th century book
The Golden Bough :
A Study in Comparative Religion . Magical rituals were the source of what would become secular art. Here we shall analyze this assertion in the context of the Hamatsa dance of the Kwakiutl people of Canada.
Ritual Stripped of its Magical Value: Looking at the Hamatsa Dance
English folklorist Jessie Weston, in fact, tried to show magical rituals could be the source of secular art in the case of the grail story in her book
From Ritual to Romance , an early 20
th century work that influenced T.S. Eliot’s poem
The Wasteland . A magical ritual would be created to bring about some natural goal beneficial to a community, but in the transition from the country to the town, magic would be largely abandoned. City-dwellers would have, nevertheless, remembered and taken these rituals with them to the city. No longer possessing magical value, the rituals now were found to contain meaning or the potential for entertainment and significance.