ns that religious experience in the context of vulgar reality is a consciousness of the reality of the immaterial. That consciousness seems to be consistent with Western mysticism and with pre-Western and non-Western religious modes.
According to Frazer, primitive religious consciousness entailed attribution of supernatural power to beings who functioned in the realm of unconditioned reality. But to these beings, which became gods, were also attributed human psychology and physical traits:
In a world so conceived [primitive man] sees no limit to his power of influencing the course of nature to his own advantage. Prayers, promises, or threats may secure him fine weather and an abundant crop from the gods; and if a god should happen . . . to become incarnate in his own person, then he need appeal to no higher power; he, the savage, possesses in himself all the supernatural powers necessary to further his own well-being and that of his fellow men (Frazer 9).
Another side of this coin was an animist conception of the physical world. Animism, as Ellwood explains, is the attribution of life to inanimate objects, whether stones or trees. Animating inanimate objects is relevant to prehistoric religion much as attribution of human characteristics is to natural processes. Frazer cites the refusal of some Buddhists to break even a tree branch, which is thought to have a soul; it would be like breaking a person's arm:
But Buddhist animism is not a philosophical theory. It is simply a common savage dogma incorporated in the system of an historical religion. To suppose . . . that . . . animism . . . derived from Buddhism is to reverse the facts. Buddhism in this respect borrowed from savagery, not savagery from Buddhism (Frazer 59).
In other words, the force of magical custom and practice, which in former times literalized or concretized feelings about how the world works, persists even after the disappearance of a world view in which...