One obvious question which must strike any one who sees or reads of magical [religious] practices must be: Why do they exist when they rest upon principles which often run counter to those we know to be true? Why has the savage not perceived the fallacy of his magic? Long ago Edward Tylor pointed out four reasons for this. First, some of the results aimed at by magic do actually occur, though for other reasons, or because there may be some real virtue in what is done or in the medicine used; secondly, in some cases trickery may be practiced by the magician to deceive his fellows – though on the whole the magician believes as firmly in his magic as so others; thirdly, positive cases count for more than negative cases – even in our own experience we often ignore things which run counter to theories in which we believe; fourthly, there is the belief in the existence of counter – magic. If a rite fails to produce its end, then it is argued that the proper conditions have not been observed, or that some one else [the devil?] has magically conspired against it.
…A …general function which has been stressed by Malinowski is that magic tends to make for confidence in those who employ it. The sphere with which it purports to cope is essentially that of the unknown and the unpredictable – of rain and drought and insect pests in agriculture, of the winds and storms and perils of the sea in sailing, of the desires and feelings of a trading partner, or the vagaries of the heart of one who one loves. Productive magic asserts man’s power over Nature, and allows him to go forward with his aims in the conviction that through his own efforts he can command success. From his point of view magic cannot be overthrown by any mere demonstration of its fallacy. It is too deeply interwined with the fundamental springs of human emotion.
… A great deal of what can be said about magic also applies to religion. It is founded on assumptions from beyond the sphere of reason, it uses manual rites and verbal formula and the condition of the performers is frequently held to be proper to the success of its appeal. But a number of points for distinction between them have been put forward. As examples we may mention Frazer’s formal criteria, which have been widely adopted, of magic being an assertion of man’s control over Nature by the commanding power of the spell, and religion as his reliance on spirit powers through the appeal of the prayer. Then there is Malinowski’s functional criteria of magic being a simple belief in the definite effects of man’s power of using spell and rite, limited in technique and directed to a definite, practical end; and religion as a complete set of beliefs and practices, united not in the form of its acts or subject matter, but in the function which it fulfils, self-contained, and finding its fulfillment in its very execution. Piddington, again, takes a cross-classification of religion as the ideology of the supernatural, and magic as its application to practical affairs, so that in activities which are ordinarily regarded as essentially religious there would be on his definition a magical component. Other writers have stressed the difficulty of drawing such a distinction, and prefer to speak of the magico-religious sphere as a whole. Linked with this are two further points. The practices of magic are frequently individual, with one person opposing his interests and his emotions to those of his fellows, creating disharmony rather than resolving it. Those of religion are essentially social, often partaking of the ritual of church, with the basic aim of adjusting individuals to their social environment, leading them to find peace within themselves, and reconciliation with others. From this comes the moral classification of magic as something frequently bad from the social point of view, and religion as something good and socially valuable. We speak of black magic but never of black religion.
Using any criterion singly the distinction between magic and religion can be easily drawn. But when they are considered in conjunction, the two spheres cannot be so clearly demarcated. …[many] elements ordinarily considered to magical can be found in rites ordinarily considered as religious, and vice versa.
…Within the Christian Church prayer may be used to secure immediately practical benefits… The basic attitude in prayer is that of appeal. But many of the forms of prayer by their phraseology alone are commands, and it has even been held that the persistent prayer will inevitably bring a response. The idea that God answers prayer is in a way an assertion of the power of the spoken word to bring the results we desire.
…It is not necessary today to prove, as Taylor had to prove half a century ago, that all known peoples, however primitive, have a religion. This “religion” may not be of the type to which we are accustomed, but it is none the less real and fills an important place in their lives. It may include acts that shock and horrify us – headhunting, cannibalism, human sacrifice, mutilation of the body. It may include beliefs that seem childish and absurd, in the power of stones and trees to move and to talk, in veneration for animals and birds, taboos against simple ordinary habits, beliefs in contaminations which the human body can suffer. Yet it includes, too, beliefs of considerable imaginative power and even beauty, cults of fertility and of vegetation, personification of natural phenomena, and tales about them. Strangely assorted as they may seem, these things can be found linked together in the religious life of a single people.
…The most common rite is one of public assembly. So much is this true that Durkheim has given its extreme expression in his theory that religion essentially connotes a church, and that the idea of God is really that of society deified.
It appears that in every society men believe in the existence of spirit entities and spirit powers which influence human activity. This impressed Taylor so much that he based his minimum definition of religion on what he called animism, and described as a belief in spiritual beings. When we think of a religion we usually think of a god or gods.
…Magic is… only one form of cultural response to situations of uncertainty. Other responses may be a reliance upon a beneficent God, a reliance upon the theory of probability – which is another name for science, or a simple fatalism which rejects both science and God. The reason for the different distribution of the magical and other responses in different types of society is something which as yet anthropology and psychology have not been able to fully explain. An answer commonly given, that it is due to historical processes, still leaves unsolved the problem of why the pattern of action took just this historical form.
…This brief sketch of magic and religion has been able only to hint at some of the most important scientific problems they present and their role in human life. What has emerged, however, is that they are intimately related to other aspects of human culture, to economic, to technology, to social grouping, to art… They also bear on basic human emotions, concerned with the nature of personality and the existence of the individual. What these beliefs and practices which may be termed irrational do is to give a firmness to much rational behavior, to provide a set of absolutes to which conduct can be referred. In their provision of a sanction for conduct, of a rallying point for man’s view of life and the universe, for his relations with his fellows and for his hope for the future, lies much of the explanation for the tenacity with which they are maintained, even when experience would seem to have proved them fallacious.
Raymond Firth, Human Types: An Introduction to Social Anthropology, 1958. Pages 128-147.