1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Magic/Magico-religious Force

Magico-religious Force.—The mere fact that we cannot draw an exact line between magic and religion suggests that they may have some fundamental feature in common. Both terms have greatly changed their connotation in the course of their existence; religio seems to have meant originally καταδεσμός (magical spell), and Pliny says that μαγεία is a deceptive art compounded of medicine, religion and astrology. Among the Greeks, on the other hand, μαγεία occupied a respectable position. More important is the fact that taboo (q.v.) is both religious and magical. There is a universal tendency to regard as magical the religions of alien races, as well as national religions which have been superseded; Leland tells us that witchcraft in Italy is known as la vecchia religione. An examination of the ideas of primitive peoples shows that there is a widely found notion of a power which manifests itself both in religion and magic. Observers have often been content to describe ceremonies without attempting to penetrate to the fundamental ideas which underlie them; this is particularly the case with magic, and only recently have anthropologists realized that in many primitive societies exists a fairly well-defined idea of magico-religious power, to which the generic name of mana, from the Melanesian word, has been given.

a. Mana in Melanesia is a force, a being, an action, a quality, or a state; it is transmissible and contagious, and is hence associated with taboo; it may be regarded as material and seen in the form of flames or heard; it is the power which is inherent in certain spirits, among which are included such of the dead as are denominated tindalos; it may also be a force inherent in some inanimate object, such as a stone which causes the yams to grow, but it is a spiritual force and does not act mechanically; it is the power of the magician and of the rite; the magic formula is itself mana. There seem to be a variety of manas, but probably the underlying idea is essentially one, though it does not follow that the Melanesians have arrived at the consciousness of this unity. Hubert and Mauss go even further and regard all force as mana; it is a quality added to objects without prejudice to their other qualities, one which supplements without destroying their mechanical action.

b. Similar ideas are found in other areas. (i) The continental Malays have a word Kramât (hrm), which means sacred or magical; in Indo-China the Bahnars use the word deng; in Madagascar hasina seems to embody in part the same notion. (ii) In Africa the idea is less apparent; perhaps the ngai of the Tanganika tribes comes nearest to the notion of mana; on the Congo nkici has a similar but more restricted sense. (iii) In Australia there are two, or perhaps three, kinds of magical power distinguished by the aborigines; all over the continent we find the maleficent power, boolya in West Australia, arungquiltha in the central tribes, koochie in New South Wales; the central tribes have certain objects termed churinga, to which magical power (which we may term churinga) is attributed; the power of magicians is held to reside in certain stones, called atnongara, and in this we must, provisionally at any rate, see a third kind of magical power: churinga is beneficent and seems to originate with the mythical ancestors, whereas arungquiltha is of immediate origin, created by means of incantations or acquired by contact with certain objects; the power of the magicians seems to proceed from the ancestors in like manner. (iv) In America these ideas are widely found; the orenda of the Hurons has been elaborately described by J. N. B. Hewitt; everything in nature, and particularly all animate objects, have their orenda; so have gods and spirits; and natural phenomena are the product of the orenda of their spirits. Orenda is distinct from the things to which it is attached; the cry of birds, the rustle of the trees, the soughing of the wind, are expressions of their orenda; the voice of the magician is orenda, so are the prayer and the spell, and in fact all rites; orenda is above all the power of the medicine man. Among the Algonquins we find the word manitu, among the Sioux wakanda, mahowa, &c., among the Shoshones pokunt; all of which seem to carry, at least in part, the same signification. In Central America, according to Hubert and Mauss, naual or nagual is the corresponding term. (v) Traces of similar ideas may be found in more advanced nations; the Hindu brahman is identified by Hubert and Mauss as the correlative of mana; in Greece φύσις is possibly the echo of a similar idea; but we are yet far from having adequately fathomed the dynamical theories of pre-scientific days.