Powers beyond the ordinary include both magic and religion. In this regard, the question arises about the relationship between these two phenomena, each of which is characterized by communication with the sacred. Without going into details, we will only note that magic means the manipulation of an impersonal force with the help of special techniques, sorcery in the name of achieving specific goals that correspond to the interests of the individual and are not related to moral assessments. Its effectiveness depends on the accuracy of the performance of ritual magical actions, adherence to tradition.

Magic is associated with the stereotyping of human activity, while the religious rationalization of human activity is carried out in a different context - when existence

is no longer fully provided by tradition, and the sacred from the impersonal force poured in the world is transformed into a divine person, towering above the profane world.

At the same time, there is a structural similarity between magic and religion - Weber draws attention to this when he introduces the concept of "magic symbolism". At a certain stage, a real victim is replaced, for example, in a funeral ceremony, by a symbolic victim, a drawing of a sacrificial animal, some parts of its body, etc. To a greater or lesser extent, the magical meaning of the ritual action is preserved in religion. To understand religion, it is important, therefore, to identify the differences between religious symbols, not only from magical ones, but in general from non-religious ones.

If the deity, i.e. omnipotent "other being" is located in another world, then people get access to this power in those actions that constitute the practice of religious life (cult activity) and the purpose of which is to serve as a connecting bridge between "this world" and the "other world" - a bridge over which the mighty power of a deity can be directed to help powerless people. In the material sense, this bridge is represented by "holy places" that are both in "this world" and beyond (for example, the church is considered the "house of God"), mediators - "holy people" (clergymen, hermits, shamans, inspired prophets), endowed with the ability to establish contact with the forces of another world, despite the fact that they themselves still live in this world. This "connecting bridge" is represented not only by cult activity, but also in mythology and ideas about incarnations, reincarnations of deities who manage to be both deities and human beings. The mediator - be it a real human being (for example, a shaman) or a mythological god-man - is endowed with "boundary" features: he is both mortal and immortal. "Power of the Holy Spirit" Magic force in the general sense of "sacred action", but it is also a sexual force - capable of impregnating women.

An important characteristic of every religion is its attitude towards magic and religion as "ideal types", i.e. the degree of presence of magical elements in it and the degree of its rationalization: in some religions there is more than one, in others - the other. Depending on this, the type of attitude towards the world inherent in this religion is formed. The general trend of the religious evolution of Ve-

Behr defines it as "the disenchantment of the world" and the strengthening of religious rationalization.

ritual and myth. In many religions, it is not belief but ritual behavior that is central. So, in Judaism, for example, the believer is required, first of all, not to know the dogmas, but certain, strictly regulated behavior, compliance with many prescriptions, rituals.

In the broadest sense of the word, a ritual is a set of repeated, regularly performed actions in an established order. Ritual action is a form of socially sanctioned symbolic behavior and, unlike custom, is devoid of utilitarian-practical goals. Its purpose is different - it performs a communicative role, symbolizes certain meanings and attitudes in both everyday and official life, plays a significant role in social education, control, the exercise of power, etc. Ritual, unlike etiquette, is associated with conviction in its deep value sense.

Religious rituals, along with their respective beliefs, are directed towards "sacred things". A magical ritual is, in fact, a witchcraft action, a conspiracy, a spell, a technique for influencing the phenomena of the surrounding world. The performer of this action is the individual, not the collective. The magical ritual is oriented pragmatically - to a greater extent on the "material" result than on the values ​​of the symbolic order. The meaning of magical action is not to "serve" a higher power, but to serve human needs.

In religious and theological works, this moment is reflected in the form of opposition of archaic beliefs with the "ugly bark of magic" growing on them - "reverence for the Highest." A. Men' characterizes magic as "a mechanical way to earn the location of mysterious forces, to make them work for oneself" according to the principle: "I gave You - You give me." "People were convinced that certain rituals with natural necessity should deliver the desired" 1.

People would not be people if they did not give meaning to what surrounds them and what they themselves do. The essence of culture is the urgent demand for people that some meaning be established in the concrete reality that surrounds us. Its deepest roots are the recognition of meaning, giving meaning to the ear

1. Men A. Sacrament, word, image. L., 1991. S. 9.

child in the depths of the cult. The cult ritual - a sacred act, a sacrament, and not myths and dogmas of dogma, and even more so not the rules of conduct, is the core of religion. In ancient religion, belief in certain complexes of myths was not mandatory as a characteristic of true religion. Nor is morality the essence of religion. Rituals mean more to society than words and thoughts; thanks to rituals, religion in ancient societies becomes part of the social order, taking root in the general system of values, including the ethical values ​​of the community, which with its help became a common system of behavior patterns for all. Some religions may be more ethical than others, but if a religion becomes morality, it ceases to be a religion.

Magical action is based on the idea that everything is connected with everything, the "logic of participation", in the words of L. Levy-Bruhl. It is realized in magical actions. At this level, magical action does not yet have a definite cosmology as its basis. Only with its appearance (the myth of creation) does the magical action transform into a religious ritual - an image of creation. In religions, the strategic goal of thinking and action is to preserve the sacred order of the universe, the cosmos in the fight against the threat of chaos.

Human society in primitive ideas itself acts as a part of the cosmos: everything is part of the cosmos, which forms the highest value. For such a consciousness, only that which is sacralized (sacredly marked) is essential, truly, real, and only that which is part of the cosmos, derived from it, involved in it, is sacralized. In the sacralized world, according to V.N. Toporov, and only in such a world, the rules of organization are formed, because outside this world there is chaos, the realm of chances, the absence of life. Religious ritual is associated, therefore, with mythological consciousness as the main way of understanding the world and resolving contradictions.

The man of this period saw the meaning of life and its purpose in the ritual. This is a religious, not a magical ritual. It is focused on the values ​​of the sign order. He is the action that ensures the salvation of "his" cosmos and control over it. Reproduction of the act of creation in the ritual actualizes the structure of being, giving it an underlined symbolism, and serves as a guarantee of the security and prosperity of the team. The cosmological myth is the guide of life for the man of that era.

Only in ritual is the highest level of sacredness achieved, and at the same time in it a person acquires a feeling of the greatest fullness of life.

In the life of archaic communities, rituals occupied a central place. Mythology served as a kind of explanation, a commentary on it. Durkheim drew attention to this circumstance. Analyzing the descriptions of the ritual in the religious life of the Australian Aborigines, he singled out the phenomenon of excitation (expressive symbolization, in Parsons' terminology). The essence of this phenomenon is that the participants in the ritual are collective, i.e. already religious, and not magical action, are in a state of strong emotional excitement, exaltation, which, according to Durkheim, is psychologically authentic and at the same time socially ordered. The "scenario" of action and patterns of behavior, interactions between the participants in the ritual are developed in detail and prescribe who and what should do at one time or another. Thus, although arousal is genuine in a psychological sense, it cannot be considered a spontaneous response to immediate stimuli. This streamlining, organized character of the ritual is determined by the fact that ritual actions are saturated with symbolic meanings, which correlate with the structure and situation of the social system. Rituals, according to Durkheim, not only reinforce, but also give rise to what he calls "faith."

The correlation of myth with the social system is based on the fact that mythological symbols do not just point to something or refer to something else. They, in their sensual quality, are rather themselves perceived as this “other”, they are this “other”1. According to Losev, the complete identification in primitive cultures of a person with a mythical totem is a characteristic property of mythological symbolization: the animal-totem and the clan are identified in the minds of the Australian aborigine. The participants in the ritual really feel like mythical symbolic creatures, whose actions they reproduce in the ritual. This identification provides the possibility of being oneself and something else at the same time. Identification in the symbol of things and ideas in early cultures leads to the fact that the "sacred thing" is treated as if it is itself what it symbolizes (similar to this in the Orthodox

1. Losev A.F. Dialectics of myth // Myth, number, essence. M., 1994.

in consciousness, the icon is not just an image of the face of God, but the very face of God). In modern secular systems of symbolization, political or otherwise, no one ever identifies a symbol with what it symbolizes.

Another level of correlation between religion and sociality lies in the fact that the primary function of a religious ritual is to form and strengthen solidarity, which is based on a common code of ritual symbolism. No object in the ritual is itself, it always appears as a symbol of something else; all operations with objects in a ritual are operations with symbols, performed according to established rules and having a meaning for those real objects of which they are symbols.

So, the sacrifice of a horse in the Vedic ritual models almost the entire cosmos, since each part of the sacrificial animal corresponds to a certain world phenomenon (the head of the sacrificial horse is the dawn, the eye is the sun, the breath is the wind, the ear is the moon, the legs are parts of the world .. .). The entire cosmos arises anew every year from this sacrificed horse, the world is created anew in the course of the rite.

E. Leach, who studied the symbolic system, which includes ritual, myth, religious ethics and worldview, came to the conclusion that the ritual is a kind of "repository" of knowledge: information related, for example, to economic activity, can be stored in the corresponding rituals, in the form symbols that have power over people that determine their behavior. They are passed on from generation to generation, influencing the worldview and the ethos associated with it, influencing to a large extent through ritual, worship.

The Christian Church, professing the religion of "spirit and truth," has not abolished temple worship, rituals, and worship as an outward symbol of spiritual service. Modern theologians, condemning "ritualism", recall that the founder of Christianity reproached the Jewish clergy and lawyers for reducing the highest religious duty to rites and statutes; he wanted another

“I want mercy, not sacrifice.” For God, burnt offerings and sacrifices are more important than “purification of the heart,” justice, faith, moral achievement. However, religious faith lives in the symbolism of ritual, and, according to the Orthodox priest, it is not enough to carry God in the heart and strive do His will in everyday "kishi. Eucharist (thanksgiving), which is called "bloodless

sacrifice" and which is a sacred meal, is the fundamental mystery christian church, the central moment of worship, symbolizing the true presence of the God-man in His Church: the sign of the presence of Christ in the Church are the mysteries, through which again and again the unity of man with God takes place.

Thus, ritual belongs to the field of religious practice, orthopraxy, while myth belongs to the cognitive component of religion, orthodoxy. They are connected in such a way that the myth defines the boundaries of the understanding of the ritual and gives it a rationale, although this is not necessarily on a conscious level.

The advantage of a symbol over a concept is that it does not require preliminary "work of the mind," "school of thought," or logical discipline. Symbols are perceived much easier and simpler than intellectual definitions; they are grasped "on the fly" on the basis of emotions, experiences, and beliefs that do not require and are not amenable to any strict definition.

Since ritual actions are guided by religious symbols, the myths that determine their meaning, they are seen as completely different from outwardly similar actions of a person in "ordinary" life: in the Christian sacrament of communion, a person "tastes the body and blood of Christ" not in order to satisfy hunger and thirst. The ritual acquires its meaning, becomes a ritual only in the context of the corresponding mythological belief.

Only in the context of the gospel story about the last meal of Jesus and his disciples ("The Last Supper") does the ritual of the Christian Eucharist itself make sense - communion with bread and wine. Only in the context of the myth of original sin does ritual cleansing from sin, the sacrament of confession, make sense.

Myth is not an explanation of the ritual, but its rationale, the rooting of the transient in the eternal. Ritual is a dramatization of a myth, the embodiment of symbols into living reality. Ritual can express, however, what is not expressed in the language of myth is not verbalizable. He speaks the language of gesture, dance, "body language". IN mythological consciousness everything that is the movement of the body is at the same time the movement of the soul. Levi-Strauss saw the task not in understanding how people "think in myths", with the help of myths, but in showing how "myths live in us."

The myth takes on visible features in the ritual, although the ritual can be performed without a clear awareness of the meaning inherent in the myth. Faith receives an incarnation visible to everyone. Ritual, worship

pen in the action, in the behavior, attitudes of the believer. With the help of the ritual, believers come into contact with "sacred time", become contemporaries of the events of "sacred history", acquire "eternal life". Moreover, in the ritual, "sacred time" is, as it were, created, since time makes sense when something happens in it.

The social significance of the ritual is the establishment of a connection between people, the assimilation of beliefs, religious attitudes and values, etc. Each ritual is an action aimed at establishing and maintaining order; he is a rite. The gods die without performing rituals, the death of a person is necessarily accompanied by them. The rite marks the power of society over the individual. In ritual, the individual establishes a connection with a group, society; in belief, with the cosmic order. Ritual fear is the fear of violating the divine order. A person feels the need for a ritual as a "solemn completion" of the daily routine at every turning point in his life. The ritual embodiment of faith is a tribute to the bodily nature of man, which must be recognized in all its vitality and, if possible, spiritualized. The Christian cross is not only a symbol of the crucifixion, death and suffering of God, but also a reflection of the ideal.

Both magic and religion arise in situations of emotional stress: an everyday crisis, the collapse of the most important plans, death and initiation into the mysteries of one's tribe, unhappy love or unquenched hatred. Both magic and religion indicate ways out of such situations and dead ends in life, when reality does not allow a person to find another way, except for turning to faith, ritual, the sphere of the supernatural. In religion, this sphere is filled with spirits and souls, providence, supernatural patrons of the family and heralds of its mysteries; in magic - a primitive belief in the power of the magic of a magic spell. Both magic and religion are directly based on the mythological tradition, on the atmosphere of miraculous expectation of the revelation of their miraculous power. Both magic and religion are surrounded by a system of rites and taboos that distinguish their actions from those of the uninitiated.

What separates magic from religion? Let us begin with the most definite and conspicuous difference: in the sacred sphere, magic appears as a kind of practical art that serves to perform actions, each of which is a means to an end; religion - as a system of such actions, the implementation of which in itself is a certain goal. Let's try to trace this difference at deeper levels. practical art

magic has a specific and applied within the strict boundaries of the performance technique: witchcraft spells, ritual and personal abilities of the performer form a permanent trinity. Religion, in all its manifold aspects and aims, does not have such a simple technique; its unity is not reduced to a system of formal actions, or even to the universality of its ideological content, it rather lies in the function performed and in the value meaning of faith and ritual. The beliefs inherent in magic, in accordance with its practical orientation, are extremely simple. It is always a belief in the power of a person to achieve a desired goal through witchcraft and ritual. At the same time, in religion we observe a significant complexity and diversity of the supernatural world as an object: the pantheon of spirits and demons, the beneficent powers of the totem, the guardian spirits of the clan and tribe, the souls of the forefathers, pictures of the future afterlife - all this and much more creates a second, supernatural reality for primitive man. Religious mythology is also more complex and varied, more imbued with creativity. Usually religious myths are concentrated around various dogmas and develop their content in cosmogonic and heroic narratives, in descriptions of the deeds of gods and demigods. Magical mythology, as a rule, appears in the form of endlessly repeated stories about the extraordinary achievements of primitive people.

Magic, as a special art of achieving specific goals, in one of its forms once enters the cultural arsenal of a person and then is directly transmitted from generation to generation. From the very beginning, it is an art that few specialists master, and the first profession in the history of mankind is the profession of a sorcerer and sorcerer. Religion, in its most primitive forms, appears as a common cause of primitive people, each of whom takes an active and equal part in it. Each member of the tribe goes through a rite of passage (initiation) and subsequently initiates others himself. Each member of the tribe mourns and weeps when his relative dies, participates in the burial and honors the memory of the deceased, and when his hour comes, he will be mourned and remembered in the same way. Each person has his own spirit, and after death, each person becomes a spirit. The only specialization that exists within religion, the so-called primitive spiritistic mediumship, is not a profession, but an expression of personal talent. Another difference between magic and religion is the play of black and white in sorcery, while religion in its primitive stages is not much interested in the opposition between good and evil, beneficent and malefic forces. Here again, the practical nature of magic, aimed at immediate and measurable results, is important, while primitive religion is turned to fatal, inevitable events and supernatural forces and beings (although mainly in a moral aspect), and therefore does not deal with problems associated with human impact on the world. The aphorism that fear first created the gods in the universe is completely wrong in the light of anthropology.

In order to understand the differences between religion and magic, and to clearly represent the relationship in the triangular constellation of magic, religion and science, it is necessary at least briefly to indicate the cultural function of each of them. The function of primitive knowledge and its value has already been discussed above, and it is quite simple. Knowledge of the surrounding world gives a person the opportunity to use natural forces; primitive science gives people a huge advantage over other living beings, it advances them much further than all other creatures along the path of evolution. In order to understand the function of religion and its value in the mind of primitive man, it is necessary to carefully study the many native

beliefs and cults. We have already shown earlier that religious faith gives stability, shapes and strengthens all value-significant mental attitudes, such as respect for tradition, a harmonious worldview, personal valor and confidence in the fight against worldly adversity, courage in the face of death, etc. This faith, maintained and formalized in cult and ceremonies, is of great vital importance and reveals to primitive man the truth in the broadest, practically important sense of the word. What is the cultural function of magic? As we have already said, all the instinctive and emotional abilities of a person, all his practical actions can lead to such impasses when they misfire all his knowledge, reveal their limitations in the power of the mind, cunning and observation do not help. The forces on which a person relies in everyday life leave him at a critical moment. Human nature responds with a spontaneous explosion, releasing rudimentary forms of behavior and a dormant belief in their effectiveness. Magic builds on this belief, transforming it into a standardized ritual that takes on a continuous traditional form. Thus, magic provides a person with a set of ready-made ritual acts and standard beliefs, formalized by a certain practical and mental technique. Thus, as it were, a bridge is erected across the abysses that arise before a person on the way to his most important goals, a dangerous crisis is overcome. This allows a person not to lose his presence of mind when solving the most difficult life tasks; maintain self-control and integrity of the personality when an attack of anger, a paroxysm of hatred, a hopelessness of despair and fear approaches. The function of magic is to ritualize human optimism, to maintain faith in the victory of hope over despair. In magic, a person finds confirmation that self-confidence, perseverance in trials, optimism prevail over hesitation, doubt and pessimism.

Casting a glance from the heights of the present, advanced civilization, which has gone far from primitive people, it is not difficult to see the rudeness and inconsistency of magic. But we must not forget that without her help primitive man would not have been able to cope with the most difficult problems of his life and could not have advanced to higher stages of cultural development. Hence the universal prevalence of magic in primitive societies and the exclusivity of its power is clear. This explains the constant presence of magic in any significant activity of primitive people.

Magic must be understood by us in its inextricable connection with the majestic folly of hope, which has always been the best school of human character.

Myth is component common system of beliefs of the natives. The relationship between people and spirits is determined by closely related mythical narratives, religious beliefs and feelings. In this system, the myth is, as it were, the basis of a continuous perspective in which the daily worries, sorrows and anxieties of people acquire the meaning of movement towards a certain common goal. Walking his way, a person is guided by a common faith, personal experience and the memory of past generations, keeping traces of those times when the events that became the impetus for the emergence of the myth took place.

An analysis of the facts and the content of myths, including those retold here, allow us to conclude that primitive people had a comprehensive and consistent system of beliefs. It would be in vain to look for this system only in the outer layers of native folklore accessible to direct observation. This system corresponds to a certain cultural reality, in which all particular forms of native beliefs, experiences and premonitions related to the death and life of spirits

after the death of people, are intertwined into some kind of grandiose organic integrity. Mythic narratives intertwine with each other, their ideas intersect, and the natives constantly find parallels and internal connections between them. Myth, faith and experience associated with the world of spirits and supernatural beings are the constituent elements of a single whole. What connects these elements is an enduring desire to have communion with the lower world, the abode of the spirits. Mythic tales only lend key moments native beliefs explicit form. Their plots are sometimes quite complex, they always tell about something unpleasant, about some kind of loss or loss: about how people have lost the ability to regain their youth, how witchcraft causes illness or death, how spirits left the world of people and how everything is at least a partial relationship with them.

It is striking that the myths of this cycle are more dramatic, the connection between them is more consistent, although more complex than the myths about the beginnings of being. Without dwelling on this point, I will only say that here, perhaps, the matter is in a deeper metaphysical sense and a stronger feeling, which are associated with the problems of human destiny, in comparison with the problems of the social plane.

Be that as it may, we see that myth, as part of the spirituality of the natives, cannot be explained solely by cognitive factors, no matter how great their significance may be. The most important role in the myth is played by its emotional side and practical meaning. What the myth narrates deeply disturbs the native. Thus, the myth that tells about the origin of the milamala holiday determines the nature of the ceremonies and taboos associated with the periodic return of the spirits. This narration itself is completely understandable to the native and does not require any "explanations", therefore the myth does not even to a small extent pretend to such a role. Its function is different: it is designed to alleviate the emotional tension experienced by the human soul, anticipating its inevitable and inexorable fate. First, the myth gives this foreboding a very clear and tangible form. Secondly, he reduces the mysterious and chilling idea to the level of familiar everyday reality. It turns out that the longed-for ability to restore youth, saving from decrepitude and aging, was lost by people just because of a trifling incident that could have been prevented even by a child or a woman. Death forever separating loved ones and loving people, is something that can come from a small quarrel or carelessness with hot stew. A dangerous disease occurs due to a chance meeting of a man, a dog and a crab. Mistakes, misdeeds and accidents acquire great significance, and the role of fate, fate, inevitability is reduced to the scale of a human mistake.

In order to understand this, it should be recalled once again that the feelings experienced by a native in relation to death, either his own, or the death of his loved ones and loved ones, are by no means completely determined by his beliefs and myths. A strong fear of death, a keen desire to avoid it, a deep grief from the loss of loved ones and relatives - all this is deeply contrary to the optimism of faith in the easy achievement of the afterlife, which pervades native customs, ideas and rituals. When a person is threatened with death or when death enters his house, the most thoughtless faith cracks. In long conversations with some seriously ill natives, especially with my consumptive friend Bagido "u, I always felt the same, perhaps implicitly or primitively expressed, but undoubtedly melancholic sadness about the passing life and its joys, the same horror before the inevitable the end, the same hope that this end might be postponed, even if only for a short time.But I also felt that the souls of these people were warmed by the reliable faith that comes from their faith.The living narrative of the myth blocked the abyss that was ready to open before them.

myths of magic

Let me now take the liberty of dwelling in more detail on another type of mythic narrative: those myths associated with magic. Magic, no matter how you take it, is the most important and most mysterious aspect of the practical attitude of primitive people to reality. The most powerful and controversial interests of anthropologists are connected with the problems of magic. In northwestern Melanesia, the role of magic is so great that even the most superficial observer cannot fail to notice it. However, its manifestations are not quite clear at first glance. Although literally the entire practical life of the natives is imbued with magic, from the outside it may seem that in a number of very important areas of activity it does not exist.

For example, no native will dig up a bed of bagat or taro without uttering magical spells, but at the same time, the cultivation of coconuts, bananas, mangoes or breadfruit does without any magical rites. Fishing, which is subordinate to agriculture, is associated with magic only in some of its forms. This is mainly fishing for sharks, kalala fish and to "ulam. But equally important, although easier and more accessible, methods of fishing with plant poisons are not at all accompanied by magical rituals. When building a canoe, in a matter associated with significant technical difficulties, risky and highly organized work, the magical ritual is very complex, inextricably linked with this process and considered absolutely necessary.But the construction of huts, technically no less difficult than the construction of a canoe, but not so dependent on chance, not subject to such risks and dangers, is not requiring such a significant cooperation of labor, is not accompanied by any magical rites.Wood carving, which has an industrial meaning, which is taught from childhood and which is employed in some villages by almost all the inhabitants, is not accompanied by magic, but artistic sculpture made of ebony or iron wood, which is practiced only by people with extraordinary technical and artistic abilities, has the corresponding magical rites, which are considered the main source of skill or inspiration. Trade, kula, a ceremonial form of exchange of goods, has its own magical ritual; however, other, smaller forms of barter, which are purely commercial in nature, do not involve any magical rites. War and love, illness, wind, weather, fate - all this, according to the natives, is completely dependent on magical powers.

Already from this cursory review, an important generalization emerges for us, which will serve as a starting point. Magic takes place where a person encounters uncertainty and chance, and also where there is an extreme emotional tension between the hope to achieve the goal and the fear that this hope may not come true. Where the goals of activity are defined, achievable and well controlled by rational methods and technology, we do not find magic. But it is present where the elements of risk and danger are obvious. There is no magic when complete confidence in the safety of the event makes any prediction of the course of events superfluous. This is where the psychological factor comes into play. But magic also performs another, no less important, social function. I have already written about the fact that magic acts as an effective factor in organizing labor and giving it a systemic character. It also acts as a force that allows the implementation of practical plans. Therefore, the culturally integrative function of magic is to eliminate those obstacles and inconsistencies that inevitably arise in those areas of practice that have great social significance, where a person is not able to fully

control the course of events. Magic maintains in a person the confidence in the success of his actions, without which he would not have been able to achieve his goals; in magic a man draws spiritual and practical resources when he cannot rely on the ordinary means at his disposal. Magic instills in him faith, without which he could not solve vital tasks, strengthens his spirit and allows him to gather strength in those circumstances when he is threatened with despair and fear, when he is seized with horror or hatred, crushed by love failure or impotent rage.

Magic has something in common with science in the sense that it is always directed towards a certain goal, generated by the biological and spiritual nature of man. The art of magic is always subordinated to practical ends; like any other art or craft, it has some conceptual basis and principles, the system of which determines the way to achieve goals. Therefore, magic and science have a number of similarities, and, following Sir James Frazer, we might with some justification call magic "pseudo-science."

Let's take a closer look at what constitutes the art of magic. Whatever the specific form of magic, it always contains three essential elements. In a magical act, there are spells spoken or chanted, a ritual or ceremony, and the person who officially has the right to perform the ceremony and cast spells. Thus, when analyzing magic, one must distinguish between the formula of the spell, the rite, and the personality of the magician himself. I will note right away that in the area of ​​Melanesia where I conducted my research, the most important element of magic is a spell. To a native, to wield magic is to know a spell; in any witchcraft rite, the entire ritual is built around the repeated repetition of the spell. As for the ritual itself and the personality of the magician, these elements are conditional and are important only as an appropriate form for casting spells. This is important from the point of view of the topic we are discussing, since the magic spell reveals its connection with traditional teachings and, to an even greater extent, with mythology.

Exploring various forms of magic, we almost always find some narratives that describe and explain the origins of the existence of certain magical rites and spells. They tell how, when and where this formula came to belong to a particular person or community, how it was transmitted or inherited. But one should not see in such narratives a "history of magic." Magic has no "beginning", it is not created or invented. Magic has simply been from the very beginning, it has always existed as the most essential condition for all those events, things and processes that constitute the sphere of human vital interests and are not subject to his rational efforts. The spell, the rite and the purpose for which they are performed coexist in one and the same time of human existence.

Thus, the essence of magic lies in its traditional integrity. Without the slightest distortion and change, it is passed down from generation to generation, from primitive people to modern performers of rituals - and only in this way does it retain its effectiveness. Therefore, magic needs a kind of pedigree, so to speak, a passport for time travel. How a myth gives a magical rite value and significance, coupled with a belief in its effectiveness, is best shown by a concrete example.

As we know, the Melanesians attach great importance love and sex. Like other peoples inhabiting the islands of the South Seas, they allow great freedom and ease of conduct in sexual relations, especially before marriage. However, adultery is a punishable offense and ties within the same totemic clan are strictly prohibited. The biggest crime in

in the eyes of the natives is any form of incest. The mere thought of an illegal relationship between brother and sister horrifies and disgusts them. Brother and sister, united by the closest ties of kinship in this matriarchal society, cannot even freely communicate with each other, should never joke or smile at each other. Any allusion to one of them in the presence of the other is considered very bad manners. Outside the clan, however, freedom of sexual relations is quite significant, and love takes on many tempting and attractive forms.

The attractiveness of sex and the strength of love attraction, the natives believe, originate in love magic. The latter is based on a drama that once happened in the distant past. The tragic myth of incest between brother and sister tells of her. Here is its summary.

In one village, a brother and sister lived in their mother's hut. One day, a young girl accidentally inhaled the smell of a powerful love potion prepared by her brother to attract the affection of another woman. Mad with passion, she drew her own brother to a deserted seashore and seduced him there. Seized with remorse, tormented by pangs of conscience, the lovers stopped drinking and eating and died side by side in the same cave. Where their bodies lay, fragrant grass sprouted, the juice of which is now mixed with other infusions and used in the rites of love magic.

It can be said without exaggeration that magical myths, even more than other types of native mythology, serve as a social claim of people. On their basis, a ritual is created, faith in the miraculous power of magic is strengthened, and traditional patterns of social behavior are fixed.

The revelation of this cult-creating function of magical myth fully confirms the brilliant theory of the origin of power and monarchy developed by Sir James Frazer in the first chapters of his Golden Bough. According to Sir James, the origins of social power are to be found chiefly in magic. Having shown how the effectiveness of magic depends on local traditions, social class, and direct inheritance, we can now trace another cause and effect relationship between tradition, magic, and power.

3. Magic and religion

Before proceeding to a detailed description of totemism, it is necessary to determine the real place of another phenomenon. It is usually relied upon in attempts to separate religious faith from popular prejudices, presenting it as a higher "moment" of spiritual life, independent of the regional conditions of a particular historical era. It is about the relationship between magic and religion and the alleged difference between them.

In fact, it is unthinkable to completely separate the concepts of magic and religion. Each cult includes a magical practice: all prayers, from primitive to modern religions, are, in essence, a form of naive and illusory influence on the outside world. It is impossible to oppose the religion of magic without breaking with science.

The relations between man and nature that have been established since time immemorial have always had a twofold character: the dominance of omnipotent nature over helpless man, on the one hand, and on the other hand, the impact on nature that man sought to exercise, even if in limited and imperfect forms characteristic of primitive society. - using their tools, their productive forces, their abilities.

The interaction of these two only outwardly incomparable forces determines the development of peculiar methods by which primitive man sought to exert an imaginary influence on nature. These methods are, in fact, magical practice.

Imitation of hunting techniques should contribute to the success of the hunt itself. Before going in search of kangaroos, the Australians rhythmically dance around a picture depicting the much-desired prey on which the existence of the tribe depends.

If the people of the Caroline Islands want a newborn to become a good angler, they try to tie his newly cut umbilical cord to a pirogue or shuttle.

The Ainu people, the indigenous population of Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands, and the Japanese island of Hokkaido, catch a little bear cub. One of the women of the clan feeds him with her milk. A few years later, the bear is strangled or killed with arrows. The meat is then eaten together during the sacred meal. But before the ritual sacrifice, the bear is prayed to return to earth as soon as possible, to let himself be caught and continue to feed the group of people who raised him in this way.

Thus, by origin, witchcraft practice is not opposed to religion, but, on the contrary, merges with it. It is true that magic is not yet associated with any privileges of a social nature (in primitive society everyone can try to "pressure" the forces of nature). However, individual members of the clan begin to advance very early, claiming to have special data for this. With the advent of the first "sorcerer", the concept of "priest" also arises.

All these are indisputable signs of the formation of a religious ideology.

We have already noted that primitive society is characterized by a naive materialistic understanding of life, nature and social relations. The elementary needs of the first people, who owned everything in common and did not know the private appropriation of the means of subsistence, were evenly satisfied or not satisfied. The history of nature and the history of people merged into one: the second, as it were, continued the first.

The basic contradiction between man and the forces of nature, underlying primitive society, is not in itself sufficient to explain the emergence of the idea of ​​the other world, and even more so of the idea of ​​"evil", "sin" and "salvation". The contradictions rooted in differences in kinship, age and sex do not yet have a class character and have not given rise to any form of truly religious departure from life. It took people to realize the limitations that the new structure of society imposed on their daily life, so that, along with the decomposition of society into classes, there also arose a need for some kind of “spiritual” element (as is commonly expressed in theological and idealistic philosophy), opposed to nature, bodily, material.

Strictly speaking, the first forms of religiosity cannot even be recognized as manifestations of ritual practice based on some kind of "supernatural" idea and thus opposed to the normal everyday customs of man. The relationship between people and their totem - an animal, plant or natural phenomenon - does not go beyond the primitive materialistic worldview with all the absurdities characteristic of it, which are preserved and retained in the beliefs of subsequent eras. Magic itself at first appears as a kind of material pressure of a person on nature or society in order to obtain certain tangible results.

Collective life could not of itself "objectively manifest itself in myth and ritual," as various representatives of the French sociological school from Durkheim to Lévy-Bruhl argue. A society without social contradictions could never give rise to religious "alienation."

When the primitive community, based on the equal participation of its members in obtaining and appropriating products, disintegrates and gives way to a regime of private property, for this period the religious ideas of people did not go beyond the imaginary connections of the primitive group with certain animals or plants on which its members ate (such as hare, turtle, porcupine, kangaroo, wild boar, eagle, bear, deer, various types of berries and herbs, trees). But the stratification of the family and the emergence of classes led to a bifurcation of ideology, which was of exceptional importance, and gave rise to different views of nature, on the one hand, and, on the other, of the world of phenomena, which were henceforth recognized as supernatural.

4 . From animal kin to animal ancestor

Totemism is the most ancient form of religion that we know in the history of mankind before the era of the emergence of classes.

What exactly does "totem" mean? This word, as we have already seen, originally meant a relationship between members of a certain group of people and their alleged or actual ancestor. Later, this relationship was extended to animals and plants that serve this group to maintain existence. This expansion of ideas is itself a certain religious process. From the concept of the totem, over time, a cult of animals, plants and natural phenomena will develop that determine human life.

It is often argued that totemism cannot be considered a religious phenomenon, since the mythical kinsman and patron of the group is not yet recognized as standing above man and is not identified with any deity. Proponents of this point of view, which is supported by theologians and some rationalist scientists, simply do not take into account that the process of establishing the idea of ​​a higher being, and even more so a personified deity, could not begin before privileged groups began to prevail in society, leading strata, social classes.

In a society with a division of labor based on family relations and age differences, kinship relations naturally become the main type of religious ties. The animal upon which the clan's food supply depends is at the same time regarded as a relative of the group. Members of this clan do not eat its meat, just as men and women of the same group do not marry each other. This prohibition is expressed in the word of Polynesian origin - "tabu" ("tapu"), which was first heard by the navigator Cook in Tanga (1771). The original meaning of this word is separated, removed away. In a primitive society, taboo is everything that, according to the primitive man, is fraught with danger.

The taboo is imposed on the sick, on corpses, on strangers, on women at certain periods of their physiological life, and in general on all objects that, as it seems to primitive man, have an extraordinary character. Later, tribal chiefs, monarchs and priests would enter the same category. Everything that is taboo is untouchable and carries an infection; however, these ideas gave rise to some healing and cleansing prohibitions.

All these beliefs are explained in various forms real life and social relations, the effect of which people experienced on themselves. It was not religion that gave birth to the idea of ​​pure and impure, holy and mundane, permitted and forbidden, but social practice, which created the reflected world of legends and rituals called sacred. But, having been born, these ideas have gone the way of independent development. And the conclusion that the way of life of people and the mode of production, and not their way of thinking, led to certain ideas does not at all mean neglect of the specific meaning of ideology or the explanation of questions of religion by simple economic references.

Which of the researchers of primitive society can deny the decisive role of social relations of production?

A group of people lives by hunting, which has everywhere been an obligatory stage in the development of society. But in order to overtake the prey, it is necessary to master the extremely complex hunting art, the ideological reflection of which can be seen in the so-called rites of passage, to which only men are so far allowed. This is the purification, initiation and introduction of the young man into the number of hunters (or fish catchers).

During ritual festivities, often lasting weeks, the initiate symbolically dies in order to be reborn to a new life and be able to fulfill his duties towards society. We are still far from the ideas of redemption and salvation that arise only in the era of the highest development of slavery, when salvation, which was impossible on earth, was transferred to the sphere of fiction, to the other world. But the transition of a young man into a more responsible category, in connection with his age or the skills he has acquired, bears in itself the germ of the idea of ​​​​the rites that will later develop in the religion of the "mysteries" and in Christianity itself.

Powerless in the face of nature and the collective, primitive man identifies himself with the animal ancestor, with his totem, through complex and often painful ceremonies, which ultimately increases his dependence on nature and the social environment. Out of the rite, out of the details of the cult, there arises little by little the striving to interpret reality from the point of view of myth and tradition.

When restoring the process of development of the first forms of religious ideology, it is always necessary to beware of attributing to a person cares and beliefs that can arise only in subsequent phases of the development of society.

There is no doubt that when we seek to judge the customs and attitudes that belong to an era in which the exploitation of man by man did not yet exist, it is difficult for us to get rid of the burden of old ideas accumulated over millennia, which are reflected in the very language in which we speak about all these issues. . It is as difficult as it is to describe now, even in general terms, the changes that will take place in the character, morals and mind of people with the disappearance of classes and the establishment of a society where freedom and equality will not be, as they are now, dubious expressions.

When, for example, we speak of a cult, we introduce a concept that could not make sense at the earliest stage in the development of human society.

For, etymologically, the idea of ​​a cult is connected with the practice of cultivating the land and presupposes a society in which production relations are already based on a primitive form of agriculture and on a corresponding division of labor between old and young, especially between men and women.

It was the women that the tribe entrusted during this period, in addition to cooking, field work, growing fruits and plants, while at the same time, men were still engaged in hunting. This period in the history of primitive society includes the advancement of women in society, which characterizes the era of matriarchy.

Traces of this era are preserved not only in religious life, in folk traditions and in the language, but also in the customs of many peoples of our time: in the Malay Peninsula, in India, in Sumatra, in New Guinea, among the Eskimos, among the Nile tribes, in the Congo, Tanganyika, Angola and South America.

The era of matriarchy explains why the most ancient fertility rites known to us are primarily characterized by the cult of a woman or the attributes of a woman (schematic representations of the details of a woman's anatomy, magical vulvar cults, etc.).

But before forcing the land to submit to the will of the person who cultivates it, society went through a period of collecting the means of subsistence, in which everyone was engaged in equal rights, a period of hunting, cattle breeding and shepherding. As long as the division of labor took place within the framework of age and kinship relations, the connection between the individual and the totem could not yet acquire the character of a genuine cult.

Each group of people within a larger association - the terms clan and tribe suggest already a fairly developed social organization - specializes in hunting a certain animal: boar, deer, snakes, bear, kangaroo. But in a society where the individual depends on others for food, this animal eventually ceases to be separated from the group itself - it becomes its symbol, its patron, and finally, its ancestor.

Complex ceremonies gradually turn the notion of a biological connection into an imaginary connection. And little by little, from such ideas, the cult of ancestors arises, which is possible with a much higher degree of social differentiation and has been preserved among various peoples of India, China, Africa and Polynesia.

A person of a certain totemic group treats his animal ancestor with special reverence. Those who hunt the bear, for example, avoid eating its meat, at least during the holy fast, but feed on game taken by hunters of other groups who have a different totem. The community of people formed on the site of the disintegrated primitive horde is like a vast cooperative in which everyone must take care of food for others and in turn depends on others for their livelihood.

Blurred, but the stadial commonality can be traced everywhere. Relationship between art and religion In general, the close relationship between art and religion is determined by a number of common points. Most importantly, they express a person's value attitude to reality, to the world of being, to the meaning of one's own life and the future of one's land. Art and religion were closely intertwined in the structure of the ancient syncretic...

According to the tribes of the present time, which are in similar conditions. And again, the main manifestation of the initial stage of the development of religion is totemism. It is especially pronounced among the peoples of Australia. This form of religion lies in the fact that each clan, tribe is magically related to its totem animal or object. Each member can have his own totem, there is also sexual totemism, i.e. one...

Both magic and religion arise in situations of emotional stress: an everyday crisis, the collapse of the most important plans, death and initiation into the mysteries of one's tribe, unhappy love or unquenched hatred. Both magic and religion indicate ways out of such situations and dead ends in life, when reality does not allow a person to find another way, except for turning to faith, ritual, the sphere of the supernatural. In religion, this sphere is filled with spirits and souls, providence, supernatural patrons of the family and heralds of its mysteries; in magic by the primitive belief in the power of magic magic spells. Both magic and religion are directly based on the mythological tradition, on the atmosphere of miraculous expectation of the revelation of their miraculous power. Both magic and religion are surrounded by a system of rites and taboos that distinguish their actions from those of the uninitiated. But what is the difference between magic and religion?

Magic is the science of practical creation. Magic is based on knowledge, but spiritual knowledge, knowledge about the supersensible. Magical experiments aimed at studying the supernatural are in themselves scientific in nature, therefore their presentation belongs to scientific literature in terms of genre. Let's follow the differences and similarities of magic with religion and science.

The difference between magic and religion

Let us begin with the most definite and conspicuous difference: in the sacred sphere, magic appears as a kind of practical art that serves to perform actions, each of which is a means to an end; religion -- as a system of such actions, the fulfillment of which in itself is a certain goal. Let's try to trace this difference at deeper levels. The practical art of magic has a definite and strictly applied technique of performance: witchcraft spells, ritual and the personal abilities of the performer form a permanent trinity. Religion, in all its manifold aspects and aims, does not have such a simple technique; its unity is not reduced to a system of formal actions, or even to the universality of its ideological content, it rather lies in the function performed and in the value meaning of faith and ritual. The beliefs inherent in magic, in accordance with its practical orientation, are extremely simple. It is always a belief in the power of a person to achieve a desired goal through witchcraft and ritual. At the same time, in religion we observe a significant complexity and diversity of the supernatural world as an object: a pantheon of spirits and demons, the beneficial powers of a totem, spirits - the guardians of the clan and tribe, the souls of the forefathers, pictures of the future afterlife - all this and much more creates a second , a supernatural reality for primitive man. Religious mythology is also more complex and varied, more imbued with creativity. Usually religious myths are concentrated around various dogmas and develop their content in cosmogonic and heroic narratives, in descriptions of the deeds of gods and demigods. Magical mythology, as a rule, appears in the form of endlessly repeated stories about the extraordinary achievements of primitive people. B. Malinovsky "Magic, Science and Religion" - [Electronic resource |

Magic, as a special art of achieving specific goals, in one of its forms once enters the cultural arsenal of a person and then is directly transmitted from generation to generation. From the very beginning, it has been an art that few specialists have mastered, and the first profession in the history of mankind is the profession of a sorcerer and sorcerer. Religion, in its most primitive forms, appears as a common cause of primitive people, each of whom takes an active and equal part in it. Each member of the tribe goes through a rite of passage (initiation) and subsequently initiates others himself. Each member of the tribe mourns and weeps when his relative dies, participates in the burial and honors the memory of the deceased, and when his hour comes, he will be mourned and remembered in the same way. Each person has his own spirit, and after death, each person becomes a spirit. The only specialization that exists within religion, the so-called primitive spiritualistic mediumship, is not a profession, but an expression of personal talent. Another difference between magic and religion is the play of black and white in sorcery, while religion in its primitive stages is not much interested in the opposition between good and evil, beneficent and malefic forces. Here again, the practical nature of magic, aimed at immediate and measurable results, is important, while primitive religion is turned to fatal, inevitable events and supernatural forces and beings (although mainly in a moral aspect), and therefore does not deal with problems associated with human impact on the environment.

Religious faith gives stability, shapes and strengthens all value-significant mental attitudes, such as respect for tradition, a harmonious worldview, personal valor and confidence in the fight against worldly adversity, courage in the face of death, etc. This faith, maintained and formalized in cult and ceremonies, is of great vital importance and reveals to primitive man the truth in the broadest, practically important sense of the word. What is the cultural function of magic? As we have already said, all the instinctive and emotional abilities of a person, all his practical actions can lead to such impasses when they misfire all his knowledge, reveal their limitations in the power of the mind, cunning and observation do not help. The forces on which a person relies in everyday life leave him at a critical moment. Human nature responds with a spontaneous explosion, releasing rudimentary forms of behavior and a dormant belief in their effectiveness. Magic builds on this belief, transforming it into a standardized ritual that takes on a continuous traditional form. Thus, magic provides a person with a set of ready-made ritual acts and standard beliefs, formalized by a certain practical and mental technique. Thus, as it were, a bridge is erected across the abysses that arise before a person on the way to his most important goals, a dangerous crisis is overcome. This allows a person not to lose his presence of mind when solving the most difficult life tasks; maintain self-control and integrity of the personality when an attack of anger, a paroxysm of hatred, a hopelessness of despair and fear approaches. The function of magic is to ritualize human optimism, to maintain faith in the victory of hope over despair. In magic, a person finds confirmation that self-confidence, perseverance in trials, optimism prevail over hesitation, doubt and pessimism. Ibid

According to J. Fraser, the radical opposition of magic and religion explains the unbending hostility with which clergy throughout history have treated sorcerers. The priest could not help but resent the arrogant arrogance of the sorcerer, his arrogance in relation to higher powers, his shameless claim to possess equal power with them. To the priest of some god, with his reverent sense of divine majesty and his humble admiration for him, such claims must have seemed an impious, blasphemous usurpation of the prerogatives belonging to the god alone. Sometimes baser motives have contributed to this hostility. The priest proclaimed himself the only true intercessor and true mediator between god and man, and his interests, as well as his feelings, often ran counter to the interests of the rival, who preached a more sure and smooth road to happiness than the thorny and slippery path of gaining divine grace.

But this antagonism, however familiar it may seem to us, seems to appear at a comparatively late stage in religion. In the earlier stages, the functions of sorcerer and priest were often combined, or rather not separated. A person sought the favor of the gods and spirits with the help of prayers and sacrifices, and at the same time resorted to charms and spells that could have the desired effect on their own, without the help of a god or a devil. In short, a person performed religious and magical rites, pronounced prayers and spells in one breath, while he did not pay attention to the theoretical inconsistency of his behavior, if by hook or by crook he managed to achieve what he wanted. J. Fraser "Golden Bough"

As we can see, there are differences between magic and religion. Religion is focused on meeting the corresponding needs of the people, on mass worship. Magic, by its very nature, cannot be a production line. In magical training, constant personal guidance of a person from outside is necessary. Higher Forces. There is a direct parallel here with experimental research in science.

Nobody will let stranger to a closed laboratory where experiments are carried out, for example, with high energies, with low temperatures, nuclear research. These experiments are carried out only by experienced scientists after preliminary mathematical and physical modeling in full compliance with safety regulations and the guaranteed absence of unauthorized persons in the laboratory.

magic religion rite ritual

History of British social anthropology Nikishenkov Alexey Alekseevich

3.1.2. Religion, magic, mythology

Malinovsky, on the whole, shared the division of phenomena in traditional societies proposed by E. Durkheim into “sacred” and “profane”. The nature of the "sacred", that is, religion and magic, he deduced not from social consciousness, but from the psychology of the individual. According to his biopsychological doctrine, the researcher considered religion and magic to be "cultural correspondences" designed to satisfy certain biopsychological needs of a person. Developing this a priori thesis, Malinovsky built his "pragmatic theory" of religion, magic and mythology. The starting point of his "pragmatic theory" of magic was the recognition of the fact that in "primitive" societies human capabilities are very limited. The feeling of weakness encourages a person to look for "additions" to his positive knowledge and available technical means. He "attempts to control the forces of nature directly, with the help of 'special knowledge'", i.e. magic. Thus, magic, according to Malinowski, is an attempt by a person to achieve the fulfillment, at least illusory, of "strong and impossible desires."

Without magic, argues Malinovsky, primitive man "could neither cope with the practical difficulties of life, nor reach the higher stages of culture." The scientist explains this statement by the fact that the function performed by magic is necessary, and it is necessary not so much for society as for each of its constituent individuals: “... The function of magic is to ritualize a person’s optimism, to increase his faith in the triumph of hope over fear. Magic brings to a person the predominance of confidence over doubt, steadfastness over indecision, optimism over pessimism. In the same vein, the researcher solves the question of the roots and functions of religion.

The emergence of religion, according to Malinovsky, was caused by a person's fear of death and those phenomena that he could not explain, of natural and social forces that he could not resist. The function of religion, the scientist believes, is that it “introduces, fixes and strengthens all valuable mental attitudes, such as reverence for traditions, harmony with the surrounding nature, courage and firmness in the fight against difficulties and in the face of death. Religious beliefs, embodied in cult and ceremonies, have an enormous biological value and, as such, represent for primitive people the truth in the broad pragmatic sense of the word. The definitions of magic and religion given by Malinovsky show that both of these phenomena merge in his concept, although Malinovsky declaratively joined J. Frazer's thesis about their fundamental difference. Mythology "pragmatic theory" assigned the auxiliary role of a kind of repository of religious plots, images, magic spells, etc.

The comforting, illusory-compensatory function of religion attracted the attention of philosophers long before Malinovsky. L. Feuerbach spoke about the nature of this function, which is rooted in the fundamental contradiction between people's "will and ability", at one time. This position was developed by the classics of Marxism, who, along with an analysis of the material conditions for the emergence and existence of religion, never lost sight of the fact that it is also “a direct, i.e. emotional, form of people’s relations to alien forces dominating them, natural and public." K. Marx in his work “On the Criticism of the Hegelian Philosophy of Law” defines religion as “the illusory happiness of the people”, “the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of the heartless world” and, ultimately, as “the opium of the people”.

"Pragmatic Theory", expressing the most general ideas of Malinovsky about the nature of religion, however, does not cover all of his ideas about the significance of this phenomenon in a particular pre-class society. In this issue, the split in the scientific thinking of the anthropologist was especially clearly manifested. His ideas about religion are located, as it were, at different levels - general sociological and empirical. If the source of the first is a priori ideological attitudes, then the source of the second is the reality observed on the Trobriands.

The specific scientific conclusions of Malinovsky about the role of religion, magic and mythology in Trobriand society are the result of a complex interaction of the two indicated tendencies, a collision of worldview bias with factual material. Malinovsky was one of the first to draw attention to the specifics of the existence of religious ideas in pre-class society - to their vagueness, inconsistency, in fact, to the absence of a clear, logically coherent religious system. He was one of the first in anthropology to pose the problem of creating a special methodology for studying these ideas, an extremely important and controversial problem to this day.

Having not received from the Trobriands a coherent description of their ideas about the souls of the dead ( baloma), Malinovsky proposed an indirect way of isolating the invariant features of religious ideas - either through their manifestations in ritual practice, the procedure of which is strictly regulated by tradition, or through spontaneous expressions of religious ideas in everyday activities. He believed that “all people, even those who are not able to express in words what they think about the “baloma” ... nevertheless, they always behave in a certain way towards her, adhering to certain rules of custom and fulfilling certain canons of emotional reactions." This empiricist-methodological proposition acquired the character of a leading principle both in describing the religious and magical activity of the Trobriands and in interpreting it. According to this principle, "religious ideas must be studied in their actions in the space of social dimensions, they must be considered in the light of various kinds thinking and the various institutions in which they can be traced.

Such a methodological prescription, essentially denying the narrowness of the “pragmatic theory”, corresponds to the real state of affairs in pre-class society, which is characterized by “sacralization of social ideas and norms, relations, groups and institutions. Religious consciousness dominates. Religious groups coincide with ethnic communities. Religious activity is an indispensable link in general social activity. Religious relations are "imposed" on other social ties. Social institutions unite religious and secular power.

Malinovsky rightly believed that every primitive society has a certain stock of knowledge based on experience and organized in a rational way, and this knowledge is bizarrely intertwined with ignorance. Starting from this position, he came to a number of interesting conclusions about the significance of religion in various areas of the life of the Trobriands. Particularly noticeable was the contribution of Malinovsky to the study of the role of mythology in pre-class society. Contemporaries, not without reason, perceived it as a "revolution" in this branch of anthropology.

Malinovsky's predecessors, who studied the mythology of primitive and ancient peoples, dealt, as a rule, with texts, but not with the life of the peoples themselves, among whom these myths existed. Ancient myths reached the New Age in a form greatly distorted by literary processing; the myths of modern pre-class and early class societies came into the hands of scientists as disparate plots that lost their original appearance from the retelling of random people - travelers, missionaries, merchants, etc. All this inevitably led to a certain limitation of the myth theories created by scientists.

By the time Malinovsky published his interpretation of "primitive" mythology, E. Tylor's ideas about primitive mythology, as well as the ideas of the "mythological school" of M. Müller, were most widespread in Western science. If Tylor considered primitive mythology as the result of man's attempts to explain the world around him with the meager means of his "primitive" intellect, then the representatives of the Muller school saw the reason for the appearance of mythological plots in the "language disease" of primitive people who resorted to metaphors, presenting meteorological phenomena in the form of supernatural characters.

A fundamentally new vision of "primitive" mythology allowed Malinovsky to reveal the limitations of the armchair interpretation of the nature of myth and myth-making. The scientist showed that Tylor's and Muller's interpretations of the myth are attempts to impose on some imaginary "savage" his own rationalistic position, the position of a contemplator and thinker, which is least of all suitable for real representatives of pre-class society. “Based on my own study of living myths among savages,” writes Malinovsky, “I must admit that a purely scientific or poetic interest in nature is characteristic of primitive man to an extremely small extent, symbolic creativity is given extremely little space in his ideas and stories; myth is in reality not an idle rhapsody or an aimless outpouring of vainglorious imagination, but an intensely working, extremely important cultural force.

The mythology of pre-class society was presented for the first time in its entirety in its various forms. social functions namely Malinovsky. The myth in his interpretation "expresses and gives special meaning religious beliefs, codifies them; it guards and enhances morality, it contributes to the effectiveness of the ritual and contains practical guides for human activity." In a word, mythology is the "charter" of all social institutions"primitive" society. In this capacity, the myth is considered as a set of social attitudes, rules of conduct, norms of customary law, embodied in the plots of the sacred past, i.e. acts as a regulator social activities in an illiterate society. E. M. Meletinsky rightly called this interpretation of the myth the discovery of Malinovsky, which laid the foundation for a fundamentally new direction in the study of mythology.

Malinovsky's view of the regulatory role of myth in pre-class society reveals characteristics this phenomenon as a kind of synthesis of perverse ideas and objective judgments. Here knowledge appears in the form of ignorance, objective reality is reflected inadequately, but in this reflection there is an element of truth dressed in fantastic clothes of fiction. Such an interpretation of mythology makes its consideration a necessary element in the study of any sphere of the spiritual culture of pre-class society and, in particular, religion and magic.

If the connection of mythology with religion has always been obvious to scientists, then its connection with magic was discovered by Malinovsky and convincingly illustrated on the Trobriand material. Naive and absurd, from the point of view of a European, the determinism of magical actions received a new interpretation thanks to Malinovsky's research. The anthropologist came to the conclusion that the Trobriands resorted to magical actions not only and even not so much because they misunderstand the objective causal relationship of phenomena, but because the sacred characters of their myths behave in similar cases in similar cases. The magical act itself looks like a dramatization of a certain mythological plot, through which those who perform it, as it were, join the sacred mythical world. The desired result is “achieved” not as a result of a certain action, but as a result of the “transfer” of the life situation that has arisen to a different state - to the mythological “space-time”, where special laws operate and where the spirits of ancestors, cultural heroes, etc. are helpers of people.

Magic, according to Malinowski, is completely based on mythology: magic spells are nothing but a certain piece of myth; the necessity and content of certain magical rites in different situations determined by the structure and content of mythology. Consideration of magic in its connection with mythology revealed a whole layer of new for the British social anthropology of the first third of the twentieth century. qualities of this phenomenon - systemic qualities that did not follow from the internal nature of the magical act, but were determined by the place of this act in the worldview of society.

Malinovsky did not dwell on the analysis of the systemic qualities of the magical ritual only in the plane of its connections with mythology. He went further, revealing the functional connections of magic with the main spheres of life of the Trobriand society - the economy and social organization. Analyzing the significance of magic in Trobriand agriculture, Malinovsky comes to the conclusion that “magic always accompanies agricultural work and is practiced not from time to time, as soon as it arises. a special case or at the behest of a whim, but as an essential part of the whole system of agricultural labor", which "does not allow an honest observer to discard it as a mere appendage." At the same time, the scientist states a paradoxical split in the minds of the Trobriands - they know very well and can rationally explain what is required to achieve good harvest, but at the same time they are absolutely sure that you won’t get it without magical rites and, explaining this, they refer to the myth in which the cultured hero performs a magical rite.

What is the reason for this inconsistency? Malinowski attaches special scientific importance to the answer to this question: "The relationship between supernatural means of control over the natural course of things and rational technique is one of the most important problems for the sociologist." Magical rites, in the interpretation of Malinovsky, are a kind of mechanism for the connection between mythology as the focus of tribal tradition and the practical activities of people. Through a magical rite, the centuries-old experience embedded in mythological legends is realized, including the experience of cultivation cultivated plants and organization of this technological process. Magic rite affirms and maintains in the minds of people the value of this experience, attributing to it a sacred meaning by referring to the authority of mythical ancestors. Magi ( towosi), responsible for the rites that promote the growth of yams ( megwakeda), are at the same time organizers of collective labor; they are generally acknowledged experts in agricultural matters.

In the minds of the Trobriands, the idea of ​​ownership of a particular plot of land is often associated with the magician's sacred connection with this plot, although in reality a certain community or its subdivision is its real owner. "Magic performed for the village community as a whole (involving several settlements. - A. N.), villages, and at times for the division of the village (sub-clan. - A. N.), has its own "towoshi" (magician) and its own system of "towoshi" (magic), and this is perhaps the main expression of the unity (of the listed divisions. - A. N.)". The described situation means that the land-ownership and real production-territorial structure of the Trobriand society in the minds of its members appear in an "inverted" form as the structure of magical activity and the hierarchy of persons who produce it. And this is not surprising, since it is the magicians who usually lead the teams that gather to work together.

Malinowski's empirically reflected picture of the "imposition" of magical practice on the structure of the production activity of the Trobriands includes another significant aspect - the role of magic in their social organization. After all, in this society, the magician is often combined in one person with the leader or head of the community, which follows from the principle of the correspondence of the sacred status to the social potestary, which is characteristic of the whole of Melanesia.

Malinovsky gives an interesting interpretation of the connection between the mythology of the Trobriands and their systems of kinship. In myths, he argues, there are norms governing the relationship between various related groups. The researcher confirms this by the fact that the relationships between mythological creatures are codified norms of behavior. So, for example, the mythological plot, which tells about all kinds of meetings and adventures of the Dog, the Pig and the Crocodile, is nothing more than the norms of relations between the most important totem groups bearing the names of these creatures, generalized on the basis of specific logic. The relationships of the Trobriands with the souls of the dead and of the souls of the dead among themselves are transformed, sacralized types of relationships between different categories of classifying relatives. This is due to the fact that “social division, belonging of an individual to a clan or sub-clan is preserved through all his rebirths”, which gives significant social and regulatory significance to the cult of ancestors, who act here as sacred guardians of traditional norms of behavior.

Malinovsky's specific empirical interpretation of the religion, magic and mythology of the Trobriands, which was the result of certain logical possibilities of this level of methodology, made an unconditionally positive contribution to the study of the problem. But, recognizing this, we must pay attention to the limitations of such an interpretation.

The limiting influence of Malinovsky's a priori attitudes on his specific conclusions was expressed, first of all, in focusing attention on the positive side of religious functions and in a complete refusal to see their negative sides (the dogmas of "universal functionality" and "functional necessity"). Malinovsky unreasonably put an equal sign between socially useful phenomena, in the functioning of which there is a religious and magical aspect, and religion itself. Speaking about the illusory-compensatory function of religion, he did not want to notice its other features - the constant fear of black magic, the fear of evil spirits that fetter the will and mind of man.

Briefly summarizing the conclusions from the analysis of Malinovsky's specific scientific interpretation of the factual material on the Trobriands, which is a modeling type of explanation, we can conclude the following. Intuitive-fictional descriptiveness as a consequence of the operational uncertainty of the methods led to the fact that the explanations of the factual material turned out to be extremely vague and ambiguous, they seem to be guessed when reading Malinovsky's monographs. It is never possible to say with complete certainty how he evaluates this or that fact. Rather, the fact speaks for itself than Malinovsky speaks about it.

Many of the principles of his specific methods, which in themselves were certain methodological achievements, in practice often had an undesirable effect. Thus, the principle of reflecting phenomena in their interconnection led to factual overload - behind the huge amount of materials used, the analytical thought of the researcher was lost, isolating invariant relations that express not directly visible, but significant ties in society. The principle of a modeling explanation of a phenomenon through showing its role in the general cultural context contributed to the dissolution of the qualitative specifics of this phenomenon in a variety of others.

The result of all this was the lack of a clear theoretical analysis of the institutions of kinship and religion of pre-class society, a logical conclusion about their qualitative specificity. Malinovsky's conclusions on these problems do not represent a coherent system of views, they are only a series of observed empirical patterns, not explanations, but only outlines of explanations, not a solution to the problem, but its formulation and indication possible directions solutions. The noted analytical weaknesses, however, are more than compensated for by the literary gift of Malinovsky, who possessed a mysterious ability in his works to describe the phenomena under study in such a way that these descriptions spoke much more about reality than their generalized interpretation.

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