A Study in Comparative Religion

October 13, 2021

By AHNZ

The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion (1890) by James Frazer has had substantial impact on anthropology and major influence on modern thinkers. For a study of the structure of pre-philosophical thought, or ‘magic’, you could ask for no better guide. To understand New Zealand history we sometimes need such a guide since, from time to time, entire generations reject the received wisdom of their forebears. The COVID-19 crisis, as we will see, makes a very good example of exactly that.

For those interested in the Strauss-Howe model the category of the New Zealanders who are reactionary toward Reason are called the Prophet Generation and examples include the Vogel Boomers and the Baby Boomers.

Frazer’s work is also essential reading for understanding Maoris in the original sense because without exception they were, of course, pre-philosophical and superstitious. The reader is startled to discover Frazer’s central premise that all “savage” minds the world over think alike and their rituals resemble each other often identically. It’s an essential foil for exposing the “Maori Philosophy” of Mason Durie and “Maori Science” of Auckland University in 2021. The Golden Bough directly draws on examples from Maori superstition largely thanks to Frazer’s researcher, our own Raymond Firth. The 1996 edition of Frazer’s abridged work even uses cover art of a tattooed Maori face.

The following is intended as a summary of Frazer’s guide to those who either abandon or have yet to attain reason. He formulated explicitly what it is that primitive minds accept implicitly as a result of exercising a concrete-based mind to its utmost limits. In other words, he reverse-engineered the mechanics of magic.

Frazer’s First Law of Magic: Similarity

Frazer’s First Law is The Law of Similarity. Without access to Abstract thinking the person who processes reality with a dominantly Concrete mind mistakes correlation for causation. In other words, like produces like. In terms of cognition the core of it is really just that of the reptilian or limbic parts of the brain taking up the seat of consciousness while the neocortex either complies or remains passive. It is when the neocortex embellishes misassociations that things get quite screwy.

For example, we get the voodoo doll that is similar enough to the subject enough that it is supposed pricking the doll will harm the real live person (eg. Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom (1984.) This is also the principle behind the magic memory water of Homeopathy and the healing crystals peddled in most shopping malls in New Zealand complete with a fruity looking shop proprietor who can advise on how to use the magic and what you should pay for them.

Obviously we live in a Demon Haunted World that people in everyday mainstream retail life are basic enough in their cognition to accept the First Law. Backward countries even have an example called a Cargo Cult where, for example, cell phones and aeroplanes are made out of wood and expected to function because they are similar to the real thing. Savage as it is, New Zealanders are no better when they elect politicians to ‘Close The Gaps’ by redistributing wealthy-person traits to poor people in the expectation that making the outside similar will change the nature of people on the inside. AHNZ calls this The Mix-And-Match-Barbie Fallacy.

The COVID-19 Hysteria employs The Law of Simularity when it comes to the wearing of masks. After all, it is well known but suppressed information that mandated wearing of face-covering masks is of no health benefit (Ref. Masks. Important public service announcement from the NZ Government, Avyaya, Youtube (2020)) so we must don our Fraserian hats and interpret them as an act of superstition. When we see people wearing masks alone in their cars or far from everyone in the outdoors, or we see Covid Karens and their like with breathing holes cut in their already useless masks it’s clear that, to themselves, masks are a totem object. The mask is not expected by the masses to have any scientific use but rather gains its power by resembling something else that does (the same way a tattoo works.)

The COVID-19 “vaccine” is another example of medical magic based on the First Law. Monty Python made a great joke about the importance of a machine that did no more for health than produce a “Ping!” sound yet to the concrete mind that thinks only by proxy, by (mis)associations and correlations, is was of great value. From a scientific standpoint everyone is well aware that what is being propagandised as a “vaccine” is nothing of the sort. The medicine injection does not stop infection nor spread as a vaccine would but only acts as a palliative, or so it is claimed. However, because the spell-casters distribute the medicine via hypodermic needle via medical professionals and refer to it as a “vaccine” it is intended to operate via magic due to Law One: Similarity.

Frazer’s Second Law of Magic: Law of Contact

By the First Law, Similarity, the magician infers that he can produce any effect he desires merely by imitating it. It’s still prevalent enough that rational people constantly have occasion to contradict it by the well-worn phrase: “Correlation is not causation.” By the Second Law, The Law of Contact or Contagion, the magician or Magical Thinker considers that objects continue to act on each other at a distance like some magic touch or accursed stigma.

Think here of lucky charms such as a rabbits foot or Peter Blake’s lucky Red Socks (1995.) Think of medieval pilgrim trails visiting various holy places to be near a holy relic claimed to be the shin bone or the skull or other cast-off body parts of some Christian saint or other. Fraser recounts how English monarchs were once thought to have a Royal touch that cured disease but it ended with Queen Anne whereas New Zealand Maoris kept it up to the days of Wiremu Ratana and beyond. This image (left) shows the museum at Ratana Pa in the 1920s where alleged ex-cripples’ walking sticks, crutches, and a wheel chair have become trophies demonstrating the power of God’s/Ratana’s healing touch. Examples are numerous of the old magic idea that eating a strong animal or keeping its body parts imbued anyone with the characteristics of that animal such as their speed or reflexes. Maoris who practiced cannibalism thought so. Auckland was invaded by the Hauraki Maoris in 1851 that all started because a chief’s sacred head had been made contact with and this was evil magic worthy of bloody revenge.

“A few years ago the Maori tohunga used sometimes to try to squeeze the spirit out of a sick man by piling stones on him..he used sometimes to squeeze a man’s life out in this way. Could anything be more foolish?” – Health for the Maori: A Manual for Use in Native Schools, James Pope (1884)

“When you believe in things that you don’t understand then you suffer. Superstition ain’t the way.” – Superstition, Stevie Wonder (1972)

When it comes to COVID-19 Hysteria, ,what difference is an Ashley Bloomfield Tshirt, towel, or tote bag from other ritual totem objects?

Contact Tracing is the obsession of the population for which daily statistics are collected and the masses transfixed by. Given that Law 2 is literally called Law of Contact and Contagious Magic it could not be more transparent to anyone following along. The afflicted all want to know who has been contaminated, when, and where while our modern witchdoctors dutifully accommodate using all the power of modern broadcast technology.

“Stop the Spread” is their catch-cry. Smartphone tracking apps are sanctioned with QR code signage mandated for every public place. A Clown World of magic emerges as irrational rules are piled contradictoraly upon irrational rules. Practitioners accept Frazer’s Second Rule of magic and scramble in their anxiety to resist it using the prescribed rituals. The old Law 2 magic that stated cell phones could ignite petrol pumps was replaced by the new Law 2 myth that one had to “Scan In” to defeat the Contagion that preys upon the non-hyper-vigilant anxious-paranoid. Those who are not hyper-vigilant anxious-paranoid are regarded as suspicious and known by their chilled normalcy and failure to perform conspicuous rites such as Scanning In,  Mask Wearing, and especially “Vaccinating.” After use, a petrol pump is treated like a supermarket trolley and sanitised with alcohol despite the assurance of our best Witchdoctors that the Contagious Magic does not spread via fomites. Nor does this fact stop entire supermarkets being tabooed for “Deep Cleaning” spell before being opened up again. It also must be magic that children are not required to be “vaccinated” or masked or tested or Contact Traced even though from a medical science standpoint they are as capable of contracting a virus as anyone else.

Positive and Negative Magic

All magic and application of one or both of Frazer’s two laws. He makes another useful distinction between positive and negative magic, that is to say between Sorcery and Taboo. Sorcery is when the magician seeks to make something happen such as rain to fall. Taboo is when the magician seeks to stop something happening such as preventing rain from falling. While there is plenty of Sorcery in New Zealand politics the COVID-19 activity is powered by Negative Magic: Taboo.

Our superstitious mainstream taboos the entire country at times or cities and districts at a time by a name we have all become very familiar with. An old time Maori chief and tohunga priest casting a taboo would use the word “tapu” or “rahui” but for the Prime Minister and Director-General of Health it called Lockdown. They taboo cities, districts, even the entire country on-again-off-again by changing prescriptions referred to as Levels. The Prime Minister has singled out particular people and particular businesses during the daily spell-casting which serves as a warning to others who would be ruined socially and financially if they do not comply with the spell. In the recent past the masses have responded to gun crime and knife crime using the Law of Similarity by tabooing guns and knives. (When the Prime Minister wore a hijab and incanted “They are us” this was Sorcery not Taboo.) People, firms, towns, activities, entire industries have been tabooed. The House of Representatives was tabooed. Anyone coming to New Zealand is automatically Contaminated and tabooed into “Managed Isolation and Quarantine” (MIQ) under the watch of the Army.

The Jab, Masks, “Vaccines,” and MIQ are as much Taboo as Lockdown

It is clear to all non-magical thinkers, we the rational, that a so-called vaccination “jab” and its repeated “Booster” jab is a form of Negative Magic. The superstitious, especially after recently undergoing the jabbing ritual, tell us all the time how they have done this not for themselves but for others. The jab is a taboo intended to prevent something, not Sorcery intended to bring something positive about. The jabbed tell us “you are welcome” because they believe they have suppressed a possessing demon contagion within themselves from getting out and hurting others. Masks, likewise…

“You aren’t wearing it so much to protect yourself from others, but, to protect others from you! I have to go get groceries…I wear a mask for your protection.”– FB commenter I decided not to name

The taboo magic of masks, like the jab, are not considered to operate on the person they are applied to but the wider community itself. You have only to listen to the magical thinkers or their priests to understand that they really do think that. Even those who do not have the benefit of Fraser’s anthropological framework have observed this strange situation. The jabbed and masked are far from satisfied that they have made themselves uncursed because their action was a taboo for the sake of others not a Sorcery charm for themselves. Many memes are circulating that observe the curiosity of taboo participants who become increasingly anxious that others are free-riding on having been beneficiaries of the taboo without returning the favor…

“Took a 2 hour nap today…but I’m still tired because you didn’t take yours..thanks! Anti-Nappers!”

“My wife’s pregnant! It’s your fault my vasectomy didn’t work..you should’ve got yours done..!”

“Imagine if there was a 99.97% chance you won’t shit your pants, but you’re forced to wear diapers just in case. Now imagine you’re to wear these diapers to protect your neighbor from shitting his pants.”

Frazer’s making explicit what Negative Magic is provides the only explanation offered for the above behavior. Participants in the superstitious group, referred to by the Prime Spellcaster as “The Team of Five Million” are casting a taboo protection spell on everyone else not themselves. From their point of view their health and life is in the hands of the tribe. If you are not tabooing then the superstitious suspect you of wishing them dead and become acutely anxious at the perceived betrayal.

By Frazer’s model we can now empathise with the superstitious and why it is they call for the exclusion and lynching and even hope for the death of those who do not participate in the Team taboo ritual. They call on and are delighted by the possibility of punishing and excluding people from human rights and the necessities of life who, by their own lights, evidently want they and their loved ones to suffer or die painfully of the Contagion. It is nothing for them to embrace the unlawful (currently) arrest and dismissal of doctors, health workers, school teachers, and transport workers. We may need their skills for our economy, we may risk poverty, yet the prime directive above all sanity and science is magical. The “Elimination Strategy” taboo must go on!

The Sovereign Magician

Rulers and their priests (media and academic) are the major beneficiaries of a little amount of superstition, according to Frazer. When, as in the most primitive people, superstition is widespread nobody has a monopoly on magic. As the irrationality is driven out of everyday life the remaining users of Magic are considered especially powerful to those who believe they exist at all. New Zealand, being in this intermediary stage, places huge faith in magic incarnate.

Consider the $55 million “Public Interest Journalism Fund” awarded by Labour 6.0 to keep the Legacy Media subsidised afloat (and on-message) long beyond when it should have been extinct.

Consider the array of New Zealander of the Year,  Prime Minister’s Science Prize, Wellingtonian of the Year Supreme Award, etc. distributed chiefly to Siouxsie Wiles, Michael Baker, and Shaun Hendy. The media approval and Social Proof targeted at this trio who are Jacinda Ardern’s artillery is immense. One one-message health professional was even rewarded with a quick selection to parliament and immediate promotion to Minister; Ayesha Verrall.

Not to mention the fortune. None of the three need worry about attracting fabulous grant money for their future projects. Only this week it was revealed that Hendy’s operation was appointed without any public tender contest a sum of $6,000,000 by Labour 6.0 for his work which, so it happens, backs up their every move. No need for peer review.

“On the whole, then, we seem to be justified in inferring that in many parts of the world the king is the lineal successor of the old magician or medicine-man…No class of the community has benefited so much as kings by this belief in the possible incarnation of a god in human form.” – Frazer

Jacinda Ardern, much like her artillery trio above, and like children, tend not to need masking up because the spell seems to stipulate that they are non-contaminated. “Bubbles” are for the superstitious Muggles not for the Wizards among us. No wonder the House of Representatives was relegated to video-calls and prevented from gathering while it was made clear that Ardern’s Executive was in a different and uncontaminated class. No wonder Siouxsie Wiles could venture forth during Lockdown Tapu in a way the lesser-ranked previous Health Minister David Clark could not pull off.

Ardern made 2020 the year of the Lockdown Election and who else could win a Taboo mini-game except the Dungeon Master making up every rule? It is Easier To Fool People Than To Convince Them That They Have Been Fooled and fortunately for Ardern she inherited a people who were pre-inducted as fully qualified fools. The Baby Boomers are a generation who abandoned reason as in the Ayn Rand quote at the top of this page. They are also the critical mass in our population who, having been won, have led the rest us us along for the Magical Mystery Tour with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern at the wheel.

How Will This End?

Thanks to all who have been interested enough to read this far and I wont lengthen this essay further with a detailed prognosis. Two of the endings to a Mass Panic outlined by Frazer might light the way. On one fork, the The Public Expulsion of Evils is successful and “The devils are now driven away, and great and general is the joy.” What keeps New Zealand from this end is both that the superstitious don’t yet feel satisfied that the “Five Million” are compliant but also that an end to this Mass Moral Panic in no way suits the architect whose re-election depends on more of the same.

The second fork, which would be glorious, is an Emperor’s New Clothes moment where the Wizard placing fear and division into the people is caught out and laughed out of power…

“About the year 1830 there appeared, in one of the States of the American Union bordering on Kentucky, an impostor who declared that he was the Son of God, the Saviour of mankind, and that he had reappeared on earth to recall the impious, the unbelieving, and sinners to their duty. He protested that if they did not mend their ways within a certain time, he would give the signal, and in a moment the world would crumble to ruins. These extravagant pretensions were received with favour even by persons of wealth and position in society. At last a German humbly besought the new Messiah to announce the dreadful catastrophe to his fellow-countrymen in the German language, as they did not understand English, and it seemed a pity that they should be damned merely on that account. The would-be Saviour in reply confessed with great candour that he did not know German. “What!” retorted the German, “you the Son of God, and don’t speak all languages, and don’t even know German? Come, come, you are a knave, a hypocrite, and a madman. Bedlam is the place for you.” The spectators laughed, and went away ashamed of their credulity.” – Frazer

I’ve looked for a primary source to this Kentucky-adjacent tale for the past 5 years without success but it rings true. If the mass taboo magic were to wear out the Orwellian Double Think superstructure it depends on beyond Ardernian running software patches (such as “It’s a tricky virus” or “Delta is a Game Changer”) then the psychosis would become exhausted and end. At this point a good magician would get out ahead of the inevitable Taboo Market Crash by declaring victory over COVID-19 and making herself scarce before the tar and feathers come out.

—

Ref. also The Public Expulsion of Evils, NZB3

Ref. also COVID Masks are Gang Patches, NZB3

Image ref. Zespri Magic, Ref. AHNZ

Image ref. Museum at Ratana Pa, William Hall Raine; Museum of New Zealand

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