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.

88:5.1Since any­thing con­nected with the body could be­come a fe­tish, the ear­li­est magic had to do with hair and nails. Se­crecy at­ten­dant upon body elim­i­na­tion grew up out of fear that an en­emy might get pos­ses­sion of some­thing de­rived from the body and em­ploy it in detri­men­tal magic; all exc­reta of the body were there­fore care­fully buried. Pub­lic spit­ting was re­frained from be­cause of the fear that saliva would be used in dele­te­ri­ous magic; spit­tle was al­ways cov­ered. Even food rem­nants, cloth­ing, and or­na­ments could be­come in­stru­ments of magic. The sav­age never left any rem­nants of his meal on the ta­ble. And all this was done through fear that one’s en­e­mies might use these things in mag­i­cal rites, not from any ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the hy­gienic value of such prac­tices.

88:5.2Mag­i­cal charms were con­cocted from a great va­ri­ety of things: hu­man flesh, tiger claws, croc­o­dile teeth, poi­son plant seeds, snake venom, and hu­man hair. The bones of the dead were very mag­i­cal. Even the dust from foot­prints could be used in magic. The an­cients were great be­liev­ers in love charms. Blood and other forms of bod­ily se­cre­tions were able to in­sure the magic in­flu­ence of love.

88:5.3Im­ages were sup­posed to be ef­fec­tive in magic. Ef­fi­gies were made, and when treated ill or well, the same ef­fects were be­lieved to rest upon the real per­son. When mak­ing pur­chases, su­per­sti­tious per­sons would chew a bit of hard wood in or­der to soften the heart of the seller.

88:5.4The milk of a black cow was highly mag­i­cal; so also were black cats. The staff or wand was mag­i­cal, along with drums, bells, and knots. All an­cient ob­jects were mag­i­cal charms. The prac­tices of a new or higher civ­i­liza­tion were looked upon with dis­fa­vor be­cause of their sup­pos­edly evil mag­i­cal na­ture. Writ­ing, print­ing, and pic­tures were long so re­garded.

88:5.5Prim­i­tive man be­lieved that names must be treated with re­spect, es­pe­cially names of the gods. The name was re­garded as an en­tity, an in­flu­ence dis­tinct from the phys­i­cal per­son­al­ity; it was es­teemed equally with the soul and the shadow. Names were pawned for loans; a man could not use his name un­til it had been re­deemed by pay­ment of the loan. Nowa­days one signs his name to a note. An in­di­vid­ual’s name soon be­came im­por­tant in magic. The sav­age had two names; the im­por­tant one was re­garded as too sa­cred to use on or­di­nary oc­ca­sions, hence the sec­ond or ev­ery­day name—a nick­name. He never told his real name to strangers. Any ex­pe­ri­ence of an un­usual na­ture caused him to change his name; some­times it was in an ef­fort to cure dis­ease or to stop bad luck. The sav­age could get a new name by buy­ing it from the tribal chief; men still in­vest in ti­tles and de­grees. But among the most prim­i­tive tribes, such as the African Bush­men, in­di­vid­ual names do not ex­ist.

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.]

91:2.2Both prayer and magic arose as a re­sult of man’s ad­jus­tive re­ac­tions to Uran­tian en­vi­ron­ment. But aside from this gen­er­al­ized re­la­tion­ship, they have lit­tle in com­mon. Prayer has al­ways in­di­cated pos­i­tive ac­tion by the pray­ing ego; it has been al­ways psy­chic and some­times spir­i­tual. Magic has usu­ally sig­ni­fied an at­tempt to ma­nip­u­late re­al­ity with­out af­fect­ing the ego of the ma­nip­u­la­tor, the prac­ti­tioner of magic. De­spite their in­de­pen­dent ori­gins, magic and prayer of­ten have been in­ter­re­lated in their later stages of de­vel­op­ment. Magic has some­times as­cended by goal el­e­va­tion from for­mu­las through rit­u­als and in­can­ta­tions to the thresh­old of true prayer. Prayer has some­times be­come so ma­te­ri­al­is­tic that it has de­gen­er­ated into a pseu­do­mag­i­cal tech­nique of avoid­ing the ex­pen­di­ture of that ef­fort which is req­ui­site for the so­lu­tion of Uran­tian prob­lems.

91:8.2Prayer is not an evo­lu­tion of magic; they each arose in­de­pen­dently. Magic was an at­tempt to ad­just De­ity to con­di­tions; prayer is the ef­fort to ad­just the per­son­al­ity to the will of De­ity. True prayer is both moral and re­li­gious; magic is nei­ther.

91:8.7Prayer may be an an­gry cry for vengeance or a mer­ci­ful in­ter­ces­sion for one’s en­e­mies. It may be the ex­pres­sion of a hope of chang­ing God or the pow­er­ful tech­nique of chang­ing one’s self. It may be the cring­ing plea of a lost sin­ner be­fore a sup­pos­edly stern Judge or the joy­ful ex­pres­sion of a lib­er­ated son of the liv­ing and mer­ci­ful heav­enly Fa­ther.

90:3.73. Magic—the in­flu­ence of en­e­mies. Much sick­ness was thought to be caused by be­witch­ment, the ac­tion of the evil eye and the magic point­ing bow. At one time it was re­ally dan­ger­ous to point a fin­ger at any­one; it is still re­garded as ill-man­nered to point. In cases of ob­scure dis­ease and death the an­cients would hold a for­mal in­quest, dis­sect the body, and set­tle upon some find­ing as the cause of death; oth­er­wise the death would be laid to witch­craft, thus ne­ces­si­tat­ing the ex­e­cu­tion of the witch re­spon­si­ble there­for. These an­cient coro­ner’s in­quests saved many a sup­posed witch’s life. Among some it was be­lieved that a tribesman could die as a re­sult of his own witch­craft, in which event no one was ac­cused.

• cocoon of modern science

81:2.9When asked where fire came from, the sim­ple story of An­don and the flint was soon re­placed by the leg­end of how some Prometheus stole it from heaven. The an­cients sought a super­nat­u­ral ex­pla­na­tion for all nat­u­ral phe­nom­ena not within the range of their per­sonal com­pre­hen­sion; and many mod­erns con­tinue to do this. The de­per­son­al­iza­tion of so-called nat­u­ral phe­nom­ena has re­quired ages, and it is not yet com­pleted. But the frank, hon­est, and fear­less search for true causes gave birth to mod­ern sci­ence: It turned as­trol­ogy into as­tron­omy, alchemy into chem­istry, and magic into med­i­cine.

• prepared way for superior religion by assuming reality of supermaterial beings

103:9.4The mag­i­cal and mytho­log­i­cal parent­age of nat­u­ral re­li­gion does not in­val­i­date the re­al­ity and truth of the later rev­e­la­tional re­li­gions and the con­sum­mate sav­ing gospel of the re­li­gion of Je­sus. Je­sus’ life and teach­ings fi­nally di­vested re­li­gion of the su­per­sti­tions of magic, the il­lu­sions of mythol­ogy, and the bond­age of tra­di­tional dog­ma­tism. But this early magic and mythol­ogy very ef­fec­tively pre­pared the way for later and su­pe­rior re­li­gion by as­sum­ing the ex­is­tence and re­al­ity of super­ma­te­rial val­ues and be­ings.

90:2.2An­cient black art, both re­li­gious and sec­u­lar, was called white art when prac­ticed by ei­ther priests, seers, shamans, or med­i­cine men. The prac­ti­tion­ers of the black art were called sor­cer­ers, ma­gi­cians, wiz­ards, witches, en­chanters, nec­ro­man­cers, con­jur­ers, and sooth­say­ers. As time passed, all such pur­ported con­tact with the super­nat­u­ral was clas­si­fied ei­ther as witch­craft or shaman­craft.

90:2.3Witch­craft em­braced the magic per­formed by ear­lier, ir­reg­u­lar, and un­rec­og­nized spir­its; shaman­craft had to do with mir­a­cles per­formed by reg­u­lar spir­its and rec­og­nized gods of the tribe. In later times the witch be­came as­so­ci­ated with the devil, and thus was the stage set for the many com­par­a­tively re­cent ex­hi­bi­tions of re­li­gious in­tol­er­ance. Witch­craft was a re­li­gion with many prim­i­tive tribes.

• devotees become lazy

69:2.6The San­gik tribes were fairly in­dus­tri­ous when re­sid­ing away from the trop­ics. But there was a long, long strug­gle be­tween the lazy devo­tees of magic and the apos­tles of work—those who ex­er­cised fore­sight.

• surrounded entire life of ancients

83:4.2Magic, rit­ual, and cer­e­mony sur­rounded the en­tire life of the an­cients, and mar­riage was no ex­cep­tion. As civ­i­liza­tion ad­vanced, as mar­riage be­came more se­ri­ously re­garded, the wed­ding cer­e­mony be­came in­creas­ingly pre­ten­tious. Early mar­riage was a fac­tor in prop­erty in­ter­ests, even as it is to­day, and there­fore re­quired a le­gal cer­e­mony, while the so­cial sta­tus of sub­se­quent chil­dren de­manded the widest pos­si­ble pub­lic­ity. Prim­i­tive man had no rec­ords; there­fore must the mar­riage cer­e­mony be wit­nessed by many per­sons.

• devotees ignore score of failures

85:4.4Fire was mixed up with magic in the minds of prim­i­tive fear-rid­den mor­tals. A devo­tee of magic will vividly re­mem­ber one pos­i­tive chance re­sult in the prac­tice of his magic for­mu­las, while he non­cha­lantly for­gets a score of neg­a­tive re­sults, out-and-out fail­ures. Fire rev­er­ence reached its height in Per­sia, where it long per­sisted. Some tribes wor­shiped fire as a de­ity it­self; oth­ers revered it as the flam­ing sym­bol of the pu­ri­fy­ing and purg­ing spirit of their ven­er­ated de­i­ties. Vestal vir­gins were charged with the duty of watch­ing sa­cred fires, and in the twen­ti­eth cen­tury can­dles still burn as a part of the rit­ual of many re­li­gious ser­vices.

• primitive man enslaved to

91:0.2The ear­li­est prayer forms were not ad­dressed to De­ity. These ex­pres­sions were much like what you would say to a friend as you en­tered upon some im­por­tant un­der­tak­ing, “Wish me luck.” Prim­i­tive man was en­slaved to magic; luck, good and bad, en­tered into all the af­fairs of life. At first, these luck pe­ti­tions were mono­logues—just a kind of think­ing out loud by the magic server. Next, these be­liev­ers in luck would en­list the sup­port of their friends and fam­i­lies, and pres­ently some form of cer­e­mony would be per­formed which in­cluded the whole clan or tribe.

• burdensome to life from cradle to grave

95:2.5For cen­turies the Egyp­tians placed their faith in tombs as the safe­guard of the body and of con­se­quent plea­sur­able sur­vival af­ter death. The later evo­lu­tion of mag­i­cal prac­tices, while bur­den­some to life from the cra­dle to the grave, most ef­fec­tu­ally de­liv­ered them from the re­li­gion of the tombs. The priests would in­scribe the coffins with charm texts which were be­lieved to be pro­tec­tion against a “man’s hav­ing his heart taken away from him in the nether world.” Pres­ently a di­verse as­sort­ment of these mag­i­cal texts was col­lected and pre­served as The Book of the Dead. But in the Nile val­ley mag­i­cal rit­ual early be­came in­volved with the realms of con­science and char­ac­ter to a de­gree not of­ten at­tained by the rit­u­als of those days. And sub­se­quently these eth­i­cal and moral ide­als, rather than elab­o­rate tombs, were de­pended upon for sal­va­tion.

87:5.9The in­ten­tion and will of the spir­its were stud­ied by means of omens, or­a­cles, and signs. And these spirit mes­sages were in­ter­preted by div­ina­tion, sooth­say­ing, magic, or­deals, and as­trol­ogy. The whole cult was a scheme de­signed to pla­cate, sat­isfy, and buy off the spir­its through this dis­guised bribery.

90:0.1The evo­lu­tion of re­li­gious ob­ser­vances pro­gressed from pla­ca­tion, avoid­ance, ex­or­cism, co­er­cion, con­cil­i­a­tion, and pro­pi­ti­a­tion to sac­ri­fice, atone­ment, and re­demp­tion. The tech­nique of re­li­gious rit­ual passed from the forms of the prim­i­tive cult through fe­tishes to magic and mir­a­cles; and as rit­ual be­came more com­plex in re­sponse to man’s in­creas­ingly com­plex con­cept of the super­ma­te­rial realms, it was in­evitably dom­i­nated by med­i­cine men, shamans, and priests.

150:3.2Late that evening Je­sus gave the united group a mem­o­rable talk on “Magic and Su­per­sti­tion.” In those days the ap­pear­ance of a bright and sup­pos­edly new star was re­garded as a to­ken in­di­cat­ing that a great man had been born on earth. Such a star hav­ing then re­cently been ob­served, An­drew asked Je­sus if these be­liefs were well founded. In the long an­swer to An­drew’s ques­tion the Mas­ter en­tered upon a thor­ough­go­ing dis­cus­sion of the whole sub­ject of hu­man su­per­sti­tion. The state­ment which Je­sus made at this time may be sum­ma­rized in mod­ern phrase­ol­ogy as fol­lows:

150:3.86. Div­ina­tion, sor­cery, and witch­craft are su­per­sti­tions of ig­no­rant minds, as also are the delu­sions of magic. The be­lief in magic num­bers, omens of good luck, and harbingers of bad luck, is pure and un­founded su­per­sti­tion.

150:3.119. The prac­tices of the en­chanters, the wiz­ards, the ma­gi­cians, and the sor­cer­ers, were de­rived from the su­per­sti­tions of the Egyp­tians, the As­syr­i­ans, the Baby­lo­ni­ans, and the an­cient Ca­naan­ites. Amulets and all sorts of in­can­ta­tions are fu­tile ei­ther to win the pro­tec­tion of good spir­its or to ward off sup­posed evil spir­its.

90:1.4But not all shamans were self-de­ceived; many were shrewd and able trick­sters. As the pro­fes­sion de­vel­oped, a novice was re­quired to serve an ap­pren­tice­ship of ten years of hard­ship and self-de­nial to qual­ify as a med­i­cine man. The shamans de­vel­oped a pro­fes­sional mode of dress and af­fected a mys­te­ri­ous con­duct. They fre­quently em­ployed drugs to in­duce cer­tain phys­i­cal states which would im­press and mys­tify the tribes­men. Sleight-of-hand feats were re­garded as super­nat­u­ral by the com­mon folk, and ven­tril­o­quism was first used by shrewd priests. Many of the olden shamans un­wit­tingly stum­bled onto hyp­no­tism; oth­ers in­duced au­to­hyp­no­sis by pro­longed star­ing at their navels.

69:2.7The first hu­man fore­sight was di­rected to­ward the preser­va­tion of fire, wa­ter, and food. But prim­i­tive man was a nat­u­ral-born gam­bler; he al­ways wanted to get some­thing for noth­ing, and all too of­ten dur­ing these early times the suc­cess which ac­crued from pa­tient prac­tice was at­tributed to charms. Magic was slow to give way be­fore fore­sight, self-de­nial, and in­dus­try.