The Trickster and the Paranormal

by George P. Hansen

  One consequence of the research findings is that psi experiments must be understood as social processes. Many people potentially influence a result, even inadvertently and even in the future. Social forces must be taken seriously. They have an autonomy that cannot be comprehended reductionistically. So far, most parapsychology studies have focused on psychological variables (i.e., characteristics of individuals). This is not sufficient; a final result cannot be determined by summing the contributions of known individuals. There is a complex interplay, and a more sophisticated understanding of social processes is needed. This will be broached in the next chapter.

  Boundaries and limits are two recurring themes in this book, and they help provide a broader perspective needed in considering psi. The trickster is central to this effort, for like psi, he is not easily constrained; he crosses and blurs boundaries. He is paradoxical, ambiguous, and causes problems for rational understanding.

  Psi requires a broad perspective for understanding. Any comprehensive theory must accommodate RNG results as well as cultural trends in the paranormal. The commonalities must be discerned. The work of William Braud provides a beginning. Labile systems, i.e., those that readily change, are more amenable to psi influence than are stable systems. This is a general property. It appears at the micro-level with electronic random number generators and tumbling dice. The same pattern is seen at higher levels. Persons who break out of routine, and who act spontaneously, find psi more likely to manifest. Small groups and larger cultures undergoing significant transition have elevated levels of paranormal activity. Liminality and anti-structure have properties of lability and randomness (by the way, Hermes is the god of luck, and of dice).

  Though ESP and PK involve information, there is no reason to think that anything is transmitted. ESP is not like mental radio. Instead, more abstract ideas of information and communication are required for modelling it. Structuralism, semiotics, and literary theory provide some alternatives, and they will be discussed in the next two chapters. Briefly expressed, the ideas are: individually and collectively, we detect and impose pattern and order on our existence in myriad ways. Through classification, social structure, rational thought, and many other mechanisms, we bring order and intelligibility to our world.

  Liminality and anti-structure break down established classifications and categories; they subvert structure; they allow new forms to emerge. It is under those conditions that information is created and destroyed. Those conditions are also the home of the trickster and of psi.

  CHAPTER 22

  Totemism and the Primitive Mind

  Note: In years past, anthropologists used “primitive” and “savage” to designate what is now referred to as preliterate. The words were sometimes, but by no means always, used in a derogatory sense. The two terms were so frequently used in the writings on totemism that it seems best to continue with them because they are consistent with the large bulk of the relevant literature. Little new material on totemism has appeared since those terms were in fashion.

  During the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first two of the twentieth, totemism engaged some of the era’s most formidable minds including Emile Durkheim, Andrew Lang, Wilhelm Wundt, Arnold van Gennep, Herbert Spencer, Marcel Mauss, and Sigmund Freud. Totemism was the base for the religious and social organization of many societies, but it was also one of the most vexing aspects of primitive cultures. It commanded extended discussion and debate in books and professional journals. Today the matter is almost entirely forgotten. Most introductory anthropology texts allot totemism only a few sentences, and when I checked the subject in the 1997 Books in-Print, I found only ten items listed. Two were first published over 30 years ago, and the remainder over 70 years ago. This astounding neglect gives an important clue to the nature of the topic.

  This situation makes it difficult to explain totemism, because without a set of common examples, the overall picture cannot be conveyed, yet if examples are presented with no sense of direction, they seem incoherent. For the first few pages of this chapter I will give an introductory overview. It may seem dry and abstract, but the remainder of the chapter should be a bit easier.

  Totemism was central to the worlds of many primitive peoples, but because it was so fundamental, encompassing and varied, it cannot be neatly defined. It is perhaps best explained by example. A tribe might be divided into a bear clan, an eagle clan, and others. Each clan has different rights, responsibilities, taboos, marriage restrictions, etc. In some cultures all objects in the world are categorized in relationship to totem animals. For instance, certain kinds of rocks and trees belong to one clan, others to other clans. One clan might own the rain, another streams. Clans may be restricted from eating certain foods, but at ritual occasions they may be required to eat them. A clan may revere its totem animal or consider it a relative or a guardian spirit. A person may see himself as part of the totem, and the totem as part of him. Death of a member of a totem species could be viewed as death of a family member.

  Such arrangements are vastly different than our own, and from our perspective, they confuse rational categories; boundaries are blurred (e.g., between people and animals). The primitives recognized a wide range of magical interconnections, but magic was particularly problematic for the early scholars who grappled with the primitive mentality. Many who thoroughly studied totemism and magic readily acknowledged that they found them incomprehensible. Even in 1994, after an extensive review, anthropologist Andrew Duff-Cooper concluded that totemism “remains essentially problematical today.” All this subtly signals the limits to Western rationality, and this is a key to the nature of totemism.

  Primitive classification schemes, and their incomprehensibility to the modern academic mind, are central to understanding the rationalization and disenchantment of the world (in Max Weber’s usage of the terms). The non-resolution of the debates on totemism indicates the presence of foundational issues. Those are relevant to anthropology, sociology, linguistics, literary theory, and, I propose, to psychical research.

  The basic issues, though transmogrified, are now seen in deconstructionism, post-structuralism, and cultural studies. Those areas also raise questions about rationality. The intellectual antecedents of those fields can be traced (in part) to the early discussions of totemism (though few recognize it). That lineage must be understood to fully appreciate the implications. Totemism provides a direct challenge to the Western worldview, but so does deconstructionism. As I will explain in the next chapter, the fundamental ideas involve magic and the irrational.

  In order to keep the discussion to a manageable length, I will emphasize the topic of classification. Totemism classifies items, structures society, and organizes the world. This general interpretation has wide support among eminent figures in social science, and it will be the focus here. When classification, statuses, and structures are dissolved we have conditions of liminality, anti-structure, and communitas. That is how totemism relates to other topics in this book.

  British structural anthropologist Rodney Needham recognized the intrinsic relation between classification and liminality. He translated Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss’s Primitive Classification (first published in French in 1903), and in his introduction to that work Needham explicitly referred to festivals such as saturnalia where rules and taboos are violated. He stated that “The theme of reversal is itself one of the most pervasive and fundamental problems in social anthropology, and it is so only in the context of the classifications within

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  which its instances are discerned.” Needham did not use the term liminal (the word was then not as commonly used by anthropologists as it is today), but he recognized that festivals typified the breakdown of a variety of boundaries. A few years later the ideas received more attention from Victor Turner and Barbara Babcock.

  “Boundary” is a recurrent theme in this book. Classification and categorization establish boundaries. Something as simple as applying a name to a tribe of people
, a group of trees, a species of animal, or a mountain range constitutes a process of classifying. Naming sets a person, idea, or group apart from others. It gives an identity. It makes a distinction. For social life, distinctions must be agreed upon, and the anthropological terms “cultural category” and “collective representation” emphasize the shared nature of distinctions. Such notions initially appear trivial, but they form the basis of thought and language. communication is a shared process, and by its nature calls attention to distinctions. Even modern information theory is based on the difference between 0 and 1 (i.e., bits, short for binary digits, are used to measure and convey information).

  Anthropologists recognized that our perceptions and categories are often organized around binary oppositions. Differentiation (i.e., making distinctions) is central to this. French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss developed the ideas, noting that oppositions form structures out of a more undifferentiated whole. He noted that there are parallels between structures. This was a simple observation with deep consequences, and using his structural approach, anthropologists and others demonstrated the existence of common patterns across an amazing array of areas including kinship, myth, and linguistics.

  Levi-Strauss revived interest in totemism in the 1960s in an attempt to understand the seemingly irrational beliefs of the primitives. Though he continues to be widely cited, his writings are perhaps not too well understood; they are couched in abstract terms. Levi-Strauss did not fully comprehend the issues himself, because he did not realize the efficacy of magic per se (i.e., involving psi).

  Although Levi-Strauss is the best-known anthropologist associated with structuralism, equally important are the contributions of Rodney Needham of Oxford and Edmund Leach of Cambridge. Needham translated many important works, including Robert Hertz’s essay “The Pre-eminence of the Right Hand” (originally published in 1909) which is one of the most important papers on binary classification schemes. Needham also edited a significant collection of essays on binary oppositions: Right & Left (1973). In 1979 he published Symbolic Classification, an accessible introduction to the topic. Needham also translated Levi-Strauss’ Totemism. Edmund Leach was the foremost interpreter of Levi-Strauss. His works are always a delight to read, with many pungent comments and sparkling insights.

  Many who have used structuralist ideas focussed on how society is strengthened and made stable. Less attention has been given to the dissolution of structure, but that also shows commonalities. In this book we are more interested in the breakdown of structures and in their nascent formation, rather than in their stable forms. Structural breakdown, i.e., dissolving into more undifferentiated conditions, and structure emerging from those conditions, are anti-structural (a.k.a., liminal, interstitial) by definition. They are characterized by the blurring of binary oppositions.4 The primitives looked upon liminal conditions as dangerous situations that needed to be hedged off from the mundane world. There were rituals to separate the elements of oppositions and thereby reinforce the order of the world.

  Above are some of the main ideas that connect magic, totemism, structuralist thought, and liminality. These concepts are difficult to absorb on the first encounter. To help, I will present something about the history of the ideas and the personalities who articulated them.

  The understanding of totemism and the development of structuralist thought did not occur quickly. It took decades, with rapid advances within a span of a few years and then long periods of quiescence during which little of importance was written.

  Totemism Debates, 1869-1918: The Rationality Battles

  In 1869 John Ferguson McLennan called attention to the relationship between totemism and marriageability classes. The primitive was not allowed to marry or have sexual relations within his or her

  totemic group (i.e., the rule of exogamy). This imposed limitations on sexual behavior. It also served to specify important relationships and obligations between groups. Neither totemism nor exogamy was found in all primitive cultures nor did they necessarily occur together, but their conjunction was frequent enough to demand attention, and the debates sparked by McLennan continued for over 50 years.

  Sir James George Frazer was an important figure in those debates. He was best known for his work The Golden Bough, which was first published in 1890 in two volumes. Frazer had a gift for writing, and his books and articles stimulated broad interest in anthropology in the literate public.5 The Golden Bough was later expanded, ultimately being presented in a series of 13 volumes; a one-volume abridgement was also published and remains in print.

  Frazer’s work on totemism is lesser known. As early as 1885 he had written an article on it for Encyclopaedia Britannica, and a few years later that served as the basis for a book. In 1910 he published a four-volume set entitled Totemism and Exogamy with over 2200 pages, and an additional fifth volume, Totemica, appeared in 1937. Frazer’s work called attention to the obscure connection between rules of marriageability and totemism. Violation of exogamy (i.e., incest) was looked upon as extremely dangerous, and breaking of this taboo warranted extreme punishment, often death. In many primitive cultures, the entire cosmology was intricately tied to the social structure. Breaking rules concerning social relations was seen as having effects in the larger cosmos; there were magical interconnections, and violation of taboos had cosmic consequences.

  Frazer was an armchair theorist who compiled and summarized the work of others. In fact, he had no direct encounter with the people of his theories, and when William James asked him about the primitives he knew, Frazer replied “But Heaven forbid!” Frazer viewed earlier cultures as lower forms on an evolutionary chain (Western European being the highest). Even in his own day, Frazer’s work was not well regarded by all anthropologists, and his influence among them was limited; he had a greater impact in the humanities. Despite, or perhaps because of, the limitations of his perspective, his work called attention to how different we are from the primitives; they appear irrational. Frazer recognized it to be extremely difficult to comprehend their viewpoint, and he seems to have understood this better than those who have had more sympathy for them.

  Frazer wrote during a time when the long war between science and religion was particularly intense in intellectual circles. This was partly due to the rise of Darwinism, but also the growing field of anthropology was demonstrating some embarrassing parallels between the primitive gods and the Judeo-christian one. These were not detached scholarly discussions, rather the debates struck at the core of the participants’ lives. Many rationalists studied magic and religion with the goal of defeating superstitious beliefs, including Christianity, which they saw as regressive. Frazer understood his role in this, and a number of his colleagues used his writings to attack religion.

  To the rationalists, magic was particularly vexing; it appeared entirely superstitious. However, it was not extinct in their own society, and the then-rising popularity of Theosophy, occultism, and spiritualism alarmed them. They viewed those movements as a dangerous throwback to the primitive past. The scientific evidence compiled by the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) lent credibility to magical ideas, and the formation of the SPR was prompted by some who were sympathetic to religious concerns. Needless to say, this was not welcome to many rationalists, and Frazer’s friend, rationalist Edward Clodd, denounced the SPR in his presidential address to the Folk Lore Society. The Rationalist Press Association (RPA) and its imprint Watts & Co. were active in the battles; not only did they attack religion, but they were some of the strongest adversaries of psychical research. By the way, Frazer is one of the anthropologists frequently invoked by modern-day debunkers of the paranormal.12

  The science-religion war was central to the development of the social sciences and intellectual culture of the twentieth century. It established social patterns, determined who would achieve status and influence in academe, and who would indoctrinate students. The battles determined the kinds of thought and behavior that were to be acceptable and rewarded. Wh
ether or not they admitted it, like that of the primitive, their own intellectualism was intimately tied to social structure.

  Andrew Lang was one of Frazer’s sharpest critics. Lang was a folklorist, journalist, anthropologist, and one of the leading men of letters of his day. He was also a psychical researcher and served as president of the Society for Psychical Research and also of the Folk Lore Society. His position in anthropology was forgotten for many years, but there has been some belated recognition. oxford anthropologist Rodney Needham dedicated his book Remarks and Inventions (1974) to him. In 1994, Lang’s nearly-lost manuscript Totemism was first published along with an extensive commentary by Andrew Duff-

  Cooper.15 An additional example of Lang’s influence is that Arnold van Gennep credited his own interest in ethnography to him.

  Lang offered a completely different perspective on totemism than Frazer, and in his books Social Origins (1903) and The Secret of the Totem (1905) he argued that totems were used to differentiate groups. Lang noted that this was not a new idea, and in fact, it had been suggested by Garcilaso de la Vega (1539-1616), author of History of the Incas.

  The notion that totems differentiate groups seems trifling, but it’s not. It emphasizes that totemism is ultimately about classification. Totems connected social classes to the larger world. Such sociological paradigms radically contrast with psychological perspectives. For instance James Frazer took a psychological approach; he saw the person as a separate entity and considered magic and religion to be products (errors) of individual human minds. His perspective has been labeled individualistic rationalism. Sociological approaches recognize the massive impact and primacy of social relationships on human thought. These provide very different insights than psychological paradigms, but they have had limited influence outside a small section of the social sciences. Individualistic rationalism continues its dominance today and so pervades our thinking that most do not grasp other ways of thought.