Article
French
ID: <
10.4000/terrain.4229>
·
DOI: <
10.4000/terrain.4229>
Abstract
Perfume, symbolism and spellsAn impressive affinity seems to exist between the powers of magic and of perfumes. Based on a phenomenology of olfactory experience and an ethnology of magic, the efficacity attributed to oktesap, a smelly sachet of magic for success in hunting in New Guinea, is compared to that of perfumes in our culture. What the language of magic and the silent language of perfume have in common is that they make it possible to substitute for the world here below, where the contingent and the particular reign, another world, freed of hazards and singularities, a world of order and harmony.