Claude Lévi Strauss
The sorcerer and his magic
Since the pioneering work of Cannon, we understand more clearly the psycho-phisiological mechanisms under-lying the instances reported from many parts of the world of death by exorcism and the casting spells( *1). An individual who is aware that he is the object of sorcery is thouroughly convinced that he is doomed according to the most solemn traditions of his group. His friends \nd relatives share this certainty. From then on the community withdraws. Standing aloof from the accursed, it treats him not only as though he were already dead but as though he were a source of danger to the entire group. On every ocasion and by every action, the social body suggests death to the unfortunate victim,who no longer hopes to escape what he considers to be his ineluctable fate. Shortly thereafter, sacred rites are held to dispatch him to the realm of shadows. First bruttaly torn from all of his family and social ties and excluded from all functions and activities through which he experienced self -awareness, then banished by the same forces the world of the living, the victim yields to the combined effect of intense terror, the sudden total withdrawal of the multiple reference systems provided by the support of the group, and, finally, to the group's decisive reversal in proclaiming him-once a living man, with rights and obligations- dead and an object of fear, ritual and taboo. Physical integrity cannot withstand the dissolution of the social personality.(2)
*1W.B. Cannon,"Voodoo' Death", American Anthropologist, n.s.,XLIV (1942).
2An Australian aborigine was brought to Darwin hospital in April 1956, apparently dying of this type of sorcery. He was placed in an oxygen tent and fed intranvenously. He gradually recovered, convinced that the white man's magic was the stronger. See Arthur Morley in the London Times, April 22, 1956, p11
Since the pioneering work of Cannon, we understand more clearly the psycho-phisiological mechanisms under-lying the instances reported from many parts of the world of death by exorcism and the casting spells( *1). An individual who is aware that he is the object of sorcery is thouroughly convinced that he is doomed according to the most solemn traditions of his group. His friends \nd relatives share this certainty. From then on the community withdraws. Standing aloof from the accursed, it treats him not only as though he were already dead but as though he were a source of danger to the entire group. On every ocasion and by every action, the social body suggests death to the unfortunate victim,who no longer hopes to escape what he considers to be his ineluctable fate. Shortly thereafter, sacred rites are held to dispatch him to the realm of shadows. First bruttaly torn from all of his family and social ties and excluded from all functions and activities through which he experienced self -awareness, then banished by the same forces the world of the living, the victim yields to the combined effect of intense terror, the sudden total withdrawal of the multiple reference systems provided by the support of the group, and, finally, to the group's decisive reversal in proclaiming him-once a living man, with rights and obligations- dead and an object of fear, ritual and taboo. Physical integrity cannot withstand the dissolution of the social personality.(2)
*1W.B. Cannon,"Voodoo' Death", American Anthropologist, n.s.,XLIV (1942).
2An Australian aborigine was brought to Darwin hospital in April 1956, apparently dying of this type of sorcery. He was placed in an oxygen tent and fed intranvenously. He gradually recovered, convinced that the white man's magic was the stronger. See Arthur Morley in the London Times, April 22, 1956, p11
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