Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/175

 From Spell to Prayer. 157

mana, as I have interpreted it, yields the chief clue to the original use of names of power in connection with the spell, from " in the devil's name "^^ to " Im Namen Jesu."27 ]y[j.. Skeat has compared the exorcising of disease-demons by- invoking the spirit of some powerful wild beast, the elephant or the tiger, to the casting out of devils through Beelzebub their prince. ^^ Admitting the comparison to be just and apt, is not there at the back of this the notion of the magic-working power — the "control" — inherent in the supernatural being as such ? ^^ Secondary ideas will of course tend to superimpose themselves, as when, as Mr. Skeat has abundantly shown, the magician invokes the higher power no longer as an ally, but rather as a shield. " It is not I who am burying him (in the form of a waxen image), it is Gabriel who is burying him." ^^ Still Gabriel, I suggest, was primarily conceived as a magic-working power, and indeed as such is able to bear all responsibility on his broad shoulders. Compare the huntsman's charm addressed to the (more or less divine) deer: "It is not I who am huntsman, it is Pawang Sidi (wizard Sidi) that is hunts- man ; It is not I whose dogs these are, it is Pawang Sakti (the " magic wizard "), whose dogs these are." ^^

But I must move forward to another aspect of the inherent tendency of the magical instrument to generate religion. Instead of taking the form of a divine fellow-operator who backs the magician, the mana may instead associate itself so closely wuth the magician's symbol as to seem a god whose connection is with it rather than with him. The ultimate psychological reason for this must be sought, as I have already hinted, in the good workman's tendency to

^ Cf. G. B.,^\., 121.


 * ' See a recent work with this title by W. Heitmuller, Gottingen, 1903.
 * Folk- Lore, xiii., 159.

^ The Malay charm-book quoted by Mr. Skeat puts the matter typically, '• God was the Eldest Magician." M. M., 2.
 * » AT. AI., 571. Cf. G^. ^.,- i., II.
 * ' M. M., 175.