Page:The sexual life of savages in north-western Melanesia.djvu/80

Rh important types of magic the rites are intimately interwoven with the activities which they accompany and are not merely superimposed upon them. Thus, in garden magic, the officiator plays an economically and socially important role and is the organizer and director of the work. It is the same in the building of a canoe and its magic, and in the rites associated with the conduct of an oversea expedition: the man who technically directs and is the leader of the enterprise has also the duty or privilege of performing the magic. Both functions, the directive and the magical, are indivisibly united in the same person. In other types of magic, which are placed by the natives in the category of buluhwalata (black magic) — and this comprises all sorcery and, among others, the charms for drought or rain — the practitioner has an immense and direct influence over other tribesmen. Magic is indeed by far the most efficient and frequently used instrument of power.

As magic is so intimately bound up with the activity which it accompanies, it is clear that, in certain types of occupation, the division of functions between the sexes will involve a corresponding division in magical performance. Those types of work which customarily only men perform will demand a man as officiating magician; where women are occupied with their own business, the magician must be female. Thus, looking at the table given below, we see that in fishing and hunting, as well as in wood carving, activities in which no woman ever participates, magic is exclusively practised by men. War Rh