# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Magic/Magicians

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Magicians.—Most peoples know the professional worker of magic, or what is regarded as magic. (a) In most if not all societies magic, or certain sorts of it, may be performed by any one, so far as we can see, who has mastered the necessary ritual; in other cases the magician is a specialist who owes his position to an accident of birth (seventh son of a seventh son); to simple inheritance (families of magicians in modern India, rain-makers in New Caledonia); to revelation from the gods or the spirits of the dead (Malays), showing itself in the phenomena of possession; or to initiation by other magicians. (b) From a psychical point of view it may probably be said that the initiation of a magician corresponds to the “development” of the modern spiritualistic medium; that is to say, that it resolves itself into exercises and rites which have for their object the creation or evolution of a secondary personality. From this point of view it is important to notice that certain things are forbidden to magicians under pain of loss of their powers; thus, hot tea is taboo to the Arunta medicine man; and if this seems unlikely to cause the secondary personality to disappear, it must be remembered that to the physiological effects, if any, must be added the effects of suggestion. Of this duplication of personality various explanations are given; in Siberia the soul of the shaman is said to wander into the other world, and this is a widely spread theory; where the magician is supposed to remain on earth, his soul is again believed to wander, but there is an alternative explanation which gives him two or more bodies. Here we reach a point at which the familiar makes its appearance; this is at times a secondary form of the magician, but more often is a sort of life index or animal helper (see Lycanthropy); in fact, the magician’s power is sometimes held to depend on the presence—that is, the independence—of his animal auxiliary. Concurrent with this theory is the view that the magician must first enter into a trance before the animal makes its appearance, and this makes it a double of the magician, or, from the psychological point of view, a phase of secondary personality. (c) In many parts of the world magical powers are associated with the membership of secret societies, and elsewhere the magicians form a sort of corporation; in Siberia, for example, they are held to be united by a certain tie of kinship; where this is not the case, they are believed, as in Africa at the present day or in medieval Europe, to hold assemblies, so-called witches’ Sabbaths; in Europe the meetings of heretics seem to be responsible for the prominence of the idea if not for its origin (see Witchcraft). The magician is often regarded as possessed (see Possession) either by an animal or by a human or super-human spirit. The relations of priest and magician are for various reasons complex; where the initiation of the magician is regarded as the work of the gods, the magician is for obvious reasons likely to develop into a priest, but he may at the same time remain a magician; where a religion has been superseded, the priests of the old cult are, for those who supersede them, one and all magicians; in the medieval church, priests were regarded as especially exposed to the assaults of demons, and were consequently often charged with working magic. The great magicians who are gods rather than men—e.g. kings of Fire and Water in Cambodia—enjoy a reverence and receive a cult which separates them from the common herd, and assimilates them to priests rather than to magicians. The function of the so-called magician is often said to be beneficent; in Africa the witch-doctor’s business is to counteract evil magic; in Australia the magician has to protect his own tribe against the assaults of hostile magicians of other tribes; and in Europe “white magic” is the correlative of this beneficent power; but it may be questioned how far the beneficent virtue is regarded as magical outside Europe.