Hocus pocus focus

By Richard Dickenson

Most of us grow up believing or half-believing in some imaginary Robin Hood yarns or other. Mostly it’s because people love yarns. When our parents or teachers present us with a yarn as if it were true it’s all too easy for it to get stuck in our minds as such.

Furthermore once the story has been accepted it’s easy to find that much of the rest of our milieu also becomes involved and subscribes to the story, imaginary though it be. It seems to be everywhere. It pops up during our education. We accept it as a given, an unquestionable norm. There’s no arguing with it.

It crops up in all sorts of unexpected places. It crops up in school. It features when we give evidence in a law court. It intrudes when we try to explain things that are hard to explain. We may even get married according to the dictates of the story. It may well come to influence much that we do and much that follows from that. The world as we know it seems to depend on the story. Without it nothing is secure and might all just collapse.

In short the story has, in a way, taken over the real truth, and ourselves with it.

This weakness for stories is nowhere more prominent and successful than in the sphere of religion. For example, other than for the highly questionable contents of the holy literature of Hinduism there exists no evidence that the sacrifice of a horse really does explain the creation and history of the universe. Similarly apart from bits of the equally dubious Bible and its priests there is no evidence that anyone ever walked on water or rose from the dead. And again, we have only the words of the Prophet to confirm that he really did once go riding on a winged horse name Burak.

So how, in the past, did all these holy men – each with his own personal axe to grind – win over the peasants so that they started to believe the stuff they were being handed? It was done via a highly successful sequence. First, cook up some appealing yarn that could not actually be proved to be wrong. Second, fix it in peoples’ minds with a series of easy rituals. Then throw in a spot of personal sacrifice here and there. It was that easy.

Some of the stories are much as already mentioned. Then was added a creation myth and a repetitious ritual. A prime example is the Christian ritual of Eucharist. The priest takes a piece of bread and says, in the Latin version, ‘Hoc est Corpus’ and, suddenly, the bread actually becomes the body of Jesus, though everyone can see that, in fact, it does no such thing. It is dramatically impressive. As a passing comment, the illiterate peasants who knew no Latin, mixed up the phrase until it became ‘hocus pocus’ – a phrase encompassing, ever since, all sorts of other spells, magic and prestidigitation.

Once having got the system up and running more or less anything – food, gestures, clothing and so on can all be drafted into the scene. The burka for Moslems, eating bitter-root at pass-over for Jews, putting hands together in prayer or drawing a crucifix in the air for Christians, anything can acquire religious significance.

Royal crowns, thrones, Easter eggs, flags and other bits of coloured cloth like medal ribbons can all become imbued with some mystical relevance far beyond what they really are. We even accept bits of coloured paper as if they are money. A picture of Che Guevara becomes symbolic of worthy revolution.

Finally, one of the best ways of emphasising the power of ritual is to combine it with some sort of sacrifice. People see pictures of starving children, emaciated donkeys, women being stoned to death by men and they immediately send in contributions. If this makes them feel good it further reinforces the ritual power of sacrifice. Abraham, ’tis said, was even ready to slaughter his son.

People are notorious for cooking up acceptable excuses for their ritual actions. An adulterous wife will claim that becoming lustfully involved with another man must have been because she really loved him. The early Spanish conquerors forbade Aztec sacrifices while, back home, their own Inquisition priests burned ‘witches’ alive.

A politician will proclaim ‘Their sacrifice has brought glory to our own great and everlasting history.’

My advice is don’t believe a word of it. It is all part of the yarn-telling, ritually focussed symbolism for the great gullible masses.

Indeed, ‘How easily the many are governed by the few.’