Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race - Knowledge Rush

46 Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race[61]associated with the cult of the dead, for death was looked upon asthe resumption into nature, and as the investment with vague anduncontrollable powers, of a spiritual force formerly embodiedin the concrete, limited, manageable, and therefore less awfulform of a living human personality. Yet these powers werenot altogether uncontrollable. The desire for control, as wellas the suggestion of the means for achieving it, probably arosefrom the first rude practices of the art of healing. Medicineof some sort was one of the earliest necessities of man. Andthe power of certain natural substances, mineral or vegetable,to produce bodily and mental effects often of a most startlingcharacter would naturally be taken as signal evidence of whatwe may call the “magical” conception of the universe. 35 Thefirst magicians were those who attained a special knowledgeof healing or poisonous herbs; but “virtue” of some sort beingattributed to every natural object and phenomenon, a kind ofmagical science, partly the child of true research, partly of poeticimagination, partly of priestcraft, would in time spring up, wouldbe codified into rites and formulas, attached to special placesand objects, and represented by symbols. The whole subject hasbeen treated by Pliny in a remarkable passage which deservesquotation at length:Pliny on the Religion of Magic“Magic is one of the few things which it is important todiscuss at some length, were it only because, being the mostdelusive of all the arts, it has everywhere and at all timesbeen most powerfully credited. Nor need it surprise us thatit has obtained so vast an influence, for it has united in itselfthe three arts which have wielded the most powerful swayover the spirit of man. Springing in the first instance fromMedicine—a fact which no one can doubt—and under cover35 Thus the Greek pharmakon=medicine, poison, or charm; and I am informedthat the Central African word for magic or charm is mankwala, which alsomeans medicine.