Fetishes, Charms, and Magic

88:6.1Magic was prac­ticed through the use of wands, “med­i­cine” rit­ual, and in­can­ta­tions, and it was cus­tom­ary for the prac­ti­tioner to work un­clothed. Women out­num­bered the men among prim­i­tive ma­gi­cians. In magic, “med­i­cine” means mys­tery, not treat­ment. The sav­age never doc­tored him­self; he never used medicines ex­cept on the ad­vice of the spe­cial­ists in magic. And the voodoo doc­tors of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury are typ­i­cal of the ma­gi­cians of old.

88:6.2There was both a pub­lic and a pri­vate phase to magic. That per­formed by the med­i­cine man, shaman, or priest was sup­posed to be for the good of the whole tribe. Witches, sor­cer­ers, and wiz­ards dis­pensed pri­vate magic, per­sonal and self­ish magic which was em­ployed as a co­er­cive method of bring­ing evil on one’s en­e­mies. The con­cept of dual spiritism, good and bad spir­its, gave rise to the later be­liefs in white and black magic. And as re­li­gion evolved, magic was the term ap­plied to spirit op­er­a­tions out­side one’s own cult, and it also re­ferred to older ghost be­liefs.

88:6.3Word com­bi­na­tions, the rit­ual of chants and in­can­ta­tions, were highly mag­i­cal. Some early in­can­ta­tions fi­nally evolved into prayers. Pres­ently, im­i­ta­tive magic was prac­ticed; prayers were acted out; mag­i­cal dances were noth­ing but dra­matic prayers. Prayer grad­u­ally dis­placed magic as the as­so­ciate of sac­ri­fice.

88:6.4Ges­ture, be­ing older than speech, was the more holy and mag­i­cal, and mimicry was be­lieved to have strong mag­i­cal power. The red men of­ten staged a buf­falo dance in which one of their num­ber would play the part of a buf­falo and, in be­ing caught, would in­sure the suc­cess of the im­pend­ing hunt. The sex fes­tiv­i­ties of May Day were sim­ply im­i­ta­tive magic, a sug­ges­tive ap­peal to the sex pas­sions of the plant world. The doll was first em­ployed as a magic tal­is­man by the bar­ren wife.

88:6.5Magic was the branch off the evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gious tree which even­tu­ally bore the fruit of a sci­en­tific age. Be­lief in as­trol­ogy led to the de­vel­op­ment of as­tron­omy; be­lief in a philoso­pher’s stone led to the mas­tery of met­als, while be­lief in magic num­bers founded the sci­ence of math­e­mat­ics.

88:6.6But a world so filled with charms did much to de­stroy all per­sonal am­bi­tion and ini­tia­tive. The fruits of ex­tra la­bor or of dili­gence were looked upon as mag­i­cal. If a man had more grain in his field than his neigh­bor, he might be haled be­fore the chief and charged with en­tic­ing this ex­tra grain from the in­do­lent neigh­bor’s field. In­deed, in the days of bar­barism it was dan­ger­ous to know very much; there was al­ways the chance of be­ing ex­e­cuted as a black artist.

88:6.7Grad­u­ally sci­ence is re­mov­ing the gam­bling el­e­ment from life. But if mod­ern meth­ods of ed­u­ca­tion should fail, there would be an al­most im­me­di­ate re­ver­sion to the prim­i­tive be­liefs in magic. These su­per­sti­tions still linger in the minds of many so-called civ­i­lized peo­ple. Lan­guage con­tains many fos­sils which tes­tify that the race has long been steeped in mag­i­cal su­per­sti­tion, such words as spell­bound, ill-starred, pos­ses­sions, in­spi­ra­tion, spirit away, in­ge­nu­ity, en­tranc­ing, thun­der­struck, and as­ton­ished. And in­tel­li­gent hu­man be­ings still be­lieve in good luck, the evil eye, and as­trol­ogy.

88:6.8An­cient magic was the co­coon of mod­ern sci­ence, in­dis­pens­able in its time but now no longer use­ful. And so the phan­tasms of ig­no­rant su­per­sti­tion ag­i­tated the prim­i­tive minds of men un­til the con­cepts of sci­ence could be born. To­day, Uran­tia is in the twi­light zone of this in­tel­lec­tual evo­lu­tion. One half the world is grasp­ing ea­gerly for the light of truth and the facts of sci­en­tific dis­cov­ery, while the other half lan­guishes in the arms of an­cient su­per­sti­tion and but thinly dis­guised magic.

88:6.9[Pre­sented by a Bril­liant Evening Star of Neb­a­don.]