



Myth, it may be added at once, can attach itself not only to 



