Erich Neumann

The Origins and History of Consciousness

Publisher: Princeton University Press (1954)

209

The magical effect of the rite is factual enough, and in no sense illusory. Moreover it actually works out, just as primitive man supposes, in his hunting successes; only the effect does not proceed via the object but via the subject. The magical rite, like all magic and indeed every higher intention, including those of religion, acts upon the subject who practices the magic or the religion, by altering and enhancing his own ability to act. In this sense the outcome of the action, whether it be hunting, war, or whatever else, is in the highest degree objectively dependent upon the effect of the magic ritual. It was left for modern man to make the psychological discovery that the operative factor in magic is the 'reality of the soul' and not the reality of the world. Originally the reality of the soul was projected outwards upon an external reality. Even today prayers for victory are commonly regarded not as an inner alteration of the psyche but as an effort to influence God. In exactly the same way, hunting magic was experienced as an effort to influence the quarry, and not as an influencing of the hunter himself. In both cases our enlightened rationalism misunderstands the magic and prayer as illusory, in its scientific pride at having established that the object cannot be influenced. In both cases it is wrong. An effect that proceeds from an alteration in the subject is objective and real.