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THE PHILOSOPHY OF PLEASURE
Against a woman rival, with a plant (467) To guard a pregnant woman from demons (493) To Kāma (521)
Magic stanzas for marriage ceremonies (740-753) Of and to Desire (Kama) (985)
The worries and difficulties of married life in Vedic times, apparently, were much the same as those that we know in the world today. And the remedies offered by the Kāma-material of the Atharva-veda are the classic ones of all ages: medical treatment in the form of herbs, plants, and philters; suggestion and persuasion, enhanced by magic objects (amulets); eugenics; mental and emotional hygiene-attunement, adjustment; all couched in terms of magic, and administered by the priestmagician medicine man-archaic archetype of those modern wizards of the psyche, the consulting psychoanalyst and the family doctor. On the other hand, some of the charms are simply household-medicine, used by man or wife without the assistance of the priest-wizard: love-charms against rivals, etc.
Kama is of the essence of magic, magic of the essence of love; for among nature's own spells and charms that of love and sex is pre-eminent. This is the witchcraft that compels life to progress from one generation to the next, the spell that binds all creatures to the cycle of existences, through deaths and births. It would be impossible to imagine a compendium of magic lore without its due assortment of love-charms. The Latin carmen, "magic priestly song (conjuring up the powers, warding demons away)," our English "charm" (which meant, originally, "magic stanza, the conjuring sing-song that works a spell"), and such kindred terms as "incantation," "enchantment," "enchanting," "enchanter," all point back to the magic song or spell; likewise the French enchanté, désenchanté, and charme. A singer, a soprano, une cantatrice, is an enchantress; so too the tenor who "puts a spell" upon the audience. Love, song, and the divine
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| SR No. | 007309 |
| Book Title | Philosophies of India |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | Heinrich Zimmer, Joseph Campbell |
| Publisher | Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd |
| Publication Year | 1953 |
| Total Pages | 709 |
| Language | English |
| Classification | Book_English |
| File Size | 34 MB |