It is convenient to briefly indicate what magic has represented for the human being; he creates it by his “belief” in the supernatural. Man, from the earliest times, has tried to control all the natural phenomena that were generated in his physical environment and to know the movements of the stars, as well as the causes of what he did not understand.
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The cave painting found in the “Les trois Freres” grotto in the south of France is very representative. This figure represents an individual who has a beard, legs and feet drawn, and is presented walking and moving, with deer horns on his head, and his ears and arms correspond to another type of animal. So it is adorned with “animal” parts. Surely he is an individual dressed for a ceremony and was magically representing a deer hunter along with other animals, so the title that has been assigned to him is “the sorcerer”.
This finding corresponds to the hominid remains found in this region of France and which was called Cro-Magnon Man because it was located in a cave with this name. (Posts HOMO-ITER: MAN WALKER. PART I & HOMO-ITER: MAN WALKER. PART II; Future post CHRONICLE OF A DISAPPEARANCE ANNOUNCED IN THE PLEISTOCENE).
This painting falls within what is called imitative magic, since the fact of representing a human being in a painting implied that by putting it in motion – along with the other elements of the painting – it would achieve the invoked results: being able to reach the animal required. A painting, representing this ceremony, served to spiritually understand the animal that they did not want to harm it, but would need it for its meat to feed and its skin as clothing. Surely there were some other ways of drawing or painting the objects and animals that they wanted to magically relate, such as, for example, drawing them along the paths or areas –on the ground or in the sand- that these animals used to travel and who needed to get hold of to benefit of its meats, bones and skins.
Another form of magic used -from ancient times- is the so-called contaminating or contact. Its fundamental principle is that the magician can act on a person (or animal) by in his hand any object that has been in contact with that person (or animal). All these magical forces exert their effectiveness on the things on which they interact, and are supposed to do so by a secret power of attraction, at near or far distances. Based on this other form of magic, we can imagine that they could also make contacts with the spear and with the horns of the animal to be able to attract them to themselves.
Although we have pointed out 2 forms of magic, the imitative and by contact, there are other modalities that have been practiced throughout the history of humanity; as well as we must recognize that they were not only used to hunt animals, but also to imitate them in their general behavior, their rest, their way of sleeping, to take care of other animals, their wandering, their way of feeding, etc.
Just as positive magic has existed, so has negative. J. G. Frazer in his book “The Golden Bough. Magic and Religion”, has expressed in this regard that both magic, the contact and the imitative, comprise both positive mandates (enchantments or sorcery) and negative (taboos or prohibitions), so you must answer what we must do what we should not do. He explains that positive mandates tell us that we must carry out this for this to happen, their purpose is to generate an event that is desired; while negative mandates tell us that we should not do this so that this does not happen, their purpose is to avoid the event that is feared.
These conceptualizations of Frazer about positive and negative magic lead us to mention that there have always been countless behaviors to carry out some activities while walking; suffice it to point out that of imitating the walking of some animals, of certain towns, attracting them to suitable trails to capture and hunt them. The same happens with the prohibition of doing some other activities while walking: not sewing, not spinning, not eating certain fruits or dishes, etc.
All peoples, for millennia, have been “building” their domestic magic, which are similar in general aspects, containing common elements. This generalized construction of magic in the human being responds to a universal archetype.
According to C. G. Jung, the archetypes “are images linked entirely to the emotions of the human being”, “… are images of a collective nature, which occur almost universally as constituents of myths and, at the same time, as autochthonous individual products of unconscious origin… ”; Thus, every archetype is a psychic binomial of images and emotions, a psychic projection or spiritual images (productions) generated in the collective unconscious and that reach to consciousness after long periods of time, generated by repeated experiences, in such a way that they have “incubated” in the collective unconscious, that is to say, they are always common to entire peoples and to specific times, and through the individual unconscious they are revealed, manifest and externalize themselves towards the physical environment. In our case, as manifestations in magical beliefs.
Every archetype is produced by a condensation of myriads of events similar to each other, of certain psychic experiences that have been repeated for millennia.
All these beliefs in magical matters are transfigured in images, sustained in an infinity of customs, rites, traditions, magical rituals, formulas of praise, help, blessing or curse, etc., that over the course of long periods of time are constituted an important part of the collective archetype.
Since ancient times, it is inscribed in the archaic mind that everything must “die” and “be reborn”. Let us keep in mind that the magic practiced by sorcerers (shamans, magicians, etc.), people specialized in this activity, sought fundamentally to help but above all to heal others, save them from not losing their lives.
Let’s also observe that the archetype “Magic” does not imply the existence of magic itself, nor of a magician or sorcerer, but has been formed by the condensation that we spoke of earlier, from the millennial repetition of psychic experiences and that have accumulated in the collective unconscious.
We can assure that there is always a connection between archetypes, and in addition to that of “Magic” should not be confused with those related to the ritual of the new, cycle restart, or astrological periods, or recreation. It is the search and encounter with life, with that spiritual part that the human being has always tried to find, and which later became a religion because magic ceased to be effective; for this reason, in a first phase these thaumaturges arose (healers, shamans, etc.), and in a later phase, religious figures (monks, priests, etc.) emerged. With the conception of “spirit” and the idea that dwells in “things” begins the process of transformation of magic – which begins to lose effectiveness – towards religion.
This repetition of events similar to each other, mostly equivalent or analogous, generated by everyday attitudes and actions regarding the practice of magic, translated into a search for power and control towards the supernatural and towards everything that was not understood, became It transformed into an archetype, which we could well enunciate – currently – psychologically as wanting to ascend to God or wanting to be like God. The condensation of that archetype translates into movement and dynamism that we must give way to by walking. That is to say, walking, we carry out that analogy in which we transfer and release that archetypal need to control the rest of things. Walking is exercising the archetype “Magic”; this has been based on rituals, customs and traditions -very varied in all peoples and that currently some still express archaically- that have provided us with a force (physical and mental) capable of coping with all kinds of emotional issues such as frustrations, losses , failures, sufferings, revenges, penances, threats, challenges, etc., and from the physical point of view, such as falls, accidents, diseases, discomforts, pain, infections, etc.
The displacement that is achieved through the archetype “Magic”, the soul or spirit of the individual -or group- that is involved in the process of archetypal images, generally participated disguising himself with animal or vegetable clothing, with or without a mask, and with rhythms and movements that resembled the animals that he wanted and needed to be present in the ceremony or in the magical ritual, for this reason there is always a relationship between clothing (or the cave painting that we mentioned earlier ) which is generally called totemism and the archetype “Magic”.
There is a parallelism between painting or drawing, totemism (including its statuary or sculptural creation) and the archetype “Magic”, since all three are representations of images that the unconscious (mind, spirit and soul) must carry out, and all of them are impregnated and sustained by human emotions.
Regarding the functional animal relationship, we can mention that part of the soul of the animal – its anima – is transmuted into the soul of the human being who invokes it magically, obtaining movement and energy from that selected animal, is the impulse to move. The anima generates a movement that gives breath, provokes and drives a walk that gives vigor.
An ancestral paragon is the activities we carry out when preparing daily food.
Sounds are eternal units that reside in the mind, in the interior of the being, entities that participate in creation when they are emitted by the voice, or by any other means, and are received by ears.
It seems that someone whispered to us advising that the highest art, the best art, is the one that is performed with the greatest number of human senses. And therefore, we could venture saying that the rhythm in the corporal movements has a deep and subtle effect in the preparation of the dishes. That rhythmic faculty, sensation and capacity are determining in the being for it.
I do not wish to elaborate on this, but I do comment that the activities carried out in the kitchen, aimed at preparing food, have always been carried out in the company of movements and songs of work – rhythm and compass – since ancient times and in very primitive activities such as mashing, grinding, cutting, kneading, mashing, combining, chopping, decapitating, mutilating, topping, slicing, carving, mixing, baking, roasting, and all of them surely had a compass, a song, a rhythm, a melody, a cadence (time lapse), that accompanied and led them.
It was characteristic that these were carried out in a group and as the food preparation activity became more and more an individual activity, the custom and its rituals of accompanying them with songs and rhythmic body movements in groups, was lost.
(Textual fragments extracted from my book: Loya Lopategui, Carlos, COCINOPEA. Gastronomy, EMULISA, México, 2011).
Hence, we could also venture to say that a good cook (male or female) is one who has an adequate and relevant interior rhythm. (Future post THE COMPASS AND THE RHYTHM IN THE WALKING). The rhythmic balance and the good flavor come together to achieve the best dishes.
Now, according to my personal conclusion about this archetype, that of Magic, is that we need to repeat our ancestors in their ceremonial behavior and be in motion imitating animals in their walk, to fully communicate with our deepest interiority (with our instincts), and this will, of course, be achieved by reducing our physical and mental dependence on modern means of transportation. So let’s start walking.
Our ancestors painted the totem to multiply it and to present it, either on the walls of a rock (like the cave painting described), on any soil or terrain, or specifically on the trails where that animal-totem used to walk or graze; sometimes they only highlighted the most desired parts of the animal or only those parts drew. In general, they painted some section of the animal totem that fully identified it as such, such as its antlers, its heads, its tusks, its tracks, etc.
The spirit (or soul) pictorially represented in this way (imitative magic) provided an encouraged (in latin: animation) for the animals to present themselves at the desired moments and in the right places, in order to hunt them down. In addition to these plastic forms, they also used real parts (contact magic) of the animal that they wanted to capture, such as their skins, ornaments, hooves, bones, etc.; all this to give an “animation” to their pack companions towards the place where they would wait for them, and after that, to capture all of them.
A very widespread variety in almost all the peoples of the world was the practice of imitative magic when ingesting selected parts of animals, because in them certain important forces of the animal were stored, and that when eating them – prepared in different ways – they transmitted those magical powers to the ingesting them; depending on the “part” that was destined to consume magically, greater physical strength, better eyesight, greater speed in running, greater resistance in walking long distances, better hearing, greater reproductive and fertilization capacity, ease in elimination of sterility and sexual impotence, etc.
In this same sense, another imitative magic practice, but with plants and vegetables was to eat parts of their stems, leaves, roots, flowers and fruits, because this is how they acquired their benign and healing properties, according to the people who provided them.
However, this regular custom, almost in all the peoples of the world, of eating plants and vegetables, there was also the magical practice that combined plants and vegetables with the capture of animals. For example, the use that was given to the fallen leaves – by themselves, not cut – from the trees. A certain number of them were placed in an animal pit-trap, so that in the same way the prey fell freely into the trap. The greater the number of leaves and the greater their size, the more animals and of great size would fall into the trap.
Another magical practice was contact with stones; because when they got tired walking, because they had traveled long distances, it was believed that touching them allowed them to transfer their tiredness to those stones that they later threw in special places along the way.
Let’s start walking. I am sure we do not need any magic to give an “animation” to our body to make it walk, or perhaps we should make contact with our archetype “Magic”.
