The Anthropology of Magic

Susan Greenwood

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781845206703
• eBook ISBN: 9781000180633
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

Magic is arguably the least understood subject in anthropology today. Exotic and fascinating, it offers us a glimpse into another world but it also threatens to undermine the foundations of anthropology due to its supposed irrational and non-scientific nature. Magic has thus often been 'explained away' by social or psychological reduction. The Anthropology of Magic redresses the balance and brings magic, as an aspect of consciousness, into focus through the use of classic texts and cutting-edge research. Suitable for student and scholar alike, The Anthropology of Magic updates a classical anthropological debate concerning the nature of human experience. A key theme is that human beings everywhere have the potential for magical consciousness. Taking a new approach to some perennial topics in anthropology - such as shamanism, mythology, witchcraft and healing - the book raises crucial theoretical and methodological issues to provide the reader with an engaging and critical understanding of the dynamics of magic.Join the live discussion on Facebook!

SECTION ONEEXPLAINING MAGIC

This section sets out to explain theories that help an understanding of magic: not the explanations that somehow reduce magic to its effects on human behaviour or society, but the essence of magic as an intuitive process of mind. Magic is a holistic orientation to the world that is essentially relational and expansive; it is not irrational or confined to the thought of so-called primitives, nor is magic the preserve of non-Western, exotic societies. Rather, it is an aspect of human consciousness, and therefore it is especially appropriate to study magic in modern, Western societies, where it often manifests as an undercurrent.

1 MYSTICAL MENTALITY

Picture the scene of English anthropologist Edward Evans-Pritchard and French philosopher Lucien Lévy-Bruhl sitting opposite each other discussing mystical mentality in 1934. At such a meeting, what would they be conversing about, and why does it have such an implication for the study of magic? Evans-Pritchard and Lévy-Bruhl were formative in the early development of ideas about magic, and at the heart of this debate is an exploration of the very nature of human thought. Their exchange of ideas has huge implications for understanding magic in its essence as a human process of mind, and in this chapter, I have set out an imagined, constructed dialogue—a fictional documentary—built up from my reading of their correspondence and other related works. All of their conversation is based closely on their published ideas and, in some cases, actual correspondence. The bringing together of the universal grand schemes of thinking of the philosopher and the particular experience of the anthropologist reveals some interesting insights into the dynamics of an anthropological study of magic.

Returning to the ideas of these two early ancestor-type figures has established the parameters for a reconsideration of magic. In reading again their exchange of ideas for this book, I was struck by how their published work seemed so distant in time and obscured by debates over Lévy-Bruhl’s use of the term pre-logical to describe native thought. In focusing on what I consider to be the real issues regarding magic and bringing them back into the present, I wanted to make it feel more immediate, closer to the experience of anthropologists in developing new ideas and new research methodologies. Some of the best work is done in dialogue with colleagues and in informal discussion at conferences and other gatherings. Seeking to capture this vitality, I visualized Evans-Pritchard and Lévy-Bruhl discussing mystical mentality as I researched their publications, respective biographical details and professional life histories; we know that they met personally, but we have no record of what was actually said.

Lévy-Bruhl had started a productive and stimulating exchange of ideas with Evans-Pritchard, who, in the early 1930s, wrote papers in Cairo in response¹—one of which was published as ‘Lévy-Bruhl’s Theory of Primitive Mentality’—and he sent a copy to Lévy-Bruhl, whom he had met some time before. Evans-Pritchard had published the philosopher’s reply to his paper, and in an introduction to Lévy-Bruhl’s response, he wrote that it had value for students of the philosopher’s writings; he also thought that the older man’s ‘tolerant, open-minded, and courteous’ attitude was a ‘model for any senior scholar replying to criticisms of his views by an inferior in years, knowledge, and ability’.² At this point, the philosopher would have been seventy-seven years old, while the anthropologist was thirty-two, less than half the older man’s age. The action on the part of Evans-Pritchard indicates the high esteem in which he held Lévy-Bruhl, and it gives us a clue as to the basis of their relationship.

Before we venture into the imaginary dialogue, a few biographical details will give us greater insight into what the ramifications of the conversation might have been. Born in Crowborough, south-east England, in 1902, Evans-Pritchard studied history and anthropology at Oxford before going on to the London School of Economics (LSE), his intellectual base during his field trips to Africa. Charles Gabriel Seligman (1873–1940), a professor of ethnology at LSE,³ had organized surveys of African cultures—tracing the territorial spread of people, mapping boundaries of language, culture and political domains—and he employed Evans-Pritchard as his research assistant. Some time later, Evans-Pritchard started his first fieldwork with the Azande, and it was during this period that he came to think that the anthropologist must live as far as possible in native people’s villages and camps and to be physically and morally part of their community.

Evans-Pritchard was one of the first anthropologists to conduct such fieldwork and therefore to have first-hand information about how natives think. Before the turn of the century, the main sources of information for scholars were the detailed accounts of missionaries; those who studied these materials corresponded with the travellers, merchants, administrators and missionaries and interpreted their reports according to current theories—no one thought of doing systematic fieldwork. The two processes of collecting facts and theorizing were thought to be as different as spinning and weaving. Eventually, library analysis gave way to anthropology becoming professionalized.⁴

Unlike Evans-Pritchard, Lévy-Bruhl was dependent on the reports of others on native thought but was open to criticism and discussion from colleagues and ready to refine and develop his thinking. Born in Paris in 1857, Lévy-Bruhl was a contemporary of Durkheim, one of the founders of sociology, and his thinking is framed within Durkheimian social parameters. Lévy-Bruhl founded the Sorbonne Institute of Ethnology, Paris, but resigned in 1927 to spend time on writing and travel. A philosopher who was particularly fascinated with how people thought, Lévy-Bruhl wrote a number of books on the subject, ranging from How Natives Think, which was published in 1910, to L’Expérience mystique et les symbols chez primitives, published in 1937.

We can now turn to the conversation between the anthropologist and the philosopher on mystical mentality. We know from photographs that Lévy-Bruhl had a neatly trimmed moustache and a small, pointed beard; he wore small, round glasses, and his expression was often serious, even severe. In photographs, Evans-Pritchard looked the image of an elite English gentleman, and this belied his bohemian and nonconformist tendencies. Perhaps they are meeting in the faculty lounge at LSE or in a similar, book-lined room at Oxford University. They may be drinking a glass of wine, or perhaps a French brandy brought as a gift by Lévy-Bruhl.

AN IMAGINARY DIALOGUE

[As the two men settle into their seats, as the elder scholar at the end of his career, perhaps Lévy-Bruhl has a look that is both assured and searching, his head slightly inclined in listening position, as the anthropologist starts speaking. The younger anthropologist, who is in his prime, is just back from a trip to the homeland of the Azande in central Africa (the zone between the Nile and the Congo) and is fresh with ideas about magic. Evans-Pritchard is a practical man who was trained in history and uses plain common sense in his approach to ideas about magic. He is suspicious of the grand theoretical schemes of philosophers; nevertheless, he admires Lévy-Bruhl’s work and considers him to be a great man and a great scholar. The first topic of conversation is some misunderstandings regarding the terminology that Lévy-Bruhl has used.⁵

Spending a lifetime researching the different ways in which humans think, Lévy-Bruhl was respectful of native thought. He had come to the view that native thinking processes were different to those of people in the West, —their thinking was mystical and pre-logical, rather than scientific. Influenced by the social orientation of Durkheim, he made a distinction between what he considered to be ‘primitive’ and ‘civilized’ societies. Today we obviously do not use the terms ‘primitive’ or ‘civilized’ in this manner, but at the time of this debate these terms were in common use (see Chapter 6, page 98).]

Evans-Pritchard:

Dear friend, I admire and have been greatly influenced by your work and I am concerned to break down misunderstandings about primitive mentality and what you have termed natives’ prelogical thought because, as you know only too well, this has caused hostility amongst many anthropologists. We are agreed that the human mind thinks in similar ways, the problem is the language you use. Pre-logical is not a helpful term.

Lévy-Bruhl:

I do not know how to thank you enough for the trouble which you have taken in order to arrive at the exact significance of my work, and to make it understood by the anthropologists who seem so hostile to it. If anything is capable of effectively combating the prejudice against me that exists in England, it is the exposition and examination of my theory to which you have devoted yourself in your writing.

[Lévy-Bruhl had the habit of keeping a thin, inexpensive, black oilcloth notebook with thirty small pages of cross-ruled paper in his pocket, and if an idea in connection with his thoughts came to him, he would sit and write it down. These notebooks, which were first published posthumously as Les Carnets de Lucien Lévy-Bruhl in Paris in 1949 ten years after his death, related to the last months of his life, and the place and date where he had each thought appear underneath the wording of the text. Reading the notebooks, it is possible to follow Lévy-Bruhl on his outings in the Bois de Boulogne, at Bagatelle, and on the coasts of Normandy and Brittany and enter into some of his last thoughts on the human mind.⁶ Perhaps he pulls one of these notebooks from his pocket now, as he consults his notes on how he would explain his views in English to Evans-Pritchard.]

I do not think that primitives are incapable of thinking coherently, but I do believe that most of their beliefs are incompatible with a scientific view of the universe. These minds do not have, in some given circumstances, the same logical requirements as ours; they are logical, but the principles of their logic are different. There is a unity in the human mind in place and time, and primitive thinking is not due to an earlier evolutionary stage or inferior reasoning, but it is subject to different social conditions.

I decided to make a study of this mind in a society furthest from my own. I thought that the differences from Western mental habits were so great that no existing vocabulary could express them, and so I set out to create an adequate language. However, a closer examination has led me to move from seeing things from a logical point of view and abandon a badly founded hypothesis. I agree that the term prelogical suggests that native thinking is illogical, and this is not what I wanted to suggest at all.

Evans-Pritchard:

[The anthropologist smoked a pipe, and perhaps he relights it at this moment, as he considers what the philosopher has said.]

I can see that you have tried to create a language to understand mystical mentality, and how you have sought to explain how primitive reasoning is incompatible with a scientific view of the world. In other words, native thought is mainly unscientific and also mystical. You refer to the content or patterns of thoug...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Dedication
• Introduction
• SECTION ONE: EXPLAINING MAGIC
• SECTION TWO: THE EXPERIENCE OF MAGIC
• SECTION THREE: PRACTICAL MAGIC
• SECTION FOUR: WORKING WITH MAGIC
• Index