Fetishes, Charms, and Magic

88:4.1Civ­i­lized man at­tacks the prob­lems of a real en­vi­ron­ment through his sci­ence; sav­age man at­tempted to solve the real prob­lems of an il­lu­sory ghost en­vi­ron­ment by magic. Magic was the tech­nique of ma­nip­u­lat­ing the con­jec­tured spirit en­vi­ron­ment whose machi­na­tions end­lessly ex­plained the in­ex­pli­ca­ble; it was the art of ob­tain­ing vol­un­tary spirit co-op­er­a­tion and of co­erc­ing in­vol­un­tary spirit aid through the use of fe­tishes or other and more pow­er­ful spir­its.

88:4.2The ob­ject of magic, sor­cery, and nec­ro­mancy was two­fold:

88:4.31. To se­cure in­sight into the fu­ture.

88:4.42. Fa­vor­ably to in­flu­ence en­vi­ron­ment.

88:4.5The ob­jects of sci­ence are iden­ti­cal with those of magic. Man­kind is pro­gress­ing from magic to sci­ence, not by med­i­ta­tion and rea­son, but rather through long ex­pe­ri­ence, grad­u­ally and painfully. Man is grad­u­ally back­ing into the truth, be­gin­ning in er­ror, pro­gress­ing in er­ror, and fi­nally at­tain­ing the thresh­old of truth. Only with the ar­rival of the sci­en­tific method has he faced for­ward. But prim­i­tive man had to ex­per­i­ment or per­ish.

88:4.6The fas­ci­na­tion of early su­per­sti­tion was the mother of the later sci­en­tific cu­rios­ity. There was pro­gres­sive dy­namic emo­tion—fear plus cu­rios­ity—in these prim­i­tive su­per­sti­tions; there was pro­gres­sive driv­ing power in the olden magic. These su­per­sti­tions rep­re­sented the emer­gence of the hu­man de­sire to know and to con­trol plan­e­tary en­vi­ron­ment.

88:4.7Magic gained such a strong hold upon the sav­age be­cause he could not grasp the con­cept of nat­u­ral death. The later idea of orig­i­nal sin helped much to weaken the grip of magic on the race in that it ac­counted for nat­u­ral death. It was at one time not at all un­com­mon for ten in­no­cent per­sons to be put to death be­cause of sup­posed re­spon­si­bil­ity for one nat­u­ral death. This is one rea­son why an­cient peo­ples did not in­crease faster, and it is still true of some African tribes. The ac­cused in­di­vid­ual usu­ally con­fessed guilt, even when fac­ing death.

88:4.8Magic is nat­u­ral to a sav­age. He be­lieves that an en­emy can ac­tu­ally be killed by prac­tic­ing sor­cery on his shin­gled hair or fin­ger­nail trim­mings. The fa­tal­ity of snake bites was at­tributed to the magic of the sor­cerer. The dif­fi­culty in com­bat­ing magic arises from the fact that fear can kill. Prim­i­tive peo­ples so feared magic that it did ac­tu­ally kill, and such re­sults were suf­fi­cient to sub­stan­ti­ate this er­ro­neous be­lief. In case of fail­ure there was al­ways some plau­si­ble ex­pla­na­tion; the cure for de­fec­tive magic was more magic.