E. E. Evans-Pritchard, in Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic Among the Azande, poses essential questions about human thought in his examination of the central role of witchcraft and magic among these Southern Sudanese people. Primarily, Evans-Pritchard's study brings into question the nature of reality itself, and the relationship of reality and the human mind. Examining this book, the Western reader might be tempted to dismiss the Azande as an absurdly superstitious people with little or no connection to the real and scientific world of cause and effect which that reader is convinced is the one and only reality. However, the reader would be more wise if he considered the often less than rational nature of his own culture and its belief systems.
For example, in San Diego, California, recently, in the very midst of modern Western civilization, surrounded by computers (the symbol of rationality), there took place a mass suicide of apparently intelligent people who believed--unto death--that the suicide would result in their being somehow transported to, or picked up by, an alien flying saucer. If this is seen as an aberration, can one say that the beliefs of the adherents of the major religions of the world are reason-based? Is not Christianity, for example, rooted in part in the belief that there is a spiritual struggle between good and evil in the world, and that that evil is personified by Satan, a fallen angel who was thrown out of Heaven for challenging God? Is this belief any more or less rational than the witchcraft beliefs of the Azande? Is there not a large measure of some sort of supernatural magic in the Resurrection of Jesus, at least in terms of its apparent defiance of all that is known of scientific law and physical death?
In the political realm, are not the conspiracy theories so rampant today in Western cultures a kind of equivalent of the magic, oracle and witchcraft beliefs of the Azande? In other words, one shou...