Sorcery: An Origins Story
“The Sorcerer”, sketch based on Henri Breuil’s original drawing of art in the Trois-Frères cave, France.
– by Ronald J. Planer and Kim Sterelny
People in many traditional societies around the world respond to sickness, death, and a range of other serious misfortunes in a strange and strangely uniform way: they regard these events as ultimately caused by the occult agency of other humans. Moreover, this view is not just backward-looking; people actively fear occult attacks, and take countermeasures to avoid them. We call this psychological tendency “the agential view of misfortune”. Its wide occurrence is puzzling not just because the view is false, but also because the view is costly: socially, economically, and—one can only assume—psychologically. Michelle Stephenson (2022) provides a striking description of the view among the Mekeo of Papua New Guinea: “People seem almost obsessed by fears of harmful magic being used against them and no death or serious mishap occurs which is not attributed to the sorcerer’s powers. Villagers themselves say that they are preoccupied with such fears and that consequently they tend to be highly suspicious of each other’s motives, even of close relatives” (p. 129).
We take up this puzzle in our article, Rise of the dark shaman: A path from healers to sorcerers (2026). Our starting point is the inadequacy of existing explanations. The biggest problem, as we see it, is that none offers a plausible account of how the agential view of misfortune might establish in the first place. Once the view is established, its persistence is not mysterious. Acceptance by the parental generation strongly disposes acceptance by the next generation. The seriousness with which the parental generation takes the threat, and the costs they accept to reduce it testify to their real conviction. This is especially true to the extent that the local version of the view is enmeshed into the broader worldview of the culture—which it typically is. A person who questions the status quo may make themselves a target (indeed, they may be suspected of sorcery); at best, they will seem somewhat socially deviant. Moreover, accusations of sorcery and witchcraft are available as ready-made “social moves” for people to play against each other. Where and when people can deploy such accusations to improve or protect their social standing or that of their allies, we should expect they will do so.
We argue that the agential view of misfortune has its roots in shamanism (itself widespread). The prototypical shaman is someone who (i) is understood by others as possessing unique talents and skills for interacting with a supernatural world distinct from this one. (ii) They can obtain information no one else can, including knowledge of future events. (iii) Moreover, shaman are able to directly act in the spirit world on behalf of others; for example, they may locate and return the spirit of a sick person. But because they can act on behalf of others, they can act on their own behalf as well. They are players of in a dangerous game. (iv) To enter this world, shaman often subject themselves to excruciating physical rituals—often in the public eye—which may be supplemented by mind-altering drugs where available. They are the original “psychonauts”.
Shamanism primes the agential view of misfortune in two main ways. First, shamans constitute “living proof” of the possibility of sorcerers—of “dark shamans”. If they can wield their powers for good, it stands to reason they—or at least a counterpart—can wield them for evil. Many ethnographic accounts attest to group members’ impression that shaman are “morally ambiguous” in this sense. The second way is that shamans themselves stoke fear over sorcerous threats. As acknowledged occult specialists, shamans have an outsized role in shaping the occult lore and practices the next generation encounters, and by continuing to make the threat of sorcery salient to others, they ensure their ongoing place of social prominence in group life. Ethnography again shows that shamans (and similar occult specialists) enjoy prestige translating into benefits on the ground (e.g., being excused from normal social duties, having increased power in group decision-making). It is also common for shamans to receive direct compensation for services rendered (e.g., divination ceremonies). In some communities, these occult specialists also play forensic roles, revealing the source of occult attacks, and this too gives them social leverage.
We do not claim that shamans consciously “big up” themselves. Rather, we see the operation of a well-known and studied cognitive bias at work here—namely, the “myside bias”. Shamans have an implicit, unconscious tendency to bias the flow of information about the occult in ways that support and extend their importance. Our hypothesis is that this myside bias, operating cumulatively over cultural-historical time, leads to an elaboration of lore emphasizing the threat of harmful magic, and the shaman as defender and protector.
Our other main task in our article is to offer an account of how shamanism itself can establish. The core ideas we develop are these: (i) following an ingenious insight of 19th-century anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor, we suggest that dreams and hallucinatory visions psychologically dispose people towards belief in immaterial spirits and a spirit realm. (ii) Once language evolved, these phenomenological raw materials were channeled into culturally shared views about spirits and the spirt world—in other words, a version of an animistic worldview was established. (iii) Proto-shamans were recognizable within this animistic milieu as individuals as who were especially willing to work with conscious-altering techniques that had already come to be associated with the spirit world, who were less risk-averse, and who were perhaps more prone to respond to these techniques.
The final step here is to explain how individuals claiming supernatural skills and talents for themselves gain credibility in the eyes of the broader group. We canvass a range of options in our article, but at an abstract level, we think cognitive biases are again crucial—especially our susceptibility to causal illusions. We are apt to turn noticed associations, and even the appearance of associations, into causal beliefs. When a highly salient event precedes a second, unusual or unexpected event, (an intense trance-inducing ceremony followed by the death of an enemy) humans are apt to conclude that the first caused the second. On our account, these biases play a dual role: they both work to convince proto-shamans of their powers while also convincing others of the efficacy of the displays and treatments these individuals put on.
These two parts of our argument—the development of the agential view of misfortune out of shamanism and the origins of shamanism itself—could be separated. In particular, one could couple the first to an alternative account of the latter. What we most want to insist on is that shamanism, however evolved, has a special role to play in midwifing the agential view of misfortune. Unlike belief in the omnipresent danger of others’ harmful magic, which is undeniably costly, belief in shamanism is plausibly beneficial to the broader group (if only for its placebo effect), or at the very least benign. Shamans did not displace more effective medical practitioners. This makes the task of explaining the origins of shamanism much easier.
Boiled down, what we propose is a (cultural) evolutionary model of belief in sorcery, witchcraft and allied phenomena in three main stages: first comes animism, then comes shamanism, then comes the agential view of misfortune.
For now, all we can claim to be in possession of is a “how plausibly” model. We take this to be progress, given the puzzling nature of the agential view of misfortune, together with the failure of previous explanations to deal with the unique challenge of the view’s origins. To convert our model into a “how actually” model will require testing, and we conclude our article with a number of predictions for future research. Stay tuned.
References
Stephen, M. (2022). Sorcery, magic and the Mekeo world view. In N.C. Habel (Ed.), Power, plumes and piglets, Australian Association for the Study of Religions Book Series, pp. 149-160.
