Chapter XI

. They are a good example of how every belief in a superior power is at the bottom a belief in magic. Magic gives to these beings the capacity to destroy human life and to command other agents of destruction. Magic also gives man the power and the means to defend himself, and if properly applied, to frustrate all the nefarious attempts of the mulukwausi. Comparing the two agencies, it may be said that in every-day life, the sorcerer is by far the most feared and is most frequently believed to be at work; while the mulukwausi enter upon the scene at certain dramatic moments, such as the presence of death, a catastrophe on land, and more especially at sea; but then, they enter with even deadlier weapons than the bwaga'u. Health, the normal state of human beings can, if once lost, be regained by magic and by magic only. There is no such thing as natural recovery, return to health being always due to the removal of the evil magic by means of magical counter-action.

All those crises of life, which are associated with fear of danger, with the awakening of passions or of strong emotions, have also their magical accompaniment. The birth of a child is always ushered in by magic, in order to make the child prosper, and to neutralise the dangers and evil influences. There is no rite or magic at puberty; but then, with this people, puberty does not present any very definite crisis in the life of the individual, as their sexual life starts long before puberty arrives, and gradually shapes and develops as the organism matures. The passion of love, however, has a very elaborate magical counterpart, embodied in many rites and formulæ, to which a great importance is attached, and all success in sexual life is ascribed to it. The evil results of illicit love--that is love within the clan, which, by the way, is considered by these natives as the main class of sexual immorality--can also be counteracted by a special type of magic.

The main social interests, ambition in gardening, ambition in successful Kula, vanity and display of personal charms in dancing--all find their expression in magic. There is a form of beauty magic, performed ceremonially over the dancers, and there is also a kind of safety magic at dances, whose object is to prevent the evil magic of envious sorcerers. Particular garden magic, performed by an individual over his crops and seeds, as well as the evil magic which he casts on the gardens of his rivals, express the private ambitions in gardening, as contrasted with the interests of the whole village, which are catered for by communal garden magic.

Natural forces of great importance to man, such as rain and sunshine, the appropriate alternative operation of which makes his crops thrive; or wind, which must be controlled for purposes of sailing and fishing, are also governed by magic. The magic of rain and sunshine can be used for good, as well as for nefarious purposes, and in this they have a special interest in the Trobriands, because the most powerful system of this magic is in the hands of the paramount chiefs of Kiriwina. By bringing about a prolonged drought, the chiefs of Omarakana have always been able to express their general displeasure with their subjects, and thus enhance their wholesale power, independently of any other mechanism, which they might have used for forcing their will on private individuals or on whole communities.

The basic, food-providing economic activities, which in the Trobriands are mainly gardening and fishing, are also completely magic-ridden. The success of these pursuits is of course largely due to luck, chance or accident, and to the natives they require supernatural assistance. We had examples of economic magic in describing the construction of a canoe, and the fishing for kaloma shell. The communal garden-magic and the fishing magic of certain village communities show to a higher degree even than the cases described, the feature which we found so distinct in canoe magic, namely: that the rites and formulæ are not a mere appendage, running side by side with economic efforts, without exercising any influence over these. On the contrary, it may be said that a belief in magic is one of the main, psychological forces which allow for organisation and systemisation of economic effort in the Trobriands. [80] The capacity for art, as well as the inspiration in it, is also ascribed to the influence of magic.

The passions of hatred, envy, and jealousy, besides finding their expression in the all powerful sorcery of the bwaga'u and mulukwausi, are also responsible for many forms of witchery, known by the generic term of bulubwalata. The classical forms of this magic have as their object the estrangement of the affections of a wife or a sweetheart, or the destruction of the domestic attachment of a pig. The pig is sent away into the bush, having been made to take a dislike to its master and to its domestic habits; the wife, though the spells used to estrange her are slightly different, can be made also to take a dislike to her domestic life, abandon her husband and return to her parents. There is a bulubwalata of gardens, of canoes, of Kula, of kaloma, in fact of everything, and a good deal of beneficial magic is taken up with exorcising the results of bulubwalata.

The list of magic is not quite exhausted yet. There is the magic of conditional curses, performed in order to guard property from possible harm, inflicted by others; there is war-magic; there is magic associated with taboos put on coco-nuts and betel-nuts, in order to make them grow and multiply; there is magic to avert thunder and resuscitate people who are struck by lightning; there is the magic of tooth-ache, and a magic to make food last a long time.

All this shows the wide diffusion of magic, its extreme importance and also the fact that it is always strongest there, where vital interests are concerned; where violent passions or emotions are awakened; when mysterious forces are opposed to man's endeavours; and when he has to recognise that there is something which eludes his most careful calculations, his most conscientious preparations and efforts.

II

Let us now proceed to formulate some short statement of the essential conception of magic, as it is entertained by the natives. All statement of belief, found among human beings so widely different from us, is full of difficulties and pitfalls, which perhaps beset us most there, where we try to arrive at the very foundation of the belief--that is, at the most general ideas which underlie a series of practices and a body of traditions. In dealing with a native community at the stage of development which we find in the Trobriands, we cannot expect to obtain a definite, precise and abstract statement from a philosopher, belonging to the community itself. The native takes his fundamental assumptions for granted, and if he reasons or inquires into matters of belief, it would be always only as regards details and concrete applications. Any attempts on the part of the Ethnographer to induce his informant to formulate such a general statement would have to be in the form of leading questions of the worst type because in these leading questions he would have to introduce words and concepts essentially foreign to the native. Once the informant grasped their meaning, his outlook would be warped by our own ideas having been poured into it. Thus the Ethnographer must draw the generalisation for himself, must formulate the abstract statement without the direct help of a native informant.

I am saying direct help because the generalisation must be entirely based on indirect data supplied by the natives. In the course of collecting information, of discussing formulæ and translating their text, a considerable number of opinions on matters of detail will be set forth by the natives. Such spontaneous opinions, if placed in a correctly constructed mosaic, might almost of themselves give us a true picture, might almost cover the whole field of native belief. And then our task would only be to summarise this picture in an abstract formula.

The Ethnographer, however, possesses an even better supply of evidence from which to draw his conclusions. The objective items of culture, into which belief has crystallised in the form of tradition, myth, spell and rite are the most important source of knowledge. In them, we can face the same realities of belief as the native faces in his intimate intercourse with the magical, the same realities which he not only professes with his tongue, but lives through partly in imagination and partly in actual experience. An analysis of the contents of the spells, the study of the manner in which they are uttered; in which the concomitant rites are performed; the study of the natives' behaviour, of the actors as well as of the spectators; the knowledge of the social position and social functions, of the magical expert--all this reveals to us, not only the bare structure of their ideas on magic, but also the associated sentiments and emotions, and the nature of magic as a social force.

An Ethnographer who, from the study of such objective data, has been able to penetrate into the natives' attitude, to formulate a general theory of magic, can then test his conclusions by direct questionings. For he will be already in a position to use native terminology and to move along the lines of native thought, and in his questionings he will be able to accept the lead of his informant instead of misleading the latter and himself by leading questions. More especially in obtaining opinions of actual occurrences from the natives, he will not have to move in abstract generalities, but will be able to translate them into concrete applications and into the native modes of thought.

In arriving at such general conclusions about vast aspects of primitive human thought and custom, the Ethnographer's is a creative work, in so far as he brings to light phenomena of human nature which, in their entirety, had remained hidden even from those in whom they happened. It is creative in the same sense as is the construction of general principles of natural science, where objective laws of very wide application lie hidden till brought forth by the investigating human mind. In the same sense, however, as the principles of natural science are empirical, so are also the final generalisations of ethnographic sociology because, though expressly stated for the first time by the investigator, they are none the less objective realities of human thinking, feeling and behaviour.

III

We can start from the question of how the natives imagine their magic to have originated. If we would ask even the most intelligent informant some such concretely framed questions as: "Where has your magic been made? How do you imagine its invention?"--they would necessarily remain unanswered. Not even a warped and half-suggested reply would be forthcoming. Yet there is an answer to this question, or rather to its generalised equivalent. Examining the mythology of one form of magic after the other, we find that there are in every one either explicitly stated or implied views about how magic has become known to man. As we register these views, compare them, and arrive at a generalisation, we easily see, why our imaginary question, put to the natives, would have to remain unanswered. For, according to native belief, embedded in all traditions and all institutions, magic is never conceived as having been made or invented. Magic has been handed on as a thing which has always been there. It is conceived as an intrinsic ingredient of everything that vitally affects man. The words, by which a magician exercises his power over a thing or a process, are believed to be co-existent with them. The magical formula and its subject matter were born together.

In some cases, tradition represents them literally as being 'born' by the same woman. Thus, rain was brought forth by a woman of Kasana'i, and the magic came with it, and has been handed on ever since in this woman's sub-clan. Again, the mythical mother of the Kultur-hero Tudava gave birth, among other plants and animals, also to the kalala fish. The magic of this fish is also due to her. In the short myth about the origin of kayga'u magic--the one to protect drowning sailors from witches and other dangers--we saw that the mother, who gave birth to the Tokulubweydoga dog, also handed the magic over to him. In all these cases, however, the myth does not point to these women's inventing or composing the magic; indeed, it is explicitly stated by some natives that the women had learned the magic from their matrilineal ancestors. In the last case, the woman is said in the myth to have known the magic by tradition.

Other myths are more rudimentary, yet, though less circumstantial about the origin of the magic, show us just as unmistakably that magic is a primeval thing, indeed, in the literal sense of the word, autochthonous. Thus, the Kula magic in Gumasila came out of the rock of Selawaya; the canoe magic out of the hole in the ground, brought by the men, who originally emerged with it; garden magic is always conceived as being carried from underground by the first ancestors, who emerged out of the original hole of that locality. Several minor forms of magic of local currency, such as fish magic, practised in one village only, wind magic, etc., are also imagined to have been carried out of the ground. All the forms of sorcery have been handed over to people by non-human beings, who passed them on but did not create them. The bwaga'u sorcery is due to a crab, who gave it to a mythical personage, in whose dala (sub-clan) the magic was carried on and from it distributed all over the islands. The tokway (wood-sprites) have taught man certain forms of evil magic. There are no myths in Kiriwina about the origin of flying witch magic. From other districts, however, I have obtained rudimentary information pointing to the fact that they were instructed in this magic by a mythical, malevolent being called Taukuripokapoka, with whom even now some sort of relations are kept up, culminating in nocturnal meetings and sexual orgies which remind one very strongly of the Walpurgisnacht.

Love magic, the magic of thunder and lightning, are accounted for by definite events. But in neither of them are we led to imagine that the formula is invented, in fact, there is a sort of petitio principii in all these myths, for on the one hand they set out to account for how magic came, and on the other, in all of them magic is represented as being there, ready made. But the petitio principii is due only to a false attitude of mind with which we approach these tales. Because, to the native mind, they set out to tell, not how magic originated, but how magic was brought within the reach of one or other of the Boyowan local groups or sub-clans.

Thus it may be said, in formulating a generalisation from all these data, that magic is never invented. In olden days, when mythical things happened, magic came from underground, or was given to a man by some non-human being, or was handed on to descendants by the original ancestress, who also brought forth the phenomenon governed by the magic. In actual cases of the present times and of the near-past generations whom the natives of to-day knew personally, the magic is given by one man to another, as a rule by the father to his son or by the maternal kinsman. But its very essence is the impossibility of its being manufactured or invented by man, its complete resistance to any change or modification by him. It has existed ever since the beginning of things; it creates, but is never created; it modifies, but must never be modified.

It is now easy to see that no questions about the origins of magic, such as we formulated before, could have been asked of a native informant without distorting the evidence in the very act of questioning, while more general and quite abstract and colourless inquiries cannot be made intelligible to him. He has grown up into a world where certain processes, certain activities have their magic, which is as much an attribute of theirs' as anything else. Some people have been traditionally instructed how this magic runs, and they know it; how men came by magic is told in numerous mythical narratives. That is the correct statement of the native point of view. Once arrived at this conclusion inductively, we can of course, test our conclusions by direct questions, or by a leading question, for the matter of that. To the question: "where human beings found magic?" I obtained the following answer:--

"All magic, they found long ago in the nether world. We do not find ever a spell in a dream; should we say so, this would be a lie. The spirits never give us a spell. Songs and dances they do give us, that is true, but no magic."

This statement, expressing the belief in a very clear and direct manner, I had confirmed, reiterated with variations and amplifications, by ever so many informants. They all emphasise the fact that magic has its roots in tradition, that it is the most immutable and most valuable traditional item, that it cannot leak into human knowledge by any present human intercourse with spirits or with any non-human beings such as the tokway or tauva'u. The property of having been received from previous generations is so marked that any breach of continuity in this succession cannot be imagined, and any addition by an actual human being would make the magic spurious.

At the same time, magic is conceived as something essentially human. It is not a force of nature, captured by man through some means and put to his service; it is essentially the assertion of man's intrinsic power over nature. In saying that, I, of course translate native belief into abstract terms, which they would not use themselves for its expression. None the less it is embodied in all their items of folk-lore and ways of using magic and thinking about it. In all the traditions, we find that magic is always in possession of man, or at least of anthropomorphic beings. It is carried out from underground by man. It is not conceived as having been there somewhere outside his knowledge and then captured. On the contrary, as we saw, often the very things which are governed by magic have been brought forth by man, as for instance rain, the kalala fish; or disease, created by the anthropomorphic crab.

The close sociological association of magic with a given sub-clan emphasises this anthropocentric conception of magic. In the majority of cases indeed, magic refers to human activities or to the response of nature to human activities, rather than to natural forces alone. Thus, in gardening and in fishing, it is the behaviour of plants and animals tended or pursued by man; in the canoe magic, in the carver's magic, the object is a human-made thing; in the Kula, in love magic, in many forms of food magic, it is human nature on to which the force is directed. Disease is not conceived as an extraneous force, coming from outside and settling on the man, it is directly a man-made, sorcerer-made something. We may, therefore, amplify the above given definition, and say that magic is a traditionally handed on power of man over his own creations, over things once brought forth by man, or over responses of nature to his activities.

There is one more important aspect of the question of which I have spoken already--the relation of magic to myth. It has been stated in