Equally widespread–perhaps more so than the use of spells–is the use of material objects, often known in the literature as “medicines” (hence the popular use of the term medicine man for magician). The nature of the medicines varies greatly. In some cases, medicines intended to cause harm are genuine poisons (some African people place poisons in rivers to stun and catch fish, but regard them as they do any other, less genuinely efficacious medicines). More usually the medicines do not empirically bring about the effect but in some way represent it; for example, it is common practice for a magician to try to harm another person by destroying something from his body (e.g., hair or nail parings), or something that has been in contact with him (e.g., a piece of clothing or other personal possession). Another kind of symbolism is exemplified by the Trobriand use of light vegetable leaves in rites to ensure a canoe’s speed, symbolizing the ease with which it will glide over the water; the Azande of The Sudan place a stone in a tree fork to postpone the setting of the Sun; many Balkan people used to swallow gold to cure jaundice.
The significance of the magical rite itself is often overlooked by those who hold the view that magic is something apart from religion. But it seems universal that magic is practiced only in formal and carefully defined ritual situations. The rite itself may be symbolic, as with the sprinkling of water on the ground to make rain or the destruction of a waxen image to harm a victim.
The ritual nature of magical performances may also be seen in a third element, that of the condition of the performer. Even though regarded as an everyday and “natural” phenomenon, magic is nonetheless considered as potentially dangerous and polluting, as is any sacred or religious object or activity. Both the magician and the rite itself are typically surrounded by the observance of taboos, by the purification of the participants, and so on. The magician may observe restrictions on certain foods or on sexual activity, and he may be regarded as polluting to other people at these times. There are two obvious reasons: failure to observe such precautions nullifies the magic, and taking precautions indicates to the participants and others the importance of the rite itself and the ends desired. The precautions mark off the rite from ordinary and profane activities and invest it with sanctity.
A general point to be made is that the frequent tales of people living in fear of evil magicians and black magic are merely fanciful travelers’ stories. Magic is normally regarded as an everyday aspect of religion used to explain certain kinds of events and to help bring about desired eventualities. Like most religious phenomena, magic may be regarded with some sense of awe and mystery, but this is more often a sign of the importance given to it than of fear or terror. Typically people perform magical acts themselves or they go to a magician, an expert who knows how to observe the necessary ritual precautions and taboos, and who may be a professional consulted for a fee. Depending upon the beliefs of the particular culture, the skill may be transmitted by inheritance or bought from other magicians, or may be invented by the magician for himself. Magicians may be consulted for nefarious purposes, to protect a client from the evil magic of others, or for purely benevolent reasons. It seems universal that magic is morally neutral, although the emphasis in any particular society may be on either its good or its evil use.
In some religions, especially those of small-scale nonliterate societies, magic may be considered as important and even central to religious belief; whereas in others, especially in the main world religions, it may be unimportant, and often regarded as a mere superstition that is not acceptable to official dogma. It has often been maintained that magic is important in societies that possess a particular worldview or cosmology, in which a scientifically or empirically correct cause-effect relationship between human and natural phenomena is seen as a symbolic one. This view, which is associated particularly with the British anthropologist Sir James Frazer (1854-1941), is now viewed as being based on a misunderstanding of patterns of thought in prescientific cultures. It is true that these cultures may lack the scientifically accurate knowledge of Western industrial societies; they may use magical techniques (for example, rainmaking), whereas in an industrial society it is known that such techniques are instrumentally ineffective. But magic is also performed for expressive purposes; i.e., stating and maintaining the formal culture and organization of the society, so that rainmaking magic has also the function of stressing the importance of rain and the farming activities associated with it.
The functions of magic are several, but there are two main aspects i.e.,
1) The Instrumental
2) The Expressive
A basic feature of magical rites and beliefs is that the practitioners believe that these are instrumental; i.e., they are designed to achieve certain ends in nature or in the behaviour of other people. This is usually the aspect most important for the people concerned as well as for past writers on the subject. The symbolic or expressive aspect is always present, however; it is because of its symbolic content that magic may best be understood as a part of a religious system.
Malinowski and his followers have distinguished three main instrumental functions:
a)Productive Magic
b)Protective Magic
c)Destructive Magic
Productive magic is used to ensure a successful outcome to some creative or productive activity in terms of both human labour and natural bounty, such as a good harvest or hunt. Malinowski showed clearly how it may foster confidence where technology is weak or uncertain; his example of the Trobriand Islanders making magic when fishing in the open sea but not doing so when fishing in a calm and protected lagoon makes the point clearly. In addition, productive magic may also assist the efficient organization of labour and give greater incentive to those who feel confident of success.
Protective magic aims to prevent or remove danger, to cure sickness, and to protect an individual or community from the vagaries of nature and the evil acts of others. Again, it may give people confidence to continue their normal activities.
Destructive magic is sorcery, directed specifically to harm other people. The fear of this form of magic may reduce individual initiative since a successful or wealthy person in an egalitarian society may fear the sorcery of the envious. On the other hand, the use of counter-magic against sorcery rids a community of its internal fears and tensions.
The expressive functions of magic are symbolic and usually latent in the sense that the performers may not themselves be immediately aware of them. They have largely to do with the effects of individual acts upon society at large. It is there that the part played by magic in a total system of religion may be seen.
The relationship of magic to other religious activities depends on three main considerations. The first is the nature of the power toward which the rites are directed. The eminent British anthropologist Sir Edward Burnett Tylor and his successors distinguished a personal, conscious, and omnipotent spiritual being as the object of religious ritual; magical performances have no power in themselves but are usually thought by believers to be an expression of an external, impersonal force in nature, for which the Melanesian-Polynesian term mana has typically been used. A second consideration is the participants: the magician and those who go to him. As noted above, Durkheim pointed out that a priest has a congregation whereas the magician has a clientele. A religious ritual has as its principal function (in sociological terms) the maintenance of a sense of cohesion among the members of the church, whereas the magical rite lacks this function. This view has been influential in the past and has by now become part of general anthropological thinking, although some of its details have been rejected by recent researchers.
The third consideration is that of the function of magic and of other religious activities. The magician may see the overt function of his action as instrumental, as geared to a specific end; the external observer may accept this but also see a latent function. Malinowski, for example, maintained that much of Trobriand magic was performed as an extension of human ability, as a power beyond the normal or understood. It had as its most important function the instillation of confidence in situations where human knowledge and competence cease. In addition, the rite helps to throw the importance of a given activity and the cooperation needed for it into relief and thus helps maintain the high social value of cooperation in a small community beset by disruptive jealousies and competition over scarce and difficult resources. A.R. Radcliffe-Brown pointed out in his work on the Andaman Islanders that their magical rites and precautions at childbirth and death may comfort those concerned, although they are also irksome, but that their main function is to highlight the social importance of birth and death and to bring to public notice the changes in patterns of local and kinship organization that follow them. Some of the hypotheses of Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown are today regarded as questionable, but they have influenced subsequent studies in that they were concerned not only with the individual’s belief in magic but also with the function of magic in the total social system.
In brief, it may be said that religious rites are ways of acting out beliefs about the relationships of man to God, man to man, and man to nature. In contrast, magic is a way of achieving certain ends beyond the knowledge and competence of ordinary people, especially in technologically limited societies, and of expressing their desires symbolically. Certain functions are common to both: the provision of explanation for the otherwise inexplicable; a means of coping with the unusual and mysterious; the enhancement of the social values of certain activities and situations and the coordination of socially valuable activities.
The problem of the relationship of magic to technical and scientific knowledge has concerned most writers on the subject. Magical rites have at least superficial similarities to nonmagical technical activities. In each the actor performs an action that he expects will have a certain consequence. The distinction between the two processes made by Tylor and Frazer (see below) was that the magician assumes a direct cause-effect relationship between the action and the subsequent event, whereas in empirical fact the relationship is one of the association of ideas only. Many writers have pointed out that magic is used when technical knowledge is missing or uncertain. This is not to say that magic is a substitute for technical knowledge but that its performance gives confidence to people aware of their technical limitations. The magician does not regard his magic as being the same kind of activity as weeding a field or sharpening a knife; the magical rite is of a different order, dealing with external and mystical forces.
To the scientific mind it is puzzling that people continue to believe in magic when it seems clear that there is empirically no cause-effect relationship between a magical rite and the desired consequence. The main purpose of magic, however, is not so much to achieve a certain technical end as to perform an act that has symbolic or psychological value. It is thus pointless to test it, in the same sense that a Christian does not test the efficacy of prayer. The proble