CHAPTER XVII

MAGIC AND THE KULA

I

In treating of the various customs and practices of the Kula, I had at every step to enter into the description of magical rites and into the analysis of spells. This had to be done, first of all, because magic looms paramount in the natives' view of the Kula. Again, all magical formulæ disclose essentials of belief and illustrate typical ideas in a manner so thorough and telling that no other road could lead us as straight into the inner mind of the native. Finally, there is a direct, ethnographic interest in knowing the details of magical performance, which has such an overweening influence over tribal life, and enters so deeply into the make-up of the natives' mentality.

It is now necessary to complete our knowledge of magic and to focus all the dispersed data into one coherent picture. So far, the many scattered references and numerous concrete details have not furnished a general idea, of what magic means to the natives; how they imagine the working of the magical forces; what are their implied and expressed views on the nature of magical power. Collecting all the material which has already been presented in the previous chapters, and supplementing it with native and ethnographic comments, we shall be able to arrive at a certain synthesis, respecting the Kiriwinian theory of magic.

All the data which have been so far mustered disclose the extreme importance of magic in the Kula. But if it were a question of treating of any other aspect of the tribal life of these natives, it would also be found that, whenever they approach any concern of vital importance, they summon magic to their aid. It can be said without exaggeration that magic, according to their ideas, governs human destinies; that it supplies man with the power of mastering the forces of nature; and that it is his weapon and armour against the many dangers which crowd in upon him on every side. Thus, in what is most essential to man, that is in his health and bodily welfare, he is but a plaything of the powers of sorcery, of evil spirits and of certain beings, controlled by black magic. Death in almost all its forms is the result of one of these agencies. Permanent ill-health and all kinds of acute sickness, in fact everything, except such easily explainable ailments as physical overstrain or slight colds, are attributed to magic. I have spoken (