Reflections on Folk Magic
I recently read Stephen Wilson’s The Magical Universe – a book cataloguing evidence of magical practice and belief in mediaeval Europe. This is not the high, learned magic of people who might self identify as sorcerers, but everyday magic. The sort of magic your typical peasant might be dabbling in. Evidently much of it intertwined with, and leaned upon Christianity. I get the impression that our mediaeval ancestors had no problem doing magic and seeing themselves as Christians. Plenty of magic in fact called on saints, priests, relics, dust from sacred places, holy water, the wafers from communion and so forth. There might well have been pagan roots, but there was a lot of Christianity in the mix too.
What struck me most was this: The entire tome could be summed up by saying that the folk magic of mediaeval Europe was about trying to cajole a hostile world into letting you live, reproduce and keep your offspring alive. This is the magic of survival. I don’t know enough to say just how highly the odds were stacked against life, but the magic described in this book suggests a belief that it was so. Magic is about getting the crops to grow, warding off storms and vermin, tackling disease, finding a mate, keeping children safe from evil influences, cursing and warding off curses, for the greater part.
What do any of us do in face of a hostile reality that is beyond our control? We pray, we ask for help, we try and find some way of getting in control. It’s easy to look back at our history and see the foolishness of superstition, but what about the present? Are we any better, or merely different?
We put so much faith in politics and democracy to give us a bit of control and influence, and yet the same kinds of people, from the same kinds of families tend to be the ones in power, and it’s very, very rare that a change of government makes any significant changes to things for the better. We get bigger, nastier weapons, more compelx systems, not much compassion. Progress is small and slow.
We put our faith in science, too. Our fictions, books and films alike, are full of it. Meteors, aliens, diseases and all the other things that might imperil humanity may threaten us, but worry not, clever boffins will save the day! And so we believe that clever boffins will save us from climate change, from the effects of over consumption, from the diseases we create for ourselves through our modern lifestyles. We expect a pill for every ill, and a device to offset every wrong thing we do. As a consequence, we carry on poisoning ourselves, feeling entirely rational about the idea that science will save us. Is this faith in the power of science any more rational than the belief in the intervention of saints? Might it not be a magic wand by another name? Yes, science can do a great deal, and no doubt will, but it is not a magic cure all, and we are going to have to take responsibility for our own individual and collective fates.
We don’t have oracles any more. We have the media, which tells us what is going to be the next ‘must have’ whether we are the right shape, the right style of parent, the right face, whether we want the right things. Is our collective acceptance of the voices that come out of little boxes actually any better founded than believing the words of priestesses deep in a trance? Is it any more useful? Any less manipulative than the worst imaginings we have had about magicians manipulating ignorant, primitive people? The magic words come out of the box and we all run out to buy a new pair of shoes. Most of us don’t listen to religious leaders any more. We don’t go to the wise woman for advice. We listen to TV experts, we read agony aunt columns, we let ourselves be led by people we’ve never met, who know nothing about us. And this makes us more rational than the mediaevals? We don’t believe in saintly miracles, but we do believe in miracle diets, miracle cleaning products, miracle life saving drugs even though there’s plenty of evidence that none of them are totally reliable.
We still do belief and superstition. We’ve just change the delivery methods and the names of the forces to whose wills we consider ourselves vulnerable. We placate them with offerings of money, and hope they won’t turn on us and destroy our lives.
