magic
 

Mythology, implies a belief in supernatural forces. That is to say, in beings who are both different from and superior ‘to living men' in that they exercise, either directly or through the intermediary of natural phenomena, a benign or harmful influence. It is the function of ritual practices or ceremonies to encourage the former influence and prevent or neutralize the latter.

As an introduction to the study of the varied forms and the often-poetic embellishments which these beliefs assumed among different peoples throughout the ages, it is appropriate to inquire into their origins: when in the life of mankind did such beliefs first appear?

Supernatural beings, the objects of these beliefs, can be divided into two categories that, though in principle distinct, overlap in a number of cases. On the one hand there are the dead, ancestors or manes, who have been known to their contemporaries in the form and condition of normal men. On the other hand there are the divinities, strictly speaking, which never existed as ordinary mortals.

Our information about the religious beliefs of peoples known to history can be derived from written documents; about primitive peoples who still exist. We have the oral reports of travelers and ethnologists. But for prehistoric ages both of these sources of information are entirely lacking, and we never find ourselves in the actual presence of prehistoric religious beliefs. The materials we possess are either physical traces of what appear to be vestiges of ritual practices or else pictorial representations of such practices from which can be inferred — with the aid of ethnological parallels — a belief in the existence of the supernatural beings to whom they were addressed. One cannot, therefore, insist too strongly on the hypothetical character of conclusions based on such material.

We shall confine ourselves to the study of those people we call Paleolithic because of their industry in chipped, not polished, stone, and who lived during the Pleistocene geological epoch. We shall retrace our way cautiously through the course of time and, ignoring facts that are too ambiguous, try to discover what may reasonably be conjectured about their religious beliefs.

RELIGIOUS BELIEFS

Mythology in the strict sense of the word. — It is not impossible that the Magdalenians — the least ancient of Paleolithic peoples — had a mythology in the strict sense of the word: that is to say, that they attributed to certain supernatural beings not only a specific form, but specific acts. This at least is an acceptable interpretation of wall-drawings discovered in the cavern of the Trois­Freres in the Ariège department of southern France. There are three of them, and two at least seem to form an intentional group. Objectively the one on the right depicts a personage whose upright posture, legs and rump belong to a man. He has a horse’s tail, a bison’s head and the front legs of an animal, with one hoof distinctly cloven. He is perhaps dancing, and is certainly playing some kind of bowed musical instrument. An animal that turns its head towards him precedes him. To be sure, the human figure may be a magician in disguise who is charming the animal in front of him; but it would seem difficult to dis­guise the arms of an actual man with imitation hoofed forelegs. Moreover, neither of the two animals who pre­cede him is altogether real. The one nearest to him, a female whose sex is carefully accentuated, has the hind­quarters of the deer tribe and the forequarters of a bison. The forelegs of the reindeer in front terminate in the hooves of anything but a reindeer. We may thus suppose that this group of figures, of which not one entirely cor­responds to reality, was intended to represent a mytholog­ical scene — a sort of Paleolithic Orpheus charming equally mythical animals by means of his music and dancing.

The Magicians. — But this interpretation of the Trois­Frères group is by no means the only one possible. Ac­tually, the combination in the same animal of character­istics belonging to different species is found again else­where, not only in other drawings from the same cave. In the Trois-Frères cavern there are two bears, one with a wolf’s head, the other with a bison’s tail. A Solutrian bas-relief at Roc in the Charente shows a swine with a bull’s back.

Such figures, as we see, are connected with the magic of hunting and fertility and represent not myth­ological but real animals who are partially deformed in order to avert the hostility which might be aroused in them were their exact resemblance drawn. In addition, personages who combine human and animal character­istics occur elsewhere in Magdalenian art, both in wall paintings and household possessions. Some of them also seem to be dancing and — according to ethnological parallels — may quite probably represent magicians in disguise. Such are, to cite only the least debatable spec­imens, another figure carved and painted on a wall of the same Trois-Frères cave — a man with a bearded head, bull’s ears, stag’s antlers and a horse’s tail — and the three personages with chamois heads carved on a staff found in the Mège shelter at Teyjat in the Dordogne. Though all these figures may equally be interpreted as either divinities or magicians, it would seem that the figure cut on one side of a limestone pebble from La Ma­deleine, in which human features are represented under a covering mask, must be that of a magician. On the other face of the same stone there is a feminine figure whose animal head is not so certainly a mask. If we assume that she also is a magician we reach the interesting conclusion that at least in the Lower Magdalenian period magic functions were not an exclusively masculine prerogative.

Whether any of the figures mentioned above actually represented a hybrid deity or not, it is easy to see how the use of magic disguise contributed to the belief in such deities. The power of the magician was attributed to his disguise. It played the role of establishing a mystic communion, a fusion of essence, between him and the animals on which he proposed to act. Magic power and the magi­cian’s appearance were naturally associated. His aspect, simultaneously animal and human, naturally led to the conception of gods under the same hybrid form. The god possessed similar powers, and the magician, at least in the exercise of his functions, was in some way the god’s in­carnation. In any case, whether these figures represented divinities or magicians, they bear witness to the existence of religious beliefs. There can be no doubt that during the Magdalenian period many caverns, either wholly or at least in their lower depths, were sanctuaries.

Hunting Magic. — Food in Paleolithic times de­pended primarily on hunting, and the essential role of magic was to assure its success. Mimetic magic with animal disguises must have contributed. But Magdalenian man certainly had recourse to sympathetic or homoeo­pathic magic, which relies on the theory that an operation performed on an image of a real being will produce the same effect on the being itself. Many of the drawings and clay figures of the cave of Montespan in the Haute­Garonne seem to have been made in order to be slashed or pierced with holes with the object of wounding real animals. Particularly remarkable is a statue of a bear cub, modeled in the round and placed on a stand, which seems to have been destined for this purpose. The statue never had a head. There is a cavity in the neck which seems to have been produced by a wooden peg supporting some object — and the skull of a bear cub was found on the ground between the statue’s two front paws. This sug­gests that the head of an actual animal completed the headless statue, which is riddled with more than thirty holes. There are other indications that it was perhaps covered with an animal’s hide, which also played a part in the magic ceremony.

Also sculptured in the round at Isturitz in the Basses­Pyrénées is a feline creature, perforated in a manner, which does not seem to suggest that the holes were made in order to hang up the figure. They must therefore repre­sent wounds; and there are also arrows or harpoons scratched on the figure’s thighs and spine. Another sculp­ture in the same grotto was even more obviously intended for sympathetic magic. This is a bison in sandstone. On its flank there is a deep vertical incision, at the side of which an arrow is cut. It is even possible that the original fracturing of the head and feet was the result of inten­tional mutilation that completed the magic ceremony.

From these examples, in which the magic operation consists of actually wounding the animal’s image, ancient man passed gradually to merely portraying the wounds or even simply evoking them by drawing the weapons which were supposed to inflict them. This can be seen, among many other examples, in a wall drawing of a bear at Trojs­Frères. Its body is depicted as having been stoned. It bristles with arrows, and from its muzzle flow streams of blood.

In these figures, and in others that seem to represent animals being hunted not with weapons but with snares, it is almost certain that the portrayal of a wished-for event was intended to bring about the event itself.

Two drawings on limestone of animals pierced with arrows, a rhinoceros and a stag, found at La Colornbière in the Am, must antedate the Magdalenian and corre­spond chronologically to the Solutrian period in a region to which this civilization did not penetrate.

Fertility Magic. — Since hunting of necessity required the existence of game it is natural that Paleolithic man, in order that game should be plentiful, also practiced fertility magic. In this case sympathetic magic could not, as with hunting magic, consist of performing on animal images the operations that would produce the desired result on the animals themselves. Fertility could only be caused artificially in effigy. We can therefore consider the repre­sentation of certain animal couples, and certain females, as examples of fertility magic. Such animal couples are the clay-modeled bisons of Tuc d’Audoubert, the reindeer sculptured in ivory of Bruniquel and the bull following a cow at Teyjat. To these may be added a wall drawing of bison at Altamira. A female fertility figure is the drawing on a flagstone at La Madeleine of a doe accompanied by her fawn. All these specimens are of the Magdalenian period. But the older Solutrian frieze at Roc presents several bas-reliefs of female forms: the sow with cow’s back already mentioned and some mares, one of which seems to be accompanied by the rough outline of a male.

It is possible, though disputable, that certain figures of wounded men — for example a drawing in the shelter at Saltadora — were intended to bewitch an enemy, and thus correspond to war magic similar to hunting magic. We consider it even more doubtful that representations of amorous scenes between human beings or the figurines of women with exaggerated bellies were intended to cause fertility among women. There is the Magdalenian ‘Wo­man with a Reindeer’ of Laugerie-Basse and the luxuriant females who are particularly abundant in, though not exclusive to, the Aurignacian period. But their role, we believe, was purely erotic. There is, however, a curious drawing on a blade of bone at Isturitz in which a woman, followed by a man, bears on her thigh a harpoon similar to those that in the picture on the opposite side of the blade have wounded a bison. This we are tempted to interpret as a love charm.

To sum up, there seem to be no indications of hunting magic or fertility magic during Aurignacian times. They only appear with the Solutrian and continue into the Magdalenian period, reaching their apogee in its first phase.

Pre-Mousterlan Offerings. Different religious practices are encountered in pre-Mousterian central Europe, a period which goes back to the last ice age. The most characteristic remains come from Drachenloch, above Vattis in the valley of the Tamina (canton of Saint-Gall, Switzerland), which is the highest known Palaeolithic cavern, over 7,500 feet above sea level. In two of the chambers there are low stonewalls nearly three feet high, which were certainly made by the hand of man. They run along the cave wall, leaving between it and them a space about fifteen inches wide. This space is filled with the bones of cave bears. These bones are chiefly skulls and are usually accompanied by the two first cervical vertebrae. There are also leg bones belonging, with rare exceptions, to different individual bears. At the entrance and in the forepart of one of these chambers similar bone—heaps were accumulated in half a dozen rectangular stone chests, covered by large slabs that form lids. In the far end of the same chamber three skulls were gathered together in an empty space between fallen blocks. Another skull had been carefully placed beneath a huge stone that was wedged in a manner to protect it against the pressure of the earth. It was encircled by a sort of stone crown adapt­ed to the shape of the head.

All these collections of bears’ remains were certainly deliberate. Since the skulls were generally attached to the first two vertebrae, they were not deposited there flesh-less, but in a state to be eaten. Moreover, the brain, like the legs with their meat and marrowbones, represented the most succulent part of the animal. They were thus in all probability offerings to some supernatural power. It is, of course, arbitrary to see in this power a Supreme Being like our own God, and more likely these choice morsels were offered to conciliate the spirits of the game, to give them thanks for the success of a past hunting expedition and to solicit the continuance of their favors in the future. In any case we have here what may be the oldest known example of practices addressed to supernatural powers.

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                                  Last modified: 06/28/09