ABSTRACT
In the general digression just concluded, I have laid stress on the organising function of magic. Let me exemplify this on our Trobriand material, and show how this side of magical phenomena directly influences the wording of spells. Let us once more listen to the Trobriand magician while he addresses spirits and animals, plants and soil. The spell in the belief of the natives is a verbal communionbetween the magician and the object addressed. The magician speaks and the objects respond. The words are launched into the things— sometimes even the surrounding world gives the sign that the words have been received by the essence of things: the kariyala, ‘magical portent’, awakens, the thunder rumbles in the skies and lightning appears on the horizon (cf. Ch. III, Sec. 4). But once we understand that while the magician addresses animals and plant agents, while he launches his words towards the soil and the tubers, these words are believed to take effect, then we realise that by this very belief they do have an effect. On whom? Not on the soil and spirits, on the spider and the full moon. This is a native belief which, important as it is, does not directly bind us. But—and this is of the highest importance to the sociologist—they do really produce an effect on the magician himself, on his retinue and on all those who work with him, under him and by him. It is the sociological setting which is of the greatest importance in the study of magic, because it is this indirect effect of the words upon the psychology or physiology of the native organism, and hence upon social organisation, which probably gives us the best clue to the nature of magical meaning. It also furnishes us, in connexion with the data supplied by native belief, with the real answer to the question: What have we to do in translating magical words?
