War Magic: Religion, Sorcery, and Performance ed. by Douglas S. Farrer

Abstract

Reviewed by: War Magic: Religion, Sorcery, and Performance ed. by Douglas S. Farrer Bradley M. Johnson douglas s. farrer, ed. War Magic: Religion, Sorcery, and Performance. New York: Berghahn Books, 2016. Pp. x + 170. This edited volume explores a variety of practices categorized as "war magic" scattered across several different regions of the world. Each essay (with the exception of Sinclair's chapter on Buddhist battle magic that focuses on historical texts) showcases the results of in-depth, ethnographic research on the cosmologies, societal structures, and uses of offensive and defensive magic in specific communities, while providing pertinent background information and often introducing the readers to key informants and practitioners. Farrer takes care to develop key terms at the beginning of the book, briefly referencing major debates concerning the distinctions between "religion" and "magic," as well as the connotations of "sorcery" and "witchcraft." He and the other contributors are cognizant of the oversimplifications that plague earlier investigations of war magic, whether it was Frazer and Tylor adopting evolutionist, hierarchical interpretations of magic that reduced its users to a primitive mindset, or later thinkers who sometimes whitewashed the darker aspects while also trapping their subjects in the ethnographic present. The book contains seven essays after the introduction, including one cowritten by Farrer, that describe and interpret local practices of magic through phenomenological and ethnographic lenses. Several themes follow through these chapters and help to unify the content of the book, even as they treat disparate regions and situations. One of the most prominent is that of embodiment, in the sense that each writer seeks to emphasize the bodily, performative, ritualized nature of magic. This perspective falls in direct contrast to the textual bias that many prior anthropologists brought to the study of magic, as they often assumed the core to consist in esoteric scrolls and powerful words (though these, of course, often play important parts). Margaret Chan's essay focuses on tangki war magic in Singapore as ritual theater, performances that channel the powers of warrior gods through spiritpossession by affixing weapons or other objects through the performer's [End Page 128] body. What results are often grotesque displays of superhuman pain endurance, such as the image of a woman with a bicycle frame impaled through her cheeks on the cover of the book. Likewise, Jean-Marc de Grave writes about kanuragan, secret initiation rituals in Java where people of different backgrounds hope to attain invulnerability from weapons and other means of bodily harm. Through learning to harness one's "spirit siblings," initiates could become stronger and eventually progress towards more spiritual knowledge. In his chapter on Yanomami shamans in Venezuela, Željko Jokić highlights the morally ambiguous role of the shapori, who use their powers both to heal members of their villages, but also to launch long-range attacks on other villages that are said to result in horrifying deaths. In describing the death of a child interpreted to be the victim of such an attack, Jokić does not hide the terrifying role of war magic in this society. The way various traditions adapt to changing contexts is another commonality, bringing attention to their basis in history and sociopolitical situations. In his essay on Buddhist war magic, Iain Sinclair relies on tantric sources to explicate the development of a just war theory across several centuries in India. Still, even as they developed criteria for warfare and deployed magical tactics to inflict harm or scatter armies, practitioners did not resort to using the language of "holy war." Similarly, Michael Roberts focuses on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a group that also adopts tantric tactics. Since the 1980s, members have carried a kuppi on their persons, a talisman that provides a sense of reassurance that they are part of a whole, and which happens to be a cyanide pill that they promise to bite if captured. Each chapter spends some time historicizing the practices it highlights, explicitly pushing against stereotypes of magical traditions being primitive or timeless. Closely related to the theme of adaptation, and especially emphasized by Farrer in the introduction and the article he co-writes, is the cycle of disenchantment and re-enchantment. D. S. Farrer and James D...