Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/178

 1 60 From Spell to Prayer.

versa, not to speak of the identification of arungquiltha with other manifestations of the supernatural embodied in stones, alcheringa animals, and what not?*^ Simply, I answer, because magic proper is all along an occult process, and as such part and parcel of the " god-stuff " out of which religion fashions itself. And more than this, by importing its peculiar projectiveness into the vague associations of the occult it provides one, though I do not say the only, centre round which those associations may crystallise into relatively clear, if even so highly fluid and unstable, forms. We may see why the medicine-man is so ready to press into his service that miscellaneous mass of " plant," dead men's bones, skins of strange animals, and what not ; and why these objects in their turn come to be able to work miracles for themselves, and in fact develop into non- human medicine-men. But all these things were psycho- logically next door to impossible, if magic were in origin a mechanical " natural science " utterly alien in its inward essential nature to all religion, and as such capable only of yielding to it as a substitute, and never of joining forces with it as ally and blood-relation. Surely, if we look at the matter simply from this side alone, the side of the instru- ment, there is enough evidence to upset the oil-and-water theory of Dr. Frazer.

Before we leave the subject of the instrument let us finally note that concurrently with the personification and progressive deification of the instrument, as it may be called, the spell evolves into the prayer. Thus, on the one hand, the name of power associated with the spell, instead of being merely quoted so as by simple juxtaposition to add mana to 7na?ia, may be invoked as a personal agency by w^hose good grace the charm as a whole is caused to work. Dr. Frazer provides us with an instance of this from the Kei Islands. When their lords are away fighting, the women, having anointed certain stones and fruits and '^ Sp. and C, 550-1.