magicharmful practices intended to harm others. Whatever the intention of a
magical rite is its strange words are used because of their inherent power.
Egyptian temple priests serve as freelance magicians, for instance,
because they possess training in the written and oral use of words. The
patron deity of these ancient priests is Thoth, god of writing and also
magic. The magician might utter a curse, which represents automatically
effective words, making the magician’s pronouncement a performative
utterance that by definition makes something happen. The magician may
perform his rite or curse within the presence of a group of witnesses,
operating as the sender and recipient of the rite, whereas a sorcerer
performs the rite in isolation from any group.
Since magic and religion are often intertwined in a particular religious
tradition in spite of an insistence on its foreignness, it is possible to find
it in many religions. The Seal of Solomon is, for instance, a ring sent to
the Hebrew king from God and delivered to him by the angel Michael,
which enables the king to control demonic beings. The Metternich Stele
contains an image of the goddess Isis teaching heka (magic) to selected
people. The early Christian church makes an essential distinction
between magic and miracle with the latter identified with divine powers
that overrule the established natural order, whereas magic is associated
with deceptive, fraudulent, or demonic activities in the view of church
leaders.
In contrast to these negative connotations, the practice of magic pre-
supposes an awareness of the interrelatedness of everything. Since every-
thing is intimately interconnected, the magician can work on a subject
from a distance or in direct contact. The interrelated nature of the world
helps to understand the process of healing because an illness represents
a break in the harmony of the world, while magical healing restores the
original system. It operates within a religious culture to organize labor,
solve social and legal disagreements, and preserves reliable knowledge.
The ancient Greek, Rome, and Christian churches’ characterization of
magic as something foreign to religion is echoed by nineteenth- and twen-
tieth-century anthropological theorists. James Frazer considers it to be a
pseudo-science, Tylor refers to it as a mistaken science, Durkheim calls it
anti-religious, Lévy-Bruhl thinks that it is an example of prelogical men-
tality, and Malinowski distinguishes between magic and religion because
magical rites are designed, for instance, to assure safety and success, while
a religious rite represents an end in itself. Frazer views magic, for instance,
in evolutionary terms as representing a period of human superstition,
which gives rise eventually to religion and science. He identifies two fal-
lacious laws underlying magic: similarity and contact or contagion. In the
first case “like produces like” or what he calls homeopathic magic,