I
In treating of the various customs and practices of the Kula, I had at every step to enter into the description of magical rites and into the analysis of spells. This had to be done, first of all, because magic looms paramount in the natives’ view of the Kula. Again, all magical formulæ disclose essentials of belief and illustrate typical ideas in a manner so thorough and telling that no other road could lead us as straight into the inner mind of the native. Finally, there is a direct, ethnographic interest in knowing the details of magical performance, which has such an overweening influence over tribal life, and enters so deeply into the make-up of the natives’ mentality.
It is now necessary to complete our knowledge of magic and to focus all the dispersed data into one coherent picture. So far, the many scattered references and numerous concrete details have not furnished a general idea, of what magic means to the natives; how they imagine the working of the magical forces; what are their implied and expressed views on the nature of magical power. Collecting all the material which has already been presented in the previous chapters, and supplementing it with native and ethnographic comments, we shall be able to arrive at a certain synthesis, respecting the Kiriwinian theory of magic.
All the data which have been so far mustered disclose the extreme importance of magic in the Kula. But if it were a question of treating of any other aspect of the tribal life of these natives, it would also be found that, whenever they approach any concern of vital importance, they summon magic to their aid. It can be said without exaggeration that magic, according to their ideas, governs human destinies; that it supplies man with the power of mastering the forces of nature; and that it is his weapon and armour against the many dangers which crowd in upon him on every side. Thus, in what is most essential to man, that is in his health and bodily welfare, he is but a plaything of the powers of sorcery, of evil spirits and of certain beings, controlled by black magic. Death in almost all its forms is the result of one of these agencies. Permanent ill-health and all kinds of acute sickness, in fact everything, except such easily explainable ailments as physical overstrain or slight colds, are attributed to magic. I have spoken (Chapter II) of the several ways in which the evil powers bring disease and death. The tauva’u, who bring epidemics and the tokway, who inflict shooting pains and minor ailments, are the only examples of non-human beings’ exerting any direct influence on human destinies, and even the members of this restricted pantheon of demonology only occasionally descend among the mortals to put into action their potential powers. By far the deepest dread and most constant concern of the natives are with the bwaga’u, the entirely human sorcerers, who carry out their work exclusively by means of magic. Second to them in the quantity of magical output and in the frequency of their exploits, are the mulukwausi, the flying witches, which have been described in detail in Chapter XI. They are a good example of how every belief in a superior power is at the bottom a belief in magic. Magic gives to these beings the capacity to destroy human life and to command other agents of destruction. Magic also gives man the power and the means to defend himself, and if properly applied, to frustrate all the nefarious attempts of the mulukwausi. Comparing the two agencies, it may be said that in every-day life, the sorcerer is by far the most feared and is most frequently believed to be at work; while the mulukwausi enter upon the scene at certain dramatic moments, such as the presence of death, a catastrophe on land, and more especially at sea; but then, they enter with even deadlier weapons than the bwaga’u. Health, the normal state of human beings can, if once lost, be regained by magic