In order to give logical and fundamental explanation of this psychic phenomena many scientists referred to the most primitive existing societies in order to see the practices, rituals and the whole concept of primitive religious beliefs and magic originally and to refer to these observations for further research.
The studies of Marett and Malinowski who looked on religious beliefs from the emotionalist perspective show that religion and magic as one of its primitive forms originates from the emotional stress of people and their desire to feel this vacuum, to suppress the emotions of fear caused by the violent environment. In order to overcome this emotional crisis primitive people invented special sorts of ritual traditions of mystical nature where the miracle takes a common place and which are separated from the reality by taboos and certain rules in order to establish the margins between reality and magic. They base this sort of theory on t he concept that primitive people were more empiric than rational, and they perceived the surrounding world only by their feels and emotions rather than by certain critical analysis and reason. But from the other hand other scientists, as Hamilton mentions mark that primitive societies still had the features of rationalism in their practices and could differentiate to a certain level the reality and metaphysics.
Marett's and Malinowski's ideas are criticized widely, as being single sided. Hamilton marks that the relation between ritual and emotion is quite variable, more over Marett`s theory doesn't deal with tribal cultures of primitive societies, so his ideas might be real limited to a certain observed primitive societies. On the other hand Malinowski explored tribal societies so his observations and conclusions might be more persuasive. If Marett gave the leading role in the development of religious beliefs to the ritual and so in rituals the main source of development of religion, art, and philosophy, then Malinowski on the other hand emphasized on the priority of practical role of magic and myths in archaic societies which had a regulative role in order to keep an order in the tribe and they were later substituted by a more organized and defined system of values and beliefs as religion.
In order to choose the definite and well proved position in answering the question about the nature of religion is it more of emotional or intellectual origin it's important to take into consideration different aspects of this problem. In different cultures now it's perceived on different levels both on emotional and rational, but still I have to say that the priority of emotional experience is more vivid and obvious as it bases on emotional and psychic experiences rather than on cognition and rationalism. In western culture religion is a supplement to the whole system of the beliefs that people have and is an integral form of culture, and people treat it as culture. In eastern cultures it's visa versa, even in Christians of orthodox Europe, not talking about Muslims and representatives of other religion confessions refer to religion as to the tradition form of magic, and consider God to be more a wizard than a God is it's stated in religion teachings.
So we can see that the emotional origin of religion dominates over the intellectual or rational one, and western culture had the same emotional origins of religion as any other society. The religion was a product of person's fantasies, images and in general, a product of person's imagination rather than a product of logical and analytical thinking about the world that surrounds a man. But in many aspects, as modern science shows, emotional and rational approach to reality was close enough on the rise of the human era so it's difficult to differentiate them. As human emotional world in inalienable components of persons inner world which includes thinking and reasoning abilities, so in many ways it dominated and influenced human's rational nature as well. Because people are not able to explain different events that take place in their lives, because they are unable to change the matter of events very often, there appears a basic psychological need to cure their emotional world by referring to some sort of illusion and myth that would substitute reality and would put an end to emotional hunger. From another perspective religious norms regulate or deeds, life but mostly they regulate the activity of or emotional world and psychics, suppressing negative emotions and regulating our desires according to the situation.