"The rhythmic movement, uniform and continuous, is the immediate expression of a mental state, in which the consciousness of each individual is overwhelmed by a single sentiment, a single hallucinatory idea, a common objective. Each body shares the same passion, each face wears the same mask, each voice utters the same cry." Mauss P. 163
In Mauss’s analysis and explanation of magic a point is made that magic, although an individual may perform it, is a social movement and a group phenomenon. He describes how the magical believers react when they are worked up to a frenzy or how “magic produces mental excitation in individuals” (p. 163). One example he used was in tribal situations where the women, the elderly and children participated in ritual dancing while the able-bodied men were out on a hunt or at war. The power of the dancing was believed to aid the men in victory. Mauss wanted his discussion of magic to be separate from that of religion although he often bridged the connection between the two. While reading the above excerpt, the images of a recent religious documentary called, Jesus Camp came to mind.
The film Jesus Camp was about an evangelical Protestant group of Pentecostal children sent to a summer camp by their parents with the intention of creating warriors for Christ. The children were expected to be the religious leaders of the future and to be as militant as they believed extremist Muslim children were. There were scenes in the movie where everyone in the camp auditorium was worked into such a frenzy that they began speaking in tongues and swaying. The participants at the camp displayed many of the same reactions to powerful feelings brought on by a group consensus of beliefs and practices that Mauss attributed to more magic prone peoples. Mauss depicted magic as a group experience, where he portrayed tribal practices
where people were carried away, where they were “…masked with the image of the same desire, to hear all mouths uttering proof of their certainty… there is no possibility of resistance, by the convictions of the whole group” (P. 164). The young followers in the film could have been described by that sentiment too.
Mauss represented magic as a versatile thing, one in which many must participate in order for the magic to work. It required belief in higher supernatural powers and the mana in everything to make the magic function. Religion, it can be argued, also needs the beliefs of the group to work. The children and volunteers in Jesus Camp created their fervor together. In the film they fed off each other’s energy. Their passion lied in a shared belief of the ubiquitous power of their God and his reaction to their rituals. Although Mauss connected magic and religion to science and medicine multiple times, it is difficult to make the connection between science, medicine and the evangelicals in the film. They didn’t address science in a positive light, to them science was a means of denying their belief system, for example they chanted and prayed against the practice of abortion. However, because they felt the world was against their belief system, [what I perceive as] the magical spirit of their religious connection could be a form of psychological therapy for their feelings of being on the fringe of society. The images of massive faith healings associated with evangelicals also come to mind in this context although that was not part of the movie, it was instead massive group therapy.
www.ica.org.uk/Jesus20Camp+15193.twl
www.caica.org/HEADLINE%20NEWS%20SEPT%20OCT.htm
Disclaimer: I started writing about the film last week, before I noticed that many others had written about it too. When I did notice, I decided not to start all over again and stuck with it.
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