ABSTRACT
The classical forms of magic hardly occur in Tikopia. There are almost no spells of the conventional kind, believed to be effective through the peculiar power of the vocables uttered. There are few special substances of virtue, such as the ‘medicines’ of common African type or the talismans of the Orient. There are no beliefs in witchcraft of a personal order, based upon a psycho-physical disposition or endowment of the actor. Can Tikopia be said to have any magic? I do not think the question in this form is important—except in its bearing on the historical and semantic problems of anthropological thought in this field. What then can I discuss? To me, what is of interest is to examine certain types of social action, and social situations, in Tikopia: the fact that these resemble in some respects actions and situations ordinarily discussed under the head of magic gives a useful framework for theoretical comparison of elements which appear relevant for sociological analysis. That is why the inverted commas appear in the title of this article; they indicate that as with Tikopia totemism 2 we are considering a variant from a generally accepted pattern.
