The Interrelationship Between Religion and Magic in Hittite Religion

Abstract

The question of the interrelationship between religion and magic has often been touched upon by scholars. It has been so especially since the works of EWARD B. TYLOR1) and J. G. FRAZER 2), who helped to draw the lines in a clearer way, even if their solutions can no longer be accepted as the definite ones. The interest has mainly been concentrated on the interrelationship of magic and religion in primitive religion. Frazer, however, tried to trace the relation between the two phenomena during the centuries, in several cultures, thereby finding that magic represents the simplest and most elementary processes of the mind and thus is historically the former 3). Religion is more complicated and came later, after the failure of magic in bringing about what it wanted was obvious. Religion and magic, in FRAZER'S opinion, were founded upon conflicting views of the universe 4) which were in the end irreconcilable. He was, however, fully aware of the fact that they were both existing side by side in many religions and he discussed their interrelationship in several cases. For good reasons FRAZER did not discuss the interrelationship between religion and magic in Hittite religion, as the texts were not available to him. Actually it is first recently that they have been accessible to non-hittitologists in a greater measure, through good and reliable translations 5). In Hittite texts we find religion and magic side by side. Both seem