Controlling the future.
But primitive man was not actuated by any abstract love of knowledge, and when he had observed what appeared to him to be a law of nature, he proceeded to turn it to advantage in his efforts for the preservation of his life.

Since events had the characteristic of recurrence, all he had to do in order to produce the recurrence of any particular event which he desired, was to cause it to happen in the first instance; and since he did not distinguish between imitation and reality, he thought that if he simply enacted the event he would thus ensure its being brought to pass.

And so he assiduously set himself to influence the course of nature to his own advantage.

When the Australian aborigines are performing ceremonies for the increase of witchetty grubs, a long narrow structure of boughs is made which represents the chrysalis of the grub.

The men of the witchetty grub totem enter the structure and sing songs about the production and growth of the witchetty grub.