Supernatural and Natural Selection by Lyle B. Steadman Craig T. Palmer

Author:Lyle B. Steadman, Craig T. Palmer [Lyle B. Steadman, Craig T. Palmer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781594515668
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2010-02-28T00:00:00+00:00

Frazer's other category of magic, which he calls contagious magic, is based on the "Law of Contact": things that have once been in contact remain mystically joined even when separated, so that what is done to one will affect the other. Of this law, he writes:

A curious application of the doctrine of contagious magic is the relation commonly believed to exist between a wounded man and the agent of the wound, so that whatever is subsequently done by or to the agent must correspondingly affect the patient either for good or evil. ... In Melanesia, if a man's friends get possession of the arrow which wounded him, they keep it in a damp place or in cool leaves, for then the inflammation will be trifling and will soon subside....

Strained and unnatural as this idea may seem to us, it is perhaps less so than the belief that magic sympathy is maintained between a person and his clothes, so that whatever is done to the clothes will be felt by the man himself. (Ibid.; 47–50)

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