The Differences between Magic and Religion are:
Magic is a performing art that entertains an audience by creating illusions of seemingly impossible or supernatural feats, using purely natural means. These feats are called magic tricks, effects or illusions. One who performs such illusions is called a magician or more commonly an illusionist. Some performers may also be referred to by names reflecting the type of magical effects they present, such as prestidigitators, conjurors, mentalists, escape artists, and ventriloquists.
Religion and magic reveal many similarities. Both of them deal with unobservable powers. They operate only on the basis of faith of the adherent or believer. Both religion and magic can be explained as human attempts to cope with fears, frustrations and uncertainties of day-to-day life. Both in religion and magic attempts are made to direct the supernatural power to achieve specific ends, using certain techniques.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
Malinowski and Frazer are well-known scholars who have contributed richly to the understanding of magic and religion.
Religion refers to ultimate problems and meaning of human existence (e.g. death, failures etc.), whereas magic is concerned more with immediate problem like control of weather, drought, victory in battle, prevention of disease. Within religion, one prays to gods and pleads with them, whereas in magic, the magical manipulates the supernatural power. Religion makes a person believe in the power of the supernatural.
On the contrary, in magical practices, the adherent believe in the own power to manipulate the power of the supernatural. It needs to be pointed out that religion and magic are not completely distinct. Vermon (1962:63) explains that magic is dispensed in a buyer-seller situation, whereas religion follows the pattern of flock and the shepherd. In religion, a person feels powerless before the sacred, and accepts the supreme power and omnipotence of the sacred. A devotee prays and begs to the supreme.
Moreover, religion demands a strong emotional involvement its adherents and is very personal. In magic, the magician is business like and undertakes to manipulate the power of the supernatural, only for a ‘price’. A magical act is more impersonal and follows a fixed formula. Religion has more of collective-orientation.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
Religion pursue common goals; .it has a set of beliefs and common practice; it units its adherents as a community. Indirect contrast, magic does not produce or even attempt to produce ‘community’ among the believers. Magic is more individualistic. Magic moreover does not provide a philosophy, a way of life or moral prescriptions, as religion does.
A practitioner of magic, the magician represents only himself or herself. Whereas religious functionaries represent the religion or the community of believers. In view of its businesslike character, and reliance on magic formula magic was considered by Frazer, a renewed anthropologist, as a primitive form of science.