Magical Means Research Articles

Dance and the Rodeo: Partners at the Party

A man, submerged in deep blue light. Shoulders as if rippling through a heavy current. He upends, cool-like water pouring, street moves in slow motion. In the midst of a tangle of swiftly passing dancers, one leaps backwards and we just catch at the top of the leap her shaking, trembling joy. Something animal in the air. Luminescent tensile red threads connect dancers mouth to mouth across the space. They can’t possibly be counting this music, but two dancers drop to floor and in sudden synchrony shapeshft together. Men toss themselves through space; women slide over their shoulders like friendly fishes passing in a school. When one stops (Did they ever really pause? They must have because of the sense of calm and lightness, but they couldn’t have because of the sense of urgency and power), others wash over on an unseen current. One woman, serenely slow, dancing centre stage, while another circles in super fast-forward, the juxtaposition a magical means of giving us, simultaneously, boundless energy AND all the time in the world. Revelation /Elation.

Mental illness and cultural issues in West African films: implications for orthodox psychiatric practice

The portrayal of psychiatry and of the activities of supernatural forces in indigenous films produced in West Africa was critically examined in this study. Most often the content of these...

The role and practices of the curandeiro and saludador in early modern Portuguese society

This paper will explore the role and practices of magic-using folk healers - curandeiros and saludadores - in early modern Portuguese society. The article will examine the ambivalent place of the folk healer as a figure both central to and marginal in Portuguese popular culture. In considering some of the services offered by unlicensed popular healers and their recourse to the unorthodox magical means inherent in popular curing, the paper will investigate curandeiros and saludadores illicit sources of power. Further, this work will examine the prominence of men as folk healers in southern Portugal during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Finally, by looking at the notoriety of Luso-African folk healers, the paper will assess the importance of race as a factor in the culture of Portuguese magical curing.

Epilepsy and its treatment in the ancient cultures of America.

Epilepsy was a well-recognized disease in pre-Columbian America, as appears from the reports of the Spanish chroniclers of the sixteenth century. Both the Aztecs and the Incas strongly associated epilepsy with magic and religion, which is evident from their ideas about the pathogenesis and treatment of the disease. Apart from treatment of epilepsy by magic means, the Incas and especially the Aztecs used in addition a large number of botanic medicines; the use of these medicines probably had an empiric nature.

Occult economies and the violence of abstraction: notes from the South African postcolony

Postcolonial South Africa, like other postrevolutionary societies, appears to have witnessed a dramatic rise in occult economies: in the deployment, real or imagined, of magical means for material ends. These embrace a wide range of phenomena, from "ritual murder," the sale of body parts, and the putative production of zombies to pyramid schemes and other financial scams. And they have led, in many places, to violent reactions against people accused of illicit accumulation. In the struggles that have ensued, the major lines of opposition have been not race or class but generation—mediated by gender. Why is all this occurring with such intensity, right now? An answer to the question, and to the more general problem of making sense of the enchantments of modernity, is sought in the encounter of rural South Africa with the contradictory effects of millennial capitalism and the culture of neoliberalism. This encounter, goes the argument, brings "the global" and "the local"— treated here as analytic constructs rather than explanatory terms or empirical realities—into a dialectical interplay. It also has implications for the practice of anthropology, challenging us to do ethnography on an "awkward" scale, on planes that transect the here and now, then and there,

Scholastic Magic: Ritual and Revelation in Early Jewish Mysticism (review)

Hebrew Studies 39 (1998) 262 Reviews remains, with even more serious questions to ponder, as a result of Covenant ofBlood. Beverly P. Mortensen Northwestern University Evanston, IL 60201 m-beverly@nwu.edu SCHOLASTIC MAGIC: RITUAL AND REVELATION IN EARLY JEWISH MYSTICISM. By Michael D. Swartz. pp. 260. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997. Cloth, $35.00. As the title suggests, Michael Swartz's book addresses a number of important issues in both the history of religions and the field of Jewish studies . Indeed, Scholastic Magic takes its place alongside a growing number of works which challenge the tendency to sever the study of Judaism from the broader methodological and comparative context of the history of religions . For this reason alone Scholastic Magic is an important work. In Scholastic Magic, Michael Swartz has also produced a significant study of the role of magic in the form of early Jewish mysticism known as Hekhalot ("palace") or Merkabah ("chariot") mysticism. The study of magic in Judaism is still in its infancy. Older works like Joshua Trachtenberg'S Jewish Magic and Superstition entice the reader with striking examples from the rich tradition of Jewish magic but lack methodological sophistication. Recently, however, studies such as Moshe Idel's Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic have begun to reassess the place of magic within different areas of Judaism. In several works, Gershom Scholem addressed the issue of magic within Merkabah mysticism. Scholem was ambivalent about the role of magic, viewing it as an original and essential element but one whose proliferation signaled the decline of the movement, an attitude which parallels a common scholarly perspective on the role of magic in Gnosticism, wherein heavily magical texts such as the Books of Jeu, are often described as representing the degeneration of Gnosticism. Michael Swartz's book must be viewed within the context of the discussion begun by Scholem and continued by scholars such as Elliot Wolfson, Peter Schafer, and David Halperin. Situating itself within the broader topic of the role of magic within Merkabah mysticism, Scholastic Magic focuses on the adjuration of an angel known as the Sar-Torah or "Prince of the Torah," who provided the mystics with fantastic memory and learning. Hebrew Studies 39 (1998) 263 Reviews Swartz examines this fascinating material from a number of perspectives : phenomenological, historical, ritual, and social. He locates his study within the broader fields of magic and mysticism and brings in comparative material from the Greek magical papyri, building on a parallel already noted by Scholem. On the phenomenological level, one of the most important insights of the book is that the Sar-Torah material should be viewed as "scholastic magic," and therefore a species of scholasticism which scholars are only now beginning to appreciate as a category within the history of religions. Swartz employs the phrase scholastic magic "because of its appropriation of rabbinic scholasticism through magical means...scholasticism , like rabbinic Judaism, does not rely on reason independent of authority but insists on dialectical practices that are passed down through a succession of teachers." In the case of the Sar-Torah texts, knowledge traditionally passed from rabbi to disciple is now transmitted via angelic adjuration and revelation. And yet, the authors of these texts attempt to anchor this potentially subversive activity in the rabbinic tradition by depicting the figures who adjured the Sar-Torah as famous rabbis. Thus, as Swartz points out, the sources "manifest a deep ambivalence toward rabbinic notions of Torah, tradition, and purity." The identity of the authors of this material has been debated-were they rabbis, members of the apparently disempowered class of people known as am ha-aretz, or another group? Swartz examines these possibilities and suggests his own interpretation. Because of the level of education, literary artistry, and (albeit limited) rabbinic knowledge evinced in the texts, he concludes that their authors did not belong to the "lower classes." Instead, he points to a number of groups who possessed some education but did not belong to the rabbinic elite, including the scribes and synagogue functionaries. Without explicitly identifying the Sar-Torah authors with either of these groups, Swartz argues that their existence points to the possibility that members of an educated, non-rabbinic elite...

Scriptural ethical principles and traditional African ethics

The traditional ethical code of Africa is dominated by two factors, to wit, interpersonal relationships, which include the ancestor spirits, and taboo, which is mainly concerned with respecting the hierarchy of forces. God is hardly a factor in everyday conduct. Biblical ethics, on the other hand, is totally dominated by the idea of and relationship with God. The origin of biblical ethics (creation and redemption), history (God's redemptive acts), content (being God’s image, holy as He is holy), motivation (do as I have done to you), responsibility (both individual and communal responsibility) is directed towards God. Expectation (rewards and sanctions), universality (including all peoples, since God is the Creator of all), internal character (in that thoughts and motives are also judged by God), teaching about property, jurisprudence (placing kings and the lowliest on the same level before God and his law), and work ethic (which is strongly critical of using any magical means) - all of these are God-centred, and therefore sharply distinguished from African ethics which is man-centred. In the New Testament, the distinguishing factor is the new being, who is in Christ, being born again by the Holy Spirit, by which man is conformed to the image of his Redeemer and King. The dominant theme in both Testaments is love, which in African ethics is reserved for one's nearest kin), but in Scripture demanded even for one's enemies.

Korean Shamans and the Spirits of Capitalism

ABSTRACTSRecent studies have taught us that “religion” is not a fixed category but an instrument of popular consciousness. While the studies' subjects have often been victims of colonialism and capitalist exploitation, cultural production through magical means need not be restricted to a society's most oppressed elements. Counter to the expectations of Max Weber, for whom capitalism marched to the drumbeat of “rationalization,” many of the clients who patronize the shaman shrines of Seoul, Republic of Korea, are engaged in high‐risk petty‐capitalist enterprises. Shamans, clients, and spirits address the seemingly arbitrary fluctuations of good and bad fortune that can bring sudden wealth or ruin, and offer wry commentary upon what their world has become.

The Moral Magic of Consent

We regularly wield powers that, upon close scrutiny, appear remarkably magical. By sheer exercise of will, we bring into existence things that have never existed before. With but a nod, we effect the disappearance of things that have long served as barriers to the actions of others. And, by mere resolve, we generate things that pose significant obstacles to others' exercise of liberty. What is the nature of these things that we create and destroy by our mere decision to do so? The answer: the rights and obligations of others. And by what seemingly magical means do we alter these rights and obligations? By making promises and issuing or revoking consent When we make promises, we generate obligations for ourselves, and when we give consent, we create rights for others. Since the rights and obligations that are affected by means of promising and consenting largely define the boundaries of permissible action, our exercise of these seemingly magical powers can significantly affect the lives and liberties of others.

Neither cargo nor cult: ritual politics and the colonial imagination in Fiji

In the 1880s an oracle priest, Navosavakadua, mobilized Fijians of the hinterlands against the encroachment of both Fijian chiefs and British colonizers. British officials called the movement the Tuka cult, imagining it as a contagious superstition that had to be stopped. Navosavakadua and many of his followers, deemed dangerous and disaffected natives, were exiled. Scholars have since made Tuka the standard example of the Pacific cargo cult, describing it as a millenarian movement in which dispossessed islanders sought Western goods by magical means. In this study of colonial and postcolonial Fiji, Martha Kaplan examines the effects of narratives made real and traces a complex history that began neither as a search for cargo, nor as a cult. Engaging Fijian oral history and texts as well as colonial records, Kaplan resituates Tuka in the flow of indigenous Fijian history-making and rereads the archives for an ethnography of British colonizing power. Proposing neither unchanging indigenous culture nor the inevitable hegemony of colonial power, she describes the dialogic relationship between plural, contesting, and changing articulations of both Fijian and colonial culture. A remarkable enthnographic account of power and meaning, Neither Cargo nor Cult addresses compelling questions within anthropological theory. It will attract a wide audience among those interested in colonial and postcolonial societies, ritual and religious movements, hegemony and resistance, and the Pacific Islands.

Exploring the relation between preschool children's magical beliefs and causal thinking

Three studies are presented which examine the degree to which children engage in magical thinking. We suggest that this is not a monolithic question that can be answered by a simple ‘yes' or ‘no’, but involves a number of different facets, including parental input, children's spontaneous beliefs and children's responses to magical events. Conceptions about children's beliefs in magical and fantasy figures were assessed by means of a parent survey. Parents reported that children believe in the reality of a number of fantasy figures and that parents encourage these beliefs to some degree. In Study 2,4‐ and 5‐year‐old children made a clear distinction between possible and impossible transformations of animals and did not invoke magical means to produce any outcome. In Study 3 children were asked if a magician could cause certain animal transformations. Here, the 4‐ and 5‐year‐olds made no distinction between possible and impossible events, reporting that for a magician none of these events was impossible. Few children said that magicians used trickery, instead suggesting that ‘real’ magic was involved. Taken together these studies suggest that children hold a belief in magic, but not an overwhelming ‘magical’ orientation.

Sorcery and the Silencing of Chiefs: "Words on the Wind" in Postindependence Ambae

In this paper I discuss what I learned from being the "son" of a Pacific island chief who was accused of committing murder by magical means. My research on Ambae in Vanuatu lends cross-cultural support to the idea in current African ethnography that sorcery often serves as an idiom for discourse about local power and privilege in "weak" postcolonial states. On Ambae, as in the Cameroons, sorcery accusations are a leveling discourse, a protest on the part of women, the young, and the powerless against the persistence of old forms of inequality in a new era of postcolonial politics. I also show how ambiguities in sorcery beliefs on Ambae blur questions of innocence and guilt. Ultimately, my "father" was forced to accept his political fate in the bitter knowledge that his enemies may have been right, that the "words on the wind" might have whispered the truth.

THE ECONOMIC ETHICS OF RUSSIAN-ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY: PART II - RUSSIAN OLD BELIEVERS AND SECTS

In Part I, the patrimonial-bureaucratic Muscovite state and the aspects of Russian-Orthodox religion, which led to an attitude of world-indifference, were analysed. In this second part the economic ethics of the Russian Old Believers and of the major sects are analysed and it is shown that the development of congregational religion led to more self-responsibility and, particularly in the case of some sects, to more congregational discipline. Moreover, the Skoptsy and Molokans seem to have turned away from the mysticism of the Orthodox Church and from magical means of salvation. They developed an ascetic inner-worldly conduct of life and achieved, like many Old Believers, considerable economic success.

Con men and conjure men: a ghetto image

Con men and conjure men: a ghetto image Loudell F. Snow Introduction His ad appears in a Harlem newspaper, in bold, eyecatching type: THE FAMOUS REV. DePRINCE King of the hoodoo workers one of the nations most powerful Prophet root worker. I have returned back to your city by popular demand to help you to overcome all your problems in life. One visit will convince you that I have the god-given power directly from above to remove all hard, evil conditions, jinx, and black art. I have the god-given power and the master root that I guarantee will make you lucky in all things. I have the black cat bone and crow feet and snap root that I have gotten myself from the snake pit and I have the marks on my arms to prove it. I also have something that I have prepared in the cemetery that will make you lucky. If you are suffering from luck problems, nature problems, legal, can't find a job and want to get what you want, no matter what it is; I want you to make it your business to see me. If you want to be lucky in cards, bingo, guaranteed numbers; If you truly want to hit and hit big, straight, with no phony baloney I guarantee that I will make you lucky in 24 hours or I will return every dime of your money back. If you have lost your faith and your money in these no good phony prophets and you want to meet the real thing, 46 CON MEN AND CONJURE MEN call me and make that appointment that will change your life completely. All work is 100% guaranteed.1 The Reverend DePrince has the power. The black cat bone and the power. The snap root and the crow feet and the power. He works in the cemetery, works in the snakepit. Has the, marks on his arms to prove it. Huckster? Obviously. A hustler? Of course. But he offers hope. Hope that evil times will vanish, that a job will turn up, that lost nature will return. Con man and conjure man, he represents a tradition unbroken since the first slaves arrived in the New World. He sells hope. It is hope in the form of magic, the resort of the weak and the powerless, of those who cannot change their lives by efforts more direct. It is superstition, of course, but superstition is found where desired outcomes are important and uncertain, and where rational means to obtain them are not available. Reverend DePrince with his master root and his snap root and his power—God-given—offers the supplicant those means. In psychological terms this may serve the positive function of giving an individual the feeling of some control over his or her life, illusory though that feeling may be.2 It does not get at the underlying causes of such feelings, however—poverty, unemployment, racism—although it allows the individual to fight back at how these are manifest in daily life. And it provides a fertile ground for exploitation and manipulation, and may drain away financial resources already too slim. The social environment of magical practice The belief that both fortune and misfortune could be caused by magical means was prominent in West African religions, supported by a worldview in which Man, Nature and the Gods were seen as inseparable; in which the line between good and evil was relative, not absolute; where the dead continued to be interested in and interact with the living; where events could be changed by ritual manipulations.3 The ritual specialist was a man or woman of special powers and high status, a status inherited from his or her forebears, or bestowed at a birth seen as unusual. And these were no ordinary mortals: they could call up spirits, render themselves invisible, turn men into animals, even fly. Loudell F. Snow 47 The slaves were brought to the New World and inevitably, "witchdoctors " and "conjurers" were among them. They functioned, as before, to influence the happenings of everyday life, and they helped the slaves to endure. As in Africa, they provided roots, and conjure bags and...

Suicide and social control in New Britain

Noie had always been a nonentity. He was not really a heap of refuse, like a few other in the village, but surely a marginal man. For one thing he had been an orphan since early childhood, and his clansmen living in the vicinity never cared much for him. Needless to say, no girl had been promised to him on her birth. Indeed, what parents would have been foolish enough to commit themselves to regular food exchanges with his relatives until marriage took place? And what is more, who could have vouched for him? He had, however, gone through all the rites of passage. Some of them, it is true, had to be piteously conducted in the bush instead of being performed on the dancing ground of the village, since his relatives could not afford to go into debt just so that he could join the set of well-off children. But on the whole, he had received his share of those magical means of regeneration given on such occasions. When old enough to work in the garden Noie was adopted by Kulao, one of the big men of the village. A few years later he left for a European plantation, as all the boys of his age did. When his contract was over he came back to the village with some money, and he wanted to get married. At this point he was lucky, for Kulao's brother rapidly succeeded in finding a wife for him. The village people heard of the arrangement and began to discuss it. Then Kulao, who had been informed of the matter from the outset, interceded. He summoned his brother and said, a lot of fuss! What about the comforts of my life? If Noie gets married, who will fetch firewood for

The fabricated child

The Diola ’ folktale to be examined in this paper provides in narrative form a number of comments on Diola notions of legitimacy. Briefly it is about the ambiguous resolution of a woman’s problem which raises an irresolvable child’s problem. For the Diola, a woman to be considered a fully ‘legitimate’ wife must have children. Similarly, to be ‘legitimate’ a child must have recognizable consanguines. If a woman has a child, as she does in this tale, by extraordinary and magical means and not in the ‘natural’ way, the social position of the child is placed in complete and irremediable jeopardy. This follows because such a child will have no real kin. I consider the tale as an instructive example of what Kenneth Burke calls the ‘temporalizing of essence’ where basic ideas, usually key values and beliefs, are dramatically acted out. In this case, however, it is not so much the temporalizing of essence, but instead the ‘temporalizing of essences brought into conflict’. Basic beliefs and conditions are dramatically evoked, then tampered with. The resulting disarrangement evokes a second set of beliefs which in turn question the possibility, or at least the advisability, of the original tampering. Embedded in the tale is a metaphor that equated the womb with a beehive. The metaphor is apt for it highlights the ambiguous social scene encountered by the Fabricated Child. One of my main tasks will be a detailed discussion of this metaphor. Before its explication, however, I will want to place the metaphor in the context of the entire tale and show how it fits with the overall conflict of ‘essences’. The discussion takes the following plan. First two versions of the tale are given, one told by a man (AK), the other by a woman (FJ). Since the woman’s version is rather odd, even surrealistic, I allow myself a brief disgression about its actual performance. This should explain some of its peculiarities. I continue with comments

At the Hawk’s Well: Yeats’s Unresolved Conflict Between Language and Silence

From earliest times, wielders of words have been painfully conscious of the inadequacy of their medium. Man's innermost thoughts and most subtle emotions elude the grasp of even the craftiest master of language, so that workers in one literary form have always sought the richer resources of another in hopes of finding a tool to convey the fullness of their meaning. Poets and prose-writers alike have repeatedly turned to the drama as the magic means of transcending the limitations of language. Thus, when Yeats discovered Ezra Pound's rendering of the Japanese Noh drama in 1916, he seized upon it as the perfect solution to his own search for a dramatic form. Aristocratic, symbolic, blending verse, music, dance, mask, and folk ritual a perfect harmony of being, these plays seemed to the Irish playwright the ideal means for conveying an intensity of emotion that would enable him to transcend, if only for a fleeting moment, the bounds of time and space, to pass into a deep of the mind that had hitherto been too subtle for our habitation.2 A long struggle towards a fitting medium of poetic drama had preceded Yeats's discovery. As a writer whose forte was intense lyric poetry but who nonetheless felt a deep commitment to resuscitating the ancient Irish heritage and bringing it before the public on the stage, he had rejected out of hand the current trend towards realism as practiced by Ibsen and Galsworthy, and was tirelessly experimenting with new forms. Not the least among his influences were the French symbolists such as Mal-

Power and Social Control

Human culture develops as a means for man to control his environment. Primitive cultures rely to a large extent on magical means. The whimiscal and incalculable forces which govern nature are personified, and rituals are developed which are intended to control the actions of the gods. Such cultures tend to be fatalistic. The magical controls are limited and uncertain. One must endure and accept what comes.As culture develops, men turn increasingly to rational control of the environment. Technology arises, and, what is more fundamental, attitudes arise which enable the progressive development and utilization of technological resources. In our culture, full rational control over the environment appears not far from accomplishment.As the forces of nature give way to the development of culture, however, it becomes evident that the culture itself exhibits “forces” or “laws of development” which seem themselves to be beyond control. It has become a commonplace to say that while man has established rational control over nature, he has not done so over his culture, and that this is the next and imperative task. What is too commonly overlooked is the radically different nature of the second problem.It is through culture that rational control of nature is possible. By analogy, it would seem that culture itself must supply the resources to control itself: that is, that rational control over culture must in some sense be reflexive. This raises a set of problems that, even after two thousand years, have not as yet been thought through. The methods and techniques used to control nature may have to be profoundly transformed before they can be used to subject culture to rational control—indeed, the very meaning of the term “rational control” is called into question.

Calling the Soul: A Mongolian Litany

The examination and cataloguing of Mongol manuscripts and prints in European libraries in recent years has brought to light a considerable number of books whose subject matter is the occurrence and treatment of sickness by magical means, and the magical ceremonies to be performed after a person's death in order to counteract the prolongation of the evil influences which were responsible for the occurrence.

Emaciation as magic means for the removal of anguish in anorexia mentalis.

Emaciation as magic means for the removal of anguish in anorexia mentalis.