Other myths are more rudimentary, yet, though less circumstantial about the origin of the magic, show us just as unmistakably that magic is a primeval thing, indeed, in the literal sense of the word, autochthonous. Thus, the Kula magic in Gumasila came out of the rock of Selawaya; the canoe magic out of the hole in the ground, brought by the men, who originally emerged with it; garden magic is always conceived as being carried from underground by the first ancestors, who emerged out of the original hole of that locality. Several minor forms of magic of local currency, such as fish magic, practised in one village only, wind magic, etc., are also imagined to have been carried out of the ground. All the forms of sorcery have been handed over to people by non-human beings, who passed them on but did not create them. The bwaga’u sorcery is due to a crab, who gave it to a mythical personage, in whose dala (sub-clan) the magic was carried on and from it distributed all over the islands. The tokway (wood-sprites) have taught man certain forms of evil magic. There are no myths in Kiriwina about the origin of flying witch magic. From other districts, however, I have obtained rudimentary information pointing to the fact that they were instructed in this magic by a mythical, malevolent being called Taukuripokapoka, with whom even now some sort of relations are kept up, culminating in nocturnal meetings and sexual orgies which remind one very strongly of the Walpurgisnacht.
Love magic, the magic of thunder and lightning, are accounted for by definite events. But in neither of them are we led to imagine that the formula is invented, in fact, there is a sort of petitio principii in all these myths, for on the one hand they set out to account for how magic came, and on the other, in all of them magic is represented as being there, ready made. But the petitio principii is due only to a false attitude of mind with which we approach these tales. Because, to the native mind, they set out to tell, not how magic originated, but how magic was brought within the reach of one or other of the Boyowan local groups or sub-clans.
Thus it may be said, in formulating a generalisation from all these data, that magic is never invented. In olden days, when mythical things happened, magic came from underground, or was given to a man by some non-human being, or was handed on to descendants by the original ancestress, who also brought forth the phenomenon governed by the magic. In actual cases of the present times and of the near-past generations whom the natives of to-day knew personally, the magic is given by one man to another, as a rule by the father to his son or by the maternal kinsman. But its very essence is the impossibility of its being manufactured or invented by man, its complete resistance to any change or modification by him. It has existed ever since the beginning of things; it creates, but is never created; it modifies, but must never be modified.
It is now easy to see that no questions about the origins of magic, such as we formulated before, could have been asked of a native informant without distorting the evidence in the very act of questioning, while more general and quite abstract and colourless inquiries cannot be made intelligible to him. He has grown up into a world where certain processes, certain activities have their magic, which is as much an attribute of theirs’ as anything else. Some people have been traditionally instructed how this magic runs, and they know it; how men came by magic is told in numerous mythical narratives. That is the correct statement of the native point of view. Once arrived at this conclusion inductively, we can of course, test our conclusions by direct questions, or by a leading question, for the matter of that. To the question: “where human beings found magic?” I obtained the following answer:—
“All magic, they found long ago in the nether world. We do not find ever a spell in a dream; should we say so, this would be a lie. The spirits never give us a spell. Songs and dances they do give us, that is true, but no magic.”