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A General Theory of Magic
First written by Marcel Mauss and Henri Humbert in 1902, A General Theory of Magic gained a wide new readership when republished by Mauss in 1950. As a study of magic in 'primitive' societies and its survival today in our thoughts and social actions, it represents what Claude Lévi-Strauss called, in an introduction to that edition, the astonishing modernity of the mind of one of the century's greatest thinkers. The book offers a fascinating snapshot of magic throughout various cultures as well as deep sociological and religious insights still very much relevant today. At a period when art, magic and science appear to be crossing paths once again, A General Theory of Magic presents itself as a classic for our times.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1902
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1546 people want to read
About the author
Marcel Mauss
78 books140 followersMauss was born in Épinal, Vosges to a Jewish family, and studied philosophy at Bordeaux, where his uncle Émile Durkheim was teaching at the time and agregated in 1893. Instead of taking the usual route of teaching at a lycée, however, Mauss moved to Paris and took up the study of comparative religion and the Sanskrit language. His first publication in 1896 marked the beginning of a prolific career that would produce several landmarks in the sociological literature.
Like many members of Année Sociologique Mauss was attracted to socialism, particularly that espoused by Jean Jaurès. He was particularly active in the events of the Dreyfus affair and towards the end of the century he helped edit such left-wing papers as le Populaire, l'Humanité and le Mouvement Socialiste, the last in collaboration with Georges Sorel.
Mauss took up a chair in the 'history of religion and uncivilized peoples' at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in 1901. It was at this time that he began drawing more and more on ethnography, and his work began increasingly to look like what we would today call anthropology.
The years of World War I were absolutely devastating for Mauss. Many of his friends and colleagues died in the war, and Durkheim died shortly before its end. The postwar years were also difficult politically for Mauss. Durkheim had made changes to school curricula across France, and after his death a backlash against his students began. Like many other followers of Durkheim, Mauss took refuge in administration, securing Durkheim's legacy by founding institutions such as l'Institut Français de Sociologie (1924) and l'Institut d'Ethnologie in 1926. In 1931 he took up the chair of Sociology at the Collège de France. He actively fought against anti-semitism and racial politics both before and after World War II. He died in 1950.
Like many members of Année Sociologique Mauss was attracted to socialism, particularly that espoused by Jean Jaurès. He was particularly active in the events of the Dreyfus affair and towards the end of the century he helped edit such left-wing papers as le Populaire, l'Humanité and le Mouvement Socialiste, the last in collaboration with Georges Sorel.
Mauss took up a chair in the 'history of religion and uncivilized peoples' at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in 1901. It was at this time that he began drawing more and more on ethnography, and his work began increasingly to look like what we would today call anthropology.
The years of World War I were absolutely devastating for Mauss. Many of his friends and colleagues died in the war, and Durkheim died shortly before its end. The postwar years were also difficult politically for Mauss. Durkheim had made changes to school curricula across France, and after his death a backlash against his students began. Like many other followers of Durkheim, Mauss took refuge in administration, securing Durkheim's legacy by founding institutions such as l'Institut Français de Sociologie (1924) and l'Institut d'Ethnologie in 1926. In 1931 he took up the chair of Sociology at the Collège de France. He actively fought against anti-semitism and racial politics both before and after World War II. He died in 1950.
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June 27, 2016
I’d never actually heard of this guy before – but I was reading Bourdieu’s lectures on the state and he recommended reading this. So, I tracked it down. Probably the first piece of advice is to skip the foreword and come back to it after you have read the book itself. This is because it assumes you know what Mauss has said anyway and also that you know something of Levi-Strauss’s work – and I’m not sure either is necessary before you start reading and neither make reading this any easier. The foreword provides a critique of Mauss’s work mostly around his understanding of mana. Now, mana is such a difficult concept for me that it hardly seems surprising that this is where disagreement about this book would take place – the luck of the Irish, I think they call it. I really struggled with this idea and am still not sure I’ve understood it. So, let’s start with mana and work out from there.
Mana is a Polynesian concept. I first came across it when I read a history of New Zealand a few years ago. The author of that history talked about eating people so as to gain their mana. In some ways this means more than just their spirit – you could almost look at it as something similar to boy scouts’ badges, well, if you were allowed to eat boy scouts… It is not only people that have mana – the whole world does, but the point is that mana is what gives things their efficacy, their power, their ability to produce effects on the world. The boy scout reference is more to their badges for achieving various things – mana is kind of like those. This efficacy comes from the spiritual realm, a realm that exists almost in a kind of fourth dimension in relation to the world we see and feel and live in consciously. As the author says, this geometrical metaphor of a fourth and unseen dimension is so apt that it has been immediately adopted by spiritualists since it became understood. There are the three dimensions we can see and then there is this hidden dimension that we can’t, but things that happen in that dimension causes things to happen (or not happen) in the world we can see too. So, you can think of magic as a kind of physical science in a world where part of reality is eternally hidden from us – or, at least, hidden from most of us. That hidden world provides us with our skills, our illnesses, our accidents and so on – our mana. Gaining some sort of access to that hidden place is, therefore, pretty well essential.
Now, mana is one word for this in one tradition, but the authors argue that something like mana is common to all magical traditions.
We gain access to this hidden world by various forms of magic. Magic, in this view, falls somewhere between science and religion. It is like religion because this hidden world is essentially spiritual, and it is similar to science because you can effect this hidden world through undertaking various activities in this world – mostly by doing things that have some sort of sympathetic relationship between this world and the other world. The relationship to science here is particularly interesting, which is something the author makes clear, as so much of modern science was basically born out of various magical traditions – not just medicine, but also physics, astronomy, chemistry, and botany. Think Newton and his fascination for alchemy.
The point of this book is literally to provide a scientific basis for understanding the role played by magic in society – particularly in what are termed ‘primitive societies’, although, it quickly becomes clear that it is difficult to maintain a distinction between ‘primitive’ and ‘advanced’ with these ideas. The conclusion that is reached is that magic only makes sense if it is understood as a social activity and that it is only effective to the extent that it is already believed in by society. I could wander about making strange noises, burning leaves and swearing in Ancient Greek, but if no one understands I’m casting spells, then no spells are really being cast. Like theatre, a magician needs an audience. But it also needs props too.
Magic is like science, but also not. Experimentation in science is to see what will happen if you do something – in magic you do things because you already know how you believe they will turn out. And this is why we think science is able to replace magic, we expect that if a ritual can be shown to not work, or if we give someone ‘proper medicine’ and they get well, then the need for magic ought to disappear. But magic is, as philosophers say, an a priori way of understanding the world, a way of seeing it that is fundamentally cultural, a lens that we look through – but look through before we see. It isn’t that magic is primitive science and therefore modern science should just sweep it away – but rather than magic provides a way of understanding the world that can just as easily encompass modern science, religion and ritual spells. To someone who believes in magic, in a realm that is forever present but invisible, it is that fundamental belief that makes sense of the world – and that making sense includes the world of science because science is always ‘this worldly’, while magic also sees into the hidden realm.
A word that I’m not sure is used at all in this text, but that seemed to resonate throughout, is metaphor – and I had never really thought of it as being quite so central to the idea of magic. At one point Mauss says, “it can be said that symbolic structures are present in three schematic forms, each corresponding to one of three formulas: like produces like; like acts on like; opposite acts on opposite” Page 89. A large part of this work is a critique of Frazer’s idea that all magic is sympathetic – that is, that like acts on like – but the role of metaphor in this idea of sympathy is really powerful. Magic says that you might eat a yellow frog to cure jaundice or an elephant’s horn to cure impotence. This also is similar to ideas in homeopathy, I guess – the idea of like curing like. But the idea that the world is composed of dualities, particularly of the similar and the different, is interesting because this means the world is essentially metaphorical and metaphors can be much more complex things than we generally recognise.
Magic is about effecting change – that seems pretty clear. You don’t cast a spell, call forth a demon or mix a potion unless you want to cause some effect on the world. But the means of effecting that change is often bought about by way of some metaphorical similarity between the dysfunction you are seeking to ‘cure’ and the implement you are using to cure it with. But things are often much more complex than we imagine them to be and the metaphorical similarity is often a kind of preferred view of the relationship between the two things. Sorry, I’m making this harder than I mean to. Let’s pretend you want to make your girlfriend more graceful. On the ‘like acts on like’ idea you might cut some strands of her hair and use it as a kind of rope to strangle a swan to death. Swans are graceful, there is a contact between your girlfriend and the swan by your using her hair to kill the swan – potentially, you could imagine a magic rite such as this being performed to effect a change to your girlfriend (in fact, Mauss discusses many magical performances that are remarkably similar to this to blind enemies and such). Anyway, swans aren’t just graceful. Out of water they are anything but. As one of my favourite jokes goes, “yeah, she is a swan: not terribly graceful, but she has a ridiculously long neck and a constantly damp bum.” Like I said, things have more properties than those we choose to stress in our metaphors – our metaphors stress one and ignore the rest. It isn’t clear how magic, which appears to work on metaphor, is able to limit the properties it wants to connect with to just those that link disease to cure. Except, of course, this is exactly the point Mouss is making– magic works metaphorically because magic and metaphor are both socially defined. We see the relationship because the metaphorical relationship hides all of the other relationships that could exist but that don’t because our metaphors don’t stress those relations. The stressed relations are conventional, not arbitrary. Although, sometimes they are arbitrary too – when certain plants, for instance, are linked to certain planets and therefore become effective according to being picked at particularly times of the month or year.
And that is the point of this book. It is only in social relationships that magic can be thought of as working at all. This is why the fact that a magic spell that doesn’t do what is hoped it will doesn’t automatically disprove magic. If I said that the cure for a headache was crushing the petals of a rose between your fingers and thumb, it shouldn’t take too long to learn this doesn’t actually work – but if this is part of a long lasting ritual, then belief in the ritual doesn’t have to require the ritual actually working, at least not every time or immediately. Rather, the ritual might be undermined by other forms of magic, which then also need to be taken into consideration. The magic is already believed in according to this idea – if the spell doesn’t work it isn’t because magic itself doesn’t work, but because some other form of magic is being used to counteract it. Magical belief is primary – experience, which comes after and is understood via this belief can’t disprove magic, because experience is understood through magic.
A seriously interesting book. Some quotes:
the idea of the sacred is a social idea, that is, it is a product of collective activities
page 11
Sympathy is a sufficient and inevitable feature of magic; all magical rites are sympathetic and all sympathetic ritual is magical. Page 15+16
Magic is, therefore, the foundation of the whole mystical and scientific universe of primitive man. Page 16
Actions which are never repeated cannot be called magical. Page 23
It follows from this that strictly individual actions, such as the private superstitions of gamblers, cannot be called magical. Page 23
in other languages the words for magic contain the root to do. Page 24
We might go so far as to say that there are evil spells which are evil only in so far as people fear them. Page 27
Magical rites are commonly performed in woods, far away from dwelling places, at night or in shadowy corners Page 28
On the other hand, since women are excluded from most religious cults—or if admitted, reduced to a passive role—the only practices left to them on their own initiative are magical ones. Page 35
The curious result is that on the whole, it is the men who perform the magic while women are accused of it. Page 35
Magic is also part and parcel of some professions. Doctors, barbers, blacksmiths, shepherds, actors and gravediggers have magical powers, which clearly are not attributes of individuals but of corporate groups. Page 36
When two cultures come into contact, magic is usually attributed to the lesser developed. Page 39
It is public opinion which makes the magician and creates the power he wields. Page 50
It seems from older texts and also from modern descriptions that the brighter half of the month was reserved for rites of good omen, while the darker dates were devoted to those of evil omen. Page 57
Naturally enough, however, these catalogues do not exist, since magicians have only ever felt the need to classify their rites according to their aims, not according to their procedures. Page 63
On the whole, if there is no sacrifice in religion it is also lacking in magic. Page 65
Puns and onomatopoeic phrases are among the many ways of combating sickness verbally through sympathetic magic. Page 68
All over the world people value archaisms and strange and incomprehensible terms. Page 71
Magic has always speculated on polarity and opposition: good and bad fortune, cold and hot, water and fire, freedom and coercion. Page 88
it can be said that symbolic structures are present in three schematic forms, each corresponding to one of three formulas: like produces like; like acts on like; opposite acts on opposite. Page 89
Everything has something in common with everything else and everything is connected with everything else. Page 91
The grouping of things by opposites is also a method of classification. It is really a way of thinking which is basic to all magical systems, that is, the division of everything into at least two groups: good and evil, alive and dead. Page 97
Magic has little poetry. We do not find many stories about its demons. Page 105
Magic is not interested in them as individuals, but as wielders of properties, powers whether generic or specific in nature. Page 105
There is no such thing as an inactive, honorary magician. 108
The magician often qualifies professionally through being a member of an association of magicians. In the final count, however, he always receives this quality from society itself. His actions are ritualistic, repeated according to the dictates of tradition. Page 109
Magic, by definition, is believed. Page 113
Magic, like religion, is viewed as a totality; either you believe in it all, or you do not. Page 113
We have examples of obstinate credulity and deeply rooted faith crumbling before a single experience. Page 113
Magical beliefs, of course, derive from experience: nobody seeks out a magician unless he believes in him; a remedy is tried only if the person has confidence in it. Page 114
Fortuitous coincidences are accepted as normal facts and all contradictory evidence is denied. Page 115
The second type of ritual, practised primarily by the southern, central and western tribes, involves the removal of the fatty parts of a person’s liver. It is believed that the sorcerer approaches his sleeping victim, cuts open his side with a stone knife, removes the fat and closes the wound before leaving the spot. The victim dies slowly, unaware of anything untoward having happened. Quite clearly this rite could never have actually been carried out. Page 116
while the sorcerer may have only a mitigated confidence in his own rites and is doubtless aware that the so-called magical poisoned arrows, which he removes from the bodies of people suffering from rheumatism, are only pebbles taken from his mouth, the same sorcerer still has recourse to another medicine man when he himself falls ill. Page 117
But the witches, victims of their delusions, continued to boast about them, to their own detriment, finally imposing their fantasies on the Church. Page 117
In cases such as these, we are not dealing with simple matters of fraud. Page 118
He is not a free agent. He is forced to play either a role demanded by tradition or one which comes up to his client’s expectations. Page 118
He is serious about it because he is taken seriously, and he is taken seriously because people have need of him. Page 119
Magic is believed and not perceived. Page 119
Magic as a whole is, therefore, an object a priori of belief, a belief which is unanimous and collective. Page 119
Anything which possesses magical properties, by its very nature, is a form of rite. Page 127
Mana is not simply a force, a being, it is also an action, a quality, a state. In other terms the word is a noun, an adjective and a verb. Page 133
everything hap- pens as if it were part of a fourth spatial dimension. Page 145
These values do not depend, in fact, on the intrinsic qualities of a thing or a person, but on the status or rank attributed to them by all-powerful public opinion, by its prejudices. They are social facts not experimental facts. Page 148
All over the world where magic flourishes, magical judgments existed prior to magical experience. They are the canons of the ritual, the links in the chain of representations. Experiences occur only in order to confirm them and almost never succeed in refuting them. Page 152
We cannot conceive of any magical judgment which is not the object of a collective confirmation. Page 153
It is because the result desired by everyone is expressed by everyone, that the means are considered apt to produce the effect. Page 154
if we may hazard a somewhat radical hypothesis concerning individual psychology, it does not appear to us that isolated individuals, or even the human race as a whole, can really reason inductively. They can merely acquire instincts and habits which, in fact, lead to the abolition of all reflection on actions. Page 155
Moreover, magic is closely bound up with the whole system of collective taboos, including religious prescriptions, to such an extent that we are never quite sure whether the magical character of an object derives from the taboo or the taboo derives from its magical character. Page 158
We are ourselves firmly convinced that group sentiments will always be found at the origin of all magical manifestations, whether the magic was borrowed from an earlier religion or an outside religion, or whether they sprang from the world of magic itself. Page 169
While the Inquisition certainly burned more innocent people than real witches, it also served to generate them. Page 169
Magic has no genuine kinship with anything apart from religion on the one hand and science and technology on the other. Page 174
Magic is essentially the art of doing things Page 175
Mana is a Polynesian concept. I first came across it when I read a history of New Zealand a few years ago. The author of that history talked about eating people so as to gain their mana. In some ways this means more than just their spirit – you could almost look at it as something similar to boy scouts’ badges, well, if you were allowed to eat boy scouts… It is not only people that have mana – the whole world does, but the point is that mana is what gives things their efficacy, their power, their ability to produce effects on the world. The boy scout reference is more to their badges for achieving various things – mana is kind of like those. This efficacy comes from the spiritual realm, a realm that exists almost in a kind of fourth dimension in relation to the world we see and feel and live in consciously. As the author says, this geometrical metaphor of a fourth and unseen dimension is so apt that it has been immediately adopted by spiritualists since it became understood. There are the three dimensions we can see and then there is this hidden dimension that we can’t, but things that happen in that dimension causes things to happen (or not happen) in the world we can see too. So, you can think of magic as a kind of physical science in a world where part of reality is eternally hidden from us – or, at least, hidden from most of us. That hidden world provides us with our skills, our illnesses, our accidents and so on – our mana. Gaining some sort of access to that hidden place is, therefore, pretty well essential.
Now, mana is one word for this in one tradition, but the authors argue that something like mana is common to all magical traditions.
We gain access to this hidden world by various forms of magic. Magic, in this view, falls somewhere between science and religion. It is like religion because this hidden world is essentially spiritual, and it is similar to science because you can effect this hidden world through undertaking various activities in this world – mostly by doing things that have some sort of sympathetic relationship between this world and the other world. The relationship to science here is particularly interesting, which is something the author makes clear, as so much of modern science was basically born out of various magical traditions – not just medicine, but also physics, astronomy, chemistry, and botany. Think Newton and his fascination for alchemy.
The point of this book is literally to provide a scientific basis for understanding the role played by magic in society – particularly in what are termed ‘primitive societies’, although, it quickly becomes clear that it is difficult to maintain a distinction between ‘primitive’ and ‘advanced’ with these ideas. The conclusion that is reached is that magic only makes sense if it is understood as a social activity and that it is only effective to the extent that it is already believed in by society. I could wander about making strange noises, burning leaves and swearing in Ancient Greek, but if no one understands I’m casting spells, then no spells are really being cast. Like theatre, a magician needs an audience. But it also needs props too.
Magic is like science, but also not. Experimentation in science is to see what will happen if you do something – in magic you do things because you already know how you believe they will turn out. And this is why we think science is able to replace magic, we expect that if a ritual can be shown to not work, or if we give someone ‘proper medicine’ and they get well, then the need for magic ought to disappear. But magic is, as philosophers say, an a priori way of understanding the world, a way of seeing it that is fundamentally cultural, a lens that we look through – but look through before we see. It isn’t that magic is primitive science and therefore modern science should just sweep it away – but rather than magic provides a way of understanding the world that can just as easily encompass modern science, religion and ritual spells. To someone who believes in magic, in a realm that is forever present but invisible, it is that fundamental belief that makes sense of the world – and that making sense includes the world of science because science is always ‘this worldly’, while magic also sees into the hidden realm.
A word that I’m not sure is used at all in this text, but that seemed to resonate throughout, is metaphor – and I had never really thought of it as being quite so central to the idea of magic. At one point Mauss says, “it can be said that symbolic structures are present in three schematic forms, each corresponding to one of three formulas: like produces like; like acts on like; opposite acts on opposite” Page 89. A large part of this work is a critique of Frazer’s idea that all magic is sympathetic – that is, that like acts on like – but the role of metaphor in this idea of sympathy is really powerful. Magic says that you might eat a yellow frog to cure jaundice or an elephant’s horn to cure impotence. This also is similar to ideas in homeopathy, I guess – the idea of like curing like. But the idea that the world is composed of dualities, particularly of the similar and the different, is interesting because this means the world is essentially metaphorical and metaphors can be much more complex things than we generally recognise.
Magic is about effecting change – that seems pretty clear. You don’t cast a spell, call forth a demon or mix a potion unless you want to cause some effect on the world. But the means of effecting that change is often bought about by way of some metaphorical similarity between the dysfunction you are seeking to ‘cure’ and the implement you are using to cure it with. But things are often much more complex than we imagine them to be and the metaphorical similarity is often a kind of preferred view of the relationship between the two things. Sorry, I’m making this harder than I mean to. Let’s pretend you want to make your girlfriend more graceful. On the ‘like acts on like’ idea you might cut some strands of her hair and use it as a kind of rope to strangle a swan to death. Swans are graceful, there is a contact between your girlfriend and the swan by your using her hair to kill the swan – potentially, you could imagine a magic rite such as this being performed to effect a change to your girlfriend (in fact, Mauss discusses many magical performances that are remarkably similar to this to blind enemies and such). Anyway, swans aren’t just graceful. Out of water they are anything but. As one of my favourite jokes goes, “yeah, she is a swan: not terribly graceful, but she has a ridiculously long neck and a constantly damp bum.” Like I said, things have more properties than those we choose to stress in our metaphors – our metaphors stress one and ignore the rest. It isn’t clear how magic, which appears to work on metaphor, is able to limit the properties it wants to connect with to just those that link disease to cure. Except, of course, this is exactly the point Mouss is making– magic works metaphorically because magic and metaphor are both socially defined. We see the relationship because the metaphorical relationship hides all of the other relationships that could exist but that don’t because our metaphors don’t stress those relations. The stressed relations are conventional, not arbitrary. Although, sometimes they are arbitrary too – when certain plants, for instance, are linked to certain planets and therefore become effective according to being picked at particularly times of the month or year.
And that is the point of this book. It is only in social relationships that magic can be thought of as working at all. This is why the fact that a magic spell that doesn’t do what is hoped it will doesn’t automatically disprove magic. If I said that the cure for a headache was crushing the petals of a rose between your fingers and thumb, it shouldn’t take too long to learn this doesn’t actually work – but if this is part of a long lasting ritual, then belief in the ritual doesn’t have to require the ritual actually working, at least not every time or immediately. Rather, the ritual might be undermined by other forms of magic, which then also need to be taken into consideration. The magic is already believed in according to this idea – if the spell doesn’t work it isn’t because magic itself doesn’t work, but because some other form of magic is being used to counteract it. Magical belief is primary – experience, which comes after and is understood via this belief can’t disprove magic, because experience is understood through magic.
A seriously interesting book. Some quotes:
the idea of the sacred is a social idea, that is, it is a product of collective activities
page 11
Sympathy is a sufficient and inevitable feature of magic; all magical rites are sympathetic and all sympathetic ritual is magical. Page 15+16
Magic is, therefore, the foundation of the whole mystical and scientific universe of primitive man. Page 16
Actions which are never repeated cannot be called magical. Page 23
It follows from this that strictly individual actions, such as the private superstitions of gamblers, cannot be called magical. Page 23
in other languages the words for magic contain the root to do. Page 24
We might go so far as to say that there are evil spells which are evil only in so far as people fear them. Page 27
Magical rites are commonly performed in woods, far away from dwelling places, at night or in shadowy corners Page 28
On the other hand, since women are excluded from most religious cults—or if admitted, reduced to a passive role—the only practices left to them on their own initiative are magical ones. Page 35
The curious result is that on the whole, it is the men who perform the magic while women are accused of it. Page 35
Magic is also part and parcel of some professions. Doctors, barbers, blacksmiths, shepherds, actors and gravediggers have magical powers, which clearly are not attributes of individuals but of corporate groups. Page 36
When two cultures come into contact, magic is usually attributed to the lesser developed. Page 39
It is public opinion which makes the magician and creates the power he wields. Page 50
It seems from older texts and also from modern descriptions that the brighter half of the month was reserved for rites of good omen, while the darker dates were devoted to those of evil omen. Page 57
Naturally enough, however, these catalogues do not exist, since magicians have only ever felt the need to classify their rites according to their aims, not according to their procedures. Page 63
On the whole, if there is no sacrifice in religion it is also lacking in magic. Page 65
Puns and onomatopoeic phrases are among the many ways of combating sickness verbally through sympathetic magic. Page 68
All over the world people value archaisms and strange and incomprehensible terms. Page 71
Magic has always speculated on polarity and opposition: good and bad fortune, cold and hot, water and fire, freedom and coercion. Page 88
it can be said that symbolic structures are present in three schematic forms, each corresponding to one of three formulas: like produces like; like acts on like; opposite acts on opposite. Page 89
Everything has something in common with everything else and everything is connected with everything else. Page 91
The grouping of things by opposites is also a method of classification. It is really a way of thinking which is basic to all magical systems, that is, the division of everything into at least two groups: good and evil, alive and dead. Page 97
Magic has little poetry. We do not find many stories about its demons. Page 105
Magic is not interested in them as individuals, but as wielders of properties, powers whether generic or specific in nature. Page 105
There is no such thing as an inactive, honorary magician. 108
The magician often qualifies professionally through being a member of an association of magicians. In the final count, however, he always receives this quality from society itself. His actions are ritualistic, repeated according to the dictates of tradition. Page 109
Magic, by definition, is believed. Page 113
Magic, like religion, is viewed as a totality; either you believe in it all, or you do not. Page 113
We have examples of obstinate credulity and deeply rooted faith crumbling before a single experience. Page 113
Magical beliefs, of course, derive from experience: nobody seeks out a magician unless he believes in him; a remedy is tried only if the person has confidence in it. Page 114
Fortuitous coincidences are accepted as normal facts and all contradictory evidence is denied. Page 115
The second type of ritual, practised primarily by the southern, central and western tribes, involves the removal of the fatty parts of a person’s liver. It is believed that the sorcerer approaches his sleeping victim, cuts open his side with a stone knife, removes the fat and closes the wound before leaving the spot. The victim dies slowly, unaware of anything untoward having happened. Quite clearly this rite could never have actually been carried out. Page 116
while the sorcerer may have only a mitigated confidence in his own rites and is doubtless aware that the so-called magical poisoned arrows, which he removes from the bodies of people suffering from rheumatism, are only pebbles taken from his mouth, the same sorcerer still has recourse to another medicine man when he himself falls ill. Page 117
But the witches, victims of their delusions, continued to boast about them, to their own detriment, finally imposing their fantasies on the Church. Page 117
In cases such as these, we are not dealing with simple matters of fraud. Page 118
He is not a free agent. He is forced to play either a role demanded by tradition or one which comes up to his client’s expectations. Page 118
He is serious about it because he is taken seriously, and he is taken seriously because people have need of him. Page 119
Magic is believed and not perceived. Page 119
Magic as a whole is, therefore, an object a priori of belief, a belief which is unanimous and collective. Page 119
Anything which possesses magical properties, by its very nature, is a form of rite. Page 127
Mana is not simply a force, a being, it is also an action, a quality, a state. In other terms the word is a noun, an adjective and a verb. Page 133
everything hap- pens as if it were part of a fourth spatial dimension. Page 145
These values do not depend, in fact, on the intrinsic qualities of a thing or a person, but on the status or rank attributed to them by all-powerful public opinion, by its prejudices. They are social facts not experimental facts. Page 148
All over the world where magic flourishes, magical judgments existed prior to magical experience. They are the canons of the ritual, the links in the chain of representations. Experiences occur only in order to confirm them and almost never succeed in refuting them. Page 152
We cannot conceive of any magical judgment which is not the object of a collective confirmation. Page 153
It is because the result desired by everyone is expressed by everyone, that the means are considered apt to produce the effect. Page 154
if we may hazard a somewhat radical hypothesis concerning individual psychology, it does not appear to us that isolated individuals, or even the human race as a whole, can really reason inductively. They can merely acquire instincts and habits which, in fact, lead to the abolition of all reflection on actions. Page 155
Moreover, magic is closely bound up with the whole system of collective taboos, including religious prescriptions, to such an extent that we are never quite sure whether the magical character of an object derives from the taboo or the taboo derives from its magical character. Page 158
We are ourselves firmly convinced that group sentiments will always be found at the origin of all magical manifestations, whether the magic was borrowed from an earlier religion or an outside religion, or whether they sprang from the world of magic itself. Page 169
While the Inquisition certainly burned more innocent people than real witches, it also served to generate them. Page 169
Magic has no genuine kinship with anything apart from religion on the one hand and science and technology on the other. Page 174
Magic is essentially the art of doing things Page 175
January 28, 2019
اگر آدمی را میشناسید که گاهی اوقات بدون آنکه دلیلش را توضیح بدهد، خواستار انزوایی جدی میشود و بعد از مدتی به جمع خانواده برمیگردد و معلوم نیست در آن مدت چه کرده و سینهاش انباشته از اسرار بیشمار است، این احتمال را به فهرست حدسهایتان اضافه کنید که شاید او یک جادوگر پارهوقت باشد. «جادوگران پارهوقتی هستند که به محض آنکه آیین محقق میشود، به جایگاه خود بهعنوان افرادی عادی برمیگردند». اما جادو همیشه آمدن چند پری کوچک نیست که با گفتن وردی به سادگی «بیبیدی بابیدی بو» کدو حلوایی را به درشکه تبدیل میکنند و پیراهن دامنپفی تنات میکنند و تو را به مهمانی رقص پسر پادشاه میفرستند. جادو گاهی با مناسکی رازآمیز اجرا میشود که در آن جادوگر برای پرداختن به کار جادوییاش نیروی زیادی صرف میکند. در فصل ابتدایی کتاب، مقدمات جادو، تعریف آن و همچنین ابزارها و ملزومات یک جادوگر شرح داده شده که شاید خیلیها را یاد مدرسه علوم و فنون جادوگری هاگوارتز بیندازد. انگار جادو و جادوگری در زمانی دور امری معمول بوده و آدمها همانطور که برای درمان بیماریشان به پزشک مراجعه میکردند، برای حل بعضی مسائل بغرنج سراغ جادوگران میرفتند. با اینحال جادو همواره رازآمیز، مبهم و اندکی بیش از تصور، جذاب بوده است.
«در جادو، میان آرزو و تحققش هیچ شکافی نیست.»؛ احتمالاً به همین دلیل است که در قصههای پریان و داستانهایی که در کودکی میشنیدیم، جادو زیاد اتفاق میافتاد. برای بچه که فقط پیروی اصل لذت است و جز پاسخ دادن به غرایزش خواستهی دیگری ندارد، برآورده شدن آنی آرزوهای کوچکش حتی در قالب یک قصه هم لذتبخش است.
نظریهای وجود دارد که جادو را کهنترین شکل اندیشهی بشری میداند. این نوع اندیشه لابد زمانی در حالت خالصش وجود داشته و بشر در آغاز تنها در چهارچوب جادو میاندیشیده است. در این نظریه چنین گمان میرود که غلبهی مناسک جادویی در کیشهای ابتدایی و فولکلور برهان نیرومندی برای اثبات این مدعاست. فریزر جادو را نخستین مرحلهی تکامل ذهن انسان میداند. دین از دل کاستیها و اشتباهات جادو سربرآورده.
با همهی اینها نمیتوانم بگویم که کتاب جامع بود و ابهاماتم را بهطور کامل از میان برد. اما به این دلیل که کتاب دیگری در این حوزه نخوانده بودم برایم جذاب بود و عجالتاً چهار ستاره تقدیمش میکنم.
«در جادو، میان آرزو و تحققش هیچ شکافی نیست.»؛ احتمالاً به همین دلیل است که در قصههای پریان و داستانهایی که در کودکی میشنیدیم، جادو زیاد اتفاق میافتاد. برای بچه که فقط پیروی اصل لذت است و جز پاسخ دادن به غرایزش خواستهی دیگری ندارد، برآورده شدن آنی آرزوهای کوچکش حتی در قالب یک قصه هم لذتبخش است.
نظریهای وجود دارد که جادو را کهنترین شکل اندیشهی بشری میداند. این نوع اندیشه لابد زمانی در حالت خالصش وجود داشته و بشر در آغاز تنها در چهارچوب جادو میاندیشیده است. در این نظریه چنین گمان میرود که غلبهی مناسک جادویی در کیشهای ابتدایی و فولکلور برهان نیرومندی برای اثبات این مدعاست. فریزر جادو را نخستین مرحلهی تکامل ذهن انسان میداند. دین از دل کاستیها و اشتباهات جادو سربرآورده.
با همهی اینها نمیتوانم بگویم که کتاب جامع بود و ابهاماتم را بهطور کامل از میان برد. اما به این دلیل که کتاب دیگری در این حوزه نخوانده بودم برایم جذاب بود و عجالتاً چهار ستاره تقدیمش میکنم.
December 22, 2023
“Thus, if magic is to exist, society has to be present (p.156)”
GOOD RIDDANCE! Society this, society that! Maude I understand where you’re coming from, and I respect you, but can we have an ounce of imagination for the remote possibility of the supernatural ?! Perhaps, I read from so far ahead in time that he’s right to say that magic resembles technology in its ever growing tendency to the individualistic and specialized pursuits. So beyond that it’s not impossible to imagine magic in privacy. Magic as witnessed solely by the individual. Heh
GOOD RIDDANCE! Society this, society that! Maude I understand where you’re coming from, and I respect you, but can we have an ounce of imagination for the remote possibility of the supernatural ?! Perhaps, I read from so far ahead in time that he’s right to say that magic resembles technology in its ever growing tendency to the individualistic and specialized pursuits. So beyond that it’s not impossible to imagine magic in privacy. Magic as witnessed solely by the individual. Heh
November 28, 2016
ENFIM, cabei! um livrinho de 180 páginas que me deu um trabalhão, mas também resolveu a minha vida em muitos sentidos haha
O que o Mauss faz é, para a área de pesquisa dele e no período em que o estudo foi publicado, bastante inovador. Basicamente, ele leva a magia a sério, e procura esmiuçá-la com dedicação. Em nenhum momento o autor entra no mérito da magia "existir" ou não; o valor do rito é o próprio rito e não é mensurável pela sua efetividade, ao contrário da ciência. Mauss discute tradições, examina o cerne mágico, a figura do feiticeiro e da bruxa. É uma leitura dura, mas incrível. Poderia ter mil páginas e eu leria com prazer (mas provavelmente levaria uns 5 anos pra terminar haha).
Uma leitura indispensável pra quem se interessa por esse tema. :)
O que o Mauss faz é, para a área de pesquisa dele e no período em que o estudo foi publicado, bastante inovador. Basicamente, ele leva a magia a sério, e procura esmiuçá-la com dedicação. Em nenhum momento o autor entra no mérito da magia "existir" ou não; o valor do rito é o próprio rito e não é mensurável pela sua efetividade, ao contrário da ciência. Mauss discute tradições, examina o cerne mágico, a figura do feiticeiro e da bruxa. É uma leitura dura, mas incrível. Poderia ter mil páginas e eu leria com prazer (mas provavelmente levaria uns 5 anos pra terminar haha).
Uma leitura indispensável pra quem se interessa por esse tema. :)
March 6, 2015
You really need to be into magical thinking if you get this book. I mean, is indeed interesting for a while, but later is remarkably evident that instead of the question: how magic works? the question: how a person becomes a believer about magic in this time? is way more interesting and intriguing.
Now, thinking as a person really interested on this, you have a short book, concluding several elements about magic, Frazer is constantly quoted and few times updated, but here is easier and faster to get and understand. Not a great book for me, but must be useful to whom are into this field or beginning on it.
Took me a loooooong time.
Now, thinking as a person really interested on this, you have a short book, concluding several elements about magic, Frazer is constantly quoted and few times updated, but here is easier and faster to get and understand. Not a great book for me, but must be useful to whom are into this field or beginning on it.
Took me a loooooong time.
November 3, 2013
This work is essential for those who want an unvarnished easy to read sociological/anthropological study of ancient magic and shamanism, the witch shaman as outsider, magic predates religion, magic practices control of or over deities, religion requires sacrifice to a deity, prayers to a deity, while magick like science is about understanding nature and natures god(dess) and how the world works, it is a science of empiricism; do this ritual this way and this will happen.
The difference between magic and religion is crucial and is misconstrued as being the same because both use ritual.
The difference between magic and religion is crucial and is misconstrued as being the same because both use ritual.
Read
December 23, 2023Marking this as finished even though I didn't read the last 30 pages (sorry Professor). But I used it in two papers so I think it counts.
July 8, 2023
موس از اونهاست که دست میذاره رو چیزایی که دیگران دورش نمیرن. به همین جهت با وجود اینکه نمیشه همه حرفاشو پذیرفت، یویژه که اکثرا به موضوع جادوی سمپاتیک تکیه داره و قضاوت ارزشیش در موضوع پژوهشش دیده میشه، اما با این همه کتاب بسیار ارزشمندی در نوع خودشه.
August 24, 2023
خیلی کتاب قدیمیایه و ترجمه خوندنش هم اذیتم کرد، چون پانویسها ناکافی بودن و باید حدس میزدم منظور متجرم رو. تو ظرف زمانی خودش میشه از تلاشهای اولیه و خوب قلمدادش کرد، ولی عنوانی که یدک میکشه، یعنی نظریه عمومی جادو الان براش موضوعیت نداره و نظریه کاملی نیست. مضافا که خیلی تکرار داشت و کمبود منابع نویسنده شدیدا حس میشد.
April 24, 2023
Quite the mouthful. The middle part of this book felt like a fortified trench, it took me a few attempts to breach it. I don’t know why I imposed myself to read this French sociology book in a different language zzz.
Whenever I read sci fi or fantasy, I wonder why (my perception of) our modern age has somewhat assigned and confined magic to fiction only? Where has magic gone in the “real world”, besides card tricks and your local circus. Seriously?
I had read “Essai sur le don” (“Essay on the Gift”) but there is more to Mauss’s writings, especially in the field of religion. I was intrigued by this not-so-obvious relationship between magic and religion and boy, does Mauss tries to untangle it. My favorite passages were those about finding the magical in the religious, and vice versa then studying this interrelationship and how people have been conscious of the difference in their practices of both rites and spells.
There are some surprisingly modern passages about the distribution of magical power between women and men, and how this unequal distribution (and retribution for using magic) stems from women being the locus of superstitions, religious taboos because of their body characteristics and its lifecycle through puberty, menstruation, pregnancy and childbirth.
After a while, the book epistemic and methodology got as interesting as the book content itself, if not more. Magic feels like a real minefield when studied through the prism of sociology, and the preface of the English version by David Pocock helped me understand why. Is the presence and belief in magic a proxy for attributing “civilised” or “primitive” status to a culture or population? Should we really build into a single category labelled “magic” a wide range of practices across time and space? While we might have better tools (and the “privilege” of learning from our 20th century hard learned lessons) to debunk this kind of dialectic today, “Théorie de la magie” was published in 1902, so concepts and methodology at the time would inevitably have influenced the writing.
Mauss’s intent with this work is to define what magic is, in tension with other categories of human society, mainly religion although he makes (“hazards” is the word he uses) an interesting and daring point about science, technology, and in general craftsmanship/technique all being born out of magic. Stay buckled to your seats : )
To define magic, Mauss takes the sociological “nuclear bomb” approach of studying dozen of magic systems across our world instead of diving on one aspect (middle finger to the sociology of Robert Park’s “The City”, anyone?), from the oldest Australian tribes to the Cherokees, going through African, Malaysian and countless other places where usage(s) of magic were apparent throughout history up until quite recently (a hundred years tops). You’d have to be Mauss or Durkheim (*ahem*) to pull off this effort at generalisation and even then, the book being under 200 pages, there is something more to scratch under the surface. Pocock has a good summary about this: “the anthropologist inevitably works with the categories of his own culture and consciously refines them through the experience of others. He may […] imagine that his categories are perfectly matched in the cultures which he observes […] From this it is an easy and dangerous step to imagine that the entire phenomenon is now accessible to his empathetic understanding”.
That warning should set quite well the epistemological landscape and the innate caveat around any sociology work, in 1902 or in 2023. Either way, the book was I guess an invitation, at the time, to do more research on this activity and collective phenomenon called “magic”.
Whenever I read sci fi or fantasy, I wonder why (my perception of) our modern age has somewhat assigned and confined magic to fiction only? Where has magic gone in the “real world”, besides card tricks and your local circus. Seriously?
I had read “Essai sur le don” (“Essay on the Gift”) but there is more to Mauss’s writings, especially in the field of religion. I was intrigued by this not-so-obvious relationship between magic and religion and boy, does Mauss tries to untangle it. My favorite passages were those about finding the magical in the religious, and vice versa then studying this interrelationship and how people have been conscious of the difference in their practices of both rites and spells.
There are some surprisingly modern passages about the distribution of magical power between women and men, and how this unequal distribution (and retribution for using magic) stems from women being the locus of superstitions, religious taboos because of their body characteristics and its lifecycle through puberty, menstruation, pregnancy and childbirth.
After a while, the book epistemic and methodology got as interesting as the book content itself, if not more. Magic feels like a real minefield when studied through the prism of sociology, and the preface of the English version by David Pocock helped me understand why. Is the presence and belief in magic a proxy for attributing “civilised” or “primitive” status to a culture or population? Should we really build into a single category labelled “magic” a wide range of practices across time and space? While we might have better tools (and the “privilege” of learning from our 20th century hard learned lessons) to debunk this kind of dialectic today, “Théorie de la magie” was published in 1902, so concepts and methodology at the time would inevitably have influenced the writing.
Mauss’s intent with this work is to define what magic is, in tension with other categories of human society, mainly religion although he makes (“hazards” is the word he uses) an interesting and daring point about science, technology, and in general craftsmanship/technique all being born out of magic. Stay buckled to your seats : )
To define magic, Mauss takes the sociological “nuclear bomb” approach of studying dozen of magic systems across our world instead of diving on one aspect (middle finger to the sociology of Robert Park’s “The City”, anyone?), from the oldest Australian tribes to the Cherokees, going through African, Malaysian and countless other places where usage(s) of magic were apparent throughout history up until quite recently (a hundred years tops). You’d have to be Mauss or Durkheim (*ahem*) to pull off this effort at generalisation and even then, the book being under 200 pages, there is something more to scratch under the surface. Pocock has a good summary about this: “the anthropologist inevitably works with the categories of his own culture and consciously refines them through the experience of others. He may […] imagine that his categories are perfectly matched in the cultures which he observes […] From this it is an easy and dangerous step to imagine that the entire phenomenon is now accessible to his empathetic understanding”.
That warning should set quite well the epistemological landscape and the innate caveat around any sociology work, in 1902 or in 2023. Either way, the book was I guess an invitation, at the time, to do more research on this activity and collective phenomenon called “magic”.
July 7, 2025
hes not right. yet this is very special
Marcel Mauss, A General Theory of Magic, trans. Robert Brain (London: Routledge, 1972).
• Foreword
o Most of the theoretical discussion [of magic] which preceded Mauss’s work had for its effect not so much that of overcoming the apparent division between those who believed and those who did not (i.e. the ethnologists themselves) as of reinforcing it. 3 Thus it caomes about, for ecample, that we learn more about Sir James Frazer’s beliefs about ‘magic’ than we understand about the examples which he cites” 3
o Levi Strauss defends Mauss, and Durkheim also, from the common criticism alleging that they ‘were wrong … to bring together notions borrowed from widely separated regions of the world and to constitute them as category”
o Levi Strauss
conceptions of the mana type are so frequent and so widespread that we should ask ourselves if we are not confronted with a permanent and universal form of thought which .. being a function of a certain situation of the mind in the face of things, must appear each time that this situation is given”
always and everywhere notions of this (mana) type intervene, somewhat as algebraic symbols, to represent a value of indeterminate meaning (signification), which being itself empty of meaning (sens) is therefore susceptible to the reception of any meaning (sens) whatsoever. Its unique function is to make good a discrepancy between signifier and signified, or, more exactly, to draw attention to the fact that in certain circumstances, on a certain occasion or in certain of their manifestations, a relation of inadequacy exists between signified and signifier to the detriment of the anterior relation of complementarity.
this is a FIELD OF EXPLANATION. Magic as one of many symbolic actions used to fill in the variance in things thought and things felt.
o LS has a criticism of Mauss that’s relevant here
Inevitable works with the categories of his own culture and consciously refines them through the experience of others.
Imagines his categories are perfectly matched
Presumes that they are practicing magic as he supposes it to be
His notions are of “sentiment, fatality, fortuity” yet these are his
• Prologue
o The science of religion has no scientific terminology
o Studying sacrifice he finds something that needs more study
o The idea of the sacred is a social idea
o Magical practices…are social facts in the same sense that religious rites are social facts
o Not analyzing a series of magical rites but that ensemble of magic which is in the immediate milieu of magical rites
o The interest is not in rite but in magic’s methods. In the feeling of magic.
• 1. Sources and historical background
o Tylor is immediate source—Primitive Culture. HE associates magical demonology with primitive animism. Mentions sympathetic magic (one of the first to do so). his def for this is magical rites which follow socalled laws of sympathy. Wants to show that these rites played a role in the system of survivals. 15
o Frazer and Lehmann have genuine theories ofa mgic
Frazer is the pinnacle of tradition. magical actiosn are those which are destined to produce special effects through the application of two laws of sympathetic magic—the law of similarity and the law of contiguity. Like produces like.
He is dogmatic. No doubts and no exceptions. Sympathy is a sufficient and inevitable feature of magic; all magical rites are sympathetic and all sympathetic ritual is magical 15–16.
Magic as first stage in evolution of human mind, for him
Religion grew up out of the failures and mistakes of magic
Once upon a time man himself was a god (thought he was master of external world. Yet the world resists his attempts to master.) and so he peopled the world with gods.
Frazer’s two features 1. sympathetic and 2. normally acts on its own
o This work is diff bc theres all types of magic considered.
• 2. Definition of Magic
o Magic forms a distinct class of phenomena
o Some societes are not very coherent in their notions of magic
o [Lists all that magic does]
o Symbolic, sympathetic, homeopathic, anti-pathetic
o Hs’s parsing out the magic from the religious.
o He’s troubling Frazer’s two features.
o Two poles of magic religion: sacrifice and evil spells. In between are a confused mass of activities whose specific nature is not immediately apparent
o Private and voluntary
o “Irreligiosity of magical rites” 29
o Religion is “predictable, prescribed, and official” 29
• 3. Elements of magic
o 1. Magician
They have specific qualities. Not everyone can do it.
Getting wacky: A soul is a person’s double, that is, it is not an anonymous part of his person, but the person himself.
Kinship is relation between magician and the spirits
• People like to envisage these relations under a sexual guise.
Initiation, magic in society
• People become magician through revelation, through consecration, and through tradition
• Magical powers are obtained through the separation of the soul from the body
• In the case of the shaman, however, separation and possession must be constantly repeated
o 2. The actions
The actions of a magician are rites. They correspond to our whole concept of ritual. In folklore they are very uncomplicated, commonplace s
• Conditions of the rites: there are a certain number of dependent observances. Time and place, Materials and tools
o OBJECTS ARE MEDICATED
• Client has a role and, with magician, is an agent
• two types of rites; VERBAL AND NONVERBAL 62
o what is language????? no def here
o Verbal aka spells but also more than spells. oaths wishes prayers hymns interjections simple formulas
o 3. Representations
Minimum display is display of its effects
Terrific confusion of images
Impersonal representations
• ABSTRACT
o TOTEM EX PARTE: THIS IS THE FETISH? 79–80
o Remains and residues 80 sympathetic relations 81
o mimetic sympathy 84
o ANY RESEMBLANCE IS PURELY THEORETICAL
o FUSION 85
• CONCRETE
o I think here the chain of association is just less clear?
Personal
• CONCRETE
o demonology
• 4. Analysis and Explanation of Magic
o Monotony and sameness of it in history
o How magicians and theoriests explain the efficacy of magical beliefs
1. sympathetic formulas
2. notion of property
3. notion of demons
Magic can’t be reduced to this though
Remaining eliments are not neglibile
o Mana as noun, adjective, verb. mysterious and separate.
o Offers similar, analogous terms
o a necessary concept of a field where ritual occurs, where the magician is active, a place where spirits come alive and where magical effluvia are wafted.
o WE might end here and conclude that magic is a social phenomenon. Colelctivity behind all of its manifestations.
o MANA AS DEF WORKS UNTIL IT DOESN’T: Mana still too cut off from social life, something too intellectual about it still.
o If magic is to exist, society has to be present.
o Shared and voluntary. social facts fabricated
o Sentiment, fresh vigour 169
• Conclusion
o Magic is, therefore, a social phenomenon. It only remains for us to show what place it holds among the other social phenomena, religion excepted, since we shall return to that later.
o lol RELATIONS TO EVERYTHING SAVE RELIGION
o resembles technology yet is simple
o “magician does nothing, or almost nothing, but makes everyone believe that he is doing everything” 175
o Linked to science in same way. kind of is!
o Though we may feel ourselves to be very far removed from magic, we are still very much bound up with it
o Magical origins found in those early forms of collective represetnations which have since become the basis for individual understanding
Marcel Mauss, A General Theory of Magic, trans. Robert Brain (London: Routledge, 1972).
• Foreword
o Most of the theoretical discussion [of magic] which preceded Mauss’s work had for its effect not so much that of overcoming the apparent division between those who believed and those who did not (i.e. the ethnologists themselves) as of reinforcing it. 3 Thus it caomes about, for ecample, that we learn more about Sir James Frazer’s beliefs about ‘magic’ than we understand about the examples which he cites” 3
o Levi Strauss defends Mauss, and Durkheim also, from the common criticism alleging that they ‘were wrong … to bring together notions borrowed from widely separated regions of the world and to constitute them as category”
o Levi Strauss
conceptions of the mana type are so frequent and so widespread that we should ask ourselves if we are not confronted with a permanent and universal form of thought which .. being a function of a certain situation of the mind in the face of things, must appear each time that this situation is given”
always and everywhere notions of this (mana) type intervene, somewhat as algebraic symbols, to represent a value of indeterminate meaning (signification), which being itself empty of meaning (sens) is therefore susceptible to the reception of any meaning (sens) whatsoever. Its unique function is to make good a discrepancy between signifier and signified, or, more exactly, to draw attention to the fact that in certain circumstances, on a certain occasion or in certain of their manifestations, a relation of inadequacy exists between signified and signifier to the detriment of the anterior relation of complementarity.
this is a FIELD OF EXPLANATION. Magic as one of many symbolic actions used to fill in the variance in things thought and things felt.
o LS has a criticism of Mauss that’s relevant here
Inevitable works with the categories of his own culture and consciously refines them through the experience of others.
Imagines his categories are perfectly matched
Presumes that they are practicing magic as he supposes it to be
His notions are of “sentiment, fatality, fortuity” yet these are his
• Prologue
o The science of religion has no scientific terminology
o Studying sacrifice he finds something that needs more study
o The idea of the sacred is a social idea
o Magical practices…are social facts in the same sense that religious rites are social facts
o Not analyzing a series of magical rites but that ensemble of magic which is in the immediate milieu of magical rites
o The interest is not in rite but in magic’s methods. In the feeling of magic.
• 1. Sources and historical background
o Tylor is immediate source—Primitive Culture. HE associates magical demonology with primitive animism. Mentions sympathetic magic (one of the first to do so). his def for this is magical rites which follow socalled laws of sympathy. Wants to show that these rites played a role in the system of survivals. 15
o Frazer and Lehmann have genuine theories ofa mgic
Frazer is the pinnacle of tradition. magical actiosn are those which are destined to produce special effects through the application of two laws of sympathetic magic—the law of similarity and the law of contiguity. Like produces like.
He is dogmatic. No doubts and no exceptions. Sympathy is a sufficient and inevitable feature of magic; all magical rites are sympathetic and all sympathetic ritual is magical 15–16.
Magic as first stage in evolution of human mind, for him
Religion grew up out of the failures and mistakes of magic
Once upon a time man himself was a god (thought he was master of external world. Yet the world resists his attempts to master.) and so he peopled the world with gods.
Frazer’s two features 1. sympathetic and 2. normally acts on its own
o This work is diff bc theres all types of magic considered.
• 2. Definition of Magic
o Magic forms a distinct class of phenomena
o Some societes are not very coherent in their notions of magic
o [Lists all that magic does]
o Symbolic, sympathetic, homeopathic, anti-pathetic
o Hs’s parsing out the magic from the religious.
o He’s troubling Frazer’s two features.
o Two poles of magic religion: sacrifice and evil spells. In between are a confused mass of activities whose specific nature is not immediately apparent
o Private and voluntary
o “Irreligiosity of magical rites” 29
o Religion is “predictable, prescribed, and official” 29
• 3. Elements of magic
o 1. Magician
They have specific qualities. Not everyone can do it.
Getting wacky: A soul is a person’s double, that is, it is not an anonymous part of his person, but the person himself.
Kinship is relation between magician and the spirits
• People like to envisage these relations under a sexual guise.
Initiation, magic in society
• People become magician through revelation, through consecration, and through tradition
• Magical powers are obtained through the separation of the soul from the body
• In the case of the shaman, however, separation and possession must be constantly repeated
o 2. The actions
The actions of a magician are rites. They correspond to our whole concept of ritual. In folklore they are very uncomplicated, commonplace s
• Conditions of the rites: there are a certain number of dependent observances. Time and place, Materials and tools
o OBJECTS ARE MEDICATED
• Client has a role and, with magician, is an agent
• two types of rites; VERBAL AND NONVERBAL 62
o what is language????? no def here
o Verbal aka spells but also more than spells. oaths wishes prayers hymns interjections simple formulas
o 3. Representations
Minimum display is display of its effects
Terrific confusion of images
Impersonal representations
• ABSTRACT
o TOTEM EX PARTE: THIS IS THE FETISH? 79–80
o Remains and residues 80 sympathetic relations 81
o mimetic sympathy 84
o ANY RESEMBLANCE IS PURELY THEORETICAL
o FUSION 85
• CONCRETE
o I think here the chain of association is just less clear?
Personal
• CONCRETE
o demonology
• 4. Analysis and Explanation of Magic
o Monotony and sameness of it in history
o How magicians and theoriests explain the efficacy of magical beliefs
1. sympathetic formulas
2. notion of property
3. notion of demons
Magic can’t be reduced to this though
Remaining eliments are not neglibile
o Mana as noun, adjective, verb. mysterious and separate.
o Offers similar, analogous terms
o a necessary concept of a field where ritual occurs, where the magician is active, a place where spirits come alive and where magical effluvia are wafted.
o WE might end here and conclude that magic is a social phenomenon. Colelctivity behind all of its manifestations.
o MANA AS DEF WORKS UNTIL IT DOESN’T: Mana still too cut off from social life, something too intellectual about it still.
o If magic is to exist, society has to be present.
o Shared and voluntary. social facts fabricated
o Sentiment, fresh vigour 169
• Conclusion
o Magic is, therefore, a social phenomenon. It only remains for us to show what place it holds among the other social phenomena, religion excepted, since we shall return to that later.
o lol RELATIONS TO EVERYTHING SAVE RELIGION
o resembles technology yet is simple
o “magician does nothing, or almost nothing, but makes everyone believe that he is doing everything” 175
o Linked to science in same way. kind of is!
o Though we may feel ourselves to be very far removed from magic, we are still very much bound up with it
o Magical origins found in those early forms of collective represetnations which have since become the basis for individual understanding
April 28, 2017
What kind of thing is magic, exactly? Or better, what makes magic the kind of thing it is, as distinct from, say, religion, science, art, or philosophy? This is the question that A General Theory of Magic aims to answer. Not a theory FOR magic, but a theory OF magic is set out here in this classic of anthropological research. From shape-shifting to spell-binding, incantation to malediction, Marcel Mauss and Henri Hubert thus scour the arcane terrain of magical practice to draw out its specificity amongst the far-flung field of cultural production.
Setting themselves most distinctly against James Frazer's theory of magic as 'sympathetic action' (in which like causes produce like effects - as in: water magic producing rain, etc), A General Theory's most immediate goal is in fact to show how magic cannot be understood in terms of any one of its disparate elements; not this or that magical principle defines magic, but rather its 'totality' as a phenomenon - one including magical actors, beliefs, rituals, objects, traditions and representations, all of which, only when taken together, properly delimit the field of magic.
In a word: magic is a social phenomenon. A strange result! After all, isn't magic instead a furtive practice, one done in candle-lit cravens and in the shadows of society? True, say Mauss and Hubert, but close attention to the actual practice of magic nonetheless reveals its highly orchestrated and tightly regulated character: spells are formulas, indifferent to meaning ("abracadabra!") while magical objects simply 'play the part' in rites and rituals largely uncaring as to their specificity; in all things magic, it is in fact convention which rules its operation.
Having established this already important result however, for Mauss and Hubert, the heart of magic lies deeper still - not just any social phenomenon, but one involving the exercise of 'magical causality': a type of causality running in 'parallel', as it were, with the everyday, pedestrian causes we are all familiar with. In turn, this magical causality is premised on a kind of force - familiar with every video game player - here dubbed mana. Now, the ambiguities surrounding the invocation of 'mana' are multiple and well known, but they can be summed up by asking whether all of this is just to say that magic is... well, magical. So the success of 'A General Theory' isn't a given, but as far as starts go, it's a damn fine one.
Setting themselves most distinctly against James Frazer's theory of magic as 'sympathetic action' (in which like causes produce like effects - as in: water magic producing rain, etc), A General Theory's most immediate goal is in fact to show how magic cannot be understood in terms of any one of its disparate elements; not this or that magical principle defines magic, but rather its 'totality' as a phenomenon - one including magical actors, beliefs, rituals, objects, traditions and representations, all of which, only when taken together, properly delimit the field of magic.
In a word: magic is a social phenomenon. A strange result! After all, isn't magic instead a furtive practice, one done in candle-lit cravens and in the shadows of society? True, say Mauss and Hubert, but close attention to the actual practice of magic nonetheless reveals its highly orchestrated and tightly regulated character: spells are formulas, indifferent to meaning ("abracadabra!") while magical objects simply 'play the part' in rites and rituals largely uncaring as to their specificity; in all things magic, it is in fact convention which rules its operation.
Having established this already important result however, for Mauss and Hubert, the heart of magic lies deeper still - not just any social phenomenon, but one involving the exercise of 'magical causality': a type of causality running in 'parallel', as it were, with the everyday, pedestrian causes we are all familiar with. In turn, this magical causality is premised on a kind of force - familiar with every video game player - here dubbed mana. Now, the ambiguities surrounding the invocation of 'mana' are multiple and well known, but they can be summed up by asking whether all of this is just to say that magic is... well, magical. So the success of 'A General Theory' isn't a given, but as far as starts go, it's a damn fine one.
March 29, 2011
Is magic, which we think about as a highly individualized, secretive, antisocial, instrumental activity as much a 'social construction' as religion, which we think of as collective, public, social, and in-and-for-itself? Yep.
August 19, 2012
I loved the book, but was disappointed with the translation.
(Note to self: learn French)
(Note to self: learn French)
November 2, 2024
largely consists of a bit of an old fashioned laundry list of anthropological observations of magical practices from across the world. Lots of similarities and parallels are found, and overall a very interesting book. Has a sort of colonial superiority about it in the way of lots of anthropology, especially the old stuff – but the author seems to be continually leaning away from that despite their genre, especially towards the end.
Having also read Winnicott's Playing and Reality (where transitional objects and spaces are discussed), I come away from Magic with the sense that magic is a sort of collective transitional space, where we can suspend our disbelief to explore and develop ideas and practices in our cultures outside of hard requirements for efficacy or explicability.
Mauss suggests that most of our techniques, including science and technology, originally arose out of and were sheltered by magic. Seems plausible!
He doesn't quite get to the point of suggesting that sidelining or over-repressing magical tendencies could be a maladaptive limit on practical societal creativity, but it's not a big leap.
Having also read Winnicott's Playing and Reality (where transitional objects and spaces are discussed), I come away from Magic with the sense that magic is a sort of collective transitional space, where we can suspend our disbelief to explore and develop ideas and practices in our cultures outside of hard requirements for efficacy or explicability.
Mauss suggests that most of our techniques, including science and technology, originally arose out of and were sheltered by magic. Seems plausible!
He doesn't quite get to the point of suggesting that sidelining or over-repressing magical tendencies could be a maladaptive limit on practical societal creativity, but it's not a big leap.
September 29, 2017
Well, ok it's not that epic but it describes some basic things about magic as part of a society. Differences and similarities with religion, whether people believe it's real, who practice it and how. It refers to many different cultures, from medieval western Europe, grecoroman world, America, arcoss the ocean...you name it. But there's no list, they just get some reference as an example here and there. Surprisingly for such an old book it's a nice and pleasant read. Interesting for both an anthropoogist but also anyone into fantasy, coming to think of it. Also, it's short, you won't get tired. There are I guess longer, more modern, perhaps better similar books but this is an old classic.
June 16, 2023
This is quite a book. If the idea that ‘magic’ as an anthropological category is no longer taken as valid dissuades you from reading this, just know that you will miss out on some astounding ideas. For instance, on p.137:
“[Mana] cannot be experienced, since it truly absorbs all experience.”
I don’t care if that’s anthropologically “true” or not - it is an idea worth chewing on for a day, and in my opinion constitutes great writing. Many similar ideas populate this book, making it well worth reading.
Don’t read this to passively absorb information about a supposedly singular social phenomenon murkily termed ‘magic’ - read this to set your mind churning.
“[Mana] cannot be experienced, since it truly absorbs all experience.”
I don’t care if that’s anthropologically “true” or not - it is an idea worth chewing on for a day, and in my opinion constitutes great writing. Many similar ideas populate this book, making it well worth reading.
Don’t read this to passively absorb information about a supposedly singular social phenomenon murkily termed ‘magic’ - read this to set your mind churning.
February 26, 2024
Considering when it was written I think it is a really great text and I definitely recommend it to people wanting to broaden their understanding of magic.
For those practiced in the magical arts, please enjoy reading this breakdown of magic across multiple societies over various time periods written (originally) like 100 years ago.
For those practiced in the magical arts, please enjoy reading this breakdown of magic across multiple societies over various time periods written (originally) like 100 years ago.
April 30, 2020
Breathtaking original work. Who else could master such broad materials and come up with such a succinct analysis that identifies magic as a social phenomenon? The beginning of comparative studies was already at such a height.
March 15, 2018
Written in 1902, this book feels a lot fresher than 116 years old.
His treatment of the topic feels very modern and I am positive I will be returning for many re-reads.
Highly recommend.
His treatment of the topic feels very modern and I am positive I will be returning for many re-reads.
Highly recommend.
February 22, 2022
read for class. enjoyed thinking about the concepts in this, especially how they expand past magic, but ultimately i still struggle with enjoying anthropological theory.
Read
December 9, 2024DNF
Want to read
August 8, 2025Take legends with a pail of salt!
April 13, 2022
کتاب بدی نبود، اما از وسطاش حس کردم واقعاً چیز جدیدی بهم یاد نمیده که قبلاً از فلسفه صورتهای سمبلیک نخونده باشم.
January 7, 2025
I think I like this book more than The Gift. The Gift utilizes positivism in different ways to describe what Baudrillard might call a historical materialism of impossible exchange. Both A General Theory of Magic and The Gift are essential to anthropology…It’s “Magic”!
These supposedly omniscient guys become mythologies of anything essential they might have been masked behind within their own representation. How does that happen? Who or what is this ontological medium? How and when do they communicate themselves?
When you’re the political guy “above” all that, it’s not much different than…these old shaman who take the social temperature of their tribes similarly. Some thoughts are more intuitive than others. When the memetic virality of ideas lies in its communicability, magic men are all about the medicine!
This tribal anthropology is imbricated with the political field, even today…Especially in the post Reagan neoliberal world. When the linguistic ciphers for hire must investigate and squash thoughts that might as well not be thunk. Hacker guys holding the keys to the structure of language’s phonetic reproduction in time. The temporal order of its morphology.
In a way it has always been an aesthetics of measurement between the more intuitive reproducers of meaning and the less intuitive. Between the empirical intuitions and the more rational exploiters of sense and meaning. Some sacrifice their experiential lives for the tribal sociopathology, and others rigidly adhere to the representational biopolitics of life’s reproduction. Who, is to say, which one better defines human nature?
These supposedly omniscient guys become mythologies of anything essential they might have been masked behind within their own representation. How does that happen? Who or what is this ontological medium? How and when do they communicate themselves?
When you’re the political guy “above” all that, it’s not much different than…these old shaman who take the social temperature of their tribes similarly. Some thoughts are more intuitive than others. When the memetic virality of ideas lies in its communicability, magic men are all about the medicine!
This tribal anthropology is imbricated with the political field, even today…Especially in the post Reagan neoliberal world. When the linguistic ciphers for hire must investigate and squash thoughts that might as well not be thunk. Hacker guys holding the keys to the structure of language’s phonetic reproduction in time. The temporal order of its morphology.
In a way it has always been an aesthetics of measurement between the more intuitive reproducers of meaning and the less intuitive. Between the empirical intuitions and the more rational exploiters of sense and meaning. Some sacrifice their experiential lives for the tribal sociopathology, and others rigidly adhere to the representational biopolitics of life’s reproduction. Who, is to say, which one better defines human nature?
February 26, 2017
Malheureusement pas entièrement lu, suite à de nombreux décrochages en cours de lecture. Le propos général est intéressant, mais citer du grec ancien et considérer que le lecteur le lit et le comprend sans problème nuit à l'appropriation du texte, quand on est un jeune lecteur du XXIème siècle...
Read
June 29, 2015"each one is the whole and the whole is in each one" on why magic.... change something in or out... and you change something in the whole... if obscurity is not you're cup of tea... I suggest you not sit down and pour your self a cup of tea... the subjective and objective are connected... where you act or will is correlated through the ritual/other... Why? Why not? there is a system of categories central to magic thinking... one being sympathetic relationships... "(Mars=war, etc). in summary, far from the idea of sympathy being the presiding principal in the formation of ideas concerning properties, it is the notion of property and the social conventions behind the objects which allow the collective spirit to link together the sympathetic bonds concerned."
pg115 "Belief in magic, then, a priori is quasi a obligatory and exactly analogous to belief in religion." so then magic is only possible if the case is pre affirmed.
"the magician is appointed by society and initiated by a restricted group of magicians to whom society has delegated its power to create magicians. quite naturally he assumes the spirit of his function, (with) the gravity of a magistrate. he is serious about it because he is taken seriously, and he is taken seriously because people have a need of him."
"A magical judgement is imposed by a kind of convention which establishes, prejudicially, that a symbol will create an object, and a part will create the whole, a word, the event and so on." my question is what the difference with materials in this regard? atomical abstract being to the the observed sensual object... This relationship then being reproduced in the minds of several individuals... becomes a social process... then creating its own ontological sphere of being... becomes real being. "The universality and the a priori nature of magical judgements appear to us to be the sign of their collective origin."
pg115 "Belief in magic, then, a priori is quasi a obligatory and exactly analogous to belief in religion." so then magic is only possible if the case is pre affirmed.
"the magician is appointed by society and initiated by a restricted group of magicians to whom society has delegated its power to create magicians. quite naturally he assumes the spirit of his function, (with) the gravity of a magistrate. he is serious about it because he is taken seriously, and he is taken seriously because people have a need of him."
"A magical judgement is imposed by a kind of convention which establishes, prejudicially, that a symbol will create an object, and a part will create the whole, a word, the event and so on." my question is what the difference with materials in this regard? atomical abstract being to the the observed sensual object... This relationship then being reproduced in the minds of several individuals... becomes a social process... then creating its own ontological sphere of being... becomes real being. "The universality and the a priori nature of magical judgements appear to us to be the sign of their collective origin."
February 27, 2012
weggegeven
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