发送前,先放在这里请大家批评。
浅谈巫术与宗教的本质差异:读《金枝》的一点体会
廖康
人间的误解多种多样,一些荒谬的概念在知识分子中也颇为盛行。比如,很多人误以为巫术是宗教的前身或初始形式。甚至有的教科书也下了这种断言,持这种观点的人从来也没有论证,也鲜有人质疑,大家都把这个概念想当然地接受下来,以讹传讹。这误解如此深入人心,当有人纠正说:“不,巫术其实是科技的前身或初始形式,”他竟然遭到众人的反对。其实,这个问题早就由弗雷泽(James Frazer)在他的名著《金枝——巫术与宗教之研究》 (The Golden Bough---A Study in Magic and Religion) 中详尽地回答了。然而,就在此书的中译本序中,刘魁立还批评弗雷泽道:“最难使人接受的是,他把巫术同科学等同起来,认为它们在性质上是一致的。这不仅错误地理解了巫术的性质,而且也否定了科学的客观真实性。”真不知道刘魁立是没有读懂这部著作,还是为了在中国出版这部著作而不得不找个靶子,以示出版此书是为了批判西方资产阶级学者的错误?其实,弗雷泽并没有把巫术同科学完全等同起来,但他认为巫术与科学在认识世界的基本问题上,两者是相近的。两者都认定事件的演变是有规律的,并且由于这些演变是由不变的规律所决定的,只要掌握了这些规律,人们就可以准确地预见到或推算出事件的结果,甚至按照人的意愿来影响演变的进程,并改变结果。巫术与科技在此本质意义上近似,但在方法上完全不同。然而,巫术与宗教在本质和方法上都有根本的差异。宗教与科学在本质上的差异和宗教与巫术在本质上的差异近似,但在思维方法上,科学从神学中得益良多。基于弗雷泽的这一重要观点,结合自己的体会,我将巫术与宗教的本质差异简述如下,并就此一点,评介《金枝》。
《金枝》是一部名副其实的鸿篇巨制,有多种不同版本:头版出于1890年,后来又出过三种版本。于1911至1915年出的第三版最全,共12卷,近5000页。但1922年出的第四版最为大众欢迎,800来页,其中文译本1000多页,由中国民间文艺出版社1987年出版。愿意读原文者,可先看 The Golden Bough by James G. Frazer, Macmillan, New York, 1950。这是基于1922年第四版的修订版。此书不仅学术性强,而且文采飞扬,令人爱不释手。开篇描述罗马附近的内米湖畔阿里奇亚丛林中一座狄安娜神庙和当地一古老习俗:神庙的祭司由一逃亡奴隶担任,不仅前罪不究,而且享受“森林之王”的待遇。但他必须手持利刃,时刻护卫一株圣树。若有任何其他逃亡奴隶折取那树枝,即“金枝”,便可以同祭司决斗,若杀了祭司,他就成为新祭司及“森林之王”,其命运周而复始。为什么祭司在就任前要杀死前任?为什么在同祭司决斗前要首先折取金枝?为什么祭司还同时要有“森林之王”的称号?弗雷泽的《金枝》一书,从探究此古老习俗开始,以人类思维形态由类比向逻辑的发展为经,以世界各国传说和文献记载中的巫术和宗教为纬,编织出一幅巨大的人类由巫术到科学的独特发展史卷。不仅回答了那古老习俗引发的三大问题,而且提供了打开人类习俗、禁忌、崇拜之谜的一把钥匙。此书体系完整,资料丰富,文笔优美,奠定了弗雷泽在剑桥和人类学、民族学的崇高地位,使他获得封爵、院士,等等。有人甚至认为此书是二十世纪最伟大的文科学术著作。我没有资格评定一二,但《金枝》毫无疑问是文科学者的必读书。
当然,并不是每位文科学者都对人类习俗、禁忌、巫术、崇拜等感兴趣,但我们对人类思想的演变却不得不察,对人类文明由巫术横行,到宗教盛行,再到科技昌明的衍化原因却不得不知。其实,无论文科,还是理工科,凡受过高等教育的人,都应该对人类走过的发展路程,尤其是我们共同的心路历程,有所了解。《金枝》的浩卷叠篇,虽然读起来津津有味,但不一定都要行行过目,仅从其中的部分范例,我们就可以清楚地看到巫术与宗教的本质差异。
一说到巫术,很多人就会想到跳大神之类的骗术。与巫术相对应的英语词Magic则令人想到供人娱乐的魔术。然而在古代,巫术曾长期被当作非常严肃正经的国家大事,或者是部落里、团体中、家庭里的头等大事。巫师都是公务人员,有些甚至是首领或国王。巫师中当然不乏恶棍和骗子,但也有很多人真诚地相信自己掌握了自然的奥秘,拥有某种奇妙的法力。他们确信只要严格地遵从巫术的规则,就能够显示神通,驾驭自然。他们认认真真地企图通过巫术为人治病,让无后的夫妇生育,使贫瘠的土地增产,令久旱的地区下雨。当然,巫师不是科技工作者,没有真正掌握自然运行的规律,他们往往失败。但为什么数千年来人民还会笃信巫术呢?
这不仅因为人们的思维方式相同,没有认识到错误根源何在,也有偶胜因素在作怪。就像现代人出于好奇或游戏的心理去算卦一样,九次算错了,他们都不在意,甚至会完全忘记,但一次算对了,他们就会牢记一生,坚信算卦多么灵验。巫术有时候也的确会成功,可能是方法碰对了,比如某种“祛邪”的植物确有杀菌的功能;但更可能是巧合,比如赶上了下雨;或因巫术而产生的心理作用增进了战胜疾病的信心或加强了求生的意志力,等等。事实上,早期的化学家就是撞了大运的炼丹士。就像现代医学重视预防胜于治疗一样,巫术的重要组成部分实为禁忌,而非驱魔。世界各地上有各种各样、层出不穷的禁忌,按类型区别,也有很多:饮食禁忌、面孔禁忌、语言禁忌、生理禁忌(尤其是月经和分娩禁忌)、头发禁忌、唾液禁忌、铁器禁忌、职业禁忌,等等。禁忌的实效更难以检验,人们往往宁可信其有,而不肯信其无,鲜有人胆敢以身试“法”。即便有人试过,无恙,多数人还是不愿意跟随破忌。毕竟禁忌的麻烦还可以忍受,而犯忌的后果则难以预料,何苦呢?
由于巫术偶尔会成功,而禁忌的效果又难以检验,更由于人们的思维方式相同,初民和未开化者都自然而然地认为巫术有效,使巫术能够在世界各地长期流行。巫师还有两种有效的方式,为巫术保驾护航,即仪式和辩解。仪式越繁复,巫术就越显得庄严肃穆,就越可能产生效果,很可能只是心理效果;即使无效,巫师也越容易把过错推诿到仪式的疏漏上,辩解也就越容易。显然,越是精明的巫师,越可能看穿那些无效和欺骗的把戏。巫师中最能干的人就会趋向于或多或少有意识地进行欺诈。盘算周到的骗子往往容易成功,反倒是诚实自负的巫师更可能会失败,并断送前程,因为骗子通常事先准备好了脱身的辩词,而笃信自己法术和咒语的巫师总是真切地盼望着预期的效果,一旦失灵,他便大吃一惊,比别人更加难以接受其巫术无效的事实,被大家认为无能,甚至会受到惩罚并被抛弃。由于巫师在古代又经常担任国家首领,其结果必然是:大权往往会落入那些既聪明之极又无耻之尤者手中。当然,一旦这类机灵的恶棍达到其野心的顶点,而不再有进一步私利可图,他们也可能将其才智、经验和财富用来服务公众,以换取贤名,永垂青史。好心人会把事情办砸,歹徒也可能造福社会。历史的辩证法一向如此,不要盲目相信墨写的历史,那多是成功者的纪录,下面很可能掩盖着铁血的事实。我们的三皇五帝、尧舜大禹和吐哺天下的周公,可能都不在例外。
墨写的谎言可以欺骗蒙昧的后人,却难以蒙蔽同代的智者。一些明慧的先哲洞察了纷乱的人世,看到人类的机巧、奸诈给人民和社稷带来灾难痛苦,产生不公不义,造成冤情惨剧。他们看到人类的自大和掌控自然的企图,即巫术的运用,总是成事不足,败事有余。他们看到人类努力探索万物运行的奥秘和人世变化的规律,也就是寻求巫术的努力,往往徒劳无功;即使偶有小成,也被歹徒利用。他们深感人类是多么渺小无力,他们深感人类的努力和奋争是多么有害无益。他们看到天地星辰运行得有条不紊,也看到火山爆发让城市在瞬间消逝,洪水泛滥使乡村涤荡无存;有时让玉石俱焚,有时令丑恶湮灭。于是,这些先哲确信宇宙间定有某种超乎人类能力、理解力、想象力,无所不能的,具有人格的道、逻格斯,或曰神、上帝在主宰一切。人类不要企图去理解他,更休想左右他,而要全心全意地信仰他、崇拜他、祈求他、取悦他,把自己的一切,包括生命都交给他处理。即便他让无辜的好人死去,也一定是因为他有宏大的计划,一定是为了更大的善。总之,他是至尊、至善,不容置疑的。他的行为(在不信神者看来很多都是自然界的运动,与善恶无关)自有其终极的善意,我们理解的要接受,不理解的也要接受,而且还要心平气和地接受。只有这样,我们才能获得心灵的宁静和喜乐。即便我们在现世的生活中可能还有苦难,但这只是暂时的,我们将在彼岸获得永世的幸福。
先哲们为了让世人认同他们的这些体会或顿悟,分享这些福音,他们或潜心作书,或四下宣讲,弟子们把先哲的宣讲纪录下来,有些就发展成了宗教。当然,这只是宗教产生的众多原因之一,这也是我们这些不信神者的说法。信神者则认为,经书乃受了神启,不由自主写出来的,实际上是神假借人的手将其旨意和教导书写出来。无论如何,世界上的主要宗教都有一个共同特点,即认为知识有小益大害,要人们绝智弃巧。《道德经》说:“大道废,有仁义。智慧出,有大伪。”《圣经》说人的原罪就是违背了上帝的禁令,偷吃知识之树的果实,从此能够识别善恶了。为此原罪,人类才被逐出伊甸乐园,开始遭受无穷的苦难。佛教虽然提倡智慧,但那绝非我们所说的格物致知、明察事理之类的人间才智。佛教倡导的是觉知佛的一切真理,并如实了知一切事物的本质。对此复杂、深奥的概念,人家有专门的术语Prajna,要达到此境界简直比登天还难,类似西方神学中的超验明达,那是让和尚、尼姑、居士,甚至圣人们终生揣摩仍可望而不可及的高度,中文没有对应的词汇,所以唐僧将此梵语音译为“般若”。在文革中,中国第一次接近全民有组织、有系统的宗教崇拜。曾几何时,人们普遍认为“知识越多越反动”,而人间的一切问题都可以在毛主席著作中找到答案。我们要“抓革命,促生产”,只要在“灵魂深处爆发革命”,就能够释放出无限的生产力。当然,我们顶礼膜拜的不是无形的上帝,而是人间的领袖。其恶果更甚;人民水深火热,自斗不暇,经济几近崩溃,我们深有体会。
无论是宗教,还是近似宗教的学说,它们对知识的基本态度都不谋而合。其排斥,甚至仇恨的态度就是宗教与巫术的根本差别。说到底,巫术就是企图掌握自然规律、控制自然、左右人事;而宗教则是对这种企图的放弃,臣服于神明,对命运或上帝的安排逆来顺受,最多也只是祈祷和希望。主张积极入世的儒家当然不是什么宗教,称之为儒教实在是误喻。而主张无为而治的老庄的确具有明显的宗教倾向,他们的学说与宗教在本质上相同。虽然老子的《道德经》本是一部中国的《君王论》,讲的是治国之道和无为的哲学,它却于八百年后被张道陵发展为道教,老子被尊为祖师爷。道家有个寓言:一老翁宁可抱瓮入井取水,也不肯采用辘轳吊桶等方便设施,他反对的是发展人的机巧之心,认为那是祸害的根源。《圣经》里最长的一段神与人的对话是在耶和华与约伯间进行的,内容主要是耶和华教训约伯,让他知道究竟谁是“全能者”(The Almighty “El—Shaddai”)。这个词在《创世记》中才用了六次,在《约伯记》(Book of Job) 中竟用了三十一次,在圣经其它地方没有使用过,其重要性由此可见。约伯是一位富有的阿拉伯财主,受到国人的敬爱,他变得骄傲了。在经历了飞来横祸后,约伯开始怀疑上帝,并提出一些问题,要求上帝回答。耶和华通过旋风对他讲话,与其说是解答他的疑问,不如说是提出一系列反诘问题,有七十七个之多,让约伯深思,自己寻找答案:是谁创造了天地万物?是谁让日月星辰各就其位?让宇宙运行不紊?其中最有力,最具挑战性的反问乃是:“你可曾司掌晨光”(Hast thou commanded the morning)?用现代物理学的语言来说,就是:“你可曾掌握了核裂变、核聚变的秘密,能够照亮地球吗?”两千多年前的约伯不仅没有这等能力,而且连想都不敢想,人类有一天可能会发电,让昼夜通明;甚至还能造出原子弹、核电站,造出一个小太阳,名符其实地司掌晨光。当然,约伯被镇服了。他匍匐在上帝面前,承认自身渺小、上帝伟大,甘愿听凭上帝安排。上帝让他活到一百四十岁,人丁兴旺、畜牧发达。《约伯记》的教训非常生动明了:上帝可能给予,也可以收回;人力微不足道,不要奋争、抱怨,而要谦卑、恭顺,取悦上帝,上帝自会慷慨赐予。
由于巫术和宗教这种本质上的差异和原则上的抵触,宗教痛恨巫术。历史上有很多主教追击巫师的事件,即便是博爱的化身对巫师也充满敌意、水火难容。因为巫师以为,只要他们掌握了适当的仪式和正确的咒语,就能够控制神灵,让神依照自己的意志,按照某种确定不变的法则行事,而这在主教看来乃是大逆不道、邪恶不赦。他们即便可以饶恕妓女、窃贼、杀人犯,也不能原谅巫师。在主教看来,前者是可以改造或拯救的罪犯,而后者是与他们势不两立的死敌。后来很多主教和教皇对待科学家也是同样态度。在这些神职人员眼里,我们称之为科学家的人与巫师没有什么两样。他们竟然妄图了解天体运行的轨迹!妄图得知植物生长的过程、动物繁殖的秘密!妄图改进生长的过程,加快繁殖的速度!妄图把一种矿物变为另一种矿物!这一切都意味着他们在向自然挑战,向上帝的杰作挑战。这是绝对不允许的。更不用说他们中有些人还胆敢怀疑上帝在宇宙间至高无上的地位,胆敢否定神如此眷爱的地球是宇宙的中心,那就非得把他绑在火刑柱上烧死不可。西欧一些科学家非常了解宗教对巫术的仇恨,也很清楚教会对他们的科学研究将如何看待,对他们将如何处置,所以他们总是小心谨慎地为自己的科研披上宗教的外衣,在论文的前言里每每冠以赞美天主的话语,甚至要等到临终前才敢出版自己的研究成果。我们在文革期间,无论出版什么科研成果报告都同样要首先歌颂一番伟大的导师、伟大的领袖和他的政党及革命路线。
由此,我们也可以反观到,在寻求知识的态度上,在企图掌握宇宙万物运行规律的愿望和努力上,巫术与宗教往往背道而驰,但与科技常常并行不悖。然而,巫术毕竟不是科技。它们之间到底有什么不同呢?通过对世界各国从古至今大量巫术的研究,从现象到本质,弗雷泽找到了差别,那就是初民及未开化者的主导思维方式——类比型思维,即根据事物的表面相似之处来认定其内在联系。比如:看到菜花的样子像大脑,就认为吃菜花能够补脑。但鸡爪子是万万不可吃的,那会影响书法。古希腊和古罗马人都曾把孕妇作为牺牲品敬献给土地和谷物女神,以求丰产。在古代墨西哥则有祭祀玉米女神“长发妈妈”的庆典,让女人们放开长发,在舞蹈中飘逸,以求来年的玉米穗子能够长得同样繁茂。需要下雨,北美纳奇兹印第安男巫便先行斋戒,然后舞蹈。祈雨师口中含水,牙咬水管,一边舞蹈,一边将水喷向乌云,用模拟下雨的方式引导天公降雨。我们的祖先通常供奉司掌风雨的龙王,而一旦风雨不按人的愿望来临,也会打龙王,把纸糊的或木制的龙王搬下神龛,扔到院子里暴晒,让它也感受缺水的苦楚,以便满足人的愿望。如果需要止雨,新不列颠的苏尔卡人就把石头先在火中烧热,再放入雨水里。他们以为,雨水不愿意被炽热的石头烘干,因而不会再下到这里来。很多民族都有狂欢节,其原始形式不乏野合,甚至还有公开的、集体的男女交欢。弗雷泽的研究表明,不应将这类活动看作单纯的纵欲行为,他们是在认真、庄严地组织这类活动,并认为那是大地富饶和人类福祉所必需的,因为他们不能区别自己的情欲发泄与植物的繁育方法有什么不同。
初民和未开化者也不大能区分语言和实物的差别,常常把名词和它们所代表的人或物混为一体,认为两者之间不仅仅有思想概念上的联系,还有物质的联系。比如,马达加斯加的士兵不能吃肾,因为马达加斯加语的“肾”和“射死”是同一个字。许多语言巫术和语言禁忌就是从这种表面的相似和关联中产生出来的。比如把仇敌的名字写下来烧掉或扔到茅坑里;不许直接使用长辈和皇帝的名字,等等。在古埃及,每个人甚至有两个名字;大名要小心隐瞒,只是悄悄地用在正式仪式上,以防恶人用巫术侵害,小名才是公用的。汉语的“四”音近“死”,“八”音近“发”,即使在科学昌明的今天,中国的电话号码中“四”还是比“八”用得少得多。类比型思维的残渣余孽越多的地方,科技就越落后,生产力也越不发达。
科学的思维方式是逻辑思维。那是通过对感性材料的分析思考,撇开事物的具体形象和个别属性,深入其最小单元来揭示出事物的本质特征,形成概念并运用概念来进行判断和推理,来概括地、间接地反映现实。逻辑思维是人脑对客观事物间接、概括的反映,它凭借实验和观测来寻找事物的规律,揭示事物的本质;其基本形式乃概念、判断、推理;其主要方法有归纳、演绎、分析和综合,以图从具体上升到抽象。这是我们认识事物、了解宇宙的法宝。有意思的是,虽然宗教压制科技,神学对科学的思维方式却有很大贡献。无论在东方还是西方,神学研究都大量涉及逻辑思维。佛教的因明,喇嘛教的论场,基督教的推理都是运用逻辑来论实证伪,培养、发展了人的逻辑思维能力,而某些神学士一旦把这能力运用在世俗和对自然的研究上,就取得了科技的成果。在西方,自从政教分离后,教会对科技的干涉越来越少。逻辑思维迅速占领了西方人思想和教育的主峰,仅仅几百年,他们就超过了所有文明古国,走在世界的前边。在中国,巫术一向绵绵不绝,而且往往和宗教在相当大的程度上重合。中国人信教,大多数是为了消灾祈福。只要灵验就好,并不在乎这个神,那个神,能够护佑我们的都是好神,很少有人考虑灵魂永生等彼岸问题。巫术不灵就求神,求神不灵再巫术。“不二法门”基本上停留在口头上,中国从来没有打过十字军东征性质的战争。宗教始终没有形成有机构、有计划、定点定时的全国性活动(只有文革中早请示、晚汇报和政治学习最接近西方的宗教活动形式)。总体来说,宗教在中国是比较个人的事情(共产党之所以压制法轮功,主要是因为它有组织)。对宗教的这种宽容,或不如说无所谓的态度,也反映了我们对什么都不认真,不求甚解的习惯。这种连使用人称代称都男女不分的一锅粥文化直到上个世纪初才开始大变。五四运动后,我们终于把民主和科学引进了中国。我们的教育也从重复孔孟之道变为培养逻辑思维。民主仍然举步维艰,科学已经大行其道。但文革期间,我们走了一段弯路,没有民主的科学跛子摔倒在半宗教半巫术的泥潭里。一方面,全中国都崇拜毛主席,除了毛泽东思想以外,什么都不学。另一方面,民间大肆流行喝海宝、打鸡血等所谓健身强体的歪门邪道。文革结束后,百废俱兴,科学的春天回来了,而钱学森竟然提出“唯象思维”,还自以为是什么新的思维模式,说穿了,其实就是“类比型思维”,换一种称呼而已。在他的误导下,在投机取巧的浮躁中,伪科学肆虐。耳朵识字、隔瓶取药、意念弯勺、穿墙越壁、蔽谷弃食等所谓的“人体特异功能”得到极大重视、宣传和“研究”,算卦卜易也再次流行。许多人都受到蛊惑,焦躁地回头寻找祖宗留下的秘方,以为我们古老的巫术种子能够开出现代的科技之花,帮助我们尽快实现四个现代化。《金枝》的中译本就是在那时候(1987年6月)出版的。我相信,它有助于读者认识真理,了解人类走过的歧途,让我们回到正确的道路上来。
随着人类文明的发展,随着教育的普及,巫术逐渐为科学技术取代。人类一直具有掌控自然的愿望,这愿望曾在巫术的实践中屡受挫折,也曾被宗教长期压制,却没有泯灭。人类虽然走过了漫长的弯路,但我们终于抛弃了错误的方法,找到了正确的途径,把巫术发展为科技,一步步实现了我们的愿望,探求宇宙奥秘的雄心已经成为部分征服自然的业绩。而且科学还在不断地纠正自身,还在不断地探索新的领域,研究新的方法。科技一直以几何级数的速度在发展。然而,也有一些人藐视自然,滥用技术,敢于“喝令三山五岳开道”,相信“人定胜天”。还有一些彻底的唯物主义者甚至无所畏惧、为所欲为,不仅对自然如此,对人世也如此;正所谓“只顾眼前荣华富贵,哪管身后洪水滔滔。”其实,科技本身只是一种能力,如何应用这种能力,还需要其它能力,更需要道德。科技日新月异的发展令人感到我们的综合能力,也就是应该如何运用科技的能力,远远落在了后面。换句话说,如果把科技比作计算机,那综合能力就是使用计算机的能力。当今,我们常有被工具所困的经验,并感叹成了科技的奴隶。更可怕的是,人的道德水平,包括领导人和决策者的道德水平与科技的飞速发展严重不成比例。科技已使地球成为一个小村庄,但村民还没有学会怎么和谐相处。
宗教走的是与巫术完全不同的道路,甚至是相反的道路。宗教万古如斯,永不言错,自信已经找到了终极真理。人们只需皈依诚信、顶礼膜拜就可以抵达幸福的彼岸,而现世的一切成就都无关紧要。宗教仍一如既往。很多人对神明依旧敬畏,依旧谦卑地匍匐在自然的伟力面前,依旧认为人类渺小而微不足道。他们反对培养机巧之心,提倡无所作为,抑制科技发展,一切都以经书里神的指示办事。尤其在道德品行上,更要遵循“十诫”,恪守“天条”。对神的教诲,无论那是经过多少人的转口阐释,也都要亦步亦趋。然而,宗教和科技也可以相辅相成。事实上,有不少科学家和技术工作者也信教,他们的信仰与科研不仅并行不悖,而且相互促进。一些天体运行的规律就是教士和神学院的学生发现的。牛顿的主要研究是神学,他相信宇宙的第一推动来自上帝。在研究神与人的关系时,他也发现了宇宙运行的规律。在了解神的伟大时,他也发现了自然界的奥秘。爱因斯坦也具有宗教情怀,当然,他所信仰的上帝未必是人格化的神,未必是道成肉身的基督,或坐在九天之上的白胡子老头。
由于对某种神秘莫测的超自然力的敬畏,由于对人类自身弱点的认识和担心,有些科学家在进行研究时亦有所顾忌,对科技的应用亦有所保留。出于对至善的信仰,出于对人类道德缺陷的洞察,他们不愿意把宇宙的奥秘全部交给充满野心和傲慢的世人,以防肆无忌惮的滥用会导致人类自身的全体毁灭。普罗米修斯为人类盗火而受到宙斯的惩罚也许并非全无道理,毕竟人类还太幼稚,我们用火取暖烧饭,也用火自相残杀。我们掌握的科技还不能让全人类丰衣足食,却拥有那么多的核武器,足以杀死地球上每一个人五十次还有余。这柄悬在全人类头上的达摩克里斯之剑随时都可能掉下来。在相应的道德体系发展完善并为地球村民认同之前,无疑,宗教对于遏制科技的无限膨胀仍有一定作用。如果摒弃宗教的排他性,宗教对于个人的道德自律和精神安慰也有积极作用。
(未定稿,欲转抄者,请与作者联系)
2007年2月1日
- Re: 浅谈巫术与宗教的本质差异:读《金枝》的一点体会posted on 02/06/2007
我也读过很多前世轮回,心灵感应之类的书,觉得奥秘无穷。这本书一定要去看看。 - posted on 02/06/2007
墨写的谎言可以欺骗蒙昧的后人,却难以蒙蔽同代的智者。一些明慧的先哲洞察了纷乱的人世,看到人类的机巧、奸诈给人民和社稷带来灾难痛苦
从此以后的"宗教"一词,似乎专指基督教 , 恐怕有所不妥 .
世界上的主要宗教都有一个共同特点,即认为知识有小益大害,要人们绝智弃巧。《道德经》说:“大道废,有仁义。智慧出,有大伪。”
对这段道德经的理解似乎完全有误。建议删除。
在文革中,中国第一次接近全民有组织、有系统的宗教崇拜。曾几何时,人们普遍认为“知识越多越反动”,而人间的一切问题都可以在毛主席著作中找到答案。
其恶果更甚;人民水深火热,自斗不暇,经济几近崩溃,我们深有体会。
这段似乎有夹杂"私货"的嫌疑, 而且也是用"类比型思维" ,论证比较混乱。(邓小平末期、朱镕基之前的经济才真是“濒临崩溃”。至少“经济几近崩溃”六字建议删除。)
而主张无为而治的老庄的确具有明显的宗教倾向,他们的学说与宗教在本质上相同。
这一点完全不能赞同。道家转变为道教是受了佛教的冲击影响,老庄本性恐怕与宗教无关。
初民和未开化者也不大能区分语言和实物的差别,常常把名词和它们所代表的人或物混为一体,认为两者之间不仅仅有思想概念上的联系,还有物质的联系。比如,马达加斯加的士兵不能吃肾,因为马达加斯加语的“肾”和“射死”是同一个字。许多语言巫术和语言禁忌就是从这种表面的相似和关联中产生出来的。比如把仇敌的名字写下来烧掉或扔到茅坑里;不许直接使用长辈和皇帝的名字,等等。在古埃及,每个人甚至有两个名字;大名要小心隐瞒,只是悄悄地用在正式仪式上,以防恶人用巫术侵害,小名才是公用的。汉语的“四”音近“死”,“八”音近“发”,即使在科学昌明的今天,中国的电话号码中“四”还是比“八”用得少得多。
这一段论证混乱,“马达加斯加的士兵不能吃肾”和“中国的电话号码”这两个例子都与论题不符。
总体看来,最大的问题就是把宗教近乎等同于基督教。如果不能通篇大改的话,不妨注明一句:由于受原作者出生地和时代的局限,这里的宗教基本上指的是基督教。
稍小一点的问题是涉及到中国的事情论证不足,且有夹带私货的嫌疑。
以上权当个人不知天高地厚的见解。祝好! - Re: 浅谈巫术与宗教的本质差异:读《金枝》的一点体会posted on 02/06/2007
愿闻其详。仅此几句断言无法让我改变 Frazer 800页鸿篇说明的观点。文革中期、后期中国经济濒临崩溃也是我们经历过的。 - Re: 浅谈巫术与宗教的本质差异:读《金枝》的一点体会posted on 02/06/2007
有个疑问:
巫术和宗教之间的渊源还是比较明显存在的,道教和神道教都是明显的例子。而犹太-基督教则由于有苏美尔以来几千年中东文明的沉淀基础,所以比较有体系、与原始巫术的差别才比较大。
是否可以这样想:
原始巫术中本来就有感性与理性(类比推理)两种组成部分,前者如敬畏和神秘体验,后者如占卜和观星;
后来的宗教主要取其注重感性的那部分因素,而文艺复兴以后的科学则取其理性的那部分因素?
我这也是类比型思维,权当一种投石问路抛砖引玉的猜测。 - Re: 浅谈巫术与宗教的本质差异:读《金枝》的一点体会posted on 02/06/2007
建议读一遍《金枝》。 - Re: 浅谈巫术与宗教的本质差异:读《金枝》的一点体会posted on 02/06/2007
建议读一遍《金枝》。
得,一竿子支到800页去了。
一个傻瓜提出的问题比一个聪明人能回答的问题多100倍,不过唐三藏悬帖辩经的时候可是有问必回的,呵呵。 ^_*
(题外话: 在红旗拉普口岸我问那海关的人,哪一条规定要求我必须坐你们的车过境? 他指了指墙上的数百条规定,说“自己看”。再问,又递给我一本《中华人民共和国宪法》说:“自己看”。 ) - Re: 浅谈巫术与宗教的本质差异:读《金枝》的一点体会posted on 02/06/2007
有时间一定要读《金枝》 - Re: 浅谈巫术与宗教的本质差异:读《金枝》的一点体会posted on 02/06/2007
对念人类学的来说,《金枝》是ABC。
随便拍脑袋:宗教是系统化,也是干枯的巫术。:) - Re: 浅谈巫术与宗教的本质差异:读《金枝》的一点体会posted on 02/06/2007
呵呵,这个厉害,要慢慢啃。:-)
不过,作为哲学体系一部分的宗教神学,跟作为世俗生活方式的宗教的区别是很大的。本文指的多半是前者。 - Re: 浅谈巫术与宗教的本质差异:读《金枝》的一点体会posted on 02/06/2007
八十一子 wrote:
不过,作为哲学体系一部分的宗教神学,跟作为世俗生活方式的宗教的区别是很大的。本文指的多半是前者。
老八,你这个有误。哲学是哲学,神学是神学。同是系统化的解释,哲学的推动力是批判理性;神学的推动力是信仰和排他。
神学是宗教裤衩的腰带。:) - Re: 浅谈巫术与宗教的本质差异:读《金枝》的一点体会posted on 02/06/2007
devil wrote:
八十一子 wrote:老八,你这个有误。哲学是哲学,神学是神学。同是系统化的解释,哲学的推动力是批判理性;神学的推动力是信仰和排他。
不过,作为哲学体系一部分的宗教神学,跟作为世俗生活方式的宗教的区别是很大的。本文指的多半是前者。
神学是宗教裤衩的腰带。:)
说得是。神学二字不当。不过,应该说早期宗教里各种世界观的探索里有很多理性成分。后来纳入神学体系里就干枯了。 - Re: 浅谈巫术与宗教的本质差异:读《金枝》的一点体会posted on 02/06/2007
指使燃灯兄弟读大部头,不好意思!如果问具体的小问题,还好回答。如下大问题,就只好让原作者回答了。
是否可以这样想:
原始巫术中本来就有感性与理性两种组成部分,前者如敬畏和神秘体验,后者如占卜和观星;
后来的宗教主要取其注重感性的那部分因素,而文艺复兴以后的科学则取其理性的那部分因素?
从您的笔名来看,大概对《可兰经》和阿拉伯文化较熟,还请赐教。 - posted on 02/06/2007
廖兄这是一篇大作,我是说涉及的都是大问题,了不起。当然,里面
问题也会有,我只觉得有卢克莱修的“物性论”的精神!
这《金枝》中文版我倒是有,上下两册。但不容易读,我是指身心投
入地读,心领神会地读。在中国时几乎不可能,在国外也尝试读了几
次,都没有终全篇的,甚至觉得跟没读一样。
恐怕火候还不够。只是这“金枝”我倒是知道,是一种寄生植物,叫
槲寄生“Mistletoe” ,见诺玛贴:
http://www.mayacafe.com/forum/topic1.php3?tkey=1102782842
先读的时候只觉得“物性论”,到后来才记得提问题。
“十字战争”
这个指什么?十字军?
耳朵识字、隔瓶取药、意念弯勺、穿墙越壁、蔽谷弃食等所谓的“人体特异功能”得
到极大重视、宣传和“研究”,算卦卜易也再次流行。
这个我还是主张存异。不要说我中庸,上回燃灯转的叔本华论宗教贴
我就说了,不能把一切都放在一种标准来看。
举个例子吧,一个生病的人,也许只要一个朋友的电话,说两句哪怕
是装出来的客套话,也是很治疗的。
当然,不用一条线,连成一篇大作也难。但既使连成了大作,里面总
有不少地方可以批评的。这样,燃灯提的问题都是可以的。
- Re: 浅谈巫术与宗教的本质差异:读《金枝》的一点体会posted on 02/06/2007
(题外话: 在红旗拉普口岸我问那海关的人,哪一条规定要求我必须坐你们的车过境? 他指了指墙上的数百条规定,说“自己看”。再问,又递给我一本《中华人民共和国宪法》说:“自己看”。 )
燃灯这就委屈了。我过关倒不用转车,时间不同吧。那时野行了几个
月,看见边防军,都象见了亲人一样呢。说句不好听的话,有点余秋
雨《千年一叹》中由尼泊尔入境时的感慨。
肯定是落泪了的,人与大山哟,泥土啊,亲情,唉! - Re: 浅谈巫术与宗教的本质差异:读《金枝》的一点体会posted on 02/06/2007
“你可曾司掌晨光”(Hast thou commanded the morning)?用现代物理学的语言来说,就是:“你可曾掌握了核裂变的秘密,能够照亮地球吗?”
小砖:太阳里进行的应该是核聚变(fusion)。
应该说巫术属于人类幼年期对世界的探索?人类启蒙期的先哲们,如老子,孔子,耶稣,释迦牟尼,他们对世界和宇宙的思索的广度和深度已经不是巫师们可以相比的了。当然,耶稣在传道时常常使用巫术来镇一镇愚民们。 - posted on 02/07/2007
我希望廖老师再考虑一下所附这一段,并建议将其分为两段来分别论述。窃以为,先哲们的意思,和文革中所谓的“宗教崇拜”有着很大的区别,不可同日而语。
事实上,文革是搞的“个人崇拜”,是某人潜意识里的“自大”,而一些有权术野心的人所煽动起来的类似于复辟封建皇朝的政治运动。
至于先哲们的意思,有时间的话,我们可以详细来分析,我认为那是非常伟大的,符合人性的。科学和知识,是不能取代智慧的。先哲们所拥有的所希望人们领悟的恰好是大智慧。这是文明发展到一定时候出现的奇迹。
宗教,和先哲们的意思还是有着很大距离。比如说,中世纪的黑暗,和宗教政治是分不开的。
政治是人为的。我想,政治如果能倾向于科学或者先哲们的意思都会很好。就前者而言,顺应科学就是顺应了自然的规律;而后者,顺应了先哲们的意思就是顺应了自然的人性。
自然的人性,本身也超越了“已有的科学知识”。因为知识是死的,而人是活的。因而,科学也在不断求证,不断深化的过程中。在这个过程中,科学家们依靠的恰是智慧和灵感,而智慧和灵感就是在顺应自然的人性。
这里面的意思很深奥,几句话确实说不清楚。:)而且,搞清楚的人也很少。一则,大多数人为名利的欲望所驱动,并不想追随大智慧,所以利用和歪曲先哲的意思来搞黑暗的政治。二则,人的灵性和定力,以为“知识”是永久的,而先哲们希望有人能领悟的恰好是“无常”的大道。人性,只有在领悟“无常”时才能自由。
有时间再聊。斗胆胡说几句,也是从“文学”的角度而言,请谅解。
》先哲们为了让世人认同他们的这些体会或顿悟,分享这些福音,他们或潜心作书,或四下宣讲,弟子们把先哲的宣讲纪录下来,有些就发展成了宗教。当然,这只是宗教产生的众多原因之一,这也是我们这些不信神者的说法。信神者则认为,经书乃受了神启,不由自主写出来的,实际上是神假借人的手将其旨意和教导书写出来。无论如何,世界上的主要宗教都有一个共同特点,即认为知识有小益大害,要人们绝智弃巧。《道德经》说:“大道废,有仁义。智慧出,有大伪。”《圣经》说人的原罪就是违背了上帝的禁令,偷吃知识之树的果实,从此能够识别善恶了。为此原罪,人类才被逐出伊甸乐园,开始遭受无穷的苦难。佛教虽然提倡智慧,但那绝非我们所说的格物致知、明察事理之类的人间才智。佛教倡导的是觉知佛的一切真理,并如实了知一切事物的本质。对此复杂、深奥的概念,人家有专门的术语Prajna,要达到此境界简直比登天还难,类似西方神学中的超验明达,那是让和尚、尼姑、居士,甚至圣人们终生揣摩仍可望而不可及的高度,中文没有对应的词汇,所以唐僧将此梵语音译为“般若”。
》在文革中,中国第一次接近全民有组织、有系统的宗教崇拜。曾几何时,人们普遍认为“知识越多越反动”,而人间的一切问题都可以在毛主席著作中找到答案。我们要“抓革命,促生产”,只要在“灵魂深处爆发革命”,就能够释放出无限的生产力。当然,我们顶礼膜拜的不是无形的上帝,而是人间的领袖。其恶果更甚;人民水深火热,自斗不暇,经济几近崩溃,我们深有体会。
- posted on 02/07/2007
感谢象罔、99兄和梦冉。“十字战争”改了,核聚变加了。耶稣那些“神迹”miracles 我可不敢说是巫术 magic。其实真要说有什么差别,就是巫术的结果就是目的,而神迹只是布道的手段,让人信才是目的。
梦冉:一说到宗教,就说不清了。我只想在文章里讲明我对巫术与宗教的本质差异这一点读书体会。老庄本不是宗教,但其出世精神与宗教合拍,很容易就被纳入道教。先哲们的教导对科技的无限膨胀有遏制作用,但能否避免人类毁灭,我比较悲观,只是没有在文章中表达而已。如果能在核裂变、核聚变前停下来,人类也足够应付自然,过好生活了,但怎么可能停得下来啊!
文革中的做法只是近似宗教,当然不是宗教,那是个人崇拜, cult。 - posted on 02/07/2007
在下除了读这本《金枝》还读过其它神学专著,但是从你的:“在中国,巫术一向绵绵不绝,而且往往和宗教在相当大的程度上重合。......钱学森竟然提出‘唯象思维’,还自以为是什么新的思维模式,说穿了,其实就是‘类比型思维’,换一种称呼而已。在他的误导下,在投机取巧的浮躁中,伪科学肆虐。.....算卦卜易也再次流行。许多人都受到蛊惑,焦躁地回头寻找祖宗留下的秘方,以为我们古老的巫术种子能够开出现代的科技之花,帮助我们尽快实现四个现代化。”.......
我读到是阁下在举旗子打倒“巫”,把中国反伪科学的矛头对准——“巫术”。
请问楼主:你知道华夏文明什么时候是政教合一的?“羽人”祭祀与安邦有什么关系?封建王朝的衰败是因为没有逻辑思维?中国不进步是没有教......哈哈......希望您多了解夏商周时代的“巫术”,别以为外国的理论就是科学,那里的月亮都比中国先进吧?
在我国的少数民族中很多民俗文化与“巫”有关,请问为什么少数民族几千年来还保存这样的部落文化???......
- posted on 02/07/2007
大鹏 wrote:
我读到是阁下在举旗子打倒“巫”,把中国反伪科学的矛头对准——“巫术”。
这句话没大读懂,想多听听。(其实我也认同文中所说的:钱学森后来是‘类比型思维’)
devil wrote:
哲学的推动力是批判理性;神学的推动力是信仰和排他。
一小砖: “排他" 似乎又是犯了把宗教专指一神教的错误,至少对于印度教来说是不成立的。
神学是宗教裤衩的腰带。:)太经典了,哈哈,,,这教导人们去吃智慧果的家伙,,,^_* - posted on 02/07/2007
《金枝》曾经影响不小,但初版距今百年了,不能不对百年来该领域内的思考争辩有所了解。下面是大英百科的魔术条:
magic
Encyclopædia Britannica Article
magic
a concept used to describe a mode of rationality or way of thinking that looks to invisible forces to influence events, effect change in material conditions, or present the illusion of change. Within the Western tradition, this way of thinking is distinct from religious or scientific modes; however, such distinctions and even the definition of magic are subject to wide debate.
Nature and scope
Practices classified as magic include divination, astrology, incantations, alchemy, sorcery, spirit mediation, and necromancy. The term magic is also used colloquially in Western popular culture to refer to acts of conjuring and sleight of hand for entertainment. The purpose of magic is to acquire knowledge, power, love, or wealth; to heal or ward off illness or danger; to guarantee productivity or success in an endeavour; to cause harm to an enemy; to reveal information; to induce spiritual transformation; to trick; or to entertain. The effectiveness of magic is often determined by the condition and performance of the magician, who is thought to have access to unseen forces and special knowledge of the appropriate words and actions to manipulate those forces.
Phenomena associated or confused with magic include forms of mysticism, medicine, paganism, heresy, witchcraft, shamanism, voodoo, and superstition. Magic is sometimes divided into the "high" magic of the intellectual elite, bordering on science, and the "low" magic of common folk practices. A distinction is also made between "black" magic, used for nefarious purposes, and "white" magic, ostensibly used for beneficial purposes. Although these boundaries are often unclear, magical practices have a sense of "otherness" because of the supernatural power that is believed to be channeled through the practitioner, who is a marginalized or stigmatized figure in some societies and a central one in others.
Elements of magic
Spells
The performance of magic involves words (e.g, spells, incantations, or charms) and symbolic numbers that are thought to have innate power, natural or man-made material objects, and ritual actions performed by the magician or other participants. A spell or incantation is believed to draw power from spiritual agencies to accomplish magic. Knowledge of spells or symbolic numbers is often secret (occult), and the possessor of such knowledge can be either greatly revered or feared. In some cases, the spell is the most highly regarded component of the magical rite or ceremony. The Trobriand Islanders of Melanesia, for example, regarded using the right words in the right way as essential to the efficacy of the rite being performed. Among the Maori of New Zealand the power of words is thought to be so important that mistakes in public recitations are believed to cause disasters for individuals or the community. Moreover, like the medieval European charms that used archaic languages and parts of the Latin liturgy, spells often employ an esoteric vocabulary that adds to the respect accorded rites. Belief in the transformative power of words is also common in many religions. Shamans, spirit mediums, and mystics, for example, repeat specific sounds or syllables to achieve an ecstatic state of contact with spiritual forces or an enlightened state of consciousness. Even modern magic for entertainment retains a residual of the spell with its use of the term abracadabra.
Material
Much anthropological literature refers to the objects used in magic as "medicines," hence the popular use of the term medicine man for magician. These medicines include herbs, animal parts, gemstones, sacred objects, or props used in performance and are thought to be potent in themselves or empowered by incantations or rituals. In some cases, medicines that are intended to heal are physiologically effective; for example, the poppy is used widely as an anesthetic, willow bark is used by some Chinese as an analgesic, and garlic and onions were used as antibiotics in medieval Europe. Other medicines that are meant to cause harm, such as toad extracts and bufadienolides, are, in fact, known poisons. Other materials have a symbolic relationship to the intended outcome, as with divination from animal parts. In scapulamancy (divination from a sheep shoulder bone), for example, the sheep's bone reflects the macrocosmic forces of the universe. In sorcery a magician may employ something belonging to the intended victim (e.g., hair, nail parings, or a piece of clothing) as part of the ritual. The rite itself may be symbolic, as with the drawing of protective circles in which to call up spirits, the sprinkling of water on the ground to make rain, or the destruction of a wax image to harm a victim. Plants or other objects can also symbolize desired outcomes: in rites to ensure a canoe's speed, the Trobriand use light vegetable leaves to represent the ease with which the craft will glide over the water; the Zande of The Sudan place a stone in a tree fork to postpone the setting of the sun; and many Balkan peoples once swallowed gold to cure jaundice.
Rites and condition of the performer
Because magic is based on performance, ritual and the magician's knowledge and ability play a significant role in its efficacy. The performance of magic also presumes an audience, either the spiritual forces addressed, the patient-client, or the community. Both the magician and the rite itself are concerned with the observance of taboos and the purification of the participants. Magicians, like priests presiding over religious rituals, observe restrictions of diet or sexual activity to demarcate the rite from ordinary and profane activities and to invest it with sanctity. Modern magicians' success with entertaining audiences is dependant primarily on their performance skills in manipulating material objects to create an illusion.
Functions
Foremost among the many roles magic plays are its “instrumental” and “expressive” functions. Based in the attempt to influence nature or human behaviour, magic's instrumental function is measured by its efficacy in achieving the desired result. Anthropologists identify three main types of instrumental magic: the productive, the protective, and the destructive. Productive magic is employed to solicit a successful outcome from human labour or nature, such as bountiful hunt or harvest or good weather. Protective magic aims to defend an individual or community from the vagaries of nature and the evil of others. The use of amulets to ward off contagious diseases or the recitation of charms before a journey are examples of this protective function. Lastly, destructive magic, or sorcery, is intended to harm others, often is motivated by envy, and is socially disruptive. Consequently, the use of countermagic against sorcery may relieve some social tension within a community.
Magic's expressive function results from the symbolic and social meanings attached to its practices, though its performers may not necessarily be aware of this function. Magic can provide a sense of group identity through shared rituals that give power or strength to members. At the same time, it can isolate the magician as a special person within or on the margins of society. Magic can also serve as a creative outlet or form of entertainment. It is, therefore, inseparable from the total system of thought, belief, and practice in a given society.
Definitional issues: magic, religion, and science
The term magic cannot be defined in isolation because of its broad parameters, important role in many societies, and interactions with related phenomena. Magic is a generic label used by outsiders (theoretically, objective observers) to describe specific practices in societies in which this word or its conceptual equivalent may not even exist. As a result, diverse phenomena are lumped together on the assumption that they operate in the same way. This artificial construct of magic also exists only in relation to what it is not—primarily, religion and science as alternate modes of rationality. Such definitions of magic privilege cultures with a strong scientific orientation and stigmatize those that practice magic instead of religion. Consequently, defining magic and identifying magicians requires an understanding of the cultural contexts in which these labels are used.
Although magic has an ambiguous relationship with Western religion and science, it is rooted in the main institutional, social, and intellectual traditions in Western history. Moreover, modern attempts to arrive at a universal definition of magic reflect a Western bias. In particular, 18th- and 19th-century views on cultural and historical evolution set magic apart from religion and science. In a model developed by the British anthropologist Sir James Frazer (1854–1941), magic is characterized as an early stage in human development, superseded first by religion and then by science. The debate over the relationship between magic, religion, and science that dominated much of the discussion about magic throughout the 20th century is evident in the fieldwork of anthropologists, the theories of sociologists of religion, and critiques by postmodernists. Consequently, research in comparative religions, history, and anthropology in the second half of the 20th century moved away from the evolutionary model toward more context-sensitive interpretations, while other studies developed new models for cross-cultural comparison. Nonetheless, the magic-religion-science model retains considerable interpretive power, and the dichotomies used to distinguish magic from religion or science are pervasive in popular discourse.
Magic and religion
Magic continues to be widely perceived as an archaic worldview, a form of superstition lacking the intrinsic spiritual value of religion or the rational logic of science. Religion, according to seminal anthropologist Sir Edward Burnett Tylor (1832–1917), involves a direct, personal relationship between humans and spiritual forces; in religion's highest form, that relationship is with a personal, conscious omnipotent spiritual being. Magic, on the other hand, is characterized as external, impersonal, and mechanical, involving technical acts of power. Magic seeks to manipulate spiritual powers, while religious prayer supplicates spiritual forces, a distinction explored by Bronislaw Malinowski (1884–1942) in his work on the Trobriand Islanders. Moreover, according to Émile Durkheim (1858–1917), religion is communal because its adherents, bound together by shared belief, form a church. Magic, on the other hand, involves no permanent ties between believers and only temporary ties between individuals and the magicians who perform services for them. The fieldwork of A.R. Radcliffe-Brown (1881–1955) among the Andaman Islanders, however, has made clear that magic, too, may have a communal dimension.
Magic and science
Although magic is similar in some respects to science and technology, it approaches efficacy (the ability to produce a desired material outcome) differently. Magic, like religion, is concerned with invisible, nonempirical forces; yet, like science, it also makes claims to efficacy. Unlike science, which measures outcomes through empirical and experimental means, magic invokes a symbolic cause-effect relationship. Moreover, like religion and unlike science, magic has an expressive function in addition to its instrumental function. Magical rainmaking strategies, for example, may or may not be efficacious, but they serve the expressive purpose of reinforcing the social importance of rain and farming to a community.
Subcategories of magic
The view of magic as pre-religious or nonscientific has contributed both to subtle distinctions between magic and other practices and to the recognition of subcategories of magic. Notably, anthropologists distinguish magic from witchcraft, defining the former as the manipulation of an external power by mechanical or behavioral means to affect others and the latter as an inherent personal quality that allows the witch to achieve the same ends. However, the line between the two is not always clear, and in some parts of the world an individual may operate in both ways. Similarly, the distinction between "black" magic and "white" magic is obscure since both practices often use the same means and are performed by the same person. Scholars also distinguish between magic and divination, whose purpose is not to influence events but to predict or understand them. Nevertheless, the mystical power of diviners may be thought to be the same as that behind magic. Ultimately, despite these distinctions and the variety of unique roles that practitioners play in their own societies, most end up classified under the universal term magician. Often even religious figures such as priests, shamans, and prophets are identified as magicians because many of their activities include acts defined as "magical" by modern scholars.
In the end, distinctions between magic and religion or science are harder to make in practice than in theory; scholars therefore use labels such as magico-religious to describe activities or persons who cross this artificial dividing line. Similarly, the boundary between magic and science is permeable, since the modern scientific method (observation and experimentation) evolved from forms of scientific magic such as alchemy and astrology. Thus, the evolutionary model, which draws sharp distinctions between magic, religion, and science, cannot account for the essential similarity between various phenomena. Moreover, dichotomies that define magic in relation to other phenomena are reductionist, often ignoring the meaningful structures and beliefs that inform these practices in their native context.
Conceptual history
The claim that magic is found in all human societies rests on a definition that is rooted in Western cultural assumptions, and both these assumptions and the use of the term magic have undergone change over time and place. Consequently, to understand beliefs and practices in other societies that appear similar to European magic, it is necessary to apply the context-sensitive and comparative methods that become increasingly important in the study of anthropology, history, and religion.
History of magic in Western worldviews
The Western conception of magic is rooted in the ancient Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman heritage. The tradition took further shape in northern Europe during the medieval and early modern period before spreading to other parts of the globe through European exploration and colonialism after 1500. The view of Western civilization as a story of progress includes the magic-religion-science paradigm that traces the "rise" and "decline" of magic and then religion, along with the final triumph of science—a model now challenged by scholars. Moreover, the very origins of the word magic raise questions about ways in which one person's religion is another person's magic, and vice versa.
Ancient Mediterranean world
The root word for magic (Greek: mageia; Latin: magia) derives from the Greek term magoi, which refers to a Median tribe in Persia and their religion, Zoroastrianism. The Greco-Roman tradition held that magicians possessed arcane or secret knowledge and the ability to channel power from or through any of the polytheistic deities, spirits, or ancestors of the ancient pantheons. Indeed, many of the traditions associated with magic in the classical world derive from a fascination with ancient Middle Eastern beliefs and are concerned with a need for countermagic against sorcery. Spells uttered by sorcerers and addressed to gods, to fire, to salt, and to grain are recorded from Mesopotamia and Egypt. These texts also reveal the practice of necromancy, invoking the spirits of the dead, who were regarded as the last defense against evil magic. Greco-Egyptian papyruses from the 1st to the 4th century AD, for example, include magical recipes involving animals and animal substances, along with instructions for the ritual preparations necessary to ensure the efficacy of the spells. Divination took many forms—from the Etruscan art of haruspicina (reading entrails of animal sacrifices) to the Roman practice of augury (interpreting the behaviour of birds)—and was widely practiced as a means of determining propitious times to engage in specific activities; it often played a role in political decision making. Ancient Roman society was particularly concerned with sorcery and countersorcery, contests associated with the development of competitive new urban classes whose members had to rely on their own efforts in both material and magical terms to defeat their rivals and attain success.
Ambivalence toward magic carried into the early Christian era of the Roman Empire and its subsequent heirs in Europe and Byzantium. In the Gospel According to Matthew, the Magi who appeared at the birth of Jesus Christ were both Persian foreigners of Greco-Roman conception and wise astrologers. As practitioners of a foreign religion they seemed to validate the significance of Jesus' birth. However, magus, the singular form of magi, has a negative connotation in the New Testament in the account of Simon Magus (Acts 8:9–25), the magician who attempted to buy the miraculous power of the disciples of Christ. In medieval European Christian legends, his story developed into a dramatic contest between true religion, with its divine miracles, and false demonic magic, with its illusions. Nonetheless, belief in the reality of occult powers and the need for Christian counterrituals persisted, for example, in the Byzantine belief in the "evil eye" cast by the envious, which was thought to be demonically inspired and from which Christians needed protection through divine remedies.
Medieval Europe
During the period of Europe's conversion to Christianity (c. 300–1050), magic was strongly identified with paganism, the label Christian missionaries used to demonize the religious beliefs of Celtic, Germanic, and Scandinavian peoples. Church leaders simultaneously appropriated and Christianized native practices and beliefs. For example, medicinal remedies found in monastic manuscripts combined Christian formulas and rites with Germanic folk rituals to empower natural ingredients to cure ailments caused by poisons, elf-attack, demonic possession, or other invisible forces. Another Christianized practice, bibliomancy (divination through the random selection of a biblical text), was codified in the 11th-century Divinatory Psalter of the Orthodox Slavs. Although coopted and condemned by Christian leaders of this period, magic survived in a complex relationship with the dominant religion. Similar acculturation processes occurred in later conversions in Latin America and Africa, where indigenous beliefs in spiritual forces and magical practices coexist, sometimes uneasily, with Christian theology.
In high medieval Europe (c. 1050–1350), the battle between religion and magic occurred as the struggle against heresy, the church's label for perverted Christian belief. Magicians, like heretics, were believed to distort or abuse Christian rites to do the Devil's work. By the 15th century, belief in the reality of human pacts with the Devil and the magical powers acquired through them contributed to the persecution of those accused of actually harming others with their magic. Also in the high Middle Ages the demonization of Muslims and Jews contributed to the suspicion of the "other.” Marginal groups were routinely accused of ritual baby-killing. In lurid accounts of the “blood libel,” Jews were charged with stealing Christian children for sacrifice. Similar accusations were made against witches by Christians and against Christians by the ancient Romans.
Although magic was widely condemned during the Middle Ages, often for political or social reasons, the proliferation of magic formulas and books from the period indicates its widespread practice in various forms. Richard Kieckhefer has identified two major categories of magic: "low" magic includes charms (prayers, blessings, adjurations), protective amulets and talismans, sorcery (the misuse of medical and protective magic), divination and popular astrology, trickery, and medical magic through herbs and animals; and "high," or intellectual, magic, includes more learned forms of astrology, astral magic, alchemy, books of secrets, and necromancy. There is also evidence of courtly interest in magic, particularly that involving automatons and gemstones. Moreover, magic served as a literary device of the time, notably the presence of Merlin in the Arthurian romances. Although medieval European magic retained its sense of otherness by borrowing from Jewish practices and Arabic scientific sources such as the astral magic manual Picatrix, it also drew from the mainstream Christian tradition. Necromancy, for example, used Latin Christian rites and formulas to compel the spirits of the dead to obey.
Late medieval and early modern Europe
By the late Middle Ages (c. 1350–1450) and into the early modern period (c. 1450–1750), magic was regarded as part of a widespread and dangerously antisocial demonic cult that included the condemned practices of sorcery, necromancy, and witchcraft. Accused heretics, witches, and magicians were subject to inquisitions designed to uncover these cult connections and to destroy the means of transmission (e.g., the burning of condemned books and/or the “guilty” parties). The influential manual Malleus maleficarum (“The Hammer of Witches,” 1486) by Jacob Sprenger and Henry Krämer describes witchcraft in great detail (e.g, the witches' sabbath, a midnight assembly in fealty to the Devil); moreover, this oft reprinted volume is responsible for the misogynist association of witchcraft with women that becomes the dominant characteristic in the early modern period. This conspiracy theory of demonic magic contributed to the early modern "witch craze” that occurred at a time of growing tension between magic, religion, and nascent science.
Nonetheless, despite the persecution of “black” magic and its alleged practitioners, forms of "white" magic persisted in Europe on the boundaries between magic, mysticism, and emerging empiricism. During the Renaissance there was renewed interest in ancient Near Eastern practices, neoplatonic mysticism, and Arabic texts on alchemy and astrology. Pico della Mirandola sought hidden knowledge in Jewish Kabbala, a mystical practice for unlocking the divine secrets contained in written and unwritten Hebrew Scriptures. Marsilio Ficino studied astral magic and the power of music to channel cosmic influences, while Giordano Bruno explored the mystical traditions of Hermeticism, based on works of the legendary Alexandrian prophet of the 1st–3rd century Hermes Trismegistus. Although generally tolerated because their practices were perceived to be within the main Judaic and Christian Hermetic tradition, practitioners of alchemy were sometimes considered to be evil magicians who acquired their knowledge through a pact with the Devil (as in the Faust legends). When magical activities of intellectual dilettantes proved, or appeared, to be antisocial, the results were more often put down to simple trickery—as in the case of the 18th-century charlatan Alessandro, conte di Cagliostro (Giuseppe Balsamo).
European traditions and the modern world
The European fascination with the magical traditions of the ancient Middle East was extended to those of East and South Asia when Europeans made contact with these regions in the early modern period. Orientalism, as literary and cultural critic Edward Said labeled this phenomenon, has its roots in the sense of the "other" found in the earliest definitions of magic (notably the Magi as Persian foreigners) and in the Renaissance penchant for Egyptian, Hebrew, and Arabic materials. Intrigued by the exotic otherness of Eastern societies, modern European philosophers experimented with the progressive model of magic-science-religion. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, for example, viewed 19th-century India as an immature civilization, in part because Hindu consciousness lacked the categories of logic Hegel valued.
A popular “scientific” worldview prevails in modern Western societies that suggests the triumph of human reason. Enlightenment rationalism and the Scientific Revolution—ironically rooted in Renaissance experiments in magic and motivated in part by Reformation pragmatism—led to the modern triumph of scientific reasoning over magic, evident, for example, in 19th-century exposés of magic tricksters as charlatans. Notably, spirit rappers, mediums who “conversed” with spirits who replied by knocking on a table, were easily exposed as the ones doing the knocking. Modern popular magic has appeared in the realm of entertainment, generally as a plot device in stories and movies, as tricks aimed at children, and as mysterious sleight-of-hand illusions in magic shows that delight the audience's sense perceptions and challenge their reasoning ability. The fascination with occult knowledge and mystical powers derived from nonmainstream or foreign sources persists in the West in astrological charts in newspapers, theories of interplanetary aliens and government conspiracies to hide them, occult rituals in some New Age religions, and interest in traditional practices that have an esoteric flavour, such as feng shui (geomancy, the traditional Asian practice of aligning graves, homes, and temples with cosmic forces). This persistence suggests, in part, the impact of globalization on postmodern worldviews challenging the dominance of a strictly scientific mode of rationality.
Globalization of the magic concept
Western conceptions of magic, religion, and science were exported to other parts of the globe in the modern period by traders, conquerors, missionaries, anthropologists, and historians. European travelers in the 16th–19th centuries functioned as primitive ethnographers whose written observations are invaluable historical resources. However, their accounts, often coloured by their Judeo-Christian assumptions about religion versus magic, illuminate how indigenous peoples were treated as "children" to be educated or, in the case of some conquerors, as subhuman races to be enslaved. During the latter part of the 19th century, anthropologists began to analyze magic and its part in the evolution of the world's religions. Their work was characterized by a fundamental distinction rooted in the magic-religion-science evolutionary model: the world is divided between historical, literate urbanized cultures, or “civilizations” (for example, the ancient traditions of East and South Asia) and nonliterate, tribal archaic, or "primitive," societies (such as those found in parts of Africa, the Americas, and Oceania). Historians viewed complex societies characterized by urbanization, centralization, and written traditions as more advanced and measured their progress as civilizations according to the evolutionary model. Nomadic, tribal, agricultural, or nonurbanized societies with strong oral traditions were often perceived by early European observers as developmentally stagnant people without history. While these views are no longer accepted, their residual effect is still felt in the way magic, religion, and science are conceptualized. Anthropologists of religion traditionally distinguished between the “religion” practiced by the world's main faiths, which often marginalize magic as superstition, and the beliefs of small nonliterate societies in which “magic” may in fact be central to religious belief. Here the distinction between religion and magic seems unfounded. Indeed, as some postcolonial societies endeavour to distance themselves from Western logic, ancient religious traditions are pivotal to the reassertion of cultural identity and autonomy. West African vodun (voodoo), which spread to the Caribbean, the Americas, and elsewhere, is one example of an indigenous religious practice that is tied to cultural identity in art, music, and literature and used subversively as a rallying point for postcolonial resistance to Western modes of rationality.
World cultures
The Western concept of magic as a set of beliefs, values, and practices that are not fully religious or scientific does not find its equivalent in non-Western languages and cultures; conversely, concepts found in other cultures may be untranslatable into English or a Western framework. For example, Hawaiian historian David Malo (c. 1793–1853), discussing Christianity and traditional Hawaiian religion, found ho`omana (to make, to do, or to imbue with supernatural, divine, or miraculous power) the closest translation for English religion, contrary to its characterization by Westerners as a magical component in Polynesian beliefs. Furthermore, a modern Japanese dictionary uses a transliteration, majikku, for the English word magic. It also uses the English word magic to translate several Japanese words beginning with ma-, the kanji character representing a vengeful spirit of the dead (in East Asian folk belief, an ancestor not cared for properly; in Buddhist cosmology, an evil demonic figure). While superficially similar to the Christian notion of magic as demonic, the cosmologies regarding these demons differ significantly. Moreover, ma- does not have the range of meanings that magic has in Western thought.
On the other hand, specific practices identified as magic—e.g., divination, spells, spirit mediation—are found worldwide, even if the word magic is not. For example, in China various practices such as divination through oracle bones, offerings to dead ancestors, and feng shui can be classified as either magic, religion, or science, but it is questionable whether these categories have any validity in Chinese thought; rather these so-called magical practices are an intrinsic part of the worldviews expressed in China's main religious and philosophical systems (ancestor worship, Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism). In modern China, some communities deal with crisis by combining seemingly contradictory practices—including supplication and coercion of gods, appeals to ancestral spirits, folk cures, and modern inoculations. Such syncretism has been common in East Asia; notably, in 6th-century Japan, the native nature worship of Shinto blended with imported forms of Buddhism without the kind of conflict that occurred during the conversion of Europe to Christianity. In modern East Asia, conflict between magic, religion, and science introduced by Western concepts of magic occurs alongside a strong tradition of syncretism that blends empirical science with practices that Westerners often perceive as unscientific magic or religious superstition.
Asian religious traditions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism teach that material life is illusory. This mode of rationality focuses on understanding the principles and spiritual forces that lie behind physical experience. Consequently, adepts in these traditions who have achieved a level of understanding of these cosmic forces often appear to have the ability to manipulate physical reality in ways that seem magical. The point of demonstrations by street magicians and snake charmers in India is to show the illusory quality of material reality in order to draw attention to the universal, timeless, and cosmic. Purposeful deception in magic is thus used to illustrate the deceptiveness of human apprehensions of reality. The mystical component of magic is also clear in Tantra and other esoteric and nonconformist sects of Hinduism or Buddhism, which use mystical words, symbols, and diagrams in their rituals. Whether these practices are magic or religion depends upon one's point of view.
Postcolonial points of views
Anthropological and sociological studies of modern nonliterate societies in the Americas, Oceania, and Africa have given rise to new global terminology. Beginning in the second half of the 20th century, some sociologists and anthropologists turned the tables on earlier scholarship by applying the methods used for examining extant nonliterate (“primitive”) societies to literate, urban societies of the past, which previously had been evaluated by the criteria reserved for the study of “civilizations.” For example, the phenomenon of shamanism and the word shaman, as defined by Mircea Eliade (1907–86) in his exploration of ecstatic states, has been applied not only to “primitive” cultures but to premodern Christian Europe. Likewise the term mana (“power”), appropriated from Melanesian and Polynesian cultures by Émile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss (1872–1950), has been widely applied to magical practices in historical civilizations, including that of classical Rome.
History of magic theories
Foundations
Because of the impact of anthropological theory on the study of magic, its development and history bear reviewing. The first important figure in this line of inquiry was Sir Edward Burnett Tylor, whose Primitive Culture (1871) regarded magic as a "pseudo-science" in which the "savage" postulated a direct cause-effect relationship between the magical act and the desired outcome. Tylor regarded magic as "one of the most pernicious delusions that ever vexed mankind," but he did not approach it as superstition or heresy. Instead he studied it as a phenomenon based on the "symbolic principle of magic," a scheme of thought founded on a rational process of analogy. He also realized that magic and religion are parts of a total system of thought. Although he believed that magic and animistic beliefs became less prevalent in the later stages of history, he did not view magic and religion as alternative stages in the evolutionary development of mankind.
That conclusion would be left for Sir James Frazer in The Golden Bough (1890), in which he ordered magic, religion, and science in a grandiose evolutionary scheme. Magic preceded religion because, according to Frazer, the former was logically more simple. This notion, however, was a based on his erroneous assumption that the Australian Aborigines, examples of a “primitive” people, believed in magic but not in religion.
Sociological theories
Another line of theorists, including sociologists Durkheim and Mauss, widened the discussion by defining magic in terms of its social function. In The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1912), Durkheim argued that magical rites involved the manipulation of sacred objects by the magician on behalf of individual clients; the socially cohesive significance of religious rites proper (by priests) was therefore largely lacking. Durkheim's views were furthered by A.R. Radcliffe-Brown in the The Andaman Islanders (1922) and to a lesser extent by Malinowski in Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922) and Magic, Science and Religion (1925). Radcliffe-Brown posited that the function of magic was to express the social importance of the desired event, while Malinowski regarded magic as directly and essentially concerned with the psychological needs of the individual.
Subsequent studies of the working of systems of magic, especially in Africa and Oceania, built upon the work of Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown along with that of Sir Edward Evans-Pritchard in Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande (1937). In his seminal book, Evans-Pritchard demonstrated that magic is an integral part of religion and culture used to explain events that cannot otherwise be understood or controlled. The Zande of the Sudan accept magic, together with witchcraft and oracles, as a normal part of nature and society. These phenomena form a closed logical system, each part of which buttresses the other and provides a rational system of causation.
Psychological theories
These anthropological and sociological approaches focused on magic as a social phenomenon, but the role of individual psychology was implicit in the views of Tylor and Frazer and brought out more in the work of Malinowski, who frequently offered psychological explanations for belief in magic. Sigmund Freud's influential view of magic as the earliest phase in the development of religious thought (Totem and Taboo, 1918) followed Frazer's model and posited an essential similarity between the thought of children, neurotics, and “savages.” According to Freud, all three assumed that wish or intention led automatically to the fulfillment of the desired end. This reductionist view, based on outmoded notions about "primitive" cultures, was revised as the result of new field research. Although Claude Lévi-Strauss also initially equated these three groups, he later modified this view in his analysis of the work of Mauss, which focuses on the structural linguistics of terms such as mana that are deployed in the study of magic. His work, therefore, laid the foundation for later deconstructions of the concept of magic.
Comparative religions
The rise of the study of comparative religion led to new theories that accounted for both world religions and localized belief systems. The work of Eliade, including his study of shamanism, is an important and influential example of this approach, as is that of Ninian Smart, who devised a six-dimensional (experiential, mythic, doctrinal, ethical, ritual, and social) worldview analysis for cross-cultural comparison that can be applied to different belief systems, whether called magic or religion. Likewise, Judaic scholar Jacob Neusner suggested the neutral rubric "modes of rationality" to avoid pejorative comparisons between systems of thought otherwise classified as magic, religion, science, or philosophy. The broader base established by the comparative religions approach avoids the difficulties of distinguishing urban literate from nonurban nonliterate societies and the perils of the magic-religion-science progression.
Postmodern dialogue
Postmodern scholarship continues to challenge older anthropological notions. The work of such anthropologists as Victor Turner (1920–83), Clifford Geertz, and Marshall Sahlins has had a wide impact on the social sciences and humanities. Central to the challenge to the traditional magic-religion-science paradigm was Magic, Science, Religion, and the Scope of Rationality (1990), in which Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah deconstructs the European history of the progress model and the work of anthropologists from Tylor forward. Other anthropologists have questioned the model of the rise and decline of magic in European thought articulated in Keith Thomas's groundbreaking Religion and the Decline of Magic (1971), a study of early modern England, and Valerie Flint's The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe (1991). Notably, anthropologist Hildred Geertz challenged Thomas's universalized conceptions of religion and magic, and scholars have questioned the rise and fall model by suggesting that the terminology is culture-specific and the historical circumstances much more complex than the simple pattern presented. These cross-disciplinary debates, along with the rejection of the Western magic-religion-science paradigm, have contributed to more sensitive treatments of magical practices in diverse societies.
Conclusion
The study of magic as a distinct cultural phenomenon has a long history in anthropological, sociological, and historical studies. Although some distinctions between magic and other religious or scientific activities may be useful, magic cannot be studied in isolation as it once was. Practices classified as magic represent essentially an aspect or reflection of the worldview held by a particular people at a particular point in their own historical development. Magic, like religion and science, is thus a part of a culture's total worldview.
John F.M. Middleton
Robert Andrew Gilbert
Karen Louise Jolly
Additional Reading
General works
E.M. Butler, The Myth of the Magus (1948, reissued 1993), and Ritual Magic (1949, reissued 1998), are studies of European magic and its sources; and Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science During the First Thirteen Centuries of Our Era, 2 vol. (1923), is a broad survey of Western sources from the Greco-Roman and medieval periods. Arthur C. Lehmann and James E. Myers (compilers), Magic, Witchcraft, and Religion: An Anthropological Study of the Supernatural, 5th ed. (2001), is an important collection of essays; and Ninian Smart, Worldviews: Crosscultural Explorations of Human Beliefs, 3rd ed. (2000), is an introduction to various belief systems using the six-dimension approach.
Works on the theory of magic
Among the most important early works on the theory and practice of magic are Edward B. Tylor, Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Language, Art, and Custom, 3rd American ed., 2 vol. (1889, reprinted 1977), a foundational anthropological study; Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1915, reissued 1976; originally published in French, 1912), a classic statement of the sociological approach to magic; and J.G. Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, 3rd ed., 12 vol. (1911–15), one of the seminal works on magic and religion. Other significant early works are Bronislaw Malinowski, Magic, Science, and Religion, and Other Essays, ed. by Robert Redfield (1948, reprinted 1992); Marcel Mauss, A General Theory of Magic (1972, reprinted 1975; originally published in French, 1902–03), an early anthropological study; and Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo: Some Points of Agreement Between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics (1950, reissued 1999; originally published in German, 1912–13), a psychoanalytic interpretation. Studies that employ a context-sensitive or cross-cultural approach include Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (1964, reissued 1989; originally published in French, 1951); Claude Lévi-Strauss, Introduction to the Work of Marcel Mauss (1987; originally published in French, 1950), and "Le Sorcier et sa magie," Les Temps modernes, 4(41):385–406 (March 1949); Ralph Merrifield, The Archaeology of Ritual and Magic (1987); and Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah, Magic, Science, Religion, and the Scope of Rationality (1990), a survey of Western and anthropological theories. Jacob Neusner, Ernest S. Frerichs, and Paul Virgil McCracken Flesher (eds.), Religion, Science, and Magic: In Concert and in Conflict (1989, reissued 1992), is a collection of essays on definitional theories and case studies; and Hildred Geertz, "An Anthropology of Religion and Magic, I," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 6(1):71–89 (Summer 1975); and Keith Thomas, "An Anthropology of Religion and Magic, II," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 6(1):91–109 (Summer 1975), debate Thomas's rise-and-fall theory.
Magic in the ancient world
Useful studies of magic in the ancient world are Campbell Bonner, Studies in Magical Amulets: Chiefly Graeco-Egyptian (1950); Georg Luck (trans. and ed.), Arcana Mundi: Magic and the Occult in the Greek and Roman Worlds (1985, reissued 1987), a collection of texts; Marvin Meyer and Richard Smith (eds.), Ancient Christian Magic: Coptic Texts of Ritual Power (1994, reissued 1999); and R. Campbell Thompson, Semitic Magic: Its Origins and Development (1908, reissued 2000).
Magic in the medieval and early modern world
Charles Burnett, Magic and Divination in the Middle Ages: Texts and Techniques in the Islamic and Christian Worlds (1996); Valerie I.J. Flint, The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe (1991, reissued 1993); Richard Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages (1989, reissued 2000), historical survey and analysis, and "The Specific Rationality of Medieval Magic," American Historical Review, 99(3):813–836 (June 1994); and Henry Maguire (ed.), Byzantine Magic (1995), are helpful surveys of medieval attitudes toward magic. Valuable studies on more specific topics of medieval magic include Alexander Murray, "Missionaries and Magic in Dark-Age Europe," Past & Present, 136:186–205 (August 1992), a study of Europe during the era of conversion; Edward Peters, The Magician, the Witch, and the Law (1978, reissued 1992), a study of the evolution of attitudes toward practitioners of magic; and Joshua Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstition: A Study in Folk Religion (1939, reissued 1987), on medieval Jewish magic of eastern Europe. Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England (1971, reissued 1997), an influential study based on an anthropological theory; Brian Vickers (ed.), Occult and Scientific Mentalities in the Renaissance (1984); D.P. Walker, Spiritual and Demonic Magic: From Ficino to Campanella, new ed. (1958, reissued 2000), which examines magical theory of the Renaissance; and Frances A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (1964, reissued 1999), are good introductions to magic in the early modern period.
Magic in the modern world
Important studies of magic in modern world civilizations are Francis L.K. Hsu, Exorcising the Trouble Makers: Magic, Science, and Culture (1983), and Religion, Science, and Human Crises (1952, reprinted 1973), on China; E.E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic Among the Azande (1937, reissued 1968), on African magic and witchcraft; A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, The Andaman Islanders (1922, reissued 1964); and Lee Siegel, Net of Magic: Wonders and Deceptions in India (1991).
Karen Louise Jolly
To cite this page:
MLA style:
" magic ." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 7 Feb. 2007 <http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-215630>. APA style:
magic . (2007). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved February 7, 2007, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-215630 Back to top
- posted on 02/07/2007
devil的舌头是不见血,宁勿言。
圣经不就一部miracle的大百科吗?较为片面的总结是,科学之前叫巫术,科学之后叫宗教。
尽管与学术搭不上边,但佛教被更多的认为是一种哲学,可能是过于强调智慧的缘故。
devil wrote:
八十一子 wrote:老八,你这个有误。哲学是哲学,神学是神学。同是系统化的解释,哲学的推动力是批判理性;神学的推动力是信仰和排他。
不过,作为哲学体系一部分的宗教神学,跟作为世俗生活方式的宗教的区别是很大的。本文指的多半是前者。
神学是宗教裤衩的腰带。:) - Re: 浅谈巫术与宗教的本质差异:读《金枝》的一点体会posted on 02/07/2007
神学是宗教裤衩的腰带。:)
These words indeed sound a bit like my old netmate Gadfly. - Re: 浅谈巫术与宗教的本质差异:读《金枝》的一点体会posted on 02/07/2007
I always think they are twin :)
令胡冲 wrote:
These words indeed sound a bit like my old netmate Gadfly.神学是宗教裤衩的腰带。:) - Re: 浅谈巫术与宗教的本质差异:读《金枝》的一点体会posted on 02/07/2007
令胡冲 wrote:
These words indeed sound a bit like my old netmate Gadfly.神学是宗教裤衩的腰带。:)
where is gadfly hiding? though his style reflects a hodgepodge of pepper, vinegar, alcohol and salt, he does have a pair of penetrating eyes. :-) - Re: 浅谈巫术与宗教的本质差异:读《金枝》的一点体会posted on 02/07/2007
咱也学devil,比喻一番:神学是理论物理,宗教是应用物理。神学是马克思主义,宗教是列宁主义、毛泽东思想。不行,不俏皮。
燃灯兄弟这一小砖: “排他 似乎又是犯了把宗教专指一神教的错误,至少对于印度教来说是不成立的" 也砸了我,应该说世界上的三大宗教都是排他的。不知道是不是大多数宗教都有排他性,也许印度教是个例外?
《金枝》不是神学专著。 - Re: 浅谈巫术与宗教的本质差异:读《金枝》的一点体会posted on 02/07/2007
神学是菜谱,宗教是上了桌的菜?
liaokang wrote:
咱也学devil,比喻一番:神学是理论物理,宗教是应用物理。神学是马克思主义,宗教是列宁主义、毛泽东思想。不行,不俏皮。 - Re: 浅谈巫术与宗教的本质差异:读《金枝》的一点体会posted on 02/07/2007
神学是“元宗教”(metareligion) - Re: 浅谈巫术与宗教的本质差异:读《金枝》的一点体会posted on 02/08/2007
想砸砖都无从下手. :-) 廖兄思维缜密, 不愧为科班出身.
关于中国的部分是不是有点泛泛而谈? 终于砸了一砖, 可以满意了. :-) - Re: 浅谈巫术与宗教的本质差异:读《金枝》的一点体会posted on 02/09/2007
中国大陆初步估计目前大约有3亿信仰宗教的民众,共产党员是7000万,所以请大家关注,谁将当选2008年的政协主席,引导民众更好地发挥爱国爱教.....
- Re: 浅谈巫术与宗教的本质差异:读《金枝》的一点体会posted on 02/09/2007
廖兄和壶斋兄传道的大学今天在NPR News里头, 关于美国人学外国语的事。看来要想让我们学别国的语言,就得跟我们打仗。:-)
Please paste HTML code and press Enter.
(c) 2010 Maya Chilam Foundation