Page:The sexual life of savages in north-western Melanesia.djvu/83

Rh or other of the sexes is to be found in the dark and dreaded forces of sorcery: those forces which most profoundly affect human hope and happiness. The magic of illness and health, which can poison life or restore its natural sweetness, and which holds death as it were for its last card, can be made by men and women alike; but its character changes entirely with the sex of the practitioner. Man and woman have each their own sorcery, carried on by means of different rites and formulae, acting in a different manner on the victim's body and surrounded by an altogether different atmosphere of belief. Male sorcery is much more concrete, and its methods can be stated clearly, almost as a rational system. The sorcerer's supernatural equipment is restricted to his power of vanishing at will, of emitting a shining glow from his person, and of having accomplices among the nocturnal birds. Extremely poor means of supernatural action if we compare them with the achievements of a witch!

A witch — and be it remembered that she is always a real woman and not a spiritual or non-human being — goes out on her nightly errand in the form of an invisible double; she can fly through the air and appears as a falling star; she. assumes at will the shape of a fire-fly, of a night bird or of a flying-fox; she can hear and smell at enormous distances; she is endowed with sarcophagous propensities, and feeds on corpses.

The disease which witches cause is almost incurable and extremely rapid in its action, killing, as a rule, immediately. It is inflicted by the removal of the victim's inside, which the woman presently consumes. The wizard, on Rh