On the Origin, Idea, Scope, and History of Ancient and Modern Magic

We transport ourselves through a flight of fancy to other parts of the world, from the ice-sheets of Kamchatka and Siberia to the wild forests of Canada, from here to Mexico and Peru, and then beneath the glowing zone of Asia and Africa, to completely different climates, languages, and tribes, and—we find the same thing.

From Loskiel’s mission history of the Evangelical Brethren among the Delaware and Iroquois, we know that these peoples, like the Hurons, Illinois, and other wild North American tribes, not only believe in the existence of good and evil spirits, but also think of their influences on humans in connection with their magic theories, magic remedies, etc.

That the Spaniards found the spirit- and magic-belief in Peru and Mexico is well known. *)

In Congo and Loango, the worship of the so-called "black goat," κατ’ εξοχην preeminently, is connected with the belief of the local Negroes in good and evil spirits; the good Father Antonio Zuchelli, as he himself relates in his mission reports, considered this outright to be the devil, and its adoration as the renewed Manichaean devil- and sorcery-worship, and therefore chased the worshippers away with sticks.

under the title: Three Comedies against Fanaticism and Superstition. Berlin and Stettin, 1788. 8.—contains entertaining character traits pertaining to this, regarding the spirit- and magic-belief of these peoples.

*) Home’s Sketches of the History of Man, etc. (German translation, Leipzig, 1775). Vol. II, p. 232 ff.