Note 320 — Chapter VI · THE RELATIONS BETWEEN MAGIC AND ANIMISM

In a paper on Leopard Men of the Naga Hills, read at a meeting of the R.A.I. (December 9, 1919), Mr. J. J. H. Hutton reported that such men do not change into leopards; but sometimes their souls involuntarily pass into them. If the leopard be injured or killed he whose soul was in it suffers or dies—when he hears of it. Such men are not feared, because their leopards do very little harm.

For this reason (I suppose) the belief is not exploited by wizards, who have no use for innocent superstition, and it remains pure folklore. There may not be any connexion between this animistic doctrine of human souls possessing animals and the magical doctrine of shape-changing. If they are connected, it is easy to see that in a certain atmosphere of popular philosophy, if shape-changing were believed in, the possession theory might be accepted as the true explanation upon merely being proposed. Indeed, it would make intelligible such a case as this: a man’s leopard is seen on the skirts of the village; but he himself is known to be in his hut.

Animistic explanation does not always follow culture: Europe adheres to shape-changing. Yet in the Volsung Saga the superstition is already degenerate: Sigmund and his son change into wolves by putting on wolf-skins belonging to two were-wolves whom they find asleep. This is a rationalisation—disguise as a step toward change. An earlier step is to say a man who would change must put on a belt of wolf-skin.