Chapter 6. Magicians as Kings.
THE FOREGOING evidence may satisfy us that in many lands and many races magic has
claimed to control the great forces of nature for the good of man. If that has been so, the
practitioners of the art must necessarily be personages of importance and influence in any
society which puts faith in their extravagant pretensions, and it would be no matter for
surprise if, by virtue of the reputation which they enjoy and of the awe which they inspire,
some of them should attain to the highest position of authority over their credulous fellows.
In point of fact magicians appear to have often developed into chiefs and kings. 1
Let us begin by looking at the lowest race of men as to whom we possess comparatively
full and accurate information, the aborigines of Australia. These savages are ruled neither by
chiefs nor kings. So far as their tribes can be said to have a political constitution, it is a
democracy or rather an oligarchy of old and influential men, who meet in council and decide
on all measures of importance to the practical exclusion of the younger men. Their
deliberative assembly answers to the senate of later times: if we had to coin a word for such
a government of elders we might call it a gerontocracy. The elders who in aboriginal
Australia thus meet and direct the affairs of their tribe appear to be for the most part the
headmen of their respective totem clans. Now in Central Australia, where the desert nature
of the country and the almost complete isolation from foreign influences have retarded
progress and preserved the natives on the whole in their most primitive state, the headmen
of the various totem clans are charged with the important task of performing magical
ceremonies for the multiplication of the totems, and as the great majority of the totems are
edible animals or plants, it follows that these men are commonly expected to provide the
people with food by means of magic. Others have to make the rain to fall or to render other
services to the community. In short, among the tribes of Central Australia the headmen are
public magicians. Further, their most important function is to take charge of the sacred
storehouse, usually a cleft in the rocks or a hole in the ground, where are kept the holy
stones and sticks (churinga) with which the souls of all the people, both living and dead, are
apparently supposed to be in a manner bound up. Thus while the headmen have certainly to
perform what we should call civil duties, such as to inflict punishment for breaches of tribal
custom, their principal functions are sacred or magical. 2
When we pass from Australia to New Guinea we find that, though the natives stand at a
far higher level of culture than the Australian aborigines, the constitution of society among
them is still essentially democratic or oligarchic, and chieftainship exists only in embryo. Thus
Sir William MacGregor tells us that in British New Guinea no one has ever arisen wise
enough, bold enough, and strong enough to become the despot even of a single district.
"The nearest approach to this has been the very distant one of some person becoming a
renowned wizard; but that has only resulted in levying a certain amount of blackmail." 3
According to a native account, the origin of the power of Melanesian chiefs lies entirely in
the belief that they have communication with mighty ghosts, and wield that supernatural
power whereby they can bring the influence of the ghosts to bear. If a chief imposed a fine,
it was paid because the people universally dreaded his ghostly power, and firmly believed
that he could inflict calamity and sickness upon such as resisted him. As soon as any
considerable number of his people began to disbelieve in his influence with the ghosts, his
power to levy fines was shaken. Again, Dr. George Brown tells us that in New Britain "a
ruling chief was always supposed to exercise priestly functions, that is, he professed to be
in constant communication with the tebarans (spirits), and through their influence he was
enabled to bring rain or sunshine, fair winds or foul ones, sickness or health, success or
disaster in war, and generally to procure any blessing or curse for which the applicant was
willing to pay a sufficient price." 4
Still rising in the scale of culture we come to Africa, where both the chieftainship and the
kingship are fully developed; and here the evidence for the evolution of the chief out of the
magician, and especially out of the rain-maker, is comparatively plentiful. Thus among the
Wambugwe, a Bantu people of East Africa, the original form of government was a family
republic, but the enormous power of the sorcerers, transmitted by inheritance, soon raised
them to the rank of petty lords or chiefs. Of the three chiefs living in the country in 1894
two were much dreaded as magicians, and the wealth of cattle they possessed came to
them almost wholly in the shape of presents bestowed for their services in that capacity.
Their principal art was that of rain-making. The chiefs of the Wataturu, another people of
East Africa, are said to be nothing but sorcerers destitute of any direct political influence.
Again, among the Wagogo of East Africa the main power of the chiefs, we are told, is
derived from their art of rain-making. If a chief cannot make rain himself, he must procure it
from some one who can. 5
Again, among the tribes of the Upper Nile the medicine-men are generally the chiefs. Their
authority rests above all upon their supposed power of making rain, for "rain is the one
thing which matters to the people in those districts, as if it does not come down at the
right time it means untold hardships for the community. It is therefore small wonder that
men more cunning than their fellows should arrogate to themselves the power of producing
it, or that having gained such a reputation, they should trade on the credulity of their
simpler neighbours." Hence "most of the chiefs of these tribes are rain-makers, and enjoy a
popularity in proportion to their powers to give rain to their people at the proper season... .
Rain-making chiefs always build their villages on the slopes of a fairly high hill, as they no
doubt know that the hills attract the clouds, and that they are, therefore, fairly safe in their
weather forecasts." Each of these rain-makers has a number of rain-stones, such as
rock-crystal, aventurine, and amethyst, which he keeps in a pot. When he wishes to
produce rain he plunges the stones in water, and taking in his hand a peeled cane, which is
split at the top, he beckons with it to the clouds to come or waves them away in the way
they should go, muttering an incantation the while. Or he pours water and the entrails of a
sheep or goat into a hollow in a stone and then sprinkles the water towards the sky.
Though the chief acquires wealth by the exercise of his supposed magical powers, he often,
perhaps generally, comes to a violent end; for in time of drought the angry people assemble
and kill him, believing that it is he who prevents the rain from falling. Yet the office is usually
hereditary and passes from father to son. Among the tribes which cherish these beliefs and
observe these customs are the Latuka, Bari, Laluba, and Lokoiya. 6
In Central Africa, again, the Lendu tribe, to the west of Lake Albert, firmly believe that
certain people possess the power of making rain. Among them the rain-maker either is a
chief or almost invariably becomes one. The Banyoro also have a great respect for the
dispensers of rain, whom they load with a profusion of gifts. The great dispenser, he who
has absolute and uncontrollable power over the rain, is the king; but he can depute his
power to other persons, so that the benefit may be distributed and the heavenly water laid
on over the various parts of the kingdom. 7
In Western as well as in Eastern and Central Africa we meet with the same union of chiefly
with magical functions. Thus in the Fan tribe the strict distinction between chief and
medicine-man does not exist. The chief is also a medicine-man and a smith to boot; for the
Fans esteem the smith's craft sacred, and none but chiefs may meddle with it. 8
As to the relation between the offices of chief and rain-maker in South Africa a
well-informed writer observes: "In very old days the chief was the great Rain-maker of the
tribe. Some chiefs allowed no one else to compete with them, lest a successful Rain-maker
should be chosen as chief. There was also another reason: the Rain-maker was sure to
become a rich man if he gained a great reputation, and it would manifestly never do for the
chief to allow any one to be too rich. The Rain-maker exerts tremendous control over the
people, and so it would be most important to keep this function connected with royalty.
Tradition always places the power of making rain as the fundamental glory of ancient chiefs
and heroes, and it seems probable that it may have been the origin of chieftainship. The
man who made the rain would naturally become the chief. In the same way Chaka [the
famous Zulu despot] used to declare that he was the only diviner in the country, for if he
allowed rivals his life would be insecure." Similarly speaking of the South African tribes in
general, Dr. Moffat says that "the rain-maker is in the estimation of the people no mean
personage, possessing an influence over the minds of the people superior even to that of
the king, who is likewise compelled to yield to the dictates of this arch-official." 9
The foregoing evidence renders it probable that in Africa the king has often been
developed out of the public magician, and especially out of the rain-maker. The unbounded
fear which the magician inspires and the wealth which he amasses in the exercise of his
profession may both be supposed to have contributed to his promotion. But if the career of
a magician and especially of a rain-maker offers great rewards to the successful practitioner
of the art, it is beset with many pitfalls into which the unskilful or unlucky artist may fall. The
position of the public sorcerer is indeed a very precarious one; for where the people firmly
believe that he has it in his power to make the rain to fall, the sun to shine, and the fruits of
the earth to grow, they naturally impute drought and dearth to his culpable negligence or
wilful obstinacy, and they punish him accordingly. Hence in Africa the chief who fails to
procure rain is often exiled or killed. Thus, in some parts of West Africa, when prayers and
offerings presented to the king have failed to procure rain, his subjects bind him with ropes
and take him by force to the grave of his forefathers that he may obtain from them the
needed rain. The Banjars in West Africa ascribe to their king the power of causing rain or
fine weather. So long as the weather is fine they load him with presents of grain and cattle.
But if long drought or rain threatens to spoil the crops, they insult and beat him till the
weather changes. When the harvest fails or the surf on the coast is too heavy to allow of
fishing, the people of Loango accuse their king of a "bad heart" and depose him. On the
Grain Coast the high priest or fetish king, who bears the title of Bodio, is responsible for
the health of the community, the fertility of the earth, and the abundance of fish in the sea
and rivers; and if the country suffers in any of these respects the Bodio is deposed from his
office. In Ussukuma, a great district on the southern bank of the Victoria Nyanza, "the rain
and locust question is part and parcel of the Sultan's government. He, too, must know how
to make rain and drive away the locusts. If he and his medicine-men are unable to
accomplish this, his whole existence is at stake in times of distress. On a certain occasion,
when the rain so greatly desired by the people did not come, the Sultan was simply driven
out (in Ututwa, near Nassa). The people, in fact, hold that rulers must have power over
Nature and her phenomena." Again, we are told of the natives of the Nyanaza region
generally that "they are persuaded that rain only falls as a result of magic, and the important
duty of causing it to descend devolves on the chief of the tribe. If rain does not come at
the proper time, everybody complains. More than one petty king has been banished his
country because of drought." Among the Latuka of the Upper Nile, when the crops are
withering, and all the efforts of the chief to draw down rain have proved fruitless, the
people commonly attack him by night, rob him of all he possesses, and drive him away. But
often they kill him. 10
In many other parts of the world kings have been expected to regulate the course of
nature for the good of their people and have been punished if they failed to do so. It
appears that the Scythians, when food was scarce, used to put their king in bonds. In
ancient Egypt the sacred kings were blamed for the failure of the crops, but the sacred
beasts were also held responsible for the course of nature. When pestilence and other
calamities had fallen on the land, in consequence of a long and severe drought, the priests
took the animals by night and threatened them, but if the evil did not abate they slew the
beasts. On the coral island of Niue or Savage Island, in the South Pacific, there formerly
reigned a line of kings. But as the kings were also high priests, and were supposed to make
the food grow, the people became angry with them in times of scarcity and killed them; till
at last, as one after another was killed, no one would be king, and the monarchy came to an
end. Ancient Chinese writers inform us that in Corea the blame was laid on the king
whenever too much or too little rain fell and the crops did not ripen. Some said that he
must be deposed, others that he must be slain. 11
Among the American Indians the furthest advance towards civilisation was made under the
monarchical and theocratic governments of Mexico and Peru; but we know too little of the
early history of these countries to say whether the predecessors of their deified kings were
medicine-men or not. Perhaps a trace of such a succession may be detected in the oath
which the Mexican kings, when they mounted the throne, swore that they would make the
sun to shine, the clouds to give rain, the rivers to flow, and the earth to bring forth fruits in
abundance. Certainly, in aboriginal America the sorcerer or medicine-man, surrounded by a
halo of mystery and an atmosphere of awe, was a personage of great influence and
importance, and he may well have developed into a chief or king in many tribes, though
positive evidence of such a development appears to be lacking. Thus Catlin tells us that in
North America the medicine-men "are valued as dignitaries in the tribe, and the greatest
respect is paid to them by the whole community; not only for their skill in their materia
medica, but more especially for their tact in magic and mysteries, in which they all deal to a
very great extent... . In all tribes their doctors are conjurers-are magicians-are
sooth-sayers, and I had like to have said high-priests, inasmuch as they superintend and
conduct all their religious ceremonies; they are looked upon by all as oracles of the nation. In
all councils of war and peace, they have a seat with the chiefs, are regularly consulted before
any public step is taken, and the greatest deference and respect is paid to their opinions."
Similarly in California "the shaman was, and still is, perhaps the most important individual
among the Maidu. In the absence of any definite system of government, the word of a
shaman has great weight: as a class they are regarded with much awe, and as a rule are
obeyed much more than the chief." 12
In South America also the magicians or medicine-men seem to have been on the highroad
to chieftainship or kingship. One of the earliest settlers on the coast of Brazil, the
Frenchman Thevet, reports that the Indians "hold these pages (or medicine-men) in such
honour and reverence that they adore, or rather idolise them. You may see the common folk
go to meet them, prostrate themselves, and pray to them, saying, `Grant that I be not ill,
that I do not die, neither I nor my children,' or some such request. And he answers, `You
shall not die, you shall not be ill,' and such like replies. But sometimes if it happens that
these pages do not tell the truth, and things turn out otherwise than they predicted, the
people make no scruple of killing them as unworthy of the title and dignity of pages."
Among the Lengua Indians of the Gran Chaco every clan has its cazique or chief, but he
possesses little authority. In virtue of his office he has to make many presents, so he seldom
grows rich and is generally more shabbily clad than any of his subjects. "As a matter of fact
the magician is the man who has most power in his hands, and he is accustomed to receive
presents instead of to give them." It is the magician's duty to bring down misfortune and
plagues on the enemies of his tribe, and to guard his own people against hostile magic. For
these services he is well paid, and by them he acquires a position of great influence and
authority. 13
Throughout the Malay region the rajah or king is commonly regarded with superstitious
veneration as the possessor of supernatural powers, and there are grounds for thinking
that he too, like apparently so many African chiefs, has been developed out of a simple
magician. At the present day the Malays firmly believe that the king possesses a personal
influence over the works of nature, such as the growth of the crops and the bearing of
fruit-trees. The same prolific virtue is supposed to reside, though in a lesser degree, in his
delegates, and even in the persons of Europeans who chance to have charge of districts.
Thus in Selangor, one of the native states of the Malay Peninsula, the success or failure of
the rice-crops is often attributed to a change of district officers. The Toorateyas of
Southern Celebes hold that the prosperity of the rice depends on the behaviour of their
princes, and that bad government, by which they mean a government which does not
conform to ancient custom, will result in a failure of the crops. 14
The Dyaks of Sarawak believed that their famous English ruler, Rajah Brooke, was
endowed with a certain magical virtue which, if properly applied, could render the rice-crops
abundant. Hence when he visited a tribe, they used to bring him the seed which they
intended to sow next year, and he fertilised it by shaking over it the women's necklaces,
which had been previously dipped in a special mixture. And when he entered a village, the
women would wash and bathe his feet, first with water, and then with the milk of a young
coco-nut, and lastly with water again, and all this water which had touched his person they
preserved for the purpose of distributing it on their farms, believing that it ensured an
abundant harvest. Tribes which were too far off for him to visit used to send him a small
piece of white cloth and a little gold or silver, and when these things had been impregnated
by his generative virtue they buried them in their fields, and confidently expected a heavy
crop. Once when a European remarked that the rice-crops of the Samban tribe were thin,
the chief immediately replied that they could not be otherwise, since Rajah Brooke had never
visited them, and he begged that Mr. Brooke might be induced to visit his tribe and remove
the sterility of their land. 15
The belief that kings possess magical or supernatural powers by virtue of which they can
fertilise the earth and confer other benefits on their subjects would seem to have been
shared by the ancestors of all the Aryan races from India to Ireland, and it has left clear
traces of itself in our own country down to modern times. Thus the ancient Hindoo
law-book called The Laws of Manu describes as follows the effects of a good king's reign:
"In that country where the king avoids taking the property of mortal sinners, men are born
in due time and are long-lived. And the crops of the husbandmen spring up, each as it was
sown, and the children die not, and no misshaped offspring is born." In Homeric Greece
kings and chiefs were spoken of as sacred or divine; their houses, too, were divine and their
chariots sacred; and it was thought that the reign of a good king caused the black earth to
bring forth wheat and barley, the trees to be loaded with fruit, the flocks to multiply, and
the sea to yield fish. In the Middle Ages, when Waldemar I., King of Denmark, travelled in
Germany, mothers brought their infants and husbandmen their seed for him to lay his
hands on, thinking that children would both thrive the better for the royal touch, and for a
like reason farmers asked him to throw the seed for them. It was the belief of the ancient
Irish that when their kings observed the customs of their ancestors, the seasons were mild,
the crops plentiful, the cattle fruitful, the waters abounded with fish, and the fruit trees had
to be propped up on account of the weight of their produce. A canon attributed to St.
Patrick enumerates among the blessings that attend the reign of a just king "fine weather,
calm seas, crops abundant, and trees laden with fruit." On the other hand, dearth, dryness
of cows, blight of fruit, and scarcity of corn were regarded as infallible proofs that the
reigning king was bad. 16
Perhaps the last relic of such superstitions which lingered about our English kings was the
notion that they could heal scrofula by their touch. The disease was accordingly known as
the King's Evil. Queen Elizabeth often exercised this miraculous gift of healing. On
Midsummer Day 1633, Charles the First cured a hundred patients at one swoop in the
chapel royal at Holyrood. But it was under his son Charles the Second that the practice
seems to have attained its highest vogue. It is said that in the course of his reign Charles
the Second touched near a hundred thousand persons for scrofula. The press to get near
him was sometimes terrific. On one occasion six or seven of those who came to be healed
were trampled to death. The cool-headed William the Third contemptuously refused to lend
himself to the hocuspocus; and when his palace was besieged by the usual unsavoury
crowd, he ordered them to be turned away with a dole. On the only occasion when he was
importuned into laying his hand on a patient, he said to him, "God give you better health
and more sense." However, the practice was continued, as might have been expected, by
the dull bigot James the Second and his dull daughter Queen Anne. 17
The kings of France also claimed to possess the same gift of healing by touch, which they
are said to have derived from Clovis or from St. Louis, while our English kings inherited it
from Edward the Confessor. Similarly the savage chiefs of Tonga were believed to heal
scrofula and cases of indurated liver by the touch of their feet; and the cure was strictly
homoeopathic, for the disease as well as the cure was thought to be caused by contact with
the royal person or with anything that belonged to it. 18
On the whole, then, we seem to be justified in inferring that in many parts of the world the
king is the lineal successor of the old magician or medicine-man. When once a special class
of sorcerers has been segregated from the community and entrusted by it with the
discharge of duties on which the public safety and welfare are believed to depend, these
men gradually rise to wealth and power, till their leaders blossom out into sacred kings. But
the great social revolution which thus begins with democracy and ends in despotism is
attended by an intellectual revolution which affects both the conception and the functions
of royalty. For as time goes on, the fallacy of magic becomes more and more apparent to
the acuter minds and is slowly displaced by religion; in other words, the magician gives way
to the priest, who, renouncing the attempt to control directly the processes of nature for
the good of man, seeks to attain the same end indirectly by appealing to the gods to do for
him what he no longer fancies he can do for himself. Hence the king, starting as a magician,
tends gradually to exchange the practice of magic for the priestly functions of prayer and
sacrifice. And while the distinction between the human and the divine is still imperfectly
drawn, it is often imagined that men may themselves attain to godhead, not merely after
their death, but in their lifetime, through the temporary or permanent possession of their
whole nature by a great and powerful spirit. No class of the community has benefited so
much as kings by this belief in the possible incarnation of a god in human form. The doctrine
of that incarnation, and with it the theory of the divinity of kings in the strict sense of the
word, will form the subject of the following chapter. 19