35 pages • 1 hour read
Purity and Danger
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Chapter 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary: “Magic and Miracle”
One of the assumptions at the root of our culture—reflected by some early anthropologists—is that primitive peoples lacked a truly spiritual conception of religion, believing instead in external and instrumental rituals like magic. This dichotomy recalls the tension between “interior will and exterior enactment” (74)—a tension seen in the religious history of Judaism (the Law versus the Prophets) and Christianity (the Protestant reformers versus the established church).
Our thinking on these matters has been influenced by the early anthropologists, some of whom had a blatantly anti-ritual bias. Such thinkers believed ritual incapable of expressing spiritual ideas. On the contrary, ritual fulfills a universal human need for structure and a vision of reality: “It is a mistake to suppose that there can be religion which is all interior, with no rules, no liturgy, no external signs of inward states. As with society, so with religion, external form is the condition of its existence” (77).
Chapter 4 Analysis
Here, Douglas grapples with the meaning of ritual, one of the central themes of the book. For Douglas, ritual is a universal human practice and need. It serves to put a frame around human experience, sharpening our perceptions and aiding our actions. It does not simply explain experience, but can actually formulate it.
Douglas attempts to debunk the commonly-held assumption that foreigners and primitive peoples have no conception of “true spiritual religion” (72) but only religion based on external observances and magical rituals. This assumption has led to false dichotomies: between primitive and modern cultures, between secular and religious ritual, and between interior and exterior religious practice. Douglas concludes that the true purpose of primitive magic is to “give meaning to existence” (90).
Douglas examines early Christianity and the mystical beliefs of Islam, Polynesia, and ancient Teutonic peoples. She finds that in Christianity, the belief in the spiritual significance of bodily states—e.g., pollution by blood—persisted for a long time. The history of Christianity, however, shows a continual pattern of external ritual becoming sterile and provoking a reaction toward a more spiritual conception of religious life.
But Douglas decries the notion that there can ever be a religion that is entirely interior, without rules or liturgy or external symbols. Indeed, “it is impossible to have social relations without symbolic acts” (78). Douglas reviews the thought of several earlier anthropologists and finds them moving steadily toward a more positive view of magic, ritual, and external signs.
Douglas finds that the real difference between contemporary and primitive peoples is that the latter’s experience of symbolism is consistently applied, while ours is fragmented and inconsistent. Far from being simple-minded, some primitive rituals resemble Freudian psychoanalysis. As an example, Douglas cites a shamanistic cure in an African village, where the shaman reconciled a man with the other villagers and cured his physical ailments.
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