“The owners of fish magic will often dream that there is plentiful fish. The cause of it is the magician’s ancestor spirit. Such a magician would then say: ‘The ancestral spirit has instructed me in the night, that we should go to catch fish! And indeed, when we get there, we find plenty of fish, and we cast the nets.’ ” “Mokudeya, the maternal uncle of Narugo,” who is, the main fishing magician of Oburaku “comes to his nephew in a dream and instructs him: ‘Tomorrow, cast the nets for fish in Kwabwawa!’ Narugo then says: ‘Let us come, the old man instructed me last night.’ ” “The *kaloma* (spondylus shell) magician of Sinaketa dreams about a plentiful patch of *kaloma* shell. Next morning, he would dive and knock it off on the reef. Or he dreams of a canoe, and he then paddles and casts the anchor at that place. To’udawada, Luvayam, Sinakadi dream that they knock it off in plenty. When next morning we go there, it is plentiful.”
In all these examples (except the last) we see that the spirits act as advisors and helpers. They fill the rôle of guardian of the traditions when they get angry because of a bad performance, or as associates and sympathisers when they share the magician’s ula’ula. But they are not agencies which get to work directly. In the Trobriand demonology, the magician does not command the spirits to go and set to work. The work is done by the agency of the spell, assisted by the accompanying ritual, and performed by the proper magician. The spirits stand in the same relation, as the performer does, to the magical force, which alone is active. They can help him to wield it properly, but they can never become his instruments.
To summarise the results of what we have learned about the super-normal nature of magic, it may be said that it has a definite character of its own, which differentiates it from the non-magical actions of man. The manner in which the magical force is conceived to act, parallel to the ordinary efforts but independent of them; the emotional reaction to certain types of magic and magician; the kariyala; the intercourse with spirits during the performances, all these properties differentiate magic from the ordinary activities of man.
In native terminology, the realm of the magical is called by the word megwa, which describes the ‘magical performance,’ the ‘spell,’ the ‘force’ or ‘virtue’ of magic, and can be used as adjective to describe in general everything which presents a magical character. Used as a verb, the words megwa, miga-megwa, miga, all of which are variations of the same root, mean: