The Nature of Magic

The origin myth lies at the heart of every cultural and religious foundation. Even the modern world (that is driven to understanding the cosmos though scientific inquiry) has its own origin story. Physicists prescribe to the "Big Bang Theory," (among others). Theists subscribe to a creator model. Both are taking an approach to elicit an understanding about where we came from: something out of nothingness. Atheists would posit that the substitution of a creator doesn't solve the dilemma. Philosophers argue that solving for creation creates an infinite regress. Laws of universal causality require an impetus of the bang, a creation of the creator. It's turtles all the way down. We argue points that cannot be known, trying to solve an impossible riddle with infinite concepts that our finite brains cannot grasp.

In the beginning, there was man. As his brain evolved, (perhaps out of necessity, perhaps due to a greater acquisition of proteins) his problem-solving skills and pattern recognition increased. Humans are so hard-wired to seek patterns that we create them where they cease to exist. We see faces in the knots of old trees (a concept known as pareidolia). We lend significance and meaning to events where there is none, much like those personified perennials. Early man noticed patterns in the stars to help him map the night sky. His imagination gave those patterns form and meaning. By knowing which constellations occurred during each season, he could plan for migratory cycles of beasts or know when to seek out ripened grains and fruits. With his eyes to the sky, early man could also view comets and attribute significance to their arrival. Previous encounters with those comets could have portended ill outcomes. As humans, we have difficulty recognizing correlation and exhibit faulty causality (in the latin post hoc, ergo propter hoc). Those comets were recognized by our predecessors as "bad stars." It's where we get the term disaster, from a combination of Italian and Latin (dis meaning "negative" and astrum meaning "star"). Under those same stars, early man would sit by the fire and wonder, share tales of adventure both past and present. Man was in direct conflict with nature. It was the source of both external stresses and rewarding victories.

Naturally, man created gods both to explain our origins and to curry favor with. If a god created the winds and rain, it could control them. Ritual and sacrifice became natural expressions to appease those outside forces which man could not control himself. Magic and religion evolved in every culture we have formed, from hunter-gatherers to agriculturalists. Hervey Peoples et. al. in their study, "Hunter-Gatherers and the Origins of Religion" inform us that, "the universality of religion across human society points to a deep evolutionary past. However, specific traits of nascent religiosity, and the sequence in which they emerged, have remained unknown," (Peoples et al. 2016). The authors in their work attempt to show the very sequences of emergence. Their evolutionary approach to anthropology seeks to understand the natural psychological response to external factors that create magic as an aspect to religion.

Much debate occurs around an evolutionary approach to anthropology. Rebecca and Phillip Stein note in their book "The Anthropology of Religion, Magic, and Witchcraft,":

The evolutionary approach has many critics. Many the ideas found in the school of thought are ethnocentric-for example, Tylor's idea that the religion of "primitive" peoples focused on spirits and ghosts while more civilized" peoples focused on gods. In addition, any ideas about the origin of a cultural practice are of course, highly speculative. (Stein, 22)

In "Hunter-Gatherers and the Origins of Religion," the authors benefitted from over 200 years of collective anthropological data. The authors reconstructed ancestral character states by utilizing a "time-calibrated super tree based on published phylogenetic trees and linguistic classification," (Peoples et al. 2016). Their work sought not to order "primitive" versus "civilized" cultures by belief system like Tylor's concepts. Rather, their approach was driven to figure how from animism such concepts as a creator god emerges. The authors share:

Results indicate that the oldest trait of religion, present in the most recent common ancestor of present-day hunter-gatherers, was animism, in agreement with long-standing beliefs about the fundamental role of this trait. Belief in an afterlife emerged, followed by shamanism and ancestor worship. Ancestor spirits or high gods who are active in human affairs were absent in early humans, suggesting a deep history for the egalitarian nature of hunter-gatherer societies. There is a significant positive relationship between most characters investigated, but the trait “high gods” stands apart, suggesting that belief in a single creator deity can emerge in a society regardless of other aspects of its religion.

All societies have eventually developed creation myths and animism. Assignments need not be made on value systems based on the structure or size or organization of the religion. These concepts are a natural progression of the evolution of a society: how it thinks, relates, and orders its world. Here, magic and religion are interwoven into the fabric of the evolution of culture.

As we learned from Peoples et al., magic and religion are natural expressions that evolve in every society. Robert Marett believed in a concept pre-existing before animism which he labeled "animatism." Stein and Stein explain that, "Marett thought that the idea of animatism simply grew out of human emotional reaction to the power of nature, " (Stein, 21). It was the hopes of finding favor with supernatural forces that early man began using magic. This isn't an example of "primitive” thinking. We continue to use magic or ritual in the hopes of eliciting similar outcomes. First-baseman George Gmelch explains modern magical thinking or "superstition" as it pertains to Major League Baseball:

The best evidence that players turn to rituals, taboos, and fetishes to control chance and uncertainty is found in their uneven application. They are associated mainly with pitching and hitting—the activities with the highest degree of chance—and not fielding... Ballplayers also associate a reward— successful performance—with prior behavior. If a player touches his crucifix and then gets a hit, he may decide the gesture was responsible for his good fortune and touch his crucifix the next time he comes to the plate. If he gets another hit, the chances are good that he will touch his crucifix each time he bats. (Gmelch, 36)

This behavior isn't limited to ballplayers; we all exhibit this type of thinking, regardless of indoctrination. Students have "lucky" test-taking shirts, or undergarments. Ancestral keepsakes handed down are imbued with magical "energies." Modern books like The Secret teach us powerful "laws of attraction." Magic comes naturally to humans whenever desired outcomes are left to fate or chance. Our own powerlessness to affect these outcomes open us to faulty reasoning in correlative causation. Here, magic is a psychological response to factors outside our control and understanding. Even without a prescription to a faith or doctrine, we make statements like "everything happens for a reason," as if an unknowing hand of fate is guiding the course of history by an intelligent design or plan. Everything does happen for a reason, it is called "The Law of Universal Causation." There are no uncaused events.

Though as natural as magic thinking comes to humans, it threatens our future evolution as a species. Aside from the obvious logical fallacy it represents to causation, magic and subsequently religion requires faith in a belief system, whereas science constantly requires of itself testable, replicable measures. Science doesn't require faith (or does it?); it demands precision and proof. The scientific method seeks to establish direct, provable correlations that can be further replicated. Monotheism has pitted ideologies against one another, leading to "divine rule," subjugation, imperialism, and conquest. Most wars have roots in accumulation of resources, but ideologies are utilized to rationalize the necessity of war (appeal to the greater good) to the general populace.

Despite the rise of scientific inquiry, magic shows no signs of abatement. As long as we indoctrinate children (who are the most susceptible to magical reasoning) into religious faiths, people will have presupposition towards belief in the supernatural. Though religion offers structure and unity to a culture, other methods of societal bonding and inclusion can be formed. Religious ideologies (primarily monotheism) create an "us versus them" mentality. A belief in one omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent god leaves no room for the belief in another. The very notion of differing beliefs creates an immediate enmity between faiths. Ironically, the big three monotheistic faiths all originate from a belief in the same God. Their differences only vary in ritual, observation, and holy texts. Even more absurd is the division that lies in the observation of a common particular faith: Protestant vs. Catholic, Sunni vs. Shia, Haredim vs. Hilonim. These varying observances of faiths are divisive by nature, much like the current two-party system of government in the United States. Though an argument could be made by the believer of the sense of purpose and belonging one feels in an ascribed faith, another argument could be easily posited that those feelings are just a placebo. Our anthropologic study of religion is crucial to our understanding of varying cultures and ideologies; magic is an integral part of our make-up. However, perhaps it is time to shed our magical thinking, much in the way we humans are evolving past the need for wisdom teeth. At this stage of our evolution, we have outgrown our need for magic and have replaced it with innovation and technology.

However, it has come to my attention that religion serves a purpose especially when ingrained into the identity and soul of a culture. In Demonic Warfare, author Mark Meulenbeld describes the "invention" of the Chinese Novel. Non-canonical texts that were deeply rooted in festival celebrations of local gods were slowly demoted to a lesser form of "novel" in their study and description. It began as an attempt to remove their costly, local festivals (which are still under fire) and pave a path for proselytizing by Christian missionaries. Soon thereafter, Chinese modernists adopted the approach in an attempt to reform the "backwards" thinking of common, rural folk. As communism grabbed the imagination and hearts of China, the popular Chinese novel was subject for reinterpretation and used as communist propaganda, (Meulenbeld). Essentially, it's as if someone was to take the New Testament and treat it as if it were just some interesting literature, much like how we currently study Norse or Greek mythology. The Chinese Novel was more than just literature; those stories were performed with great attention and fervor; their messages were more than folklore. These were tales fully entrenched in the Chinese worldview and cultural identity.

Perhaps religion as a guide for living makes more sense than I previously gave it credit. By removing the novel and drama from religion and viewing it through other lenses, it would seem they stole the soul of the people. It all feels tainted by the various participants. The fact that it all happened in less than a hundred years is astonishing. It would seem that in modern times, it takes even less time to change a narrative. I can see how zeitgeist and cultural narratives shifted many times over in just my own lifetime. It's as if humanity has a very selective memory of the past. I suppose that is how human memory works. It accepts what is present as true and fact, and it romanticizes the parts of the past open to nostalgia. The power to manipulate collective thought needn't be grandiose or particularly scheming. Our minds are malleable and open to suggestion. Conversely, it may very well be how we allowed magical thinking to shape our collective worldview.

Works Cited

Gmelch, George, "Superstition and Ritual in American Baseball," in Elysian Fields Quarterly: The Baseball Review, Vol. 11, No. 3, 1992, pp. 25-36.

“ INVENTION OF THE NOVEL: From Stage Act and Temple Ritual to Literary Text.” Demonic Warfare: Daoism, Territorial Networks, and the History of a Ming Novel, by Mark R. E. Meulenbeld, University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2015, pp. 27–60.

Peoples, Hervey C et al. “Hunter-Gatherers and the Origins of Religion.” Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) vol. 27,3 (2016): 261-82. doi:10.1007/s12110-016-9260-0

Stein, Rebecca L., and Philip L. Stein. The Anthropology of Religion, Magic, and Witchcraft. Taylor & Francis, 2017.