...physical contact. Magic thus is based on a specific kind of causal thinking. Religion consists of "a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to...believed to direct and control the course of nature and of human life." This entails a belief in the 'elasticity' or variability of nature: gods can be persuaded...

...schema for what one can expect to find in the teeming actual world: By religion, then, I understand a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to...believed to direct and control the course of nature and of human life. Thus defined, religion consists of two elements, a theoretical and a practical, namely,...

...black magic, or even as witchcraft. It was merely concerned, in the words of Sir James Frazer, with "a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to...believed to direct and control the course of nature and of human life,"100 and by "powers" are meant, "conscious or personal agents." Such a religion had no...

...to employ the word consistently in that sense throughout his work. By religion, then, I understand a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to...believed to direct and control the course of nature and of human life. Thus defined, religion consists of two elements, a theoretical and a practical, namely,...

...black magic, or even as witchcraft. It was merely concerned, in the words of Sir James Frazer, with "a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to...believed to direct and control the course of nature and of human life,"45 and by "powers" are meant, "conscious or personal agents." Such a religion had no...

...set apart and forbidden." 2. James G. Frazer, in his The Golden Bough considered religion a belief in "powers superior to man which are believed to direct and control the course of nature and of human life." 3. Edward Sapir, an American anthropologist, says that "the essence of religion consists...