Here is the second half of the first theory of religion paraphrased from D.L. Pals work Eight Theories of Religion. James George Frazer (1854-1941) provides the compliment to Tylor. Frazer was the kind of scholar who theorized about the truth of the world from the comfort of his chair and a warm cup of tea. A comfortable way to live, but perhaps one that leads to all kind of endless logomachy (a dispute over words). His most important work was The Golden Bough. The book seeks to resolves a pagan ritual of human sacrifice from an old roman myth.
In order to resolve the puzzle, Frazer examines the origins of religion and magic. To understand the old stories, one has to understand magic. Using a comparative study, Frazer argues that magic works by sympathy. The primitive mind believed that nature functioned by “sympathetic magic,” i.e. the primitive mind would mentally associate two things, which were thought to correlate with physical reality. “Mental connections mirror physical ones” (36). Magic was thought to affect things because of an imitative principle or a contagious principle. It is imitative if two entities are connected due to a similarity or contagious if the two entities are connected by contact.
Pals cites several examples here and it is worth noting several for clarification. For example, when someone plunges a pin into a voodoo doll adorned with the hair of his enemy, he imagines that by contagious transmission he can inflict suffering upon his foe. Or when Pawnee Indians sacrificed a maiden to their field tools, they believed that merely by contact with her blood, the life-giving properties of the maiden would be transmitted to their tools. In certain villages in India, during periods of drought, the people would perform a rain ritual. They chose a boy who wore nothing but leaves and nominated him Rain King. He would then visit each house so the residents could sprinkle water on him and the rains would return.
Frazer like Tylor sees these rituals as both magic and proto-science. The practice of magic offered a kind of certainty about the natural world. The people who had this knowledge, the magician, the medicine man, the witch doctor, etc., usually held a great deal of social power. They would ally with the King or the chief who would use their services. Sometimes the possessor of magic knowledge became king, wielding magical powers for the whole community.
Being a secular man, Frazer states that magic is a false science that people eventually see through, and in its place arises religion. He adopts a definition similar to Tylor: religion is a belief in spiritual beings. Religious people do not use spells to change the course of nature but use pleadings and prayers to supernatural beings to their preferred spirits or gods.They ask for help and favors and in return they promise to give loyalty, love, and obedience. Like Tylor, Frazer believes in the evolution of human thought and culture; thus he holds that magic and religion are stages of human consciousness.
Where magic sought to manipulate nature, religion is in the hands of the gods. And who knows the will of the gods? Indeed, we are at their mercy. In the political realm, the magician-king becomes the priest-king. Of course, there are endless variations. In ancient sedentary societies, people began to worship seasonal cults and vegetation gods. Out of this came the fertility cults based on the cycle of birth and death, often linked to sexuality. For example, in ancient Cyprus, the god Adonis was paired with Aphrodite around rituals of prostitution and a law that required virgins to sleep with a stranger at the temple before their marriage. The ritual was supposed to encourage the gods to mate so that nature would be reborn. This was a combination of magic and religion, an appeal to the gods through the principle of imitation.
Magic provided the first attempt to explain and control the power of nature. As magic declined religion took its place, but it too was found wanting. With the decline of religion, science has come to the fore. Welcome to the new age…
Skeptic's Line 