We may console ourselves about our historical demotion from the status of cosmic heroism by saying that at least we know what true religion is, whereas these cosmic creators lived according to childish magic. I'll admit that our historical disenchantment is a burden that gives us a certain sober worldliness, but there is no valid difference between religion and magic, no matter how many books are written to support the distinction. As Hocart pointed out so succinctly, magic is religion we don't believe in, and religion is magic we believe in. Voilá tout.
What Huizinga did in Homo Ludens was show that primitive life was basically a rich and playful dramatization of life; primitive man acted out his significance as a living creature and as a lord over other creatures. It seems to me like genius, this remarkable intuition of what man needs and wants; and primitive man not only had this uncanny intuition but actually acted on it, set up his social life to give himself what he wanted and needed. We may know what we lack in modern life, and we brood on it, but twist and sweat as we may we can never seem to bring it off. Perhaps things were simpler and more manageable in prehistoric times and had not gotten out of hand, and so man could act on what he knew. Primitive man set up his society as a stage, surrounded himself with actors to play different roles, invented gods to address the performance to, and then ran off one ritual drama after the other, raising himself to the stars and bringing the stars down into the affairs of men. He staged the dance of life, with himself at the center. And to think that when western man first crashed uninvited into these spectacular dramas, he was scornful of what he saw. That was because, as Huizinga so well argued, western man was already a fallen creature who had forgotten how to play, how to impart to life high style and significance. Western man was being given a brief glimpse of the creations of human genius, and like a petulant imbecile bully who feels discomfort at what he doesn't understand, he proceeded to smash everything in sight.