Christians were confident that God and nature were as one,
or that dogma and reason fully agreed. The idea that belief
in the supernatural was characteristic of religion remained,
however, firmly entrenched. Lucien Lévy-Bruhl (1857–
1939) in his early influential work argued that the primitive
mind believed in “mystical,” not “physical,” influences,
whereas practically all contemporaries recognize a clear line
of demarcation between the supernatural (rejected by all ex-
cept the credulous) and the data furnished by everyday ordi-
nary sense experience and the broad light of day. R. R. Mar-
ret (1866–1943) confirmed that the notion gives a good
minimal definition of religion. He classified the supernatural
according to negative modes (taboo) and positive modes
(mana). The sense of the supernatural, Marret stressed, is an
existential and affective reality, a response to the extranormal
and the uncanny, and is thus not related to a reasoned theory
of nature. “Power belongeth unto God,” and the sense of the
supernatural is the sense of the nearly overwhelming presence
of great power. Paul Radin (1883–1959) argued against
Lévy-Bruhl and spoke of the supernatural as arising against
a background of inevitable fears (stemming from economic
and psychic insecurity) that he found to be present in all
human beings, primitive and modern. He saw in the modern
West a decline in religion and in recourse to supernatural be-
ings for help, because other means of emphasizing and main-
taining life values were available and on the ascendant. Revi-
sion of the initial positivist separation between credulous and
rational people reached a climax with Lévy-Bruhl’s famous
reversal, recorded in his Notebooks (posthumously published
in 1949): “Primitives reject contradiction, just as we do,
when they perceive it.” Lévy-Bruhl developed comparative
epistemology, according to whose tenets anthropologists
were to compare modes of thought, psychic capacities, and
mental categories without assuming at the outset that they
themselves were in possession of a language that could ade-
quately give an account of everything other minds did
(Needham, 1972).
While this should be admitted, scholars today should
still try to speak adequately of the varieties of admittedly ex-
treme and nonverifiable languages people have recourse to
when they express their reaction to situations that have pow-
erful impact on them but remain opaque in their meaning,
or desperately baffling in their consequence. Light can be de-
rived from recent developments in anthropology that have
profited from comparative studies in mythology, literature,
and folklore. In all cultures stories abound, ranging from
myths to folk legends, that tell the adventures of heroes in
a world or worlds teeming with supernatural beings and awe-
inspiring circumstances.
Consider the example of the Odyssey, a fairly typical tale.
(Supernatural occurrences there, however, are among the
milder ones, and the range of unusual creatures is somewhat
narrow: There is a shortage of evil spirits and demons such
as abound in other types of literature.) In his travels Odys-
seus has to deal with (1) the remote but supreme authority
of the king of the gods; (2) the support or enmity of powerful
gods who have influence at court (Athena); (3) the support
or enmity of powerful gods who rule in some corner of the
world (Poseidon); (4) minor gods or goddesses (Calypso,
who enjoys a perpetual vacation at her seashore home); (5)
human beings with magical powers (Circe); (6) monstrous
beings with terrifying powers (the Sirens); (7) powerful gi-
ants (the Cyclops); and (8) very unusual human beings (the
lotus-eaters, who are more strange than ordinary foreigners).
The hero himself is endowed with exceptional powers of en-
durance and prowess at the bow; he performs an extraordi-
nary feat (he returns from Hades) and thus represents here
the ninth type of being. Other heroes in such tales can fly,
change their size, and so on. All nine types of beings may be
called supernatural or said to have supernatural traits, al-
though all may also be characterized by terms other than su-
pernatural. Only the first three are the object of religious de-
votion or have cults. The fourth type, while divine, may be
outside the religious world. Sirens and witches have powers
ordinary human beings do not have, while giants (like
dwarfs) have only their unusual size in their favor.
There is thus a whole range of modes of being and
modes of power, finely shaded, for all these beings, and a
whole range of appropriate human responses to them. The
hero is the person best equipped to survive in this perilous
world, who possesses an appropriately wide range of skills
and attitudes. Senior gods are to be honored with sacrifices
and piety. Sirens are simply to be avoided. One can do busi-
ness with the Cyclops, but the game is dangerous. Transac-
tions with Calypso and Circe are profitable and agreeable,
provided the hero keeps them at arm’s length or has some
special protection. There is also a whole range of modes of
belief, and only one part of it is appropriately labeled reli-
gious belief. The hero does not believe in Zeus in the same
way that he believes in the Sirens. And it should not be im-
mediately clear to us what it means to attribute belief to the
bards who recite such tales and to the audiences that hear
them. Whether a man believes in Zeus may be tested: Does
he perform the appropriate ritual, and does he exhibit the
appropriate attitudes? But how can one verify behaviorally
a belief in sirens? How often are human beings confronted
with apparently beautiful women half visible above reefs?
Needham (1972) has successfully argued that statements of
belief are the only available evidence of the phenomenon.
Both theologians and anthropologists, he maintains, have
taken too much for granted and have been too quick to speci-
fy what beliefs other people have and what difference these
beliefs make.
Belief in anything, including supernatural beings, is
thus a very elusive phenomenon. The Dorze of Ethiopia say
that the leopard became a Christian and so eats no meat on
the fast days of the Coptic church. Nevertheless, they watch
their cattle just as carefully on those days. And they are baf-
fled when the anthropologist professes to see a contradiction
in this. So what does go on in their minds when they say the8862 SUPERNATURAL, THE