ABSTRACT
It sounds like a sophisticated in-depth study but in fact Cawte recorded only ten instances of sorcery. One occurred before the Mission era, one was told to him by a medical student, and one occurred a year or so before he visited Momington. Another concerned an old Kaiadilt man who spoke no English hence Cawte had to work through an interpreter. Needless to say he certainly could not have made a clinical or psychiatric appraisal of the personalities of people whom he never met. He evidently based his conclusions on four cases of which he seems to have had some first hand knowledge. Cawte claims, ‘At an early point in my study of cases of sorcery, I found it useful to distinguish between “transitive” forms, in which a sorcerer is identifiable, and “intransitive” forms, in which no such activity is evident. The official versions of sorcery provided by Lardil informants are always transitive - a sorcerer has been at work’ (ibid.: p. 88). Despite the Lardil ‘official versions’ Cawte declares:
the sequences involving complaints of sorcery that I actually observed in the field are chiefly of the intransitive variety. They may be described as sorcery sans sorcerer, magic sans magician. They usually involve an overt somatic or psychiatric disorder, or else a social situation seriously disturbed by tension and interpersonal manipulation. No sorcerer acknowledges himself or can be found in such cases, especially at the outset; the complaint of sorcery arises ex post facto, as a hypothesis offered retrospectively, (ibid.: p. 90)
Of the eight sorcery cases that Cawte discusses the sorcerer is identified in five of them, and of the remaining three, one involved a southern Lardil who died in the pre-Mission era and in this particular case I recorded the identity of the
reputed sorcerer. Cawte’s own data evidently disprove his claim that sorcery cases are ‘chiefly of the intransitive variety.’ In any event, as we have seen, there are many cases of sorcerers acknowledging, indeed boasting that someone’s death was their doing. Sorcery threats are sometimes made openly in the heat of a fight. Cawte’s remark that ‘the complaint of sorcery arises ex post facto’ is tantamount to claiming to have discovered the wheel. People do not make accusations of sorcery when they are experiencing good fortune and the social scene is conflict free. They suspect sorcery when they or their close kin are suffering from some illness or misfortune and when they are involved in intense social conflict.
