Comparative Study of Mantrashastra

Author(s): Mohanlal Bhagwandas Jhaveri
Publisher: Sarabhai Manilal Nawab

Page 12

MAGIC AND MAGICAL SYMBOLISM
as part of the clothing, hair, nails and so forth of the victim represents the person. to be attacked by magic. This serves as the 'immediate object' on which the magical thought is expended. The Magician is helped by this and similar aids to a state of fixed and malignant attention which is rendered intense by action taken on the substituted object. It is not of course the injuries done to this object which are the direct cause of injury to the person attacked, but the thought of the magician of which these injuries are a materialisation. There is thus present the circumstance which a modern psychologist would demand for success in a telepathic experiment.
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In all cases the general principle is the same, namely the setting in motion and direction of powerful thought by appropriate means."-Shakti & Shakta: Chapter III, 2nd Edition, pp. 55-57.
Those who give a psychological explanation of this phenomenon "would hold that the magical symbolisms are without inherent force but work according to race and individual characteristics on the mind which does the rest. Others believe that there is an inherent power in symbolism itself, that the "symbol," is not merely such but an actual expression of, an instrument by which, certain occult laws are brought into play. In other words the power of "symbolism" derives not merely from the effect which it may have on particular minds likely to be affected by it but from itself as a law external to human thought. Some again (and Indian magicians amongst others) believe ia the presence and aid of discarnate personalities (such as the unclean Pishachas) given in the carrying out of occult operations."
"There has been, and is, a change of attitude due to an increase of psychological knowledge and scientific investigation into objective facts. Certain reconciliations have been suggested, bringing together the ancient beliefs, which sometimes exist in crude and ignorant forms. These reconciliations may be regarded as insufficiently borne out by the evidence. On the other hand, a proposed reconciliation may be accepted as one that on the whole seems to meet the claims made by the occultist on one side and the scientific psychologist on the other. But in the present state of knowledge it is no longer possible to reject both claims as evidently absurd. Men of approved scientific position have, notwithstanding the ridicule and scientific bigotry to which they have been exposed, considered the facts to be worthy of their inves tigation. And on the psychological side successive and continuous discoveries are being made which corroborate ancient beliefs in substance, though they are not always in consonance with the mode in which those beliefs were expressed. We must face the fact that (with religion) occultism is in some form or another a widely diffused belief of humanity. All however will be agreed in holding that malevolent Magic