THE GOLDEN BOUGH
A STUDY IN MAGIC AND RELIGION
THIRD EDITION
PARTI
THE MAGIC ART
AND THE EVOLUTION OF KINGS
VOL.1
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THE MAGIC ART
AND THE EVOLUTION OF KINGS
Sir JAMES GEORGE FRAZER
D.C.L., LL.D., LiTT.D. ' ■
FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
PROFESSOR OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LIVKKPOOL
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I
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" Nee indigeste tamqiiam in acerTmm congessimus digita menioratu :
sed variarum rerum disparilitas^ auctoribus diversa confusa temporibus,
ita in quoddam digesia corpus esf^ ut quae indistincte atque protniscue
ad subsidium memoriae annotaveramus in ordinem instar membrorum
cohturentia convenirent. Nee mihi vitio vertas, si res quas ex
Ueiione varia mutuabor ipsis saepe verbis quibus ab ipsis auctoribus
enarratae sunt explicabo^ quia praesens opus non eloquentiae osteniationem
sed noseendorum eongeriem pollieetur : et boni consulas oportet^ si notitiam
vetusteUis modo nostris non obsetire modo ipsis antiquorum fidelilcr verbis
recognoscas, prout quaeque se vel enarranda vel transferenda suggesserint.
Apes enim quodammodo debeinus imitari, quae vaguntur et Jlores carpunt,
deinde quicquid attulere disponunt ae per favos dividunt et sucum varium
in unum saporem mixtura quadam et proprietate spiritus sui mutant. ^^
Macrobius, Saturnalia, Praefatio.
COPYRIGHT
Third Edition March 191 1
Reprinted July 1911, 1913, 1917, 1920
TO
MY FRIEND
WILLIAM ROBERTSON SMITH
IN
GRATITUDE AND ADMIRATION
PREFACE
When I originally conceived the idea of the work, of which
the first part is now laid before the public in a third and
enlarged edition, my intention merely was to explain the
strange rule of the priesthood or sacred kingship of Nemi
and with it the legend of the Golden Bough, immortalised
Jjy Virgil, which the voice of antiquity associated with
the priesthood. The explanation was suggested to me by
some similar rules formerly imposed on kings in Southern
India, and at first I thought that it might be adequately set
forth within the compass of a small volume. But I soon
found that in attempting to settle one question I had raised
many niore : wider and wider prospects opened out before
me ; and thus step by step I was lured on into far-spreading
fields of primitive thought which had been but little explored
by my predecessors. Thus the book grew on my hands, and
soon the projected essay became in fact a ponderous
treatise, or rather a series of separate dissertations loosely
linked together by a slender thread of connexion with my
original subject. With each successive edition these disserta-
tions have grown in number and swollen in bulk by the
accretion of fresh materials, till the thread on which they
are strung at last threatened to snap under their weight.
Accordingly, following the hint of a friendly critic, I
decided to resolve my overgrown book into its elements,
and to publish separately the various disquisitions of which
viii PREFACE
it is composed. The present volumes, forming the first
part of the whole, contain a -preliminary enquiry into the
principles of Magic and the evolution of the Sacred
Kingship in general. They will be followed shortly
by a volume which discusses the principles of Taboo in
their special application to sacred or priestly kings. The
remainder of the work will be mainly devoted to the myth
and ritual of the Dying God, and as the subject is large and
fruitful, my discussion of it will, for the sake of convenience,
be divided into several parts, of which one, dealing with
some dying gods of antiquity in Egypt and Western Asia, has
already been published under the title of Adonis, Attis, Osiris.
But while I have thus sought to dispose my book in its
proper form as a collection of essays on a variety of distinct,
though related, topics, I have at the same time preserved its
unity, as far as possible, by -retaining the original title for
the whole series of volumes, and by pointing out from time
to time the bearing of my general conclusions on the particular
problem which furnished the starting-point of the enquiry.
It seemed to me that this mode of presenting the subject
offered some advantages which outweighed certain obvious
drawbacks. By discarding the austere form, without, I hope,
sacrificing the solid substance, of a scientific treatise, I thought
to cast my materials into a more artistic mould and so
perhaps to attract readers, who might have been repelled by
a more strictly logical and systematic arrangement of the
facts. Thus I put the mysterious priest of Nemi, so to
say, in the forefront of the picture, grouping the other
sombre figures of the same sort behind him in the back-
ground, not certainly because I deemed them of less moment
but because the picturesque natural surroundings of the
priest of Nemi among the wooded hills of Italy, the very
mystery which enshrouds him, and not least the haunting
magic of Virgil's verse, all combine to shed a glamour on
the tragic figure with the Golden Bough, which fits him to
PREFACE ix
stand as the centre of a gloomy canvas. But I trust that
the high relief into which he has thus been thrown in my
pages will not lead'my readers either to overrate his historical
importance by comparison with that of some other figures
which stand behind him in the shadow, or to attribute to my
theory of the part he played a greater degree of probability
than it deserves. Even if it should appear that this ancient
Italian priest must after all be struck out from the long roll of
men who have masqueraded as gods, the single omission would
not sensibly invalidate the demonstration, which I believe I
have given, that human pretenders to divinity have been
far commoner and their credulous worshippers far more
numerous than had been hitherto suspected. Similarly,
should my whole theory of this particular priesthood collapse
— and I fully acknowledge the slenderness of the foundations
on which it rests — its fall would hardly shake my general
conclusions as to the evolution of primitive religion and
society, which are founded on large collections of entirely
independent and well-authenticated facts.
Friends versed in German philosophy have pointed out
to me that my views of magic and religion and their relations
to each other in history agree to some extent with those of
Hegel. The agreement is quite independent and to me
unexpected, for I have never studied the philosopher's
writings nor attended to his speculations. As, however, we
have arrived at similar results by very different roads, the
partial coincidence of our conclusions may perhaps be
taken to furnish a certain presumption in favour of their
truth. To enable my readers to judge of the extent of the
coincidence, I have given in an appendix some extracts from
Hegel's lectures on the philosophy of religion. The curious
may compare them with my chapter on Magic and Religion,
which was written in ignorance of the views of my illustrious
predecessor.
With regard to the history of the sacred kingship which
» PREFACE
I have outlined in these volumes, I desire to repeat a,
warning which I have given in the text. While I have
shewn reason to think that in many communities sacred
kings have been developed out of magicians, I am far
from supposing that this has been universally true.
The causes which have determined the establishment of
monarchy have no doubt varied greatly in different countries
and at different times : I make no pretence to discuss
or even enumerate them all: I have merely selected one
particular cause because it bore directly on my special
enquiry ; and I have laid emphasis on it because it seems to
have been overlooked by writers on the origin of political
institutions, who, themselves sober and rational according to
modern standards, have not reckoned sufficiently with
the enormous influence which superstition has exerted in
shaping the human past. But I have no wish to exaggerate
the importance of this particular cause at the expense of
others which may have been equally or even more influential.
No one can be more sensible than I am of the risk of
stretching an hypothesis too far, of crowding a multitude of
incongruous particulars under one narrow formula, of reducing
the vast, nay inconceivable complexity of nature and history
to a delusive appearance of theoretical simplicity. It
may well be that I have erred in this direction again and
again ; but at least I have been well aware of the danger of
error and have striven to guard myself and my readers
against it. How far I have succeeded in that and the other
objects I have set before me in writing this work, I must
leave to the candour of the public to determine.
J. G. FRAZER.
Cambridge,
5//4 December 1910,
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
OF THE GOLDEN BOUGH
For some time I have been preparing a general work on
primitive superstition and religion. Among the problems
which had attracted my attention was the hitherto unex-
plained rule of the Arician priesthood ; and last spring it
happened that in the course of my reading I came across
some facts which, combined with others I had noted before,
suggested an explanation of the rule in question. As the
explanation, if correct, promised to throw light on some
obscure features of primitive religion, I resolved to develop
it fully, and, detaching it from my general work, to issue it
as a separate study. This book is the result.
Now that the theory, which necessarily presented itself
to me at first in outline, has been worked out in detail, I
cannot but feel that in some places I may have pushed it
too far. If this should prove to have been the case, I will
readily acknowledge and retract my error as .soon as it is
brought home to me. Meantime my essay may serve its
purpose as a first attempt to solve a difficult problem, and
to bring a variety of scattered facts into some sort of order
and system.
A justification is perhaps needed of the length at which I
have dwelt upon the popular festivals observed by ICuropean
peasants in spring, at midsummer, and at harvest. It can
hardly be too often repeated, since it is not yet generally
recognised, that in spite of their fragmentary character the
xii PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
popular superstitions and customs of the peasantry are by far
the fullest and most trustworthy evidence we possess as to
the primitive religion "of the Aryans. Indeed the primitive
Aryan, in all that regards his mental fibre and texture, is
not extinct. He is amongst us to this day. The great
intellectual and moral forces which have revolutionised the
educated world have scarcely affected the peasant. In his
inmost beliefs he is what his forefathers were in the days
when forest trees still grew and squirrels played on the
ground where Rome and London now stand.
Hence every enquiry into the primitive religion of the
Aryans should either start from the superstitious beliefs and
observances of the peasantry, or should at least be constantly
checked and controlled by reference to them. Compared
with the evidence afforded by living tradition, the testimony
of ancient books on the subject of early religion is worth
very little. For literature accelerates the advance of thought
at a rate which leaves the slow progress of opinion by word
of mouth at an immeasurable distance behind. Two or
three generations of literature may do more to change
thought than two or three thousand years of traditional life.
But the mass of the people who do not read books remain
unaffected by the mental revolution wrought by literature ;
and so it has come about that in Europe at the present
day the superstitious beliefs and practices which have been
handed down by word of mouth are generally of a far more
archaic type than the religion depicted in the most ancient
literature of the Aryan race.
It is on these grounds that, in discussing the meaning
and origin of an ancient Italian priesthood, I have devoted
so much attention to the popular customs and superstitions
of modern Europe. In this part of my subject I have made
great use of the works of the late W. Mannhardt, without
which, indeed, my book could scarcely have been written.
Fully recognising the truth of the principles which I have
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION xiii
imperfectly stated, Mannhardt set himself systematically
to collect, compare, and explain the living superstitions of
the peasantry. Of this wide field the special department
which he marked out for himself was the religion of the
woodman and the farmer, in other words, the superstitious
beliefs and rites connected with trees and cultivated plants
By oral enquiry, and by printed questions scattered broad-
cast over Europe, as well as by ransacking the literature of
folk-lore, he collected a mass of evidence, part of which he
published in a series of admirable works. But his health,
always feeble, broke down before he could complete the
comprehensive and really vast scheme which he had planned,
and at his too early death much of his precious materials
remained unpublished. His manuscripts are now deposited
in the University Library at Berlin, and in the interest of
the study to which he devoted his life it is greatly to be
desired that they should be examined, and that such por-
tions of them as he has not utilised in his books should
be given to the world.
Of his published works the most important are, first, two
tracts, Roggenwolf und Roggenhund, Danzig, 1865 (second
edition, Danzig, i866), and Die Kornddmonen, Berlin, 1868.
These little works were put forward by him tentatively, in
the hope of exciting interest in his enquiries and thereby
securing the help of others in pursuing them. But, except
from a few learned societies, they met with very little atten-
tion. Undeterred by the cold reception accorded to his
efforts he worked steadily on, and in 1875 published his
chief work, Der Bauiitkultus der Germanen und ihrer Nach-
harstdmme. This was followed in 1877 by Antike Wald-
und Feldkulte. Yi'is Mythologische Forsc/mngen,2i posthumous
work, appeared in 1884.
Much as I owe to Mannhardt, I owe still more to my
friend Professor W. Robertson Smith. My interest in the
early history of society was first excited by the works of
iciv PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
Dr. E. B. Tylor, which opened up a mental vista undreamed
of by me before. But it is-a long step from a lively interest
in a subject to a systematic study of it ; and that I took
this step is due to the influence of my friend W. Robertson
Smith. The debt which I owe to the vast stores of his
knowledge, the abundance and fertility of his ideas, and his
unwearied kindness, can scarcely be overestimated. Those
who know his writings may form some, though a very in-
adequate, conception of the extent to which I have been
influenced by him. The views of sacrifice set forth in his
article " Sacrifice " in the Encyclopedia Britannica, and
further developed in his recent work, The Religion of the
Semites, mark a new departure in the historical study of
religion, and ample traces of them will be found in this
book. Indeed the central idea of my essay — the conception
of the slain god — is derived directly, I believe, from my
friend. But it is due to him to add that he is in no way
responsible for the general explanation which I have offered
of the custom of slaying the god. He has read the greater
part of the . proofs in circumstances which enhanced the
kindness, and has made many valuable suggestions which
I have usually adopted ; but except where he is cited by
name, or where the views expressed coincide with those of
his published works, he is not to be regarded as necessarily
assenting to any of the theories propounded in this book.
The works of Professor G. A. Wilken of Leyden have
been of great service in directing me to the best original
authorities on the Dutch East Indies, a very important field
to the ethnologist. To the courtesy of the Rev. Walter
Gregor, M.A., of Pitsligo, I am indebted for some interesting
communications which will be found acknowledged in their
proper places. Mr. Francis Darwin has kindly allowed me
to consult him on some botanical questions. The manuscript
authorities to which I occasionally refer are answers to a
list of etlinological questions which I am circulating. Most
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION xv
of them will, I hope, be published in the Journal of the
Anthropological Institute.
The drawing of the Gelden Bough which adorns the
cover is from the pencil of my friend Professor J. H.
Middleton. The constant interest and sympathy which he
has shewn in the progress of the book have been a great
help and encouragement to me in writing it.
The Index has been compiled by Mr. A. Rogers, of the
University Library, Cambridge.
J. G. FRAZER.
Trinity College, Cambridge,
%th March 1 890.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
OF THE GOLDEN BOUGH
The kind reception accorded by critics and the public to
the first edition of The Golden Bough has encouraged me tc
spare no pains to render the new one more worthy of their
approbation. While the original book remains almost entire,
it has been greatly expanded by the insertion of much fresh
illustrative matter, drawn chiefly from further reading, but
in part also from previous collections which I had made,
and still hope to use, for another work. Friends and corre-
spondents, some of them personally unknown to me, have^
kindly aided me in various ways, especially by indicating
facts or sources which I had overlooked and by correcting
mistakes into which I had fallen. I thank them all for
their help, of which I have often availed myself Their
contributions will be found acknowledged in their proper
places. But I owe a special acknowledgment to my friends
the Rev. Lorimer Fison and the Rev. John Roscoe, who
have sent me valuable notes on the Fijian and Waganda
customs respectively. Most of Mr. Fison's notes, I believe,
are incorporated in my book. Of Mr. Roscoe's only a small
selection has been given ; the whole series, embracing a
general account of the customs and beliefs of the Waganda,
will be published, I hope, in the Journal of the Anthropo-
logical Institute. Further, I ought to add that Miss Mary
E. B. Howitt has kindly allowed me to make some extracts
VOL. I xvii b
xviii PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
from a work by her on Australian folklore and legends
which I was privileged to read in manuscript.
I have seen no reason to withdraw the explanation of
the priesthood of Aricia which forms the central theme of
my book. On the contrary, the probability of that explana-
tion appears to me to be greatly strengthened by some
important evidence which has copie to light since my the6ry
was put forward. Readers of the first edition may remember
thst I explained the priest of Aricia — the King of the
Wood — as an embodiment of a tree-spirit, and inferred
from a variety of considerations that at an earlier period
one of these priests had probably been slain every year in
his character of an incarnate deity. But for an undoubted
parallel to such a custom of killing a human god annually
I had to go as far as ancient Mexico. Now from the
Martyrdom of St. Dasius, unearthed and published a few
years ago by Professor Franz Cumont of Ghent {Analeda
BoUandiana, xvi. 1897), it is practically certain that in
ancient Italy itself a human representative of Saturn^the
' old god of the seed — was put to death every year at his
festival of the Saturnalia, and that though in Rome itself
the custom had probably fallen into disuse before the
classical era, it still lingered on in remote places down at
least to the fourth century after Christ. I cannot but
regard this discovery as a confirmation, as welcome as it
was unlocked for, of the theory of the Arician priesthood
which I had been led independently to propound.
Further, the general interpretation which, following
W. Mannhardt, I had given of the ceremonies observed by
our European peasantry in spring, at midsummer, and at
harvest, has also been corroborated by fresh and striking
analogies. If we are right, these ceremonies were originally
magical rites designed to cause plants to grow, cattle to thrive,
rain to fall, and the sun to shine. Now the remarkable
researches of Professor Baldwin Spencer and Mr. F. J. Gillen
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION xix
among the native tribes of Central Australia have proved that
these savages regularly pecfornn magical ceremonies for the
express purpose of bringing down rain and multiplying the
plants and animals on which they subsist, and further that
these ceremonies are most commonly observed at the approach
of the rainy season, which in Central Australia answers to
our spring. Here then, at the other side of the world, we find
an exact counterpart of those spring and midsummer rites
which our rude forefathers in Europe probably performed
with a full consciousness of their meaning, and which many
of their descendants still keep up, though the original in-
tention of the rites has been to a great extent, but by no
means altogether, forgotten. The harvest customs of our
European peasantry have naturally no' close analogy among
the practices of the Australian aborigines, since these savages
do not till the ground. But what we should look for in
vain among the Australians we find to hand among the
Malays. For recent enquiries, notably those of Mr. J. L.
van der Toorn in Sumatra and of Mr. W. W. Skeat in the
Malay Peninsula, have supplied us with close parallels to the
harvest customs of Europe, as these latter were interpreted
by the genius of Mannhardt. Occupying a lower plane of
culture than ourselves, the Malays have retained a keen
sense of the significance of rites which in Europe have sunk
to the level of more or less meaningless survivals.
Thus on the whole I cannot but think that the course of
subsequent investigation has tended to confirm the general
iwindples followed and the particular conclusions reached in
this book. At the same time I am as sensible as ever of the
hjrpothetical nature of much that is advanced in it. It has
been my wish and intention to draw as sharply as possible
the line of demarcation between my facts and the hypotheses
by which I have attempted to colligate them. Hypotheses
are necessary but often temporary bridges built to connect
isolated facts. If my light bridges should sooner or later
XX PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
break down or be superseded by more solid structures, I
hope that my book may still have its utility and its interest
as a repertory of facts.
But while my views, tentative and provisional as they
probably are, thus remain much what they were, there is one
subject on which they have undergone a certain amount of
change, unless indeed it might be more exact to say that I
seem to see clearly now what before was hazy. I mean the
relation of magic to religion. When I first wrote this book
I failed, perhaps inexcusably, to define even to myself my
notion of religion, and hence was disposed to class magic
loosely under it as one of its lower forms. I have now
sought to remedy this defect by framing as clear a defini-
tion of religion as the difficult nature of the subject and
my apprehension of it allowed. Hence I have come to
agree with Sir A. C. Lyall and Mr. F. B. Jevons in recog-
nising a fundamental distinction and even opposition of
principle between magic and religion. More than that, I
believe that in the evolution of thought, magic, as repre-
senting a lower intellectual stratum, has probably everywhere
preceded religion. I do not claim any originality for this
latter view. It has been already plainly suggested, if not
definitely formulated, by Professor H. Oldenberg in his able
book Die Religion des Veda, and for aught I know it may
have been explicitly stated by many others before and since
him. I have not collected the opinions of the learned on
the subject, but have striven to form my own directly from
the facts. And the facts which bespeak the priority of magic
over religion are many and weighty. Some of them the
reader will find stated in the following pages ; but the full
force of the evidence can only be appreciated by those who
have made a long and patient study of primitive superstition.
I venture to think that those who submit to this drudgery
will come more and more to the opinion I have indicated.
That all my readers should agree either with my definition
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION xxi
of religion or with the inferences I have drawn from it is
not to be expected. But \ would ask those who dissent
from my conclusions to^make sure that they mean the same
thing by religion that I do ; for otherwise the difference
between us may be more apparent than real.
As the scope and purpose of my book have been
seriously misconceived by some courteous critics, I desire
to repeat in more explicit language, what I vainly thought
I had made quite clear in my original preface, that this is
not a general treatise on primitive superstition, but merely
the investigation of one particular and narrowly limited
problem, to wit, the rule of the Arician priesthood, and
that accordingly only such general principles are explained
and illustrated in the course of it as seemed to me to throw
light on that special problem. If I have said little or
nothing of other principles of equal or even greater import-
ance, it is assuredly not because I undervalue them in com-
parison with those which I have expounded at some length,
but simply because it appeared to me that they did not
directly bear on the question I had set myself to answer.
No one can well be more sensible than I am of the im-
mense variety and complexity of the forces which have
gone towards the building up of religion ; no one can
recognise more frankly the futility and inherent absurdity
of any attempt to explain the whole vast organism as the
product of any one simple factor. If I have hitherto
touched, as I am quite aware, only the fringe of a great
subject — fingered only a few of the countless threads that
compose the mighty web, — it is merely because neither my
time nor my knowledge has hitherto allowed me to do
more. Should I live to complete the works for which I
have collected and am collecting materials, I dare to think
that they will clear me of any suspicion of treating the
early history of religion from a single narrow point of view.
But the future is necessarily uncertain, and at the best
xxU PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
many years must elapse before I can execute in full the
plan which I have traced out for myself. Meanwhile I am
unwilling by keeping silence to leave some of my readers
under the impression that my outlook on so large a subject
does not reach beyond the bounds of the present enquiry.
This is my reason for noticing the misconceptions to which
I have referred. I take leave to add that some part of my
larger plan would probably have been completed before now,
were it not that out of the ten years which have passed
since this book was first published nearly eight have been
spent by me in work of a different kind.
There is a misunderstanding of another sort which I
feel constrained to set right. But I do so with great reluct-
ance, because it compels me to express a measure of dissent
from the revered friend and master to whom I am under
the deepest obligations, and who has passed beyond the
reach of controversy. In an elaborate and learned essay
on sacrifice {L'Annee Sociologique, Deuxieme Annde, 1897-
1898), Messrs. H. Hubert and M. Mauss have represented
ray theory of the slain god as intended to supplement and
complete Robertson Smith's theory of the derivation of
animal sacrifice in general from a totem sacrament. On
this I have to say that the two theories are quite inde-
pendent of each other. I never assented to my friend's
theorj', and so far as I can remember he never gave me a
hint that he assented to mine. My reason for suspending
my judgment in regard to his theory was a simple one.
At the time when the theory was propounded, and for
many years afterwards, I knew of no single indubitable case
of a totem sacrament, that is, of a custom of killing and
eating the totem animal as a solemn rite. It is true that
in my Totemisin, and again in the present work, I noted a
few cases (four in all) of solemnly killing a sacred animal
which, following Robertson Smith, I regarded as probably
a totem. But none even of these four cases included the
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION xxiii
eating of the sacred animal by the worshippers, which was
an essential part of my friend's theory, and in regard to all
of them it was not positively known that the slain animal
was a totem. Hence as time went on and still no certain
case of a totem sacrament was reported, I became more and
more doubtful of the existence of such a practice at all, and
my doubts had almost hardened into incredulity when the
long-looked-for rite was discovered by Messrs. Spencer and
Gillen in full force among the aborigines of Central Australia,
whom I for one must consider to be the most primitive
totem tribes as yet known to us. This discovery I wel-
comed as a very striking proof of the sagacity of my
brilliant friend, whose rapid genius had outstripped our
slower methods and anticipated what it was reserved for
subsequent research positively to ascertain. Thus from
being little more than an ingenious hypothesis the totem
sacrament has become, at least in my opinion, a well-
authenticated fact. But from the practice of the rite by a
single set of tribes it is still a long step to the universal
practice of it by all totem tribes, and from that again it is
a still longer stride to the deduction therefrom of animal
sacrifice in general. These two steps I am not yet pre-
pared to take. No one will welcome further evidence of
the wide prevalence of a totem sacrament more warmly
than I shall, but until it is forthcoming I shall continue to
agree with Professor E. B. Tylor that it is unsafe to make
the custom the base of far-reaching speculations.
To conclude this subject, I will add that the doctrine
of the universality of totemism, which Messrs. Hubert and
Mauss have implicitly attributed to me, is one which I have
never enunciated or assumed, and that, so far as my know-
ledge and opinion go, the worship of trees and cereals,
which occupies so large a space in these volumes, is neither
identical with nor derived from a system of totemism. It
is possible that further enquiry may lead me to regaid as
xxiv PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
probable the universality of totemism and the derivation
from it of sacrifice and of the whole worship both of plants
and animals. I hold fnyself ready to follow the evidence
wherever it may lead ; but in the present state of our know-
ledge I consider that to accept these conclusions would be,
not to follow the evidence, but very seriously to outrun it,
In thinking so I am happy to be at one with Messrs. Hubert
and Mauss.
When I am on this theme I may as well say that I am
by no means prepared to stand by everything in my little
apprentice work, Totemism. That book was a rough piece
of pioneering in a field that, till then, had been but little
explored, and some inferences in it were almost certainly
top hasty. In particular there was a tendency, perhaps not
unnatural in the circumstances, to treat as totems, or as
connected with totemism, things which probably were neither
the one nor the other. If ever I republish the volume, as
I hope one day to do, I shall have to retrench it in some
directions as well as to enlarge it in others.
Such as it is, with all its limitations, which I have tried
to indicate clearly, and with all its defects, which I leave to
the critics to discover, I offer my book in its new form as
a contribution to that still youthful science which seeks to
trace the growth of human thought and institutions in those
dark ages which lie beyond the range of history. The
progress of that science must needs be slow and painful, for
the evidence, though clear and abundant on some sides, is
lamentably obscure and scanty on others, so that the cautious
enquirer is every now and then brought up sharp on the
edge of some yawning chasm across which he may be quite
unable to find a way. All he can do in such a case is to
mark the pitfall plainly on his chart and to hope that others
in time may be able to fill it up or bridge it over. Yet the
very difficulty and novelty of the investigation, coupled with
the extent of the intellectual prospect which suddenly opens
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION xxv
up before us whenever the mist rises and unfolds the far
horizon, constitute no small part of its charm. The position
of the anthropologist of to-day resembles in some sort the
position of classical scholars at the revival of learning. To
these men the rediscovery of ancient literature came like a
revelation, disclosing to their wondering eyes a splendid
vision of the antique world, such as the cloistered student
of the Middle Ages never dreamed of under the gloomy
shadow of the minster and within the sound of its solemn
bells. To us moderns a still wider vista is vouchsafed, a
greater panorama is unrolled by the study which aims at
bringing home to us the faith and the practice, the hopes
and the ideals, not of two highly gifted, races only, but of all
mankind, and thus at enabling us to follow the long march,
the slow and toilsome ascent, of humanity from savagery to
civilisation. And as the scholar of the Renaissance found
not merely fresh food for thought but a new field of labour
in the dusty and faded manuscripts of Greece and Rome, so
in the mass of materials that is steadily pouring in from
many sides — from buried cities of remotest antiquity as well
as from the rudest savages of the desert and the jungle — we
of to-day must recognise a new_province of knowledge which
will task the energies of generations of students to master.
The study is still in its rudiments, and what we do now
will have to be done over again and done better, with fuller
knowledge and deeper insight, by those who come after us.
To recur to a metaphor which I have already made use of,
we of this age are only pioneers hewing lanes and clearings
in the forest where others will hereafter sow and reap.
But the comparative study of the beliefs and institutions
of mankind is fitted to be much more than a means of satis-
fying an enlightened curiosity and of furnishing materials
for the researches of the learned. Well handled, it may
become a powerful instrument to expedite progress if it lays
bare certain weak spots in the foundations on which modern
xxvi PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDTTION
society is built — if it shews that much which wc are wont
to regard as solid rests on the sands of superstition rather
tlian on the rock of nature. It is indeed a melancholy and
in some respects thankless task to strike at the foundations
of beliefs in which, as in a strong tower, the hopes and
aspirations of humanity through long ages have sought a
refuge from the storm and stress of life. Yet sooner or
later it is inevitable that the battery of the comparative
method should breach these venerable walls, mantled over
with the ivy and mosses and wild flowers of a thousand
tender and sacred associations. At present we are only
dragging the guns into position : they have hardly yet
begun to speak. The task of building up into fairer and
more enduring forms the old structures so rudely shattered
is reserved for other hands, perhaps for other and happier
ages. We cannot foresee, we can hardly even guess, the
new forms into which thought and society will run in the
future. Yet this uncertainty ought not to induce us, from
any consideration of expediency or regard for antiquity, to
spare the ancient moulds, however beautiful, when these are
proved to be out-worn. Whatever comes of it, wherever
it leads us, ,we must follow truth alone. It is our only
guiding star : Jioc signo vinces.
To a passage in my book it has been objected by a
distinguished scholar that the church-bells of Rome cannot
be heard, even in the stillest" weather, on the shores of the
Lake of Nemi. In acknowledging my blunder and leaving
it uncorrected, may I plead in extenuation of my obduracy
the example of an illustrious writer ? In Old Mortality we
read how a hunted Covenanter, fleeing before Claverhouse's
dragoons, hears the sullen boom of the kettledrums of the
pursuing cavalry borne to him on the night wind. When
Scott was taken to task for this description, because the
drums are not beaten by cavalry at night, he replied in
effect that he liked to hear the drums sounding there, and
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION xxvii
that he would let them sound on so long as his book might
last. In the same spirit I make bold to say that by the
Lake of Nemi I love to hear, if it be only in imagination,
the distant chiming of the bells of Rome, and I would fain
believe that their airy music may ring in the ears of my
readers after it has ceased to vibrate in my own.
J. G. FRAZER.
Cambridge,
l8rt September 1 900.
CONTENTS
Chapter I. — The King of the Wood . Pp. 1-43
§ I. Diana and Virbius, pp. 1-24. — The lake and sanctuary of Diana at Nemi,
1-6; the character of Diana at Nemi, 6-8 ; rule of succession to the
priesthood, 8-10 ; legends of its origin, 10 sq. ; features of the worship of
Diana at Nemi, 12-14 5 Diana's festival on the 13th of August, 14-17 ;
the companions of Diana, Egeria, 17-19; Virbius, 19-21; unhistorical
character of the traditions, 21-23 5 antiquity of the grove, 23 sq.
§ 2. Artemis and Hippolytus, pp. 24-40. — Hippolytus at Troezen, 24-28 ; hair-
offerings to Hippolytus and others, 28-32 ; graves of Apollo and Artemis
at Delos, 33-35 ; Artemis a goddess of the wild life of nature, 35-38 ;
Hippolytus the consort of Artemis, 38-40.
§ 3. Recapitulation, pp. 40-43. — Virbius the consort of Diana, 40 sq. ; the leafy
bust at Nemi, 41-43.
Chapter II. — Priestly Kings . . . Pp. 44-51
Priestly kings in ancient Italy, Greece, and other parts of the world, 44-48 ;
divinity of Spartan and other early kings^ 48-51 ; magical powers of
early kings, 51.
Chapter III. — Sympathetic Magic . . Pp. 52-219
§ I. The Principles of Magic, pp. 52-54. — The Law of Similarity and the Law
of Contact or Contagion, ^2, sq.; the two principles misapplications of the
association of ideas, 53 sq. ; Sympathetic Magic in its two branches.
Homoeopathic or Imitative Magic, and Contagious Magic, 54.
I 2. Hotnoeopathic or Imitative Magic, pp. 55-174. — Magical images to injure
enemies, 55-70 ; magical images to procure offspring, 70-74 ; simulation
of birth at adoption and circumcision, 74-77 ; magical images to procure
love, 77 sq. ; homoeopathic magic in medicine, 78-84 ; homoeopathic
magic to ensure the food supply, 85 sqq. ; magical ceremonies (intichiuma)
in Central Australia for the multiplication of the totems, 85-89 ; use of
xxix
XIX CONTENTS
human blood in Australian ceremonies, 89-94 ; suggested origin of
circumcision and of other Australian initiatory rites, particularly the
extraction of teeth, 95-10I ; certain funeral rites designed to ensure
rebirth, 101-105 '< "'es to secure rebirth of animals and plants, 105 sq. ;
general theory of magical (intichiuma) and initiatory rites in Australia,
Io5-lo8 ; homoeopathic magic in fishing and hunting, 108-111 ; negative
magic or taboo, 111-113; examples of homoeopathic taboos, 1 13-1 17;
homoeopathic taboos on food, 117-119; magical telepathy, 119 sq. ;
telepathy in hunting, 120-126 ; telepathy in war, 126-134; various cases
of homoeopathic magic, 134 sq. ; homoeopathic magic to make plants
grow, 136-144; persons influenced homoeopathically by plants, 144-147;
homoeopathic magic of the dead, 147- 1 50 ; homoeopathic magic of animals,
150-157; homoeopathic magic of inanimate things, 157-159; homoeo-
pathic magic of iron, 159 sq. ; homoeopathic magic of stones, 160-165 '>
homoeopathic magic of sun, moon, and stars, 165 sq. ; homoeopathic
magic of the tides, 167 sq.; homoeopathic magic of grave-clothes and city
sites in China, 168-170; homoeopathic magic to avert misfortune, 170-174.
§ 3. Contagious Magic, pp. 174-214. — Supposed physical basis of sympathetic
magic, 174 sq. ; effect of contagious magic in fostering cleanliness, 175 ;
contagious magic of teeth, 176-182 ; contagious magic of navel-string and
afterbirth or placenta, 182-200; afterbirth or navel-string a seat of the
external soul, 200 sq. ; contagious magic of wounds and spilt blood,
201-205 ; contagious magic of garments, 205-207 ; contagious magic of
footprints and other bodily impressions, 207-214.
§ 4. The Magicians Progress, pp. 214-219. — Elevation of public magicians to
the position of chiefs and kings, 214-216; rise of monarchy essential to
the emergence of mankind from savagery, 216-219.
Chapter IV. — Magic and Religion . Pp. 220-243
Affinity of magic to science, 220 sq. ; its fatal flaw, 221 sq. ; relation of magic to
religion, definition of religion, 222-224; opposition of principle between
magic and science on the one side and religion on the other, 224-2265
hostility of religion to magic in later history, 226 ; confusion of magic and
religion in early times and among savages, 226-23 ' > confusion of magic
and religion in modern Europe, 231-233 ; confusion of magic and religion
preceded by an earlier age in which magic existed without religion,
233 sq. ; universality of the belief in magic among the ignorant classes
at the present day, 234-236 ; resulting danger to civilisation, 236 sq. ;
change from magic to religion following the recognition of the inefficacy
of magic, 237-240 ; the early gods viewed as magicians, 240-242 ;
difiBculty of detecting the fallacy of magic, 242 sq.
Chapter V. — The Magical Control of
the Weather. .... Pp. 244-331
S I. The Puilic Magician, pp. 244-247. — Two types of man-god, the religious
and the magical, 244 sq. ; rise of a class of public magicians a step in
social and intellectual progress, 245-247,
CONTENTS xxxi
I 2. Magical Control of Rain ^ pp. 21^7 - -jii. — ImpQitla.Xice o? l\ve mag\ta\
control of the weather, especially of- rain, 247 ; rain-making based on
homoeopathic or imitative magic, 247 sq. ; examples of rain-making
by homoeopathic or imitative magic, 247-251 ; stopping rain by fire,
252 sg. ; rain-making among the Australian aborigines, 254-261 ; belief
that twins control the weather, especially the rain, 262-269 J the rain-
maker makes himself wet, the maker of dry weather keeps himself dry,
269-272 ; rain-making by means of leaf-clad girls or boys in south-eastern
Europe and India, 272-275 ; rain-making by means of puppets in Armenia
and Syria, 275 sg. ; rain-making by bathing and sprinkling of water,
277 ■<■?• ; beneficial effects 6f curses, 279-282 ; rain-making by women
ploughing, 282-284 ; rain-making by means of the dead, 284-287 ; rain-
making by means of animals, especially black animals, 287-292 ; rain-
making by means of frogs, 292-295 ; stopping rain by rabbits and serpents,
295 sg. ; doing violence to the rain-god in order to extort rain, 296-299 ;
compelling saints in Sicily to give rain, 299 sg. ; disturbing the rain-god
in his haunts, 301 sg. ; appealing to the pity of the rain-gods, 302 sg. ;
rain -making by means of stones, 304-309 ; rain -making in classical
antiquity, 309 sg.
§ 3. TAe Magical Control of the Sun, pp. 311-319. — Helping the sun in eclipse,
311 j^. ; various charms to make sunshine, 312-314 ; human sacrifices to
the sun in ancient Mexico, 314 sg. ; sacrifice of horses to the sun, 315 sg.;
staying the sun by means of a net or string or by putting a stone or sod in
a tree, 316-318 ; accelerating the mdon, 319.
§ 4. The Magical Control of the Wind, pp. 319-331. — Various charms for making
the wind blow or be still, 319-323 ; winds raised by wizards and witches,
323-327 ; fighting the spirit of the wind, 327-331.
Chapter VI. — Magicians as Kings . Pp. 332-372
Magic not the only road to a throne, 332 sg. ; danger of too simple and com-
prehensive theories, 332 sg. ; discredit which such theories have brought
on mythology, 333 sg. ; magic only a partial explanation of the rise of
lyings, 334 ; social importance of magicians among the aborigines of
Australia, 334-337 ; social importance of magicians in New Guinea,
337 sg. ; magical powers of chiefs and others in Melanesia, 338-342;
evolution of chiefs or kings out of magicians, especially out of rain-makers,
in Africa, 342-352 ; kings in Africa and elsewhere punished for drought
and dearth, 352-355 ; power of medicine-men among the American
Indians, 355-360 ; power of medicine-men among the pagan tribes of the
Malay Peninsula, 360 sg, ; development of kings out of magicians among
the Malays, 361 sg. ; magical virtue of regalia, 362-365 ; magical powers
of kings among the Aryan races, 366-368 ; touching for the King's Evil,
368-371 ; general conclusion, 371 sg.
Chapter VII. — Incarnate Human Gods Pp. 373-421
Conception of gods slowly evolved, 373 sg. ; decline of magic, 374; conception
of incarnate human gods an early stage of religious history, 374-376;
xxxii CONTENTS
incarnation either temporary or permanent, 376 sq. ; temporary incarnation
of gods in human form in Polynesia, Fiji, Bali, and Celebes, 377-380 ;
temporary deification of sacrificer in Brahman ritual, 380; the new birth,
380 sq. ; temporary incarifetion or inspiration produced by drinking blood,
38 1-383 ; temporary inspiration produced by sacred tree or plant, 383 sq. ;
inspired sacrificial victims, 384 sq. ; divine power acquired by temporary
inspiration, 385 sq. ; human gods in the Pacific, 386-389 ; human gods in
ancient Egypt, Greece, and Germany, 389-392 ; human gods in Africa,
392-397 ; divinity of kings in Madagascar, 397 sq. ; divinity of kings and
men in the East Indies, 398-400 ; divine kings and men in Burma, Siam,
and Tonquin, 400-402 ; human gods in India, 402-407; pretenders to
divinity among Christians, 407-410 ; transmigrations of human divinities,
especially of the divine Lamas, 410-412; incarnate human gods in the
Chinese empire, 412-415 ; divine kings of Peru and Mexico, 415 sq. ;
divinity of the emperors of China and Japan, 417 sq. ; divinity of early
kings, 417 sq. ; divinity of Egyptian kings, 418-420 ; conclusion, develop-
ment of sacred kings out of magicians, 420 sq.
APPENDIX. — Hegel on Magic and Religion . . .Pp. 423-426
CHAPTER I
THE KING OF THE WOOD
" The still glassy lake that sleeps
Beneath Aricial s trees —
Those trees in whose dim shadow
Tlie ghastly priest doth reign,
The priest who slew the slayer.
And shall himself be slain.'"
Macaulay.
§ I . Diana and Virbius
Who does not know Turner's picture of the Golden Bough ? The lake
The scene, suffused with the golden glow of imagination in °^ ^=™-
which the divine mind of Turner steeped and transfigured
even the fairest natural landscape, is a dream-like vision of
the little woodland lake of Nemi — " Diana's Mirror," as it was
called by the ancie'nts. No one who has seen that calm
water, lapped in a green hollow of the Alban hills, can ever
forget it. The two characteristic Italian villages which
slumber on its banks, and the equally Italian palace whose
terraced gardens descend steeply to the lake, hardly break
the stillness and even the solitariness of the scene. Dian
herself might still linger by this lonely shore, still haunt
these woodlands wild.
In antiquity this sylvan landscape was the scene of a its tragic
strange and recurring tragedy. In order to understand it ™e™o"es
aright we must try to form in our minds an accurate picture
of the place where it happened ; for, as we shall see later on,
a subtle link subsisted between the natural beauty of the
spot and the dark crimes which under the mask of religion
were often perpetrated there, crimes which after the lapse of
VOL. I « B
THE KING OF THE WOOD
TbeAlban
hnis.
The
sanctnaiy
of Diana
Nemo-
rensis.
SO many ages still lend a touch of melancholy to these quiet
woods and waters, like a chiU breath of autumn on one of
those bright September days " while not a leaf seems faded."
The Alban hills are a fine bold group of voluanic
mountains which rise abruptly from the Campagna in full
view of Rome, forming the last spur sent out by- the
Apennines towards the sea. Two of the extinct craters arc
now filled by two beautiful waters, the Alban lake and its
lesser sister the lake of Nemi. Both lie far below the
monastery-crowned top of Monte Cavo, the summit of the
range, but yet so high above the plain that standing on
the rim of the larger crater at Castel Gandolfo, where the
Popes had their summer palace, you look down on the one
hand into the Alban lake, and on the other away across the
Campagna to where, on the western horizon, the sea flashes
like a broad sheet of burnished gold in the sun.
The lake of Nemi is still as of old embowered in woods,
where in spring the wild flowers blow as fresh as no doubt
they did two thousand springs ago. It lies so deep down
in the old crater that the calm surface of its clear water is
seldom ruffled by the wind. On all sides but one the banks,
thickly mantled with luxuriant vegetation, descend steeply to
the water's edge. Only on the north a stretch of flat ground
intervenes between the lake and the foot of the hills. This
was the scene of the tragedy. Here, in the very heart of
the wooded hills, under the abrupt declivity now crested by
the \allage of Nemi, the sylvan goddess Diana had an old
and famous sanctuary, the resort of pilgrims from all parts
of Latium. It was known as the sacred grove of Diana
Xemorensis, that is, Diana of the Wood, or, perhaps more
exactly, Diana of the Woodland Glade.^ Sometimes the
lake and grove were called, after the nearest town, the lake
' Strictly speaking, tiemus is a
natural opening or glade in a forest.
Thus Lucan says {P/iarsal. i. 453 .<f.)
that the Druids inhabited "deep glades
in sacred groves far from the haunts of
men" {" rifmora aJta n mot is incolitis
lucis "), as the words are rendered by
Haskins in his edition, who compares
Propertius v. 9. 24, " lucus ubi timbroso
fecerat orbt tumus." But commonly
aeiKus means no more than a wood or
grove. See for example Lucan, Pharsal.
iii. 396, " procumbunt nemora et spo-
liantur robora silvae." At Nemi the
sacred grove [lucus) formed part of the
woodlands (nemus), as we learn from
Cato, quoted by Priscian, Inst. iv. 21
(vol. i. p. 129, ed. M. Hertz), " lucunt
Dianium in neiiiore Aricino" etc. As
to the thick woods of Nemi in antiquity
see Ovid, Fasti, iii. 2O3 sq, ; id.,
Mctiim. XV. 485.
I DIANA AND VIRBIUS 3
and grove of Aricia.^ But the town, the modern Ariccia,
lay three miles away at the foot of the mountains, ai^
separated from the laKe by a long and steep descent. A
spacious terrace or platform contained the sanctuary. On
the north and east it was bounded by great retaining walls
which cut into the hillsides and served to support them.
Semicircular niches sunk in the walls and faced with columns
formed a series of chapels, which in modern times have
jaelded a rich harvest of votive offerings. On the side of
the lake the terrace rested on a mighty wall, over seven
hundred feet long by thirty feet high, built in triangular
buttresses, like those which we see in front of the piers of
bridges to break floating ice. At present this terrace-wall
stands back some hundred yards from the lake ; in other
days its buttresses may have been lapped by the water.
Compared with the extent of the sacred precinct, the temple
itself was not large ; but its remains prove it to have been
neatly and solidly built of massive blocks of peperino, and
adorned with Doric columns of the same material. Elaborate '
cornices of marble artd friezes of terra-cotta contributed to
the outward splendour of the edifice, which appears to have
been further enhanced by tiles of gilt bronze.^
1 Cato, loc. cit. ; Ovid, Fasti, vi. 20-22 ; id. 1895, pp. 106-108, 206,
756; Statius, Sylvae, iii. i. 56; 232, 324, 424-438; Bulletino del-
PHostratus, Vit. ApoUon. iv. 36. A V Institute di Corrisfondenza Archeo-
kxxse expression of Appian (Belliim logica, 1885, pp. 149-157, 225.242;
Cirik, V. 24) has sometimes given rise R. Lanciani, in tlie Athenaeum,
to tie notion that there was a town October 10, 1885, pp. 477 sg. ; R. P.
called JCemus. But this is a mistake. Pullan, in Arckaeologia : Miscellaneous
See E. Desjardins, Essai siir la Topo- Tracts relating to Antiquity, 1. (1887)
^Wji«rf«ZaA«« (Paris, 1854), p. 214, pp. 58-65; O. Rossbach, in Verhand-
and on the other side, A. Bormann, iungen der vierzigsten Versammlung
AitiialischeChorografhie(}ia.\\s,lS$2), deutscher Philologen und Schulmdnner
W- 135 -f?. «" Gorlitz (Leipsic, 1890), pp. 147-
' The site was excavated in 1 88 5 164 ; G. H. Wallis, Illustrated Cata-
»ad 1SS6 by Sir John Savile Lumley, logue of Classical Antiquities from the
now Lord Sa\-ile, who was then English Site of the Temple of Diana, Nemi,
smbassador at Rome. Further excava- Italy (preface dated 1893). The
. lions were conducted in 1S86-188S by temple measured 30 metres in length
Signer Luigi Boccanera, and again in by 15.90 in breadth {Notizie degli
1S95 by Signor Eliseo Borghi. See Scavi, 1885, p. 193). It had columns
Niihie degli Scaei, 1SS5, pp. 159 fi/., on either side of the /?-o»ai?.f (Vitruvius,
192 sq., 227 ,fs,'., 254 sq., 317-321, iv. 7. 4). A few votive offerings found
J44, 42S sq., 47S sq. ; i<i. 1SS7, pp. on the site in earlier timos are described
S3-25, 120 sq., 195-19S; id. 18SS, in Graevixis's Thesaurus Antiquitatum
W- 193 ^t-t 39- ^y • '*i- 1S89, pp. Romanarum, xii. col. 752-757. 808.
sbrine.
4 THE KING OF THE WOOD chap.
Wealth The great wealth and popularity of the sanctuary in
^"^uiaritv antiquity are attested by 'ancient writers as well as by
of the the remains which have come to light in modern times.
In the civil war its sacred treasures went to replenish the
empty coffers of Octavian,^ who well understood the useful
art of thus securing the divine assistance, if not the divine
blessing, for the furtherance of his ends. But we are not
told that he treated Diana on this occasion as civilly as his
divine uncle Julius Caesar once treated Capitoline Jupiter,
himself, borrowing three thousand pounds' weight of solid
gold from the god, and scrupulously paying him back with
the same weight of gilt copper.^ However, the sanctuary at
Xemi recovered from this drain on its resources, for two
centuries later it was still reputed one of the richest in
Italy.* Ovid has described the walls hung with fillets and
commemorative tablets ;* and the abundance of cheap votive
offerings and copper coins, which the site has yielded in our
own day, speaks volumes for the piety and numbers, if not
for the opulence and liberality, of the worshippers. Swarms
of beggars used to stream forth daily from the slums of
Aricia and take their stand on the long slope up which
the labouring horses dragged well-to-do pilgrims to the
shrine ; and according to the response which their whines
and importunities met with they blew kisses or hissed curses
after tlie carriages as they swept rapidly down hill again."
For the inscriptions of Nemi and ing his own gods tlius, he naturally
Aricia see Corpus Itiscriptionum Lati- felt no compunction at relieving the
nan4m, xiv. Nos. 2156-2226, 4180-' barbarous Gaulish gods of their little
4210, 4268-42753; W. Henzen, in savings (Suetonius, z/i.).
Ha-mes, vi. (1S72) pp. 6-13 ; G. ^ Appian, /w. cit.
Tomassetti, in Museo Itaiiaiio di Anii- * Fasti, iii. 267 sq.
chiti Classka, ii. (iSSS) coll. 48 1 sq,j. ' Juvenal, Sat. iv. 117 sq. ; Persius,
Among these inscriptions the many Sat. vi. 56, with tlic scholiast's note;
dedications to Diana serve to identify Martial, Epigr. ii. 19. 3, xii. 32. 10.
the site beyond a doubt. The evidence Porsius calls this \x\tl of the road the
of ancient writers is collected by Clu- slope of Virbius. Juvenal and Martial
Terius, Italia ArJiqua, ii. pp. 920- call it the Arician slope. But the
935. See also H. Nissen, Italische former was probably the correct name,
L^ndfshuiidi, ii (Berlin, 1902) pp. for at Rome also there was a
5SS-592 ; and for the topography, Sir "slope of Virbius" on the Esquiline,
\V. Gell. The Topo^^ap/iy of Kanie and near a sanctu;iry of Diana (Livy, i. 48.
Us Vuinity (London, 1S34), i. pp. 6). The double coincidence with
1S2-191, ii. pp. 112-117. .'\ricia is probably significant, as has
I Appian, Bdhim Civile, v. 24. been acutely pointed out by Mr. A. B.
• Suetonius, Divus Julius, 54. Serv- Cook (Classical h'cvieiv, xvi. (1902)
I DIANA AND VIRBIUS S
Even peoples and potentates of the East did homage to the
lady of the lake by setting up iiion aments in her sanctuary ; ^
and within the precinct, stood shrines of the Egyptian
goddesses Jsis and Bubastis, with a store of gorgeous
jewelle^\^^
The retirement of the spot and the beauty of the land- Roman
scape naturally tempted some of the luxurious Roman Nemi.^'
nobles to fix their summer residences by the lake.^ Here
Lucius Caesar had a house to which, on a day in early
summer, only two months after the murder of his illustrious
namesake, he invited Cicero to meet the assassin Brutus.^
The emperors themselves appear to have been partial to a
retreat where they could find repose from the cares of state
and the bustle of the great city in the fresh air of the lake
and the stillness of the woods. Here Julius Caesar built
himself a costly villa, but pulled it down because it was not
to his mind.* Here Caligula had two magnificent barges,
or rather floating palaces, launched for him on the lake ; °
and it was while dallying in the woods of Nemi that the
sluggard Vitellius received the tidings of revolt which woke
him from his dream of pleasure and called him to arms.*
Vespasian had a monument dedicated to his honour in the
p. 380, n. 3). We shall return to this * Suetonius, Divus Julius, 46.
later on. As to Virbius, we shall hear From a letter of Cicero to Atticus
more of him presently. (vi. i. 25) we infer that the house was
' \V. Henzen, in Herints, vi. (1872) building in 50 B.C.
pp. 6-12 : Corpus Inscriptionum Lati- . o c ..\. ^' \. j £ii- r
'^'^ . ^, CO Some of the timbers and littmes of
narum, xiv., Jsos. 221 S, 2216, 2210. ., , c t, j /• it
, ' . ' ,, , t, ir ■ ■ these vessels were hshed up from the
- At the place called b. Maria, m , , , , , . „ -c- • n
, r»- • V 1. 1 bottom of the lake in 1895. Especially
the commune of I\emi, there have been , ,, ., u .^r 1 u
, J . , -c ^ -n <■ remarkable are the beautiful bronze
found lemams of a masTiincent villa 01 , , - ,. j 1 lu
., ___^ , =" . t -1^ • heads of lions and wolves with moor-
the first or second century, built m . • .^1 • .1 /-^ r i >
, ,. , , J inc-rintjs in their mouths. Caligula s
terraces lust above the lake and ° ", .„.„, .„„ „
, ... . J ,1 name (c . CAESARls . avg . GER-
aoomed \vith variesrated marbles, ; . , , ,1, : j
, . , ° , „ ' MANici) is stamped on the leaden
frscoes, and works of art. See
water-pipes, and the style of the bronzes
^atisu de^i Scat':, iSSS, pp. 194- . ^u \ c\.\, c / 4 c
. , ^ T-v 1 ' Ii IS that of the first century. See
l9o> 39 1 i?- The place is near the »r.- ■ j 7. c • o„, i^, — <;
' ^,•^ r /( . \_ ■ , , JVohzie dtp-h Scam, iSgS, pp. 361-306,
month of the anaent emissar)', below -. _ *,.„'='-" T'^^ ^ /^
, ... - „ ^, < J 401-474 ; T. C. G. Boot, in Verslagen
the Tiuare of Genzano : the vine5'ards ^ ,7 j 1 ,■ j 1. \il j ■
beside the Like are here littered with ,,, . ... aj-j t- t ^, 1. j
c_ ^ re ,, T T Wetensciiafipen, Afdeehm; Letterkunde,
fragments of fine marbles. In January jjj Reeks'; xii. deef (Amsterdam,
!fl', "2^'^,*^^'^."", TT^' 1S9S), pp. 278-285; R. Lanciani,
ofMr. St. Clair Baddeley, who has j^'.^J'tZs of Old Rene (London
tmdly mmished me with some notes inon nn 20C
on the subject. ^ '' '^' ' ^" . ^'
' Cicero, Ad Atticum, xv. 4. 5. " Tacitus, Histor. iii. 36.
■animal*;.
6 THE KING OF THE WOOD chap.
grove by the senate and people of Aricia : Trajan con-
descended to fill the chief magistracy of the town ; and
Hadrian indulged his taste for architecture by restoring a
structure which had been erected in the precinct by a prince
of the royal house of Parthia.^
Diana as Such, then, was the sanctuary of Diana at Nemi, a
^^ fittincr home for the " mistress of mountains, and forests
mistress t> _ ,,
ofwiid green, and lonely glades, and sounding rivers," as Catullus
calls her.^ Multitudes of her statuettes, appropriately clad
in the short tunic and high buskins of a huntress, with the
quiver slung over her shoulder, have been found on the
spot Some of them represent her with her bow in her
hand or her hound at her side.' Bronze and iron spears,
and images of stags and hinds, discovered within the pre-
cinct,* may have been offerings of huntsmen to the huntress
goddess for success in the chase. Similarly the bronze
tridents, which have also come to light at Ne,mi, were
perhaps presented by fishermen who had speared fish in the
lake, or maybe by hunters who had stabbed boars in the
forest." The wild boar was still hunted in Italy down
to the end of the first century of our era ; for the younger
Pliny tells us how, with his usual charming affectation, he
sat meditating and reading by the nets, while three fine
boars fell into them.* Indeed, some fourteen -hundred
years later boar-hunting was a favourite pastime of Pope
' Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, id. 1888, p. 393 ; Bulletino di Corr.
xiv., Nos. 2213, 2216, 4191. Hadrian Archeol. 1885, p. 230; O. Rossbacli,
also had a monument in the grove dedi- op. cit., pp. 150 note, 151 note, 163;
cated to him by the senate and pedple G. H. Wallis, Jllustrated Catalogue,
of Aricia (Notizie degli Scavi, 1S95; PP- 35> 40- Greek hunters dedicated
pp. 430 sq.). A bust of Caesar and a spears and javelins to Pan (Anthologia
statue of Tiberius have been found on Palafina, vi. 57, '77)- Compare W.
the spot. See G. H. Wallis, Illus- H. D. Rouse, Creek Votive Offerings
traied Catatogite, p. 31 ; O. Rossbach, (Cambridge, 1902), p. 71.
in Verkandlungen der z'ierzig. Ver- ^ W. Helbig, in Bulletino delV Inst.
sammL aeutscher Philologen , p. 159. di Co?-r. Archeol. 1885, pp. ■231 sq.\
' Catnllns, xxxiv. 9 sqq. Notizie degli Scavi, 1887, p. 195 ; id.
» Bulletino Jell' Instituto di Corri- 1888, p. 393. Ilclbig observes that
ilvrukHsa Archeologica, 1SS5, pp. 228 the ancients sometimes used tridents in
sa.% Notiae degii Scazii, 1SS7, pp. 24, boar-hunts.
195 ; id. 18S8, p. 393 ; O. Ross- » Pliny, Epist. i. 6. In the second
bach, in Verhandl. d. ■oier^ig. Ver- century of our era the mountains and
utmirtL deutscher Philologen, pp. 150 oak woods of Greece harboured num-
note, 161 ; G. H. Wallis, Illustrated bers of wild boars. See Pausanias, i.
Catalt^ue, pp. 4, 15, 34 sq. 32. i, iii. 20. 4, v. 6. 6, vii. 26. 10,
♦ Natiae degli Scavi, 1SS7, p. 195; viii. 23. 9, ix. 23. 7.
I DIANA AND VIRBIUS 7
Leo the Tenth.^ A frieze of painted relftfs in terra-cotta,
which was found in the sanctuary at Nemi, and may-
have adorned Diana's temple, portrays the goddess in
the character of what is called the Asiatic Artemis, with
wings sprouting from her waist and a lion resting its paws
on each of her shoulders.^ A few rude images of cows,
oxen, horses, and pigs dug up on the site may perhaps
indicate that Diana was here worshipped as the patroness Diana
of domestic animals as well as of the wild creatures of the patroness
wood.^ In like manner her Greek counterpart Artemis was of cattle,
a goddess not only of game but of herds. Thus her
sanctuary in the highlands of north-western Arcadia, between
Clitor and Cynaethae, owned sacred cattle which were driven
off by AetoHan freebooters on one of their forays.^ When
Xenophon returned from the wars and settled on his estate
among the wooded hills and green meadows of the rich
valley through which the Alpheus flows past Olympia, he,
dedicated to Artemis a little temple on the model of her
great temple at Ephesus, surrounded it with a grove of all
kinds of fruit-trees, and endowed it not only with a chase
but also with a sacred pasture. The chase abounded in
fish and game of all sorts, and the pasture sufficed to rear
swine, goats, oxen, and horses ; and on her yearly festival
the pious soldier sacrificed to the goddess a tithe both of
the cattle from the sacred pasture and of the game from
the sacred chase.^ Again, the people of Hyampolis in
Phocis worshipped Artemis and thought that no cattle
throve like those which they dedicated to her.^ Perhaps
then the images of cattle found in Diana's precinct at Nemi
were offered to her by herdsmen to ensure her blessing on
their herds. In Catholic Germany at the present time the Analogy of
great patron of cattle, horses, and pigs is St. Leonhard, and ^^^J^f"""
models of cattle, horses, and pigs are dedicated to him, some- Germany.
times in order to ensure the health and increase of the flocks
and herds through the coming year, sometimes in order to
' W. Roscoe, Life and Pontificate Archeol. 1885, p. 153; G. H. Wallis,
of Leo the Tenth,^ iv. 376. Illustrated Catalogue, p. 23.
"- O. Rossbach, of. cit. pp. 157 sq. ; 4 Polybius, Hist. iv. 18 and 19.
;. H. Wallis, Illustrated Catalogue, . ^ , ^ z •. ^ . ■,
-.1. .1. 1 » r • .-, Xenophon, Anabasis, v. 3. 4-1,
•p. 3. 31, ivith the plate facing p. 43. f ' > j -t .
' '^ Bulhtino deW Inst, di Corr. " Pausanias, x. 35.'7.
8 THE KlN^r OF THE WOOD chap.
obtain the recovery of sick animals.^ And, curiously enough,
like Diana of Aricia, St. Leonhard is also expected to help
women in travail and to bless barren wives with offspring.^
Nor do these points exhaust the analogy between St.
Leonard and Diana of Aricia ; for like the goddess the
saint heals the sick ; he is the pati'on of prisoners, as she
was of runaway slaves ; and his shrines, like hers, enjoyed
the right of asylum.^
Xem: sa So to the last, io spitc of a few villas peeping out here
Italy -D tie ^nd there from among the trees, Nemi seems to have re-
oisfcn tkne. mained in some sense an image of what Italy had been in
the far-off days when the land was still sparsely peopled
with tribes of savage hunters or wandering herdsmen, when
the beechwoods and oakwoods, with their deciduous foliage,
reddening in autumn and bare in winter, had not yet begun,
under the hand of man, to yield to the evergreens of the
south, the laurel, the olive, the cypress, and the oleander,
still less to those intruders of a later age, which nowadays
we are apt to think of as characteristically Italian, the
lemon and" the orange.*
Rule of However, it was not merely in its natural surroundings
succession , - . , ,
to the that this ancient shrine of the sylvan goddess continued to
P^'^^^ be a tj^je or miniature of the past. Down to the decline of
at Nemi. Rome a custom was observed there which seems to trans-
port us at once from civilisation to savagery. In the
sacred grove there grew a certain tree round which at any
time of the daj', and probably far into the night, a grim
figure might be seen to prowl. In his hand he carried a
drawn sword, and he kept peering warily about him as if
' R. Andree, Vo!ive utid U'dhe- deciduous trees, the beeches reached
gsken des Katliolischen Volks in Siid- lower down than now, when they are
dcuischlmsd (Branswick, 1904), pp. confined to the highest mountain
37, 50, 152 sqq. regions. Centuries later in the land-
* R. Andree cti nt p 41 scapes on the walls of Pompeii we see
, „ . . ' . ' nothing but everq-reen trees, the Za«;r«j
R. Andree, op. nt. pp. 41-50. „^^,,.^^.^_ j^^ „,i^^^ ^^^ ^yp^g33^ ^^^
* See V. Hehn, XuJlitrpJlansrit uiid oleander ; in the latesl limes of the
Ejsistiere in ihrcm iiiergaiig aits empire and in the Middle Ages the
Asiin'^ (Berlin, 1902). pp. 520 so. : lemon-trees and orange-lrees appear,
"In the course of history the flora and since the discovery of America
of the Italian peninsula assumed more the magnolias, the agaves, and the
and more a southern character. \Ahen Indian figs. There can lie no question
the first Greeks landed in lower Italy that this revolution h.is been wrought
the forests consisted predominantly of mainly by the hand of man."
> DIANA AND VIRBIUS 9
at every instant he expected to be set upon by nn enemy.'
He was a priest and a murderer ; and the man for whom
be looked was sooner or later to murder him and hold the
priesthood in his stead. Such was the rule of the sanctuary.
A candidate for the priesthood could only succeed to office
by slaying the priest, and having slain him, he retained
office till he was himself slain by a stronger or a craftier.
The post which he held by this precarious tenure carried The priest
with it the title of king ; but surely no crowned head ever ^^^^^^^.^
lay uneasier, or was visited by more evil dreams, than his.
For year in year out, in summer and winter, in fair weather
and in foul, he had to keep his lonely watch, and whenever
he snatched a troubled slumber it was at the peril of his life.
The least relaxation of his vigilance, the smallest abatement
of his strength of limb or skill of fence, put him in jeopardy ;
grej' hairs might seal his death-warrant. His eyes probably
acquired that restless, watchful look which, among the
Esquimaux of Bering Strait, is said to betray infallibly
the shedder of blood ; for with that people revenge is a
sacred duty, and the manslayer carries his life in his hand.^
To gentle and pious pilgrims at the shrine the sight of
him might well seem to darken the fair landscape, as
when a cioud suddenly blots the sun on a bright day. The
dreamy blue of Italian skies, the dappled shade of summer
woods, and the sparkle of waves in the sun, can have accorded
but ill with that stern and sinister figure. Rather we picture
to ourselves the scene as it may have been witnessed by a
belated wa\-farer on one of those wild autumn nights when
the dead leaves are falling thick, and the winds seem to
sing the dirge of the dying year. It is a sombre picture,
set to melancholy music — the background of forest shewing
black and jagged against a lowering and stormy sky, the
s^hing of the wind in the branches, the rustle of the
withered leaves under foot, the lapping of the cold water
on the shore, and in the foreground, pacing to and fro, now
in twilight and now in gloom, a dark figure with a glitter
&*W o'-" i<TTiv iei. TrepiiTKowwv > E. W. Nelson, " The Eskimo
* ^^«'«'- ?-oiaos duvveffdai, is about Bering Strait," Eighteenth
ainhrfs descnptioa (v. 3. 12), who Annual Report of the Bureau of
i^tare seen him "pacing there American Ethttology, Part I. (Wash-
ington, 1899) p. 293.
lo THE KING OF THE WOOD chap.
of steel at the shoulder whenever the pale moon, riding
clear of the cloud-rack, -peers down at him through the
matted boughs.
PossibiUty The Strange rule of this priesthood has no parallel in
^n<»^thl^'° classical antiquity, and cannot be explained from it. To find
ruTeof an explanation we must go" farther afield. No one will
bv'thrcom- probably deny that such a custom savours of a barbarous
parative ,ige, and, Surviving into imperial times, stands out in striking
^^ ° ' isolation from the polished Italian society of the day, like a
primaeval rock rising from a smooth-shaven lawn. It is the
very rudeness and barbarity of the custom which allow us a
hope of explaining it. For recent researches into the early
history of man have revealed the essential similarity with
which, under tnany superficial differences, the human mind
has elaborated its first crude philosophy of life. Accordingly,
if we can shew that a barbarous custom, like that of the
priesthood of Nemi, has existed elsewhere ; if we can detect
the motives which led to its institution ; if wc can prove that
these motives have operated widely, perhaps universally, in
human society, producing in varied circumstances a variety
of institutions specifically different but generically alike ; if
we can shew, lastly, that these very motives, with some of
their derivative institutions, were actually at work in classical
antiquity ; then we may fairly infer that at a remoter age the
same motives gave birth to the priesthood of Nemi. Such
an inference, in default of direct evidence as to how the priest-
hood did actually arise, can never amount to demonstration.
But it will be more or less probable accordiiig to the degree
of completeness with which it fulfils the conditions I have
indicated. The object of this book is, by meeting these
conditions, to offer a fairly probable explanation of the
priesthood of Nemi.
LegeTid of I begin by setting forth the few facts and legends which
S^ihe'^" liave come down to us on the subject. According to one
Nemi storj- the worship of Diana at Nemi was instituted by Orestes,
o^i^ ' ^vho' after killing Thoas, King of the Tauric Chersonese (the
and lie Crimea), fled with his sister to Italy, bringing with him the
a^l image of the Tauric Diana hidden in a faggot of sticks.
After his death his bones were transported from Aricia to
Rome and buried in front of the temple of Saturn, on the
I DIANA AND VIRBIUS u
Capitoline slope, beside the temple of Concord. The bloody-
ritual which legend ascribed to the Tauric Diana. is familiar
to classical readers ; it is, said that every stranger who landed
on the shore was sacrificed on her altar. • But transported
to Italy, the rite assumed a milder form. Within the sanc-
tuary at Nemi grew a certain tree of which no branch might
be broken. Only a runaway slave was allowed to break off,
if he could, one of its boughs. Success in the attempt The King
entitled him to fight the priest in single combat, and if he ^^"^^
slew him he reigned in his stead with the title of King of
the Wood {Rex Nemorensis). According to the public
opinion of the ancients the fateful branch was that Golden
Bough which, at the Sibyl's bidding, Aeneas plucked before
he essayed the perilous journey to the world of the dead.
The flight of the slave represented, it was said, the flight of
Orestes ; his combat with the priest was a reminiscence of
the human sacrifices once offered to the Tauric Diana. This
rule of succession by the sword was observed down to
imperial times ; for amongst his other freaks Caligula, think-
ing that the priest of Nemi had held office too long, hired
a more stalwart ruffian to slay him ; and a Greek traveller,
who visited Italy in the age of the Antonines, remarks that
down to his time the priesthood was still the prize of victory
in a single combat.^
' Servius on Virgil, Aen. vi. 136, " Regna tment forUsqiie manu, pedi-
"Licet de hoc ramo hi qui de sacris btisque fugaces ;
Proserpinae scripsisse dicuntur, quid- Et peril exemih pos/modo quisque
dam esse mysticum adfinnent, pitblica suo " ;
tanun opinio hoc haiet. Orestes post
occisum regem Thoanicm," etc. ; id. on ''^•> -^^''-f "■o^- '■ ^59 sq. —
Virg;i, ^,f«. ii. 116; Valerius Flaccus, .. jr^ce subnrbanae templum nemorah
Argonaut, u. 304 sq. ; ^trabo, v. 3. Dianae,
12; Pausanias, ii. 27. 4; Solinus, ii. Par/aque per gladios regna nocente
II; %-aAoxmis, Caligula, 35. The manu";
custom of breaking the branch, and its
supposed connexion with the Golden Valerius Flaccus, Argon, ii. 304 sq. —
Bough of Virgil, are recorded by .Ser- ..y^,^ „^„„^ Egeriaejam te ciet alius
vius alone (on Virgil, Aen. vi. 136). „/, ^Iba
For the title " King of the Wood " see Juppiter et soli non mitis .Aricia
Suetonius, I.e. ; and compare Statins, reei. "
Sylv. iii. i. 55 jy. —
,, , ,. J ^ ^ j: . An aichnic Greek relief, found in 1701
"Jamque d,es aderat, profugis cum „™^ th. ,„„l.t of .h.ink,. in ,h. v/lf..
., . near the outlet of the lake, in the Valle-
regibus aptum • • 1. i, .• .1, i.» ..
■ , J ■ ■ ~, ■ ■ „ nccia, has been sometimes thought to
- u/nat Anctnum irtvtae ncmus ; .. ^i. i, .. l . • 1
portr.iy the combat between a priest
Ovid, Fasli, iii. 271 sq. — and a candidate for the office. But
THE KING OF THE WOOD
CHAP.
Chief
features
of the
Of the worship of Diana at Nemi some leading features
can still be made out. From the votive offerings which have
worship of been found on the site, it appears that she was conceived of
Nemf*' especially as a huntress, and further as blessing men and
women with offspring, and granting expectant mothers an
Import- easy delivery.' Again, fire seems to have played a foremost
ance of fire part in her ritual. For during her annual festival, held on
the thirteenth of August, at the hottest time of the year, her
grove shone with a multitude of torches, whose ruddy glare was
reflected by the lake ; and throughout the length and breadth
of Italy the day was kept with holy rites at every domestic
hearth.^ Bronze statuettes found in her precinct represent
the goddess herself holding a torch in her raised right hand ; ^
and women whose prayers had been heard by her came
crowned with wreaths and bearing lighted torches to the
sanctuary in fulfilment of their vows.* Some one unknown
in her
ritual
the subject is rather the murder of
Aegisthus by Orestes in presence of
Clytaemnestra and Electra. See Sir
W. Gell, Tofography of Rome, ii. Ii6
sq. ; O. Jahn, in Archdologische Zei-
tting, vii. (1849) coll. 113-118; Bau-
meister's Denkmdltr, p. 1 1 12 ; O. Ross-
bach, op. cit. pp. 148 sq. ; R. Lanciani,
New Tales of Old Rome, p. 204.
' Thus there have been found many
models of the organs of generation,
both male and female, including
wombs ; figures of women with infants
on their laps or on their arms ; and
couples seated side by side, the woman
pregnant or carrying a child. See
Bulletino delP Inst, di Corrisp. Archeo-
logica, 1885, pp. 183 sq. ; Nothie degli
Scavi, 1885, pp. 160, 254; id. 1895,
p. 424 ; O. Rossbach, op. cit. p. 1 60 ;
G. H. Wallis, Illustrated Catalogue,
pp. 4, 15, 17. Another group repre-
sents a woman just after delivery, sup-
ported by the midwife, who holds the
child in her lap. See Graevius, The-
saurus Antiquitatum Romanarum, xii.'
col. 808. As to the huntress Diana,
see above, p. 6.
^ Statius, Sylvae, iii. i. 52-60;
Gratius Faliscus, Cyncgeticon, i. 484 sq.
As to the date we know from the
calendars (W. Warde Fowler, The
Roman Festivals of the Republic, p.
198) and from I'estus (p. 343 ed.
MuUer ; compare Plutarch, Quaes/.
Rom. 100) that the festival of Diana
on the Aventine at Rome fell on
the Ides, that is, the 13th of August.
Further, the Ides of August was held
as the birthday of Diana at Lanuvium
{^Corpus Inscriptionum IatinarHm,yxi .,
No. 2112; G. Wilmanns, Exempla
Inscriptionum Latinarum, No. 319!
C. G. Bruns, Pontes Juris Romani^ ed.
O. Gradenwitz, p. 389 ; H. Dessau, In-
scriptiones Latinae Selectae, No. 72 1 2).
Moreover, Martial (xii. 67. 2) and
Ausonius (De feriis Romanis, 5 sq.)
speak of the Ides of August as Diana's
day. Hence we may safely conclude
that the Hecateias idus which Statius
{I.e.) mentious as the date of the fes-
tival of Diana at Nemi were no other
than the Ides of August, all the more
that the poet describes the time as the
hottest of the year. Compare G.
Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der
Romer (Munich, 1902), p. 201.
2 O. Rossbach, op. cit. pp. 1 50 note,
161. A coin of P. Clodius Turrinus
(43 B.C.) portrays Diana with a long
torch in either hand. See E. Babelon,
Monnaies de la R^publique Romaixt
(Paris, 1885), i. 355.
* Ovid, Fasti, iii. 269 sq. ; Proper-
tius, iii. 24. (30) 9 sq., ed. Paley.
DIANA AND VIRBIUS 13
dedicated a perpetually burning lamp in a little shrine at
Nemi for the safety of the Emperor Claudius and his family.^
The terra-cotta lamps which have been discovered in the
grove ^ may perhaps have served a like purpose for humbler
persons. If so, the analogy of the custom to the Catholic
practice of dedicating holy candles in churches would be
obvious.^ Further, the title of Vesta borne by Diana at Diana as
Nemi* points clearly to the maintenance of a perpetual
holy fire in her sanctuary. A large circular basement at
the north-east corner of the temple, raised on three steps and
bearing traces of a mosaic pavement, probably supported a
round temple of Diana in her character of Vesta, like the
round temple of Vesta in the Roman Forum.* Here the
sacred fire would seem to have been tended by Vestal
Virgins, for the head of a Vestal in terra-cotta was found on
the spot,*' and the worship of a perpetual fire, cared for by
holy maidens, appears to have been common in Latium
from the earliest to the latest times.'' Thus we know that
among the ruins of Alba the Vestal fire was kept burning
by Vestal Virgins, bound to strict chastity, until the end
of the fourth century of our era.^ There were Vestals at
1 Notizie degli Scavi, 1888, p. 193 (1902) p. 376). Previous writers had
sq. ; O. Rossbach, op. cit. p. 164. taken it for an altar or a pedestal.
2 Bulletino deW Inst, di Corrisp. But the mosaic pavement and the
Archeologica, 1885, p. 157; Notizie bases of two columns which were
degli Scavi, 1888, p. 393 ; G. H. found in position on it exclude the
Wallis, Illustrated Catalogue, pp. 24-26. hypothesis of an altar and cannot easily
3 On the dedication of burning lamps be reconciled with that of a pedestal,
and candles in antiquity, see M. P. for which, moreover, it appears to be too
Nilsson, Griechische Feste (Leipsic, large. A rain-water gutter runs round
1906), p. 345, note 5. As to the de- it and then extends in the direction of
rivation of the Catholic from the old the larger temple. As to the temple
heathen custom, see R. Andree, Votive of Vesta at Rome see J. H. Middleton,
und Weihegaben des Katholischen Volks The Remains of Ancient Rome, i.
in Suddeutschland (Brunswick, 1904), 297 sq.; O. Richter, Topographie der
p. 77. Stadt Rom''' (Munich, 1902), pp. 88
* Corpus Inscriptionum latinarum, sq. ; G. Boni, in Notizie degli Scavi,
xiv.. No. 2213 ; G. Wilmanns, Exem- May 1900, pp. 159 sqq.
pla Inscriptionum Latinarum, No. ^ G. H. Wallis, Illustrated Cata-
1767; Yl.'De&sa.w, Inscriptiones Latinae logtte, p. 30.
Selectae No. 3243. ' J. Marijuardt, Rdinische Staatsver-
6 Notizie degli Scavi, 1885, p. 478 ; waltung, iii.2 336.
O. Rossbach, op. cit. p. 158; G. M. ^ Juvenal, iv. 60 sq.; Asconius,
Wallis, Illustrated Catalogue, pp. 9 sq. In Alilonianam, p. 35, ed. Kiesse-
The true character of this circular ling and Schoell ; Symmachus, Epist.
basement was first pointed out by Mr. ix. 128 and 129 (^\f\w:<, Patrologia
A. P.. Cook (Classical Kcziiew, xvi. Latiiia, xviii. col. 355); Corpus In-
14
THE KING OF THE WOOD
CHAP.
Diana's
festival on
August 13
converted
by the
Christian
Church
into the
festival
of the
Assumption
of the
Virgin on
August 15.
Tibur ' and doubtless also at Lavinium, for the Roman
consuls, praetors, and dictators had to sacrifice to Vesta at
that ancient city when they entered on or laid down their
office.^
At her annual festival, which, as we have just seen, was
celebrated all over Italy on the thirteenth of August, hunting
dogs were crowned and wild beasts were not molested ;
young people went through a purificatory ceremony in her
honour ; wine was brought forth, and the feast consisted of
a kid, cakes served piping hot on plates of leaves, and apples
still hanging in clusters on the boughs.^ The Christian
Church appears to have sanctified this great festival of the
virgin goddess by adroitly converting it into the festival of
the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin on the fifteenth of
August.* The discrepancy of two days between the dates
of the festivals is not a fatal argument against their identity;
for a similar displacement of two days occurs in the case
of St. George's festival on the twenty-third of April, which
is probably identical with the ancient Roman festival of
the Parilia on April twenty-first.^ On the reasons which
prompted this conversion of the festival of the Virgin Diana
into the festival of the Virgin Mary, some light is thrown
by a passage in the Syriac text of The Departure of My
Lady Mary from this World, which runs thus : " And the
apostles also ordered that there should be a commemoration
of the blessed one on the thirteenth of Ab [that is, August ;
another MS. reads the 15th of Ab], on account of the vines
bearing bunches (of grapes), and on account of the trees
bearing fruit, that clouds of hail, bearing stones of wrath,
might not come, and the trees be broken, and their fruits,
and the vines with their clusters." " Here the festival of
scripiioiiutn Latinarum, vi., No. 2172,
xiv. , No. 4120; Wilmanns, Exempla
Insert ptionuni Latinarum, No. I7S°-
The Alban Vestals gave evidence at
Milo's trial in 52 B.C. (Asconius, I.e.) ;
one of them was tried for breaking her
vow of chastity late in the fourth cen-
tur)' A.D. (Symmachus, I.e.).
' Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarwii,
xiv., Nos. 3677, 3679.
''■ Servius on Virgil, Aen. ii. 296 ;
Macrobius, Saturn, iii. 4. 11.
^ Statjus, Sylvar, iii. i. 55 sqq. ;
Gratius Faliscus, Cynegetieon, i. 483-
492.
'' J. Rendel Harris, The AnnotcUors
of the Codex Bezae (London, 1901),
pp. 93-102.
^ See below, vol. ii. pp. 324 sqq.
' Journal of Sacred Literature and
Biblical Record, New Series, vii.
(London, 1865), " The Departure of
my Lady Mary from this World," p.
153. The Greek original of the treatise
I DIANA AND VIRBIUS 15
the Assumption of the Virgin is definitely said to have been The virgin
fixed on the ■ thirteenth or fifteenth of August for the sake ^gg^^ j^
of protecting the ripening grapes and other fruits. Similarly have sue-
in the Arabic text of the apocryphal work On the Passing Artemis
of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which is attributed to the and Diana
Apostle John, there occurs the following passage : " Also patroness
a festival in her honour .was instituted on the fifteenth day °/"^^
rip6nin°"
of the month Ab [that is, August], which is the day of her fruits. °
passing from this world, the day on which the miracles
were performed, and the time when the fruits of trees are
ripening." ^ Further, in the calendars of the Syrian Church
the fifteenth of August is repeatedly designated as the festival
of the Mother of God " for the vines " ; ^ and to this day
in Greece the ripening grapes and other fruits are brought
to the churches to be blest by the priests on the fifteenth
of August.^ Now we hear of vineyards and plantations
dedicated to Artemis, fruits offered to her, and her temple ^
standing in an orchard.* Hence we may conjecture that
her Italian sister Diana was also revered as a patroness of
vines and fruit-trees, and that on the thirteenth of August the
was discovered by Tischendorf. This must have been held about the same
passage was kindly indicated to me by time. But he appears to have over-
my learned friend Mr. J. Rendel Harris. looked the occurrence of Diana's festival
He writes to me : "In these late on the 1 3th of August.
Syrian calendars the festivals are simply 2 jj_ Nilles, Kalendarium Manuale
taken over from the'Greek and Roman utriusque Ecclesiae Orientaiis et Occi-
calendars without any adjustment at dentalis^ (Innsbruck, 1896-7), i. pp.
all, as a study of the detailed saints' 249, 480. Professor Nilles compares
days shows." the blessing of the herbs (Kraiitweihe),
^ /ohanni Apostoli de transitu Beaiae which still takes place in various parts
• Mariae Virginis Liber : ex recensione of German-speaking lands on August
et cum interpretatione Maximiliani 15th for the purpose of defeating the
Engeri (Elberfeldae, 1854), pp. loi, charms of witches.
103. This and the preceding passage ^ B. Schmidt, Das Volksleben der
are both cited by the late Prof. E. Neugriechen (Leipsic, 1 871), p. 58.
Lucius in his book Die Anfdtige des My learned friend Dr. W. H. D.
HeiligenkultesinderchristlichenKirche Rouse, who is well acquainted with
(Tubingen, 1904), pp. 48S sq., 521. Greece, both ancient and mcxlorn, gave
From them and from the entries in the me similar information.
Syrian calendars (see the next note), * Pauly-Wissowa, Keal-Encychp. d.
Lucius rightly inferred that the Assump- class. "Wissenschaften, ii. 1342; Pau-
tion of the Virgin Mary had been sanias, vii. i8. 12 ; Xcnophon, Ana-
assigned by the Church to the 15th basis, v. 3. 12. On the other hand
of August with reference to the ripen- the very sight of the image of Artemis
ing of the grapes and other fruits, and at Pellene was said to render trees
that the Christian festival replaced an barren and to blight the fruits of the
old heathen festival of first-fruits, which earth. See Plutarch, ^»'a^//.r, 32.
,6 THE KING OF THE WOOD chap.
owners of vineyards and orchards paid their respects to her,
at Nemi along with other classes of the community. We
have just seen that.wine and apples still hanging on the
boughs formed part of the festal cheer on that day ; in an
ancient fresco found at Ostia a statue of Diana is depicted
in company with a procession of children, some of whom
bear clusters of granes ; ^ and in a series of gems the goddess,
is represented with'^a branch of fruit in one hand and a cup,
which is sometimes full of fruit,- in the other.^ Catullus,
too, tells us that Diana filled the husbandman's barns with a
Survivals bounteous harvest.' In some parts of Italy and Sicily the
of Diana's j of the Assumption of the Virgin is still celebrated, like
festival in ■' '■ , i r
Italy. Diana's day of old, with illuminations and bonfires ; in many
ISndi-'""^ Sicilian parishes the corn is then brought in sacks to the
na%Ta. churches to be blessed, and many persons, who have a favour
to ask of the Virgin, -"ow to abstain from one or more kinds
of fruit during the first fifteen days of August.* Even in
Scandinavia a relic of the worship of Diana survived in the
custom of blessing the fruits of the earth of every sort, which
in Catholic times was annually observed on the festival of
the Assumption of the Virgin.^ There is no intrinsic im-
probability in the view that for the sake of edification the
church may have converted a real heathen festival into a
The Virgin nominal Christian one. Similarly in the Armenian Church
^'^ " according to the express evidence of the Armenian fathers
^desl of the year 700 and later, the day of the Virgin was placed
'^'""^- on September the fifteenth, because that was the day of,
Anahite, the magnificence of whose feast the Christian
doctors hoped thereby to transfer to Mary." " This Anahite
or Anaitis, as the Greeks called her, the Armenian prede-
cessor of the Virgin Mary, was a great Oriental goddess,
1 A. Dieterich, " Sommertag," i Q. V\V'[h,Spe/lacoli e FesU popolari
Archiv fur Religionsimssenuhaft, viii. Siciliane (Palermo, 1 88 1), pp. 356,
(1905) Beiheft, pp. loS sqq., with 358, 360, 361, 362; G. Finamore,
^„ 2. Credenze, Usi e Costumi Abruzzesi
2 Furtwangler, Z)2« ««/"/&» (7««OT««, (Palermo, iSgo), p. 176; G. Amalfi,
ill. 231, with plates XX. 66, XXII. 18, Tradizioni ed Usi nella peninsola
26, 30, 32, all cited by Mr. A. B. Sorrentina (Palenno, 1890), p. 50.
Cook, Classical Review, xvi. (1902) ,j q^^^^ Magnus, Ilistoria de Gen-
p. 378, note 4- Furtwiingler held that ^.^^^^ Septenlrionalium variis conditio-
these gems portray Diana of Nemi her- ^ •^^^^, j^^; „
self ' '
3 Catullus, xxxiv. 17 sqq.. « Note of Mr. l'. C. Conybeare,
I DIANA AND VIRBIUS 17
■whose worship was exceedingly popular no<, only in Armenia
but in the adjoining countries. The loose character of her
rites is plainly indicated by Strabo, himself a native of
these regions.-'
Among the ancient Celts of Gaul, who, to judge by their The 13th
speech, were near kinsmen of the ancient Latins, the thirteenth f h"^^'
of August appears to have been the di.y when the harvest festival
was dedicated to the harvest-god Rivos.^ If that was so, we cdw'^''
may conjecture that the choice of a day in mid-August for the *^*"'-
solemn celebration of the harvest-home dates from the remote
time when the ancestors of the Celtic and Italian peoples,
having renounced the wandering life of the huntsman and
herdsman, had settled down together in some land of fertile
soil and temperate climate, where harvest fell neither so late
as after the cool rainy summers of the North nor so early as
before the torrid and rainless summers of southern Europe.
But Diana did not reign alone in her grove at Nemi.* Egeria,
Two lesser divinities shared her forest sanctuary. One was "'^"^:
T- • 1 ^ r t t nymph
JbLgeria, the nymph of the clear water which, bubbling from and wife
the basaltic rocks, used to fall in graceful cascades into the °^ ^"^^
lake at the place called Le Mole, because here were estab-
lished the mills of the modern village of Nemi. The purling
of the stream as it ran over the pebbles is mentioned by
Ovid, who tells us that he had often drunk of its water.*
' Strabo, xi. 8. 12, xi. 14. 16, xii. Academy, vol. iv.
3' 37*
2 This is inferred from entries in the , " Dedications to Juno and Venus
ancient Celtic calendar of which numer- T'l T^ ■ oL'" '^^ ^°^^ ^^'"'"'
ous fragments, engraved on bronze, if' ^'f'' '^^8, p. 393 ; G. H.
were found in 1897 at Coligny near ^^^\^s, J"«strated Catalogue, p. 44),
Lyons. In this calendar the month ^'=° f ^/°°^= statuette of Jupiter (O.
Rivros seems to mean "the harvest f°«f=«:'i. "P- «{• P- 162), and a muti-
month"and to correspond to August. ''''^'^ °' unfinished bust supposed to
Sir John Rhys believes that the harvest- '■^J^sent that deity {NottUe degli Scavi,
god Rivos, who is only known from ''''^5, P- 344; G. H. Walhs, op. cit.
this calendar, answers to the better- f'' ^'^''
known Celtic god Lug. See Sir John < Virgil, Aen. vii. 762 sqq. ; Ovid,
Rhys, in Transactions of the Third Fasti, iii. 273 sqq. ; id., Metam. xv.
Intemaiional Congress for the History 482 sqq.; Strabo, v. 3. 12. As to
of Religion (Oxford, 1908), ii. 222 the stream, see P. Rosa, in Monumenti
sqq. ; and as to the Coligny calendar ed Annali pubblic. daW Instituto di
m general see further Sir John Rhys, Corrispondenza Archeologica nel 18^6,
"Gt\UR9.^AQ3SSS.," Proceedings of the p. 7; R. Lanciani, in Athenaeum,
British Academy, tgos-i<)o6, pp. 71 October 10, 1885, p. 477. The water
sqq. ; id. " Notes on the Coligny Cal- was fliverted some years ago to supply
endar," Proceedings of the British Albauo.
VOL. 1 C
i8 THE KING OF THE WOOD chap.
Women with child used to sacrifice to Egeria, because she
was beheved, hke Diana, tO-be able to grant them an easy
delivery.^ Tradition tan that the nymph had been the wife
or mistress of the wise king Numa, that he had consorted
with her in the secrecy of the sacred grove, and that the
laws which he gave the Romans had been inspired by com-
munion with her divinity.** Plutarch compares the legend
with other tales of the loves of goddesses for mortal men,
such as the love of Cybele and the Moon for tlie fair youths
Attis and Endymion.^ According to some, the trysting-
place of the lovers was not in the woods of Nemi but in a
grove outside the dripping Porta Capena at Rome, where
another sacred spring of Egeria gushed from a dark cavern.^
Every day the Roman Vestals fetched water from this spring
to wash the temple of Vesta, carrying it in earthenware
pitchers on their heads.^ In Juvenal's time the natural
rock had been encased in marble, and the hallowed spot
was profaned by gangs of poor Jews, who were suffered to
squat, like gypsies, in the grove. We may suppose that
the spring which fell into the lake of Nemi was the true
original Egeria, and that when the first settlers moved down
from the Alban hills to the banks of the Tiber they brought
» Festus, p. 77, ed. C. O. MUlIer. der Stadt Rom^ (Munich, 1902), pp.
• /-. -J 17 J- ■■■ .,»- , . ;j S42W. According to the latter writer,
» Ovid, Fash, 111. 273 sqq.; m., fj '„ r t:- • .. -j ^u
, . , ,5' ,^„ . r^;„„,„ n. tne valley of Egeria vfas outside the
mtam. ^. 482 sqq.; p'^'^'O. ^' Servian wall, at the foot of the Caelian
Ugibus, LI. 4; Livy, '• 19- 5. >■ ]y[o„„t, and is now traversed by the
21. 3 ; . Plutarch, i^«^^. 4, 8 13, ^^^^^^^ Via delle Mole di S. Sisto and
is; Dionysius Halicam. ^«/^?« . Ferratella. He identifies
Roman, u. 60 sq. ; Juvenal, Sat. m. j ■ vi,
- _ ^. r,- ■ T t i „^ . the sacred spring with a copious source
12; Lactantius, Divin. Inst. 1. 22 ; . ^ >= ^
. ' ^ r, ■ .. , n ■ •■ ., . at the Villa Fonseca. On the other
Augustine, De civitate Dei, vu. 35 ;
Serviuson Virgil, Am. vii. 763. Ovid, f °°' t>tatius (^jz/z^a?, v. 3. 290 sq.),
T- T . .• J A „,„»;„. „„.„v Lactantius (Divm. Inst. in. 22), and
Livy, Lactantius, and Augustine speak . \ . ., .. _, . , ,j ^, .
,'' . ..u -f f-M v,f„„> Servius (on Virgil, vu. 763) held that
of Egena as the wife of Numa, whereas \^ . = ' ' f'
T 1 J c ■ 111, .i,v„vt,„„ Numas Egeria was not at Rome but
Tuvenaland Servius call her his mistress. ^ . . . ''_,, ^„
-' , <■ ni » V, •„ „ ,,!,„.. at Nemi. Ine grove ot bgeria is now
The language of Plutarch is somewhat , , . , ..? , .,, °,.^., ,
i^. u .. u tu. „!,„„. popularly identified with a little wood
ambiguous, but he uses the phrase '^ A , .., d o v u . j •
, ^ „ , ,,. , , , called the Bosco Sacro, which stands in
' '^ /> . ^ -r/ ^ commanding situation to the left of
' Plutarch, Numa, 4. the Appian Way, about a mile and a
* Juvenal, Sat. iii. 10 sqq. ; Livy, half from Rome (Baedeker's Central
L 21. 3. As to the position of this Italy and Rome, ^^ p. 378).
grove and spring see O. Gilbert, ' Plutarch, Numa, 13. That they
GeschUhte und Topographie der Stadt carried the water in pitchers on their
Rom im Altertum, i. 109 sqq., ii. pp. heads maybe inferred from Propertius,
152 sqq.; O. Richter, Topographie v. 4. 15^?.; Ovid, i^of/?, iii. 11-14.
I DIANA AND VIRBIUS 19
the nymph with them and found a new home for her in a
grove outside the gates.^ The remains of baths which have
been discovered within the sacred precinct,^ together with
many terra-cotta models of various parts of the human
body,^ suggest that the waters of Egeria were used to heal
the sick, who may have signified their hopes or testified
their gratitude by dedicating likenesses of the diseased
members to the goddess, in accordance with a custom which
is still observed in many parts of Europe.* To this day
it would seem that the spring retains medicinal virtues.*
The other of the minor deities at Nemi was Virbius. Virbius,
Legend had it that Virbius was the young Greek hero"*^™^?
u- 1 1 1 r • . ■ JO companion
Hippolytus, chaste and fair, who learned the art of venery of Diana,
from the centaur Chiron, and spent all his days in the
greenwood chasing wild beasts with the virgin huntress
Artemis (the Greek counterpart of Diana) for his only
comrade. Proud of her divine society, he spurned the love
of women,* and this proved his bane. For Aphrodite, stung
by his scorn, inspired his stepmother Phaedra with love of
him ; and when he disdained her wicked advances she
falsely accused him to his father Theseus. The slander
was believed, and Theseus prayed to his sire Poseidon to
avenge the imagined wrong. So while Hippolytus drove
in a chariot by the shore of the Saronic Gulf, the sea-god
' This is the view of A. Schwegler torso of a woman clad in a long robe,
[Rdmische Geschichte, i. S48 note), with her breast cut open so as to
0. Gilbert (Geschichte und Topographie expose the bowels. It may be the
der Stadt Rom im Aliertum, i. m), offering of a woman who suffered from
and G. Wissowa (in W. H. Roscher's some internal malady.
Lexikon der griech. utid r'om. Mytho- 4 i? _ „ i r ii.
logic sv "Eeeria") ^°^ ''" example of the custom m
ariT)' u u J' -^ , ,<iM. modern times see J. J. Blunt, F«j/zp-«
^^ O. Rossbach, <?A «A p. 151. "The „r ^ ■ , n^ j ^^ \ ,.
„iji. .!,»• I- A ■ ■ • 1- of Ancient Manners and Customs dis-
old bath" IS mentioned m an mscription ;„,.,„»/ • j^ j r^ , ■ r.-.,
f™ _j .1, 1/^ ^ r -x^- coverable m Modem Italy and Sicily
ioimdoa the spot ( Corpus Inscnpttonum ,r j , ,o,,\ -ri. """V
r ,■ -XT , (London, 1523), p. 131;. The custom
Lattnarum, XIV., No. digo). L „i-ii i / .,>,,,.
3 Ar J- ■ J 7- c • 00- 's Still widespread among the Catholic
J T"^f' T'l^^' ^P- '" population of Southern Germany. See
t^TZf ^"''•^lf'"-"f-^^'^''- Katholisckcn Volks in SilddLtschland
^L ^\ ^\ "' l^^ T\ ■ (Brunswick, 1904), pp. 94 sga., 112
Rossbach, */. cit. p. 160; Archaeo- ) ,3, ' ' ^^ ^^ ^^'
logia: or Miscellaneous Tracts relating ''
toAntiquity,\.(i?,%']),Vt.l.^^.6lsq., '^^ Lanciani, in Athenaeum,
64; G. H. Wallis, Illustrated Cata- October 10, 1885, p. 477,
logue, pp. 2, 4, 22. Amongst these ' Xenophon, Cyneget. i. 2 and 1 1 ;
models may be specially noted the Euripides, Hippolytus, lo-ig. 1092 sq.
20 THE KING OF THE WOOD chap.
sent a fierce bull forth from the waves. The terrified horses
bolted, threw Hippolytusfrom the chariot, and dragged him
at their hoofs to death.^ But Diana, for the love she bore
Hippolytus, persuaded the leech Aesculapius to bring her
fair young hunter back to life by his simples. Jupiter,
indignant that a mortal man should return from the gates
of death, thrust down the meddling leech himself to Hades.
But Diana hid her favourite from the angry god in a thick
cloud, disguised his features by adding years to his life, and
then bore him far away to the dells of Nemi, where she
entrusted him to the nymph Egeria, to live there, unknown
and solitary, under the name of Virbius, in the depth of the
Italian forest. There he reigned a king, and there he
dedicated a precinct to Diana. He had a comely son,
Virbius, who, undaunted by his father's fate, drove a team
of fiery steeds to join the Latins in the war against Aeneas
and the Trojans.^ Virbius was worshipped as a god not
only at Nemi but elsewhere ; for in Campania we hear of
a special priest devoted to his service.^ Horses were
excluded from the Arician grove and sanctuary because
horses had killed Hippolytus.* It was unlawful to touch
his image. Some thought that he was the sun.* " But the
' Euripides, Hippolytus, 20 sqq.\ ia^z»flr«OT, xiv.. No. 2213). The same
ApoUodorus, Epitoma, i. 18 sq., ed. title flamen Virbialis has sometimes
R. Wagner ; Hyginus, Fabulae, 47 ; been wrongly read in an inscription
Ovid, Metatrt. xv. 497 sqq. of Gratianopolis, in Narbonensian Gaul
' Virgil, Aen. vii. 761 sqq., with (Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum,x\\.,
the commentary of Servius ; Ovid, No. 2238 ; Orelli, Inscript. Latin.
Fasti, iiL 263 sqq., vi. 735 sqq.; id., Nos. 2212, 4022). For the worship
Metam. xv. 497 sqq. ; Scholiast on of Virbius we have also the testimony
Persius, Sat. vi. 56, p. 347 sq., ed. O. of Servius, on Virgil, Aen. vii. 776:
Jahn ; Lactantius, Divin. Inst. i. 17 ; "Nam et Virbius inter deos colitur."
Pausanias, ii. 27. 4; ApoUodorus, iii. * Virgil, Aeit. vii. 779 sq.; Ovid,
10. 3 ; Scholiast on Pindar, Pyth. iii. Fasti, iii. 265 sq.
96. It was perhaps in his character ' Servius on Virgil, Aen. vii. 776.
of a serpent that Aesculapius was said Helbig proposed to identify as Virbius
to have brought the dead Hippolytus some bronze statuettes found at Nemi,
to life. See my note on Pausanias, which represent a young man naked
ii. 10. 3. except for a cloak thrown over his left
' An inscription in the public museum arm, holding in his extended right hand
at Naples mentions a flamen Virbialis a shallow bowl, while in his raised
(Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, x. , left hand he seems to have held a spear
No. 1493). Another inscription men- or staff on which he leaned. See
tions a similar priesthood at Aricia, Bulletino dell' Inst, di Corrisp. Archeo-
but the inscription is forged (Orelli, logica, 1885, p. 229. But to this it
Inscript. Latin. No. 1457 ; tompare has been objected by Rossbach (op. cit.
H. Dessau on Corpus Inscriptionum p. 162) that Virbius appears to have
I DIANA AND VIRBIUS 21
truth is," says Servius, " that he is a deity associated with
Diana, as Attis is associated with the Mother of the Gods,
and Erichthonius with Minerva, and Adonis with Venus." ^
What the nature of that association was we shall enquire
presently. Here it is worth observing that in his long
and chequered career this mythical personage has displayed
a remarkable tenacity of life. For we can hardly doubt
that the Saint Hippolytus of the Roman calendar, who was
dragged by horses to death on the thirteenth of August,
Diana's own day, is no other than the Greek hero of the
same name, who after dying twice over as a heathen sinner
has been happily resuscitated as a Christian saint.^
It needs no elaborate demonstration to convince us that The
the stories told to account for Diana's worship at Nemi of^^emi
are unhistorical. Clearly they belong to that large class of invented
myths which are made up to explain the origin of a religious Jhe^ri^^
ritual and have no other foundation than the resemblance,
real or imaginary, which may be traced between it and some
foreign ritual. The incongruity of these Nemi myths is
indeed transparent, since the foundation of the worship is
traced now to Orestes and now to Hippolytus, according as
been portrayed as an older, probably them, his nurse Cff«con//'a, was scourged
bearded man (Ovid, Metam. xv. 538 \.o A^dXYi {" plumbatis caesa'"). It is an
sqq.). odd coincidence that his Greek proto-
' Servius on Virgil, Aen. vii. 761 ; type Hippolytus dedicated just twenty
compare id. on Aen. vii. 84. See also horses to Aesculapius (Pansanias, ii. 27.
Ovid, Mctam. xv. 545 sq. — 4) ; and it is another odd coincidence,
" Hoc nemus inde colo de disque mi- if it is nothing worse, that the bones
noribus unus of Orestes, the other mythical hero of j
Nomine sub dominae lateo atque ac- Nemi, were buried beside the temple
censeor illi," of Concordia in Rome, and that Servius,
' P. Ribadeneira, Flos Sanctorum who mentions this tradition (on Virgil,
(Venice, 1763), ii. 93 sq.\ Acta Sane- Aen. ii. 1 1 6), should immediately after-
torum, August 13, pp. 4 sqq. (Paris wards quote the words "wVyzw^^aMa."
and Rome, 1867). The merit of If we knew why the hero Hippolytus
tracing the saint's pedigree belongs to dedicated just twenty horses to the god
Mr. J. Rendel Harris. See his An- who raised him from the dead, we
notators of Codex Bezae (London, might perhaps know why the saint
1901), pp. loi sq. Prudentius has Hippolytus went to heaven attended
drawn a picture of the imaginary by a <;lorious company of just twenty
martyrdom which might melt the martyrs. Bunsen courageously stood
stoniest heart {Peristeph. xi. p. 282 sqq. , out for the historical reality of the
ed. Th. Obbarius). According to the martyr, whom he would fain identify
Acta Sanctorum the saint shared the with his namesake the well - known
crown of martyrdom with twenty mem- writer of the third century {Hippolytus
hers of his household, of whom nine- and his Age, London, 1852, L pp.
teen were beheaded, while one of 212 sqq.).
22 THE KING OF THE WOOD chap.
this or that feature of the ritual has to be accounted for.
The real value of such tales is that they serve to illustrate
the nature of the -worship by providing a standard with
which to compare it ; and further, that they bear witness
indirectly to its venerable age by shewing that the true
origin was lost in the mists of a fabulous antiquity. In the
latter respect these Nemi legends are probably more to be
Tradition trusted than the apparently historical tradition, vouched for
••^^^ by Cato the Elder, that the sacred grove was dedicated to
OTOYC of J ' *~*
Nemi was Diana by a certain Egerius Baebius or Laevius of Tusculum,
^"i^ a Latin dictator, on behalf of the peoples of Tusculum,
dictator. Aricia, Lanuvium, Laurentum, Cora, Tibur, Pometia, and
Ardea.i This tradition indeed speaks for the great age of
the sanctuary, since it seems to date its foundation sometime
before 495 B.C., the year in which Pometia was sacked by
the Romans and disappears from history .^ But we cannot
suppose that so barbarous a rule as that of the Arician
priesthood was deliberately instituted by a league of civilised
communities, such as the Latin cities undoubtedly were. It
must have been handed down from a time beyond the
memory of man, when Italy was still in a far ruder state than
any known to us in the historical period. The credit of the
tradition is rather shaken than confirmed by another story
which ascribes the foundation of the sanctuary to a certain
Manius Egerius, who gave rise to the saying, " There are
many Manii at Aricia." This proverb some explained by
alleging that Manius Egerius was the ancestor of a long and
distinguished line, whereas others thought it meant that
there were many ugly and deformed people at Aricia, and
they derived the name Manius from Mania, a bogey or
bugbear to frighten children.' A Roman satirist uses the
name Manius as typical of the beggars who lay in wait for
pilgrims on the Arician slopes.* These differences of opinion,
together with the discrepancy between Manius Egerius of
Aricia and Egerius Laevius of Tusculum, as well as the
resemblance of both names to the mythical Egeria,^ excite
1 Cato, Origints, i., quoted by " Ljyy^ y. 25 ; Dionysius Halicarnas.
Priscian, hist. iv. 21, vol. i. p. 129, Antiquit. Roman, vi. 29.
ed. Hertz; M. Catonis praeter librum ' Festus, p. 145, ed. C. O. Miiller.
dererust!caguaeexean/,ed. K. Jordan, ' Persius, Sat. vi. 55 sqq.
p. 12. ' Wissowa suggests that Manius
DIANA AND VIRBIUS
23
our suspicion. Yet the tradition recorded by Cato seems too
circumstantial, and its sponsor too respectable, to allow us
to dismiss it as an idle fiction.-' Rather we may suppose
that it refers to some ancient restoration or reconstruction of
the sanctuary, which was actually carried out by the con-
federate states.^ At any rate it testifies to a belief that the
grove had been from early times a common place of worship
for many of the oldest cities of the country, if not for the
whole Latin confederacy.^
Another argument of antiquity may be drawn from some Evidence
of the votive offerings found on the spot, such as a sacrificial °'^.'.'^° .. ,
° ^ ^ antiquity ot
ladle of bronze bearing Diana's name in archaic Greek the grove,
letters,* and pieces of the oldest kind of Italian money,
being merely shapeless bits of copper, unstamped and valued
by weight.* But as the use of such old-fashioned money
Egerius was a half- forgotten male
counterpart of Egeria (W. H. Reseller's
Lexikon d. griech. und r'dm. Mytho-
hgie, s.v. "Egeria"); and Dessau
observes that the name Egerius "sine
dubio xohatret cum Egerio fonte "
( Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum,
xiv. p. 204). The same view is taken
by Messrs. A. B. Cook and E. Pais.
Mr. Cook holds that the original form
of the names was Aegerius and Aegeria,
which he would interpret as " the Oak
God" and "the Oak Goddess." See
A. B. Cook, "The European QVy-
Goi.," Folk-lore, xvi. (1905) pp. 2gisq. ;
E. Pais, Ancient Legends of Roman
History (London, 1 906), p. 142.
' As Cluverius seems to do {Italia
Antiqua, p. 931).
2 This is substantially the view of
Prof. Wissowa, who holds that the
reference is to the foundation of a
common altar in the grove by all the
members of the league (Religion und
Kultus der Romer, p. 1 99).
' Scholars are not agreed as to
whether the list of confederate Latin
cities in Cato is complete, and whether
the Latin dictator he mentions was the
head of the league or only of Tusculum.
In regard to the former question we
must remember that the passage of
Cato is known to us only from Priscian,
who seems to have quoted no more than
suited his purpose, which was merely
to illustrate a grammatical termination
(Ardeatis for the later Ardeas). Prob-
ably, therefore, the original passage
contained many more names of towns
which Priscian did not think it need-
ful to cite. This is the view of
H. Dessau (in Corpus Inscriptionum
Latinarum, xiv. p. 204). With regard
to the second question, Mommsen held
that the dictatorship in question was
merely the chief magistracy of Tus-
culum, the presidency of the Latin
league being vested in two praetors,
not in a dictator (Livy, viii. 3. 9).
Most scholars, however, appear to be
of opinion that the dictator referred to
was head of the league. See H. Jordan,
M. Catonis praeter librum de re rustica
quae extant, pp. xli. sqq. ; J. Beloch,
Der italische Bund unter Roms
Hegemonie (Leipsic, 1880), p. 188 ;
H. Nissen, Italische Landeskunde, ii.
(Berlin, 1902) pp. 557 sq.
* G. H. Wallis, Illustrated Cata-
logue, pp. 5, 36 ; Corpus Inscriptionum
Latinarum, xiv.. No. 4186.
' Bulletino di Corrisp. Archeologica,
1885, p. 232 ; Notizie degli Scavi,
1885, pp. 255, 320 ; id. 189s, p. 108;
G. XL Wallis, Illustrated Catalogue,
VV- S> 55- The use of this rude
currency is said to have been superseded
in the reign of Servius TuUius, who
substituted stamped ingots of copper
(Pliny, Nat. Hist, xxxiii. 43).
24 THE KING OF THE WOOD chap.
survived in offerings to the gods long after it vanished from
daily life,^ no great stress can be laid on its occurrence at
Nemi as evidence of thq age of the shrine.
S 2. Artemis and Hippolytus
Origin of I have said that the Arician legends of Orestes and
'''rt^'^ Hippolytus, though worthless as history, have a certain
Orestes value in so far as they may help us to understand the
Hippoirtns worship at Nemi better by comparing it with the ritual and
myths of other sanctuaries. We must ask ourselves, Why
did the authors of these legends pitch upon Orestes and
Hippolytus in order to explain Virbius and the King of the
Wood ? In regard to Orestes, the answer is obvious. He
and the image of the Tauric Diana, which could only be
appeased with human blood,^ were dragged in to render
intelligible the murderous rule of succession to the Arician
priesthood. In regard to Hippolytus the case is not so
plain. The manner of his death suggests readily enough a
reason for the exclusion of horses from the grove ; but this
by itself seems hardly enough to account for the identifica-
tion. We must try to probe deeper by examining the
worship as well as the legend or myth of Hippolytus.
Worship oC He had a famous sanctuary at his ancestral home of
Hippolytus -j-j-Qg^en, situated on that beautiful, almost landlocked bay,
liroeren. where groves of oranges and lemons, with tall cypresses
soaring like dark spires above the garden of the Hesperides,
now clothe the strip of fertile shore at the foot of the rugged
mountains. Across the blue water of the tranquil bay,
which it shelters from the open sea, rises Poseidon's sacred
island, its peaks veiled in the sombre green of the pines.
On this fair coast Hippolytus was worshipped. Within his
sanctuary stood a temple with an ancient image. His
service was performed by a priest who held office for life :
every year a sacrificial festival was held in his honour ; and
his untimely fate was yearly mourned, with weeping and
1 Livy, xxvi. 1 1. 9 ; Tacilus, Ipkigtnia in Tauris, 38 sqq. ; Strabo,
Historiae, iv. 53 ; E. Babelon, vi. 4. 2, p. 308 ; Pausanias, iii. 16.
Monnaiesde la Ripubliqtu romaitu, i. 7-10; K. O. MUller, Die Darier? 1.
pp. ii. sq. 385 ^1-
* Herodotus, iv. 103 ; Euripides,
I ARTEMIS AND HIPPOLYTUS 25
doleful chants, by unwedded maids, who also dedicated
locks of their hair in his temple before marriage.^ His
grave existed at Troezen, though the people woiild not shew
it.^ It has been suggested, with great plausibility, that in Hippoiytus
the handsome Hippoiytus, beloved of Artemis, cut off in his tebl'of^
youthful prime, and yearly mourned by damsels, we have the Adonis
one of those mortal lovers of a goddess who appear so often '^^"^^
in ancient religion, and of whom Adonis is the most familiar
type. The rivalry of Artemis and Phaedra for the affection
of Hippoiytus reproduces, it is said, under different names, the
rivalry of Aphrodite and Proserpine for the love of Adonis,
for Phaedra is merely a double of Aphrodite.* Certainly in
the Hippoiytus of Euripides the tragedy of the hero's death
is traced directly to the anger of Aphrodite at his contempt
for her power, and Phaedra is nothing but a tool of the
goddess. Moreover, within the precinct of Hippoiytus aV
Troezen there stood a temple of Peeping Aphrodite, which
was so named, we are told, because from this spot the
amorous Phaedra used to watch Hippoiytus at his manly
sports. Clearly the name would be still more appropriate
if it was Aphrodite herself who peeped. And beside this
temple of Aphrodite grew a myrtle-tree with pierced leaves,
which the hapless Phaedra, in the pangs of love, had pricked
with her bodkin.* Now the myrtle, with its glossy evergreen
leaves, its red and white blossom, and its fragrant perfume,
was Aphrodite's own tree, and legend associated it with the
birth of Adonis.* At Athens also Hippoiytus was intimately
associated with Aphrodite, for on the south side of the
Acropolis, looking towards Troezen, a barrow or sepulchral
mound in his memory was shewn, and beside it stood a
temple of Aphrodite, said to have been founded by Phaedra,
which bore the name of the temple of Aphrodite at Hippo-
^ Pausanias, ii. 32. I ; Euripides, flict of the worship of Aphrodite with
Hippoiytus, 1423-1430, with Paley's that of Artemis at Troezen" (Der
comment Diodorus Siculus speaks Baumkultus der Hellenen, p. 445, n.
(iv. 62) of the "godlike honours" 2).
accorded to Hippoiytus at Troezen. * Pausanias, ii. 32. 3.
" Pausanias, L 22. I, ii. 32. I. ^ Servius on Virgil, Aen. v. 72 ;
' S. Wide, De sacris Troezeniorum, Pausanias, vi. 24. 7. As to the myrtle
Hermionensium, Epidauriorum (Up- and Aphrodite, see C. Boetticher, Der
sala, 1S98), pp. %(> sq. C. Boetticher Baumkultus der Hellenen, fp. ^^^ sqg.;
thought that "the whole legend of V. Hehn, Kulturpjlanzen und Haus-
Hippolytus represents simply the con- Here'' (Berlin, 1902), pp. 220 sqq.
26 THE KING OF THE WOOD chap.
lytus.* The conjunction, both in Troezen and in Athens,
of his grave with a temple of the goddess of love is signifi-
cant. Later on we shall meet with mounds in which the
lovers of the great Asiatic goddess were said to lie buried.
The If this view of the relation of Hippolytus to Artemis
^°^™'i?" and Aphrodite is right, it is somewhat remarkable that both
Hippolytus his divine mistresses appear to have been associated at
^j^J^ Troezen with oaks. For Aphrodite was here worshipped
under the title of Askraia, that is, she of the Fruitless Oak ; ^
and Hippolytus was said to have met his death not far from
a sanctuary of Saronian Artemis, that is, Artemis of the
Hollow Oak, for here the wild olive-tree was shewn in which
the reins of his chariot became entangled, and so brought
him to the ground.*
Orestes at It may not be without significance that Orestes, the
Troezen. Q^-j^gr mythical hero of Nemi, also appears in the legendary
history of Troezen. For at Troezen there was a temple of
Wolfish Artemis, said to have been dedicated by Hippolytus,
and in front of the temple stood a sacred stone upon which
nine men, according to the legend, had cleansed Orestes
from the guilt of his mother's murder. In the solemn rite
they made use of water drawn from the Horse's Fount ; and
as late as the second century of our era their descendants
dined together on certain set days in a building called the
Booth of Orestes. Before the building there grew a laurel-
tree which was said to have sprung on the spot where the
things used in purifying the matricide were buried. The
old traveller Pausanias, to whom we owe so much of our
knowledge of ancient Greece, could not learn why Hippo-
' .Pausanias, L 22. 1 ; Euripides, ' Pausanias, ii. 32. 10. In Greek
.S«)>/»^ftw, 30 jyy., with the scholiast's saronis is a hollow oak. See Calli-
note ; Diodorus Siculus, iv. 62 ; machus, Hymn to Zeus, 22 ; Hesy-
I.Tz^Xj.^, Scholia on Lycophron,\jfl.<i. chius and Etymologicum Magnum,
s.v. <rapii>i>lSes ; A. B. Cook, "Zeus,
2 Pausanias, ii. 32. 6 'A^poSfnjs Jupiter, and the Oak," Classical Re-
'Aa-Kpaias, where Bekker and all sub- view, xviii. (1904) p. 370. Mytho-
sequent editors have changed 'AaKpalas logy derived the name Saronian from
into 'Ajcpaiai. But 'AffKpafos has the a certain Saron, an ancient king of
better manuscript authority. The title Troezen and a mighty hunter, who
is derived from askra, "a fruitless had been drowned while swimming
oak" (Hesychius, s.v. &<rKpa). See after a doe (Pausanias, ii. 30. 7). In
Jlr. A. B. Cook, "Zeus, Jupiter, and this mythical hunter associated with
the Oak," Classical Review, xvii, (1903) Artemis we may perhaps detect a dupli-
pp. 415 sq. cate of Hippolytus.
I ARTEMIS AND HIPPOLYTUS 27
lytus dedicated a temple to Wolfish Artemis ; but he conjec-
tured that it might have been because he extirpated the
packs of wolves that used to scour the country.^
Another point in the myth of Hippolytus which deserves Hippoiytus
attention is the frequent recurrence of horses in it. His '° f^'^"°"
■^ to horses
name signifies either "hofse- loosed" or " horse-looser "; ^ and
he consecrated twenty horses to Aesculapius at Epidaurus ; ^ *°^^^^-
he was killed by horses ; the Horse's Fount probably flowed
not far from the temple which he built for Wolfish Artemis ;
and horses were sacred to his grandsire Poseidon, who had
an ancient sanctuary in the wooded island across the bay,
where the ruins of it may still be seen in the pine-forest.*
Lastly, Hippolytus's sanctuary at Troezen was said to have
been founded by Diomede, whose mythical connexion both
with horses and wolves is attested. For the Veneti, at the
head of the Adriatic, were famed for their breed of horses,
and they had a sacred grove of Diomede, at the spot where
many springs burst forth from the foot of a lofty cliff, form-
ing at once the broad and deep river Timavus (the modern
Timao), which flows with a still and tranquil current into
the neighbouring sea. Here the Veneti sacrificed a white
horse to Diomede ; and associated with his grove were two
others, sacred to Argive Hera and Aetolian Artemis. In
these groves wild beasts were reported to lose their ferocity,
and deer to herd with wolves. Moreover, the horses of the
district, famed for their speed, were said to have been branded
with the mark of a wolf.* Thus Hippolytus was associated
with the horse in many ways, and this association may have
been used to explain more features of the Arician ritual
than the mere exclusion of the animal from the sacred grove.''
1 Pausanias, ii. 31. 4, 8, and 9. my attention to the association of the
* See Kiihner-BIass, Grammatik der horse and wolf in the early cults of
griech. Sprache, ii. 288 sq. Greece and Italy.
» Pausanias, ii. 27. 4. « M. Salomon Reinach would ex-
* Pausanias, ii. 33. 2 with my com- plain Hippolytus at Troezefi as a sacred
mentary, vol. iii. pp. 285 sq., vol. v. horse, which was torn to pieces by
pp. 596 sqq. his worshippers at a solemn sacrifice,
5 Stiabo, V. I. 4, 8, and 9, pp. 212, just as Dionysus Zagreus was said to
z\^ sq. As to the topography, see have been rent in pieces by his wor-
Bunbury in Smith's Dictionary of shippers. See S. Reinach, "Hippo-
Gretk and Roman ^Qeography, s.v. lyte," Archiv filr Religionswissen-
" Timavus " ; H. Nissen, Italische schafi, x. (1907) pp. 47.60; id.
Landeskunde, ii. 233, I have to thank Cultes, Mythes, et Religions, iii. (Paris,
my friend Mr. A. B. Cook for drawing 1908) pp. 54-67.
28 THE KING OF THE WOOD chap.
To this point we shall return later on. Whether his relation
to wolves was also invoked to account for any other aspect
of the worship at Nemi we cannot say, since the wolf plays
no part in the scanty notices of that worship which have
come down to us.^ But doubtless, as one of the wild
creatures of the wood, the beast would be under the special
care of Diana.
Hair The custom observed by Troezenian girls of offering
bffore tresses of their hair to Hippolytus before their wedding
marriage to brings him into a relation with marriage, which at first sight
and other^ Seems out of keeping with his reputation as a confirmed
bachelor. According to Lucian, youths as well as maidens
at Troezen were forbidden to wed till they had shorn their
hair in honour of Hippolytus, and we gather from the con-
text that it was their first beard which the young men thus
polled.^ However we may explain it, a custom of this sort
appears to have prevailed widely both in Greece and the
East. Plutarch tells us that formerly it was the wont of
boys at puberty to go to Delphi and oifer of their hair to
Apollo ; Theseus, the father of Hippolytus, complied with
the custom,' which lasted down into historical times.* Argive
maidens, grown to womanhood, dedicated their tresses to
Athena before marriage." On the same occasion Megarian
girls poured libations and laid clippings of their hair on the
tomb of the maiden Iphinoe.* At the entrance to the
temple of Artemis in Delos the grave of two maidens was
shewn under an olive-tree. It was said that long ago they
had come as pilgrims from a far northern land with offerings
to Apollo, and dying in the sacred isle were buried there.
The Delian virgins before marriage used to cut off a lock of
their hair, wind it on a spindle, and lay it on the maidens'
grave. The young men did the same, except that they
twisted the down of their first beard round a wisp of grass
or a green shoot.' In some places it was Artemis who
1 No argument can be drawn from dedications of hair to Apollo see An-
the bronze wolf-heads of Caligula's thologia Palatina, vi. 198, 279,
ships (above, p. 5, note 5), since these * Stadus, Theb. ii. 253 sqq.
may have been purely ornamental. * Pausanias, i. 43. 4.
^ Lucian, Dt dea Syria, 60. ' Herodotus, iv. 33 ^. ; Callima-
' Plutarch, Theseus, 5. chus, Hymn to Delos, 291 sqq. ; Paus-
* Athenaeus, xiii. S3, p. 605A. For anias, i. 43. 4.
I ARTEMIS AND HIPPOLYTUS 29
received the offering of a maiden's hair before marriage.^ At
Panamara in Caria men dedicated locks of their hair in the
temple of Zeus The l&,ks were enclosed in little stone
boxes, some of them fitted with a marble lid or shutter, and
the name of the dedicator was engraved on a square sinking
in the stone, together with the name of the priest for the
time being. Many of these inscribed boxes have been found
of late years on the spot. None of them bear the names of
women ; some of them are inscribed with the names of a
father and his sons. All the dedications are to Zeus alone,
though Hera was also worshipped with him at Panamara.^ At
Hierapolis, on the Euphrates, youths offered of their beards
and girls of their tresses to the great Syrian goddess, and
left the shorn hair in caskets of gold or silver, inscribed with
their names, and nailed to the walls of the temple.^ The
custom of dedicating the first beard seems to have been
common at Rome under the Empire.* Thus Nero conse-
crated his first beard in a golden box, studded with costly
pearls, on the Capitol.*
Some light is perhaps thrown on the meaning of these Such
practices by two ancient Oriental customs, the one Egvptian. p'''^""^^
1 1 T>i • • TIT. T^ 'intended
the Other Phoenician. When Egyptian boys or girls had to com-
recovered from sickness, their parents used to shave the chil- "renrth^
dren's heads, weigh the hair against gold or silver, and give and
the precious metal to the keepers of the sacred beasts, who '^"'"'"y-
bought food with it for the animals according to their tastes. pSce."
These tastes varied with the nature of the beast, and the
beast varied with the district. Where hawks were worshipped,
the keepers chopped up flesh, and calling the birds in a
loud voice, flung the gobbets up into the air, till the hawks
stooped and caught them. Where cats, or ichneumons, or
' AnthologiaPalatina,y\. 2'](i,2']'] ; 6 Suetonius, Nero, 12. On hair-
Pollux, iii. 38 ; Hesychius, s.v. yd/jioip offerings in general see G. A. Wilken,
IBri. Pollux seems to imply that the Ueder das Haaropfer (Amsterdam,
hair was dedicated to Hera and the 1886) (reprinted from the Revue
Fates as well as to Artemis. Coloniale Internationale). On the
* G. Deschamps and G. Cousin, in hair-offerings of the Greeks see Fr.
Bulletin de Correspondance helli- Wieseler, in Philologus, ix. (1854),
nique, xi. (1887) pp. 390 sq. ; id. xii. pp. 711-715; G. Deschamps and G.
(1888) pp. 97 sq., 249 sqq., 479-490. Cousin, in Bulletin de Correspondance
' Lucian, De dea Syria, 60. kellinigue, xii. (1888) pp. 479-490;
* J. Marquardt, Privatleben der W. H. D. Rouse, Greek Votive Offer-
Romer, pp. 599 sq. ings (Cambridge, 1902), pp. 240-245.
30 THE KING OF THE WOOD chap.
fish were the local deities, the keepers crumbled bread in
milk and set it before them, or threw it into the Nile. And
similarly with the rest of the divine menagery.^ Thus in
Egypt the offerings of hair went to feed the worshipful
animals.
Syrian In the sanctuary of the great Phoenician goddess Astarte
^rifireof ^^ Byblus the practice was different. Here, at the annual
chastity mouming for the dead Adonis, the women had to shave
as^a substi- their heads, and such of them as refused to do so were
tute for the bound to prostitute themselves to strangers and to sacrifice
hair. to the goddess with the wages of their shame.^ Though
Lucian, who mentions the custom, does not say so, there
are some grounds for thinking that the women in question
were generally maidens, of whom this act of devotion was
required as a preliminary to marriage.* In any case, it is
clear that the goddess accepted the sacrifice of chastity
as a substitute for the sacrifice of hair.* Why? By many
people, as we shall afterwards see, the hair is regarded as
in a special sense the seat of strength ; and at puberty it
might well be thought to contain a double portion of vital
energy, since at that season it is the outward sign and
manifestation of the newly -acquired power of reproducing
the species. For that reason, we may suppose, the beard
rather than the hair of the head is offered by males on this
occasion. Thus the substitution permitted at Byblus be-
comes intelligible : the women gave of their fecundity to
the goddess, whether they offered their hair or their chastity.
But why, it may be asked, should they make such an offer-
ing to Astarte, who was herself the great goddess of love
and fertility ? What need had she to receive fecundity from
^ Herodotus, ii. 65 ; Diodorus Sicu- to prostitute maidens to strangers
lus, i. 83. The latter writer's account before marriage. Eusebius speaks of
is the fuller, and has been followed in the religious prostitution of married
the text. women as well as of maidens. Con-
, r ■ r, J <• ■ a stantine destroyed the temple of the
* Lucian, De dea Syria, o. ,, . , • . .> ■ '^ .
goddess m which these impure rites
3 W. Robertson Smith, Kdigion of seem to have been performed. To
the Semites? p. 329. He refers to moderns, Heliopolis (the City of the
Sozomenus, Histor. Eccles. v. lO. 7; Sun) is better known as Baalbec; its
Socrates, Histor. Eccles. i. 18 ; and magnificent ruins are the finest remains
Eusebius, Vita Constant, iii. 58, from of Greek architecture in the East.
whose testimonies we learn that at ^ This is recognised by G. A. Wilken
Heliopolis, in Syria, it was the custom (Ueber das Haaropfer, p. 105).
I ARTEMIS AND HIPPOLYTUS 31
her worshippers ? Was it not rather for her to bestow it
on them ? Thus put, the question overlooks an important
side of polytheism, perhaps we may say of ancient religion
in general. The gods stood as much in need of their
worshippers as the worshippers in need of them. The,
benefits conferred were mutual. If the gods made the
earth to bring forth abundantly, the flocks and herds to
teem, and the human race to multiply, they expected that
a portion of their bounty should be returned to them in
the shape of tithe or tribute. On this tithe, indeed, they
subsisted, and without it they would starve. Their divine
bellies had to be filled, and their divine reproductive energies
to be recruited ; hence men had to give of their meat and
drink to them, and to sacrifice for their benefit what is most
manly in man and womanly in woman. Sacrifices of the
latter kind have too often been overlooked or misunderstood
by the historians of religion. Other examples of them will
meet us in the course of our enquiry. At the same time
it may well be that the women who offered their hair to
Astarte hoped to benefit through the sympathetic connexion
which they thus established between themselves and the
goddess ; they may in fact have expected to fecundate
themselves by contact with the divine source of fecundity.
And it is probable that a similar motive underlay the
sacrifice of chastity as well as the sacrifice of hair.
If the sacrifice of hair, especially of hair at puberty, is Hair
sometimes intended to strengthen the divine beiners to whom °^^^^ '°
rivers 3S
it is offered by feeding or fertilising them, we can the better sources of
understand, not only the common practice of offering hair "^''"y-
to the shadowy dead,^ but also the Greek usage of shearing
it for rivers, as the Arcadian boys of Phigalia did for the
stream that runs in the depths of the tremendous woody
glen below the city.^ For next perhaps to rain and sun-
shine, nothing in nature so obviously contributes to fertilise
a country as its rivers. Again, this view may set in a
clearer light the custom of the Delian youths and maidens,
* G. A. \^S&iexi, Das Haaropfer, pp. also below, p. 102.
61 sqq. ; W. Robertson Smith, /^e/i-
^on of the Semites,^ pp. 323 sqq. ; I. " Pausanias, viii. 41. 3. To the
Goldziher, Muhammedanische Studien, references given in my nott on the
L (Halle a. S. 1888) pp. 247 sqq. See passage add Pollux, ii. 30.
32
THE KING OF THE WOOD
Delos and
Delphi as
centres of
fertilisa-
tion and
of fire.
who offered their hair on the maidens' tomb under the olive-
tree. For at Delos, as at Delphi, one of Apollo's many func-
tions was to make the crops grow and to fill the husband-
man's barns ; hence at the time of harvest tithe-offerings
poured in to him from every side in the form of ripe sheaves,
or, what was perhaps still more acceptable, golden models
of them, which went by the name of the " golden summer." ^
The festival at which these first-fruits were dedicated may
have been the 6th and 7th of the harvest -month Thar-
gelion, corresponding to the 24th and 2Sth of May, for
these were the birthdays of Artemis and Apollo respectively.^
In Hesiod's day the corn-reaping began at the morning
rising of the Pleiades, which then answered to our 9th of
May,^ and in Greece the wheat is still ripe about that time.*
In return for these offerings the god sent out a sacred new
fire from both his great sanctuaries at Delos and Delphi,
thus radiating from them, as from central suns, the divine
blessings of heat and light. A ship brought the new fire
every year from Delos to Lemnos, the sacred island of the
fire-god Hephaestus, where all fires were put out before its
arrival, to be afterwards rekindled at the pure flame.® The
fetching of the new fire from Delphi to Athens appears to
have been a ceremony of great solemnity and pomp. All
the chief Athenian magistrates repaired to Delphi for the
purpose. The holy fire blazed or smouldered in a sacred
1 Callimachus, Hymn to Delos, 278 was formerly supposed. The Delia
sqq. ; Pliny, Nat. Hist. iv. 91 ; Strabo,
vi I. 15, p. 264; Plutarch, De
Pythiae oraculis, 16. In Apollo's
temple at Delphi there were dedicated
a radish of gold, a beet of silver, and
a turnip of lead, which was thought to
signify the respective value of these
vegetables (Pliny, Nat. Hist. xix. 86).
A poet speaks of tithes and first-fruits
hung up for Apollo on a high pillar at
Delphi (Clement of Alexandria, Strom.
i. 24. 164, p. 419, ed. Potter).
' Diogenes Laertius, Vit. Philos. ii.
44, iii. 2 ; Plutarch, Qttaest. Conviv.
viii. I. 2 ; J. T. Wood, Discoveries at
Ephesus: Inscriptions from the great
Theatre, pp. 4, 1 6. Apollo's birthday
(the 7th of Thargelion) was probably
the festival known in the Delian calen-
dar as the Apollonia, not the Delia as
seems to have fallen in early spring,
not in early summer. See C. Robert
in Hermes, xxi. (1886) pp. 161- 169;
Aug. Mommsen, Feste der Stadt Athen
(Leipsic, 1898), p. 451. On this
harvest-festival at Delos see W. Mann-
hardt, Antike Wald- and Feldkulte, pp.
232 sqq., who, however, took the
festival to be the Delia.
' Hesiod, Works and Days, 383 sq.\
L. Idfcler, Handbuch der mcUhematischen
und technischen Chronologic, i. 242.
< Folk-lore, i. (1890) p. 518. As
to the season of the ripening of the
corn in Greece both in ancient and
modern times, see G. Busolt's discus-
sion of the evidence, Griechische Ge-
schichte, iii. 2 (Gotha, 1904), pp. 909
sqq., note.
^ Philostratus, Heroica, xx. 24.
1 ARTEMIS AND HIPPOLYTUS 33
tripod borne on a chariot and tended by a woman who was
called the Fire-bearer. Soldiers, both horse and foot, escorted
it ; magistrates, priests, and heralds accompanied it ; and
the procession moved to the music of trumpet and fife.^
We do not know on what occasion the fire was thus solemnly
sent from Delphi to Athens, but we may conjecture that
it was when the Pythaists at Athens, watching from the
hearth of Lightning Zeus, saw lightning flash over Harma
on Mount Parnes, for then they sent a sacrifice to Delphi
and may have received the fire in return.^ After the great
defeat of the Persians at Plataea, the people of that city
extinguished all the fires in the country, deeming them
defiled by the presence of the barbarians. Having done so
they relit them at a^pure new fire fetched by a runner from
the altar of the common hearth at Delphi.^
Now the maidens on whose grave the Delian youths The graves
and damsels laid their shorn locks before marriage, were°J^^P°"°
said to have died in the island after bringing the harvest Artemis
offering, wrapt in wheaten straw, from the land of the ^' ^^*'°^
Hyperboreans in the far north.'' Thus they were in
popular opinion the mythical representatives of those bands
of worshippers who bore, year by year, the yellow sheaves
with dance and song to Deles. But in fact they had once
been much more than this. For an examination of their
names, which are commonly given as Hekaerge and Opis,
has led modern scholars to conclude, with every appearance
of probability, that these maidens were originally mere
duplicates of Artemis herself.* Perhaps indeed we may
' Bulletin de Correspondance hel- Hymn to Delos, 278 sqq. Herodotus
•ue, xviii. (1894) pp. 87-93; ^'^- does not tell us in what the sacred
XX. (1896) pp. 639-641; E. Curtius offerings consisted; Pausanias says
in Anhdologischer Anzeiger, 1895, pp. (i. 31. 2) that no one knew what
109 sg. ; Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscrip- they were. But from the evidence
tionitm Graecarum^ Nos. 611, 665, of Calliraachus, compared with that
718. of Pliny {Nat. Hist. iv. 91) and Mela
* Strabo, ix. 2. II, p. 404. (iii. 37), it appears that they were
' Plutarch, Arislides, 20. Probably believed to be the first-fruits of the
the custom of sending out new fire corn,
from Delos and Delphi was common, ' H. Stein on Herodotus, iv. 33 ;
though the existing evidence of it is O. Crusius in W. H. Roscher's Lexikon
scanty. The same remark applies to der griech. und r'om. Mythologie, \.
the practice of bringing tithes of the 2813, 2S31 ; Preller-Robert, GrjWwycA*
harvest to these sanctuaries. Mythologie, i. 298 sq. ; Wernicke, in
* Herodotus, iv. 33 ; Callimachus, Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopadie dir
VOL. I D
34 THE KING OF THE WOOD chap.
go a step farther. For sometimes one of this pair of
Hyperboreans appears as a male, not a female, under the
name of the Far-shooter (Hekaergos), which was a common
epithet of Apollo.^ This suggests that the two were
originally the heavenly twins themselves, Apollo and
Artemis, and that- the two graves which were shewn at
Delos, one before and the other behind the sanctuary of
Artemis, may have been at first the tombs of these great
deities, who were thus laid to their rest on the spot where
they had been born. As the one grave received offerings
of hair, so the other received thff ashes of the victims which
were burned on the altar.^ Both sacrifices, if I am right,
were designed to strengthen and fertilise the divine powers
who made the earth to wave with the golden harvest, and
whose mortal remains, like the miracle-working bones of
saints in the Middle Ages, brought wealth to their fortunate
possessors. Ancient piety was not shocked by the sight
of the tomb of a dead god. The grave of Apollo himself
was shewn at his other great sanctuary of Delphi,^ and
this perhaps explains its disappearance at Delos. The
priests of the rival shrines may have calculated that one
tomb sufficed even for a god, and that two might prove a
stumbling-block to any but the most robust faith. Acting
on this prudent conviction, they may have adjusted their
respective claims to the possession of the holy sepulchre
class. Alteriumswissenschaft, ii. coll. Alexandria, Strom, v. 8. 49, p. 674,
1355. 1356, 1357, 1358, 1359, 1380, ed. Potter, quoting Apollodorus of
1383, 1393, 1402. The names of Corcyra : /xiXTrere SnralSes iKdepyov ical
the maidens were variously given as eKaipyav. For Opis or Upis as a
Hyperoche and Laodice (Herodotus, name of Artemis see Macrobius, 5(2:te?-«.
iv. 33), or Hekaerge and Opis, v. 22. 3-6 ; Cjjlimachus, Hymn to
(Pausanias, i. 43. 4, v. 7. 8 ; Servius Artemis, 204 ; Palaephatus, De in-
on Virgil, Aen. xi. 532), or Upis, credib. 32.
Loxo, and Hekaerge (Callimachus, ' Pseudo-Plato, Axiochus, p. 371A;
Hymn to Delos, 292). Herodotus Servius on Virgil, Aen. xi. 532 :
further mentions (iv. 35) another pair ^' Alii futant Opim et Hecaergon
of Hyperborean maidens, Arge and nutritores Apollinis et JDianae fuisse ;
Opis by name, who came with Apollo hinc itaque Opim ipsam Dianam
and Artemis to Delos, and were buried cognominatam, quod supra dictum tit,
behind the sanctuary of Artemis in Apollinem vero Hecaergon. "
the island. They are clearly the ^ Herodotus, iv. 34 sq. According
equivalents of the Hekaerge and Opis to Herodotus, each grive contained
or Upis of the other writers. For the dust of a pair of Hyperborean
Hekaerge as an epithet of Artemis damsels.
see Servius, loc. cit. ; Clement of ^ Porphyry, Vita Pythagorae. 16.
I ARTEMIS AND HIPPOL YTUS 35
by leaving Apollo to sleep undisturbed at Delphi, while his
grave at Deles was dexterously converted into the tomb
of a blessed virgin by the easy grammatical change of
Hekaergos into Hekaerge.
But how, it may be asked, does all this apply to Hip- Hippoiytus
polytus? Why attempt to fertilise the grave of a bachelor who ^""^
paid all his devotions t?s a barren virgin ? What seed could
take root and spring up in so stony a soil ? The question
implies the popular modern notion of Diana or Artemis as
the pattern of a straight-laced maiden lady with a taste for
hunting. No notion could well be further from the truth.
To the ancients, on the contrary, she was the ideal and Artemis a
embodiment of the wild life of nature — the life of olants ^°^^^^^ °'
ST t tllg Willi
of animals, and of men — in all its exuberant fertility and life of
profusion. As a recent German writer has admirably put °^""'®-
it : " From of old a great goddess of nature was everywhere
worshipped in Greece. She was revered on the mountain
heights as in the swampy lowlands, in the rustling woods
and by the murmuring spring. To the Greek her hand
was everywhere apparent. He saw her gracious blessing
in the sprouting meadow, in the ripening corn, in the
healthful vigour of all living things on earth, whether the
wild creatures of the wood and the fell, or the cattle which
man has tamed to his service, or man's own offspring from
the cradle upward. Her destroying anger he perceived in
the blight of vegetation, in the inroads of wild beasts on
his fields and orchards, as well as*in the last mysterious
end of life, in death. No empty personification, like the
earth conceived as a goddess, was this deity, for such
abstractions are foreign to every primitive religion ; she
was an all-embracing power of nature, everywhere the
object of a similar faith, however her names differed with the
place in which she was believed to abide, with the emphasis
laid on her gloomy or kindly aspect, or with the particular
side of her energy which was specially revered. And as
the Greek divided everything in animated nature into male
and female, he could not imagine this female power of
nature without her male counterpart. Hence in a number Artemis
of her older worships we find Artemis associated with a °°' j^^^,
nature-god of similar character, to whom tradition assigned regarded as
a virgin.
36
THE KING OF THE WOOD
different names in different places. In Laconia, for
instance, she was mated with the old Peloponnesian god
Karneios, in Arcadia more than once with Poseidon, else-
where with Zeus, Apollo, Dionysus, and so on."^ The
truth is, that the word parthenos applied to Artemis, which
we commonly translate virgin, means no more than an
unmarried woman,^ and in early days the two things were
by no means the same. With the growth of a purer
morality among men a stricter code of ethics is imposed
by them upon their gods ; the stories of the cruelty, deceit,
and lust of these divine beings are glossed lightly over or
flatly rejected as blasphemies, and the old ruffians are set
to guard the laws which before they broke. In regard to
Artemis, even the ambiguous parthenos seems to have been
merely a popular epithet, not an official title. As Dr.
Farnell has well pointed out, there was no public worship
of Artemis the chaste ; so far as her sacred titles bear on
the relation of the sexes, they shew that, on the contrary,
she was, like Diana in Italy, specially concerned with the
that the term Parthenos in connection
with the Anatolian system should be
rendered simply as ' the Unmarried,'
and should be regarded as evidence
of the religious existence of the pre-
Greek social system. The Parthenos
goddess was also the Mother; and
however much the Parthenoi who
formed part of her official retinue
may have been modified by Greek
feeling, it is probable that originally
the term indicated only that they
were not cut off by marriage from
the divine life" {Cities and Bishoprics
of Phrygia, i. p. 96). Similarly in a
celebrated passage of Isaiah (vii. 14)
the Hebrew word (nn^jy) which is
translated "virgin" in our English
version means no more than " young
woman." A correct translation would
have obviated the necessity for the
miracle which so many generations
of devout but unlearned readers have
discovered in the text ; for while it
would unquestionably be a miracle if
a virgin were to conceive and bear
a son, there is nothing whatever
miraculous or even unusual about a
young woman doing so.
1 Wernicke, in Pauly - Wissowa's
Real-Efuyclopddie der class. Altertums-
wissenschafi, ii. 1339. This general
statement the writer supports with a
wealth of detailed evidence, to which
I can only refer the reader.
^ This appears from the name
Partheniai applied at Sparta to the
men who were born of the parthenoi
(unmarried women) during the absence
of the married men at the Messenian
war. See Ephorus, cited by Strabo,
■"• 3- 3> P- 279. Whether this
explanation was historically correct
or not (and other explanations of it
were given, see W. L. Newman on
Aristotle, Politics, vii. (v.) 7, p. 1306
b 29), it proves that in Greek of the
best period parthenos did not connote
chastity. Compare what Herodotus
says of the Thracians (v. 6) : rds Si
irapO^ovs oO ipv\oL(r(rov(n, dXV ^uj(7t
Tota-i aiiral ^o6\ovraL dpdpd<7i idffyeaQai.
As to the worship of unmarried god-
desses in Western Asia, Sir W. M.
Ramsay observes : " It is, in fact,
probable, though with our present
knowledge not susceptible of proof.
I ARTEMIS AND HIPPOLYTUS 37
loss of virginity and with child-bearing, and that she not Artemis a
only assisted but encouraged women to be fruitful and fhitdwAh'
multiply ; indeed, if we may take Euripides's word for it,
ir ner capacity of midwife she would not even speak to
childless women. Further, it is highly significant that
while her titles and the allusions to her functions mark
her out clearly as the patroness of childbirth, we find none
that recognise her distinctly as a deity of marriage.^
Nothing, however, sets the true character of Artemis as
a goddess of fecundity, though not of wedlock, in a clearer
light than her constant identification with the unmarried,
but not chaste, Asiatic goddesses of love and fertility, who
were worshipped with rites of notorious profligacy at their
popular sanctuaries.^ At Ephesus, the most celebrated of The
all the seats of her worship,^ her universal motherhood was Artemis"
set forth unmistakably in her sacred image. Copies of it
have come down to us which agree in their main features,
though they differ from each other in some details. They
represent the goddess with a multitude of protruding
breasts ; the heads of animals of many kinds, both wild
and tame, spring from the front of her body in a series of
bands that extend from the breasts to the feet ; bees, roses,
' L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the been the old Babylonian goddess Nana,
Greek States, ii. 444. The whole of Nanai, or Nannaia, who was identical
Dr. Farnell's treatment of this subject with the Isht&r (Astarte) of Erech.
is excellent (pp. 442-449). He sug- See H. Zimmern, in Schrader's Die
gests doubtfully that the epithets Peitho, Keilinschriftenund das Alte Testament,^
Hegemone, and Eukleia may possibly p. 422 ; R. F. Harper, Assyrian and
refer to marriage. But clearly "per- Babylonian Literature (New York,
suasion," " leader," and " good fame " 1901), pp. 116 sq., 245; W. H.
do not in themselves imply any allusion Roscher's Ixxikon dergriech. und rom.
to wedlock. The passage of Euripides Mythologie, iii. 4 sq. s.v. "Nana."
referred to in the text is Supplices, For the identification of Artemis with
958 sq. : oiS" ApTf/us Xo%(a wpoaifiBiy- another Semitic mother - goddess, see
JaiT h.v ras wriKvovs. W. Robertson Smith, Kinship and
' Thus she was identified with Marriage in Early Arabia''' (London,
Anaitis (Plutarch, Artoxerxes, 27 ; 1903), p. 298. As to the dissolute
Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscr. Graec.^ worship of Anaitis, see Strabo, xi. 14,
No. 775). and with Nana (Corpus 16, p. 532. And as to the identifica-
Inscriptionum Atticarum, iii. 131), tion of Artemis with Asiatic goddesses
or Nanaea, the goddess of Elymais of this type see L. R. Farnell, Cults
(2 Maccabees, i. 13 and 15, compared of the Greek States, ii. 478 sqq. ;
with Polybius, xxxi. 11, and Josephus, Wernicke, in Pauly-Wissowa, Encycl.
Antiquit. Jud. xii. 9). This Nanaea d. class. Alter, ii. 1369 sqq.
was sometimes identified with Aphrodite * Pausanias, i v. 31. 8 ; Dittenberger,
instead of with Artemis (Appian, Sylloge Inscript. Graecarum,^ No.
Syriace, 66). She seems to have 656.
38 THE KING OF THE WOOD chap.
and sometimes butterflies, decorate her sides from the
hips downward. The animals that thus appear to issue
from her person vary in the different copies of the statue ;
they include lions, bulls, stags, horses, goats, and rams.
Moreover, lions rest on her upper arms ; in at least one
copy, serpents twine round her lower arms ; her bosom is
festooned with a wreath of blossoms, and she wears a
necklace of acorns. In one of the statues the breast of
her robe is decorated with two winged male figures, who
hold sheaves in both hands.^ It would be hard to devise
a more expressive symbol of exuberant fertility, of prolific
maternity, than these remarkable images. No doubt the
Ephesian Artemis, with her eunuch priests and virgin
priestesses,^ was an Oriental, whose worship the Greek
colonists took over from the aborigines.* But that they
should have adopted it and identified the goddess with
their own Artemis is proof enough that the Grecian
divinity, like her Asiatic sister, was at bottom a personifica-
tion of the teeming life of nature.
Hippoiytus To return now to Troezen, we shall probably be doing no
consort of injustice either to Hippoiytus or to Artemis if ji^e suppose
Artemis, that the relation between them was once of a tenderer nature
1 The statues on which this descrip- Conservatori (No. 47) has serpents
tion is based are in the Vatican, the twined round the arms. The many
Lateran, and the Palazzo dei Con- breasts of the Ephesian Artemis are
servatori on the Capitol at Rome. mentioned by Minucius Felix ( Octavius,
The first of these is figured and xxii. 5). On the worship of the
described in Baumeister's Denkmdler, Ephesian Artemis continued as that
L 130 sq., and the second is described of the Virgin Mary see Sir W. M.
by O. Benndorf and R. Schoene, Die Ramsay, "The Worship of the Virgin
antiken Bildwerke des Lateranischen Mary at Ephesus," The Expositor,
Museums, pp. 260 sq. See also Roscher's June 1905, pp. 401 sgq.
Le^k. d. griech und ^om.Jfyth. i. , ^ ^j^_ j_ g .^^^
588 .??. ; S. Remach, R^pertotre de ^ ^^^^^^ ^^ ^^ ^.^^^^^ ^^ ^^^^^
la Statuatre grecque et romazne, .. pp. ^^ ^^^^ rcCm^^^.^x^ may strike us as a
298 299, 300, 302, n. pp. 321 sq. ,^„t^.^d;<,ti„„. Yet it is typical of the
Both the Vatican and the Lateran ^.. „,„, ...„„,• „, ,., /.L* A,r„fV,»r
statues have the necklace of acorns,
Oriental worship of the great Mother
^uiiuca uav= ui= ucui^i^^,: ui "'^"'"=. Goddess. I have suggested an explana-
and the Lateran copy (No. 768) has ^.^^ ^^ ^^^ custom elsewhere. See
in addition a circlet of acorns hanging ^ ^ g^^^^^ g^j^i^^^
on the bosom. The acorns probably I
refer to the oak-tree under which the ""' ■^ ^"'
Amazons were said to have set up the ' Pausanias, vii. 2. 7 sq. ; Preller-
image of the goddess at Ephesus Robert, Griechische Mythologie, i. 329;
(Callimachus, Hytnn to Artemis, 237 L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek
sqq.). The statue in the Palazzo dei States, ii. 480 sqq..
J ARTEMIS AND HIPPOLYTUS 39
than appears in classical literature. We may conjecture that
if he spurned the love of women, it was because he enjoyed
the love of a goddess.-' On the principles of early religion,
she who fertilises nature must herself be fertile, and to be
that she must necessarily have a male consort. If I am
right, Hippolytus was the consort of Artemis at Troezen,
and the shorn tresses offered to him by the Troezenian
youths and maidens before marriage were designed to
strengthen his union with the goddess, and so to promote the
fruitfulness of the earth, of cattle, and of mankind. It is
some confirmation of this view that within the precinct of
Hippolytus at Troezen there were worshipped two female
powers named Damia and Auxesia, whose connexion with
the fertility of the ground is unquestionable. When
Epidaurus suffered from a dearth, the people-, in obedience
to an oracle, carved images of Damia and Auxesia out of
sacred olive wood, and no sooner had they done so and set
them up than the earth bore fruit again. Moreover, at
Troezen itself, and apparently within the precinct'of Hippo-
lytus, a curious festival of stone-throwing was held in honour
of these maidens, as the Troezenians called them ; and it is
easy to show that similar customs have been practised in
many lands for the express purpose of ensuring good crops.^
In the story of the tragic death of the youthful Hippolytus we
may discern an analogy with similar tales of other fair but
mortal youths who paid with their lives for the brief rapture
of the love of an immortal goddess. These hapless lovers
were probably not always mere myths, and the legends which
traced their spilt blood in the purple bloom of the violet, the
scarlet stain of the anemone, or the crimson flush of the
rose were no idle poetic emblems of youth and beauty fleet-
' Indeed the eloquent church father "goddesses of tilth and of the fruit-
Lactantius let the cat out of the bag ful field, agrarian deities who were
when he bluntly called Hippolytus the accordint;ly compared and identified
lover of Artemis {Divin. Instittit. with Deineler and Kora [Proserpine],
'■ 17)- but who were in truth only separate
personifi^^ations of the two sides of
* Herodotus, v. 82-87; Pausanias, Demeter's character." See further my
ii. 30. 4, ii. 32. 2 ; Schol. on Aristides, note on Pausanias, ii. 30. 4. We
vol. iii. pp. 598 sq., ed. Dindorf As shall return hereafter to the custom of
H. Stein (on Herodotus, v. 82) rightly stone-throwing as a charm to fertilise
observes, Damia and Auxesia were the fields.
40
THE KING OF THE WOOD
ing as the summer flowers. Such fables contain a deeper
philosophy of the relation of the life of man to the life of
nature — a sad philosophy which gave birth to a tragic
practice. What that philosophy and that practice were we
shall learn later on.
Virbius
the male
consort of
Diana.
S 3. Recapitulation
We can now perhaps understand why the ancients identi-
fied Hippolytus, the consort of Artemis, with Virbius, who,
according to Servius, stood to Diana as Adonis to Venus, or
Attis to the Mother of the Gods. For Diana, like Artemis, was
a goddess of fertility in general, and of childbirth in particular.'
As such she, like her Greek counterpart, needed a male
partner. That partner, if Servius is right, was Virbius. In
his character of the founder of the sacred grove and first
king of Nemi, Virbius is clearly the mythical predecessor or
archetype of the line of priests who served Diana under the
title of Kings of the Wood, and who came, like him* one
after the other, to a violent end.^ It is natural, therefore, to
conjecture that they stood to the goddess of the grove in the
same relation in which Virbius stood to her ; in short, that
the mortal King of the Wood had for his queen the wood-
land Diana herself.* If the sacred tree which he guarded
with his life was supposed, as seems probable, to be her
special embodiment, her priest may not only have worshipped
it as his goddess but embraced it as his wife. There is
at least nothing absurd in the supposition, since even in
the time of Pliny a noble Roman used thus to treat a beauti-
ful beech- tree in another sacred grove of Diana on the Alban
hills. He embraced it, he kissed it, he lay under its shadow,
he poured wine on its trunk. Apparently he took the tree
for the goddess.* The jcustom of physically marrying men
and women to trees is still practised in India and other
' See, for example, CatuUus's fine
poem on her (No. xxxiv.).
2 Thie was pointed out long ago by
P. Buttmann (Mythologus, ii. 151).
^ Seneca speaks of Diana as " re-
^na nemorum^^ or "Queen of the
Woods" (Hippolytus, 406), perhaps
with a reminiscence of the Jiex Nemo-
rensis, as Mr. A. B. Cook has sug-
gested {Classical Review, xvi. (1902)
p. 373, note 4).
* Pliny, Nal. Hist. xvi. 242, pointed
out to me by Mr. A. B. Cook, who
compares Herodotus, vii. 31.
I RECAPITVLATION 41
parts of the East/ Why should it not have obtained in
ancient LatiuTn ?
Reviewing the evidence as a whole, we may conclude Summary
that the worship of Diana in her sacred grove at Nemi was °^ ''**""^-
of great importance and immemorial antiquity ; that she was
revered as the goddess of 'woodlands and of wild creatures,
probably also of domestic cattle and of the fruits of the
earth ; that she was believed to bless men and women with
offspring and to aid mothers in childbed ; that her holy fire,
tended by chaste virgins, burned perpetually in a round
temple within the precinct ; that associated with her was a
water-nymph Egeria who discharged one of Diana's own func-
tions by succouring women in travail, and who was popularly
supposed to have mated with an old Roman king in the
sacred grove ; further, that Diana of the Wood herself had
a male companion Virbius by name, who was tether what
Adonis was to Venus, or Attis to Cybele ; and, lastly, that
this mythical Virbius was represented in historical times by
a line of priests known as Kings of the Wood, who regularly
perished by the swords of their successors, and whose lives
were in a manner bound up with a certain tree in the grove,
because so long as that tree was uninjured they were safe
from attack.
A curious monument of the ill-fated dynasty appears The
to have come down to us in a double-headed bust which headed
was found in the sanctuary at Nemi. It represents two bust at
men of heavy and somewhat coarse features and a grim probably
expression. The type of face is similar in both heads, but ^ portrait
there are marked differences between them ; for while the King^of
one is young and beardless with shut lips and a steadfast *'^ ^°°'^
1 1 • r -111,,- and his
gaze, the other is a man of middle life with a tossed and successor
matted beard, wrinkled brows, a wild anxious look in the
eyes, and an open grinning mouth. But perhaps the most
singular thing about the two heads are the leaves with
scalloped edges which are plastered, so to say, on the necks
of both busts and apparently also under the eyes of the
younger figure. The leaves have been interpreted as oak
leaves, and' this interpretation, which is not free from doubt,
is confirmed by the resemblance to an oak leaf which the
' See below, vol. ii. pp. 26 sq., 56 sg., 100 sq., 316 sqq.
42
7^HE KING OF THE WOOD
A mder
survey re-
qmred to
solve the
problem
of Xemi.
moustache of the older figure clearly presents when viewed
in profile. Various explanations of this remarkable monu-
ment have been proposed ; but the most probable theory
appears to be that the older figure represents the priest of
Nemi, the King of the Wood, in possession, while the other
face is that of his youthful adversary and possible successor.
This theory would explain the coarse heavy type of both
faces, which is neither Greek nor Roman but apparently
barbarian ; for as the priest of Nemi had always to be a
runaway slave, he would commonly be a member of an
alien and barbarous race. Further, it would explain the
striking contrast between the set determined gaze of the
younger man and the haggard, scared look of the older ; on
the one face we seem to read the resolution to kill, on thq^
other the fear to die. Lastly, it would explain very simply
the leaves that cling like cerements to the necks and breasts
of both ; for we shall see later on that the priest was prob-
ably regarded as an embodiment of the tree which he
guarded, and human representatives of tree spirits are most
naturally draped in the foliage of the tree which they
personate. Hence if the leaves on the two heads are indeed
oak leaves, as they have been thought to be, we should have
to conclude that the tree which the King of the Wood
guarded and personated was an oak. There are inde-
pendent reasons for holding that this was so, but the
consideration of them must be deferred for the present.-"
Clearly these conclusions do not of themselves suffice to
explain the peculiar rule of succession to the priesthood.
But perhaps the survey of a wider field may lead us to
' As to the double-headed bust see
W. Helbigv in Nothie degli Scavi,
1885, p. 227; O. Rossbach, oJ>. cit.
p. 159; G. H. Wallis, Illustrated
Catalogue of Classical Antiqtnties frovi
theSite of the Temple of Diana, Nemi,
pp. 32 sq. ; A. B. Cook, in Classical
Review, xvi. (1902) p. 373 ; id. "The
European Sky-God," Folk-lore, xvi.
(1905) pp. 289 sqq. ; F. Granger,
" A Portrait of the Rex Nemorensis,"
Classical Review, xxi. (1907) pp. 194-
197 ; id in Classical Review, xxii.
(1908) p. 217; J. G. Frazer, "The
Leafy Bust at Nemi," Classical Review,
xxii. (1908) pp. 147-149. The in-
tenpretation adopted in the text is that
of Professor F. Granger. The- way
had been prepared for it by Mr. A. B.
Cook's suggestion that the busts repre-
sent " the double form of Diana's
favourite, Hippolytus-Virbius." Pre-
vious writers took the view that the
heads were those of water-gods. As
to the identification of the leaves on
the busts, about which botanists are
not agreed, see Mr. Francis Darwin's
letter to me, quoted in my article,
"The Leafy Bust at Nemi" {I.e.).
I RECAPITULATION 43
think that they contain, in germ the solution of the problem.
To that wider survey we must now address ourselves. It
will be long and laborious, but may possess something of the
interest and charm of a voyage of discovery, in which we
shall visit many strange foreign lands, with strange foreign
peoples, and still stranger customs. The wind is in the
shrouds : we shake out our sails to it, and leave the coast
of Italy behind us for a time.
CHAPTER II
PRIESTLY KINGS
The two The questions which we have set ourselves to answi?r are
w te'°°^ mainly two : first, why had Diana's priest at Nemi, the King
answered, of the Wood, to slay his predecessor? second, why before
doing so had he to pluck the branch of a certain tree which
the public opinion of the ancients identified with Virgil's
Golden Bough ? The two questions are to some extent
distinct, and it will be convenient to consider them separately.
We begin with the first, which, with the preliminary enquiries,
will occupy this and several following volumes. In the last
part of the book I shall suggest an answer to the second
question.
The first point on which we fasten is the priest's title.
Why was he called the King of the Wood ? Why was his
office spoken of as a kingdom ?
The union of a royal title with priestly duties was
common in ancient Italy and Greece. At Rome and in
Italy and other cities of Latium there was a priest called the Sacrificial
. King or King of the Sacred Rites, and his wife bore the
title of Queen of the Sacred Rites.' In republican Atfe6ns
the second annual magistrate of the state was called the
King, and his wife the Queen ; the functions of both were
religious. For example, the king superintended the celebra-
tion of the Eleusinian mysteries, the Lenaean festival of
Dionysus, and the torch-races, which were held at several of
' J. Marquardt, Komische Staatsver- Inscriptionum Latinarum, xiv., Nos.
waltuiig, iii." 321 sqq. Kings of the 2089, 2413, 2634. At Rome the
Sacred Rites are known from inscrip- Sacrificial King held office for life
tions to have existed at Lanuvium, (Dionysius Halicarn. Antiquit. Rom.
Bovillae, and Tusculum. See Corpus Iv. 74. 4).
44
Priestly
kings in
ancient
s
-^HAP. II PRIESTL V KINGS 45
the great Athenian festivals. Moreover, he presided at the
curious trials of animals and inanr.aate objects, which had
caused the death of a human being. To him in short were
assigned, 'in the words of Plato, " the most solemn and most
truly ancestral rites of the ancient sacrifices." ^ Many other
Greek democracies had titular kings, whose duties, so far as
they are known, seem to have been priestly, and to have
centred round the Common Hearth of the state.^ For
example, in Cos the King sacrificed to Hestia, the goddess of
the hearth, the equivalent of the Italian V§sta ; and he
received the hide and one leg of the victim as his perquisite.
In Mytilene the kings, of whom there were several, invited to
banquets at the Common Hearth those guests whom the
state delighted to honour.* In Chios, if any herdsman or
shepherd drove his cows, his sheep, or his swine to pasture in
a sacred grove, the first person who witnessed the trans-
gression was bound to denounce the transgressor to the
kings, under pain of incurring the wrath of the god and,
what was perhaps even worse, of having to pay a fine to the
offended deity.* In the same island the king was charged
with the duty of pronouncing the public curses," a spiritual
weapon of which much use was made by the ancients.'
Every eighth year the King at Delphi took part in a quaint
' Plato, Politicus, p. 290 E; Aris- Graecarum? No. 570; Ch. Michel,
totle, Constitution of Athens, 57 ; Recueil, No. 707.
Lysias, Or. yi. 4; G. Gilbert, ffamt- « P. Cauer, Delectus Inscriptionum
buck der griechischen Staatsalter- Graecarum^ No. 496 ; Ch. Michel,
tkutiter,^ i. 281 sqq. Recueil, No. 1383.
* Aristotle, Politics, viii. (vi.) 8. 20, ' G. F. Schomahn, Handbuch der
p. 1322 b 26 sqq. ; G. Gilbert, op. cit. grtech. Alterlhiimer,'^ ii. 270 sqq. ; E.
ii. 323 sq.; G. F. Schomann, Grie- Ziebarth, " Der Fluch im griechischen
chische Alterthiimer,^ i. 145 sq., ii. Recht," Hermes, xxx. (1895) pp.
423 jy. 57-7°; Miss J. E. Harrison, /'ro/«^(;-
s Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscrip- 1^"^<^tothe Study of Greek Religion 2
Honnm Grcucarum,-^ No. 616; Ch. (Cambridge, 1908), pp. 138-145 5 and
m^e.,Recueil d'lnscriptions grecques, "^ "°J« °" Pausanias, iii. 2. 7. For
No. 716. example, the people of Teos cursed
." " r^ , . T • .■ poisoners and all persons who hindered
« P. Cauer, Z)<r&rf«. Inscrtpttonum f^e importation of corn (Cauer, op. cit.
Graecarum,^ No. 431, Imes 46^??. No. 480; Ch. Michel, op. «V No.
Another mscription m the same collec , 3 , g,, Qn the other hand, at W^thens
Uon (No 428) also refers to the kmgs ;„ the time of Solon public curses were
of Mytilene Both mscript.ons are ,e,elled at all who exported anything
printed in Ch. Michel s Recueil, Nos. tut olive oil (Plutarch, Solon, 24).
350. 357- These particulnr curses may interest
7
b
Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum students of the history of free trade.
46 PHIESTLY KINGS chap.
ceremony. He sat in public distributing barley-meal and
pulse to all who chose to apply for the bounty, whether
citizens or strangers. Then an image of a girl was brought
to him, and he slapped it with his shoe. After that the
president of the Thyiads, a college of women devoted to the
orgiastic worship of Bacchus, carried away the image to a
ravine and there buried it with a rope round its neck. The
ceremony was said to be an expiation for the death of a girl
who in a time of famine had been publicly buffeted by the
king and, smarting under the insult, had hanged herself.'
In some cities, such as Megara, Aegosthena, and Pagae, the
kingship was an annual office and the years were dated by
the kings' names.^ The people of Priene appointed a young
man king for the purpose of sacrificing a bull to^ Poseidon at
the Panionian festival.^ Some Greek states had several of
Traditional these titular kings, who held office simultaneously.* At
origin of
these
Rome the tradition was that the Sacrificial King had been
priestly appointed after the abolition of the monarchy in order to
kings. offer the sacrifices which before had been offered by the
kings. ** A similar view as to the origin of the priestly kings
appears to have prevailed in Greece.^ In itself the opinion
is not improbable, and it is borne out by the example of
Sparta, almost the only purely Greek state which retained
the kingly form of government in historical times. For in
Sparta all state sacrifices were offered by the kings as
descendants of the god.' One of the two Spartan kings held
1 Plutarch, Quaest. Graec. 12. Aug. E. S. Roberts, /nh-oduction to Greek
Mommsen(Z'«/^/i/;^a,pp. aSOji/.lisprob- Epigraphy, i. No. 292), in Cos (Ditten-
ably right in comparing this ceremony berger, op. cit. No. 616), in Chios {ib.
with the swinging -festival (Aiora) at No. 57°). ^t Mylilcne (Cauer, op. cit.
Athens, as to which see The Golden Nos, 428, 431), at Cyme (Plutarch,
Bough, Second Edition, ii. 453 sqg. Quaest. Graec. 2), and perhaps in
- Corpus Tnscriptiontim Graecarum Siphnos (Isocratcs, Or. xix. 36). The
GraeciasSeptentriona/is,\.'Hos.l,2,'i< Kings of Elis may have been the
10, II, 12, 13, 14, 188, 223; G. F. officials called Basilai who sacrificed
Schoniann, op. cit. i. 146; G. Gilbert, on the top of Mount Cronius at
op. cit. ii. 323 sq. Olympia at the spring equinox (Paus-
3 Slrabo, viii. 7. 2, p. 384. In anias, vi. 20. i).
this passage the word jSairiWa is omitted ^ Livy, ii.2. 1; Dionysius Halicarn.,
in some editions, but has the authority Antiquit. Rom. iv. 74. 4. "
of several MSS. (Strabo ed. C. Miillat, " Arislolle, Politics, iii. 14. 13,
p. 998), and is probably right. p. 1285 bl4 sqq. ; Demosthenes, Contra
* This was the case at Elis (H. Roehl, Neaer. § 74 sqij. p. 1370; Plutatch,
liiscriptiones Grcucae antiqztissiincu, Quaest. Rom. 63.
No, 112; P. Cauer, op, cit. No. 253; ' Xenophon, Repub. /.acediem. 15,
11 PRIESTLY KINGS 47
the priesthood of Zeus Lacedacmon, the other the priesthood
of Heavenly Zeus.^ Sometimes the descendants of the old
kings were allowed to retain this shadowy royalty after the
real power had departed from them. Thus at Ephesus the
descendants of the Ionian kings, who traced their pedigree
to Codrus of Athens, kept the title of king and certain
privileges, such as the right to occupy a scat of honoiJr at the
games, to wear a purple robe and carry a staff instead of a
sceptre, and to preside at the rites of Elcusinian Demcter.^
So at Cyrene, when the monarchy was abolished, the deposed
King Battus was assigned certain domains and allowed to
retain some priestly functions.^ Thus the classical evidence
points to the conclusion that in prehistoric ages, before the
rise of the republican form of government, the various tribes
or cities were ruled by kings, who discharged priestly duties
and probably enjoyed a sacred character as reputed descend-
ants of deities
This combination of priestly functions with royal Priestly
authority is familiar to every one. Asia Minor, for ex- ""^P '"
ample, was the seat of various great religious capitals peopled parts of
by thousands of sacred slaves, and ruled by pontiffs who ' ^ "'°'^''^
wielded at once temporal and spiritual authority, like the
popes of mediaeval Rome. Such priest-ridden cities were
Zela and Pessinus.* Teutonic kings, again, in the old
heathen days seem to have stood in the position, and to
have exercised the powers, of high priests.^ The Emperors
of China offer public sacrifices, the details of which are regu-
lated by the ritual books.* The King of Madagascar was
compare id. 13 ; Aristotle, Politics, iii. These Ephesian kings, who prob-
14. 3, p. 1285 a 3 sqq. Argos was ably held ollice for life, are not
governed, at least nominally, by a king to be confounded with the purely
as late as the time of the great Persian priestly functionaries called Essenes
war (Herodotus, vii. 149) ; and at or King Bees, whose tenure of
Orchomenus, in the secluded highlands office was annual. See below, vol. ii.
of Northern Arcadia, the kingly form of p. 135.
government persisted till towards the ^ Herodotus, iv. 162.
end of the fifth century B.C. (Plutarch, * Strabo, xii. 3. 37, J. 3 ; compare
ParalUla, 32). As to the kings of xi. 4. 7,' xii. 2. 3, 2. 6, 3. 34 sg., 3.
Thessaly in the sixth and fifth centuries 34, 8. 9, 8. 14. But see Encyclopaedia
B.C., see F. Hiller von Gaertringen in 'Sritannica, gth ed. art. " Priest," xix.
Aus der Anomia (Berlin, 1890), pp. 729.
'-'6. 6 j_ Grimm, Deutsche Rechtsalter-
^ Herodotus, vi. 56. thiimer, p. 243.
2 Strabo, xiv. i. 3, pp. 632 sq. ^ See the Li-Kt (I.egge's transla-
48 PRIESTLY KINGS chap.
high -priest of the realm. At the great festival of the new
year, when a bullock was sacrified for the good of the
kingdom, the king stood over the sacrifice to offe^, prayer
and thanksgiving, while his attendants slaughtered the
animali^ In the monarchical states which still maintain their
independence among the Gallas of Eastern Africa, the king
sacrifices on the mountain tops and regulates the immolation
of human victims ; ^ and the dim light of tradition reveals
a similar union of temporal and spiritual power, of royal and
priestly duties, in the kings of that delightful .region of
Central America whose ancient capital, now buried under
the rank growth of the tropical forest, is marked by the
stately and mysterious ruins of Palenque.* Among the
Matabeles the king is ' high-priest. Every year he offers
sacrifices at the great and the little dance, and also at the
festival of the new fruits, which ends the dances. On these
occasions he prays to the spirits of his forefathers and like-
wise to his own spirit ; for it is from these higher powers
that he expects every blessing.*
Divinity of This last example is instructive because it shews that
kings. ^j^g king is something more than a priest. He prays not
only to the spirits of his fathers but to his own spirit. He
is clearly raised above the standard of mere humanity ;
The there is something divine about him. Similarly we may
^^^ suppose that the Spartan kings were thought not only to
poMdtobebe descended from the great god Zeus but also to partake
by Castor °^ ^^'^ holy spirit. This is indeed indicated by a curious
and Pollux, Spartan belief which has been recorded by Herodotus. The
^ou^Tto old historian tells us that formerly both of the Spartan kings
manifest went forth with the army to battle, but that in later times
certain ^ rule was made that when one king marched out to fight
the other should stay at home. " And accordingly.'^ says
electric
lights.
tion), passim (Sacred Books of the t Amirique-Centrale., i. 94. As to the
East, vols, xxvii., xxviii.). rMns of Palenque, see H. H. Bancroft,
' W. Ellis, History of Madagascar Native Races of the Pacific States, iv.
(London, N.D.), i. 359 sq. 288 sqj. ; T. Maler, " M^moire sur
' Ph. Paulitschke, Ethiographie I'^tat de Chiapa (Mexique)," Revue
Nordost-Afrikas ; die geistige Cultur it Eihnographie, iii. (1885) pp. 327
der Danikil, Calla und Soindl (Berlin, sgg.
1896), p. 129. * I'^ather Crooncnberghs, "La Mis-
' Brasseur de Bourbourg, Histoire sion du Zambfei," Missions Catho-
des nations civilisies Ju Mexique et de liques, xiv. (1882) p. 453,
H PRIESTL Y KINGS 49
Herodotus, " one of the kings remaining at home, one of the
Tyndarids is left there too ; for hitherto both of them were
invoked and followed the kings." ^ The Tyndarids are, of
course, the heavenly twins Castor and Pollux, the sons of
Zeus ; and it should be remembered that the two Spartan
kings themselves were believed to be descended from twins ^
and hence may have been credited with the wondrous powers
which superstition often associates with twins.* The belief
described by Herodotus plainly implies that one of the
heavenly twins was supposed to b^e in constant attendance on
each of their human kinsmen the two Spartan kings, staying
with them where they stayed and going with them wherever
they went ; hence they were probably thought to aid the
kings with their advice in time of need. Now Castor and
Pollux are commonly represented as spearmen, and they
were constantly associated or identified, not only with stars,
but also with those lurid lights which, in an atmosphere
charged with electricity, are sometimes seen to play round
the masts of ships under a murky sky.* Moreover, similar
lights were observed by the ancients to glitter in the dark-
ness on the points of spears. Pliny tells us that he had
seen such lambent flames on the spears of Roman sentinels
' Herodotus, v. 75. itongo [ancestral spirits] loved to haunt.
2 Pausanias iii I e, '^'^'^ brought success in war. But the
' ■ • ->■ great chief Tshaka stopped this prac-
' J. Rendel Harris, The Dioscuri in tice, for he said that the wild twin did
the Christian Legends (London, 1903) ; foolhardy things and brought the army
id., The Cult of the Heavenly Twins into needless danger."
(Cambridge, 1906). See also below, •* I'liny, Nat. Hist. ii. loi ; Dio-
pp. 262 sqq. With the Spartan custom dorus Siculus, iv. 43 ; Seneca, Natur.
we may compare the use which the Quaest. i. i. 13 ; Lucian, Dial.
Zulus made of twins in war. See deoruni, xxvi. 2; O-i'vi, Fasti, v. 720;
Dudley Kidd, Savage Childhood, a Plutarch, De defect, oraculorum, 30 ;
Study of Kafir Children (London, Lactantius Flacidus, Comment, in Statii
1906), p. 47 sq. : " In war time a Thed. viii. 792 ; Th. Henri Martin,
twin used to be hunted out and made in A'evue Archlologique, N.S. xiii.
to go right in front of the attacking (1866) pp. 168-174; P. S^billot,
army, some few paces in front of the Ligendes, Croyanceset Superstitions de la
others. He was supposed to be fear- Afsr (Paris, 1886), ii. 87-109. Seafar-
less and wild. His twin, if a sister, ^ ing men in different parts of the world
and if surviving, was compelled to tie still see and draw omens from these
a cord very tightly round her loins weird lights on the masts. See Edward
during the fight, and had to starve FitzGerald, quoted in County Folk-lore,
herself; she was also expected to Suffolk (London, 1893), pp. 121 sq. ;
place the twin brother's sleeping-mat W. V\f. Skeat, Malay Magic (London,
in that part of the hut which the 1900), p. 279.
VOL. I E
50 PRIESTLY KINGS chap.
as they paced their rounds by night in front of the camp ; '
and it is said that Cossacks riding across the steppes on
stormy nights perceive flickerings of the same sort at their
lance-heads.^ Since, therefore, the divine brothers Castor
and Pollux were believed to attend the Spartan kings, it
seems not impossible that they may have been thought to
accompany the march of a Spartan army in a visible form,
appearing to the awe-stricken soldiers in the twilight or the
darkness either as stars in the sky or as the sheen of spears
on earth. Perhaps the stories of the appearance of the
heavenly twins in battle, charging on their milk-white steeds
at the head of the earthly chivalry, may have originated in
similar lights seen to glitter in the gloaming on a point
here and there in the long hedge of levelled or ported
spears ; for any two riders on white horses whose spear-
heads happened to be touched by the mystic light might
easily be taken for Castor and Pollux in person. If there
is any truth in this conjecture, we should conclude that the
divine brothers were never seen in broad day, but only at
dusk or in the darkness of night. Now their most famous
appearance was at the battle of Lake Regillus, as to which
we are expressly told that it was late in the evening of a
summer day before the fighting was over.^ Such statements
should not be lightly dismissed as late inventions of a
rhetorical historian. The memories of great battles lingef
long among the peasantry of the neighbourhood.
The But when we have said that the ancient kings were
Sr^'Tn"*^ commonly priests also, we are far from having exhausted
early the religious aspect of their office. In those days the
divinity that hedges a king was no empty form of speech,
but the expression of a sober belief. Kings were revered,
in many cases not merely as priests, that is, as intercessors
between man and god, but as themselves gods, able to
bestow upon their subjects and worshippers those blessings
which are commonly supposed to be beyond" the reach of
mortals, and are sought, if at all, only by prayer and sacrifice
1 Pliny, Nat. Hist. ii. loi. Com- ' Dionysius Halicarn. AntiquU,'
pare Seneca, ^a^«r. Quaest. i, I. 14. Roman, vi. 13; Cicero, Dc naturt
' Potocki, Voyages dans Us Steps deorum, ii. 2. 6.
J! Astrakhan et du Caucase, i. 143.
society.
II PRIESTLY KINGS 51
offered to superhuman and invisible beings. Thus kings
are often expected to give rain and sunshine in due season,
to make the crops grow, and so on. Strange as this ex-
pectation appears to us, it is quite of a piece with early
modes of thought. A savage hardly conceives the distinction
commonly drawn by more advanced peoples between the
natural and the supernatural. To him the world is to a
great extent worked by supernatural agents, that is, by
personal beings acting on impulses and motives like his own,
liable like him to be moved by appeals to their pity, their
hopes, and their fears. In a world so conceived he sees no
limit to his power of influencing the course of nature to his
own advantage. Prayers, promises, or threats may secure
him fine weather and an abundant crop from the gods ; and
if a god should happen, as he sometimes believes, to become
incarnate in his own person, then he need appeal to no
higher being ; he, the savage, possesses in himself all the
powers necessary to further his own well-being and that of
his fellow-men.
This is one way in which the idea of a man-god is Sympa
reached. But there is another. Along with the view of"'^"?
magic.
the world as pervaded by spiritual forces, savage man has
a different, and probably still older, conception in which we
may detect a germ of the modern notion of natural law or
the view of nature as a series of events occurrihg in an
invariable order without the intervention of personal agency.
The germ of which I speak is involved in that sympathetic
magic, as it may be called, which plays a large part in most
systems of superstition. In early society the king is fre-
quently a magician as well as a priest ; indeed he appears
to have often attained to power by virtue of his supposed
proficiency in the black or white art. Hence in order to
understand the evolution of^the kingship and the sacred
character with which the office has commonly been invested,
in the eyes of savage or barbarous peoples, it is essential to
have some acquaintance with the principles of magic and to
form some conception of the extraordinary hold which that
ancient system of superstition has had on the human mind
in all ages and all countries. Accordingly I propose to
consider the subject in some detail.
CHAPTER III
SYMPATHETIC MAGIC
§ I . The Principles of Magic
TTietwo If we analyse the principles of thought on which magic is
0?!™™- based, they will probably be found to resolve themselves into
thetic two : first, that like produces like, or that an effect resembles
the^wof its cause ; and, second, that things which have once been in
Similarity contact with cach other continue to act on each other at a
Law of distance after the physical contact has been severed. The
Contact or former principle may be called the Law of Similarity, the
latter the Law of Contact or Contagion. From the first of
these principles, namely the Law of Similarity, the magician
infers that he can produce any effect he desires merely by
imitating it : from the second he infers that whatever he
does to a material object will affect equally the person with
whom the object was once in contact, whether it formed part
of his body or not. Charms based on the Law of Similarity
may be called Homoeopathic or Imitative Magic.^ Charms
based on the Law of Contact or Contagion may be called
Contagious Magic. To denote the first of these branches of
magic the term Homoeopathic is perhaps preferable, for the
alternative term Imitative or Mimetic suggests, if it does not
imply, a conscious agent who imitates, thereby limiting the
scope of magic too narrowly. For the same principles
• The expression Homoeopathic 1897, p. 65), whom I believe to be
Magic was first used, so far as I am Mr. E. S. Hartland. The expression
aware, by Mr. Y. Hirn {Origins of Imitative Magic was used incidentally
Art (London, 1900), p. 282). Tlie by me in the first edition of The Golden
expression Mimetic Magic was sug- Bough (vol. ii. p. 268).
gested by a writer in Folk-lore (viii.
52
CHAP. Ill THE PRINCIPLES OF MAGIC 53
which the magician applies in the practice of his art are
implicitly believed by him to regulate the operations of
inanimate nature ; in other words, he tacitly assumes that
the Laws oi Similarity and Contact are of universal applica-
tion and are not limited to human actions. In short, magic
is a spurious system of natural law as .weU. as a fallacious
guide of conduct ; it is a false science as well as an abortive
art Regarded as a system of natural law, that is, as a state-
ment of the rules which determine the sequence of events
throughout the world, it may be called Theoretical Magic :
regarded as a set of precepts which human beings observe in
order to compass their ends, it may be called Practical Magic.
At the same time it is to be borne in mind that the primitive
magician knows magic only on its practical side ; he never
analyses the mental processes on which his practice is based,
never reflects on the abstract principles involved in his
actions. With him, as with the vast majority of men, logic
is implicit, not explicit : he reasons just as he digests his food
in complete ignorance of the intellectual and physiological
processes which are essential to the one operation and to the
other. In short, to him magic is always an art, never a
science ; the very idea of science is lacking in his undeveloped
mind. It is for the philosophic student to trace the train of
thought which underlies the magician's practice ; to draw
out the few simple threads of which the tangled skein is
composed ; to disengage the abstract principles from their
concrete applications ; in short, to discern the spurious science
behind the bastard art.
If my analysis of the magician's logic is correct, its two The two
great principles turn out to be mtrely two different mis-a™mfs^
applications of the association of ideas.^ Homoeopathic applications
magic is founded on the association of ideas by similarity : assodation
contagious magic is founded on the association of ideas by of ideas,
contiguity. Homoeopathic magic commits the mistake of
assuming that things which resemble each other are the
same : contagious magic commits the mistake of assum-
ing that things which have once been in contact with
^ That magic is based on a mis- (Primitive Cullure^^ i. 1 1 6), but he did
taken association of ideas was pointed not analyse the different kinds of
out long ago by Professor E. B. Tylor association.
54 SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap.
each other are always in contact. But in practice the two
branches are often combined ; or, to be niore exact, while
homoeopathic or imitative magic may be practised by itself, -
contagious magic will generally be found to involve an
application of the homoeopathic or imitative principle. Thus
generally stated the two things may be a little difficult to
grasp, but they will readily become intelligible when they
are illustrated by particular examples. Both trains of
thought are in fact extremely simple and elementary. It
could hardly be otherwise, since they are familiar in the
concrete, though certainly not in the abstract, to the crude
intelligence not only of the savage, but of ignorant and dull-
witted people everywhere. Both branches of magic, the
homoeopathic and the contagious, may conveniently be
comprehended under the general name of Sympathetic
Magic, since both assume that things act on each other at
a distance through a secret sympathy, the impulse being
transmitted from one to tiie other by means of what we may
conceive as a kind of invisible ether, not unlike that which is
postulated by modern science for a precisely similar purpose,
namely, to explain how things can physically affect each
other through a space which appears to be empty.
Table It may be convenient to tabulate as follows the branches
^^^^ of magic according to the laws of thought which underlie
ofSvmpa^ them : —
^*? Sympathetic Magic
{Law of Sympathy)
Homoeopathic Magic Contagious Magic >
{Law of Similarity) \Law of Contact)
I will now illustrate these two great branches of sympathetic
magic by examples, beginning with homoeopathic magic.
* It has been ingeniously suggested shadows, reflections, and so forth, but
by Mr. Y. Hirn that magic by simi- also as sounds and names. See Y.
larity may be reduced to a case of Hirn, Origins of Art (London, 19O0),
magic by contact ■ The connecting pp. 293 sqq. This hypothesis certainly
link, on his hypothesis, is the old furnishes a point of union for the two
doctrine of emanations, according to apparently distinct sides of sympathetic
which everjrthing is continually sending magic, but whether it is one that would
out in all directions copies of itself in occur to the savage mind may be
the shape of thin membranes, which doubted.
appear to the senses not only as
HI HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 55
8 2. Homoeopathic or Imitative Magic
Perhaps the most familiar application of the principle Magical
that like produces like is the attempt which has been made ^^^^ ^^^
by many peoples in many ckges to injure or destroy an American
enemy by injuring or destroying an image of him, in the " '*"''
belief that, just as the image suffers, so does the man, and
that when it perishes he must die. A few instances out of
many may be given to prove at once the wide diffusion
of the practice over the world and its remarkable persistence
through the ages. For thousands of years ago it was known
to the sorcerers of ancient India, Babylon, and Egypt, as well
as of Greece and Rome,^ and at this day it is still resorted to
by cunning and malignant savages in Australia, Africa, and
Scotland. Thus the North American Indians, we are told,
believe that by drawing the figure of a person in sand, ashes,
or clay, or by considering any object as his body, and then
pricking it with a sharp stick or doing it any other injury,
they inflict a corresponding injury on the person repre-
sented.^ For example, when an Ojebway Indian desires
to work evil on any one, he makes a little wooden image
of his enemy and runs a needle into its head or heart,
or he shoots an arrow into it, believing that wherever the
needle pierces or the arrow strikes the image, his foe will
the same instant be seized with a sharp pain in the corre-
sponding part of his body ; but if he intends to kill the
person outright, he burns or buries the puppet, uttering
certain magic words as he does so.' So when a Cora Indian
• For the Greek and Roman piac-^ ing, Narrative of an Expedition to
tice, see Theocritus, Id. ii. ; Virgil, the Source of St. Peter's River (Lon-
Ecl. viii. 75-82; Ovid, Heroides, vi. don, 1825), ii. 159; J. G. Kohl,
91 sq. ; id. Amores, iii. 7. 29 sq. ; /Citschi- Garni, ii. 80. Similar prac-
R. WUnsch, '■ Eine antike Rache- tices are reported among the Illinois,
puppe," Philologus, Ixi. (1902) pp. the Mandans, and the Hidatsas of
26-31. North America (Charlevoix, Histoire
,-,,_, ,, de la Nouvelle France, vi. 88; Maxi-
' Henry's 7V<B'<rA among the ^j,;,^ p^,^^ ^^ ^i^^ ^^^.^^ .„ ^^^
North»^ and Western Induins quoted ^^^^^^.^ Nord- America, ii. 1 88 ; Wash-
by the Rev. Jededmh Morse .V./^r//^ .^ Matthews, Ethno^aphy and
tlu Secretary of ^^<>^ of he Untied p\ ^^ ^^^ ^.^^^^^ ^„^.
States on Indian Affairs (Newhaven, J^ ^(^^ ^^^^^ ^f B^,,^^ ^„j
1822 Appendix p. 102. I have not =^^^ ^_ ^^^^ ,. 0„ the Aymara
seen Henry s book. j^^^i^^^ ^f g^,i^i^ ^„j Vtxyx," Journal
' Peter Jones, History of the Ojeb- of the Ethnological Society of London
way Indians, p. 146; W. H. Keat- ii. {1S70) p. 236).
56 SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap.
of Mexico wishes to kill a man, he makes a figure of him
out of burnt clay, strips of cloth, and so forth, and then,
muttering incantations, runs thorns through the head or
stomach of the figure to make his victim suffer corre-
spondingly. Sometimes the Cora Indian makes a more
beneficent use of this sort of homoeopathic magic. When
he wishes to multiply his flocks or herds, he models a figure
of the animal he wants in wax or clay, or carves it from tuff,
and deposits it in a cave of the mountains ; for these
Indians believe that the mountains are masters of all riches,
including cattle and sheep. For every cow, deer, dog, or
hen he wants, the Indian has to sacrifice a corresponding
image of the creature.^ This may help us to understand
the meaning of the figures of cattle, deer, horses, and pigs
which were dedicated to Diana at Nemi.^ They may have
been the offerings of farmers or huntsmen who hoped thereby
to multiply the cattle or the game. Similarly when the
Todas of Southern India desire to obtain more buffaloes,
they offer silver images of these animals in the temples.'
The Peruvian Indians moulded images of fat mixed with
grain to imitate the persons whom they disliked or feared,
and then burned the effigy on the road where the intended
victim was to pass. This they called burning his soul.
But they drew a delicate distinction between the kinds
of materials to be used in the manufacture of these images,
according as the victim was an Indian or a Viracocha, that is,
a Spaniard. To kill an Indian they employed maize and
the fat of a llama, to kill a Spaniard they used wheat and
the fat of a pig, because Viracochas did not eat llamas and
preferred wheat to maize.*
1 C. Lumholtz, Unknown Mexico horses, elc. — are offered at the temple
(London, 1903), i. 485 sq. when tlicy recover from sickness, or
' Above, p. 7. are recciveri-d after they have been
s W. H. R. Rivers, The Todas stolen" (E. Thurston, Castes and
(London, 1906), p. 458. Among the Tribes 0/ Southern India, iv. 192; Kit,
Kusavans or potters of Southern India Ethnogjaphic Notes in Southern Mia,
"if a male or female recovers from p. 349). The analogy of these offer-
cholera, small-pox, or other severe ings to ihe various votive figures foand
illness, a figure of the corresponding in the .s:inctuary of Diana at Nemi il
sex is offered. A childless woman obvious.
makes a vow to offer up the figure of * P. j. de Arriaga, Extirfacion dt
a baby, if she brings forth offspring. la Tdola/iiadel PiruCLima, 1621), pp-
Figures of animals — cattle, sheep, 25 iy. The meaning and origin of th«
HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC
57
A Malay charm of the same sort is as follows. Take Magical
parings of nails, hair, eyebrows, spittle, and so forth of your ^0^*^2,1,^
intended victim, enough to represent every part of his Malays.
person, and then make them up into his likeness with wax
from a deserted bees' comb. Scorch the figure slowly by
holding it over a lamp every night for seven nights, and say :
" // is not wax that I am scorching,
It is the liver, heart, and spleen of So-and-so that I scorch."
After the seventh time burn the figure, and your victim
will die. This charm obviously combines the principles of
homoeopathic and contagious magic ; since the image which
is made in the likeness of an enemy contains things which
once were in contact with him, namely, his nails, hair, and
spittle. Another form of the Malay charm, which resembles
the Ojebway practice still more closely, is to make a corpse
of wax from an empty bees' comb and of the length of a
footstep ; then pierce the eye of the image, and your enemy
name Viracocha, as applied by the
Peruvians to the Spaniards, is explained
with great frankness by the Italian
historian G. Benzoni, who had him-
self travelled in America at the
time of the conquest. He says (His-
tory of the New World, pp. 252 sq.,
Hakluyt Society) : "When the Indians
saw the very great cruelties which the
Spaniards committed everywhere on
entering Peru, not only would they
never believe us to be Christians and
children of God, as boasted, but not
even that we were bom on this earth,
or generated by a man and born of a
woman ; so fierce an animal they
concluded must be the offspring of the
sea, and therefore called us Viracocchie,
for in their language they call the sea
cocchie and the froth vira ; thus they
think that we are a congelation of the
sea, and have been nourished by the
froth ; and that we are come to destroy
the world, with other things in which
the Omnipotence of God would not
suffice to undeceive them. They say
that the winds ruin houses and break
down trees, and the fire burns them ;
bat the Viracocchie devour everything,
they consume the very earth, they
force the rivers, they are never quiet,
they never rest, they are always rush-
ing about, sometimes in one direction
and sometimes in the other, seeking
for gold and silver ; yet never con-
tented, they game it away, they make
war, they kill each other, they rob,
they swear, they are renegades, they
never speak tlie trul^, and they deprive
us of our support. Finally, the
Indians curse the sea for having cast
such very wicked and harsh beings on
the land. Going about through various
parts of this kingdom I often met some
natives, and for the amusement of
hearing what they would say, I used
to ask them where such and such a
Christian was, when not only would
they refuse to answer me, but would
not even look me in the face : though
if I asked them where such and such
a Viracocchie was, they would reply
directly. " An explanation of the name
much more flattering to Spanish vanity
is given by Garcilasso de la Vega,
himself half a Spaniard (Royal Com-
mentaries of the Yncas, vol. ii. pp.
65 sqq., Hakluyt Society, Markham's
translation).
58 SYMPATHETIC MAGIC cbap.
.Magical is blind ; pierce the stomach, and he is sick ; pierce the
™^^ .. head, and his head aches ; pierce the breast, and his breast
among the ' ' ^ '
Malays. will suffer. If you would kill him outright, transfix the
image from the head downwards ; enshroud it as you would
a corpse ; pray over it as if you were praying over the
dead ; then bury it in the middle of a path where your
victim will be sure to step over it. In order that his blood
may not be on your head, you should say :
" It is not I who am burying Mm,
It is Gabriel who is burying him."
Thus the guilt of the murder will be laid on the shoulders of
the archangel Gabriel, who is a great deal better able to bear
it than you are.^ In eastern Java an enemy may be killed
by means of a likeness of him drawn on a piece of paper,
which is then incensed or buried in the ground.^ Among
the Minangkabauers of Sumatra a man who is tormented
by the passion of hate or of unrequited love will call in
the help of a wizard in order to cause the object of his hate
or love to suffer from a dangerous ulcer known as a tinggam.
After giving the wizard the necessary instructions as to the
name, bodily form, dwelling, and family of the person
in question, he makes a puppet which is supposed to
resemble his intended victim ; and repairs with it to a
wood, where he hangs the image on a tree that stands quite
by itself. Muttering a spell, he then drives an instrument
through the navel of the puppet into the tree, till the sap of
the tree oozes through the hole thus made. The instrument
which inflicts the wound bears the same name {tinggam) as
the ulcer which is to be raised on the body of the victim,
and the oozing sap is believed to. be his or her life-spirit.
Soon afterwards the person against whom the charm is
directed begins to suffer from an ulcer, which grows worse
and worse till he dies, unless a friend can procure a piece of
the wood of the tree to which the image is attached.'
1 W. W. Skeat, Afalay Magic (Lon- (1886) pp. 117 sg.
don, 1900), pp. 570-572. ' J. L. van der Toorn, " Het ani-
' J. Kreemer, " Regenmaken, Oed- misme bij den Minangkabauer der
joeng, Tooverij onder de Javapen," Padangsche Bovenlanden," Bijdragen
Mededulingen van wegs het Neder- tot de Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde van
tamisc/u Zendelinggeiu>otschap, xxx. /Wri/«//a«rfxir/4 /«a?»>',xxxix.(l890) p.S^-
in HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 59
The sorcerers of Mabuiag or Jervis Island, in Torres Magical
Straits, kept an assortment of effigies in stock ready to be ™^o^gs
operated on at the requirement of a customer. Some of straits and
the figures were of stone ; these were employed when °™®°-
short work was to be made of a man or woman. Others
were wooden ; these gave the unhappy victim a little more
rope, only, however, to terminate his prolonged sufferings by
a painful death. The mode of operation in the latter case
was to put poison, by means of a magical implement, into a
wooden image, to which the name of the intended victim
had been given. Next day the person aimed at would feel
chilly, then waste away and die, unless the same wizard who
had wrought the charm would consent to undo it.^ If the
sorcerer pulled off an arm or leg of the image, the human
victim felt pain in the corresponding limb of his body ; but
if the sorcerer restored the severed arm or leg to the figure,
the man recovered. Another mode of compassing a man's
death in Torres Straits was to prick a wax effigy of him or
her with the spine of a sting-ray ; so when the man whose
name had been given to the waxen image next went afishing
on the reef a sting-ray would sting him in the exact part of
his body where the waxen image had been pierced. Or
the sorcerer might hang the effigy on the bough of a tree,
and as it swayed to and fro in the wind the person repre-
sented by it would fall sick. However, he would get well
again if a friend of his could induce the magician to steady
the figure by sticking it firmly in the sandy bottom of the
sea.* When the Lerons of Borneo wish to be revenged on
an enemy, they make a wooden image of him and leave it
in the jungle. As it decays, he dies.' More elaborate is
the proceeding adopted by the Kenyahs of Borneo in similar
circumstances. The operator retires with the image to a
quiet spot on the river bank, and when a hawk appears in a
certain part of the sky, he kills a fowl, smears its blood on
the image, and puts a bit of fat in the mouth of the figure,
saying, " Put fat in his mouth." By that he means, " May
' A. C. Haddon, "The Ethnography pological Expedition to Torres Straits,
ofthe Western Tribe of Torres Straits," v. (Cambridge, 1 904) pp. 324/^.
foumalof the Anthropological Institute, ' W. II. Furness, The Home-life of
six. (1890) pp. 399 J?. Borneo J fead - hunters (Philadelphia,
' Reports of the Cambridge Anthro- 1902), pp. 93.
6o SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap.
his head be cut off, hung up in an enemy's house, and fed
with fat in the usual way." Then he strikes at the breast
of the image with a small wooden spear, throws it into a
pool of water reddened with red earth, and afterwards takes
it out and buries it in the ground.^
Magical If an Aino of Japan desires to compass the destruction
mages m q|- ^^ enemy, he will make a likeness of him out of mug-
Japan ana ^ °
China. wort Or the guelder-rose and bury it in a hole upside down
or under the trunk of a rotten tree, with a prayer to a demon
to carry off the man's soul or to make his body rot away
with the tree. Sometimes an Aino woman will attempt to
get rid of her husband in this fashion by wrapping up his
head-dress in the shape of a corpse and burying it deep in
the ground, while she breathes a prayer that her husband
may rot and die with the head-dress.^ The Japanese
thenfselves are familiar with similar modes of enchant-
ment. In one of their ancient books we read of a
rebellious minister who made figures of the heir to the
throne with intent, no doubt, to do him grievous bodily
harm thereby ; and sometimes a woman who has been
deserted by her lover will make a straw efiSgy of the faithless
ga'lant and nail it to a sacred tree, adjuring the 'gods to
spare the tree and to visit the sacrilege on the traitor. At a
shrine of Kompira there stood a pine-tree studded with nails
which had been thus driven in for the ' purpose of doing
people to death.^ The Chinese also are perfectly aware that
you can harm a man by maltreating or cursing an image of
him, especially if you have taken care to write on it his name
and horoscope. This mode of venting spite on an enemy is
said to be commonly practised in China. In Amoy such
images, roughly made of bamboo splinters and paper, are
called " substitutes of persons " and may be bought very
cheap for a cash or so apiece at any shop which sells paper
articles for the use of the dead or the gods ; for the frugal
Chinese are in the habit of palming off paper imitations of
all kinds of valuables on the simple-minded ghosts and gods,
who take them in all good faith for the genuine articles. As
' C. Hose and W. McDougali, in Folklore (London, 1901), pp. 329-
Jmrtial of the A nthropological Institute, 331.
xx3d. (1901) p. 178. 2 W. G. Aston, Shinto {the Way of
* J. Batchelor, The Ainu and their the Gods) (London, 1905), pp. 331 sq.
Ill HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 6i
•isual, the victim suffers a hurt corresponding to the hurt
' done to his image. Thus if you run a nail or a needle into
the,-. yes of the puppet, your man will go more or less blind ;
ii you stick a pin in its stomach, he will be doubled up with
colic ; a stab in the heart of the effigy may kill him outright ;
and in general the more you prick it and the louder you speak
the spell, the more certain is the effect. To make assurance
doubly sure it is d,, .ira'.ie to impregnate the effigy, so to say,
with the personal influence of the man by passing it clandes-
tinely beforehand over him or hiding it, unbeknown to him,
in his clothes or under his bed. If you do that, he is quite
sure to die sooner or later.^ Naturally these nefarious
practices are no new thing in the Chinese empire. There is
a passage in the Chinese Book of Rewards and Penalties
which illustrates their prevalence in days gone by. There,
under the rubric " To hide an e^^gy of a man for the pur-
pose of giving him the nightmare," we read as follows :
"This means hiding the carved wooden effigy of a man
somewhere with intent to give him the nightmare. Kong-
sun-tcho having died suddenly some tinie after he had suc-
ceeded to the post of treasurer, he appeared in a dream to
the governor of his district and said unto him : ' I have been
the victim of an odious crime, and I am come, my lord, to
pray you to avenge me. My time to die had not yet come ;
but my servants gave me the nightmare, and I was choked
in my sleep. If you will send secretly some dauntless soldiers,
not one of the varlets will escape you. Under the seventh
tile of the roof of my house will be found my image carved
of wood. Fetch it and punish the criminals.' Next day
the governor of the district had all the servants arrested, and
sure enough, after some search, they found under the afore-
said tile the figure of a man in wood, a foot high, and
bristling all over with nails. Bit by bit the wood changed
into flesh and uttered inarticulate cries when it was struck.
The governor of the district immediately reported to the
prefect of the department, who condemned several of the
servants to suffer the extreme rigour of the law." ^
' J. J. M. de Groot, The Religious ^ Le Livre des Recompenses et des
System of China, v. (Leyden, 1907) Peines,traduitduChinois,'p3.x?>\.axi\i\siS
pp. 920 sg. Juiien (Paris, 1835), p. 345.
62 SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap.
Magical When some of the aborigines of Victoria desired to
a'^'S^i! destroy an enemy, they would occasionally retire to a
lonely spot, and drawing on the ground a rude likeness of
the victim would sit round it and devote him to destruc-
tion with cabalistic ceremonies. So dreaded was this
incantation that men and women, who learned that it had
been directed against them, have been known to pine away
and die of fright.^ On the Bloomfield River in Queensland
the natives think they can doom a man by making a rough
wooden effigy of him and burying it in the ground, or by
painting his likeness on a bull-roarer ; and they believe that
persons whose portraits are carved on a tree at Cape Bedford
will waste away.* When the wife of a Central Australian
native has eloped from him and he cannot recover her, the
disconsolate husband repairs with some sympathising friends
to a secluded spot, where a man skilled in magic draws on
the ground a rough figure supposed to represent the woman
lying on her back. Beside the figure is laid a piece of
green bark, which stands for her spirit or soul, and at it the
men throw miniature spears which have been made for the
purpose and charmed by singing over them. This barken
effigy of the woman's spirit, with the little spears sticking in
it, is then thrown as far as possible in the direction which
she is supposed to have taken. During the whole of the
operation the men chant in a low voice, the burden of their
song being an invitation to the magic influence to go out
and enter her body and dry up all her fat. Sooner or later
— often a good deal later — her fat does dry up, she dies,
and her spirit is seen in the sky in the form of a shooting
star.^
Magical In Burma a rejected lover sometimes resorts to a sorcerer
miages m ^^^ engages him to make a small image of the scornful fair
Burma, t» £> o i . i • i.
and Africa, one, containing a piece of her clothes, or of something which
she has been in the habit of wearing. Certain charms or
medicines also enter into the composition of the doll, which
is then hung up or thrown into the water. As a conse-
• E. M. Curr, The Australian Race, 1903), p. 31.
iii. S47. ' Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen,
s W. E. Roth, North Queensland The Native Trides 0/ Central Australia
Ethnography :BulIetin'^o.t,{&n5haae, (London, 1899), pp. 549^?-
HI HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 63
quence the girl is supposed to go mad.^ In this last
example, as in the first of the Malay charms noticed above,
homoeopathic or imitative magic is blent with contagious
magic in the strict sense of the word, since the likeness of the
victim contains something which has been in contact with
her person. A Matabele who wishes to avenge himself on
an enemy makes a clay figure of him and pierces it with a
needle ; next time the man thus represented happens to
engage in a fight he will be speared, just as his effigy was
stabbed.* The Ovambo of South-western Africa believe
that some people have the power of bewitching an absent
person by gazing into a vessel full of water till his image
appears to them in the water ; then they spit at the image
and curse the man, and that seals his fate.^
The ancient books of the Hindoos testify to the use of Magical
similar enchantments amone; their remote ancestors. To '""^s^ '■=
ancient
destroy his foe a man would fashion a figure of him in clay India.
and transfix it with an arrow which had been barbed with a
thorn and winged with an owl's feathers. Or he would mould
the figure of wax and melt it in a fire. Sometimes effigies
of the soldiers, horses, elephants, and chariots of a hostile
army were modelled in dough, and then pulled in pieces.*
Again, to destroy an enemy the magician might kill a red-
headed lizard with the words, " I am killing So-and-so,"
smear it with blood, wrap it in a black cloth, and having
pronounced an incantation burn it.' Another way was to
grind up mustard into meal, with which a figure was made of
the person who was to be overcome or destroyed. Then
having muttered certain spells to give efficacy to the rite,
the enchanter chopped up the image, anointed it with melted
butter, curds, or some such thing, and finally burnt it in
a sacred pot' In the so-called "sanguinary chapter" of
the Calica Puran there occurs the following passage : " On
• C. J. F. S. Forbes, .finVrVA ^Kfwa (Amsterdam, 1900), pp. 121, 166,
(London, 1878), p. 232. 173, 184. Compare H. Oldenberg,
' L. Decle, Three Years in Savage Die Eeligion des Veda (Berlin, 1894),
Africa (London, 189S), p. 153. p. 508.
' H. Schinz, Deutsck-SUdwest-Afri- <* W. Caland, op, cit. p. 164.
*a, p. 314. * H. W. Magoiin, "The Asuri-
* A. Hillebrandt, Vedische Opfer Kalpa ; a Witchcraft Practice of the
««<f Z(rKi«- (Strasburg, 1897), p. 177; Atharva-Veda," American Journal of
W. Caland, Aitindisches Zauberrittial Philology, x. (1889) pp. 165-197.
64
SYMPATHETIC MAGIC
Magical
images in
modem
India.
the autumnal Maha-Navanii, or when the month is in the
lunar mansion Scanda, or Bishdcd, let a figure be made,
either of bariey-meal or earth, representing the person with
whom the sacrificer is at variance, and the head of the figure
be struck off; after the usual texts have been used, the
following text is to be used in invoking an axe on the
occasion : ' Effuse, effuse blood ; be terrific, be terrific ; seize,
destroy, for the love of Ambica, the head of this enemy.' " ^
In modern India the practices described in these old
books are still carried on with mere variations of detail. The
magician compounds the fatal image of earth taken from
sixty-four filthy places, and mixed up with clippings of hair,
parings of nails, bits of leather, and so on. Upon the breast
of the image he writes the name of his enemy ; then he
pierces it through and through with an awl, or maims it in
various ways, hoping thus to maim or kill the object of his
vengeance.^ Among the Nambutiris of Malabar a figure
representing the enemy to be destroyed is drawn on a small
sheet of metal, gold by preference, on which some mystic
diagrams are also inscribed. The sorcerer then declares that
the bodily injury or death of the person shall take place at
a certain time. After that he wraps up the little sheet in
another sheet or leaf of metal (gold if i)ossible), and buries
it in a place where the victim is expected to pass. Some-
times instead of a small sheet of metal he buries a live frog
or lizard enclosed in a coco-nut shell, after sticking nails into
its eyes and stomach. At the same moment that the animal
dies the person expires also.' Among the Mohammedans
of Northern India the proceeding is as follows. A doll is
made of earth taken from a grave or from a place where
bodies are cremated, and some sentences of the Coran
are read backwards over twenty-one small wooden pegs.
These pegs the operator next strikes into various parts of
the body of the image, which is afterwards shrouded like a
corpse, carried to a graveyard, and buried in the name of
the enemy whom it is intended to injure. The man, it is
' Asiatick Researches, v. (Fomth
Edition, London, 1S07) p. 389.
^ J. A. Dubois, Morurs, institutions,
et cerlmonies des peitpks de P/fide(Vans,
1825), ii. 63.
2 Fr. Fawcett, in Madras Govern-
ment Musiiiin, Bulletin, iii. No. I
(Madras, 1900), p. 85.
in HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 65
believed, will die without fail after the ceremony.^ A
slightly different form of the charm is observed by the
Bam-Margi, a very degraded sect of Hindoos in the North-
West Provinces. To kill an enemy they make an image
of flour or earth, and stick razors into the breast, navel, and
throat, while pegs are thrust into the eyes, hands, and feet.
.A.S if this were not enough, they next construct an image
of Bhairava or Durga holding a three-pronged fork in her
hand ; this they place so close to the effigy of the person
to whom mischief is meant that the fork penetrates its
breast.^ To injure a person a Singhalese sorcerer will pro-
cure a lock of his intended victim's hair, a paring of his
nails, or a thread of his garment. Then he fashions an
image of him and thrusts nails made of five metals into the
joints. All these he buries where the unfortunate man is
likely to pass. No sooner has he done so than the victim falls
ill with swelling or stiffness of joints, or burning sensations
in the body, or disfigurements of the mouth, legs, and arms.'
Similar enchantments are wrought by the Moslem peoples Magical
of North Africa. Thus an Arabic treatise on magic directs '""s^' ,
. , . . . , , . =■ among the
tnat It you wish to deprive a man of the use of his limbs Arabs of
you should make a waxen image of him, and engrave his ^^"^
name and his mother's name on it with a knife of which
the handle must be made of the same wax ; then smite
the limb of the image which answers to the particular
limb of the man which you desire to disable ; at the same
moment the limb of flesh and blood will be paralysed.^
The following is another extract from the same treatise :
" To injure the eyes of an enemy, take a taper and fashion
it into the likeness of him whom you would harm. Write
on it the seven signs, along with the name of your enemy
and the name of his mother and gouge out the two eyes of
the figure with two points. Then put it in a pot with quick-
' W. Crooke, Popular Religion and more evidence of such practices in
Folklore of Northern India (West- India, see E. Thurston, Ethnographic
minster, 1896), ii. 278 sq. Notes in Southern India, pp. 328 sqq. ;
' Id., The Tribes and Castes of the id.. Castes and Tribes of Southern
North- Western Provinces and Oudh /Wz'o, iv. 489 jjt., vi. 124 ; W. Croolce,
(Calcutta, 1896), i. 137. Natives of Northern India, pp. 2\% sq.
^ A. A. Perera, " Glimpses of Sin- ■> E. Doutte, Magie et Religion dans
ghalese Social Life," Indian Anti- P Afrique du Nord {A\^eTS,, i<)o&), -p^.
qoary, xxxiii. (1904) p. 57. For 61 sq.
VOL I F
66 SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap.
lime on which you must throw a little cMrib el h'amdm,
and bury the whole near the fire. The fire will make
your victim to shriek and Will hurt his eyes so that he
will see nothing, and that the pain will cause him to utter
cries of distress. But do not prolong the operation more
than seven days, for he would die and you would have
to answer for it at the day of the last judgment. If
you wish to heal him, withdraw the figure and throw it
into water. He will recover, with God's leave."
Magical Nowhere, perhaps, were the magic arts more carefully
S^m"" cultivated, nowhere did they enjoy greater esteem or exer-
Egyp: and cise a deeper influence on the national life than in the land
^^^^°°- of the Pharaohs. Little wonder, therefore, that the practice
of enchantment by means of images was familiar to the
wizards of Egypt. A drop of a man's blood, some clippings
of his hair or parings of his nails, a rag of the garment
which he had worn, sufficed to give a sorcerer complete
power over him. These relics of his person the magician
kneaded into a lump of wax, which he moulded into the
likeness and dressed after the fashion of his intended victim,
who was then at the mercy of his tormentor. If the image
was exposed to the fire, the person whom it represented
straightway fell into a burning fever ; if it were stabbed with
a knife, he felt the pain of the wound.^ Thus, for instance,
a certain superintendent of the king's cattle was once
prosecuted in an Egyptian court of law for having made
figures of men and women in wax, thereby causing paralysis
of their limbs and other grievous bodily harm. He had
somehow obtained a book of magic which contained the
spells and directions how to act in reciting them. Armed^
with this powerful instrument the rogue had shut himself up
in a secret chamber, and there proceeded to cast spells over
the people of his town.^ In ancient Babylonia also it was
1 E. Doutte, op. cit. p. 299. (1890) pp. 428 sq. ; id., Egyptian
. jlfa^V (London, 1899), pp.73 Ji'?. The
2 G. Maspero, Htstotre anctenne des ^^ happened in the reign of Rameses
piuples de r Orient classtque : les m., about 1200 B.C. Compare A.
(jr^iV.w (Paris, 1895), pp. 213 .r<^. Erman, Aegypten und aegypiisches
3 J". Chabas, Le Papyrus magique Leben im Altertum, p. 475. As to
Harris (Chalon-sur-Saone, i860), pp. Egyptian masnc in general see A.
169 sqq. ; E. A. Wallis Budge, in Erman, Die a!^yptische Religion (Bei-
Arckaeologia, Second Series, vol. ii. lin, 1905), pp. 148 sqq.
HI HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 67
a common practice to make an image of clay, pitch, honey,
fat, or other soft material in the likeness of an enemy, and to
injure or kill him by burning, burying, or otherwise ill-treating
it. Thus in a hymn to the fire-god Nusku we read :
" Those who have made images of me, reproducing m.y features.
Who have taken away my breath, torn my hairs.
Who have rent my clothes, have hindered my feet from, treading the
dust.
May the fire-god, the strong one, break their charm." ^
But both in Babylon and in Egypt this ancient tool of Magical
superstition, so baneful in the hands of the mischievous and Ift^f '"
'^ . Babylon
malignant, was also pressed into the service of religion and and Egypt
turned to glorious account for the confusion and overthrow commure'
of demons. In a Babylonian incantation we meet with a o^ demons
long list of evil spirits whose effigies were burnt by the
magician in the hope that, as their images melted in the
fire, so the fiends themselves might melt away and dis-
appear.^ Every night when the sun-god Ra sank down
to his home in the glowing west he was assailed by hosts
of demons under the leadership of the arch-fiend Apepi.
All night long he fought them, and sometimes by day the
powers of darkness sent up clouds even into the blue
Egyptian sky to obscure his light and weaken his power.
To aid the sun-god in this daily struggle, a ceremony was
daily performed in his temple at Thebes. A figure of his
foe Apepi, represented as a crocodile with a hideous face or
a serpent with many coils, was made of wax, and on it
the demon's name was written in green ink. Wrapt in a
papyrus case, on which another likeness of Apepi had been
drawn in green ink, the figure was then tied up with black
hair, spat upon, hacked with a stone knife, and cast on the
ground. There the priest trod on it with his left foot again
and again, and then burned it in a fire made of a certain
plant or grass. When Apepi himself had thus been eflfectu-
ally disposed of, waxen effigies of each of his principal
demons, and of their fathers, mothers, and children, were
^ M. Jastrow, The Religion of Baiy- (New York, 1901), pp. 375, 376, 377
Ionia and Assyria (Boston, U.S.A., sqq. ; C. Fossey, la Magie assyrienne
1S98), pp. 268, 2S5, compare pp. 270, (Paris, 1902), pp. 77-81.
272, 276, 278 ; R. F. Harper, 2 ]vr. Jastrow, op. cit. pp. 286 sq. ;
Assyrian and Babylonian Literature C. Fossey, op. cit. p. 78.
68 SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap.
made and burnt in the same way. The service, accompanied
by the recitation of certain prescribed spells, was repeated
not merely morning, noon, and night, but whenever a storm
was raging, or heavy rain had set in, or black clouds were
stealing across the sky to hide the sun's bright disc. The
fiends of darkness, clouds, and rain felt the injuries inflicted
on their images as if they had been done to themselves ;
they passed away, at least for a time, and the beneficent
sun-god shone out triumphant once more.^
Magical From the azure sky, the stately fanes, and the solemn
images in ^itual of aucieut Egypt we have to travel far in space and
Scotland. o./ i ■»
time to the misty mountains and the humble cottages of the
Scottish Highlands of to-day ; but at our journey's end we
shall find our ignorant countrymen seeking to attain the
same end by the same means and, unhappily, with the same
malignity as the Egyptian of old. To kill a person whom he
hates, a modern Highlander will still make a rude clay image
of him, called a corp cJire or corp chreadli (" clay body "), stick
it full of pins, nails, and broken bits of glass, and then place
it in a running stream with its head to the current. As
even' pin is thrust into the figure an incantation is uttered,
and the person represented feels a pain in the corresponding
part of his body. If the intention is to make him die a
lingering death, the operator is careful to stick no pins into
the region of the heart, whereas he thrusts them into that
region deliberately if he desires to rid himself of his enemy
at once. And as the clay puppet crumbles away in the
running water, so the victim's body is believed to waste
away and turn to clay. In Islay the spell spoken over the
corp clire, when it is ready to receive the ])ins, is as follows ;
" From behind you are like a ram with an old fleece." And
as the pins are being thrust in, a long incantation is pro-
nounced, beginning " As you waste away, may she waste
away ; as this wounds you, may it wound her." Sometimes,
we are told, the effigy is set before a blazing fire on a door
which has been taken off its hinges ; there it is toasted and
• E, A. Wallis Budge, "On the Series, ii. (i«yo) pp. 393-601; id.,
Hieratic PapyrusofNesi-Amsu, ascribe Kgyplian Maific, pp. 77 sqq.; M;
in the temple of Amen-Ra at Thebes, The Gods of Ihr. Egyptiaiis (London,
about B.C. ■^01" Anhaeoloj^ia, Second 1904). '• 270-272.
HI HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 69
turned to make the human victim writhe in agony. The
corp chre is reported to have been employed of late years in
the counties of Inverness, Ross, and Sutherland. A specimen
from Inverness-shire may be seen in the Pitt-Rivers Museum
at Oxford.^ It is remarkable, however, that in the High-
lands this form of magic has no power over a man who has
lost any of his members. For example, though Ross-shire
witches made a clay figure of " Donald of the Ear," they
could not destroy him, because he had lost an ear in
battle.^ A similar form of witchcraft, known as " bury-
ing the sheaf," seems still to linger in Ireland among the
dwellers in the Bog of Ardee. The person who works the
charm goes first to a chapel and says certain prayers with
his back to the altar ; then he takes a sheaf of wheat, which
he fastens into the likeness of a human body, sticking pins
in the joints of the stems and, according to one account,
shaping a heart of plaited straw. This sheaf he buries in
the devil's name near the house of his enemy, who will, it is
supposed, gradually pine away as the sheaf decays, dying
when it finally decomposes. If the enchanter desires his foe
to perish speedily, he buries the sheaf in wet ground, where
it will soon moulder away ; but if on the other hand his
wish is that his victim should linger in pain, he chooses a
dry spot, where decomposition will be slow.^ However, in
Scotland, as in Babylon and Egypt, the destruction of an
image has also been employed for the discomfiture of fiends.
When Shetland fishermen wish to disenchant their boat, they
' See an article by R. M. O. K. liurgli, 1834), pp. 328 sqq.
entitled "A Horrible Rite in the High- " J. G. Campbell, op. cit. pp. 47, 48.
lands," in the Weekly Scotsman, ' Jiry-in J. Jones, in Folklore, vi.
Saturday, August 24, 1889; Pro- (1895) p.* 302. For evidence of the
fessor J. Rhys in Folklore, iii. (1892) custom in the Isle of Man see J. Train,
p. 3S5 ; R. C. Maclagan, " Notes on Historical and Statistical Account of
Folklore Objects collected in Argyle- the Isle of Man, ii. 168; in England,
shire," Folklore, vi. (1S.9S) pp. 144- see Brand, Popular Antiquities, iii.
148; J. Macdonald, AV//'f2'e«aKrfA^i'/i 10 sqq. ; in Germany, see J. Grimm,
(London, 1S93), pp. 3 sq. ; J. G. Deutsche Mythologie,^ ii. 913 sq. ; F.
Campbell, Witchcraft and Second Sight Panzer, Beitrag zur deutschen Mytho-
in the Highlands and Islands of Scot- logie, ii. 272 sq. As to the custom
land (Glasgow, 1902), pp. 46-48. in general, see E. B. tyXot, Researches
Many older examples of the practice of into the Early History of Mankind^
this form of enchantment in Scotland pp. io(> sqq.; R. Andrce, "Sympathie-
are collected by J. G. Dalyell in bis Zauber," Ethnographische Parallelen
Darker Superstitions of Scotland (Edin- tmd Vergleiche, Neue Folge, pp. 8 sqq.
70 SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap.
row it out to sea before sunrise, and as the day is dawning
they burn a waxen figure in the boat, while the skipper
exclaims, " Go hence, Satan." ^
Magical If homoeopathic or imitative magic, working by means of
""^^'^ '° images, has commonly been practised for the spiteful purpose
o&fmng of putting obnoxious people out of the world, it has also,
Md^^^ though far more rarely, been employed with the benevolent
intention of helping others into it. In other words, it has been
used to facilitate childbirth and to procure offspring for barren
women. Thus among the Esquimaux of Bering Strait a
barren woman desirous of having a son will consult a shaman,
who commonly makes, or causes her husband to make, a
small doll-like image over which he performs certain secret
rites, and the woman is directed to sleep with it under her
pillow.' Amongst the many ceremonies wliich a Thompson
Indian girl of British Columbia had formerly to perform at
puberty was the following. She had to run four times in
the morning, carrying two small stones which had been
obtained from underneath the water. These were put in
her bosom ; and as she ran, they slipped down between her
body and her clothes and fell to the ground. While she
ran, she prayed to the Dawn that when she should be with
child she might be delivered as easily as she had been
delivered of these stones.* Similarly among the Haida
Indians of the Queen Charlotte Islands a pregnant woman
would let round stones, eels, chips, or other small objects
slip down over her abdomen for the sake of facilitating
her delivery.* Among the Nishinam Indians of California,
when a woman is childless, her female friends some-
times make out of grass a rude image of a baby and tie
it in a small basket after the Indian fashion. Some day,
when the woman is from home, they lay this grass baby in
her hut. On finding it she holds it to her breast, pretends
* Ch. Rogers, Social Life in Scot- of British Columbia," Memoir of tki
land, iii. 220. American Museum of Natural History,
. T- -.,, »T , ,. -.^ TT 1 ■ The Jesup North Pacific Expedition,
« E. W. Nelson, "The Eskimo / ^ ;i ^ ^
about Benng Stra.t" mghteenth 4 j. R, Vwanton, " Contribution.
Annuca Rfrt 'f '^^^"7«« / to the Ethnology of the Haida"
Ameruan Ethmlosy, Part I. (Wash- .den and New York, 1905), PP-
ington, 1899) p. 435. ^^ ^^ ^y,^^ j^^^^ ^^^^^ ^^„^ ;g^.
' J. Teit, "The Thompson Indians pedition, vol. v.).
Ill HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 71
to nurse it, and sings it lullabies. This is done as a charm
to make her conceive.^ The Huichol Indians of Mexico
believe in a certain Mother who is the goddess of conception
and childbirth, and lives in a cave near Santa Catarina. A
woman desirous of offspring deposits in this cave a doll
made of cotton cloth to represent the baby on which her
heart is set. After a while she goes back to the cave, puts
the doll under her girdle, and soon afterwards is supposed
to be pregnant.^ With a like intent Indian women in Peru
used to wrap up stones like babies and leave them at the
foot of a large stone, which they revered for this purpose.*
Among the Makatisses, a Caffre tribe of South Africa, a
traveller observed a woman carefully tending a doll made
out of a gourd, adorned with necklaces of glass beads, and
heavily weighted with iron ore. On enquiry he learned that
she had been directed by the medicine-man to do this as a
means of obtaining a child.* Among the Basutos childless
wives make rude effigies of clay, and give them the name of
some tutelar deity. They treat these dolls as if they were real
children, and beseech the divinity to whom they have dedicated
them to grant them the power of conception.^ In Anno, a
district of West Africa, women may often be seen carrying
wooden dolls strapped, like babies, on their backs as a cure
for sterility.® In Japan, when a marriage is unfruitful, the
old women of the neighbourhood come to the house and go
through a pretenCe of delivering the wife of a child. The
infant is represented by a doll.' The Maoris had a household
god whose image was in the form of an infant. The image
was very carefully made, generally life-size, and adorned with
the family jewels. Barren women nursed it and addressed it
in the most endearing terms in order to become mothers.*
Among the Battas of Sumatra a barren woman, who
would become a mother, will make a wooden image of a
' S. Powers, Tribes of California Austrak (Paris, 1847), ii. 325 sq.
(Washington, 1S77), p. 318. ' E. Ciisalis, The Basutos, p. 251.
* C. Lumlioltz, "Symbolism of the " BinRer, Du Niger au Golfe de
Huichol Indiiins," Memoirs of the Guinie (I'aris, 1892), ii. 230.
American Museum of Natural History, ' W. G. Aston, Shinto (the Way of
vol. iii. (May 1900) p. 52. the Gods) (London, 1905), p. 331.
^ P. J. de An-iaga, Extirpacion de la ' R. Taylor, T'e Ika A Maui, or
fdolairia del PirullAmix, i62i), p. 37. New 'Zealand and its Inhabitants*
• K.V>^&%,ai^t,VoyasedansVAfrique (London, 1870), p. 213.
SYMPATHETIC MAGIC
CHAP.
Magical
images to
procure
oSspring
in the
Eastern
Archi-
pdaga
child and hold it in her lap, believing that this will lead tc
the fulfilment of her wish.^ In the Babar Archipelago, when
a \voman desires to have a child, she invites a man who is
himself the father of a large family to pray on her behalf to
Upulero, the spirit of the sun. A doll is made of red cotton,
which the woman clasps in her arms as if she would suckle
it. Then the father of many children takes a fowl and holds
it by the legs to the woman's head, saying, " O Upulero,
make use of the fowl ; let fall, let descend a child, I beseech
you, I entreat you, let a child fall and descend into my hands
and on my lap." Then he asks the woman, " Has the child
come ? " and she answers, " Yes, it is sucking already."
After that the man holds the fowl on the husband's head,
and mumbles some form of words. Lastly, the bird is killed
and laid, together with some betel, on the domestic place of
sacrifice. When the ceremony is over, word goes about in
the village that the woman has been brought to bed, and
her friends come and congratulate her.^ Here the pretence
that a child has been born is a purely magical rite designed
to secure, by means of imitation or mimicry, that a child
really shall be born ; but an attempt is made to add to the
efficacy of the rite by means of prayer and sacrifice. To
put it otiierwise, magic is here blent with and reinforced by
religion. In Saibai, one of the islands in Torres Straits, a
similar custom of purely magical character is observed,
without any religious alloy. Here, when a woman is preg-
nant, all the other women assemble. The husband's sister
makes an image of a male child and places it before the
pregnant woman ; afterwards the image is nursed until the
birth of the child in order to ensure that the baby shall be
a boy. To secure male offspring a woman will also press to
her abdomen a fruit resembling the male organ of generation,
which she then passes to another woman who has borne
none but boys. This, it is clear, is imitative magic in a
slightly different form.* In the seventh month of a woman's
' J. B. Neumann, " Het Pane- en ^ J. G. F. Kiedel, De sluik- en
Eila-Stroomgebied op het eiland Sum- krossharige rasscn tusschen Selebes en
atra," Tijischrift van het NeJerlandsch Papua (The lln^'iie, 1886), p. 343.
Aanirij.kskunJig Gitiootschap, Tweede ' Dr. MacFarI:ine, quoted by A. C.
Serie, deel iii. (1SS6) Afdeeling, nieer lladdon, in Journal of the Anthropo-
uitgebreide artikelen, No. 3, p. 515. logical Instilute, xix. (1890) pp. 389 Jjf.
Ill HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 73
pregnancy common people in Java observe a ceremony which
is plainly designed to facilitate the real birth by mimicking
it Husband and wife repair to a well or to the bank of a
neighbouring river. The upper part of the woman's body is
bare, but young banana leaves arc fastened under her arms,
a small opening, or rather fold, being left in the leaves in
front Through this opening or fold in the leaves on his
wife's body the husband lets ftill from above a weaver's
shuttle. An old woman receives the shuttle as it falls, takes
it up in her arms and dandles it as if it were a baby, saying,
" Oh, what a dear little child ! Oh, what a beautiful little
child ! " Then the husband lets an egg slip through the
fold, and when it lies on the ground as an emblem of the
afterbirth, he takes his sword and cuts through the banana
leaf at the place of the fold, obviously as if he were severing
the navel-string.' Persons of high rank in Java observe the
ceremony after a fashion in which the real meaning of the
rite is somewhat obscured. The pregnant woman is clothed
in a long robe, which her husband, kneeling before her,
severs with a stroke of his sword from bottom to top. Then
he throws his sword on the ground and runs away as fast as
he can.2 According to another account, the woman is wrapt
round with white thread ; her husband cuts it with his sword,
throws away an oblong white gourd, dashes a fowl's egg to
the ground, rolls along a young coco-nut on which the
figures of a man and woman have been painted, and so
departs in haste.^ Among some of the Dyaks of Borneo,
when a woman is in hard labour, a wizard is called in, who
essays to facilitate the delivery in a rational manner by
manipulating the body of the sufferer. Meantime another
wizard outside the room exerts himself to attain the same
' C. Poensen, " lets over de kleed- de Javaan zijne zieken verzorgt," i7/«(ii;-
ing der Javanen," Mededcelhigen van deeliugen van wege het Nederlandsche
vitge het Nederlandsche Zetideling- Zendelinggenootschap, xxxvi, (1892) p.
geiwotschap, xx. (1S76) pp. 274 sg. ; 1 16).
C. M. Pleyte, " Plechtigheden en ^ S. A. Buddingh, " Gebruiken bij
gebruiken uit den cyclus van het Javaansche Grooten," Tijdschrift voor
familienleven der volken van den Nelrlands IndiSi 1840, deel ii. pp.
Indischen Archipel," Bijdragen tot de 239-243.
Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde van Neder- ^ J. Knebel, " Varia Javanica,"
landsch Indie, xli. (1892) p. 578. A Tijdschyift voor Indische Taal- Land-
slightly different account of the cere- en Volkenkunde, xliv. (190 1) pp. 34-
mony is given by J. Kreemer ("Hoe 37.
74
S YMPA THE TIC MA GIC
CHAP.
SmnJalioD
of birth at
adoption.
end by means which we should regard as wholly irrational,
He, in fact, pretends to be the expectant mother ; a large
stone attached to his stomach by a cloth wrapt round his
body represents the child in the womb, and, following the
directions shouted to him by his colleague on the real scene
of operations, he moves this make-believe baby about on his
body in exact imitation of the movements of the real baby
till the infant is born/
The same principle of make-believe, so dear to children,
has led other peoples to employ a simulation of birth as a
and afto- form of adoption, and even as a mode of restoring a supposed
^gsed j^^j person to life. If you pretend to give birth to a boy,
or even to a great bearded man who has not a drop of your
blood in his veins, then, in the eyes of primitive law and
philosophy, that boy or man is really your son to all intents
and purposes. Thus Diodorus tells us that when Zeus
persuaded his jealous wife Hera to adopt Hercules, the
goddess got into bed, and clasping the burly hero to her
bosom, pushed him through her robes and let him fall to the
ground in imitation of a real birth ; and the historian adds
that in his own day the same mode of adopting children
was practised by the barbarians.'* At the present time it is
said to be still in use in Bulgaria and among the Bosnian
Turks. A woman will take a boy whom she intends to
adopt and push or pull him through her clothes ; ever after-
wards he is regarded as her very son, and inherits the whole
property of his adoptive parents.* Among the Berawans of
Sarawak, when a woman desires to adopt a grown-up man
or woman, a great many people assemble and have a feast.
The adopting mother, seated in public on a raised and
covered seat, allows the adopted person to crawl from behind
between her legs. As soon as he appears in front he is
* F. W. L^gat, quoted by H. Ling
Roth, TTu Natives of Sarawak and
British North Borneo (London, 1 896),
L 98 sq.
* Diodorus Siculus, iv. 39.
* Stanislaus Ciszewski, Ktinstliche
Verwandtschaft bet den Siidslaven
(Leipsic, 1897), pp. 103 sqq. In the
Middle Ages a similar form of adoption
appears to have prevailed, with the
curious variation that the adopting
parent vi^ho simiilnted the act of birth
was the father, not the mother. See
J. Grimm, Deutsche Rechfsalterthilmer,
pp. 160, 464 sq.; J. J. Bachofen, Das
Mutterrecht, pp. 254 sq. F. Liebrecht,
however, quotes a mediaeval case in
which the ceremony was performed by
the adopting mother {Zur Volkskunde,
p. 432).
«n HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 75
Stroked with the sweet-scented blossoms of the areca palm,
and tied to the woman. Then the adopting mother and the
adopted son or daughter, thus bound together, waddle to the
end of the house and back again in front of all the spectators.
The tie established between the two by this graphic imitation
of childbirth is very strict ; an offence committed against an
adopted child is reckoned more heinous than one committed
against a real child.^ In Central Africa " the Bahima
practise adoption ; the male relatives always take charge of
a brother's children. When a man dies his brother takes
any children of the deceased and places them one by one in
his wife's lap. Then he binds round her waist the thong
used for tying the legs of restive cows during milking, just
as is done after childbirth. The children are then brought
up wjth his own family." ^ In ancient Greece any man who
had been supposed erroneously to be dead, and for whom in
his absence funeral rites had been performed, was treated as
dead to society till he had gone through the form of being
born again. He was passed through a woman's lap, then
washed, dressed in swaddling-clothes, and put out to nurse.
Not until this ceremony had been punctually performed
might he mix freely with living folk.^ In ancient India,
under similar circumstances, the supposed dead man had to
pass the first night after his return in a tub filled with a
mixture of fat and water ; there he sat with doubled-up fists
and without uttering a syllable, like a child in the womb,
while over him were performed all the sacraments that were
wont to be celebrated over a pregnant woman. Next
morning he got out of the tub and went through once more
all the other sacraments he had formerly partaken of from
his youth up ; in particular, he married a wife or espoused
his old one over again with due solemnity.*
Amongst the Akikuyu of British East Africa every
member of the tribe, whether male or female, has to go
' For this information I have to Hesycliius, s.v.^ AevTep6wor/ios.
thank Dr. C. Hose, formerly Resident * W. Caland, Die allindischen
Magistrate of the Baram district, Sara- Tocltcn- und Besialtungsgebrauche
wak. (Amsterdam, 1896), p. 89. Among
' Rev. J. Roscoe, "The Bahima," the Hindoos of Kumaon the same
/oiimal of the R. Anthropological In- custom is reported to l)e still ol)scrved.
Uilule, xxxvii. (1907) p. 104. See M:ijor Readc in Panjab Notes and
' Plutarch, Quacitiones Komanae, 5 ; Queries, ii. p. 74, § 452.
76 SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap.
Simulation through a pretence of beine born again. The aee at
of birtii u • 1. iL • r
among the ^^'nich the Ceremony is performed varies with the ability
Akiiuj-u. of the father to provide the goat or sheep which is required
for the due observance of the rite ; but it seems that the
new birth generally takes place when a child is about ten
years old or younger. If the child's father or mother
is dead, a man or woman acts as proxy on the occasion,
and in such a case the woman is thenceforth regarded by
the child as its own mother. A goat or sheep is killed
in the afternoon and the stomach and intestines are reserved.
The ceremony takes place at evening in a hut ; none but
women are allowed to be present. A circular piece of the
goat-skin or sheep-skin is passed over one shoulder and
under the other arm of the child who is to be born again ;
and the animal's stomach is similarly passed over the child's
other shoulder and under its other arm. The mother, or
the woman who acts as mother, sits on a hide on the floor
with the child between her knees. The sheep's or goat's
gut is passed round her and brought in front of the child.
She groans as if in labour, another woman cuts the gut
as if it were the navel-string, and the child imitates the
cry of a new-born infant. Until a lad has thus been born
again in mimicry, he may not assist at the disposal of his
father's body after death, nor help to carry him out into the
wilds to breathe his last. Formerly the ceremony of the new
birth was combined with the ceremony of circumcision ; but
the two are now kept separate.^ In origin we may suppose
that this curious pretence of being born again regularly
formed part of the initiatory rites through which every
Kikuyu lad and every Kikuyu girl had to pass before
he or she was recognised as a full-grown member of the
tribe;- for in many parts of the world a simulation of death
and resurrection has been enacted by candidates on such
occasions as well as on admission to the membership of
certain secret societies.^ The intention of the, mock birth
1 W. S. Kentledge and K. Rout- Exogamy, iv. 228.
)edge, With a Prehistoric People, the ^ p^ (q these rites among the Aki-
Akikiiyu of British East Africa {Lon- kuyu see W. S. Routledge and K
don, 1910), pp. 151 sq. The ceremony Routledge, op. at. pp. iti^sqq.
was briefly described by me on Dr. 3 The Golden Bough, Second Edition,
Crawford's authority in Totcmism and iii. ^22 sqg. ; Totemism and Exogamy,
HI HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 77
or mock resurrection is not clear ; but we may conjecture
that it is designed, on the principles of homoeopathic or
imitative magic, either to impart to the candidate the powers
of a ghost or to enable him to be reborn again into the
world whenever he shall have died in good earnest.
Magical images have often been employed for the Magical
amiable purpose of winning love. Thus to shoot an arrow ™^g^ "^
, , c 1 • procure
mto the heart of a clay image was an ancient Hindoo love,
mode of securing a woman's affection ; only the bow-string
must be of hemp, the shaft of the arrow must be of black ala
wood, its plume an owl's feather, and its barb a thorn.^ No
doubt the wound inflicted on the heart of the clay image was
supposed to make a corresponding impression on the woman's
heart. Among the Chippeway Indians there used to be few
young men or women who had not little images of the persons
whose love they wished to win. They pricked the hearts of
the images and inserted magical powders in the punctures,
while they addressed the effigies by the names of the
persons whom they represented, bidding them requite their
affection.^ Ancient witches and wizards melted wax in the
fire in order to make the hearts of their sweethearts to
melt of love.' And as the wound of love may be inflicted
by an image, so by an image it may be healed. How that
can be done is told by Heine in a poem based on the
experience of one of his own schoolfellows. It is called The
Pilgrimage to Kevlaar, and describes how sick people offer
waxen models of their ailing members to the Virgin Mary
at Kevlaar in order that she may heal them of their
infirmities. In the poem a lover, wasting away for love
and sorrow at the death of his sweetheart, offers to the
Virgin the waxen model of a heart with a prayer that she
would heal his heart-ache.^ Such customs, still commonly
L 44, iii. 463 sqq., 485, 487 sg., 489 3 Theocritus, Id. ii. z8 sg. ; Virgil,
^?-. 505. 532. 542, 545. 546, 549- ■E<:^- viii. 81 sg. In neither of these
' W. Caland, Altmdisches Zauber- passages is the wax said to have been
ritual (Amsterdam, 1900), p. 119; M. fashioned in the likeness of the beloved
Bloom6eld, Hymns of the Athai-va- one, but it may have been so.
Veda (Oxford, 1897), pp. 358 sg. * As to the waxen models of the
(Sacred Books 0/ the East, vol. xlii.). human body, or parts of it, which are
^ W. H. Keating, Narrative of an still dedicated to the Virgin Mary at
Expedition to the Source of St. Peter's Kevelaer, see R. Andree, Votive und
River {lK>ndon, 1825), ii. 159. Weihegabcn des Katholischen Volks in
78
S YMPA THE TIC MA GIC
Magical
images to
fns.:atain
domestic
barmcnr.
Homoeo-
pathic
magic in
ZDedidne.
observed in some parts of Catholic Europe, are interesting
because they shew how in later times magic comes to be
incorporated with religion. The moulding of wax images
of ailing members is in its origin purely magical : the
prayer to the Virgin or to a saint is purely religious : the
combination of the two is a crude, if pathetic, attempt to
turn both magic and religion to account for the benefit of
the sufferer.
The natives of New Caledonia make use of effigies to
maintain or restore harmony between husband and wife.
Two spindle-shaped bundles, one representing the man and
the other the woman, are tied firmly together to symbolise
and ensure the amity of the couple. They are made up of
various plants, together with some threads from the woman's
girdle and a piece of the man's apron ; a bone needle forms
the axis of each. The talisman is meant to render the
union of the spouses indissoluble, and is carefully treasured
by them both. If, nevertheless, a domestic jar should un-
fortunately take place, the husband repairs to the family
burying-ground with the precious packet. There he lights
a fire witli a wood of a particular kind, fumigates the talisman,
sprinkles it with water from a prescribed source, waves it round
his head, and then stirring the needle in the bundle which re-
presents himself he says, " I change the "heart of this woman,
that she may love me." If the wife still remains obdurate,
he ties a sugar-cane to the bundle, and presents it to her
through a third person. If she eats of the sugar-cane, she
feels her love for her husband revive. On her side she has
the right to operate in like manner on the bundle which
represents herself, always provided that she does not go to
the burying-ground, which is strictly forbidden to women.^
Anotlier beneficent use of homoeopathic magic is to heal
or prevent sickness. In ancient Greece, when a man died
of dropsy, his children were made to sit with their feet in
water until the body was burned. This was supposed to
prevent the disease from attacking them.'* Similarly, on
SudiitiitscMand (Brunswick, 1904) p. liqiies, xii. (1880) p. 41 ; id.. Maun
S5 ; and as to votive images of hearts et Superstitious iks Nio - Calidoniens
m general, see id. pp. 127 sg. (Noiimfo, 1 900), pp. 97 sq.
^ Plutarch, De s,'ra numinis vindicta,
• Fatlier I^mbert,ini1/j>«<^:i Cn//i»- 14.
HI HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 79
the principle of water to water, among the natives of the
hills near Rajamahall in India, the body of a person who
has died of dropsy is thrown into a river ; they think that
if the corpse were buried, the disorder would return and
carry off other people.^
The ancient Hindoos performed an elaborate ceremony, Homoeo-
based on homoeopathetic magic, for the cure of jaundice, freltment
Its main drift was to banish the yellow colour to yellow ofjaundico
creatures and yellow things, such as the sun, to which it
properly belongs, and to procure for the patient a healthy
red colour from a living, vigorous source, namely a red bull.
With this intention, a priest recited the following spell :
" Up to the sun shall go thy heart-ache and thy jaundice :
in the colour of the red bull do we envelop thee ! We
envelop thee in red tints, unto long life. May this person
go unscathed and be free of yellow colour ! The cows
whose divinity is Rohini, they who, moreover, are them-
selves red {rohinili) — in their every form and every strength
we do envelop thee. Into the parrots, into the thrush, do
we put thy jaundice, and, furthermore, into the yellow wag-
tail do we put thy jaundice." While be uttered these words,
the priest, in order to infuse the rosy hue of health into the
sallow patient, gave him water to sip which was mixed with
the hair of a red bull ; he poured water over the animal's
back and made the sick man drink it ; he seated him on the
skin of a red bull and tied a piece of the skin to him. Then
in order to improve his colour by thoroughly eradicating the
yellow taint, he proceeded thus. He first daubed him from
head to foot with a yellow porridge made of turmeric or
curcuma (a yellow plant), set him on a bed, tied three yellow
birds, to wit a parrot, a thrush, and a yellow wagtail, by
means of a yellow string to the foot of the bed ; then
pouring water over the patient, he washed off the yellow
porridge, and with it no doubt the jaundice, from him to
the birds. After that, by way of giving a final bloom to his
complexion, he took some hairs of a red bull, wrapt them
in gold leaf, and glued them to the patient's skin.^ The
' Th. Shaw, "The Inhabitants of 1807).
the HUls near Rajam.ihall," Asiatic " M. liloomfield. Hymns of the
^««arf/i«x, iv. 69 (8vo edition, London, Atharva-i'eda (Oxford, 1897), pp. 7
So SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap.
Homoeo- ancicnts held that if a person suffering from jaundice looked
P**^*^ sharply at a stone-curlew, and the bird looked steadily at
treitment "^ - o , • i ,i
ofjaundice. him, he was cured of the disease. " Such is the nature,
says Plutarch, " and such the temperament of the creature
that it draws out and receives the malady which issues,
like a stream, through the eyesight." ^ So well recognised
among bird - fanciers was this valuable property of the
stone-curlew that when they had one of these birds for
sale they kept it carefully covered, lest a jaundiced person
should look at it and be cured for nothing.^ The virtue of
the bird lay not in its colour but in its large golden eye,
which, if it do not 'pass for a tuft of yellow lichen, is the
first thing that strikes the searcher, as the bird cowers, to
escape observation, on the sandy, flint-strewn surface of the
ground which it loves to haunt, and with which its drab
plumage blends so well that only a practised eye can easily
detect it.^ Thus the yellow eye of the bird drew out the
yellow jaundice. Pliny tells of another, or perhaps the same,
bird, to which the Greeks gave their name for jaundice,
because if a jaundiced man saw it, the disease left him
and slew the bird.'' He mentions also a stone which
was supposed to cure jaimdice because its hue resembled
that of a jaundiced skin.^ In modern Greece jaundice goes
by the name of the Golden Disease, and very naturally it
can be healed by gold. To effect a perfect cure all that
you have to do is this. Take a piece of gold (best of
all an English sovereign, since English gold is the purest)
and put it in a measure of wine. Expose the wine with
the gold to the stars for three nights ; then drink three
glasses of it daily till it is used up. By that time the
jaundice will be quite washed out of your system. The
cure is, in the strictest sense of the word, a sovereign one.*
sq., 263 Sij. ; W. Caland, AUindisckes * Pliny, JVai. Hist. xxx. 94. The
Zauherritual (Amsterdam, 1900), pp. Greek name for jaundice, and for this
7 5 sq. singular bird, was ikteros. The Romans
1 Plutarch, Quaest. conviv. v. 7. 2, called jaundice "the king's malady"
8 sq. ; Aelian, Nat. animalium, xvii. (morbus regius). See below, p. 371,
13-
note ^.
2 Schol. on Aristophanes, Birds, ^ Nat. Hist, xxxvii. 170.
266 ; Schol. on Plato, Gorgias, p. 494 B. " This precious remedy was com-
3 Alfred Newton, Dictionary of municated to me by my colleague and
5«V./j (Ixindon, 1 893-1 896), p. 129. friend Professor R. . C. Bosanquet of
in HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 8l
A Wend cure for jaundice, like the modern Greek one, is to
drink a glass of water in which a gold coin has been left
overnight.^ A remedy based on the principle of contraries
is to look steadily at pitch or other black substances.^
In South Russia a Jewish remedy for jaundice is to wear
golden bracelets.^ Here the great homoeopathic principle
is clearly the same as in the preceding cases, though
its application is different. In Germany yellow turnips,
gold coins, gold rings, saffron, and other yellow things
are still esteemed remedies for jaundice, just as a stick
of red sealing - wax carried on the person cures the
red eruption popularly known as St. Anthony's fire, or Homoeo-
the blood-stone with its blood-red spots allays bleeding.* freS^em
Another popular remedy in Germany for the red St. of St.
Anthony's fire and also for bleeding is supplied by theg^e!""^^
common crossbills. In this bird " after the first moult the
difference between the sexes is shewn by the hens inclining
to yellowish-green, while the cocks become diversified by
orange-yellow and red, their plumage finally deepening into
a rich crimson-red, varied in places by a flame-colour." '
The smallest reflection may convince us that these gorgeous
hues must be endowed with very valuable medical properties.
Accordingly in some parts of Bavaria, Saxony, and Bohemia
people keep crossbills in cages in order that the red birds
may draw the red St. Antony's fire and the inflammation
of fever to themselves and so relieve the human patient.
Often in a peasant's cottage you may see the red bird in
its cage hanging beside a sick-bed and drawing to itself
the hectic flush from the cheeks of the hot and restless
patient, who lies tossing under the blankets. And the dried
body of a crossbill has only to be placed on a wound to
stop the bleeding at once. It is not the colour only of the
feathers which produces this salutary effect ; the peculiar
Liverpool. The popular Greek name 'Dr. S. Weissenberg, " Krankheit
for jaundice is xpiarf. und Tod bei den sUdrussi.schen Juden,"
• W. von Schulenburg, Wendische Globin, xci. (1907) p. 358.
yelissagen uitd Gebrdtiche (Leipsic, * K, Freiherr von Lcoprechting, .^«j
18S0), p. 223. ile.m I.e.chrain (Munich, 1855), p. 92;
- J. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,'^ A. ■W\ittke, Der deutsche Volksaher-
ii. 981 ; G. Lammert, Volksmedizin und g/auk,'^ p. 302, § 477.
medhinisc/ier Abcrglanbe in Baycrn '' Alfre<l Newton, Dictionary of
(WUrjburg, 1869), ]i. Z48. IHrds, p. 115.
VOL. I G
82 SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap.
Horoao- shape of the bill, whi^ch gives the bird its English and
P^'^^ German name, is a contributory cause. For the horny
CT^riUs. sheaths of the bill cross each other obliquely, and this forma-
tion undoubtedly enables the bird to draw diseases to
itself more readily than a beak of the common shape could
possibly do. Curious observers have even remarked that
when the upper bill crosses the lower to the right, the bird
will attract the diseases of men, whereas if the upper bill
crosses the lower to the left, it will attract the diseases of
women. But I cannot vouch for the accuracy of this parti-
cular observation. However that may be, certain it is that
no fire will break out in a house where a crossbill is kept in
a cage, neither will lightning strike the dwelling ; and this
immunity can only be ascribed to the protective colouring of
the bird, the red hue of its plumage serving to ward off the
red lightning and to nip a red conflagration in the bud.
However, the poor bird seldom lives to old age ; nor
could this reasonably be expected of a creature which has
to endure so much vicarious suffering. It generally falls a
victim to one or other of the maladies of which it has relieved
our ailing humanity. The causes which have given the
crossbill its remarkable colour and the peculiar shape of its
bill have escaped many naturalists, but they are familiar to
children in Germany. The truth is that when Jesus Christ
hung on the cross a flight of crossbills fluttered round him
and tugged with their bills at the nails in his hands and feet
to draw them out, till their feathers, which were grey before,
were all bedabbled with blood, and their beaks, which had been
straight, were twisted awry. So red have been their fea.thers
and twisted their beaks from that day to this.^ Another
cure prescribed in Germany for St. Anthony's fire is to rub
the patient with ashes from a house that has been burned
down ; "^ for it is easy to see that as the fire died out in
that house, so St. Anthony's fire will die out in that man.
A curious application of homoeopathic magic to the
1 Dr. J. Gengler, " Der Kreuz- (Prague, 1905), p. 218 ; P. Drechsler,
schnabel als Hausarzt," Globus, xci. Sitte, Branch und Volksglaube in
{1907) pp. 193 sq. ; A. Wuttke, Der Schlesien, ii. (Leipsic, igo6) p.
deuische Volksabcrglaube,'^ p. 117, 231.
I 164 ; Alois John, Situ, Branch und ^ a. Wuttke, Der deutsche Folks-
Volksglaube im deutschen Westbohmen aberglaube,^ p. 302, § 477.
in HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 83
cure of disease is founded on the old English superstition The shrew-
that if a shrew-mouse runs over a beast, be it horse, cow, JJ^e"^^.*^
or sheep, the animal suffers cruelly and may lose the use ash.
of its limb. Against this accident the farmer used to
keep a shrew-ash at hand as a remedy. A shrew-ash was
prepared thus. A deep hole was bored in the tree, and a
shrew-mouse was thrust in alive and plugged in, probably
with some incantations which have been forgotten.^ An
ancient Indian cure for a scanty crop of hair was to pour Homoeo-
a solution of certain plants over the head of the patient ; pf^,!rip-
this had to be done by a doctor who was dressed in black tions to
and had eaten black food, and the ceremony must be per- ^^^ ^^^^
formed in the early morning, while the stars were fading in
the sky, and before the black crows had risen cawing from
tlieir nests.^ The exact virtue of these plants has escaped
our knowledge, but we can hardly doubt that they were dark
and hairy ; while the black clothes of the doctor, his black
food, and the swarthy hue of the crows unquestionably com-
bined to produce a crop of black hair on the patient's head.
A more disagreeable means of attaining the same end is
adopted by some of the tribes of Central Australia. To
promote the growth of a boy's hair a man with flowing locks
bites the youth's scalp as hard as he can, being urged thereto
by his friends, who sit round watching him at his task, while
the sufferer howls aloud with pain." Clearly, on the principle
of capillary attraction, if I may say so, he thus imparts of
his own mature abundance to the scarcity of his youthful
friend.
One of the great merits of homoeopathic magic is that it Various
enables the cure to be performed on the person of the doctor °^^°'
instead of on that of his victim, who is thus relieved of all remedies
trouble and inconvenience, while he sees his medical man
writhe in anguish before him. For example, the peasants of
• Gilbert White, The Natural History hour when the stars are vanishing in
paid Antiquities of Selborne, part ii. the sky. See W. Caland, op. cit. pp.
letter 28. 85, 86, 88, 96. Was this in order
* M. Bloomfield, Hymns of the thtit the ailment might vanish with the
Atharva-Veda, pp. 31, 536 sq. ; W. stais?
Caland, Altindisches Zaii/ierritual, p. ■' Spencer and Gillen, Northern
103. In ancient Indian magic it is Trilies of Central Australia (London,
often prescribed that charms to heal ig'H). p. 352! «'/., Native Tribes of
sickness should be performed ut the Central Australia, ■^. 251.
84
SYMPA THE TIC MAGIC
CHAK
Homoeo-
pathic
Perche, in France, labour under the impression that a pro-
longed fit of vomiting is brought about by the patient's
stomach becoming unhooked, as they call it, and so falling
down. Accordingly, a practitioner is called in to restore
the organ to its proper place. After hearing the symptoms
he at once throws himself into the most horrible contortions,
for the purpose of unhooking his own stomach. Having
succeeded in the effort, he next hooks it up again in another
series of contortions and grimaces, while the patient experi-
ences a corresponding relief. Fee five francs.' In like
manner a D\-ak medicine -man, who has been fetched in
a case of illness, wjill lie down and pretend to be dead. He
is accordingly treated like a corpse, is bound up in mats,
taken out of the house, and deposited on the ground. After
about an hour the other medicine-men loose the pretended
dead man and bring him to life ; and as he recovers, the
sick person is supposed to recover too.^ A cure for a
tumour, based on the principle of homoeopathic magic, is pre-
scribed by Marcellus of Bordeaux, court physician to Theo-
dosius the First, in his curious work on medicine. It is as
follows. Take a root of vervain, cut it across, and hang
one end of it round the patient's neck, and the other in the
smoke of the fire. As the vervain dries up in the smoke, so
the tumour will also dry up and disappear. If the patient
should afterwards prove ungrateful to the good physician,
the man of skill can avenge himself very easily by throwing
the vervain into water ; for as the root absorbs the moisture
once more, the tumour will return.* The same sapient writer
recommends you, if you are troubled with pimples, to watch
for a falling star, and then instantly, while the star is still
shooting from the sky, to wipe the pimples with a cloth or
anything that comes to hand. Just as the star falls from
the sky, so the pimples will fall from your body ; only you
must be very careful not to wipe them with your bare hand,
or the pimples will be transferred to it.*
' F. Chapiseau, Le Folk-lore de la
Beitce et du Perche (Paris, 1902), i.
172 sq.
2 J. Perham, "Manangism in Borneo, "
Journal of the Straits Branch of the
Royal Asiatic Society, No. 19 (1887),
p. 100 ; H. Ling Roth, The Natives of
Sarawak and British North Borneo,
i. 280.
^ Marcellus, De medicamentis, xv.
82.
•■ Marcellus, of. cit. xxxiv. 100.
Ill HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 85
Further, homoeopathic and in general sympathetic magic Sympa-
piays a great part in the measures talvcn by the rude hunter ^"^"^
^ magic to
or fisherman to secure an abundant supply of food. On ensure the
the principle that like produces like, many things are done g°ppj
by him and his friends in deliberate imitation of the result
which he seeks to attain ; and, on the other hand, many
things are scrupulously avoided because they bear some
more or less fanciful resemblance to others which would
really be disastrous.
Nowhere is the theory of sympathetic magic more sys- Systematic
tematically carried into practice for the maintenance of the "^"^ "^
food supply than in the barren regions of Central Australia, thetic
Here the tribes are divided into a number of totem clans, ??^?° ,'"
» Central
each of which is charged with the duty of propagating and Australia,
multiplying their totem for the good of the community by
means of magical ceremonies and incantations. The great
majority of the totems are edible animals and plants, and ,
the general result supposed to be accomplished by these
magical totemic ceremonies or intichiuma, as the Arunta
call them, is that of supplying the tribe with food and
other necessaries. Often the rites consist of an imitation
of the effect which the people desire lo produce ; in other
words, tlieir magic is of the homoeopathic or imitative sort.
Thus among the Arunta the men of the witchetty grub in-
totem perform a series of elaborate ceremonies for multi- '"^^^""'f' ,
*■ or magical
plying the grub which the other members of the tribe use ceremonies
as food. One of the ceremonies is a pantomime represent- [n^r^gg of
ing the fully-developed insect in the act of emerging from "i^ totemic
the chrysalis. A long narrow structure of branches is an™piants
set up to imitate the chrysalis case of Ihc grub. In this '" Central
structure a number of men, who have the trrub for their „,. ,
. ^ Witchetty
totem, sit and sing of the creature m its various stages, grub
Then they shuffle out of it in a squatting posture, and as '^^'^'""™^'
they do so they sing of the insect emerging from the
chrj-salis. This is supposed to multiply the numbers of the
grubs.^ Again, in order to multiply emus, which are an Emu
important article of food, the men of the emu totem in the '^"'^'"°"y-
Arunta tribe proceed as follows. They clear a small spot of
level ground, and opening veins in their arms they let the
• Spencer and Gillen, Amative THbes of Central Auslraliay p. 176.
86
SYMPATHETIC MAGIC
Haj;ea
Sower
ceremony.
blood stream out until the surface of the ground, for a space
of about three square yards, is soaked with it. When the
blood has dried and caked, it forms a hard and fairly imper-
meable surface, on which they paint the sacred design of the
emu totem, especially the parts of the bird which they like
best to eat, naihely, the fat and the eggs. Round this paint-
ing the men sit and sing. Afterwards performers, wearing
head-dresses to represent the long neck and small head of
the emu, mimic the appearance of the bird as it stands
aimlessly peering about in all directions.^ Again, men of
the hakea flower totem in the Arunta tribe perform a
ceremony to make the hakea tree burst into blossom. The
scene of the ceremony is a little hollow, by the side of
which grows an ancient hakea tree. In the middle of the
hollow is a small worn block of stone, supposed to represent
a mass of hakea flowers. Before the ceremony begins, an
old man of the totem carefully sweeps the ground clean, and
then strokes the stone all over with his hands. After that
the men sit round the stone and chant invitations to the
tree to flower much and to the blossoms to be filled with
honey. Finally, at the request of the old leader, one of the
young men opens a vein in his arm and lets the blood flow
freely over the stone, while the rest continue to sing. The
flow of blood is supposed to represent the preparation of
the favourite drink of the natives, which is made by
steeping the hakea flower in water. As soon as the stone
Kangaroo is covered with blood the ceremony is complete.^ Again,
"**'°°°'' the men of the kangaroo totem in the Arunta tribe perform
ceremonies for the multiplication of kangaroos at a certain
rocky ledge, which, in the opinion of the natives, is
full of the spirits of kangaroos ready to go forth and inhabit
kangaroo bodies. A little higher up on the hillside are two
blocks of stone, which represent a male and female kangaroo
respectively. At the ceremony these two blocks are rubbed
with a stone by two men. Then the rocky ledge below is
decorated with alternate vertical stripes of red and white, to
indicate the red fur and white bones of the kangaroo. After
that a number of young men sit on the ledge, open veins in
' Spencer and Gillen, op. cit. pp.
179 sqq.
' Spencer and Gillen, op, cit. pp
184 sq.
HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC
87
their arms, and allow the blood to spurtle over the edge of
the rock on which they are seated. This pouring out of the
blood of the kangaroo men on the rock is thought to drive
out the spirits of the kangaroos in all directions, and so to
increase the number of the animals. While it is taking
place, the other men sit below watching the performers and
singing songs which refer to the expected increase of
kangaroos.^ In the Kaitish tribe, when the headman of Grass seed
the grass seed totem wishes to make the grass grow, he '="'^'"°°y-
takes two sacred sticks or stones {churingd) of the well-
known bull-roarer pattern, smears them with red-ochre, and
decorates them with lines and dots of down to represent
grass seed. Then he rubs the sticks or stones together so
Spencer and Gillen, op. cit. pp. ceedifis;s of the Geographical Society
■93 m-^ 199 ^??-. 206 sq. In the of Australia, i. (1885) pp. 50 sq.,
south of France and in the Pyrenees a with illustrations ; W. E. Roth,
number of caves have been found
adorned witli paintings or carvings of
animals which have long been extinct
in that region, such as the mammoth,
the reindeer, and the bison. All the
beasts thus represented appear to be
edible, and none of them to be fierce
carnivorous creatures. Hence it has
been ingeniously suggested by M. S.
Reinach that the intention of these
works of art may have been to multiply
by magic the animals so represented,
just as the Central Australians seek to
increase kangaroos and emus in the
manner described above. He infers
that the comparatively high develop-
ment of prehistoric art in Europe
among men of the reindeer age may
have been due in large measure to the
practice of sympathetic magic. See
S. Reinach, " L'Art et la magie,"
L' Anthropologie, xiv. (1903) pp. 257-
266; id., Cttltes, Myths et Religions,
i. (Paris, 1905) pp. 125-136. Paint-
ings and carvings executed in caves
and on rocks by the aborigines have
been described in various parts of
Australia. See G. Grey, Journals of
'aw Expeditions of Discovery (London,
1841), L 201-206 ; R. Brough Smyth,
1^ Aborigines of Victoria, i. 289-294,
n. 309 ; E. M. Curr, The Australian
Race, ii. 476; Spencer and Gillen,
Native Tribes of Central Australia,
pp. 614-618; J. F. Mann, in Pro-
Ethnological Studies among the North-
west-central Queensland Aborigines,
p. 116. We may conjecture that
the Hebrew prohibition to make
" the likeness of any beast that is on
the earth, the likeness of a'ny winged
fowl that flieth in the heaven, the like-
ness of anything that creepeth on the
ground, the likeness of any fish that is
in the water under the earth " (Deuter-
onomy iv. IT sq.), was primarily directed
rather against magic than idolatry
in the strict sense. Ezekiel speaks
(viii. 10-12) of the elders of Israel
offering incense to " every form of
creeping things, and abominable
beasts," portrayed on the walls of their
chambers. If hieroglyphs originated,
as seems possible, in representations of
edible animals and plants which had
long been in use for the purpose of
magically multiplying the species, we
could readily understand why, for
example, dangerous beasts of prey
should be conspicuously absent from
the so-called Hittite system of hiero-
glyphs, without being forced to have
recourse to the rationalistic explanation
of their absence which has been adopted
by Professors G. Hirschfeld and W^. M.
Ramsay. See W. M. Ramsay, The
Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, i.
p. XV. On the relations of art and
magic, see Y. Hirn, Origins of Art
(London, 1900), pp. 278-297.
£8 5 VA/PA THETIC MA CIC
CHAP,
that the down flies off in all directions. The down is
supposed to carry with it some virtue from the sacred stick
or stone wiiereby the grass seed is made to grow. For days
afterwards the headman walks about by himself in the bush
singing the grass seed and carrying one of the sacred bull-
roarers {c/iuringa) with him. At night he hides the imple-
ment in the bush and returns to camp, where he may have no
intercourse with his wife. For during all this time he is
believed to be so full of magic power, derived from the bull-
roarer, that if he had intercourse with her the grass seed
would not grow properly and his body would swell up when
he tasted of it. When the seed begins to grow, he still goes
on singing to make it grow more, but when it is fully grown
he brings back the sacred implement to his camp hidden in
bark ; and having gathered a store of the seed he leaves it
with the men of the other half of the tribe, saying, " You
eat the grass seed in plenty, it is very good and grows in my
country." ^
Manna A Somewhat similar ceremony is performed by men of
ceremony. , . i a
the manna totem in the Arunta tribe for the increase
of their totem. This manna is a product of the mulga
tree {Acacia aneura), and resembles the better-known sugar-
manna of gum trees. When the men of the totem wish
to multiply the manna, they resort to a great boulder of
grey rock, curiously streaked with black and white seams,
which is thought to represent a mass of manna deposited
tliere long ago by a man of the totem. The same
significance is attributed to other smaller stones which rest
on the top of the boulder. The headman of the totem
begins the ceremon}^ by digging up a sacred bull-roarer
{cJmrtnga), which is buried in the earth at the foot of the
boulder. It is supposed to represent a lump of manna and
to have lain there ever since the remote alcheringa or dream
time, the farthest past of which these savages have any
conception. Next the headman climbs to the top of the
boulder and rubs it with the bull-roarer, and after that he
takes the smaller stones and with them rubs the same spot
on the boulder. Meantime the other men, sitting round
about, chant loudly an invitation to the dust produced by
' Speucer and Gillen, Norlhcrn Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 291-294.
Ill ■ HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 89
the rubbing of the stones to go out and generate a plentiful
supply of manna on the mulga-trees. Finally, with twigs of
the mulga the leader sweeps away the dust which has
gathered on the surface of the stone ; his intention is to
cause the dust to settle on the mulga-trees and so produce
manna.^
Again, in a rocky gorge of the Murchison Range there Euro
are numbers of little heaps of rounded, water-worn stones, '=^''<'"'°"J''
carefully arranged on beds of leaves and hidden away under
piles of rougher quartzite blocks. In the opinion of the
Warramunga tribe, these rounded stones- represent euros,
that is, a species of kangaroo. According to their size they
stand for young or old, male or female euros. Any old
man of the euro totem who happens to pass the spot may
take the stones out, smear them with red ochre and rub
them well. This is supposed to cause the spirits of euros to
pass out from the stones and to be born as animals, thus
increasing the food supply.^ Again, in the Warramunga Cockatoo
tribe Messrs. Spencer and Gillen saw and heard a ceremony '=^''^™°°y'
which was believed to multiply white cockatoos to a wonderful
extent. From ten o'clock one evening until after sunrise
next morning the headman of the white cockatoo totem
held in his hand a rude effigy of the cockatoo and imitated
the harsh cry of the bird, with exasperating monotony, all
night long. When his voice faikxl him, his son took up the
call and relieved the old man until such time as his father
was rested enough to begin again.'
In this last ceremony the homoeopathic or imitative Homoeo-
character of the rite is particularly plain : the shape of the imitative
bird which is to be multiplied is mimicked by an effigy, its character
... , , , , '^ . , , r , of these
cry is imitated by the human voice. In others 01 the cere- rites,
monies just described the homoeopathic principle works
by means of stories, which resemble in shape the edible
animals or plants that the natives desire to increase. We
shall see presently that the Mclaiicsians similarly attribute
fertilising virtues to stones, of certain shapes.* Meantime it
' Spencer and (.'.iUen, N,itiTc Tribes ' Si)cnccr and Gillen, Northern
of Central Austra/ia, pp. 1S5 st/. 'J'riJu-s of Central Australia, pp. 309
- Spencer and Oillen, Northern sg.
Tribes of Central Australia,'^. 310. * See below, pp. 162-164.
90 SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap.
Use of deserves to be noticed that in some of these Australian rites
human f^^ ^^ multiplication of the totemic animals the blood of the
biood in ^
these cere- men of the totem plays an important part. Similarly in a
monies. ceremony performed by men of the Dieri tribe for the multi-
plication of carpet-snakes and iguanas the performers wound
themselves and the blood that drips from their wounds is
poured on a sandhill in which a mythical ancestor is believed
to be buried and from which carpet-snakes and iguanas are
confidently expected to swarm forth.^ Again, when the
headman of the fish totem in the Wonkgongaru tribe desires
to make fish plentiful, he paints himself all over with red
ochre, and, taking little pointed bones, goes into a pool.
There he pierces his scrotum and the skin around the navel
with the bones, and sits down in the water. The blood
from the wounds, as it mingles with the water, is supposed
to give rise to fish.^ In all these cases clearly a fertilising
virtue is ascribed to human blood. The ascription is interest-
ing and may possibly go some way to explain the widely-
spread custom of voluntary wounds and mutilations in religious
or magical rites. It may therefore be worth while, even at
the cost of a digression, to enquire a little more closely
into the custom as it is practised by the rude savages
of Australia.^
Blood In the first place, then, the Dieri custom of pouring blood
SograTes. o^er the supposed remains of the ancestor in his sandhill
closely resembles the custom observed by some of the Aus-
tralian aborigines at the graves of their relatives. Thus among
the tribes on the River Darling several men used to stand by
the open grave and cut each other's heads with a boomerang,
and then hold their bleeding heads over the grave so that
the blood dripped on the corpse at the bottom of it. If the
deceased was highly esteemed, the bleeding was repeated
after some earth had been thrown on the corpse.* Among
1 A. W. Hewitt, Native Tribes of 1 904, pp. 204 sqq. ; Totemism and
Sau(/!-£ast Austraiia {Loadoa, 1904), Exogamy, iv. 181-184.
p. 798. ^ F. Bonney, "On some Customs
* Spencer and Gillen, Northern of the Aborigines of the River Darling,
Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 287 New South Wales," Journal of the
sq. Anthropological Institute, xiii. (1884)
^ With what follows compare my pp. 134 J?. Compare J. Fraser, " The
article " The Origin of Circumcision," Aborigines of New South Wales,"
The Independent Review, November Journal and Proceedings of the Royal
ni HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 91
the Arunta it is customary for the women kinsfolk to cut
themselves at the grave so that blood flows upon it.^ Again,
at the Vasse River, in Western Australia, before the body
was lowered into the grave, the iiatives used to gash their
thighs, and at the flowing of the blood they all said, " I
have brought blood," and they stamped the foot forcibly on
the ground, sprinkling the blood around them ; then wiping
the wounds with a wisp of leaves, they threw it, all
bloody, on the dead man. After that they let the body
down into the grave.^ Further, it is a common practice with Biood
the Central Australians to give human blood to the sick f^e'^sick
and aged for the purpose of strengthening them ; and in and aged
order that the blood may have this effect it need not always
be drunk by the infirm person, it is enough to sprinkle it on
his body. For example, a young man will often open a
vein in his arm and let the blood trickle over the body of
an older man in order to strengthen his aged friend ; and
sometimes the old man will drink a little of the blood.* So
in illness the blood is sometimes applied outwardly as well
as inwardly, the patient both drinking it and having it
rubbed over his body ; sometimes apparently he only drinks
it The blood is drawn from a man or woman who is
related to the sufferer either by blood or marriage, and the
notion always is to convey to the sick person some of the
strength of the blood-giver.* In the Wiimbaio tribe, if a
man had nearly killed his wife in a paroxysm of rage, the
woman was laid out on the ground, and the husband's arms
being tightly bound above the elbows, the medicine-man
opened the veins in them and allowed the blood to flow on
the prostrate body of the victim till the man grew faint'
The intention of thus bleeding the man over the woman
Society of Nero South IVa/es, xvi. t'l/., Morthern Tribes of Central Aus-
(18S2) pp. 229, 231 ; A. W. Howitt, tralia, p. 598.
Native Tribes ofSouth-East Australia, * Spencer and Gillcn, Native Tribes
pp. 451, 465. of Central Australia, p. 464; id.,
' Spencer .ind Gillen, Native Tribes Northern Tribes of Central Australia,
tf Central Australia, pp. 507, 509 sq. pp. 599 sqq. ; W. E. Roth, Ethnologi-
' Mr. Bussel in Sir G. Gxtf?,Jour- cal Studies, p. 162, § 283. In North-
»iaii of Two Expeditions of Discovery Western Queensland tlie blood may be
in North- West and Wf stern Australia drawn for this purpose from any healthy
(London, 1841), ii. 330. man, not necessarily from a kinsman.
' Spencer and Gillcn, Native Tribes • A. W. Howitt, Native Tribes of
tf Central Australia, pp. 382, 461 ; Souih-East Australia, p. 380.
92
S YMPA THE TIC MA GIC chap.
was apparently to restore her to life by means of the blood
B:=od used drawn from her assailant. Again, before an avenging party
'*-'" "°. starts to take the life of a distant enemy, all the men stand
avenging
party. up. Open veins in their genital organs with sharp flints or
pointed sticks, and allow the blood to spurtlc over each
other's thighs. This ceremony is supposed to strengthen
the men mutually, and also to knit them so closely together
that treachery henceforth becomes impossible. Sometimes
for the same purpose blood is drawn from the arm and
drunk by the men of the avenging party, and if one of them
refuses thus to pledge himself the others will force his mouth
open and pour the blood into it. After that, even if he
wishes to play the traitor and to give the doomed man
warning, he cannot do so ; he is bound by a physical
necessity to side with the avengers whose blood he has
swallowed.^
B:>3d of Further, it is worth while to notice some uses made of
circum- human blood in connexion with the ceremonies of circum-
and sub- cision and subincision, which all lads of the Central Australian
mcision ; j-j-j^es have to undergo before they are recognised as full-
i:ss5 made ^ ./ o
jfr_ grown men. For example, the blood drawn from them at
these operations is caught in a hollow shield and taken to
certain kinsmen or kinswomen, who drink it or have it
smeared on their breasts and foreheads.^ The motive of
this practice is not mentioned, but on the analogy of the
preceding customs we may conjecture that it is to strengthen
the relatives who partake of the blood. This interpretation
is confirmed by an analogous use in Queensland of the
blood drawn from a woman at the operation which in the
female sex corresponds to subincision in the male ; for that
blood, mixed with another ingredient, is kept and drunk as
a medicine by any sick person who may be in the camp at
the time.'* Moreover, it is corroborated by a similar use
of the foreskin which has been removed at circumcision ; for
among the southern Arunta this piece of skin is given to
the younger brother of^the circumcised lad and he swallows
• Spencer and GiUen, jA'aZ/TO Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 251, 463;
of Central Australia, pp. 461 sq. ; id., id.. Northern Tribes of Central Aus-
Xort'mm Tribes of Central Australia, tralia, pp. 352, 355.
pp. 560, 562, 59S. 2 W. E. Roth, Ethwlogi-cal Studies,
^ Spencer and Gillen, A'(z//w Tribes p. 174. § 305.
Ill HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 93
it, in the belief that it will make him grow strong and tall/
In the tribe at Fowler's Bay, who practise both circumcision
and subincision, the severed foreskin is swallowed by the
operator,^ perhaps in order to strengthen the lad sympatheti-
cally. In some tribes of North- West Australia it is the lad
himself who swallows his own foreskin mixed with kangaroo
flesh ; while in other tribes of the same region the severed
portion is taken by the relations and deposited under the
bark of a large tree.^ The possible significance of this latter
treatment, of the foreskin will appear presently. Among
the Kolkodoons of Cloniny, in Northern Queensland,
the foreskin is strung on twine made of human hair,
and is then tied round the mother's neck " to keep off
the devil." * In the Warramunga tribe the old men draw
blood from their own subincised urethras in presence of the
lads who a few days before have undergone the operation
of subincision. The object of this custom, we are told, is
to promote the healing of the young men's wounds and to
strengthen them generally.^ It does not appear that the
blood of the old men is drunk by or smeared upon the
youths ; seemingly it is supposed to benefit them sympa-
thetically without direct contact. A similar action of blood Anodynes
at a distance may partly explain a very singular custom j^e prin-
observed by the Arunta women at the moment when a lad c'P'e "f
. , . .... rr^, . . c 1 J* homoeo-
is bemg submcised. The operation is periormed at a dis- pathic
tance from, but within hearing of, the women's camp. When magic.
the boy is seized in order to be operated on, the men of the
' Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes his nrck till the wound has healed,
of Central Australia, pp. 250 sq. when he throws it into the fire. See
.\mong the northern Arunta tlie fore- H. B;i.scdow, Anthropological Notes on
skin is buried, along with the blood, the Western Coastal Tribes of the
m a hole [ib. p. 26S). Northern Territory of South Australia,
' A. W. Howitt, Native Trilies of p. 12 (printed by Hussey and Gilling-
South-East Australia, p. 667. ham, Adelaide).
' E. Clement, " Ethnographical * B. II. Purcell, " Rites and Cus-
Kotes on the Western Australian toms of the Australian Aborigines,"
Aborigines," Internationales Anhiv Verhaudlungender Berliner Gesellschaft
fur Ethnografhie, xvi. (1904) p. II. fiir Anlhropologie,-p. (287) (Zeitschrift
Among the western coastal tribes of filr Etlmolo^e, xxv. 1893). Cloniny
the Northern Territory of South Aus- is iiorh.ips a misprint for Cloncurry.
Iralia the foreskin is held against the ' Spencer and Gillen, Northern
bellies of those who have been present Tribes if Central Australia, pp. 360
at the operation, then it is placed in a sq., 599. Compare id., Native Tribes
bag which the operator wears roim<l of Cenlral Australia, p. ■257.
94 ^ YMPA THE TIC MA GIC chap.
party raise a loud shout of " Pirr-rr." At that sound the
women immediately assemble in their camp, and the boy's
mother cuts gashes across the stomach and shoulders of the
boy's sisters, her own elder sisters, an old woman who
furnished the boy with a sacred fire at circumcision, and all
the women whose daughters he would be allowed to marry ;
and while she cuts she imitates the sound made by the men
who are subincising her son. These cuts generally leave
behind them a definite series of scars ; they have a name of
their own {urpind), and are often represented by definite
lines on the bull-roarers.^ What the exact meaning of this
extraordinary ceremony may be, I cannot say ; but perhaps
one of its supposed effects may be to relieve the boy's pain
by transferring it to his women-kind. In like manner,
when the Warramunga men are fighting each other with
blazing torches, the women burn themselves with lighted
twigs in the belief that by so doing they prevent the men
from inflicting serious injuries on each other.^ The theory
further receives some support from certain practices formerly
observed by the natives inhabiting the coast of New South
Wales. Before lads had their noses bored, the medicine men
threw themselves into contortions on the ground, and after
pretending to suffer great pain were delivered of bones, which
were to be used at the ceremony of nose-boring. The lads
were told that the more the medicine men suffered, the less
pain they themselves would feel.' Again, among the same
natives, when a woman was in labour, a female friend would
tie one end of a cord round the sufferer's neck and rub her
own gums with the other end till they bled,* probably in
order to draw away the pain from the mother to herself.
For a similar reason, perhaps, in Samoa, while blood was
being drawn from a virgin bride, her friends, young and old,
beat their heads with stones till they bled.^
Lastly, in some tribes the blood shed at the circumcision
' Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes * D. Collins, ofi. cit. p. 363.
cf Central Australia, pp. 2^6 sq. ' G. Turner, Samoa, p. 94; com-
- Spencer and Gillen, Northern pare W. T. Pritchard, " Notes on
Tribes of Central Australia, -p. ■^<)l . certain Anthropological Matters re-
5 Lieut. -Colonel D. Collins, Account specting the South Sea Islanders (the
ef the English Colony in New South Samoans)," Memoirs of the Anthropo-
/fa.ij. Second Edition (London, 1804), logical Society of London, i. (1863-4)1
p. 366. pp. 324-326.
Ill HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 95
and subincision of lads is collected in paper bark and buried Fertilising
in the bank of a pool where water-lilies grow ; this is sup- ^'rito^d
posed to promote the growth of the lilies.^ Needless to say, to blood
this rude attempt at horticulture is not prompted by a °[^,"J,™^^
simple delight in contemplating these beautiful bright blue sub-
flowers which bloom in the Australian wilderness, decking '"^'^'°"-
the surface of pools by countless thousands. The savages feed
on the stems and roots of the lilies ; that is why they desire
to cultivate them.^ In this last practice a fertilising virtue Fertilising
is clearly attributed to the blood of circumcision and sub- ^urituted
incision. The Anula tribe, who among others observe the to foreskin
custom, obviously ascribe the same virtue to the severed
foreskin, for they bury it also by the side of a pool.' The
Warramunga entertain the same opinion of this part of the
person, for they place the foreskin in a hole made by a
witchetty grub in a tree, believing that it will cause a plenti-
ful supply of these edible grubs.* Among the Unmatjera
the custom is somewhat different, but taken in connexion
with their traditions it is even more significant. The boy
puts his severed foreskin on a shield, covers it up with a
broad spear-thrower, and then carries it in the darkness of
night, lest any woman should see what he is doing, to a
hollow tree in which he deposits it. He tells no one where
he has hidden it, except a man who stands to him in the
relation of father's sister's son. Nowadays there is no
special relation between the boy and the tree, but formerly
the case seems to have been different. For according to
' Spencer and Gillen, Northern < Spencer and Gillen, Northern
Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 367, Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 353
368, 599. ■??• Some of the dwarf tribes of the
* Spencer and Gillen, Northern Gaboon, who practise circumcision.
Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 9, place the severed foreskins in the trunks
368, 552, 553, 554 sg. See further of a species of nut-tree (ICula edulis),
E. Palmer, " On Plants used by the which seems to be their totem ; for the
Natives of North Queensland, "yOT<r«<z/ tree is said to have a certain sanctity
and Proceedings of the Royal Society of for them, and some groups take their
New South Wales for i88j, xvii. loi. name from it, being called A-Kula,
The seeds of the splendid pink water- " the people of the nut-tree." They
lily (the sacred lotus) are also eaten by eat the nuts, and have a special cere-
the natives of North Queensland. The mony at the gathering of the first
plant grows in lagoons on the coast. nuts of the season. See Mgr. Le
See E. Palmer, loc. cit. Roy, " Les Pygmees," Missions Catho-
' Spencer and Gillen, Northern liques, xxix. (1897) pp. 222 sq..
Tribes of Central Australia, ^. 372. 237.
96
SYMPATHETIC MAGIC
Belief of
the Central
Australian
tribes in the
reincarna-
tion of the
dead.
Circum-
cision
perhaps
intended
to ensure
reincarna-
tion.
tradition the early mythical ancestors of the tribe placed
their foreskins in their nanja trees, that is, in their local totem
centres, the trees from which their spirits came forth at birth
and to which "they would return after death.^ If, as seems
highly probable, such a custom as that recorded by the
tradition ever prevailed, its intention could hardly be any
other than that of securing the future birth and reincarnation
of the owner of the foreskin when he should have died and
his spirit returned to its abode in the tree. For among all
these Central tribes the belief is firmly rooted that the
human soul undergoes an endless series of reincarnations,
the living men and women of one generation being nothing
but the spirits of their ancestors come to life again, and
destined to be themselves reborn in the persons of their
descendants. During the interval between two incarnations
the souls live in their nanja spots or local totem centres,
which are always natural objects such as trees or rocks.
Each totem clan has a number of such totem centres
scattered over the country. There the souls of the dead
men and women of the totem, but of no other, congre-
gate during their disembodied state, and thence they issue
and are born again in human form when a favourable oppor-
tunity presents itself.^ It might well be thought that a
man's new birth would be facilitated if, in his lifetime, he
could lay up a stock of vital energy for the use of his dis-
embodied spirit after death. That he did, apparently, by
detaching a portion of himself, namely the foreskin, and
depositing it in his nanja tree, or rock, or whatever it
might be.
Is it possible that in this belief and this practice we
have the long lost key to the meaning of circumcision?
In otiier words, can it be that circumcision was originally
intended to ensure the rebirth at some future time of the
circumcised man by disposing of the severed portion of his
body in such a way as to 'provide him with a stock of energy
on which his disembodied spirit could draw when the critical
moment of reincarnation came round ? The conjecture is
confirmed by the observation that among the Akikuyu of
1 Spencer and Gillen, Northern ^ Spencer and Gillen, Native Triba
Tribes of Central Australia, p. 341. of Central Australia, pp. 123 sqq.
m HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 97
British East Africa the ceremony of circumcision used to
be regularly combined with a graphic pretence of rebirth
enacted by the novice.^ If this should prove to be indeed
the clue* to the meaning of circumcision, it would be
natural to look for an explanation of subincision along Subincision
the same lines. Now we have seen that the blood ofP?^'*''''
also
subincision is used both to strengthen relatives and to designed
make water-lilies grow. Hence we may conjecture that Jebirth'^^
the strengthening and fertilising virtue of the blood was
applied, like the foreskin at circumcision, to lay up a store
of energy in the nanja spot against the time when the man's
feeble ghost would need it. The intention of both ceremonies
would thus be to ensure the future reincarnation of the in-
dividual by quickening the local totem centre, the home of
his disembodied spirit, with a vital portion of himself That
portion, whether the foreskin or the blood, was in a manner
seed sown to grow up and provide his immortal spirit with a
new body when his old body should have mouldered in the
dust.
Perhaps the same theory may serve to explain another Knocking
initiatory rite practised by some of the Australian aborigines, °nA^tSia
namely, the knocking out of teeth. This is the principal perhaps
ceremony of initiation amongst the tribes of eastern and south- for^the
eastern Australia ; and it is often practised, though not as an same
initiatory rite, by the Central tribes, with whom the essen- p""^"^*'
tial rites of initiation are circumcision and subincision.^
On the hypothesis here suggested, we should expect to find
the tooth regarded as a vital part of the man which was
sacrificed to ensure another life for him after death. The
durability of the teeth, compared to the corruptible nature
of the greater part of the body, might be a sufficient reason
with a savage philosopher for choosing this portion of the
corporeal frame on which to pin his hope of immortality.
The evidence at our disposal certainly does not suffice to
establish this explanation of the rite ; but there are some
facts which seem to point in that direction. In the first
' See above, pp. 75-77. 655 sq., 675 sq. ; Spencer and Gillen,
* A. W. Howitt, Native Tribes of Native Tribes of Central Australia,
South-Easi Australia, pp. 538 sqq., pp. 213 sq., 450 sqq. ; id.. Northern
5*3i 564. 565, 566, 569, 571, 576, Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 18,
5861^., 588, 589, 592, 613, 616, 641, 329, 588 sqq.
VOU I H
98 SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap,
place, the extracted tooth is supposed to remain in sym-
pathetic connexion with the man from whom it has been
removed ; and if proper care is not taken of it, he may-
fall ill.' With some Victorian tribes the practice was for
the mother of the lad to choose a young gum-tree and to
insert her son's teeth in the bark, at the fork of two of the
topmost boughs. Ever afterwards the tree was held in a
sense sacred. It was made known only to certain persons
of the tribe, and the youth himself was never allowed to
learn where his teeth had been deposited. When he died,
the tree was killed by fire.'' Thus in a fashion the tree
might be said to be bound up with the life of the man
whose teeth it contained, since when he died it was de-
stroyed. Further, among some of the Central tribes the
extracted tooth is thrown away as far as possible in the
direction of the spot where the man's mother is supposed
to have had her camp in the far-off legendary time
which is known as the alcheringa? May not this be done
to secure the rebirth of the man's spirit in that place ?
In the Gnanji tribe the extracted tooth is buried by
the man's or woman's mother beside a pool, for the
purpose of stopping the rain and increasing the number
of water-lilies that grow in the pool.* Thus the same
fertilising virtue is ascribed to the tooth which is attributed
to the foreskin severed at circumcision and to the blood
Extraction drawn at subincision. Why the drawing of teeth should
'^ "^^ ^ supposed to stop rain, I cannot guess. Curiously enough,
with rain, among the Central tribes generally, the extraction of teeth
has a special association with rain and water. Thus
among the Arunta it is practised chiefly by the members
of the rain or water totem ; and it is nearly if not quite
obligatory on all the men and women of that totem, whereas
it is merely optional with members of the other clans.
Further, the ceremony is always performed among the
1 See below, pp. 176 sq. Native Tribes of Central Australia,
' W. Blandowski, " Personal Obser- pp. 453 sg.
rations made in an Excursion towards. , „ , „.,, ,, .. ^ ...
u ^ . I Tj I f ir- . ■ » V opencer and Gillen, Native Jnm
the Central Farts of Victoria," Trans- /• ^ T , ^ . ,■
^. J- ., „, ., ,,■ , f ■ . r of Central Australia, pp. 452 sq.
actions of the Fntlosophual Society of ■' > 1 1 tj 2
Victoria, i. (Melbourne, 1855) p. 72. * Spencer and Gillen, Northern
Compare R. Brough Smyth, Aborigines Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 594i
of Victoria, i. 6 1 ; Spencer and Gillen, 596,.
m HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 99
Arunta immediately after the magical ceremony for the
making of rain.^ In the Warramunga tribe the knocking
out of the teeth generally takes place towards the end of
the wet season, when the water -holes are full, and the
natives do not wish any more rain to fall. Moreover, it
is always performed on the banks of a water-hole. The
persons to be operated on enter the pool, fill their mouths
with water, spit it out in all directions, and splash the water
over themselves, taking care to wet thoroughly the crown
of the head. Immediately afterwards the tooth is knocked
out. The Chingilli also knock out teeth towards the close
of the wet season, when they think they have had enough
of rain. The extracted tooth is thrown into a water-hole,
in the belief that it will drive rain and clouds away.^ I
merely note, without attempting to account for, this associa-
tion between the extraction of teeth and the stopping of
rain.
The natives of the Cape York Peninsula in Queensland Extraction
use the extraction of the tooth to determine both a man's °^^^
totem and the country to which he belongs. While the determine
tooth is being knocked out, they mention the various coimby
districts owned or frequented by the lad's mother, her and totem
father, or other of her relatives. The one which happens
to be mentioned at the moment when the tooth breaks
away is the country to which the lad belongs in future,
that is, the country where he will have the right to hunt
and to gather roots and fruits. Further, the bloody spittle
which he ejects after the extraction of the tooth is examined
by the old men, who trace some likeness between it and
a natural object, such as an animal, a plant, or a stone.
Henceforth that object will be the young man's ari or
totem.* Some light is thrown on this ceremony by a
parallel custom which the natives of the Pennefather River
in Queensland observe at the birth of a child. They
believe that every person's spirit undergoes a series of
reincarnations, and that during the interval between two
' Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes ' A. C. Haddon, Head-hunters, p.
(f Central Australia, '^. ii^l. 193 5 Reports of the Cambridge Anthro-
' Spencer and Gillen, jVi»-/^er»7V«i5« fological Expedition to Torres Straits,
<!f Central Australia, pp. 592-594. v. 193, 221.
loo SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap.
Be.ief in re- successivc reincarnations the spirit stays in one or other
incarnation gf j-jjg haunts of Anjca, the being who causes conception
among the . ^ , , . . , . , _ _
natives of in womcn by putting mud babies into their wombs. Hence,
';°^ P!"."'=- in order to determine where the new baby's spirit resided
in Queens- since it was last in the flesh, they mention Anjea s haunts
"^'^ one after the other while the grandmother is cutting the
child's navel-string ; and the place which happens to be
mentioned when the navel-string breaks is the spot where
the spirit lodged since its last incarnation. That is the
country to which the child belongs ; there he will have
the right of hunting when he grows up. Hence, according
to the home from which its spirit came to dwell among
men, a child may be known as a baby obtained from a
tree, a rock, or a pool of fresh water. Anjea, with whom
the souls of the dead live till their time comes to be born
again, is never seen ; but you may hear him laughing in
the depths of the woods, among the rocks, down in the
lagoons, and along the mangrove swamps.^ Hence we may
fairly infer that the country assigned to a man of the Cape
York Peninsula at the extraction of his tooth is the one
where his spirit tarried during the interval which elapsed
since its last incarnation. His totem, which is determined
at the same time, may possibly be the animal, plant, or other
natural object in which his spirit resided since its last embodi-
ment in human form, or perhaps rather in which a part of his
spirit may be supposed to lodge outside of his body during life.
The latter view is favoured by the belief of the tribe of the
Pennefather River, whose practice at childbirth so closely
resembles that of the Cape York natives at puberty ; for
the Pennefather people hold that during a man's life a
portion of his spirit lodges outside of his body in his after-
birth.^ However that may be, it seems probable that
among the Cape York natives the custom of knocking out
the tooth is closely associated with a theory of reincarna-
1 W. E. Roth, N'orth Queensland 326. In Samoa, a child sometimes
Ethnography, Bulletin No. 5 (Bris- received as his god for life the deity
bane, 1903), pp. 18, 23, §§ 68, 83. who chanced to be invoked at the
We are reminded of the old Greek moment of his birth, whether that
saying to be born "of an oak or a was his father's or his mother's god.
rock" (Homer, Odyssey, xix. 163). See G. Turner, Samoa, p. 79.
See A. B. Cook, "Oak and Rock,"
Cia-ssUal Review, xv. {1901) pp. 322- " See below, pp. 183 sq.
in HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC loi
tion. Perhaps the same theory explains a privilege enjoyed
by the Kamilaroi trbe of New South Wales. They claimed
a superiority over the surrounding tribes, and enforced their
claim by exacting from them the teeth knocked out at
puberty. The exaction of this tribute might have passed
for a mere assertion of suzerainty, were it not that the
Kamilaroi knocked out their own teeth also.^ Perhaps the
extracted teeth were believed to secure to their present
possessors a magical control over their for;ner owners, not
only during life but after death, so that armed with them
the Kamilaroi could help or hinder the rebirth of their
departed friends or enemies.^
Thus, if I am right, the essential feature in all the three Australian
great initiatory rites of the Australians is the removal of'""'^'°'^' ,
a vital part of the person which shall serve as a link be- to secure
tween two successive incarnations by preparing for the'^^'^"^
novice a new body to house his spirit when its present
tabernacle shall have been worn out. Now, if there is any Certain
truth in this suggestion, we should expect to find thatrit^''^^^
measures to ensure reincarnation are also taken at death intended
and. burial. This seems in fact to be done. For, in the 'dnc^na-
first place, the practice of pouring the blood of kinsmen t'o"-
and kinswomen into the grave is obviously susceptible of
this explanation, since, in accordance with the Australian
usages which I have cited, the blood might well be thought
' Lieut.-Colonel D. Collins, Account of Ezekiel (xxxii. 18-32) as contrasting
of the English Colony of New South the happy lot of the circumcised warrior
WaUi, Second Edition (London, 1804), in the under world with the misery of
PP- 353. 372 ^qq- The Cammeray of his uncircumcised foe in the same
whom Collins speaks are no doubt the place, and confesses himself unable to
tribe now better known as the Kamil- see why circumcision should be thought
aroL Carrahdy, which he gives as the to benefit the dead. See H. Gunkel,
native name for a high-priest, is clearly " Uber die Beschneidung im alten
the Kamilaroi kuradyi, "medicine- Testament," Archiv fur Papyrusfor-
man" (W. Ridley, Kamilaroi and schung, ii. (1903) p. 21. (Prof. Gun-
other Australian Languages, Sydney, kel's paper was pointed out to me by my
1875, p. 158). friend Mr. W. Wyse.) The benefit, on
* If the possession of the foreskin the theory here suggested, was very sub-
conferred on the possessor a like power stantial, since it allowed the dead to
over the person to whom it had be- come to life again, the grave being a
longed, we can readily understand why bourne from which only uncircumcised
the Israelites coveted the foreskins of travellers fail, sooner or later, to return,
their enemies the Philistines (i Samuel But I confess that Prof. Gunkel's
"iii. 25-27, 2 Samuel iii. 14). Pro- explanation of the passage seems to
fessor H. Gunkel interprets a passage me rather far-fetched.
I02 SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap.
Austiaiian to Strengthen the feeble ghost for a new birth. The same
f^':°^^^ . may be said of the Australian custom of depositing hair
intended to With the dead, for it is a common notion that the hair is
^^°f^ the ^jjg gg^j. Qf strength.^ Again, it has been a rule with some
tkm of the Australian tribes to bury their dead on the spot where they
~^^ were born.' This was very natural if they desired the dead
man to be born again. Further, the common Australian
practice of depositing the dead in trees * may, in some
cases at least, have been designed to facilitate rebirth ; for
trees are often the places in which the souls of the dead
reside, and from which they come forth to be born again
in human shape. Thus the Unmatjera and Kaitish tribes
bury very aged women and decrepit old men in the
ground ; but the bodies of children, young women, and men
in the prime of life are laid on platforms among the boughs
of trees ; and in regard to children we are definitely told
that this is done in the hope that " before very long its
spirit may come back again and enter the body of a
woman — in all probability that of its former mother."*
Further, the Arunta, who bury their dead, are careful to
leave a low depression on one side of the mound, in order
that the spirit may pass out and in ; and this depression
always faces towards the dead man's or woman's camping-
ground in the alcluringa or remote past, that is, the spot
which he or she inhabited in spirit form.* Is not this done
to let the spirit rid itself of its decaying tabernacle and
repair to the place where in due time it will find a new
and better body ? In this connexion the final burial rites in
the Binbinga, Anula, and Mara tribes are worthy of remark.
Among these people the bones of the dead are, after a series
of ceremonies, deposited in a hollow log, on which the dead
man's totem is painted. This log is then placed, with the
' G. Grey, Journals of Two Ex/iedi- sq. ; J. Mathew, Eaglehawk and Crtnv,
tiom of Discovery, ii. 335. p. 122; Spencer and Gillen, Nativi
* See above, pp. 2S sqq. Tribes of Central Australia, p. 498 J
' J. Dawson, Australian Aborigines, id.. Northern Tribes of Central Aus-
p. 62 ; J. F. Mann, in Proceedings of tralia, pp. 505 sqq.
ihi Giograpkica! Society of Australia, ' Spencer and Gillen, Northern
L (1S85) p. 48. Tribes of Central Australia, p. 506.
' E.J. "E-yte, Journals of Expeditions * Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes
of Discovery into Central Australia of Central Australia, p. j^^T. Compare
(London, 1S45). ii. 345 sq. ; W. E. id., Northern Tribes of Central Aus-
Roth, Ethnological Studies, pp. 165 tralia, p. 506.
Ill HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 103
bones, in the boughs of a tree beside a pool, so that if possible
it overhangs the water. For about three wet seasons the
father and son of the deceased, who placed the log there, are
alone allowed to eat water-lilies out of that pool, and no
woman is permitted to go near the spot. There the bones
of the dead man remain till the log rots and they fall into
the water or are carried away by a flood. When the burial
rites are all over, the spirit of the deceased returns to its
mungai spot, that is, to the place where it dwells in the
interval between two successive incarnations. Sooner or
later it will be born again.^ These rites seem, therefore,
clearly to be a preparation for the new birth.
As the belief in reincarnation is shared by many Belief in
peoples besides the Australians, it is natural to suppose [f^""^™'
that funeral rites intended to facilitate the rebirth of the measures
deceased may be found in other parts of the world, jg^^^e j^
Elsewhere I have cited examples of these rites : ^ here I among
will add a few more. It is especially the bodies of dead peoples,
infants which are the object of such ceremonies ; for since
their lives have been cut prematurely short, it seems reason-
able to give their souls a chance of beginning again and
lengthening out their existence on earth to its natural close.
But it is not always dead babies only whom the living seek
thus to bring back to life. For example, we read that round Reincarna-
about Mount Elgon in East Africa " the custom of throwing fi,°V™°bu
out the dead is universal among all the clans of Bagishu, of Mount
except in the case of the youngest child or the old grand- ^°°'
father or grandmother, for whom, like the child, a prolonged
life on earth is desired. . . . When it is desired to per-
petuate on the earth the life of some old man or woman, or
that of some young baby, the corpse is buried inside the
house or just under the eaves, until another child is born
to the nearest relation of the corpse. This child, male or
female, takes the name of the corpse, and the Bagishu firmly
believe that the spirit of the dead has passed into this new
child and lives again on earth. The remains are then dug
up and thrown out into the open." * Similarly among the
■ Spencer and Gillen,iVi7ffA«r«7'n*«j Edition (1907), PP- 77 ^??-
of Central Australia, pp. 552 sqq. ^ J. B. Purvis, Through Uganda to
■^ Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Second Mount Elgoni^onion,l9og),-p^.Z02sq.
Lower
Con?o.
104 SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap.
Reincarna- tribes of the Lower Congo " a baby is always buried near
the°rttes°° ^^ house of its mother, never in the bush. They think
of the that, if the child is not buried near its mother's house, she
will be unlucky and never have any more children. It is
believed that the only new thing about a child is its body.
The spirit is old and formerly belonged to some deceased
person, or it may have the spirit of some living person.
They have two reasons for believing this. The child speaks
early of strange things the mother has never taught it, so
that they believe the old spirit is talking in the child. Again,
if the child is like its mother, father, or uncle, they think it
has the spirit of the person it resembles, and that that person
will soon die. Hence a parent will resent it if you say that
the baby is like him or her." ^ Thus it appears that the
argument for the pre-existence of the human soul, which
Plato and Wordsworth ^ drew from reminiscence, is fully
Reincarna- accepted by some negro tribes of West Africa. In the
India. Bilaspore district of India "a still-born child, or one who
has passed away before the Chhatti (the sixth day, the day
of purification) is not taken out of the house for burial, but
is placed in an earthen vessel (a ghara) and is buried in the
doorway or in the yard of the house. Some say that this
is done in order that the mother may bear another child." '
It is said that among the Kondhs of India, on the day after
a death, some boiled rice and a small fowl are taken to the
place where the body was burned ; there the fowl is split
down the breast and placed on the spot, after which it is
eaten and the soul of the departed is invited to enter a new-
born child.^ On the fifth day after a death the Gonds
perform the ceremony of bringing back the soul. They go
to the riverside and call aloud the name of the deceased.
' J. H. Weeks, " Notes on some t) >fivx'>\ '"'pit' i" ri^de rip &v6ptiyirlvif elSei
Customs of the Lower Congo People," yevia-dcu- wcrre Kal rair-g adivarbv n
Folk-lore, xix. (1908) p. 422. ioiKa> ij \fivxh ^T-vai- Compare Words-
- PJato, Phaedo, 18, p. 72 E Kal worth. Ode on Intimations of Im-
IL^r, iipTj E^(3i)s ujroXa/Siiy, Kal Kar mortality:
ite'tpm ye rbv Xiyo;/, S Scixpares, d Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting.
dXiiB-qs 4cTTLVj bv ai etco&as dafid, \^7etf,
Srt rnHf T] fiddrjiTLs o6k dXXo n fj i,v6.- 3 E. M. Gordon, Indian Folk-tales
fivrifft! Tvyxafei^ o5(7o, Kal Kari. tovtov (London, 1908), p. 49.
ajfayKri ttov i]fJLas iv Trpor^pif rivi "jQifiVi^
iuimirfKevai. S. rvv dvafufwria-KdneBa. * E. Thurston, Castes and Tribes of
toCto 5e ahvvarovy el fjiij ^v ttov Jifiuv^ Southern India^ iii. 39^*
m HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 105
Then they enter the river, catch a fish or an insect, and
taking it home place it among the sainted dead of the
family, believing that the spirit of their lost one has thus
been brought back to the house. Sometimes the fish or
insect is eaten in order that the spirit which it contains may
be born again as a child.^ When a baby died within a Reincama-
month or two of birth, the Hurons did not dispose of its ,'1,°"^^°^^
little body like those of grown people by depositing it on
a scaftbld ; they buried it beside the road in order, so they
said, that the child might enter secretly into the womb of
some woman passing by and be born again into the world.*^
Some of the ancient rules observed with regard to funerals Reincama-
in the Greek island of Ceos have been ingeniously ex- '1°" ^"'Of'g
•^ •' the ancient
plained by Mr. F. B. Jevons as designed to secure the re- Greeks.
birth of the departed in one of the women of the family.' The
widespread custom of burying the dead in the house was
perhaps instituted for the same purpose,* and the ancient
Greek practice of sacrificing to the dead man at the grave
on his birthday may possibly have originated in the same
train of thought.^ For example, sacrifices were annually
offered on their birthdays to Hippocrates by the Coans,
to Aratus by the Sicyonians, and to Epicurus by his
disciples.^
Now too we can fully understand the meaning of the Rites to
bloody ritual in the ceremonies for the multiplication of the fehjr"^^/'^
totem animals and plants. We have seen that a strengthen- edible
ing'and fertilising virtue is attributed to human blood. What anlTpiants.
' R. V. Russel, in Census of India, ' Herodotus, iv . 26 ; Hesychius, J.zi.
^90/, vol. sdii. Central Provinces, Vtviaio.; \m. Be\L\ier, Anecdota Craeca,
p. 93- i. pp- 86, 231; Isaetis, ii. 46; 7'Ae
* Relaiims desJisuUes, 1636, p. 130 Oxyrhynchus Papyri, ed. Grenfell and
(Canadi.-m Reprint). Hunt, part iil. (London, 1903), p. 203
' " Greek Law and Folklore," Clas- daxiav ^v Troii}o'oi'Tai TrXrialov roB Td^on
sicaj Seview, is.. (1S95) pp. 247-250. /iov Kar (tos t^ yeveBUif /iov f(p' <fi Siiireip
For the rales themselves see H. Roehl, dpyvplov dpaxfi&s iKarif. My attention
iHscriptiones Graicae Atitiquissimae, was called to this subject by iny friend
^°- 595 ; Dittenbeiger, Sylloge In- Mr. W. Wyse, who supplied me with
scriftitmum Grct^ariiin,^ No. 877; many of the Greek passages referred to,
Qu Michel, Jxaueii d' inscriptions including the one in the Oxyrhynchus
gruques. No. 39S. Papyri.
* This has been suggested by Mr.
J. E. King for infant burL-U {Classical ' Viiariim Striptores Graeci, ed. A.
Review, xvii. (1903) p. 83 sq.); but Westermann, p. 450; VXvX&xcii, Aratus,
»t need not confine the suggestion to 53 ; Diogenes Laertius, Vit. Philosoph.
fibe case of infants. x. 1 8.
106
5 YMPA THE TIC MA GIC
General
theory of
intufuuj^a
and
:a'"tiatory
rises in
Australia.
Cannibal-
tsm in
Australia.
more natural than that it should be poured out by the men
of the totem on the spot in which the disembodied spirits of
the totem animals or plants are waiting for reincarnation ?
Clearly the rite seems intended to enable these spirits to
take bodily shape and be born again, in order that they may
again serve as food, if not to the men of the totem clan, at
least to all the other members of the tribe. Later on we
shall find that the attempt to reincarnate the souls of dead
animals, in order that their bodies may be eaten over again,
is not peculiar to the Australian savages, but is practised
with many curious rites by peoples in other parts of the
world.
To sum up briefly the general theory to which the fore-
going facts have thus far led us, I would say that just as the
intichiuma rites of the Australians are, for the most part,
magical ceremonies intended to secure the refmbodiment of the
spirits of edible animals and plants, so their initiatory rites
may pei^haps be regarded as magical ceremonies designed
mainly to ensure the reincarnation of human souls. Now
the motive for procuring the rebirth of animals and plants is
simply the desire to eat them. May not this have been one
motive for attempting to resuscitate the human dead ? It
would seem so, for all the tribes on the Gulf of Carpentaria
who have been examined by Spencer and Gillen eat their
dead,^ and the ceremonies and traditions of the Arunta
indicate that their ancestors also ate the bodies of their
fellow tribesmen.^ In this respect the practice of the
Binbinga tribe is particularly instructive. For among them
the bodies of the dead are cut up and eaten, not by men
of the same tribal subclass as the deceased, but by men
belonging to the subclasses which compose the other inter-
marr}ing half of the tribe.* This is exactly analogous to
the practice which at present prevails as to the eating of the
totem animal or plant among all these central and northern
tribes. Among them each clan that has an edible animal
or plant for its totem is supposed to provide that animal or
• Spencer and Gillen, Northern
Tribes of CetUral Australia, pp. 547
sqq.
* Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes
0/ Central Australia, pp. 473-475-
' Spencer and Gillen, Northern
Tribes of Central Australia, j).
548.
Ill HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 107
plant for all the other clans to eat ; and similarly among
the Binbinga the men of any particular subclass do
actually provide their own bodies for the members of
the other intermarrying half of the tribe to devour.
And just as in the far past the members of a totem
clan appear to have subsisted regularly (though not
exclusively, and perhaps not even mainly) on their totem
animal or plant/ so at a remote time they seem regularly to
have eaten each other. Thus the Wild Dog clan of the
Arunta has many traditions that their ancestors killed and
ate Wild Dog men and women.^ Such traditions probably
preserve a true reminiscence of a state of things still more
savage than the present practice of the Binbinga. At that
more or less remote time, if we may trust the scattered hints
of custom and legend which are the only evidence we have
to go upon, the men and women of a totem clan, in defiance
of the customs of a later age, regularly cohabited with each
other,^ ate their totems, and devoured each other's dead
bodies. In such a state of things there was no sharp line
of distinction drawn, either in theory or in practice, between
a man and his totem ; and this confusion is again confirmed
by the legends, from which it is often difficult to make out
whether the totemic ancestor spoken of is a man or an
animal.* And if measures were taken to resuscitate both,
it may well have been primarily in order that both might be
eaten again. The system was thoroughly practical in its aim ; Australian
only the means it took to compass its ends were mistaken. It [j^f^'*"
was in no sense a religion, unless we are prepared to bestow religion,
the name of religion on the business of the grazier and the
market-gardener; for these savages certainly bred animals and
plants, and perhaps bred men, for much the same reasons that
a grazier and a market-gardener breed cattle and vegetables.
* Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes plants the names of which they bear
of Central Australia, pp. 207-211. that an Alcheringa man of, say, the
' Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes kangaroo totem may sometimes be
of Central Australia, pp. 434 sq., spoken of either as a man-kangaroo or
475- as a kangaroo-man. The identity of
* Spencer a:nd Gillen, Native Tribes the Iiuman individual is often sunk in
of Central Australia, pp. 418 sqq. that of the animal or plant from which
* " In the Alcheringa lived ancestors he is supposed to have originated"
who, in the native mind, are so inti- (Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes
mately associated with the animals or of Central Australia, p. 119).
loS SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap.
But whereas the methods of the grazier and market-gardener
rest upon the laws of nature, and therefore do really produce
the effects they aim at, the methods of these savages are
based on a mistaken conception of natural law, and therefore
totally fail to bring about the intended result. Only they
do not perceive their failure. Kindly nature, if we may per-
sonify her for a moment, draws a veil before their eyes, and
herself works behind the veil those wonders of reproduction
which the poor savage vainly fancies that he has wrought
P^«*<^' bv his magical ceremonies and incantations. In short,
ftinction of ' . . . 1-1
totemism totemism, as It exists at present among these tribes, appears
m Central j-q {jg mainly a crude, almost childlike attempt to satisfy the
Australia. -' ' ^ , ,
primary wants of man, especially under the hard conditions
to which he is subject in the deserts of Central Australia, by
magically creating everything that a savage stands in need
of, and food first of all. But to say so is not to afifirm that
this has been the purpose, and the only purpose, of Australian
totemism from the beginning. That beginning lies far behind
us in the past, and is therefore necessarily much more obscure
and uncertain than the function of totemism as a fully de-
veloped system, to which alone the preceding remarks are
applicable.
Our examination of the magical rites performed by the
Australians for the maintenance of the food supply has
led us into this digression. It is time to pass to ceremonies
practised for the same purpose and on the same principles
by peoples in other parts of the world.
Homoeo- The Indians of British Columbia live largely upon the
L.-^v^'J fish which abound in their seas and rivers. If the fish do
msgic in not come in due season, and the Indians are hungry, a
Xootka wizard will make an image of a swimming fish and
put it into the water in the direction from which the fish
generally appear. This ceremony, accompanied by a prayer
to the fish to come, will cause them to arrive at once.^
The islanders of Torres Straits use models of dugong and
turtles to charm dugong and turtle to their destruction,^
• Franz Boas, in Sixth Report on the the British Association for 1 890).
North- Westi-m Tribes of Canada, p. * A. C. Iladdon in Journal of the
45 (separate reprint from the Report of Anthropological Institute, xix. (1 890)
cshing aad ^,
hurtin?.
iir HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 109
The Toradjas of Central Celebes believe that things of the
same sort attract each other by means of their indwelling
spirits or vital ether. Hence they hang up the jawbones
of deer and wild pigs in their houses, in order that the
spirits which animate these bones may draw the living crea-
tures of the same kind into the path of the hunter.^ In
the island of Nias, when a wild pig has fallen into the
pit prepared for it, the animal is taken out and its back
is rubbed with nine fallen leaves, in the belief that this will
make nine more wild pigs fall into the pit, just as the nine
leaves fell from the tree.^ In the East Indian islands of
Saparoea, Haroekoe, and Noessa Laut, when a fisherman is
about to set a trap for fish in the sea, he looks out for a tree, of
which the fruit has been much pecked at by birds. From
such a tree he cuts a stout branch and makes of it the prin-
cipal post in his fish-trap ; for he believes that just as the tree
lured many birds to its fruit, so the branch cut from that
tree will lure many fish to the trap.*
The western tribes of British New Guinea employ a Homoeo-
charm to aid the hunter in spearing dugong or turtle. AP?'j.°g
small beetle, which haunts coco-nut trees, is placed in the magic in
hole of the spear-haft into which the spear-head fits. This hunting^'"'
is supposed to make the spear-head stick fast in the dugong
or turtle, just as the beetle sticks fast to a man's skin when
it bites him.* When a Cambodian hunter has set his nets and
p. 427; Reports of the Cambridge collectively. See Dr. N. Adriani, " Me-
Anihtepo'.ogical £xfedition to Torres dedeelingen omtrent de Toradjas van
S'ra/Vjf, V. 333, 33S. Midden- Celebes," Tijdschrift voor
' A. C. Kruyt, " Het koppen- Indische Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde,
Snellen der Toradja's," Verslagen en xliv. (1901) p. 221.
Med,d,ejinsen der konink Ak^emie , j ^ Thomas, "De jacht op het
van !l .te,,seAa/>pen m^elmg Letter- ^i,^„j ^ias," 7vdsc/iHft voor Indische
fcunde, IV Reeks, III. Deel(Amster- ^^^^. ^^^^. ^„ Volkmkunde, xxvi.
dam, I&99), pp. 203 sq. I follow the ^77
experienced Messrs. N. Adriani and ,' _ , .,
A. C. Kruiit (Kruyt) in calling the ^^" Schmid, " Aantcekeningcn
natives of Central Celebes by the name "°1'.^"« ^^ ^^'J^"' gewoonten en ge-
of Toradjas, though that name is not p™i'<en, benevens de vooroordeelen en
used bv the people themselves, but is bijgeloovigheden der bevolking van de
only applied to them in a derogatory e'landen Saparoea, Haroekoe, Noessa
sense bv the Buginese. It means no ^f'-''-,' Jijdschriftvoor NeMandsIndii,
more than '-inlanders." The people '*'43. dl. n. pp. 6oi sq.
are divided into a number of tribes, * B. A. Hely, " Notes on Totemism,
each with its own name, who speak etc., among the Western Tribes,"
for the most part one language but British Ne^v Guinea, Annual Report
have no common name for themselves for iSfJf-^J, p. 56.
no SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap.
Homoeo- taken nothing, he strips himself naked, goes some way off, then
i^°i °J strolls up to the net as if he did not see it, lets himself be
magic in caught in it, and cries, " Hillo ! what's this ? I'm afraid I'm
hnntifg^° caught." After that the net is sure to catch game.-' A
pantomime of the same sort has been acted within living
memory in our Scottish Highlands. The Rev. James Mac-
donald, now of Reay in Caithness, tells us that in his boy-
hood when he was fishing with companions about Loch
Aline and they had had no bites for a long time, they used
to make a pretence of throwing one of their fellows over-
board and hauling him out of the water, as if he were a
fish ; after that the trout or silloch would begin to nibble,
according as the boat was on fresh or salt water.^ Before
a Carrier Indian goes out to snare martens, he sleeps by
himself for about ten nights beside the fire with a little stick
pressed down on his neck. This naturally causes the fall-
stick of his trap to drop down on the neck of the marten.^
Among the Galelareese, who inhabit a district in the northern
part of Halmahera, a large island to the west of New Guinea,
it is a maxim that when you are loading your gun to go
out shooting, you should always put the bullet in your
mouth before you insert it in the gun ; for by so doing you
practically eat the game that is to be hit by the bullet,
which therefore cannot possibly miss the mark.* A Malay
who has baited a trap for crocodiles, and is awaiting results,
is careful in eating his curry always to begin by swallowing
three lumps of rice successively ; for this helps the bait to
slide more easily down the crocodile's throat. He is equally
scrupulous not to take any bones out of his curry ; for, if he
1 E. A)Tnonier, " Notes sur les * M. J. van Baarda, " Fabelen,
coutumes et croyances superstitieuses verhalen en overleveringen der Galel-
des Cambodgiens," Cochitichine fran- areezen," Bijdragen tot de Taal- Land-
false : excursions et reconnaissances, en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch
No. i6 (Saigon, 1883), p. 157. Indie, xlv. (1895) p. 502. As to the
- Tames Macdonald, Religion and district of Galela in Halmahera see G.
Mytk (London, 1893), p. 5. Lafond in Bulletin de la Sociiti de
2 A. G. Morice, "Notes, archaeo- Giographie (Paris), ii. s^rie, ix. (1838)
logic:.!, industrial, and sociological, on pp. 77 sqq. (where Galeta is apparently
the Western Denes," Transactions of a misprint for Galela) ; F. S. A. de
the Canadian Institute, iv. (1892-93) Clercq, Bijdragen tot de Kennis der
p. 108 ; id., Au pays de FOurs Noir : Residentie Ternate (Leyden, 1890), pp.
chez les sauvagesde la Colombie Briton- 112 sq.; W. Kiikenthal, Forschungs-
niaui (Paris and Lyons, 1897), p. reisein.den Molukken und in Borneo
71, (Frankfort, 1896), pp. 147 sqq.
HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC
III
did, it seems clear that the sharp-pointed stick on which the
bait is skewered would similarly work itself loose, and the
crocodile would get off with the bait. Hence in these cir-
cumstances it is prudent for the hunter, before he begins his
meal, to get somebody else to take the bones out of his
curry, otherwise he may at any moment have to choose
between swallowing a bone and losing the crocodile.^
This last rule is an instance of the things which the Negative
hunter abstains from doing lest, on the principle that like J^^^ *"
produces like, they should spoil his luck. For it is to
be observed that the system of sympathetic magic is not
merely composed of positive precepts ; it comprises a
very large number of negative precepts, that is, pro-
hibitions. It tells you not merely what to do, but also
what to leave undone. The positive precepts are charms :
the negative precepts are taboos. In fact the whole doctrine
of taboo, or at all events a large part of it, would seem to be
only a special application of sympathetic magic, with its two
great laws of similarity and contact.^ Though these laws
' W. W. Skeat, Malay Magic, p.
300.
^ The theory that taboo is a negative
magic was first, I believe, clearly
formulated by Messrs. Hubert and
Mauss in their essay, " Esquisse d'une
theorie generale de la magie,"
L'AnnSe Sociologique, vii. (Paris, 1 904)
p. 56. Compare A. van Gennep,
Tabou et Totimismt d. Madagascar
(Paris, 1904), pp. 19 sgq. I reached
the same conclusion independently and
stated it in my Lectures on the Early
History of the Kingship (London,
•905)1 pp. 52-54, a passage which I
have substantially reproduced in the
text. When I wrote it I was unaware
that the view had been anticipated
by my friends Messrs. Hubert and
Mauss. See my note in Man, vi.
(1906) pp. 55 sq. The view has been
criticised adversely by my friend Mr.
R. R. Marett {The Threshold of
Religion, pp. 85 sqq.). But the differ-
ence between us seems to be mainly
one of words ; for I regard the sup-
posed mysterious force, to which he
gives the Melanesian name of mana,
as supplying, so to say, the physical
basis both of magic and of taboo, while
the logical basis of both is furnished
by a misapplication of the laws of the
association of ideas. And with this
view Mr. Marett, if I apprehend him
aright, is to a certain extent in agree-
ment (see particularly pp. 102 sq.,
113 sq. of his essay). However, in
deference to his criticisms I have here
stated the theory in question less abso-
lutely than I did in my Lectures. As to
the supposed mysterious force which I
take to underlie magic and taboo I
may refer particularly to what I have
said in The Golden Bought i. 319-
322, 343. In speaking of taboo I
here refer only to those taboos which
are protected by magical or religious
sanctions, not to those of which the
sanctions are purely civil or legal ;
for I take civil or legal taboos to be
merely a later extension of magical
or religious taboos, which form the
original stock of the institution. See
my article " Taboo " in Encyclcpaedia
Britannica, Ninth Edition, vol. xxiii.
pp. 16, 17.
taboo.
Ill S YMPA THE TIC MA GIC chap,
Negative ate Certainly not formulated in so many words nor even con-
magic or ceived in the abstract by the savage, they are nevertheless
implicitly believed by him to regulate the course of nature
quite independently of human will. He thinks that if he
acts in a certain way, certain consequences will inevitably
follow in virtue of one or other of these laws ; and if the
consequences of a particular act appear to him likely to
prove disagreeable or dangerous, he is naturally careful not
to act in that way lest he should incur them. In other
words, he abstains from doing that which, in accordance
with his mistaken notions of cause and effect, he falsely
believes would injure him ; in short, he subjects himself to
a taboo. Thus taboo is so far a negative application of
practical magic. Positive magic or sorcery says, " Do this
in order that so and so may happen." Negative magic or
taboo says, " Do not do this, lest so and so should happen."
The aim of positive magic or sorcery is to produce a desired
event ; the aim of negative magic or taboo is to avoid an
undesirable one. But both consequences, the desirable and
the undesirable, are supposed to be brought about in
accordance with the laws of similarity and contact. And
iust as the desired consequence is not really effected by the
observance of a magical ceremony, so the dreaded consequence
does not really result from the violation of a taboo. If the
supposed evil necessarily followed a breach of taboo, the
taboo would not be a taboo but a precept of morality or
common sense. It is not a taboo to say, " Do not put your
hand in tlie fire " ; it is a rule of common sense, because the
forbidden action entails a real, not an imaginary evil. In
short, those negative precepts which we call taboo are just as
vain and futile as those positive precepts which we call
sorcer>'. The two things are merely opposite sides or poles
of one great disastrous fallacy, a mistaken conception of the
association of ideas. Of that fallacy, sorcery is the positive,
and taboo the negative pole. If we give the general name
of magic to the whole erroneous system, both theoretical and
practical, then taboo may be defined as the negative side of
practical magic. To put this in tabular form : —
HOMO EOF A THIC OR IMITA TIVE MAGIC 1 1 3
Magic
Theoretical Practical
(Magic as a pseudo-science) (Magic as a pseudo-art)
I I
Positive Magic Negative Magic
or or
Sorcery Taboo
I have made these remarks on taboo and its relations to Taboos
magic because I am about to give some instances of taboos'?'"' ,
° =■ ~ observed
observed by hunters, fishermen, and others, and I wished to in fishing
shew that they fall under the head of Sympathetic Magic, fn"g o'^Tthe
being only particular applications of that general theory, principle of
Thus, it is a rule with the Galelareese that when you th™ic^
have caught fish and strung them on a line, you may magic,
not cut the line through, or next time you go a-fishing
your fishing-line will be sure to break.^ Among the Esqui-
maux of Baffin Land boys are forbidden to play cat's cradle,
because if they did so their fingers might in later life
become entangled in the harpoon-line.^ Here the taboo
is obviously an application of the law of similarity, which is
the basis of homoeopathic magic : as the child's fingers are
entangled by the string in playing cat's cradle, so they will
be entangled by the harpoon-line when he is a man and hunts
whales. Again, among the Huzuls, who inhabit the wooded spinning
north-eastern slopes of the Carpathian Mountains, the wife J^^ooed
. .,.,,,,,. 'n certain
of a hunter may not spm while her husband is eating, cases on
or the game will turn and wind like the spindle, and the '^^ p™"
hunter will be unable to hit it.' Here again the taboo homoeo-
is clearly derived from the law of similarity. So, too, in ^^^-^
most parts of ancient Italy women were forbidden by law
to spin on the highroads as they walked, or even to carry
their spindles openly, because any such action was believed
to injure the crops.'' Probably the notion was that the
1 M. J. van Baarda, in Bijdragen the American Museum of Natural His-
tot lie Tool- Land- en Volkenkutide van tory, xv. Part I. (1901) p. i6l.
Nederlandsch Indie, xlv. (1895) p. ^ r_ p. Kaindl, " Zauberglaube bei
507. ■ den Huzulen," Globus, Ixxvi. (1899J
2 r. Boas, "The Eskimo of Baffin p. 273.
Land and Hudson Bay," Bulletin of * Pliny, Nat. Hist, xxviii. 28.
VOL, I I
114 SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap,
twirling of the spindle would twirl the corn-stalks and prevent
them from growing straight. So, too, among the Ainos of
Saghalien a pregnant woman may not spin nor twist ropes
for two months before her delivery, because they think
that if she did so the child's guts might be entangled
like the thread.^ For a like reason in Bilaspore, a district
of India, when the chief men of a village meet in council,
no one present should twirl a spindle ; for they think that
if such a thing were to happen, the discussion, like the
spindle, would move in a circle and never be wound up.^ In
the East Indian islands of Saparoea, Haroekoe, and Noessa
Laut, any one who comes to the house of a hunter must walk
straight in ; he may not loiter at the door, for were he to
do so, the game would in like manner stop in front of the
hunter's snares and then turn back, instead of being caught
in the trap." For a similar reason it is a rule with the
Toradjas of Central Celebes that no one may stand or loiter
on the ladder of a house where there is a pregnant woman,
for such delay would retard the birth of the child ; * and in
various parts of Sumatra the woman herself in these circum-
stances is forbidden to stand at the door or on the top rung
of the house-ladder under pain of suffering hard labour for
her imprudence in neglecting so elementary a precaution.^
Taioii Malays engaged in the search for camphor eat their food
^"1^"" dr\' and take care not to pound their salt fine. The reason
search for is that the camphor occurs in the form of small grains
' B. Pilsudski, " Schwangerhaft, schappelijk leven vanden Poso-Alfoer,"
E-ibisdung und Fehigeburt bei den Mededeelingen van ivege het Neder-
Bswohnem der Inse! Sachalin," An- landsche Zendelinggenootschap, xl.
tkrejrus, v. (1910) p. 763. (1896) pp. 262 sq ; id. ib. xliv.
' Rev. E. M. Gordon, m/oumaland ('900) p. 235.
Procudings of the Asiatic Society of ^- Snouck Hurgronje, De Atjehers
B^.zal, Xew Series, i. (1905) p. 185"; (Batavia and Leyden, 1893-94), i.
ii.. ^Indinn Folk Tales (London, 1908), 409 ; E. A. Klerks, " Geographisch en
-p. 82 sq. ethnographisch opstal over de land-
" 1 ,r c- , J ,, . , . schappen Korintie, Serampas en Soen-
'Van Schmid, " Aanteekeningen ^^-.l'^^^^^,^' Tijdschriftvoor Indische
nopens de zeden gewoonten en gebrui- j-^^i^ ^^„^. ^,^ Volkenkunde, xxxix.
ken, benevens de v^roordeelen en j^g , y ^ ^^^ ^^^^ .. j,^^
D:;£eloo^1gheden der bevo king van de huwelijk bij de Minangkabausche
f^^.^" .^,^P^^°!f' Haroekoe Noessa -Maliers," ib. xliv. (1901) pp. 490 sq. ;
lj.^x,n:dschr,ftvoorNeerla,rdsIndte, m. Joustra, " Het leven, de zeden en
I 43: - "• P- 004- gewoonten der Bataks," Mededeelingen
* A. C. Kjuijt, " Een en ander van wege het Nederlandsche Zendeling
aangaande het geestelijk en roaat- genootschap, xlvi. (1902) p. 406.
ni HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC nj
deposited in the cracks of the trunk of the camphor-tree, camphor
Accordingly it seems plain to the Malay that if, while seek- °".'^^
/•I I ,- 1^. principle
mg for camphor, he were to eat his salt finely ground, theofhomoeo
camphor would be found also in fine grains ; whereas bv ^"^"'."^
^ & > / magic.
eating his salt coarse he ensures that the grains of the cam-
phor will also be large.^ Camphor hunters in Borneo use
the leathery sheath of the leaf-stalk of the Penang palm
as a plate for food, and during the whole of the expedition
they will never wash the plate, for fear that the camphor
might dissolve and disap'pear from the crevices of the tree.^
Apparently they think that to wash their plates would be
to wash out the camphor crystals from the trees in which
they are imbedded. In Laos, a province of Siam, a Taboos
rhinoceros hunter will not wash himself for fear that as a °^*f "^^
by hunters
consequence the wounds inflicted on the rhinoceros might on the
not be mortal, and that the animal might disappear in of homo^eo
one of the caves full of water in the mountains.^ The pathic
chief product of some parts of Laos is lac. This is a ""^s";-
resinous gum exuded by a red insect on the young branches
of trees, to which the little creatures have to be attached by
hand. All who engage in the business of gathering the
gum abstain from washing themselves and especially from
cleansing their heads, lest by removing the parasites from
their hair they should detach the other insects from the
boughs.* Some of the Brazilian Indians would never bring
a slaughtered deer into their hut without first hamstringing it,
belie%-ing that if they failed to do so, they and their children
would never be able to run down their enemies.* Apparently
they thought that by hamstringing the animal they at the same
stroke deprived their foemen of the use of their legs. No
Arikara Indian would break a marrow bone in a hut ; for
1 H. Lake and H. J. Kelsall, "The" ^ E. Aymonier, Voyage dans le Laos
Camphor-tree andCamphorLanguageof (Paris, 1895-97), i. 322. As to lac
]6koK,'' Journal of ike Straits Branch and the mode of cultivating it, see id.
of the Royal Asiatic Society, No. 26 ii. \% sq. The superstition is less ex-
(January 1 894), p. 40 ; W. W. Skeat, plicitly stated in the same writer's Notes
Malay Magic, p. 213. sur le Laos (Saigon, 1885), p. no.
»W. H. Fumess, Home- life of J ^- '^}^^^^< L'^ Singularitez de la
Borneo Head-hunters (Philadelphia, Prance Antcirctique, autrement nommie
1902) p. 169. Amenque (Antwerp, 1558), p. 93 ;
' id., Cosmographie Universelle (Paris,
' E. A)Tnonior, Notes sur le Laos 1575), ii. 970 [wrongly numbered
{Saigon, 1885), p. 269. 936] sq.
u6 SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap.
they think that were he to do so their horses would break
their legs in the prairie.^ Again, a Blackfoot Indian who has
set a trap for eagles, and is watching it, would not eat rosebuds
on any account ; for he argues that if he did so, and an eagle
alighted near the trap, the rosebuds in his own stomach
would make the bird itch, with the result that instead of
swallowing the bait the eagle would merely sit and scratch
himself. Following this train of thought the eagle hunter
also refrains from using an awl when he is looking after
his snares ; for surely if he were to scratch with an awl, the
eagles would scratch him. The same disastrous consequence
would follow if his wives and children at home used an awl
while he is out after eagles, and accordingly they are for-
bidden to handle the tool in his absence for fear of putting
him in bodily danger."
Horooeo- All the foregoing taboos being based on the law of simi-
^Ws and l^^ty may be called homoeopathic taboos. The Cholones,
contagious an Indian tribe of eastern Peru, make use of poisoned
taboos. arrows in the chase, but there are some animals, such as
armadillos, certain kinds of falcons, and a species of vulture,
which they would on no account shoot at with these weapons.
For they believe that between the poisoned arrows which
they use and the supply of poison at home there exists a'
sympathetic relation of such a sort that if they shot at
any of these creatures with poisoned shafts, all the poison at
home would be spoilt, which would be a great loss to them.^
Here the exact train of thought is not clear ; but we
may suppose that the animals in question are believed to
possess a power of counteracting and annulling the effect of
the poison, and that consequently if they are touched by it,
all the poison, including the store of it at home, would be
robbed of its virtue. However that may be, it is plain that
the superstition rests on the law of contact, on the notion,
namely, that things which have once been in contact remain
sympathetically in contact with each other always. The
poison with which the hunter wounds an animal has once
1 Maximilian, Prinz zu Wied, Keise Tales (London, 1893), pp. 237, 238.
in das injure Nord - America, ii. ^ E. Poeppig, Reise in Chile, Peru
247. utid auf dem Amazonenstrome (Leipsic,
2 G. B. Grinnell, Blackfoot Lodge 1835-36), ii. 323.
Ill HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 117
been in contact with the store of poison at home ; hence
if the poison in the wound loses its venom, so necessarily
will all the poison at home. These may be called con-
tagious taboos.
Among the taboos observed by savages none perhaps Foods
are more numerous or important than the prohibitions to eat '^''°°^<i
certam foods, and of such prohibitions many are demonstrably principle
derived from the law of similarity and are accordingly pat^™"*"
examples of negative magic. Just as the savage eats many magic
animals or plants in order to acquire certain desirable
qualities with which he believes them to be endowed, so he
avoids eating many other animals and plants lest he should
acquire certain undesirable qualities with which he believes
them to be infected. In eating the former he practises
positive magic ; in abstaining from the latter he practises
negative magic. Many examples of such positive magic will
meet us later on ; ^ here I will give a few instances of such
negative magic or taboo. For example, in Madagascar Malagasy
soldiers are forbidden to eat a number of foods lest on the ^'°°°^ "^
■ 1 r 1 1 • . . iooa based
prmciple of homoeopathic magic they should be tainted by on the
certain dangerous or undesirable properties which are sup- of homlTeo.
posed to inhere in these particular viands. Thus they may patWo
not taste hedgehog, "as it is feared that this animal, from its ™^^"^"
propensity of coiling up into a ball when alarmed, will
impart a timid shrinking disposition to those who partake of
it." Again, no soldier should eat an ox's knee, lest like an
ox he should become weak in the knees and unable to
march. Further, the warrior should be careful to avoid
partaking of a cock that has died fighting or anything that
has been speared to death ; and no male animal may on any
account be killed in his house while he is away at the wars.
For it seems obvious that if he were to eat a cock that had
died fighting, he would himself be slain on the field of battle ;
if he were to partake of an animal that had been speared, he
would be speared himself ; if a male animal were killed in
his house during his absence, he would himself be killed in
like manner and perhaps at the same instant. Further, the
Malagasy soldier must eschew kidneys, because in the
Malagasy language the word for kidney is the same as that
' Meanwhile I may refer the reader to The Golden Bought ii. 353 sgq.
"8 SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap.
for " shot " ; so shot he would certainly be if he ate a
Caffrc kidney,^ Again, a Caffre has been known to refuse to eat
acd ZuiU
talx>os on
macnc.
,„ , „„ two mice caught at the same time in one trap, alleging that
food based were he to do so his wife would give birth to twins ; vet the
on the ^ , ^ . - ■'
principle same man would eat freely of mice if they were caught
ofhomoeo- singly." Clearly he imagined that if he ate the two mice he
would be infected with the virus of doublets and would com-
municate the infection to his wife. Amongst the Zulus
there are many foods which are similarly forbidden on
homoeopathic principles. It may be well to give some
specimens of these prohibitions as they have been described
by the Zulus themselves. " There is among the black men,"
they say, " the custom of abstaining from certain foods. If
a cow has the calf taken from her dead, and the mother too
dies before the calf is taken away, young people who have
never had a child abstain from the flesh of that cow. I do
not mean to speak of girls ; there is not even a thought of
whether they can eat it ; for it is said that the cow will produce
a similar evil among the women, so that one of them will be
like the cow when she is in childbirth, be unable to give
birth, like the cow, and die together with her child. On this
account, therefore, the flesh of such a cow is abstained from.
Further, pig's flesh is not eaten by girls on any account ; for
it is an ugly animal ; its mouth is ugly, its snout is long ;
therefore girls do not eat it, thinking if they eat it, a
resemblance to the pig will appear among their children.
They abstain from it on that account. There are many
things which are abstained from among black people through
fear of bad resemblance ; for it is said there was a person who
once gave birth to an elephant, and a horse ; but we do not
know if that is true ; but they are now abstained from on
that account, through thinking that they will produce an
evil resemblance if eaten ; and the elephant is said to
produce an evil resemblance, for when it is killed many
parts of its body resemble those of a female ; its breasts, for
instance, are just like those of a woman. Young people,
^ H. F. Standing, " Malagasy /arff, " arivo, 1896), p. 261.
AntaTianarivo Aimuul and Madagascar ^Dudley Kidd, Savage Childhood
Magas.uu,xo\.\\. (reprint of the second (London, 1906), p. 48.
four numbers, 1S81-1SS4) (Antanan-
Ill HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC iig
therefore, fear to eat it ; it is only eaten on account of famine,
when there is no food ; and each of the young women say,
' It is no matter if I do give birth to an elephant and live ;
that is better than not to give birth to it, and die of famine.'
So it is eaten from mere necessity. Another thing which is
abstained from is the entrails of cattle. Men do not eat
them, because they are afraid if they eat them, the enemy
will stab them in the bowels. Young men do not eat them ;
they are eaten by old people. Another thing which is not
eaten is the under lip of a bullock ; for it is said, a young
person must not eat it, for it will produce an evil resemblance
in the child ; the lip of the child will tremble continually,
for the lower lip of a bullock moves constantly. They do
not therefore eat it ; for if a child of a young person is seen
with its mouth trembling, it is said, ' It was injured by its
father, who ate the lower lip of a bullock.' Also another
thing which is abstained from is that portion of the paunch of
a bullock which is called unitala ; for the unitala has no villi,
it has no pile ; it is merely smooth and hard. It is there-
fore said, if it is eaten by young people, their children will be
born without hair, and their heads will be bare like a man's
knee. It is therefore abstained from." ^
The reader may have observed that in some of the fore- Magical
going examples of taboos the magical influence is supposed "^ '^P'^^'J''
to operate at considerable distances ; thus among the Black-
feet Indians the wives and children of an eagle hunter are
forbidden to use an awl during his absence, lest the eagles
should scratch the distant husband and father ;^ and again
no male animal may be killed in the house of a Malagasy
soldier while he is away at the wars, lest the killing of the
animal should entail the killing of the man.^ This belief in
tlie sympathetic influence exerted on each other by persons
or tilings at a distance is of the essence of magic. Whatever
doubts science may entertain as to the possibility of action
at a distance, magic has none ; faith in telepathy is one of
its first principles. A modern advocate of the influence of
mind upon mind at a distance would have no difficulty in
' II. CiUaway, A^!iisr.ry I'alcs, pp. 280-282.
Tr,n::':'o!is, and Histories of t lie " Al lOve, p. 1 1 6.
Zuius, i. (Natal and London, 186S), ' Above, p. 117.
130 SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap.
convincing a savage ; the savage believed in it long ago,
and what is more, he acted on his belief with a logical
consistency such as his civilised brother in the faith has not
yet, so far as I am aware, exhibited in his conduct. For the
savage is convinced not only that magical ceremonies affect
persons and things afar off, but that the simplest acts of
daily life may do so too. Hence on important occasions
the behaviour of friends and relations at a distance is often
regulated by a more or less elaborate code of rules, the
neglect of which by the one set of persons would, it is sup-
posed, entail misfortune or even death on the absent ones.
In particular when a party of men are out hunting or
fighting, their kinsfolk at home are often expected to do
certain things or to abstain from doing certain others, for the
sake of ensuring the safety and success of the distant
hunters or warriors. I will now give some instances of this
magical telepathy both in its positive and in its negative
aspect.
Telepathy In Laos when an elephant hunter is starting for the
amon°"the chase, he warns his wife not to cut her hair or oil her body
Dyaks, in his absence ; for if she cut her hair the elephant would
Hottentots, burst the toils, if she oiled herself it would slip through
«"=• tliem.^ When a Dyak village has turned out to hunt wild
pigs in the jungle, the people who stay at home may not
touch oil or water with their hands during the absence of
their friends ; for if they did so, the hunters would all be
" butter-fingered " and the prey would slip through their
hands.- In setting out to look for the rare and precious
eagle-wood on the mountains, Cham peasants enjoin their
wives, whom they leave at home, not to scold or quarrel in
their absence, for such domestic brawls would lead to their
husbands being rent in pieces by bears- and tigers.' A
Hottentot woman whose husband is out hunting must do
one of two things all the time he is away. Either she must
light a fire and keep it burning till he comes back ; or if
she does not choose to do that, she must go to the water
' E. Aymonier, Notes siir le Laos, British North Borneo, i. 430.
pp. 25 .<■,/. ; id., Voyage dans le Laos
(P.iris, 1895-97). i. 62, 63. ^ E. Aymonier, " Les Tchames et
- Chalmers, quoted by H. Ling leurs religions," Revue de VHistoire des
Roth, The Natives of Sarawak and Religions, xxiv. (1 89 1) p. 278.
Ill HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 121
and continue to splash it about on the ground. When
she is tired with throwing the water about, her place may be
taken by her servant, but the exercise must in any case be
kept up without cessation. To cease splashing the water
or to let the fire out would be equally fatal to the husband's
prospect of a successful bag.^ In Yule Island, Torres
Straits, when the men are gone to fetch sago, a fire is lit and
carefully kept burning the whole time of their absence ; for
the people believe that if it went out the voyagers would
fare ill.^ At the other end of the world the Lapps
similarly object to extinguish a brand in water while any
members of the family are out fishing, since to do so
would spoil their luck.*
Among the Koniags of Alaska a traveller once observed Telepathy
a young woman lying wrapt in a bearskin in the corner among*\h^
of a hut. On asking whether she were ill, he learned Koniags,
that her husband was out whale-fishing, and that until and"™^""
his return she had to lie fasting in order to ensure a Caiiforniar
good catch.* Among the Esquimaux of Alaska similar
notions prevail. The women during the whaling season
remain in comparative idleness, as it is considered not good
for them to sew while the men are out in the boats.
If during this period any garments should need to be
repaired, the women must take them far back out of sight
of the sea and mend them there in little tents in which just
one person can sit. And while the crews are at sea no
work should be done at home which would necessitate
pounding or hewing or any kind of noise ; and in the huts
of men who are away in the boats no work of any kind
whatever should be carried on.° When the Esquimaux of
Aivilik and Iglulik are away hunting on the ice, the bedding
may not be raised up, because they think that to do so
would cause the ice to crack and drift off, and so' the men
might be lost. And among these people in the winter,
' Th. Hahn, Tsuni- 1| Goam (London, Societatis Scientiarum Fcnnicae, iv.
1S81), p. 77. (1856) p. 392.
' A. C. Haddon, Head-hunters ' Arctic Papers for the Expedition of
(London, 1901), p. 259. 1875 (published by the Royal Geo-
^ C. Leemius, De Lapponibus Pin- graphical Society), pp. 261 sq. ; Report
inarchiae (Copenhagen, 1767), p. 500. of the International Polar Expedition
* H. J. Holmberg, " fiber die to Point Barrow, Alaska (Washington,
Vblker des russischen Ameiika," Acta 1885), p. 39.
122 SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap.
when the new moon appears, boys must run out of the
snow-house, take a handful of snow, and put it into the
kettle. It is believed that this helps the hunter to capture
the seal and to bring it home.^ When the Maidu Indians
of California were engaged in driving deer into the snares
which they had prepared for them, and which consisted of
fences stretched from tree to tree, the women and children
who were left behind in the village had to observe a variety
of regulations. The women had to keep quiet and spend
much of the time indoors, and children might not romp,
shout, jump over things, kick, run, fall down, or throw
stones. If these rules were broken, it was believed that the
deer would become unmanageable and would jump the
fence, so that the whole drive would be unsuccessful.^
TeCepaihv While a Gilyak hunter is pursuing the game in the
£^o^ tS forest, his children at home are forbidden to make drawings
G:ivaks, on wood or on sand ; for they fear that if the children did
^u agirs, ^^^ ^^ paths in the forest would become as perplexed as
the lines in the drawings, so that the hunter might lose his
way and never return. A Russian political prisoner once
taught some Gilyak children to read and write ; but their
parents forbade them to write when any of their fathers
was a\va>- from home ; for it seemed to them that writing
was a peculiarly complicated form of drawing, and they
stood aghast at the idea of the danger to which such a
drawing would expose the hunters out in the wild woods.^
Among the Jukagirs of north-eastern Siberia, when a young
man is out hunting, his unmarried sister at home may not look
at his footprints nor eat certain parts of the game killed by him.
If she leaves the house while he is absent at the chase, she must
keep her eyes fixed on the ground, and may not speak of
the chase nor ask any questions about it* When a Nuba of
north-eastern Africa goes to El Obeid for the first time, he
tells his wife not to wash or oil herself and not to wear pearls
' F. Eo,i;i, "The Eskimo of Baffin iii. (New York, 1905) p. 193.
Land and Hudson Bay," Bulletin of 3 .
the Am^ruiin Museum of Natural , ^ -/-a/^be <y» A«?«< y<-««« / y/«
TT- , _. ■ ,.„ , de Sakhahne (I'aris, 1901), p. 268.
History, xv. part 1. (1 90 1) pp. 149, ^ > :» j;> f
l5o. * W. Jochelson, "Die Jukagiren im
- Roland B. Dixon, "The Northern aussersten Nordosten K-Aifca," Jahres-
Miiidu," BuKitin of the American bericht der geograph. Gesellschaft von
Museum of Xatura! History, xvii. part Bern, xvii. (1 900) p. 14.
Ill HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 123
round her neck during his absence, because by doing so she
would draw down on him the most terrible misfortunes.^
When Bushmen are out hunting, any bad shots they may
make are set down to sucli causes as that the children at
home are playing on the men's beds or the like, and the
wives who allow such things to happen are blamed for their
husbands' indifferent marksmanship.^
Elephant-hunters in East Africa believe that, if their Telepathy
wives prove unfaithful in their absence, this gives the s"p™se^^
elephant power over his pursuer, who will accordingly be disastrous
killed or severely wounded. Hence if a hunter hears of ^jf^.g ,„_
his wife's misconduct, he abandons the chase and returns fidelity.
home.* If a Wagogo hunter is unsuccessful, or is attacked
by a lion, he attributes it to his wife's misbehaviour at
home, and returns to her in great wrath. While he is
away hunting, she may not let any one pass behind her
or stand in front of her as she sits ; and she must lie
on her face in bed.* The Moxos Indians of eastern
Bolivia thought that if a hunter's wife was unfaithful
to him in his absence he would be bitten by a serpent
or a jaguar. Accordingly, if such an accident happened
to him, it was sure to entail the punishment, and often
the death, of the woman, whether she was innocent or
guilty.'"" An Aleutian hunter of sea-otters thinks that he
cannot kill a single animal if during his absence from home
his wife should be unfaithful or his sister unchaste.*
The Huichol Indians of Mexico treat as a demi-god a Telepathy
species of cactus which throws the eater into a state of ecstasy. ™^^^^ f„,
The plant does not grow in their country, and has to be fetched the sacred
every year by men who make a journey of forty-three days for '^"'^ "^'
the purpose. Meanwhile the wives at home contribute to the
safety of their absent husbands by never walking fast, much
less running, while the men are on the road. They also do
their best to ensure the benefits which, in the shape of rain,
• Missions Ciuholiquis, xiv. (1S82) of German East Africa," Journal of
p. +60. the Anthropological Institute, xxxii.
s W. n. I. Bleek, A Brief Account (''.'oz) PP- 3i« ^Q-
,'Bush,K^n Folklore, p. 19. ' A. D'Orbigny, Voyage dans PAmJ-
rtque Mirtdionale, iii. part i. p. 226.
' P. Reichard, Deutsch - Ostafnka j_ PetrofT, Report on the Popda-
iLeipsic. 1&93I, p. 427. ^;^„_ Industries, and Resources of
* H. Cole, "Notes on the Wagogo Alaska, p. 155.
124 SYMPATHETIC. MAGIC chap
good crops, and so forth, are expected to flow from the
sacred mission. With this intention they subject themselves
to severe restrictions like those imposed upon their husbands.
During the whole of the time which elapses till the festival
of the cactus is held,' neither party washes except on certain
occasions, and then only with water brought from the
distant country where the holy plant grows. They also fast
much, eat no salt, and are bound to strict continence. Any
one who breaks this law is punished with illness, and, more-
over, jeopardises the result which all . are striving " for.
Health, luck, and life are to be gained by gathering the
cactus, the gourd of the God of Fire ; but inasmuch as the
pure fire cannot benefit the impure, men and women must
not only remain chaste for the time being, but must also
purge themselves from the taint of past sin. Hence four
days after the men have started the women gather and
confess to Grandfather Fire with what men they have been
in love from childhood till now. They may not omit a
single one, for if they did so the men would not find a
single cactus. So to refresh their memories each one
prepares a string with as many knots as she has had
lovers. This she brings to the temple, and, standing before
the fire, she mentions aloud all the men she has scored on
her string, name after name. Having ended her confession,
she throws the string into the fire, and when the god has
consumed it in his pure flame, her sins are forgiven her and
she departs in peace. From now on the women are averse
even to letting men pass near them. The cactus-seekers
themselves make in like manner a clean breast of all their
frailties. For every peccadillo they tie a knot on a string, and
after they have " talked to all the five winds " they deliver
the rosary of their sins to the leader, who burns it in the fire.'
Te'epathy Many of the indigenous tribes of Sarawak are firmly
jearch for persuadcd that were the wives to commit adultery while
camphor, their husbands are searching for camphor in the jungle,
the camphor obtained by the men would evaporate.^
> C. Lumholtz, Unknewn Mexico, ^ For this information I am indebted
ii. 126 sqq. ; as to the sacred cactus, to Dr. C. Hose, formerly Resident
which the Indians call hikuli, see id. Magistrate of the Baram district,
L 357 sqq. Sarawak.
Ill HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 125
Husbands can discover, by certain knots in the tree, when
their wives are unfaithful ; and it is said that in former days
many women were killed by jealous husbands on no better
evidence than that of these knots. Further, the wives dare
not touch a comb while their husbands are away collecting
the camphor ; for if they did so, the interstices between the
fibres of the tree, instead of being filled with the precious
crystals, would be empty like the spaces between the teeth
of a comb.^ While men of the Toaripi or Motumotu tribe Telepathy
of eastern New Guinea are away hunting, fishing, fighting, J;°i^„g"°^
or on any long journey, the people who remain at home and
must observe strict chastity, and may not let the fire go out. "^'^ '"^'
Those of them who stay in the men's club-houses must
further abstain from eating certain foods and from touching
anything that belongs to others. A breach of these rules
might, it is believed, entail the failure of the expedition.^
Among the tribes of Geelvink Bay, in north-western New Teiepath>
Guinea, when the men are gone on a long journey, as to Qyij,g^
Ceram or Tidore, the wives and sisters left at home sing to
the moon, accompanying the lay with the booming music of
gongs. The singing takes place in the afternoons, be-
ginning two or three days before the new moon, and lasting
for the same time after it. If the silver sickle of the moon
is seen in the sky, they raise a loud cry of joy. Asked why
they do so, they answer, " Now we see the moon, and so do
our husbands, and now we know that they are well ; if we
did not sing, they would be sick or some other misfortune
would befall them."* On nights when the moon is at the
full the natives of Doreh, in north-western New Guinea, go
out fishing on the lagoons. Their mode of proceeding is
to poison the water with the pounded roots of a certain
plant which has a powerful narcotic effect ; the fish are
stunned by it, and so easily caught. While the men are at
\Tork on the moonlit water, the people on the shore must
• W. H. Fumess, Home - life of der N. Westlcust van Nieuw Guinea,
Boniic Head-hunters, p. 169. meer bepaaldelijk den Stam der Noe-
j , p, , „„ . . „ . . foereezen," Tijdschrift voor Indische
j^ A' • \i , J • 1 T Jj :: ■■ Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde, xxxii.
of the AritkroNilogtciil Instttuie, TUXMW. , 00 \ /■ • 'j « t\- n
/iSoSi n -27 <'^^9) P- 263; td., "Die Papua-
(109^) p. j-!7- stamme an der Geelvinkbai," Mittei-
' J. L. van Hasselt, " Eenige Aan- Itmgen der geograph. Geselhchaft tu
teekeniiigen aangaande de Bewoners /ena, ix. (1891) pp. loi sg.
126
S YMPA THE TIC MA QIC
in the Kei
Islands
keep as still as death with their eyes fixed on the fishermen ;
but no woman with child may be among them, for if she
were there and looked at the water, the poison would at
Telepathy once lose its effect and the fish would escape.^ In the Kei
Islands, to the south-west of New Guinea, as soon as a vessel
that is about to sail for a distant port has been launched,
the part of the beach on which it lay is covered as speedily
as possible with palm branches, and becomes sacred. No
one may thenceforth cross that spot till the ship comes
home. To cross it sooner would cause the vessel to perish.^
Moreover, all the time that the voyage lasts three or four
young girls, specially chosen for the duty, are supposed
to remain in sym-athetic connexion with the mariners
and to contribute by their behaviour to the safety and
success of the voyage. On no account, except for the
most necessary purpose, may they quit the room that
has been assigned to them. More than that, so long as
the vessel is believed to be at sea they must remain abso-
lutely motionless, crouched on their mats with their hands
clasped between their knees. They may not turn their
heads to the left or to the right or make any other move-
ment whatsoever. If they did, it would cause the boat
to pitch and toss ; and they may not eat any sticky stuff,
such as rice boiled in coco-nut milk, for the stickiness
of the food would clog the passage of the boat through
the water. When the sailors are supposed to have reached
their destination, the strictness of these rules is somewhat
relaxed ; but during the whole time that the voyage lasts
the girls are forbidden to eat fish which have sharp bones
or stings, such as the sting-ray, lest their friends at sea
should be involved in sharp, stinging trouble.^
Where beliefs like these prevail as to the sympathetic con-
nexion between friends at a distance, we need not wonder
that above everything else war, with its stern yet stirring
appeal to some of the deepest and tenderest of human
Telepathy
in war.
^ H. von Rosenberg, Der malayi-
schi Architiel ^€v^i\c, 1878), pp. 453,
462.
- C. ^L Plej-te, " Ethnographische
BeschriJTing der Kei-Eilanden," Tijd-
schrifi van ket yederlandsch Aardrijks-
kundig Genootschap, Tweede Serie, x.
(1893) p. 831.
^ H.'Geurtjens, " Le C&emonial des
Voyages aux lies Keij," Anthropos, v.
(1910) pp. 337, 353. The girls bear
the title of wat moel.
Ill HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 127
emotions, should quicken in the anxious relations left behind
a desire to turn the sympathetic bond to the utmost account
for the benefit of the dear ones who may at any moment be
fighting and dying far away. Hence, to secure an end so
natural and laudable, friends at home are apt to resort to
devices which will strike us as pathetic or ludicrous, accord-
ing as we consider their object or the means adopted to
effect it. Thus in some districts of Borneo, when a Dyak is Telepathy
out head-hunting, his wife or, if he is unmarried, his sister '° ™'' ,
' among the
must wear a sword day and night in order that he may Dyaks.
always be thinking of his weapons ; and she may not sleep
during the day nor go to bed before two in the morning,
lest her husband or brother should thereby be surprised in
his sleep by an enemy.^ In other parts of Borneo, when the
men are away on a warlike expedition, their mats are spread
in their houses just as if they were at home, and the fires are
kept up till late in the evening and lighted again before dawn,
in order that the men may not be cold. Further, the roofing
of the house is opened before daylight to prevent the distant
husbands, brothers, and sons from sleeping too late, and so
being surprised by the enemy.^ While a Malay of the Penin-
sula is away at the wars, his pillows and sleeping-mat at home
must be kept rolled up. If any one else were to use them,
the absent warrior's courage would fail and disaster would
befall him. His wife and children may not have their hair
cut in his absence, nor may he himself have his hair shorn.^
Among the Sea Dyaks of Banting in Sarawak the Telepathy
women strictly observe an elaborate code of rules while '" "^"^
,, r \ • t^ i- . , among the
the men are away fightmg. Some of the rules are negative Sea Dyaks
and some are positive, but all alike are based on the prin-
ciples of magical homoeopathy and telepathy. Amongst
them are the following. The women must wake very
early in the morning and open the windows as soon as
it is light ; otherwise their absent husbands will oversleep
themselves. The women may not oil their hair, or the men
will slip. The women may neither sleep nor doze by day,
' J. C. E. Tromp, " De Ramb.ii en of Borneo," Journal of the Anihropo-
Sebroeang Dajaks," l^ijdsc h rift voor logical Institute, xxii. (1893) p.
Indische Taal- Land- en Volkenkiinde, 56.
>""■• "S. 3 VV. W^. Skeal, Malay Magic, p.
' H. Ling Rolh, "Low's Natives 524.
128 SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap
or the men will be drowsy on the march. The women
must cook and scatter popcorn on the verandah every
morning ; so will the men be agile in their movements.
The rooms must be kept very tidy, all boxes being placed
near the walls ; for if any one were to stumble over them,
the absent husbands would fall and be at the mercy of the
foe. At every meal a little rice must be left in the pot
and put aside ; so will the men far away always have some-
thing to eat and need never go hungry. On no account may
the women sit at the loom till their legs grow cramped,
otherwise their husbands will likewise be stiff in their joints
and unable to rise up quickly or to run away from the
foe. So in order to keep their husband's joints supple the
women often vary their labours at the loom by walking up
and down the verandah. Further, they may not cover up
their faces, or the men would not be able to find their way
through the tall grass or jungle. Again, the women may
not sew with a needle, or the men will tread on the sharp
spikes set by the enemy in the path. Should a wife prove
unfaithful while her husband is away, he will lose his life
in the enemy's country. Some years ago all these rules
and more were observed by the women of Banting, while
their husbands were fighting for the English against rebels.
But alas I these tender precautions availed them little ; for
many a man, whose faithful wife was keeping watch and
ward for him at home, found a soldier's grave.'
Telepathy Among the Shans of Burma the wife of an absent
among the warrior has to observe certain rules. Every fifth day she
Shans, the rests and does no work. She fills an earthen goblet with
andth?''' water to the brim and puts flowers into it every day. li
Toradjas. the Water sinks or the flowers fade, it is an omen of death.
Moreover, she may not sleep on her husband's bed during
his absence, but she sweeps the bedding clean and lays it
out every night.^ In the island of Timor, while war is being
waged, the high-priest never quits the temple; his food is
brought to him or cooked inside ; day and night he must
keep the fire burning, for if he were to let it die out,
disaster would befall the warriors and would continue so
1 Mrs. Hewitt, "Some Sea-Dayalc ^ Indian Antiquary, xxL (1892) p
Tabus," Man, viii. (1908) pp. 186 sq. 120.
HI HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC ii<i
long as the hearth was cold. Moreover, he must drink
only hot water during the time the army is absent ; for
every draught of cold water would damp the spirits of
the people, so that they could not vanquish the enemy.^
Among the Toradjas of Central Celebes, when a party
of men is out hunting for heads, the villagers who stay at
home, and especially the wives of the head-hunters, have to
observe certain rules in order not to hinder the absent men
at their task. In the first place, the entrance to the lobo or
spirit-house is shut. Far the spirits of their fathers, who
live in that house, are now away with the warriors, watching
over and guarding them ; and if any one entered their
house in their absence they would hear the noise and return
and be very angry at being thus called back from the
campaign. Moreover, the people at home have to keep
the house tidy : the sleeping-mats of the absent men must
be hung on beams, not rolled up as if they were to be away
a long time : their wives and next-of-kin may not quit the
house at night : every night a light burns in the house, and
a fire must be kept up constantly at the foot of the house-
ladder : garments, turbans, and head-dresses may not be laid
aside at night, for if the turban or head-dress were put off
the warrior's turban might drop from his head in the battle ;
and the wives may sew no garments. When the spirit of
the head-hunter returns home in his sleep (which is the
Toradja expression for a soldier's dream) he must find
everything there in good order and nothing that could vex
him. By the observance of these rules, say the Toradjas,
the souls of the head-hunters are " covered " or protected.
And in order to make them strong, that they may not soon
grow weary, rice is strewed morning- and evening on the
floor of the house. The women too go about constantly
with a certain plant of which the pods are so light and
feathery that they are easily wafted by the wind, for that
helps to make the men nimble-footed."
' H. O. Forbes, "On some Tribes der Toradja's van Midden-Celebes, en
of the Island of Timor," Journal of zijne beteekenis," Verslagen en Mede-
the Anthropological Institute, xiii. deelingen der konink. Akademie van
(1884) p. 414. W^/^«.ff/;a//«», Afdeeling Letterkunde,
IV. Reeks, III. Deel (Amsterdam,
' .A.. C. Kruyt, " Het koppensnellan 1899), pp. 158 sq.
VOL. I K
I30 SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap.
Telepathy When Galelarecse men are going away to war, they
^o^the ^""^ accompanied down to the boats by the women. But
Gaieiieese after the leave-taking is over, the women, in returning to
Kd***^ their houses, must be careful not to stumble or fall, and
Islanders, jn the house they may neither be angry nor lift up weapons
against each other ; otherwise the men will fall and be
killed in battle.^ Similarly, we saw that among the Chams
domestic brawls at home are supposed to cause the searcher
for eagle-wood to fall a prey to wild beasts on the mountains.^
Further, Galelareese women may not lay down the chop-
ping knives in the house while their husbands are at the
wars ; the knives must always be hung up on hooks.' The
reason for the rule is not given ; we may conjecture that
it is a fear lest, if the chopping knives were laid down by
the women at home, the men would be apt to lay down
their weapons in the battle or at other inopportune moments.
In the Kei Islands, when the warriors have departed, the
women return indoors and bring out certain baskets con-
taining fruits and stones. These fruits and stones they
anoint and place on a board, murmuring as they do so, " O
lord sun, moon, let the bullets rebound from our husbands,
brothers, betrothed, and other relations, just as raindrops
rebound from these objects which are smeared with oil." As
soon as the first shot is heard, the baskets are put aside, and
the women, seizing their fans, rush out of the houses. Then,
waving their fans in the direction of the enemy, they run
through the village, while they sing, "O golden fans! let
our bullets hit, and those of the enemy miss."* In this
custom the ceremony of anointing stones, in order that
the bullets may recoil from the men like raindrops from
the stones, is a piece of pure homoeopathic or imitative
magic ; but the prayer to the sun, that he will be pleased
to give effect to the charm, is a religious and perhaps
later addition. The waving of the fans seems to be a
charm to direct the bullets towards or away from their
1 M. T- 1-an B.-iarda, " Fabelen, ' M. J. van Baarda, I.e.
verhalen eu overleveringen der Galel- * C. M. Pleyte, " Ethnographische
areezen," Bijdraom tot de Taal- Land- Beschrijving der Kti-Eilanden," Tijd-
m VoikixkiiiuU vanNederlamisch-Indie, schrift van het Nederlandsch Aardrijks-
xlv. (1S95) p. 507. kundig Genootschap, Tweede Serie, x.
> See above, p. 120. {1893) P- 805.
in HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 131
mark, according as they are discharged from the guns of
friends or foes.
An old historian of Madagascar informs us that " while Telepathy
the men are at the wars, and until their return, the women '° "^ .,
' ' among the
and girls cease not day and night to dance, and neither lie Malagasy.
down nor take food in their own houses. And although
they are very voluptuously inclined, they would not for
anything in the world have an intrigue with another man
while their husband is at the war, believing firmly that if
that happened, their husband would be either killed or
wounded. They believe that by dancing they impart
strength, courage, and good fortune to their husbands ;
accordingly during such times they give themselves no rest,
and this custom they observe very religiously." ^ Similarly
a traveller of the seventeenth century writes that in Mada-
gascar " when the man is in battle or under march, the wife
continually dances and sings, and will not sleep or eat in
her own house, nor admit of the use of any other man,
unless she be desirous to be rid of her own ; for they enter-
tain this opinion among them, that if they suffer themselves
to be overcome in an intestin war at home, their husbands
must suffer for it, being ingaged in a forreign expedition ;
but, on the contrary, if they behave themselves chastely, and
dance lustily, that then their husbands, by some certain
sympathetical operation, will be able to vanquish all their
combatants." ^ We have seen that among hunters in various
parts of the world the infidelity of the wife at home is
believed to have a disastrous effect on her absent husband.
In the Babar Archipelago, and among the Wagogo of East
Africa, when the men are at the wars the women at home are
bound to chastity, and in the Babar Archipelago they must
fast besides.' Under similar circumstances in the islands of
Leti, Moa, and Lakor the women and children are forbidden to
remain inside of the houses and to twine thread or weave.*
• De Flacourt, Histoire de la Grande have copied from De Flacourt.
/j&Af<M!5^!K(ra>-(Paris,l658), pp.97 Jj?. ^ j_ q_ p_ Riedel, De sluik- en
A statement of the same sort is made by kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en
'Ha.^ Hioi'Ssxiiovi.,Voyage to Madagascar Papua, ^. 341; H. Cole, "Notes on
««/ /^ .£0?^ /»aiV.y, translated from the the Wagogo of German East Africa,"
French (London, 1792), pp. 46 jy. Journal of the Anthropological Institute,
' John Struys, Voiages and Travels xxxii. (1902) pp. 312, 317.
(L«ndon, 1684), p. 22. Struys may * Riedel, op. cit. p. 377.
132 SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap.
Telepathy Among the Tshi-speaking peoples of the Gold Coast the
*" ""^ , wives of men who are away with the army paint themselves
among the ■' • i i j j i r\
natives of white, and adorn their persons with beads and charms. Un
^^ the day when a battle is expected to take place, they run
about armed with guns, or sticks carved to look like guns,
and taking green paw-paws (fruits shaped somewhat like a
melon), the}- hack them with knives, as if they were chopping
off the heads of the foe.^ The pantomime is no doubt merely
an imitative charm, to enable the men to do to the enemy as
the women do to the paw-paws. In the West African town
of Framin, while the Ashantee war was raging some years
ago, I^Ir. Fitzgerald Marriott saw a dance performed by
women whose husbands had gone as carriers to the war.
They were painted white and wore nothing but a short
petticoat. At their head was a shrivelled old sorceress in
a very short white petticoat, her black hair arranged in a
sort of long projecting horn, and her black face, breasts,
arms, and legs profusely adorned with white circles and
crescents. All carried long white brushes made of buffalo
or horse tails, and as they danced they sang, "Our husbands
have gone to Ashanteeland ; may they sweep their enemies
Telepathy off the face of the earth ! " ^ Among the Thompson Indians
=° *"^^ of British Columbia, when the men were on the war-path,
.tes^fcan the women performed dances at frequent intervals. These
Indians, (j^nces were believed to ensure the success of the expedition.
The dancers flourished their knives, threw long sharp-pointed
sticks forward, or drew sticks with hooked ends repeatedly
backward and forward. Throwing the sticks forward was
symbolic of piercing or warding off the enemy, and drawing
them back was symbolic of drawing their own men from
danger. The hook at the end of the stick was particularly
well adapted to serve the purpose of a life-saving apparatus.
The women always pointed their weapons towards the
enemy's country. They painted their faces red and sang
as they danced, and they prayed to the weapons to preserve
their husbands and help them to kill many foes. Some had
' A. B. Ellis, The Tshi-speaking ly {tepnnled fiom Ars gualuor Ci^roiia-
PeopUs of tki Gi\'J Coast, p. 226. lornin, the transactions of a Masonic
lodge of London). The lamented Miss
' H. P. Filigerald Marriott, The Mary H. Kingsley was so kind as to
Sicret Trie M Societies of West Africa, p. lend me a copy of this work.
Ill HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 133
eagle-down stuck on the points of their sticks. When the
dance was over, these weapons were hidden. If a woman
whose husband was at the war thought she saw hair or a
piece of a scalp on the weapon when she took it out, she
knew that her husband had killed an enemy. But if she
saw a stain of blood on it, she knew he was wounded or
dead.^ When the men of the Yuki tribe of Indians in
California were away fighting, the women at home did
not sleep ; they danced continually in a circle, chanting
and waving leafy wands. For they said that if they
danced all the time, their husbands would not grow tired.^
Among the Haida Indians of the Queen Charlotte
Islands, when the men had gone to war, the women at
home would get up very early in the morning and pretend
to make war by falling upon their children and feigning to
take them for slaves. This was supposed to help their
husbands to go and do likewise. If a wife were unfaithful
to her husband while he was away on the war-path, he
would probably be killed. For ten nights all the women
at home lay with their heads towards the point of the
compass to which the war-canoes had paddled away. Then
they changed about, for the warriors were supposed to
be coming home across the sea. At Masset the Haida
women danced and sang war-songs all the time their hus-
bands were away at the wars, and they had to keep every-
thing about them in a certain order. It was thought that a
wife might kill her husband by not observing these customs.^
In the Kafir district of the Hindoo Koosh, while the men are Telepathy
out raiding, the women abandon their work in the fields and '" "*^ ^
P among the
assemble in the villages to dance day and night. The dances Kafirs of
are kept up most of each day and the whole of each night. Ko^^t '*°°
Sir George Robertson, who reports the custom, more than
once watched the dancers dancing at midnight and in the
early morning, and could see by the fitful glow of the wood-
" T. Teit, "The Thompson Indians ' J. R. Swanton, "Contributions to
of British Columbia," Memoir of the the Ethnology of the Haida" (Leyden
Aiiieruan Museum 0/ Natural History, and New York, 1905), pp. 55 sq.
The Jesup North Pacific Expedition, {Memoir of the American Museum of
vol. i. No. 4 (April 1900), p. 356. Natural History, The Jesup North
^ S. Powers, Tribes of California Pacific Expedition, vol. v. purt i.).
(Washington, 1877), pp. 129 sq.
134 SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap.
fire how haggard and tired they looked, yet how gravely and
earnestly they persisted in what they regarded as a serious
duty.^ The dances of these Kafirs are said to be performed
in honour of certain of the national gods, but when we
consider the custom in connexion with the others which
have just been passed in review, we may reasonably surmise
that it is or was originally in its essence a sympathetic
charm intended to keep the absent warriors wakeful, lest
they should be surprised in their sleep by the enemy.
When a band of Carib Indians of the Orinoco had gone on
the war-path, their friends left in the village used to calculate
as nearly as they could the exact moment when the absent
warriors would be advancing to attack the enemy. Then
they took two lads, laid them down on a bench, and inflicted
a most severe scourging on their bare backs. This the
youths submitted to without a murmur, supported in their
sufferings by the firm conviction, in which they had been
bred from childhood, that on the constancy and fortitude
with which they bore the cruel ordeal depended the valour
and success of their comrades in the battle.^
Homoeo- So much for the savage theory of telepathy in war and the
magic at c^asc. We pass now to other cases of homoeopathic or imita-
making tive magic. While marriageable boys of the Mekeo district in
British New Guinea are making their drums, they have to live
alone in the forest and to observe a number of rules which are
based on the principle of homoeopathic magic. The drums
will be used in the dances, and in order that they may give
out a resonant sonorous note, great care must be taken in
their construction. The boys may spend from two days to a
week at the task. Having chosen a suitable piece of wood,
they scrape the outside into shape with a shell, and hollow
out the inside by burning it with a hot coal till the sides
are very thin. The skin of an iguana, made supple by
being steeped in coco-nut milk, is then stretched over the
hollow and tightened with string and glue. All the time
a boy is at work on his drum, he must carefully avoid
' Sir George Scott Robertson, Tht graphica natural y evaiigelica dela
Kafirs of the Hindu Kush (London, Nueva Amlahuia de, Cuniana, Guayana
1896), pp. 335, 621-626. y Vertientes del Rio Orinoco (1779),
^ Antonio Gxulin, Historia Coro- p. 97.
in HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 135
women ; foi' if a woman or a girl were to see him, the drum
would split and sound like an old cracked pot. If he ate fish,
a bone would prick him and the skin of the drum would
burst. If he ate a red banana it would choke him, and
the drum would give a dull stifled note ; if he tasted grated
coco-nut, the white ants, like the white particles of the nut,
would gnaw the body of the drum ; if he cooked his food
in the ordinary round-bellied pot, he would grow fat and
would not be able to dance, and the girls would despise him
and say, " Your belly is big ; it is a pot ! " Moreover, he
must strictly shun water ; for if he accidentally touched it
with his feet, his hands, or his lips before the drum was
quite hollowed out, he would throw the instrument away,
saying : " I have touched water ; my hot coal will be put
out, and I shall never be able to hollow out my drum." ^ A various
Highland witch can sink a ship by homoeopathic or imitative ^jQ[55"^Qf
magic. She has only to set a small round dish floating in a homoeo
milk-pan full of water, and then to croon her spell. When ^fj^g|'^_
the dish upsets in the pan, the ship will go down in the sea.
They say that once three witches from Harris left home at
night after placing the milk-pan thus on the floor, and strictly
charging a serving-maid to let nothing come near it. But
while the girl was not looking a duck came in and squattered
about in the water on the floor. Next morning the witches
returned and asked if anything had come near the pan.
The girl said " No," whereupon one of the witches said to
the others, " What a heavy sea we had last night coming
round Cabag head ! " * If a wolf has carried off a sheep or
a pig, the Esthonians have a very simple mode of making
him drop it. They let fall anything that they happen to
have at hand, such as a cap or a glove, or, what is perhaps
still better, they lift a heavy stone and then let it go. By
that act, on the principle of homoeopathic magic, they
compel the wolf to let go his booty.^
Among the many beneficent uses to which a mistaken
' Father Guis, " Les Canaques, ce Islands of Scotland (Glasgow, 1902),
qu'ils font, ce qu'ils disent," Missions pp. 21 sq.
Catholiques, xxx. (1898) p. 29; A. C.
Haddon, Head-hunters, p. 257. ' Boeder -Kreutzwald, Der Ehsien
^ J. G. Campbell, Witchcraft and abergldubische Gebrduche, Weisen una
Second Sight in the Highlands and Gewohnheiten, p. 122.
136 SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap,
Homoeo- ingenuity has applied the principle of homoeopathic or imitative
m^agic magic, is that of causing trees and plants to bear fruit in due
applied to season. In Thiiringen the man who sows flax carries the seed
plants i" ^ long bag which reaches from his shoulders to his knees,
gro*- and he walks with long strides, so that the bag sways to and
Magic at fj.Q qjj jjjg jjack. It IS believed that this will cause the flax
sowing and
planting, to wavc in the wind. In the interior of Sumatra rice is sown
by women who, in sowing, let their hair hang loose down
their back, in order that the rice may grow luxuriantly and
have long stalks.^ Similarly, in ancient Mexico a festival
was held in honour of the goddess of maize, or " the long-
haired mother," as she was called. It began at the time
" when the plant had attained its full growth, and fibres
shooting forth from the top of the green ear indicated that
the grain was fully formed. During this festival the women
wore their long hair unbound, shaking and tossing it in the
dances which were the chief feature in the ceremonial, in
order that the tassel of the maize might grow in like pro-
fusion, that the grain might be correspondingly large and
flat, and that the people might have abundance." * It is a
Malay maxim to plant maize when your stomach is full, and
to see to it that your dibble is thick ; for this will swell the
ear of the maize.^ And they say that you should sow rice
also with a full stomach, for then the ears will be full.*
The eminent novelist, Mr. Thomas Hardy, was once told
that the reason why certain trees in front of his house, near
Weymouth, did not thrive, was that he looked at them
before breakfast on an empty stomach.* More elaborate
still are the measures taken by an Esthonian peasant woman
to make her cabbages thrive. On the day when they are
^ Aug. Witzschel, Sagen, Sitten und 1892) p. 421. Compare Brasseur de
Gebrduche aus Thiiringen (Vienna, 'Som\>oaig,B'istoiredes nations civilisies
1878), p. 218, § 36. du Mexique et de t Amirique-Centrale,
' A. L. van Hasselt, Volksbeschrij- i. 518 sq,
ving van Midden -Sumatra (Leyden, * W. W. Skeat,.i5/<2/aj' A'a^«V,p. 217.
1S82), p. 323; J. L. van der Toorn, ^ A. L. van Hasselt, " Nota betref-
" Het animisme bij den Minang- fende de rijstcultuur in de Residentie
kabauer der Padangsche Bovenlanden, " TapanoeJi," Tijdschrift voor Indische
Bijdragen tot de Taal- Land- en Volken- Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde, xxxvi.
kunde van Nederlandsch- Indie, xxxix. (1893) p. 529.
(1890) p. 64. 8 xhis I learned from Mr. Hardy
' E. J. Payne, History of the New in conversation. See also his letter in
World called America, i. (Oxford, Folklore, via. (1897) p. II.
lu HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 137
sown she bakes great pancakes, in order that the cabbages
may have great broad leaves ; and she wears a dazzling
white hood in the belief that this will cause the cabbages
to have fine white heads. Moreover, as soon as the cabbages
are transplanted, a small round stone is wrapt up tightly in
a white linen rag and set at the end of the cabbage bed,
because in this way the cabbage heads will grow very white
and firm.^ Among the Huzuls of the Carpathians, when a
woman is planting cabbages, she winds many cloths about
her head, in order that the heads of the cabbages may also
be thick. And as soon as she has sown parsley, she grasps
the calf of her leg with both hands, saying, " May it be as
thick as that ! " ^ Among the Kurs of East Prussia, who
inhabit the long sandy tongue of land known as the
Nehrung which parts the Baltic from a lagoon, when a
farmer sows his fields in spring, he carries an axe and
chops the earth with it, in order that the cornstalks may
be so sturdy that an axe will be needed to hew them down.'
For much the same reason a Bavarian sower in sowing
wheat will sometimes wear a golden ring, in order that the
corn may have a fine yellow colour.* The Malagasy think
that only people with a good even set of teeth should plant
maize, for otherwise there will be empty spaces in the maize
cob corresponding to the empty spaces in the planter's
teeth.*
In many parts of Europe dancing or leaping high Dancing
in the air are approved homoeopathic modes of making ^^"^ j^^
the crops grow high. Thus in Franche-Comtd they high as
say that you should dance at the Carnival in order tofo'^^^'i^
make the hemp grow tall." In the Vosges mountains the 'he crops
sower of hemp pulls his nether garments up as far as he ^™"^ '^
can, because he imagines that the hemp he is sowing will
1 Boeder - Kreutzwald, Der Ehsten * F. Panzer, Beitrag zur deutschen
abergldubhche Gebrduche, IVeisen mid Mythologie, ii. p. 207, § 362 ; Bavaria,
Gewohnheiten, p. 133. Compare F. Landes-undVolkskundedes Konigreichs
J. Wiedemann, Aus dem inneren und Bayern, ii. 297, iii. 343.
ausseren Leben der Ehsten, p. 447. " H. F. Standing, " Malagasy _^;i/)',"
^ R. F. Kaindl, 'f Zauberglaube bei Antananarivo Annual and Madagascar
den Huzulen," Globus, Ixxvi. (1899) j1/fl^a2«»«, vol. ii. (reprint of the second
p. 276. four numbers, 1881-1884) (Antanan-
" F. Tetzner, "Die Kuren in Ost- arivo, 1896), p. 257.
preussen," Globus, Ixxv. (1899) p. ' Ch. Beauquier, Les Mois en
14S. Franche-Comti l^aris, 1900), p. 30.
13^ SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap.
Dancing attain the precise height to which he has succeeded in
and leap- hitching up his breeches ; ^ and in the same region another
ing high as ^ ^ ' o
a charm Way of ensuring a good crop of hemp is to dance on the
the'"crops '■^"f °f *^^ house on Twelfth Day.^ In Swabia and among
grov,- high, the Transylvanian Saxons it is a common custom for a man
who has sown hemp to leap high on the field, in the belief
that this will make the hemp grow tall.^ All over Baden
till recently it was the custom for the farmer's wife to give
the sower a dish of eggs or. a cake baked with eggs either
before or after sowing, in order that he might leap as high
as possible. This was deemed the best way of making the
hemp grow high. For the same purpose some people who
had sown hemp used to dance the hemp dance, as it was
called, on Shrove Tuesday, and in this dance also the
dancers jumped as high as they could. In some parts of
Baden the hemp seed is thrown in the air as high as
possible, and in Katzenthal the urchins leap over fires
in order that the hemp may grow tall.* Similarly in many
other parts of Germany and Austria the peasant imagines
that he makes the flax grow tall by dancing or leaping
high, or by jumping backwards from a table ; the higher
the leap the taller will the flax be that year. The special
season for thus promoting the growth of flax is Shrove
Tuesday, but in some places it is Candlemas or Walpurgis
Night (the eve of May Day). The scene of the performance
is the flax field, the farmhouse, or the village tavern.* In
' L. F. Sauve, Le Folk-lore des Bohmen, p. 49 ; E. Sommer, Sagen,
Hati/es- Vbsges (Paris, 1889), p. 142. Mdrchen und Gebrduche aus Sachsen
2 L. F. Sauve, op. cit. pp. 17 sq. und Thiiringen, p. 148; O. Knoop,
' E. Meier, Deutsche Sagen, Sitten Volkssagen, Erzdhlungen, Aberglauben,
und Gebrduche aus Schwaben, p. 499 ; Gebrduche und Mdrchen aus dem
A. Heinrich, Agrarische Sitten und ostlichen Hinterponimem, p. 176;
Gebrduche unter den Sachsen Sieben- A. Witzschel, Sagen, Sitten und Ge-
biirgens (Hermannstadt, 1880), p. 11. brduche aus Thiiringen, p. 191, § 13 ;
■* E. H. Meyer, Badisches Volksleben J. F. L. Woeste, Volksiiberlieferun-
im neunzehnten Jahrhundert (Stras- gen in der Grafschaft Mark, p. 56,
burg, 1900), pp. 421 sq. § 24; Bavaria, Landes- und Volks-
» A. Kuhn und W. Schwartz, Nord- kunde des Konigreichs Bayern, ii.
deutsche Sagen,Mdrchen und Gebrduche, 298, iv. 2, pp. 379, 382 ; A. Heinrich,
P- 445> § 354 ; J- V. Grohmann, Aber- Agrarische Sitten und Gebrduche unter
glauben und Gebrduche aus Bohmen den Sachsen Siebenbiirgens, pp. 1 1 sq.;
und Mdhren, p. 95, § 664 ; A. W. von Schulenberg, Wendische Volks-
Peter, Volksthiimliches aus dsterrei- sagen uftd Gebrduche aus dem Spreewald,
chisch-Schlesien, ii. 266 ; Von Reins- p. 252 ; J. A. E. Kohler, Volksbrauch,
berg-Duringsfeld, Fest - Kalender aus Aberglauben, Sagen und andre altl
in HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 139
some parts of Eastern Prussia the girls dance one by one
in a large hoop at midnight on Shrove Tuesday. The
hoop is adorned with leaves, flowers, and ribbons, and
attached to it are a small bell and some flax. Strictly
speaking, the hoop should be wrapt in white linen hand-
kerchiefs, but the place of these is often taken by many-
coloured bits of cloth, wool, and so forth. While dancing
within the hoop each girl has to wave her arms vigorously
and cry " Flax grow ! " or words to that effect. When she
has done, she leaps out of the hoop, or is lifted out of it
by her partner.* In Anhalt, when the sower had sown the
flax, he leaped up and flung the seed-bag high in the air,
saying, " Grow and turn green ! You have nothing else to
do." He hoped that the flax would grow as high as he
flung the seed-bag in the air. At Quellendorff, in Anhalt,
the first bushel of seed-corn had to be heaped up high in
order that the corn-stalks should grow tall and bear plenty
of grain.^ When Macedonian farmers have done digging
their fields, they throw their spades up into the air, and
catching them again, exclaim, " May the crop grow as high
as the spade has gone 1 " '
The notion that a person can influence a plant homoeo- Plants and
pathically by his act or condition comes out clearly in a gugn^gj
remark made by a Malay woman. Being asked why she homoeo
stripped the upper part of her body naked in reaping the ^y'a"^''"^
rice, she explained that she did it to make the rice-husks person's
act or
Uberlieferungen im Voigtlande, pp. 368 und Schwartz, Grohmann, Witzschel, s''*'^-
sq. ; Die gestriegelte Rockenphilosophie Heinrich, ll.cc). Sometimes the
(Chemnitz, 1759), p. 103; M.Toeppen, women dance in the sunlight (Die
Aberglaubeti aus Masuren,"^ p. 68; gestriegelte Rockenphilosophie, I.e.);
A. Wuttke, Der deutsche Volksalier- but in Voigtland the leap from the
glaube^ p. 396, § 657 ; U. Jahn, Die table should be made by the house-
deutsche Opfergebrduche bei Ackerbau wife naked and at midnight on Shrove
uttdVieAzucAtjpp. i^^sg.; R. Wuttke, Tuesday (Kohler, /.c). On Walpurgis
SdcAsiscAeyo/is/;unJe'-{Dtesdcn,igoi), Night the leap is made over an alder
p. 370 ; E. Hoffmann - Krayer, branch stuck at the edge of the flax
'' Fruchtbarkeitsriten im schweizeri- field (Sommer, /.c).
schen Volksbrauch," Schweizerisches ' E. Lemke, Volksthiimliches in
Archiv fiir Volkskunde, xi. (1907) Ostpreussen, pp. 8-12 ; M. Toeppen,
p. 260. According to one account. I.e.
in leaping from the table you should ' O. Hartung, "Zur Volkskunde aus
hold in your hand a long bag con- Anhalt," Zeitschrift des Vereins fiir
taining flax seed (Woeste, I.e.'). 'i'he Volkskunde, vii. (1897) pp. 149 sq.
dancing or leaping is often done ' G. F. Abbott, Macedonian Folk-
specially by girls or women (Kuhn lore (Cambridge, 1903), p. 122.
l40
S YMPA THE TIC MA GIC
Fertilising
influence
supposed
to be exer-
cised on
plants by
pregnant
women or
by women
who have
borne many
children.
thinner, as she was tired of pounding thick-husked rice.'
Clearly, she thought that the less clothing she wore the less
husk there would be on the rice. Among the Minang-
kabauers of Sumatra, when a rice barn has been built a
feast is held, of which a woman far advanced in preg-
nancy must partake. Her condition will obviously help the
rice to be fruitful and multiply.^ Among the Zulus a
pregnant woman sometimes grinds corn, which is after-
wards burnt among the half- grown crops in order to
fertilise them.^ For a similar reason in Syria when
a fruit-tree does not bear, the gardener gets a pregnant
woman to fasten a stone to one of its branches ; then the
tree will be sure to bear fruit, but the woman will run a risk
of miscarriage,* having transferred her fertility, or part of it,
to the tree. The practice of loading with stones a tree which
casts its fruit is mentioned by Maimonides,^ though the
Rabbis apparently did not understand it. The proceeding
was most probably a homoeopathic charm designed to load
the tree with fruit.^ In Swabia they say that if a fruit-tree
does not bear, you should keep it loaded with a heavy
stone all summer, and next year it will be sure to bear.^
The custom of tying stones to fruit - trees in order to
ensure a crop of fruit is followed also in Sicily.*
The magic virtue of a pregnant woman to communicate
fertility is known to Bavarian and Austrian peasants, who
• W. W. Skeat, Malay Magic, p.
248.
^ J. L. van der Toorn, " Het ani-
misme bij den Minangkabauer der
Padangsche Bovenlanden," Bijdragen
tot de Tool- Land- en Volkenkunde van
Nederlandsch ■ Indie, xxxix. (1890)
p. 67.
^ Dudley Kidd, Savage Childhood
(London, 1906), p. 291.
* Eijub Abela, " Beitrage zur Kennt-
niss aberglaubischer Gebrauche in
Syrien," Zeitschrift des deutschen Palae-
stina-Vereins, vii. (1884) p. 112, §
202. Compare L'Abbe B. Chemali,
" Naissance et premier age au Liban,"
Anthropos, v. (1910) pp. 734, 735.
' Quoted by D. Chwolsohn, Die
Ssabier und der Ssabisvius (St. Peters-
burg, 1856), ii. 469.
* W. Mannhardt (Baumkultus, p.
419) promised in a later investiga-
tion to prove that it was an ancient
custom at harvest or in spring to load
or pelt trees and plants, as well as the
representatives of the spirit of vegeta-
tion, with stones, in order thereby to
express, the weight of fruit which was
expected. This promise, so far as I
know, he did not live to fulfil. Com-
pare, however, his Mythologische For-
schungen, p. 324,
' E. Meier, Deutsche Sagen, Sitten
und Gebrauche aus Schwaben, pp. 249
sq. The placing of the stone on the
tree is described as a punishment, but
this is probably a misunderstanding.
* G. Pitr^, Usi e costumi, credenze
et pregiudizi del popolo siciliano, iii
(Palermo, 1889) pp. 113^?.
Ill HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 141
think that if you give the first fruit of a tree to a woman
with child to eat, the tree will bring forth abundantly next
year.' In Bohemia for a similar purpose the first apple of a
young tree is sometimes plucked and eaten by a woman who
has borne many children, for then the tree will be sure to bear
many apples.^ In the Ziircher Oberland, Switzerland, they
think that a cherry-tree will bear abundantly if its first
fruit is eaten by a woman who has just given birth to her
first child.^ In Macedonia the first fruit of a tree should
not be eaten by a barren woman but by one who has many
children.* The Nicobar Islanders think it lucky to get a
pregnant woman and her husband to plant seed in gardens.^
The Greeks and Romans sacrificed pregnant victims to
the goddesses of the corn and of the earth, doubtless
in order that the earth might teem and the corn swell in
the ear.^ When a Catholic priest remonstrated with the
Indians of the Orinoco on allowing their women to sow the
fields in the blazing sun, with infants at their breasts, the
men answered, " Father, you don't understand these things,
and that is why they vex you. You know that women are
accustomed to bear children, and that we men are not.
When the women sow, the stalk of the maize bears two or
three ears, the root of the yucca yields two or three
I Bavaria, Landes- und Volkskunde " Fabelen, Verhalen en Overleveringen
des Kbnigreichs Bayern, ii. 299 ; T. der Galelareezen," Bijdragen tot de
Vernaleken, Mythen und Brduche des Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde -van
Volkes in Osterreich, p. 315. On Nederlandsch- Indie, xlv. (1895) p.
the other hand, in some parts of north- 457.
west New Guinea a woman with child ^ J. V. Grohnian, Aberglauben und
may not plant, or the crop would be Gebrduche aus Bohmen und Mdhren,
eaten up by pigs ; and she may not p. 143, § 1053.
climb a tree in the rice-field, or the crop ' E. Hoffmann- Krayer, " Frucht-
would fail. See J. L. van Hasselt, barkeitsriten im schweizerischen Volks-
"Enige aanteekeningen aangaande de brauch," Schweizerisches Archiv fUr
Bewoners der N. Westkust van Nieuw Volkskunde, xi. (1907) p. 263.
Guinea," Tijdschrift voor Indische * G. F. Abbott, Macedonia Folk-
Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde, xxxii. lore, p. 122.
(i88g) p. 264 ; id., " Die Papua- * Census of India, igoi, vol. iii. p.
stamme an der Geelvinkbai," Mittei- 206.
lungen der Geographischen Gesellschaft 8 Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscrip-
iujena, ix. (1891) p. 102. Similarly tionum Craecarum,^ No. 615, line 17
the Galelareese say that a pregnant iirhp Kapwov A^/nyrpi. Sy ivKiiiova jrpwro-
woman must not sweep under a Ti/coK; compare iV/., No. 616, line 61 j-^.,
shaddock tree, or knock the fruit from No. 617, line 3 ; Ovid, Fasti, iv. 633
the bough, else it will taste sour instead sq. ; Macrobius, Saturn, i. 12. 20;
oi sweet. See M. J. van Baarda, Arnobius, Adversus nationes, iv. 22.
142
S YMPA THE TIC MA GIC
Barren
women
supposed
to make
the frnit-
trees
barren.
Taboc5
based on
the belief
that
persons can
influer.ce
vegetation
homoeo-
pathically
by their
acts or
states.
basketfuls, and everything multiplies in proportion. Now
why is that ? Simply because the women know how to
bring forth, and know how to make the seed which they
sow bring forth also. Let them sow, then ; we men don't
know as much about it as they do."^ For the same reason,
probably, the Tupinambas of Brazil thought that if a
certain earth-almond were planted by the men, it would not
grow.^ Among the Ilocans of Luzon the men sow bananas,
but the sower must have a young child on his shoulder, or
the bananas will bear no fruit.* When a tree bears no fruit,
the Galelareese think it is a male ; and their remedy is
simple. They put a woman's petticoat on the tree, which,
being thus converted into a female, will naturally prove
prolific* On the other hand the Baganda believe that a
barren wife infects her husband's garden with her own
sterility and prevents the trees from bearing fruit ; hence a
childless woman is generally divorced.* For a like reason,
probably, the Wajagga of East Africa throw away the corpse
of a childless woman, with all her belongings, in the forest or
in any other place where the land is never cultivated ; more-
over her body is not carried out of the door of the hut,
but a special passage is broken for it through the wall,^ no
doubt to prevent her dangerous ghost from finding its way
back.^
Thus on the theory of homoeopathic magic a person can
influence vegetation either for good or for evil according to the
good or the bad character of his acts or states : for example,
a fruitful woman makes plants fruitful, a barren woman
makes them barren. Hence this belief in the noxious and
infectious nature of certain personal qualities or accidents
1 J. Gumilla, Histoiie tiaturelle,
civile el giographique de rOrinoque
(Avignon, 1758), iii. 184.
s R. Southey, History of Brazil, i.*
(London, 1S22) p. 253.
3 F. Blunientritt, "Sitten und
Brauche der Ilocanen," Globus, xlviii.
No. 12, p. 202.
* M. J. van Baarda, " Fabelen,
Verhalen en Overleveringen der Galel-
areezen," Bijdragen tot de Taal- Land-
tn Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-
Jtidii', xlv. (l8gs) p. 489.
' Rev. J. Roscoe, " Further Notes
on the Manners and Customs of the
Baganda, "yb«?-«a/ 0/ the Anthropologi-
cal Institute, xxxii. (1902) p. 38.
' B. Guttmann, "Trauer und Be-
grabnissitten der Wadschagga," Globiis,
Ixxxix. (1906) p. 200.
' J. G. Frazer, " On certain Burial
Customs as illustrative of the Primitive
Theory of the Soul," Journal of the
Anthropological Institute, xv. (1886)
pp. 69 sq.
Ill HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 143
has given rise to a number of prohibitions or rules of
avoidance : people abstain from doing certain things lest
they should homoeopathically infect the fruits of the earth
with their own undesirable state or condition. All such
customs of abstention or rules of avoidance are examples
of negative magic or taboo.^ Thus, for example, arguing
from what may be called the infectiousness of personal
acts or states, the Galelareese say that you ought not
to shoot with a bow and arrows under a fruit-tree,
or the tree will cast its fruit even as the arrows fall to
the ground ; ^ and that when you are eating water-melon
you ought not to mix the pips which you spit out of
your mouth with the pips which you have put aside to
serve as seed ; for if you do, though the pips you spat out
may certainly spring up and blossom, yet the blossoms will
keep falling off just as the pips fell from your mouth, and
thus these pips will never bear fruit.^ Precisely the same
train of thought leads the Bavarian peasant to believe that
if he allows the graft of a fruit-tree to fall on the ground,
the tree that springs from that graft will let its fruit fall
untimely.* The Indians of Santiago Tepehuacan suppose
that if a single grain of the maize which they are about to
sow were eaten by an animal, the birds and the wild boars
would come and devour all the rest, and nothing would
grow. And if any of these Indians has ever in his life
buried a corpse, he will never be allowed to plant a fruit-
tree, for they say that the tree would wither. And they
will not let such a man go fishing with them, for the fish
would flee from him.* Clearly these Indians imagine that
anybody who has buried a corpse is thereby tainted, so to
say, with an infection of death, which might prove fatal to
fruits and fish. In Nias, the day after a man has made pre-
parations for planting rice he may not use fire, or the crop
would be parched ; he may not spread his mats on the
ground, or the young plants would droop towards the earth.^
' As to negative magic or taboo, * " Lettre du cure de Santiago
see above, pp. \l\ sqq. Tepehuacan," bulletin de la Sociki
' M. J. van Baarda, op. cit. p. 488. de Giographie (Paris), lime Serie, ii.
= M. J. van Baarda, «/.«■/. pp. 496 ff. (1834) pp. \?,\ sq., 183.
< Bavaria, Latules- und Volkskunde ° E. Modigliani, Un Viaggio a Nias
lUs Kihiigreiihs Bayerti^ ii. 299. (Milan, 1890), p. 590.
144
5 YMPA THE TIC MA GIC
Persons in
fluenced
homoeo
When the Chams of Cochinchina are sowing their dry rice-
fields and desire that no rain should fall, they eat their rice
dry instead of moistening it, as they usually do, with the
water in which vegetables and fish have been boiled. That
prevents rain from spoiling the rice.^
In the foregoing cases a person is supposed to influence
vegetation homoeopathically. He infects trees or plants
pathicaiiy with qualities or accidents, good or bad, resembling and
^ ^ ' derived from his own. But on the principle of homoeo-
pathic magic the influence is mutual : the plant can infect
the man just as much as the man can infect the plant. In
magic, as I believe in physics, action and reaction are equal
and opposite. The Cherokee Indians are adepts in prac-
tical botany of the homoeopathic sort. Thus wiry roots
of the catgut plant or devil's shoestring {Tephrosia) are
so tough that they can almost stop a ploughshare in
the furrow. Hence Cherokee women wash their heads
with a decoction of the roots to make the hair strong, and
Cherokee ball-players wash themselves with it to toughen
their muscles. To help them to spring quickly to their feet
when they are thrown to the ground, these Indian ball-
players also bathe their limbs with a decoction of the small
rush (/uncus tenuis), which, they say, always recovers its
erect position, no matter how often it is trampled down.
To improve a child's memory the Cherokees beat up
burs in water which has been fetched from a roaring
waterfall. The virtue of the potion is threefold. The voice
of the Long Man or river-god is heard in the roar of the
cataract ; the stream seizes and holds things cast upon its
surface ; and there is nothing that sticks like a bur.
Hence it seems clear that with the potion the child will
drink in the lessons taught by the voice of the waters, will
seize them like the stream, and stick fast to them like a
bur. For a like reason the Cherokee fisherman ties the
plant called Venus' flytrap {Dionaea) to his fishtrap, and he
chews the plant and spits it on the bait. That will be sure
to make the trap and the bait catch fish, just as Venus'
flytrap catches and digests the insects which alight on it.^
' Damien Grangeon, " Les Cham et
leiirs superstitions," Missions QatAo-,
lifues, xxviii. (1896) p. 83.
^ J. Mooney, "Myths of the
Ill HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 145
The Kei islanders think that certain creepers which adhere
firmly to the trunks of trees prevent voyagers at sea from
being wafted hither and thither at the mercy of the wind
and the waves ; the adhesive power of the plants enables
the mariners to go straight to their destination.^ It is a
Galelareese belief that if you eat a fruit which has fallen
to the ground, you will yourself contract a disposition to
stumble and fall ; and that if you partake of something
which has been forgotten (such as a sweet potato left in the
pot or a banana in the fire), you will become forgetful.^ The
Galelareese are also of opinion that if a woman were to con-
sume two bananas growing from a single head she would give
birth to twins.* The Guarani Indians of South America
thought that a woman would become a mother of twins if she
ate a double grain of millet.* In Vedic times a curious
application of this principle supplied a charm by which a
banished prince might be restored to his kingdom. He had
to eat food cooked on a fire which was fed with wood which
had grown out of the stump of a tree which had been cut down.
The recuperative power manifested by such a tree would in
due course be communicated through the fire to the food,
and so to the prince, who ate the food which was cooked on
the fire which was fed with the wood which grew out of the
tree.* Among the Lkungen Indians of Vancouver Island
an infallible means of making your hair grow long is to rub
it with fish oil and the pulverised fruit of a particular kind
of poplar {Populus trichocarpd). As the fruit grows a long
way up the tree, it cannot fail to make your hair grow long
too.' At Allumba, in Central Australia, there is a tree to
Cherokee," Nineteenth Annual Report Indie, xlv. (1895) pp. 466, 468.
of the Bureau of American Ethnology ^ M. J. van Baarda, op. cit. p.
(Washington, 1900), pt. i. pp. 425- 467.
427; compare?^., "Sacred Formulas * R. Southey, History of Brazil, ii.
of the Cherokees," Seventh Annual (London, 1817) p. 37.
Report of the Bureau of Ethnology ^ H. Oldenberg, Die Religion des
(Washington, 1891), p. 329. Veda, p. 505 ; M. Bloomfield, Hymns
1 H. Geurtjens, "Le Ceremonial des of the Atharva -Veda, p. 240; W.
voyages aux lies Keij," Anthropos, v. Caland, Altindisches Zauberritual,
(1910) p. 352. p. 37.
2 M. J. van Baarda, "Fabelen, « Fr. Boas, in Sixth Report on the
Verhalen en Overleveringen der Galel- North-Western Tribes of Canada, p. 25
areezan," Bijdragen tot de Taal- Land- (separate reprint from the Report of
en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch- the British Association for i8<)0).
Vol. I L
146 SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap.
which the sun, in the shape of a woman, is said to have
travelled from the east. The natives believe that if the
tree were destroyed, they vs^ould all be burned up ; and that
were any man to kill and eat an opossum from this tree, the
food would burn up all his inward parts so that he would die.^
People The Sundanese of the Indian Archipelago regard certain
supposed ]^j,^j]g of wood as Unsuitable for use in house-building,
to be , , 7
influenced especially such trees as have prickles or thorns on their
'"'SiSiv trunks. They think that the life of people who lived in a
by the house made of such timber would be thorny and full of
thel^mber trouble. Again, if a house is built of trees that have fallen,
of which or lost their leaves through age, the inmates would die soon
Le'buiit. or would be hard put to it to earn their bread. Again, wood
from a house that has been burnt down should never be
used in building, for it would cause a fire to break out in
the new house.^ In Java some people would not build a
house with the wood of a tree that has been uprooted by a
storm, lest the house should fall down in like manner ; and
they take care not to construct the upright and the horizontal
parts (the standing and lying parts, as they call them) of
the edifice out of the same tree. The reason for this pre-
caution is a belief that if the standing and lying woodwork
was made out of the same tree, the inmates of the house
would constantly suffer from ill health ; no sooner had one
of them got up from a bed of sickness than another would
have to lie down on it ; and so it would go on, one up and
another down, perpetually.^ Before Cherokee braves went
forth to war the medicine-man used to give each man a
small charmed root which made him absolutely invulner-
able. On the eve of battle the warrior bathed in a running
stream, chewed a portion of the root and spat the juice on
his body in order that the bullets might slide from his
skin like the drops of water. Some of my readers perhaps
doubt whether this really made the men bomb-proof. There
is a barren and paralysing spirit of scepticism abroad at
^ Spencer and Gillen, Northern ' D. Louwerier, " Bijgeloovige ge-
Triiis of Cf'itral Australia, -pp. 62^ sq. bruiken, die door de Javanen worden
- T. H.ibbema, " Bijgeloof in de in aclit genomen bij het bouwen hunner
Praenger-Regentschappen," Bijdragen huizen," Mededcelingen van wege het
.v.- d< Tool- Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap,
XedirUmdsch-Tndie, li. (1900) p. 113. xlviii. (1904) pp. 380 sq.
Ill HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 147
the present day which is most deplorable. However, the
efficacy of this particular charm was proved in the Civil
War, for three hundred Cherokees served in the army of
the South ; and they were never, or hardly ever, wounded
in action.^ Near Charlotte Waters, in Central Australia,
there is a tree which sprang up to mark the spot where a
blind man died. It is called the Blind Tree by the natives,
who think that if it were cut down all the people of the
neighbourhood would become blind. A man who wishes
to deprive his enemy of sight need only go to the tree
by himself and rub it, muttering his wish and exhorting
the magic virtue to go forth and do its baleful work.^
In this last example the infectious quality, though it Homoeo
emanates directly from a tree, is derived originally from a '^^^^ ^f
man — namely, the blind man — who was buried at the place the dead,
where the tree grew. Similarly, the Central Australians
believe that a certain group of stones at Undiara are the
petrified boils of an old man who long ago plucked them
from his body and left them there ; hence any man who
wishes to infect his enemy with boils will go to these stones
and throw miniature spears at them, taking care that the
points of the spears strike the stones. Then the spears are
picked up, and thrown one by one in the direction of the
person whom it is intended to injure. The spears carry with
them the magic virtue from the stones, and the result is an
eruption of painful boils on the body of the victim. Some-
times a whole group of people can be afflicted in this way by
a skilful magician.' These examples introduce us to a
fruitful branch of homoeopathic magic, namely to that
department of it which works by means of the dead; for
just as the dead can neither see nor hear nor speak, so you
may on homoeopathic principles render people blind, deaf,
and dumb by the use of dead men's bones or anything else
that is tainted by the infection of death. Thus among
the Galelareese, when a young man goes a-wooing at night,
he takes a little earth from a grave and strews it on the
• J. Mooney, "Sacred Formulas of ^ Spencer and CAWftn, Native Tribes
the Cherokees," Seventh Annual of Central Australia, y. ^<,2.
Report of the Bureau of Ethnology ^ Spencer and Gillen, op. cit. p,
(Washington, 1S91), p. 3S9. 550.
148 SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap.
roof of his sweetheart's house just above the place where
her parents sleep. This, he fancies, will prevent them from
waking while he converses with his beloved, since the earth
from the grave will make them sleep as sound as the dead.^
Homoeo- Burglars in all ages and many lands have been patrons of this
^ic of species of magic, which is very useful to them in the exercise
the dead of their profession. Thus a South Slavonian housebreaker
^bi^iars sometimes begins operations by throwing a dead man's bone
for the over the house, saying, with pungent sarcasm, " As this bone
of conceal- "1^7 Waken, so may these people waken " ; after that not a
'^°'- soul in the house can keep his or her eyes open.^ Similarly,
in Java the burglar takes earth from a grave and sprinkles
it round the house which he intends to rob ; this throws
the inmates into a deep sleep.^ With the same intention a
Hindoo will strew ashes from a pyre at the door of the
house ; * Indians of Peru scatter the dust of dead men's
bones ; " and Ruthenian burglars remove the marrow from a
human shin-bone, pour tallow into it, and having kindled the
tallow, march thrice round the house with this candle burning,
which causes the inmates to sleep a death-like sleep. Or
the Ruthenian will make a flute out of a human leg-bone
and play upon it ; whereupon all persons within hearing are
overcome with drowsiness.* The Indians of Mexico employed
for this maleficent purpose the left fore-arm of a woman who
had died in giving birth to her first child ; but the arm had
to be stolen. With it they beat the ground before they
entered the house which they designed to plunder ; this caused
every one in the house to lose all power of speech and
motion ; they were as dead, hearing and seeing everything,
but perfectly powerless ; some of them, however, really slept
and even snored.' In Europe similar properties were
1 M. T. van Baarda, " Fabelen, Ver- ii. 215, No. 760 ; W. Crooke, Popula:
halen en Oveileveringen der Galelaxee- Religion and Folklore of Northern
zen," Bijdragen tot de Taal- Land- en India (Westminster, 1896), i. 261.
Volkenhtnde van Nederlandsch- Indie, ^ P. J. de Arriaga, Extirpacion de
xlv. (1895) p. 462. la idolatria del Piru (Lima, 1621),
' F. S, Krauss, Volksglaube und reli- p. 22.
giSser Branch der Siidslaven, p. 146. « R. F. Kaindl, " Zauberglaube bei
'J. Knebel, "Amulettes Java- den Rutenen," Globus, Ixi. (1892)
naises," Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal- p. 282.
Land- en Volkenkunde, xl. (1898) p. ^ B.A&SahngVLn, Histoiregin^raledes
5°6. choses de la Nouvelle-Espagne (Paris,
* North Indian Notes and Queries, 1880), bk. iv. ch. 31, pp. 274 sq. ; E.
ni HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 149
ascribed to the Hand of Glory, which was the dried and
pickled hand of a man who had been hanged. If a candle
made of the fat of a malefactor who had also died on the
gallows was lighted and placed in the Hand of Glory as in a
candlestick, it rendered motionless all persons to whom it was
presented ; they could not stir a finger any more than if they
were dead/ Sometimes the dead man's hand is itself the
candle, or rather bunch of candles, all its withered fingers
being set on fire ; but should any member of the household
be awake, one of the fingers will not kindle. Such nefarious
lights can only be extinguished with milk.^ Often it is pre-
scribed that the thief's candle should be made of the finger
of a new-born or, still better, unborn child ; sometimes it is
thought needful that the thief should have one such candle
for every person in the house, for if he has one candle too
little somebody in the house will wake and catch him. Once
these tapers begin to burn, there is nothing but milk that will
put them out. In the seventeenth century robbers used to
murder pregnant women in order thus to extract candles from
their wombs.^ An ancient Greek robber or burglar thought
he could silence and put to flight the fiercest watchdogs by
carrying with him a brand plucked from a funeral pyre.*
Again, Servian and Bulgarian women who chafe at the Homoeo-
restraints of domestic life will take the copper coins from^^*i^pf
the eyes of a corpse, wash them in wine or water, and give the dead
the hquid to their husbands to drink. After swallowing it, fOT^vSious
the husband will be as blind to his wife's peccadilloes as the purposes,
dead man was on whose eyes the coins were laid.* When a
Seler, AUmexikanische Studien, ii. Volksaberglaube,^ pp. 126 sq. § 184;
(Berlin, 1899) pp. 51 sq. (VerSffent- A. GiXX&e, De hand en de vingeren in
lichungen aus dem koniglichen Museum het volksgeloof, pp. 3 1 sqq. Compare
fiir Volkerku7ide, vi.). Tettau und Temme, Volkssagen Ost-
^ J. Brand, Popular Antiquities of preussens, Litthauens und Westfreus-
Great Britain, iii. 278 sq. (Bohn's ed.). sens, p. 266.
^ W. Henderson, Folklore of the * Aelian, Nat. Anim. i. 38.
Northern Counties of England, pp. 239 ' F. S. Krauss, Volksglaube und re-
sqq. ; J. W. Wolf, Niederldndische ligioser Brauch der Siidslaven, p. 140.
Sagen (Leipsic, 1843), pp. 363-365. The custom of placing coins on the eyes
^ L. Strackerjan, Aberglaube und of a corpse to prevent them from open-
Sagen aus dem Herzogthum Oldenburg, ing is not uncommon. Its observance in
L 100 sq. § 141 ; J. V. Grohmann, England is attested by the experienced
Aberglauben und Gebrduche aus Biihmen Mrs, Gamp : — " When Gamp was
und Mdhren, p. 106 § 758, p. 205 summonsed to his long home, and I
§ 1421 ; A. Wuttke, Der deutsche see him a-lying in Guy's Hospital with
ISO
S YMPA THE TIC MA GIC
CHAP.
Homoeo-
pathic
magic of
animal*;
Blackfoot Indian went out eagle-hunting, he used to take a
skull with him, because he believed that the skull would
make him invisible, like the dead person to whom it had
belonged, and so the eagles would not be able to see and
attack him.^ The Tarahumares of Mexico are great runners,
and parties of them engage in races with each other. They
believe that human bones induce fatigue ; hence before a race
the friends of one side will bury dead men's bones in the
track, hoping that the runners of the other side will pass over
them and so be weakened. Naturally they warn their own
men to shun the spot where the bones are buried.^ The
Belep of New Caledonia think that they can disable an
enemy from flight by means of the leg-bone of a dead foe.
They stick certain plants into the bone, and then smash it
between stones before the skulls of their ancestors. It is
easy to see that this breaks the leg of the living enemy and
so hinders him from running away. Hence in time of war
men fortify themselves with amulets of this sort' The
ancient Greeks seem to have thought that to set a young
male child on a tomb would be to rob him of his manhood
by infecting him with the impotence of the dead.* And as
there is no memory in the grave the Arabs think that earth
from a grave can make a man forget his griefs and sorrows,
especially the sorrow of an unhappy love.*
Again, animals are often conceived to possess qualities
or properties which might be useful to man, and homoeo-
pathic or imitative magic seeks to communicate these
properties to human beings in various ways. Thus some
Bechuanas wear a ferret as a charm, because, being very
tenacious of life, it will make them difficult to kill.* Others
a penny piece on each eye, and his
wooden leg under his left arm, I
thought I should have fainted away.
But I bore up " (C. Dickens, Martin
Chuszlewit, eh. xix.).
1 G. B. Grinnell, Blackfoot Lodge
Tales, p. 238.
' C. Lumholtz, Unknown Mexico,
j. 2S4.
' Father Lambert, in Missions Catho-
liquis, xi. (1879) P- 43 i "^-i Mceurs
et superstitions des Nio - Calidaniens
(Noum&, 1900), pp. 30 sq.
* Hesiod, Works and Days, 750 sqq.
But the lines are not free from am-
biguity. See F. A. Paley's note on the
passage.
^ E. Doutt^, Magie et religion dans
PAfrique du Nord (Algiers, 1908),
pp. 302 sq.
' J. Campbell, Travels in South
Africa, Second Journey (London,
1822), ii. 206 ; Barnabas Shaw, Mem-
orials of South Africa (London, 1 840),
p. 66.
Ill HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 151
wear a certain insect, mutilated, but living, for a similar
purpose.' Yet other Bechuana warriors wear the hair of a
hornless ox among their own hair, and the skin of a frog on
their mantle, because a frog is slippery, and the ox, having
no horns, is hard to catch ; so the man who is provided with
these charms believes that he will be as hard to hold as the
ox and the frog.^ Again, it seems plain that a South African
warrior who twists tufts of rats' hair among his own curly
black locks will have just as many chances of avoiding the
enemy's spear as the nimble rat has of avoiding things thrown
at it ; hence in these regions rats' hair is in great demand
when war is expected.^ In Morocco a fowl or a pigeon may
sometimes be seen with a little red bundle tied to its foot ;
the bundle contains a charm, and it is believed that as the
charm is kept in constant motion by the bird, a corresponding
restlessness is kept up in the mind of him or her against
whom the charm is directed.^ When a Galla sees a tortoise,
he will take off his sandals and step on it, believing that
the soles of his feet are thereby made hard and strong
like the shell of the animal.* The Wajaggas of Eastern
Africa think that if they wear a piece of the wing-bone
of a vulture tied round their leg they will be able to run
and not grow weary, just as the vulture flies unwearied
through the sky.^ The Esquimaux of Baffin Land fancy
that if part of the intestines of a fox is placed under the
feet of a baby boy, he will become active and skilful
in walking over thin ice, like a fox.'' One of the ancient
books of India prescribes that when a sacrifice is offered
for victory, the earth out of which the altar is to be
made should be taken from a place where a boar has been
wallowing, since the strength of the boar will be in that earth.^
' E. Casalis, The Basutos, pp. 271 der Dandkil, Gal/a und Somdl (Beilin,
sg. 1896), p. 27.
^ E. Casalis, op, cit, p. 272. ' M. Merker, Rechisverhdltnisse und
' Rev. James Macdonald, " Manners, Sitten der Wadschagga (Gotha, 1902),
Customs, Religions, and Superstitions p. 21 (Petermanns Mitteilungen, Er-
of South African "YrCo^^" Journal of giinzungsheft, No. 138).
the AnthrofologicallnstiluU, yiyi.{lZgi) ^ F. Boas, "The Eskimo of Baffin
p. 132. Land and Hudson Bay," Bulletin of
* A. I.eared, Morocco and the Moors the American Museum of Natural
(London, 1876), p. 272. History, xv. pt. i. (1901) p. 160.
' Ph. Paulitschke, Ethnographic ^ H. Oldenberg, Die Religion des
Xordost - Afrikas : die geistige Cultur Veda, p. 505.
152
S YMPA THE TIC MA GIC
pathic
magic of
insects.
Homoeo- When you are playing the one-stringed lute, and your fingers
are stiff, the thing to do is to catch some long-legged field
spiders and roast them, and then rub your fingers with the
ashes ; that will make your fingers as lithe and nimble as
the spiders' legs — at least so think the Galelareese/ As
the sea-eagle is very expert at seizing fish in its talons,
the Kei islanders use its claws as a charm to enable
them to make great gain on their trading voyages.^ The
children of the Baronga on Delagoa Bay are much troubled
by a small worm which burrows under their skin, where its
meanderings are visible to the eye. To guard her little
one against this insect pest a Baronga mother will attach
to its wrist the skin of a mole which burrows just under
the surface of the ground, exactly as the worm burrows
under the infant's skin.^ To bring back a runaway slave
an Arab of North Africa will trace a magic circle on
the ground, stick a nail in the middle of it, and attach
a beetle by a thread to the nail, taking care that the
sex of the beetle is that of the fugitive. As the beetle
crawls round and round it will coil the thread about the
nail, thus shortening its tether and drawing nearer to the
centre at every circuit. So by virtue of homoeopathic magic
the runaway slave will be drawn back to his master.^ The
Patagonian Indians kill a mare and put a new-born boy in
its body, believing that this will make him a good horseman.'
The Lkungen Indians of Vancouver's Island believe that
the ashes of wasps rubbed on the faces of warriors going to
battle will render the men as pugnacious as wasps, and
that a decoction of wasps' nests or of flies administered
internally to barren women will make them prolific like
the insects.^
Among the western tribes of British New Guinea, a
' M. J. van Baarda, " Fabelen, * E. Doutte, Magie et religion dans
Verhalen en Overleveringen der Galel- PAfrique du Nord (Algiers, 1908),
areezen," Bijdragen tot de Taal- Land- pp. 244 sq.
enVolkenkunde van Mederlandsch- Indie, ''Journal of American Folk-lore,
xlv. (1895) p. 484.
' H. Geurtjens, " Le C(5remonial des
voyages aux lies Keij," Anthropos, v.
(1910) p. 352.
^ H. A. Junod, Les Ba-ronga (Neu-
chatel, 1S98), pp. 472 sq.
xvii. (1904) p. 293, referring to Hes-
keth Pritchard, Through the Heart 0/
Patagonia (London, 1902).
" Fr. Boas, in Sixth Report on the
North -Western Tribes of Canada, p.
25 (separate reprint from Report of the
British Association for iSgO).
(II HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 153
man who has killed a snake will burn it and smear his legs Homoeo-
with the ashes when he goes into the forest ; for no snake ^^^ f ,
o ' magic of
will bite him for some days afterwards.' The Baronga of snakes
Delagoa Bay carry the powdered ashes of a serpent in a^JJj^'^j*'
little bag as a talisman which guards them from snake-
bites.^ Among the Arabs of Moab a woman will give her
infant daughter the ashes of a scorpion mixed with milk to
drink in order to protect her against the stings of scorpions.^
The Cholones of eastern Peru think that to carry the poison
tooth of a serpent is a protection against the bite of a serpent,
and that to rub the cheek with the tooth of an ounce is an
infallible remedy for toothache and face-ache.* In order to
strengthen her teeth some Brazilian Indians used to hang
round a girl's neck at puberty the teeth of an animal which
they called capugouare, that is " grass-eating." ^ When a
thoroughbred mare has drunk at a trough, an Arab woman
will hasten to drink any water that remains in order that she
may give birth to strong children.* If a South Slavonian
has a mind to pilfer and steal at market, he has nothing to
do but to burn a blind cat, and then throw a pinch of its
ashes over the person with whom he is higgling ; after that
he can take what he likes from the booth, and the owner
will not be a bit the wiser, having become as blind as the
deceased cat with whose ashes he has been sprinkled. The
thief may even ask boldly " Did I pay for it ? " and the deluded
huckster will reply, " Why, certainly." "^ Equally simple and
effectual is the expedient adopted by natives of Central
Australia who desire to cultivate their beards. They prick
the chin all over with a pointed bone, and then stroke it
carefully with a magic stick or stone, which represents a kind
of rat that has very long whiskers. The virtue of these
whiskers naturally passes into the representative stick or
1 B. A. Hely, " Notes on Totemism, * a.. Thevet, Cosmographie uni-
etc., among the Western Tribes," verselle (Paris, 1575), ii. 946 [980].
British Ntiv Guinea : Annual Report « a t ,, ^ , ...
, „ , -^ ° A. Jaussen, " Coutumes arabes,
^^^h! A.' Vnod, Les Ba-ronga Hevue Biblique, K^xW 1<)0Z, j. z^^-,
(Neuchitel, 1 898), p. 472. "^^ ' I"'"''"'" «'''^*" '^« f^^ '^ ^'"''>'
^ A. Jaussen, Coutumes arabes au V- i •
pays de Moab (Paris, 1908), p. 29. ' F. S. Krauss, Volksglaube und
* E. Poeppig, Reise in Chile, Peru religiSser Branch der Siidslaven, p.
und auf dem Amazonenstrome, ii. 323. 147.
IS4
5 YMPA THETIC MA GIC
CHAP.
Stone, and thence by an easy transition to the chin, which,
consequently, is soon adorned with a rich growth of beard.'
When a party of these same natives has returned from
killing a foe, and they fear to be attacked by the ghost of
the dead man in their sleep, every one of them takes care
to wear the tip of the tail of a rabbit-kangaroo in his hair.
Why ? Because the rabbit - kangaroo, being a nocturnal
animal, does not sleep of nights ; and therefore a man who
wears a tip of its tail in his hair will clearly be wakeful
during the hours of darkness.^ The Unmatjera tribe of
Central Australia use the tip of the tail of the same animal
for the same purpose, but they draw out the sympathetic
chain one link farther. For among them, when a boy has
undergone subincision and is leading a solitary life in the
bush, it is not he but his mother who wears the tip of the
nocturnal creature's tail in order that he may be watchful at
nights, lest harm should befall him from snakes and so forth.^
The ancient Greeks thought that to eat the flesh of the
wakeful nightingale would prevent a man from sleeping ; that
to smear the eyes of a blear-sighted person with the gall of
an eagle would give him the eagle's vision ; and that a
raven's eggs would restore the blackness of the raven to
silvery hair. Only the person who adopted this last mode
of concealing the ravages of time had to be most careful to
keep his mouth full of oil all the time he applied the eggs to
his venerable locks, else his teeth as well as his hair would
be dyed raven black, and no amount of scrubbing and scour-
ing would avail to whiten them again.* The hair-restorer
was in fact a shade too powerful, and in applying it you
might get more than you bargained for.
The Huichol Indians of Mexico admire the beautiful
markings on the backs of serpents. Hence when a Huichol
woman is about to weave or embroider, her husband catches
Cherokees ^ large Serpent and holds it in a cleft stick, while the woman
and other strokes the reptile with one hand down the whole length of
Indians^ its back ; then she passes the same hand over her forehead
Homoeo-
pathic
magic of
animals
amon? the
' Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes
of Central Australia, pp. 545 "9-
^ Ibid. pp. 494 sq.
' Spencer and Gillen, Northern
Tribes of Central Australia, p.
344.
* Aelian, Nat. Anim. \. 42, 43,
and 48
Ill HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 155
and eyes, that she may be able to work as beautiful patterns
in the web as the markings on the back of the serpent.^
Among the Tarahumares of Mexico men who run races
tie deer-hoofs to their backs in the belief that this will
make them swift-footed like the deer.^ Cherokee ball-
players rub their bodies with eel-skins in order to make
themselves as slippery and hard to hold as eels ; and they
also apply land-tortoises to their legs in the hope of making
them as thick and strong as the legs of these animals. But
they are careful not to eat frogs, lest the brittleness of
the frog's bones should infect their own bones. Moreover,
they will not eat the flesh of the sluggish hog-sucker, lest they
should lose their speed, nor the flesh of rabbits, lest, like the
rabbit, they should become confused in running. On the
other hand, their friends sprinkle a soup made of rabbit ham-
strings along the path to be taken by their rivals, in order to
make these rivals timorous in action. Moreover, the ball-
players will not wear the feathers of the bald-headed buzzard,
for fear of themselves becoming bald, nor turkey feathers,
lest they should suffer from a goitrous growth on the throat
like the red appendage on the throat of a turkey.^ The
flesh of the common grey squirrel is forbidden to Cherokees
who suffer from rheumatism, because the squirrel eats in a
cramped position, which would clearly aggravate the pangs
of the rheumatic patient.* And a Cherokee woman who is
with child may not eat the flesh of the ruffed grouse,
because that bird hatches a large brood, but loses most of
them before maturity. Strict people, indeed, will not allow a
woman to taste of the bird till she is past child-bearing.^
When a Cherokee is starting on a journey on a cold winter
morning he rubs his feet in the ashes of the fire and sings
four verses by means of which he can set the cold at defiance,
like the wolf, the deer, the fox, and the opossum, whose feet,
so the Indians think, are never frost-bitten: After each
verse he imitates the cry and action of the animal, thus
homoeopathically identifying himself with the creature. The
' C. Lumholtz, Unknown Mexico, of the Bureau of American Ethnology
ii. 234. (Washington, 1900), part i. pp. 262,
' C. Lumholtz, op. cit. i. 290. 284, 285, 306, 308.
' T- Mooney, " Myths of the * Id., ib. p. 262.
Cherokee," Nineteenth Annual Report * Id., ib. p. 285.
156 SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap.
Homoeo- song he sings may be rendered, " I become a real wolf, a real
ma?ic of deer, a real fox, and a real opossum." After stating that he
animals has becomc a real wolf, the songster utters a prolonged howl
among the , ° r t>
Cherokees. and paws the ground like a wolf with his feet. After giving
notice that he has become a real deer, he imitates the call
and jumping of a deer. And after announcing his identifica-
tion, for all practical purposes, with a fox and an opossum,
he mimicks the barking and scratching of a fox and the cry
of an opossum when it is driven to bay, also throwing his
head back just as an opossum does when it feigns death.'
Some Cherokees are said to drink tea made of crickets in
order to become good singers like the insects.^ If the
eyes of a Cherokee child be bathed with water in which a
feather of an owl has been soaked, the child will be able,
like the owl, to keep awake all night. The mole-cricket has
claws with which it burrows in the earth, and among the
Cherokees it is reputed to be an excellent singer. Hence
when children are long of learning to speak, their tongues
are scratched with the claw of a live mole-cricket in order
that they may soon talk as distinctly as the insect. Grown
persons also, who are slow of speech, may acquire a ready
flow of eloquence, if only the inside of their throat be
scratched on four successive mornings with a mole-cricket.'
The negroes of the Maroni river in Guiana have a somewhat
similar cure for stammering. Day and night the shrieks of
a certain species of ape resound through the forest. Hence
when the negroes kill one of these pests, they remove its
larynx and make a cup out of it. If a stammering child
drinks out of such a cup for a few months, it ceases to
stammer.* Cherokee parents scratch the hands of their
children with the pincers of a live red crawfish, resembling
a lobster, in order to give the infants a strong grip, like
that of the crawfish.^ This may help us to understand why
on the fifth day after birth a Greek child used to receive
presents of octopuses and cuttle-fish from its friends and
relations.' For the numerous arms, legs, and tentacles of
' Id., ib. p. 266. rii/ue du Stid {V3.11S, 18S3), pp. 159x5'.
" Id., ih. p. 309. ' J. Mooney, op. cit. p. 308.
^ Id., ill. p. 309. « Scholiast on Plato, Theaeletus,
* J. Crevaux, Voyages dans I' Ami- p. 160 A.
rn HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 157
these creatures seem well calculated to strengthen the grip
of a baby's hands and to impart the power of toddling to
its little toes.
On the principle of homoeopathic magic, inanimate Homoeo
things, as well as plants and animals, may diffuse blessing or^^^f^^f
bane around them, according to their own intrinsic nature inanimate
and the skill of the wizard to tap or dam, as the case may* '"^^"
be, the stream of weal or woe. Thus, for example, the
Galelareese think that when your teeth are being filed you
should keep spitting on a pebble, for this establishes a
homoeopathic connexion between you and the pebble, by
virtue of which your teeth will henceforth be as hard and
durable as a stone. On the other hand, you ought not to
comb a child before it has teethed, for if you do, its teeth
will afterwards be separated from each other like the teeth
of a comb.^ Nor should children look at a sieve, otherwise
they will suffer from a skin disease, and will have as many
sores on their bodies as there are holes in the sieve.^ In
Samaracand women give a baby sugar candy to suck and
put glue in the palm of its hand, in order that, when the
child grows up, his words may be sweet and precious things
may stick to his hands as if they were glued.^ The
Greeks thought that a garment made from the fleece of a
sheep that had been torn by a wolf would hurt the wearer,
setting up an itch or irritation in his skin. They were also
of opinion that if a stone which had been bitten by a dog
were dropped in wine, it would make all who drank of that
ivine to fall out among themselves.^ Among the Arabs of
Moab a childless woman often borrows the robe of a woman
who has had many children, hoping with the robe to acquire
the fruitfulness of its owner.* The Caffres of Sofala, in
East Africa, had a great dread of being struck with any-
thing hollow, such as a reed or a straw, and greatly preferred
being thrashed with a good thick cudgel or an iron bar, even
though it hurt very much. For they thought that if a man
' M. J. van Baarda, " Fabelen, ^ E. Chavannes, Documents sur les
Verhalen en Overleveringen der Galel- Tou-Kiue (Turcs) Occidentaux (St.
areezen," Bijdragen tot de Taal- Land- I'etersburg, 1903), p. 134.
eaVolkeniundevanNederlandsck-Indu, ^ Aelian, Nat. anim. i. 38.
xlv. (1895) P- 483- '' A. Jaussen, Coutumes arabes au
' M. J. van Baarda, op. cit. p. 534. pays de Moab, p. 35.
158
S YMPA THE TIC MA GIC
Homoeo-
pathic
magic of
inanimate
things.
were beaten with anything hollow, his inside would waste
away till he died.^ In eastern seas there is a large shell
which the Buginese of Celebes call the " old man " [kadjawo).
On Fridays they turn these " old men " upside down and
place them on the thresholds of their houses, believing that
whoever then steps over the threshold of the house will live
to be old.^ Again, the Galelareese think that, if you are
imprudent enough to eat while somebody is sharpening a
knife, your throat will be cut that same evening, or next
morning at latest' The disastrous influence thus attributed,
under certain circumstances, to a knife in the East Indies,
finds its counterpart in a curious old Greek story. A
certain king had no child, and he asked a wise man how he
could get one. The wise man himself did not know, but
he thought that the birds of the air might, and he undertook
to enquire of them. For you must know that the sage under-
stood the language of birds, having learned it through some
serpents whose life he had saved, and who, out of gratitude, had
cleansed his ears as he slept. So he sacrificed two bulls, and
cut them up, and prayed the fowls to come and feast on the
flesh ; only the vulture he did not invite. When the birds
came, the wise man asked . them what the king must do to
get a son ; but none of them knew. At last up came the
vulture, and he knew all about it. He said that once when
the king was a child his royal father was gelding rams in the
field, and laid down the bloody knife beside his little son ;
nay, he threatened the boy with it. The child was afraid
and ran away, and the father stuck the knife in a tree, either
a sacred oak or a wild pear-tree. Meanwhile, the bark of
the tree had grown round the knife and hidden it. The
vulture said that if they found the knife, scraped the rust off
it, and gave the rust, mixed with wine, to the king to drink
for ten days, he would beget a son. They did so, and it fell
out exactly as the vulture had said.* In this story a knife
' J. Dos Santos, Eastern Ethiopia^ It appeared to me to be of a sort which
book i. oh. 20 (G. McCall Theal,
Records of South-Eastem Africa, vii.
224).
' One of these sliells is exhibited in
the Anthropological Museum at Berlin,
with a label explaining its use. I do
not know to what species it belongs.
may often be seen on mantelpieces in
England.
' M. J. van Baarda, op. cit. p. 468.
* The Icing was Iphiclus ; the wise
man was Melarapus. See Apollodorus,
i. 9. 12; Eustathius on I iomer, Od.
xi. 292 ; Schol. on Theocritus, iii. 43.
Ill HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 159
which had gelded rams is supposed to have deprived a boy
of his virility merely by being brought near his person.
Through simple proximity it infected him, so to say, with the
same disability which it had already inflicted on the rams ;
and the loss he thus sustained was afterwards repaired by
administering to him in a potion the rust which, having been
left, on the blade by the blood of the animals, might be
supposed to be still imbued with their generative faculty.
The strengthening virtue of iron is highly appreciated Homoeo-
by the Toradjas of Central Celebes, only they apply it J^^^^l^ ^
externally, not internally, as we do in Europe. For this iron,
purpose the people of a village assemble once a year in the
smithy. The master of the ceremonies opens the proceed-
ings by carrying a little pig and a white fowl round the
smithy, after which he kills them and smears a little of
tlieir blood on the forehead of every person present. Next
he takes a doit, a chopping-knife, and a bunch of leaves in
his hand, and strikes with them the palm of the right
hand of every man, woman, and child, and ties a leaf of the
Dracaena termhialis to every wrist. Then a little fire is
made in the furnace and blown up with the bellows. • Every
one who feels sick or unwell now steps up to the anvil, and
the master of the ceremonies sprinkles a mixture of pigs'
blood, water, and herbs on the joints of his body, and
finally on his head, wishing him a long life. Lastly, the
patient takes the chopping-knife, heats it in the furnace,
la>-s it on the anvil, and strikes it seven times with the
hammer. After that he has only to cool the knife in water
and the iron cure is complete. Again, on the seventh day
after a birth the Toradjas hold a little feast, at which the
child is carried down the house ladder and its feet set on a
piece of iron, in order to strengthen its feeble soul with the
strong soul of the iron.^ At critical times the Mahakam
Dyaks of Central Borneo seek to strengthen their souls
The way in which the king's impotence this latter form. The animals were
was caused by the knife is clearly indi- rams, according to Apollodorus.
cated by the scholiast on Theocritus :
cvvi^ti errcveyKeiv airr^v [scil. riiv ' A. C. Kruijt, " Het ijzer in Mid-
IMxa'-lxi-'''\roXiiJLoploiiTo\iirMSb^. In this den-Celebes," Bijdragen tot de Taal-
scholiura we must correct iK-ri^xvovTi. Land- en Volkenkunde van Neder-
. . . SevSpoi' into iKT^/Miovn . . . (["(pa. landsch-Indil, liii. (1901) pp. 157 sq.,
Eustathius (I.e.) quotes the scholium in 1 59.
f6o
SYMPATHETIC MAGIC
CHAP.
Homoeo-
pathic
magic of
stones.
by biting on an old sword or setting their feet upon it'
At initiation a Brahman boy is made to tread with his
right foot on a stone, while the words are repeated,
" Tread on this stone ; like a stone be firm " ; ^ and the
same ceremony is performed, with the same words, by a
Brahman bride at her marriage.^ In Madagascar a mode of
counteracting the levity of fortune is to bury a stone at
Oathsuponthe foot of the heavy house-post.* The common custom of
stones. swe.iring upon a stone may be based partly on a belief that
the strength and stability of the stone, lend confirmation
to an oath. Thus the old Danish historian Saxo Gram-
maticus tells us that " the ancients, when they were to
choose a king, were wont to stand on stones planted in the
ground, and to proclaim their votes, in order to foreshadow
from the steadfastness of the stones that the deed would
be lasting."^ There was a stone at Athens on which
the nine archons stood when they swore to rule justly
and according to the laws.* A little to the west of
St. Columba's tomb in lona " lie the black stones, which are
so called, not from their colour, for that is grey, but from
the effects that tradition says ensued upon perjury, if any
one became guilty of it after swearing on these stones in
the usual manner ; for an oath made on them was decisive
in all controversies. Mac-Donald, king of the isles, de-
livered the rights of their lands to his vassals in the isles and
' A. W. Nieuwenhuis, Quer durch
Borneo, ii. (Leyden, 1907) p. 173.
2 G-nhya-SAtras, translated by H.
Oldenberg, part ii. p. 146.
' Gnhya-Sutras, translated by H.
Oldenberg, part i. pp. 168, 282
sq., part ii. p. 188 {Sacred Books
of the East, vols. xxix. and xxx.).
Compare Sonnerat, Voyage aux Indes
Orientales (Paris, 1 782), ii. 81 ; E.
Thurston, Ethnographic Notes in
Southern India (Madras, 1906), p. I.
So among the Kookies of Northern
Cachar in India the young couple at
marriage place each a foot on a large
stone in the middle of the village.
See Lieut. R. Stewart, ' ' Notes on
Northern Cachar," Journal of the
Asiatic Society of Bengal, xxiv. (1855)
pp. 620 sq. In the old ruined church
of Balquhidder in Perthshire there is
an ancient gravestone on which people
used to stand barefoot at marriages
and baptisms. See The Folk - lore
Journal, vi. (1888) p. 271.
* Father Abinal, "Astrologie Mal-
gache," Missions Catholiques, xi.
(1879) p. 482.
^ The First Nine Books of the
Danish History of Saxo Grammaticus,
translated by O. Elton (London, 1894),
p. 16. The original runs thus : Lec-
turi regent veteres affixis humo saxis
insistere suffragiaqae promere consue-
verant, subfectorum lapidum frmitate
facti constantiam ominaturi (Historia
Danica, lib. i. p. 22, ed. P. E. Miiller).
^ Aristotle, Constitution of Athens,
7 and 55 ; Plutarch, Solon, 25 ; Pollux,
viii. 86.
in HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC i6i
continent, with uplifted hands and bended knees, on the
black stones ; and in this posture, before many witnesses, he
solemnly swore that he would never recall those rights
which he then granted : and this was instead of his great
seal. Hence it is that when one was certain of what he
affirmed, he said positively, I have freedom to swear this
matter upon the black stones."^ Again, in the island of
Arran there was a green globular stone, about the size of
a goose's egg, on which oaths were taken. It was also
endowed with healing virtue, for it cured stitches in the
sides of sick people if only it was laid on the affected part.
They say that Macdonald, the Lord of the Isles, carried
this stone about with him, and that victory was always on
his side when he threw it among the enemy .^ Once more,
in the island of Fladda there was a round blue stone, on
which people swore decisive oaths, and it too healed stitches
in the side like the greep stone of Arran.* When two
Bogos of eastern Africa have a dispute, they will sometimes
settle it at a certain stone, which one of them mounts.
His adversary calls down the most dreadful curses on him
if he forswears himself, and to every curse the man on the
stone answers "Amen!"* In Laconia an unwrought
stone was shewn which, according to the legend, relieved
the matricide Orestes of his madness as soon as he had sat
down on it ; ^ and Zeus is said to have often cured himself
of his love for Hera by sitting down on a certain rock in
the island of Leucadia.* In these cases it may have been
thought that the wayward and flighty impulses of love and
madness were counteracted by the steadying influence of a
heavy stone.
But while a general magical efiicacy may be supposed
' Martin, "Description of the Hills," Asiatick Researches, iii. '^o sq.
Western Islands of Scotland," in (8vo ed.). On the custom see further
Pinkerton's Voyages and Travels, iii. my article, "Folk-lore in the Old
657. Testament," in Anthropological Essays
» Martin, op. cit. p. 646. presented to E. B. Tylor (Oxford,
1907)1 PP- 13' ^'I'l-
3 Martin, op. c,t. pp. 627 sq. 5 p^usanias, iii. 22. i ; compare id.
* W. Munzinijer, Siitefi unil Recht ii. 31. 4.
der Bogos (Winterthur, 1859), pp. 33 " Ptolemaeus, Ncrva I/istoria, in
sq. For an Indian example of swear- Photius, Bihliotheca, p. 153, cd. I.
ing on a stone see J. Eliot, " Observa- Bekker ; id. in Mythographi Graeci,
tions on the Inhabitants of the Garrow cd. A. Westermann, p. 198.
VOL. I M
I&2
S YMPA THE TIC MA GIC
Homoeo-
pathic
magic of
special
kinds of
Homoeo-
pathic
magic of
stones in
New
Caledonia,
to reside in all stones by reason of their common properties
of weight and solidity, special magical virtues are attributed
to particular stones, or kinds of stone, in accordance with
their individual or specific qualities of shape and colour.
For example, a pot-hole in a rocky gorge of Central
Australia contains many rounded boulders which, in the
opinion of the Warramunga tribe, represent the kidneys,
heart, tail, intestines, and so forth of an old euro, a species
of kangaroo. Hence the natives jump into the pool, and
after splashing the water all over their bodies rub one
another with the stones, believing that this will enable them
to catch euros.^ Again, not very far from Alice Springs, in
Central Australia, there is a heap of stones supposed to be
the vomit of two men of the eagle-hawk totem who had
dined too copiously on eagle-hawk men, women, and
children. The natives think that if any person caught
sight of these stones he would be taken very sick on the
spot ; hence the heap is covered with sticks, to which every
passer-by adds one in order to prevent the evil magic from
coming out and turning his stomach.^ The Indians of
Peru employed certain stones for the increase of maize,
others for the increase of potatoes, and others again for the
increase of cattle. The stones used to make maize grow
were fashioned in the likeness of cobs of maize, and the
stones destined to multiply cattle had the shape of sheep.'
No people perhaps employ stones more freely for the
purposes of homoeopathic magic than the natives of New
Caledonia. They have stones of the most diverse shapes
and colours to serve the most diverse ends — stones for
sunshine, rain, famine, war, madness, death, fishing, sailing,
and so forth. Thus in order to make a plantation of taro
thrive they bury in the field certain stones resembling taros,
praying to their ancestors at the same time. A stone
marked with black lines like the leaves of the coco-nut
palm helps to produce a good crop of coco-nuts. To
make bread-fruit grow they use two stones of different sizes
representing the unripe and the ripe fruit respectively.
^ Spencer and Gillen, Northern ^ P. J. de Arriaga, Exiirpacion de la
Tribes of Central Australia,^^. 2^-^ sy. idolatria del Piru (Lima, 1621), pp.
* Spencer and Gillen, op. cit. p. 472, 15, 16, 25
Ill HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 163
As soon as the fruit begins to form, they bury the small
stone at the foot of the tree ; and later on, when the fruit
approaches maturity, they replace the small stone by the
large one. The yam is the chief crop of the Nev/
Caledonians ; hence the number of stones used to foster its
growth is correspondingly great. Different families have
different kinds of stones which, according to their diverse
shapes and colours, are supposed to promote the cultivation
of the various species of yams. Before the stones are
buried in the yam field they are deposited beside the
ancestral skulls, wetted with water, and wiped with the
leaves of certain trees. Sacrifices, too, of yams and fish
are offered to the dead, with the words, " Here are your
offerings, in order that the crop of yams may be good."
Again, a stone carved in the shape of a canoe can make a
voyage prosperous or the reverse according as it is placed
before the ancestral skulls with the opening upwards or
downwards, the ceremony being accompanied with prayers
and offerings to the dead. Again, fish is a very important
article of diet with the New Caledonians, and every kind of
fish has its sacred stone, which is enclosed in a large shell
and kept in the graveyard. In performing the rite to secure
a good catch, the wizard swathes the stone in bandages of
various colours, spits some chewed leaves on it, and, setting
it up before the skulls, says, " Help us to be lucky at the
fishing." ^ In these and many similar practices of the New
Caledonians the magical efficacy of the stones appears to be
deemed insufficient of itself to accomplish the end in view ;
it has to be reinforced by the spirits of the dead, whose
help is sought by prayer and sacrifice. Moreover, the stones
are regularly kept in the burial-grounds, as if to saturate
them with the powerful influence of the ancestors ; they
are brought from the cemetery to be buried in the fields or
at the foot of trees for the sake of quickening the fruits of
the earth, and they are restored to the cemetery when they
' Father Lambert, in i1/Mw'(?KJ CaM»- mont, "Usages, moeurs et coutumes
liqiies-, yii\. (1880) pp.273, 287, XXV. des N^o-Cal^doniens," i¥«w«« (/'£rfK«-
(iSgj) pp. 104-106, 116-118; id., ,,»ra//«'«, vii. (1889) pp. 114 jy. (whose
Mceurs et Supentitions des Nio-Cali- account of the stones is borrowed from
denials (Noumfe, 1900), pp. 217, Father Lambert).
218, 222, 292-304. Compare Glau-
i64 5 YMPA THE TIC MA GIC chap.
have discharged this duty. Thus in New Caledonia magic
is blent with the worship of the dead.
Homoeo- In Other parts of Melanesia a like belief prevails that
?***<= certain sacred stones are endowed with miraculous powers
magic of , , , . c \
stones in which correspond m their nature to the shape ot the stone.
Melanesia, -pj^yg ^ piece of water-wom coral on the beach often bears
a surprising likeness to a bread-fruit. Hence in the Banks
Islands a man who finds such a coral will lay it at the
root of one of his bread-fruit trees in the expectation
that it will make the tree bear well. If the lesult answers
his expectation, he will then, for a proper remuneration,
take stones of less-marked character from other men and
let them lie near his, in order to imbue them with the
magic virtue which resides in it. Similarly, a stone with
little discs upon it is good to bring in money ; and if a man
found a large stone with a number of small ones under it,
like a sow among her litter, he was sure that to offer money
upon it would bring him pigs. In these and similar cases
the Melanesians ascribe the marvellous power, not to the
stone itself, but to its indwelling spirit ; and sometimes, as
we have just seen, a man endeavours to propitiate the spirit
by laying down offerings on the stone.^ But the conception
of spirits that must be propitiated lies outside the sphere of
magic, and within that of religion. Where such a concep-
tion is found, as here, in conjunction with purely magical
ideas and practices, the latter may generally be assumed to
be the original stock on which the religious conception has
been at some later time engrafted. For there are strong
grounds for thinking that, in the evolution of thought, magic
has preceded religion. But to this point we shall return
presently.
Homoeo- The ancients set great store on the magical qualities of
P**!"^ precious stones ; indeed it has been maintained, with great
ofprecions show of reason, that such stones were used as amulets long
"°°^ before they were worn as mere ornaments.^ Thus the
Greeks gave the name of tree-agate to a stone which
exhibits tree-like markings, and they thought that if two
> R. H. Codrington, The Melan- sq. ; id., "The Origin of Jewellery,"
esiars (Oxford, 1891), pp. 181-185. Jfeport of the British Association for
' W. Ridgeway, The Early Age 190s (meeting at Southport), pp. 815
if Greece (Cambridge, 1901), i. 330 sq.
Ill HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 165
of these gems were tied to the horns or neck of oxen at the
plough, the, crop would be sure to be plentiful.^ Again,
they recognised a milk-stone which produced an abundant
supply of milk in women if only they drank it dissolved
in honey-mead.* Milk-stones are used for the same
purpose by Greek women in Crete and Melos at the
present day ; ^ in Albania nursing mothers wear the
stones in order to ensure an abundant flow of milk.*
In Lechrain down to modern times German women
have attempted to increase their milk by stroking their
breasts with a kind of alum which they call a milk-stone.*
Again, the Greeks believed in a stone which cured snake-
bites, and hence was named the snake -stone ; to test its
efficacy you had only to grind the stone to powder and
sprinkle the powder on the wound.* The wine-coloured
amethyst received its name, which means " not drunken,"
because it was supposed to keep the wearer of it sober ; ^ and
two brothers who desired to live at unity were advised to
carry magnets about with them, which, by drawing the
twain together, would clearly prevent them from falling out.*
In Albania people think that if the blood-stone is laid on a
wound it will stop the flow of blood.*
Amongst the things which homoeopathic magic seeks Homoeo-
to turn to account are the great powers of nature, such as ^^y^ ^^
the waxing and the waning moon, the rising and the setting the sun,
sun, the stars, and the sea. Elsewhere I have illustrated ij,e stars, '
the homoeopathic virtues ascribed to the waxing and the »■'«' ">«
waning moon : ^^ here I will giv»i an Arab charm of the
' Orphica : Lithica, 230 sqq., ed. wasperhaps the "dragon-stone" which
G. Hermann. Pliny mentions (^Nat. was supposed to confer extraordinary
Hist, xxxvii. 192) a white tree-stone sharpness of vision on its owner. See
(" daub-iiis alia") which, if buried Ptolemaeus Hephaestionis, Nov. Hist.
under a tree that was being felled, v. p. 150, in Photius, Bibliotheca, ed.
would prevent the woodman's axe from I. Bekker, p. 192 of A. Westermann's
being blunted. Mythographi Graeci.
' Orphica: Lithica, 189 sqq. ; com- ' Pliny, Nat. Hist, xxxvii. 124.
pare Pliny, Nat. Hist, xxxvii. 162. ' Orphica : Lithica, 320 sq.
' W. Ridgeway, The Early Age of ' J. G. von Hahn, Albanesische
Greece, i. 330. Studien, i. 158. On the magic of
* J. G. von Hahn, Albanesische precious stones see also E. Doutt^,
Studien, i. 158. Magie et religion dans VAfriqtu da
' K. Freiherr von Leoprechting, Aus Nord, pp. 82 sqq.
dent Lechrain (Munich, 1855), p. 92. '<• Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Second Edi-
' Orphica: Lithica, 335 sqq. This- tion, pp. 361 sqq., 369 sqq.
star.
1 66 SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap.
Homoeo- setting sun. When a husband is far away and his wife
^^"^^, would bring him home to her, she procures pepper and
the setting coriander seed from a shop that faces the east, and throws
^°^ them on a lighted brasier at sunset. Then turning to the
east she waves a napkin with which she has wiped herself,
and says : " Let the setting sun return having found such
and such an one, son of such and such a woman, in grief
and pain. May the grief that my absence causes him make
him weep, may the grief that my absence causes him make
him lament, may the grief that my absence causes him make
him break the obstacles that part us and bring him back
to me." If the charm is unsuccessful, she repeats it one day
at sunrise, burning the same perfumes. Clearly she imagines
that as the sun goes away in the west and comes back in the
east, it should at its return bring the absent one home.'
Hotnoeo- The ancient books of the Hindoos lay down a rule that
^^jof after sunset on his marriage night a man should sit silent
the pole- with his wife till the stars begin to twinkle in the sky.
When the pole-star appears, he should point it out to her,
and, addressing the star, say, " Firm art thou ; I see thee,
the firm one. Firm be thou with me, O thriving one 1 "
Then, turning to his wife, he should say, " To me Brihaspati
has given thee ; obtaining offspring through me, thy husband,
live with me a hundred autumns."^ The intention of the
ceremony is plainly to guard against the fickleness of
fortune and the instability of earthly bliss by the steadfast
influence of the constant star. It is the wisii expressed in
Keats's last sonnet : —
B}-ight star ! would I were steadfast as thou art —
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night.
Dwellers by the sea cannot fail to be impressed by the
sight of its ceaseless ebb and flow, and are apt, on the prin-
^ E. Doutte, Magie et religion dans Brahman with its children and with
rAfrique du Nord, pp. 131 sq. its grandchildren, with such a man
- The G-nhya-Siitras, translated by children and grandchildren will iirmly
H. Oldenberg, part i. pp. 43, 285 sq., dwell, servants and pupils, garments
part ii. pp. 47 sq., 193 sqq. {Sacred and woollen blankets, bronze and gold,
Books of the East, vols. xxix. and xxx.). wives and kings, food, safety, long life.
In the last passage the address to the glory, renown, splendour, strength,
star is fuller and more explicit. A part holy lustre, and the enjoyment of food.
of it runs thus : — " He who knows thee May all these things firmly and immov-
(the polar star) as the firm, immovable ably dwell with me ! ''
Ill HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 167
ciples of that rude philosophy of sympathy and resemblance Homoeo
which here engages our attention, to trace a subtle relation, ^j^gj^^f
a secret harmony, between its tides and the life of man, of the tides.
animals, and of plants. In the flowing tide they see not
merely a symbol, but a cause of exuberance, of prosperity,
and of life, while in the ebbing tide they discern a real
agent as well as a melancholy emblem of failure, of weak-
ness, and of death. The Breton peasant fancies that clover
sown when the tide is coming in will grow well, but that
if the plant be sown at low water or when the tide is
going out, it will never reach maturity, and that the cows
which feed on it will burst.^ His wife believes that the best
butter is made when the tide has just turned and is beginning
to flow, that milk which foams in the churn will go on
foaming till the hour of high water is past, and that water
drawn from the well or milk extracted from the cow while
the tide is rising will boil up in the pot or saucepan and
overflow into the fire.^ The Galelareese say that if you
wish to make oil, you should do it when the tide is high,
for then you will get plenty of oil.^ According to some
of the ancients, the skins of seals, even after they had
been parted from their bodies, remained in secret sympathy
with the sea, and were observed to ruffle when the tide
was on the ebb.* Another ancient belief, attributed to
Aristotle, was that no creature can die except at ebb tide.
The belief, if we can trust Pliny, was confirmed by experi-
ence, so far as regards human beings, on the coast of France.^
Philostratus also assures us that at Cadiz dying people never
yielded up the ghost while the water was high.® A Hke
fancy still lingers in some parts of Europe. On the
Cantabrian coast of Spain they think that persons who die
of chronic or acute disease expire at the moment when
the tide begins to recede.^ In Portugal, all along the
coast of Wales, and on some parts of the coast of Brittany,
1 P. Sebillot, Ugendes, croyances et Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch- Indie,
superstitions de la mer (Paris, 1886), i. xlv. (1895) p. 499.
136. * Pliny, Nat. Hist. ix. 42.
2 P. Sebillot, op. cit. i. 135. ^ Ibid. ii. 220.
3 M. J. van Baarda, " Fabelen, Ver- " Philostratus, Vit. Apollon. v. 2.
halen en Overleveringen der Galelaree- '' P. Sebillot, Llgendes, croyances el
zen," Bijdragen tot de Taal- Land- en superstitions de la mer, i. 132.
1 68
5 YMF A THE TIC MA GIC
Homoeo-
pathic
magic of
the tides.
Homoeo-
pathic
magic of
grave-
clothes
in China.
a belief is .said to prevail that people are born when the
tide comes in, and die when it goes out.^ Dickens attests
the existence of the same superstition in England. " People
can't die, along the coast," said Mr. Peggotty, " except
when the tide's pretty nigh out. They can't be born,
unless it's pretty nigh in — not properly born till flood."
The belief that most deaths happen at ebb tide is said to
be held along the east coast of England from Northumber-
land to Kent.' Shakespeare must have been familiar with
it, for he makes Falstaff die " even just between twelve and
one, e'en at the turning o' the tide." * We meet the belief
again on the Pacific coast of North America among the
Haidas of the Queen Charlotte Islands. Whenever a good
Haida is about to die he sees a canoe manned by some of
his dead friends, who come with the tide to bid him welcome
to the spirit land. " Come with us now," they say, " for the
tide is about to ebb and we must depart." ^ At the other
extremity of America the same fancy has been noted among
the Indians of Southern Chili. A Chilote Indian in the
last stage of consumption, after preparing to die like a
good Catholic, was heard to ask how the tide was running.
When his sister told him that it was still coming in, he
smiled and said that he had yet a little while to live. It
was his firm conviction that with the ebbing tide his soul
would pass to the ocean .of eternity.* At Port Stephens,
in New South Wales, the natives always buried their dead
at flood tide, never at ebb, lest the retiring water should
bear the soul of the departed to some distant country.'
To ensure a long life the Chinese have recourse to certain
complicated charms, which concentrate in themselves the
magical essence emanating, on homoeopathic principles,
from times and seasons, from persons and from things.
The vehicles employed to transmit these happy influences
J p. Sibillot, op. cit. \. 129-132;
M. E. James in Folklore, ix. (1898)
p. 1S9.
' Dickens, David Copptr/ield, chap.
xx.x.
•> \V. Henderson, Folklore of the
Northern Counties of England (Lon-
don, 1879), p. 58.
* Henry V. Act ii. Scene 3.
'' Rev. C. Harrison, "Religion and
Fami]y among the Haidas," Journal
of the Anthropological Institute, xxi.
(1892) pp. 17 sq. ..
C. Martin, " Uber die Eingebo-
renen von Chiloe," Zeitschrift fiir Eth-
nologie, ix. (1877) p. 179.
' A. W. Howitt, Native Tribes of
South-East Australia, p. 465.
Ill HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 169
are no other than grave-clothes. These are provided
by many Chinese in their lifetime, and most people have
them cut out and sewn by an unmarried girl or a very young
woman, wisely calculating that, since such a person is likely
to live a great many years to come, a part of her capacity to
live long must surely pass into the clothes, and thus stave off
for many years the time when they shall be put to their
proper use. Further, the garments are made by preference
in a year which has an intercalary month ; for to the Chinese
mind it seems plain that grave-clothes made in a year which
is unusually long will possess the capacity of prolonging life
in an unusually high degree. Amongst the clothes there is
one robe in particular on which special pains have been
lavished to imbue it with this priceless quality. It is a
long silken gown of the deepest blue colour, with the word
"longevity" embroidered all over it in thread of gold. To
present an aged parent with one of these costly and splendid
mantles, known as " longevity garments," is esteemed by the
Chinese an act of filial piety and a delicate mark of attention.
As the garment purports to prolong the life of its owner, he
often wears it, especially on festive occasions, in order to
allow the influence of longevity, cieated by the many golden
letters with which it is bespangled, to work their full effect
upon his person. On his birthday, above all, he hardly ever
fails to don it, for in China commoa sense bids a man lay in
a large stock of vital energy on his birthday, to be expended
in the form of health and vigour during the rest of the year.
Attired in the gorgeous pall, and absorbing its blessed influ-
ence at every pore, the happy owner receives complacently
the congratulations of friends and relations, who warmly
express their admiration of these magnificent cerements, and
of the filial piety which prompted the children to bestow so
beautiful and useful a present on the author of their being.^
Another application of the maxim that like produces
J.J. M. de Groot, The Religious supposed that the pin which is decorated
Syitem of China, i. 60-63. Among with them will absorb some of their
Uie hairpins provided for a woman's life-giving power and communicate it
burial is almost always one which is to the woman in whose hair it is ulti-
adomed with small silver figures of a mately to be fastened. See De Groot,
stag, a tortoise, a peach, and a crane. op. Ht. i. 55-57.
These being emblems of longevity, it is
1 70 S YMPA THE TIC MA GIC chap.
Homoeo- like IS sccn in the Chinese belief that the fortunes of a town
magic ^''^ deeply affected by its shape, and that they must vary
applied to according to the character of the thing which that shape
cife irf ° niost nearly resembles. Thus it is related that long ago
China. the towH of Tsuen-chcu-fu, the outlines of which are like
those of a carp, frequently fell a prey to the depredations of
the neighbouring city of Yung-chun, which is shaped like a
fishing-net, until the inhabitants of the former town con-
ceived the plan of erecting two tall pagodas in their midst.
These pagodas, which still tower above the city of Tsuen-
cheu-fu, have ever since exercised the happiest influence
over its destiny by intercepting the imaginary net before it
could descend and entangle in its meshes the imaginary
carp.^ Some thirty years ago the wise men of Shanghai
were much exercised to discover the cause of a local
rebellion. On careful enquiry they ascertained that the
rebellion was due to the shape of a large new temple which
had most unfortunately been built in the shape of a tortoise,
an animal of the very worst character. The difficulty was
serious, the danger was pressing ; for to pull down the
temple would have been impious, and to let it stand as it
was would be to court a succession of similar or worse
disasters. However, the genius of the local professors of
geomancy, rising to the occasion, triumphantly surmounted
the difficulty and obviated the danger. By filling up two
wells, which represented the eyes of the tortoise, they at
once blinded that disreputable animal and rendered him
incapable of doing further mischief.^
Homoeo- Sometimes homoeopathic or imitative magic is called in
magic to '•^ a^nnul an evil omen by accomplishing it in mimicry. The
avert effect IS to circumvcnt destiny by substituting a mock calamity
misfortune, fo"" ^ ^eal One. At Kampot, a small seaport of Cambodia, a
French official saw one morning a troop of armed guards
escorting a man who was loaded with chains. They passed
his house and went away towards the country, preceded by
a man who drew lugubrious sounds from a gong, and
followed by a score of idlers. The official thought it must
be an execution and was surprised to have heard nothing
• J. J. M. de Greet, op. cit. iii. 977.
^ J. J. M. de Groot, op. cit. iii. 1043 sq.
Ill HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 171
about it. Afterwards he received from his interpreter the
following lucid explanation of the affair. " In our country
it sometimes happens that a man walking in the fields has
nothing but the upper part of his body visible to people at
a distance. Such an appearance is a sign that he will
certainly die soon, and that is what happened last evening
to the man you saw. Going homewards across the plain
he carried over his shoulder a bundle of palms with long
slender stems ending in fan-like tufts of leaves. His family,
returning from their work, followed him at a distance,
and soon they saw his head, shoulders, and arms moving
along the road and carrying the branches, while his body
and legs were invisible. Struck with consternation at the
sight, his mother and wife repaired in all haste to the
magistrate and implored him to proceed against the man
after the fashion customary in such cases. The magistrate
replied that the custom was ridiculous, and that he would
be still more ridiculous if he complied with it. However,
the two women insisted on it so vehemently, saying it was
-the only way to avert the omen, that he decided to do as
they wished, and gave them his word that he would have
the man arrested next morning at sunrise. So this morning
the guards came to seize the poor man, telling him that he
was accused of rebellion against the king, and without
listening to his protestations of innocence they dragged him
off to court. His family pretended to be surprised and
followed him weeping. The judges had him clapped into
irons and ordered him to instant execution. His own
entreaties and the prayers of his family being all in vain,
he begged that the priests of the pagoda might come and
bear witness to his innocence and join their supplications to
those of his friends. They came in haste, but receiving a
hint how the wind lay they advised the condemned man to
submit to his fate and departed to pray for his soul at the
temple. Then the man was led away to a rice-field, in the
middle of which a banana-tree, stripped of its leaves, had
been set up as a stake. To this he was tied, and while his
friends took their last leave of him, the sword of the exe-
cutioner flashed through the air and at a single stroke swept
off the top of the banana -tree above the head of the
172 SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap.
pretended victim. The man had given himself up for dead,
His friends, while they knocked off his irons, explained to
him the meaning of it all and led him away to thank the
magistrates and priests for what they had done to save him
from the threatened catastrophe." The writer who reports
the case adds that if the magistrates had not good-naturedly
lent themselves to the pious fraud, the man's family would
have contrived in some other way to impress him with the
terror of death in order to save his life.^
Homoeo- Again, two missionaries were journeying not long ago
^agicto through Central Celebes, accompanied by some Toradjas.
avert Unfortunately the note of a certain bird called teka-teka was
misfortune, heard to the left. This boded ill, and the natives insisted
that they must either turn back or pass the night on the
spot. When the missionaries refused to do either, an
expedient was hit upon which allowed them to continue
the journey in safety. A miniature hut was made out of a
leafy branch, and in it were deposited a leaf moistened with
spittle and a hair from the head of one of the party. Then
one~of the Toradjas said, " We shall pass the night here,"
and addressing the hair he spoke thus : " If any misfortune
should happen through the cry of that bird, may it fall on
you." In this way the evil omen was diverted from the
real men and directed against their substitute the hair, and
perhaps also the spittle, in the tiny hut.^ When a Cherokee
has dreamed of being stung by a snake, he is treated just
in the same way as if he had really been stung ; otherwise
the place would swfell and ulcerate in the usual manner,
though perhaps years might pass before it did so. It is the
ghost of a snake that has bitten him in sleep.^ One night
a Huron Indian dreamed that he had been taken and burned
alive by his hereditary foes the Iroquois. Next morning a
council was held on the affair, and the following measures
' Mission Pavie, Indo-Chitte, iSjg- Mededeelingen van wege het Neder-
iSgs, Giographie et voyages, i. (Paris, landsche Zendelinggenootschap, xlii.
1901) pp. 35-37. The kind of optical (1898) p. 524.
illusion which this mock execution was ^ J. Mooney, " Sacred Formulas of
intended to expiate is probably caused the Cherokees, " Seventh Annual Report
by a mist or exhalation rising from of the Bureau of Ethnology (Washing-
damp ground, ton, 1891). p- 352; id. in Nineteenth
2 N. Adriani en A. C. Kruijt, "Van Annual Report, etc., part i. (Washing-
Posso naar Parigi, Sigi en Lindoe," ton, 1900) p. 295.
HI HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC 173
were adopted to save the man's life. Twelve or thirteen
fires were kindled in the large hut where they usually burned
their prisoners to death. Every man seized a flaming brand
and applied it to the naked body of the dreamer, who
shrieked with pain. Thrice he ran round the hut, escaping
from one fire only to fall into another. As each man thrust
his blazing torch at the sufferer he said, "Courage, my
brother, it is thus that we have pity on you." At last he
was allowed to escape. Passing out of the hut he caught
up a dog which was held ready for the purpose, and throw-
ing it over his shoulder carried it through the wigwams as
a sacred offering to the war-god, praying him to accept the
animal instead of himself. Afterwards the dog was killed,
roasted, and eaten, exactly as the Indians vi^ere wont to
roast and eat their captives.^
In Madagascar this mode of cheating the fates is reduced Homoeo-
to a regular system. Here every man's fortune is deter- p^"^.'*^
- - magic to
mmed by the day or hour of his birth, and if that happens avert mis-
to be an unlucky one his fate is sealed, unless the mischief ^^^a-* '"
can be extracted, as the phrase goes, by means of a sub- gascar.
stitute. The ways of extracting the mischief are various.
For example, if a man is born on the first day of the second
month (February), his house will be burnt down when he
comes of age. To take time by the forelock and avoid this
catastrophe, the friends of the infant will set up a shed in a
Seld or in the cattle-fold and burn it. If the ceremony is to
be really effective, the child and his mother should be placed
in the shed and only plucked, like brands, from the burning
hut before it is too late. Again, dripping November is the
month of tears, and he who is born in it is born to sorrow.
But in order to disperse the clouds that thus gather over
his future, he has nothing to do but to take the lid off a
boiling pot and wave it about. The drops that fall from it
V, ill accomplish his destiny and so prevent the tears from
trickling from his eyes. Again, if fate has decreed that a
young girl, still unwed, should see her children, still unborn,
descend before her with sorrow to the grave, she can avert
the calamity as follows. She kills a grasshopper, wraps it
in a rag to represent a shroud, and mourns over it like
' Rflatims de$ Jisuites, 1642, pp. 86 sq. (Canadian reprint).
174 SYMPATHETIC MAGIC , chap.
Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be com-
forted. Moreover, she takes a dozen or more other grass-
hoppers, and having removed some of their superfluous legs
and wings she lays them about their dead and shrouded
fellow. The buzz of the tortured insects and the agitated
motions of their mutilated limbs, represent the shrieks and
contortions of the mourners at a funeral. After burying
the deceased grasshopper she leaves the rest to continue
their mourning till death releases them from their pain ; and
having bound up her dishevelled hair she retires from the
grave with the step and carriage of a person plunged in
grief. Thenceforth she looks cheerfully forward to seeing
her children survive her ; for it cannot be that she should
mourn and bury them twice over. Once more, if fortune
has frowned on a man at his birth and penury has marked
him for her own, he can easily eraze the mark in question
by purchasing a couple of cheap pearls, price three halfpence,
and burying them. For who but the rich of this world can
thus afford to fling pearls away ? ^
§ 3. Contagious Magic
•Ccmtagious Thus far we have been considering chiefly that branch
^^^ by °f sympathetic magic which may be called homoeopathic
contaa, or imitative. Its leading principle, as we have seen, is
^m^nce. that like produces like, or, in other words, that an effect
resembles its cause. The other great branch of sympa-
thetic magic, which I have called Contagious Magic, pro-
ceeds upon the notion that things which have once been
conjoined must remain ever afterwards, even when quite
dissevered from each other, in such a sympathetic relation
that whatever is done to the one must similarly affect the
other.^ Thus the logical basis of Contagious Magic, like
that of Homoeopathic Magic, is a mistaken association of
ideas ; its physical basis, if we may speak of such a thing,
1 W. Ellis, History of Madagascar, * The principles of contagious
i. 454^??. ; Father Abinal, "Astrologie magic are lucidly stated and copiously
Malgache," Missions Catholiques, xi. illustrated by Mr. E. S. Hartland in
(1S79) pp. 432-434, 481-483. Com- ,the second volume of his Legend of
pare J. B. Piolet, Madagascar et les 'Perseus (London, 1895).
ffovas (Paris, 1895), pp. 72 sq.
CONTAGIOUS MAGIC
I7S
like the physical basis of Homoeopathic Magic, is a material
medium of some sort which, like the ether of modern physics,
is assumed to unite distant objects and to convey impres-
sions from one to the other. The most familiar example Magical
of Contagious Magic is the magical sympathy which is ^y™pa*y
supposed to exist between a man and any severed portion man and
of his person, as his hair or nails ; so that whoever gets "^^ severed
possession of human hair or nails may work his will, at any his person,
distance, upon the person from whom they were cut. ThisJ^'^u^
superstition is world-wide ; instances of it in regard to hair nails.
and nails will be noticed later on in this work.^ While Beneficial
like other superstitions it has had its absurd and mischievous '^^^'^^ °^
consequences, it has nevertheless indirectly done much good stition?^'^
by furnishing savages with strong, though irrational, motives <=^'^>"g ^f
. ,ri fi removal of
for observmg rules of cleanlmess which they might never refuse.
have adopted on rational grounds. How the superstition
has produced this salutary effect will appear from a single
instance, which I will give in the words of an experienced
observer. Amongst the natives of the Gazelle Peninsula in
New Britain " it is as a rule necessary for the efficiency of a
charm that it should contain a part of the person who is to
be enchanted (for example, his hair), or a piece of his
clothing, or something that stands in some relation to him,
such as his excrements, the refuse of his food, his spittle, his
footprints, etc. All such objects can be employed as panait,
that is, as a medium for a papait or charm, consisting of an
incantation or murmuring of a certain formula, together with
the blowing into the air of some burnt lime which is held in
the hand. It need hardly, therefore, be said that the native
removes all such objects as well as he can. Thus the cleanli-
ness which is usual in the houses and consists in sweeping
the floor carefully every day, is by no means based on a
desire for cleanliness and neatness in themselves, but purely
on the effort to put out of the way anything that might
serve an ill-wisher as a charm." ^ I will now illustrate the
principles of Contagious Magic by examples, beginning
with its application to various parts of the human body.
1 Meantime I may refer the readej ^ R. Parkinson, Dreissig Jdhre in
to The Golden Bough, Second Edition, der Siidsee (Stuttgart, 1907), pp. 118
L 367 sqq. fq.
176 SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap.
Conta^ioaj Among the Australian tribes it was a common practice
magic of J.Q j^jjQ^i^ Qyj- oj^g Qr more of a boy's front teeth at those
teeth in ^
Australia, ceremonics of initiation to which every male member had to
submit before he could enjoy the rights and privileges of a
full-grown man.-' The reason of the practice is obscure ; a
conjecture on this subject has been hazarded above.^ All
that concerns us here is the evidence of a belief that a
sympathetic relation continued to exist between the lad and
his teeth after the latter had been extracted from his gums.
Thus among some of the tribes about the river Darling, in
New South Wales, the extracted tooth was placed under the
bark of a tree near a river or water-hole ; if the bark grew over
the tooth, or if the tooth fell into the water, all was well ; but
if it were exposed and the ants ran over it, the natives believed
that the boy would suffer from a disease of the mouth.'
Among the Murring and other tribes of New South Wales
the extracted tooth was at first taken care of by an old
man, and then passed from one headman to another,
until it had gone all round the community, when it came
back to the lad's father, and finally to the lad himself.
But however it was thus conveyed from hand to hand, it
might on no account be placed in a bag containing magical
substances, for to do so would, they believed, put the owner
of the tooth in great danger.* The late Dr. Howitt once
acted as custodian of the teeth which had been extracted
from some novices at a ceremony of initiation, and the old
men earnestly besought him not to carry them in a bag in
which they knew that he had some quartz crystals. They
declared that if he did so the magic of the crystals would
pass into the teeth, and so injure the boys. Nearly a year
after Dr. Howitt's return from the ceremony he was visited
by one of the principal men of the Murring tribe, who had
travelled some two hundred and fifty miles from his home to
fetch back the teeth. This man explained that he had been
' As to the diiiusion of this custom Anthropological Institute, xiii. (1884)
in Australia see above, p. 97. p. 128. For the practice of some
, „ Victorian tribes see above, p. 98.
bee pp. 97 sqq. 4 ^ ^_ Howitt, in Journal of the
' F. Bonney, " On some Customs of Anthropological Institute, xiii. (1884)
the Aborigines of the River Darling, pp. 456 sq.; id.. Native Tribes of
New South Wales," Journal of the South-Mast Australia, p. 561
in CONTAGIOUS MAGIC 177
sent for them because one of the boys had fallen into ill
health, and it was believed that the teeth had received some
injury which had affected him. He was assured that the
teeth had been kept in a box apart from any substances,
like quartz crystals, which could influence them ; and he
returned home bearing the teeth with him carefully wrapt
up and concealed.* In the Dieri tribe of South Australia
the teeth knocked out at initiation were bound up in emu
feathers, and kept by the boy's father or his next-of-kin
until the mouth had healed, and even for long afterwards.
Then the father, accompanied by a few old men, performed
a ceremony for the purpose of taking all the supposed life
out of the teeth. He made a low rumbling noise without
uttering any words, blew two or three times with his mouth,
and jerked the teeth through his hand to some little distance.
After that he buried them about eighteen inches under ground.
The jerking movement was meant to shew that he thereby
took all the life out of the teeth. Had he failed to do so,
the boy would, in the opinion of the natives, have been
liable to an ulcerated and wry mouth, impediment in speech,
and ultimately a distorted face.^ This ceremony is interest-
ing as a rare instance of an attempt to break the sympathetic
link between a man and a severed part of himself by render-
ing the part insensitive.
The Basutos are careful to conceal their extracted teeth. Contagious
lest these should fall into the hands of certain mythical ^^^-^
beings called baloi, who haunt graves, and could harm the Africa,
owner of the tooth by working magic on it* In Sussex Am^St
some forty years ago a maid-servant remonstrated strongly «c
against the throwing away of children's cast teeth,
affirming that should they be found and gnawed by any
animal, the child's new tooth would be, for all the world, like
the teeth of the animal that had bitten the old one. In
proof of this she named old Master Simmons, who had a
1 A. W. Howitt, va. Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xx. (1 89 1)
Anthropological Institute, xvi. (1887) pp. 80 Jj'. ; id.. Native Tribes of South-
p. 55, XX. (1891) p. 81 ; id.. Native East Australia, pp. 655 sg.
Tribes of South- East Australia, pp. ^ Father Porte, " Les Reminiscences
561 sq, d'un missionnaire du Basutoland,"
Missions Catholiques, xxviii. (1896)
^ A. W. Howitt, in Journal of the p. 312.
VOL. 1 N
mice and
rats.
178 SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap.
very large pig's tooth in his upper jaw, a personal defect that
he ahvays averred was caused by his mother, who threw away
one of his cast teeth by accident into the hog's trough.^ A
similar belief has led to practices intended, on the principles
of homoeopathic magic, to replace old teeth by new and better
Teeth of ones. Thus in many parts of the world it is customary to
put extracted teeth in some place where they will be found
by a mouse or a rat, in the hope that, through the sympathy
which continues to subsist between them and their former
owner, his other teeth may acquire the same firmness and
excellence as the teeth of these rodents. Thus in Germany
it is said to be an almost universal maxim among the people
that when you have had a tooth taken out you should insert
it in a mouse's hole. To do so with a child's milk-tooth
which has fallen out will prevent the child from having
toothache. Or you should go behind the stove and throw
your tooth backwards over your head, saying, " Mouse, give
me your iron tooth ; I will give you my bone tooth." After
that your other teeth will remain good. German children
say, " Mouse, mouse, come out and bring me out a new
tooth " ; or " Mouse, I give you a little bone ; give me a
little stone " ; or " Mouse, there is an old tooth for you ; make
me a new one." In Bavaria they say that if this ceremony
be observed the child's second teeth will be as white as the
teeth of mice.^ Amongst the South Slavonians, too, the child
is taught to throw his tooth into a dark corner and say,
" Mouse, mouse, there is a bone tooth ; give me an iron tooth
instead."' Jewish children in South Russia throw their
cast teeth on the roof with the same request to the mouse
to give them an iron tooth for a tooth of bone.^ Far away
1 Charlotte I,atham, " West Sussex Mark Brandenburg," Zeitschrift des
Superstitions lingering in 1S6S" Fo/k- Vereins fur Volkskunde, i. (1891) p.
Ion Record, i. (1878)" p. 44. 193; H.Raff, "AberglaubeinBayern,"
2 A. Wuttke, Der dtntsche Volks- ibid. viii. (1S98) p. 400; R. Andrce,
aberglauhc," p. 330, § 526 ; F. Panzer, Braunschweiger Volkskunde (Bruns-
Beilrag sur detitichen Afytliologie, ii. wick, 1896), p. 213. Compare J. V.
307; E. Krause, in Zeitsdirift fiir GnAixaxan, Aberglanhen und Gebrduche
Ethitologie, XV. (18S3) p. 79; J. Von- aiis Bdhmen und Mdhren, p. 169,
bun, Volkssagcn mis I'orarlba-g, p. 67 ; § 1197.
J. W. Wolf, BeiJrage cur deutsclien ^ T? . S. yi-iaxi^s, Sitle und Branch der
Mythohgie, i. p. 20S, g§ 37, 39; G. Siidslaven, p. 546.
Lammert, Volksmedizin und medizi- * S. Weissenberg, " Kinderfreud
nischer Aberglauhe in Bayent, p. I2<S ; und -leid bei den sildrussischen Juden,"
H. Prahn, "Glaube und Braucli in der Globus, Ixxxiii. (1903) p. 317.
rn CONTAGIOUS MAGIC i79
from Europe, at Raratonga, in the Pacific, when a child's tooth
was extracted, the following prayer used to be recited : —
'■'■Big rat! little rat !
Here is my old tooth.
Pray give me a new one."
Then the tooth was thrown on the thatch of the house, because
rats make their nests in the decayed thatch. The reason
assigned for invoking the rats on these occasions was that
rats' teeth were the strongest known to the natives.^ In the
Seranglao and Gorong archipelagoes, between New Guinea
and Celebes, when a child loses his first tooth, he must throw
it on the roof, saying, " Mouse, I give you my tooth ; give me
yours instead." ^ In Amboyna the custom is the same, and
the form of words is, " Take this tooth, thrown on the roof,
as the mouse's share, and give me a better one instead." ^
In the Kei Islands, to the south-west of New Guinea, when
a child begins to get his second teeth, he is lifted up to the
top of the roof in order that he may there deposit, as an
offering to the rats, the tooth which has fallen out. At the
same time some one cries aloud, " O rats, here you have his
tooth; give him a golden one instead."* Among the Ilocans
of Luzon, in the Philippines, when children's teeth are loose,
they are pulled out with a string and put in a place where
rats will be likely to find and drag them away.* In ancient
Mexico, when a child was getting a new tooth, the father or
mother used to put the old one in a mouse's hole, believing
that if this precaution were not taken the new tooth would
not issue from the gums.* A different and more barbarous
' W. Wyatt GHX, Jottings from the p. 176.
Pacific, pp. 222 sq. On the use of 3 Riedel, „/. cit. p. 75.
roof-thatch in superstitious ceremonies 4 r M PI t " Ffh h' h
see W. Caland, Altindisclus Zauber- ,, .'■•■' j il- ■ -n-, , !, T..f
., , o !> o T .u Beschrnving der Kei-Eilanden, lijd-
ritual, pp. 82 n.^_ 82 sq In he ,,kriftLn\et Nederlandsch Aardrijks-
present case the virtue 01 the thatch j. j- n , r j. t- jo-
^ , , , •. 1 I ■ t kundig Genootschap, Tweede bene, x.
clearly depends on its harbouring rats. (iSqoI „ g,.
Some Dravidian tribes forbid a men- "■'' "'
struous woman to touch the house- F- Blumentritt, "Sitten und
thatch (W. Crooke, Popular Religion Brauche der Ilocanen," Globus, xlviii.
atul Folklore of Northern India, West- No. I2, p. 200.
minster, 1896, i. 269). " B. de Sahagun, Histoire gSnirale
* J. G. F. Riedel, De sluik- en Iroes- des choses de la Nouvelle Espagne, pp.
harige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua, 316 sq.
I So SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap.
application of the same principle is the Swabian superstition
that when a child is teething you should bite off the head of
a living mouse, and hang the head round the child's neck by
a string, taking care, however, to make no knot in the string ;
then the child will teethe easily.^ In Bohemia the treatment
prescribed is similar, though there they recommend you to
use a red thread and to string three heads of mice on it
instead of one.^
Con- But it is not always a mouse or a rat that brings the
^rof '^^'^'^ ^ "^^ ^"^ stronger tooth. Apparently any strong-
teeth: toothed animal will serve the purpose. Thus when
s^iirreis, ^^^ '^^ ^^"^ tooth drops out, a Singhalese will throw it
foxes, on the roof, saying, " Squirrel, dear squirrel, take this
j,^'^' tooth and give me a dainty tooth." ^ In Bohemia
a child will sometimes throw its cast tooth behind the
stove, asking the fox to give him an iron tooth instead of
the bone one.* In Berlin the teeth of a fox worn as an
amulet round a child's neck make teething easy for him,
and ensure that his teeth will be good and lasting.'
Similarly, in order to help a child to cut its teeth, the
aborigines of Victoria fastened to its wrist the front tooth
of a kangaroo, which the child used as a coral to rub its
gums with.* Again, the beaver can gnaw through the
hardest wood. Hence among the Cherokee Indians, when
the loosened milk tooth of a child has been pulled out or
has dropped out of itself, the child runs round the house
with it, repeating four times, " Beaver, put a new tooth
into my jaw," after which he throws the tooth on the roof
of the house.' In Macedonia, a child carefully keeps for
a time its first drawn tooth, and then throws it on the
roof with the following invocation to the crow : —
1 E. Meier, Deutsche Sagen, Sitten Goudy kindly translated the Czech
und Gebrdtuke aus Schwaben, p. 5 10, words for me.
§4»S- ^E. Krause, "AberglaubischeKuren
' J. V. Grohmann, Aberglauben und und sonstiger Aberglaube in Berlin,"
Gebrduche am Bohmen und Mdhren, Zeitschrift fur Ethnologic, xv. (1883)
p. Ill, § 822. p. 84.
' A. A. Perera, " Glimpses of Cin- « j. Dawson, Australian Aborigines,
ghalese Social Life," /«nr«a«^«/'/'(7«a;j/, p. 39.
xxxii. (1903) p. 435. t J. Mooncy, "Myths of the
* J. V. Grohmann, Aberglauben und Cherokee," Nineteenth Annual Report
Gebrduche aus Bohmen und Mdhren, <if the Bureau of American Ethnology
pp. 55 at top, p. 1 1 1, § 825. Mr. A. P. (Washington, 1900), part I p. 266.
Ill CONTAGIOUS MAGIC i8i
" O dear crow, here is a tooth of bone,
Take it and give me a tooth of iron instead,
That I may be able to chew beans
And to crunch dry biscuits." ^
We can now understand a custom of the Thompson Indians
of British Columbia, which the writer who records it is
unable to explain. When a child lost its teeth, the father
used to take each one as it fell out and to hide it in a
piece of raw venison, which he gave to a dog to eat. The
animal swallowed the venison and the tooth with it.^
Doubtless the custom was intended to ensure that the
child's new teeth should be as strong as those of a dog.
In Silesia mothers sometimes swallow their children's cast
teeth in order to save their offspring from toothache.
The intention is perhaps to strengthen the weak teeth
of the child by the strong teeth of the grown woman.*
Amongst the Warramunga of Central Australia, when a
girl's tooth has been knocked out as a solemn ceremony,
it is pounded up and the fragments placed in a piece of
flesh, which has to be eaten by the girl's mother. When
the same rite has been performed on a man, his pounded
tooth must be eaten in a piece of meat by his mother-in-
law.* Among the heathen Arabs, when a boy's tooth fell Teeth
out, he used to take it between his finger and thumb and *™^
throw it towards the sun, saying, " Give me a better for the sun.
it" After that his teeth were sure to grow straight, and
close, and strong. " The sun," says Tharafah, " gave the
lad from his own nursery-ground a tooth like a hailstone,
white and polished." ° Thus the reason for throwing the
old teeth towards the sun would seem to have been a
notion that the sun sends hail, from which it naturally
follows that he can send you a tooth as smooth and white
and hard as a hailstone. Among the peasants of the
Lebanon, when a child loses a milk tooth, he throws it
1 G. F. Abbott, Macedonian Folklore § 823 ; A. Wuttke, Der deutsche
(Cambridge, 1903), p- 20. Vclksaberglauie,'^ p. 330, § 527.
' T. Teit, "The Thompson Indians 4 „ , ^.,, ,, .,
r tT •.• 1. J^ I I.). »/ ■ J- ^i Spencer and Gillen, Northern
of British Columbia, Memoir of the „ ., r r^ , , ^ , ,. , ^
. . ,. s ,r ^ t rr- , Trtbes Of Central Australia, V). 593.
American Museum 0/ Natural History, ■' > r j^j
The Jesup Ndrth Pacific Expedition, * Rasmussen, Additamenta ad his-
vol. i. part iv. (April 1900) p. 308. toriam Arabum ante Islamismum, p.
' J. V. Grohmann, op. cit. p. 1 11, 64.
ii»2 SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap.
towards the sun, saying, " Sun, sun, take the ass's tooth
and give me the deer's tooth." They sometimes say jest-
ingly that the child's tooth has been carried off by a mouse.^
An Armenian generally buries his extracted teeth at the
edge of the hearth with the prayer : " Grandfather, take
a dog's tooth and .give me a golden tooth." ^ In the light
of the preceding examples, we may conjecture that the
grandfather here invoked is not so much the soul of a dead
ancestor as a mouse or a rat.
Con- Other parts which are commonly believed to remain
"^""^ .. in a sympathetic union with the body, after the physical
navel- conncxion has been severed, are the navel-string and the
SerbiSi afterbirth, including the placenta. So intimate, indeed,
among the is the union conceived to be, that the fortunes of the
and the individual for good or evil throughout life are often
aborigines supposed to be bound up with one or other of these
traia. portions of his person, so that if his navel-string or
afterbirth is preserved and properly treated, he will be
prosperous ; whereas if it be injured or lost, he will suffer
accordingly. Thus among the Maoris, when the navel-
string dropped off, the child was carried to a priest to be
solemnly named by him. But before the ceremony of
naming began, the navel-string was buried in a sacred place
and a young sapling was planted over it. Ever afterwards
that tree, as it grew, was a tohu oranga or sign of life for the
child.^ In the Upper Whakatane valley, in the North
Island of New Zealand, there is a famous //zW« tree, to
which the Maoris used to attach the navel-strings of their
children ; and barren women were in the habit of embracing
the tree in the hope of thereby obtaining offspring.* Again,
among the Maoris, " the placenta is named fenua, which
word signifies land. It is applied by the natives to the
placenta, from their supposing it to be the residence of the
child : on being discharged it is immediately buried with
' L'Abbe B. Chemali, " Naissance Zealand and its Inhabitants^ (X,onion,
et premier age au Liban," Anthropos, 1870), p. 184.
V. (tgio) p. 745. ^ Elsdon Best, quoted by W. H.
,,,,,,. -r. . , Goldie, "Maori Medical Lore,"
^ M. Abepnian, jDer armeuiscne „ .. , „ ,. ^ '
ir lu 1 in- ■ o \ no ^ ransactions and Froceedtngs of tht
Vo/isglauie (hsipsic, 1899), p. 68. ,, 7 , ^ r ^-^ , •• / ,
" ^ 1 ' =•'" r jY^^ Zealand Institute, xxxvii. (1904)
^ R. Taylor, Te Ika A Maui, or New pp. 94 sq.
"I CONTAGIOUS MAGIC 183
great care, as they have the superstitious idea that the
priests, if offended, would procure it ; and, by praying
over it, occasion the death of both mother and child,
by ' praying them to death,' to use their own expres-
sion." ^ Again, some of the natives of South Australia
regarded the placenta as sacred and carefully put it away
out of reach of the dogs,^ doubtless because they thought
that harm would come to the child if this part of himself
were eaten by the animals. Certain tribes of Western
Australia believe that a man swims well or ill, according
as his mother at his birth threw the navel-string into
water or not.^ Among the Arunta of Central Australia
the navel-string is swathed in fur-string and made into a
necklace, which is placed round the child's neck. The
necklace is supposed to facilitate the growth of the
child, to keep it quiet and contented, and to avert illness
generally.* In the Kaitish tribe of Central Australia the
practice and belief are similar.^ In the Warramunga tribe,
after the string has hung round the child's neck for a
time, it is given to the wife's brother, who wears it in his
armlet, and who may not see the child till it can walk.
In return for the navel-string, the man makes a present
of weapons to the infant's father. When the child can
walk, the father gives fur-string to the man, who now
comes to the camp, sees the child, and makes another
present to the father. After that he keeps the navel-
string for some time longer, and finally places it in a
hollow tree known only to himself.® Among the
natives on the Pennefather river in Queensland it is
• George Bennett, Wanderings in Australia, p. 9 (published along with
New South Wales, Batavia, Pedir the author's Diary of Ten Years''
Coast, Singapore and China (London, Eventful Life of an Early Settler in
1834),!. 128, note*. hsXofemtaox Western Australia, London, 1884,
whenua in the sense of "placenta "and but paged separately).
"land," see E. Tregear, Maori-Poly- * Spencer and Gillen, JVatizie Tribes
nesian Comparative Dictionaiy (Wei- of Central Australia, p. 467.
lington, N.Z., 1891), pp. 620 ji?. 'Spencer and Gillen, Northern
* E. J. Eyre, Journals of Exfedi- Tribes of Central Australia, p, 607.
tiomofDiscozviy into Central Australia, " Spencer and Gillen, op. cit. p. 608.
ii- 323- The writers add that the child has no
^ G. F. Moore, Descriptive Vocabu- special connexion with the tree in after
lary of the Language in Common Use years. We may suspect that such a
amongst the Aborigines of Western connexion did exist in former times.
i84
5 YMPA THETIC MA GIC
Con-
tagious
magic of
navel-
string in
Xew
Guinea,
Fiji, the
Caroline
Islands,
and the
Gilbert
Islands.
believed that a part of the child's spirit {cho-i) stays in
the afterbirth. Hence the grandmother takes the after-
birth away and buries it in the sand. She marks the
spot by a number of twigs which she sticks in the ground
in a circle, tying their tops together so that the structure
resembles a cone. When Anjea, the being who causes
conception in women by putting mud babies into their
wombs, comes along and sees the place, he takes out the
spirit and carries it away to one of his haunts, such as a
tree, a hole in a rock, or a lagoon, where it may remain
for years. But sometime or other he will put the spirit
again into a baby, and it will be born once more into
the world.^ '
In the Yabim tribe of German New Guinea the mother
ties the navel-string to the net in which she carries the child,
lest any one should use the string to the child's hurt.^ " In
some parts of Fiji the navel-string of a male infant is planted
together with a cocoanut, or slip of a bread-fruit tree, and
the child's life is supposed to be intimately connected with
that of the tree. Moreover, the planting is supposed to have
the effect of making the boy a good climber. If the child
be a girl, the mother or her sister will take the navel-string
to the sea-water when she goes out fishing for the first time
after the childbirth, and she will throw it into the sea when
the nets are stretched in line. Thus the girl will grow up
into a skilful fisherwoman. But the queerest use I ever saw
the string put to was at Rotuma. There it has become
almost obligatoiy for a young man, who wants the girls to
respect him, to make a voyage in a white man's vessel ; and
mothers come alongside^ ships anchored in the roadstead
and fasten their boy's navel-string to the vessel's chain-
plates. This will make sure of a voyage for the child when
it has grown up. This, of course, must be a modern
development, but it has all the strength of an ancient
custom."' In Ponape, one of the Caroline Islands, the
' W. E. Roth, Noiih Queensland
Ethnography. Bulletin No. 5 (Brisbane,
1903). P- iS. As to the mode of
determining where the soul of the
child has dwelt since its last incarna-
tion, see above, pp. 99 sg.
' K. Vetter, in Nachrichten iibe?
Kaiser Wilhelms-Land und den Bis-
marck-Archipel, 1897, pp. 92'; M.
Kiieger, Neu-Cuinea, p. 165.
' The Rev. Lorinier Fison, in a
letter to nie dated May 29, I go I.
Ill CONTAGIOUS MAGIC 185
navel-string is placed in a shell and then disposed of in
such a way as shall best adapt the child for the career which
the parents have chosen for him. Thus if they wish to
make him a good climber, they will hang the navel-string
on a tree.^ In the Gilbert Islands the navel-string is wrapt
by the child's father or adoptive father in a pandanus leaf,
and then worn by him as a bracelet for several months.
After that he keeps it most carefully in the hut, generally
hanging under the ridge-beam. The islanders believe that
if the navel-string is thus preserved, the child will become a
great warrior if it is a boy, or will make a good match if
it is a girl. But should the bracelet be lost before the child
is grown up, they expect that the boy will prove a coward
in war, and that the girl will make an unfortunate marriage.
Hence the most anxious search is made for the missing
talisman, and if it is not to be found, weeks will pass before
the relations resign themselves to its loss. When the boy
has grown to be a youth and has distinguished himself for
the first time in war, the bracelet containing the navel-string
is taken by the villagers, on a day fixed for the purpose, far
out to sea ; the adoptive father of the lad throws the bracelet
overboard, and all the canoes begin to catch as many fish
as they can. The first fish caught, whether large or small,
is carefully preserved apart from the rest. Meantime the
old women at home have been busy preparing a copious
banquet for the fishermen. When the little fleet comes to
shore, the old woman who helped at the lad's birth goes to
meet it ; the first fish caught is handed to her, and she
carries it to the hut. The fish is laid on a new mat, the
youth and his mother take their places beside it, and they
and it are covered up with another mat. Then the old
woman goes round the mat, striking the ground with a short
club and murmuring a prayer to the lad's god to help him
henceforth in war, that he may be brave and invulner-
able, and that he may turn out a skilful fisherman. The
navel-string of a girl, as soon as she is grown up, is thrown
into the sea with similar ceremonies ; and the ceremony on
land is the same except that the old woman's prayer is
' Dr. Hahl, " Mittheilungen iiber Ponape," Ethnologisches Notizblatt,
Sitten und rechtliche Verhaltnisse auf ii. (Berlin, 1901) p. 10.
i86
S YMPA THE TIC MA GIC
naturally different ; she asks the girl's god to grant that she
may have a happy marriage and many children. After the
mat has been removed, the fish is cooked and eaten by the
tvvo ; if it is too large to be eaten by them alone, the
remainder is consumed by friends and relations. These
ceremonies are only observed for the children of wealthy
parents, who can defray the cost. In the case of a child
of poorer parents the bracelet containing the navel-string
simply hangs up till it disappears in one way or another.^
Con- Among the Galelareese, to the west of New Guinea,
'^^°'^, the mother sometimes keeps the navel-string till the child
magic of ^ , . .
navel- is old enough to begin to play. Then she gives it as a
S'^biSf plaything to the little one, who may take it away ; other-
in the wise the child would be idiotic. But others plant the
Moluccas. j^3^ygj.3|-rjj,g ^yj^h ^ banana-bush or a coco-nut.^ The Kei
islanders, to the south-west of New Guinea, regard the navel-
string as the brother or sister of the child, according as the
infant is a boy or a girl. They put it in a pot with ashes,
and set it in the branches of a tree, that it may keep a
watchful eye on the fortunes of its comrade.' In the Babar
Archipelago, between New Guinea and Celebes, the placenta
is mixed with ashes and put in a small basket, which seven
women, each of them armed with a sword, hang up on a
tree of a particular kind {Citrus hystrix). The women carry
swords for the purpose of frightening the evil spirits ; other-
wise these mischievous beings might get hold of the placenta
and make the child sick. The navel-string is kept in a
little box in the house.* In the Tenimber and Timorlaut
islands the placenta is buried in_a basket under a sago or
coco-nut palm, which then becomes the property of the
child. But sometimes it is hidden in the forest, or deposited
in a hole under the house with an offering of betel.^ In the
Indii, xlv. (1895) P- 4^^-
2 C. M. rieyte, " Ethnographische
Beschrijving der Kei-Eilanden," Tijd-
schrift van het Nederlandsch Aardrijks-
kundig Genootschap, Tweede Serie, x.
(1893) pp. 816 sq. Compare J. G.
F. Riedel, De sluik-en kroeskarige
rassen iusschen Selebes en Papua, p.
236.
* J. G. F. Riedel, op. cit, p. 354.
* Riedel, op. cit. p. 303.
' R. Parkinson, " Beitrage zur
Ethnologic der Gilbertinsulaner," In-
teniationaks Archiv filr Ethnographie,
ii. {1S89) p. 35. In these islands the
children of well-to-do parents are
always adopted by other people as soon
as they are weaned. See ib. p. 33.
^ M. J- van Baarda, " Fabelen,
Verhalen en Overleveringen der Gale-
lareezen," Bijdragen totde Taal- Land-
en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-
Ill CONTAGIOUS MAGIC 187
Watubela islands the placenta is buried under a coco-nut,
mangga, or great fig-tree along with the shell of the coco-
nut, of which the pulp had been used to smear the newborn
child.-' In many of the islands between New Guinea and
Celebes the placenta is put in the branches of a tree, often
in the top of one of the highest trees in the neighbourhood.
Sometimes the navel-string is deposited along with the
placenta in the tree, but often it is kept to be used as medi-
cine or an amulet by the child.^ Thus in Ceram the child
sometimes wears the navel-string round its neck as a charm
to avert sickness ; * and in the islands of Leti, Moa, and
Lakor he carries it as an amulet in war or on a far journey.*
We cannot doubt that the intention of putting the placenta
in the top of a tall tree is to keep it, and with it the child,
out of harm's way. In the islands of Saparoea, Haroekoe,
and Noessa Laut, to the east of Amboyna, the midwife
buries the afterbirth and strews flowers over it. Moreover,
resin or a lamp is kept burning for seven or three nights
over the buried afterbirth, in order that no harm may come
to the child. Some people, however, in these islands
solemnly cast the afterbirth into the sea. Being placed in
a pot and closely covered up with a piece of white cotton,
it is taken out to sea in a boat. A hole is knocked in the
pot to allow it to sink in the water. The midwife, who is
charged with the duty of heaving the pot and its contents
overboard, must look straight ahead ; if she were to glance
to the right or left the child whose afterbirth is in the pot
would squint. And the man who rows or steers the boat
must make her keep a straight course, otherwise the child
would grow up a gad-about Before the pot is flung into
the sea, the midwife disengages the piece of white cotton in
which it is wrapt, and this cloth she takes straight back to
the house and covers the baby with it. In these islands it
is thought that a child born with a caul will enjoy in later
years the gift of second sight — that is, that he will be able
to see things which are hidden from common eyes, such as
devils and evil spirits. But if his parents desire to prevent
» Riedel, op. cit. p. 208. * Riedel, op. cit. p. 135.
^ Riedel, op. cit. pp. 23, 135, 236,
325, 391, 417. 449. 468. " Riedel, op. cit. p. 391
i88 SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap.
him from exercising this uncanny power, they can do so.
In that case the midwife must dry the caul in the sun, steep
it in water, and then wash the child with the water thrice ;
further, when the child is a little older, she must grind the
caul to powder, and give the child the powder to eat with
its pap. Some people keep the caul ; and if the child falls
ill, it is given water to drink in which the caul has been
steeped.! -Similarly in the Luang-Sermata islands a child
born with a caul is counted lucky, and can perceive and
recognise the spirits of his ancestors.^ A caul, it may be
said, is merely the foetal membrane which usually forms
part of the afterbirth ; occasionally a child is born with it
wrapt like a hood round its head.
Contagious In Parigi, a kingdom on the coast of Central Celebes,
magK of , , .....
the the placenta is laid in a cookmg-pot, and one of the
^2x:ena in mother's female relations carries the pot wrapt in white
Ceieoes. j . ■ i i
cotton and hidden under a petticoat {sarong) to a spot
beneath the house or elsewhere, and there she buries it. A
coco-nut is planted near the place. Going and coming the
woman is led by another, and must keep her eyes fast shut,
for if she looked right or left the child would squint,
" because she is at this time closely united with a part of
the child, to wit its older brother, in other words the
placenta." On her return to the house she lies down on
her sleeping-mat, still with closed eyes, and draws a petticoat
over her head, and another woman sprinkles her with water.
After that she may get up and open her eyes. The
sprinkling with water is intended to sever her sympathetic
connexion with the child and so prevent her frOm exercising
any influence on it.' Among the Tolalaki of Central
Celebes turmeric and other spices are put on the placenta,
^ Van Schmidt, ' ' Aanteekeningen a sign that the wife has been unfaithful,
nopens de zeden, gewoonten en ge- ^j^g^jg]^ ^p^ ^^ p_ ^26.
bruiken, etc., der bevolking van de ^ N. Adriani and A. C. Kruijt,
eilandeu Saparoea, Haroekoe, Noessa ' ' Van Posso naar Parigi, Sigi en
lyaut," etc., Tijdschrift voor Neirlands Lindoe," Mededeelingen van wige het
Jndii, Batavia, 1843, ^- "■ PP- 523- Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap,
526. The customs and beliefs on this xlii. (1898) pp. 434 sq. In Parigi
subject in the adjoining island of after a birth the kindspek (?) is wrapt
Amboyna seem to be identical. See J- in a leaf and hung in a tree at some
G.F. Riedel, 0/. «V. pp.73 j-^. Accord- distance from the house. For the
ing to Riedel, if the pot with the after- people think that if it were burned,
birth does not sink in the water, it is the child would die [ibid. p. 434).
HI CONTAGIOUS MAGIC 189
which is then enclosed in two coco-nut shells that fit one on
the other. These are wrapt in bark-cloth and kept in the
house. If the child falls' ill, the coco-nut shells are opened
and the placenta examined. Should there be worms in it,
they are removed and fresh spices added. When the child
has grown big and strong, the placenta is thrown away.^
Among the Toboongkoo of Central Celebes the afterbirth
is placed in a rice-pot with various plants, which are intended
to preserve it from decay as long as possible ; it is then
carefully tied up in bark-cloth. A man and a woman of the
family carry the placenta away ; in doing so they go out and
in the house four times, and each time they enter they kiss
the child, but they take care not to look to the right or the
left, for otherwise the child would squint. Some bury the
placenta, others hang it on a tree. If the child is unwell,
they dig up the placenta or take it down from the tree, and
lay bananas, rice of four sorts, and a lighted taper beside it.
Having done so, they hang it up on a tree if it was
previously buried ; but they bury it if it was formerly hung
up.^ The Tomori of Central Celebes wash the afterbirth,
put it in a rice-pot, and bury it under the house. Great
care is taken that no water or spittle falls on the place. For
a few days the afterbirth is sometimes fed with rice and eggs,
which are laid on the spot where it is buried. Afterwards
the people cease to trouble themselves about it.^ In
southern Celebes they call the navel-string and afterbirth
the two brothers or sisters of the child. When the infant
happens to be a prince or princess, the navel-string and
afterbirth are placed with salt and tamarind in a new rice-
pot, which is then enveloped in a fine robe and tightly
corded up to prevent the evil spirits from making off with
the pair of brothers or sisters. For the same reason a light
is kept burning all night, and twice a day rice is rubbed on
the edge of the pot, for the purpose, as the people say, of
giving the child's little brothers or sisters something to eat.
After a while this feeding, as it is called, takes place at
I N. Adrian! and A. C. Kruijt, "Van grafische aanteekeningen omtrent de
Posso naar Mori," Medededingen van Toboenglcoe en de Tomori," ibid. p.
wege het Nederl. Zcndelinggetwotschap, 218.
xliv. (1900) pp. 161 sq.
* A. C Kruijt, " Eenige etlino- * Id., ib. p. 236.
igo
S YMPA THETIC MA GIC
rarer intervals, and when the mother has been again brought
to bed it is discontinued altogether. On the ninth day after
the birth a number of coco-nuts are planted, with much
ceremony, in a square enclosure, and the water which was
used in cleansing the afterbirth and navel-string is poured
upon them. These coco-nuts are called the contemporaries
of the child and grow up with him. When the planting is
done, the rice-pot with the navel-string and afterbirth is
carried back and set beside the bed of the young prince or
princess, and when his royal highness is carried out to take
the air the rice-pot with his two " brothers " goes out with
him, swathed in a robe of state and screened from the sun
by an umbrella. If the prince or princess should die, the
afterbirth and navel-string are buried. Among common
people in South Celebes these parts of the infant are
generally buried immediately after the birth, or they are
sunk in the deep sea, or hung in a rice-pot on a tree.^
Contagious In the island of Timor the placenta is called the child's
companion and treated accordingly. The midwife puts it
in an earthen pot and covers it with ashes from the hearth.
After standing thus three days it is taken away and buried
by a person who must observe silence in discharging this
duty.^ In Savou, a small island to the south-west of Timor,
the afterbirth is filled with native herbs, and having been
deposited in a new pot, which has never before been used, is
buried under the house to keep off evil spirits. Or it is put
in a new basket and hung in a high toddy palm to fertilise
it, or thrown into the sea to secure a good catch of fish.
The person who thus disposes of the afterbirth may not
look to the right or the left ; he must be joyous and, if
possible, go singing on his way. If it is to be hung on a
tree, he must climb nimbly up, in order that the child may
always be lucky. These islanders ascribe a similar fertilising
virtue to a caul. It is dried and carefully kept in a box.
When rice-stalks turn black and the ears refuse to set, a
man will take the box containing the caul and run several
magic of
the
placenta
and navel-
string in
Timor,
Sarou,
and Rotti
^ B. F. Matthes, Bijdragen tot de
Ethnclogie van Zuid- Celebes (The
Hague, 1875), PP- S7-60.
" G. Heijmering, " Zeden en ge-
woonten op het eiland Timor," Tijd-
schrift voor N'elrland's Indil, 1845, pp.
279 sq.
Ill CONTAGIOUS MAGIC 191
times round the rice-field, in order that the wind may waft
the genial influence of the caul over the rice.^ In Rotti, an
island to the south of Timor, the navel-string is put in a
small satchel made of leaves, and if the father of the child
is not himself going on a voyage, he entrusts the bag to one
of his seafaring friends and charges him to throw it away in
the open sea with the express wish that, when the child
grows up and has to sail to other islands, he may escape the
perils of the deep. But the business of girls in these
islands does not lie in the great waters, and hence their
navel-strings receive a different treatment. It is their task
to go afishing daily, when the tide is out, on the coral reefs
which ring the islands. So when the mother is herself
again, she repairs with the little satchel to the reef where
she is wont to fish. Acting the part of a priestess she
there eats one or two small bagfuls of boiled rice on the
spot where she intends to deposit the dried navel-string of
her baby daughter, taking care to leave a few grains of rice
in the bags. Then she ties the precious satchel and the
nearly empty rice-bags to a stick and fastens it among the
stones of the reef, generally on its outer edge, within sight
and sound of the breaking waves. In doing so she utters a
wish that this ceremony may guard her daughter from the
perils and dangers that beset her on the reef — for example,
that no crocodile may issue from the lagoon and eat her up,
and that the sharp corals and broken shells may not wound
her feet.^
In the island of Flores the placenta is put in an earthen contagiou-
pot, along with some rice and betel, and buried by the father '^^'^ °f
in the neighbourhood of the house, or else preserved in one placenta
of the highest trees.' The natives of Bali, an island to the l? ^°'''=^'
° ^ ' bah, and
east of Java, believe firmly that the afterbirth is the child's Java.
brother or sister, and they bury it in the courtyard in the
half of a coco-nut from which the kernel has not been
• J. H. Letteboer, " Eenige aantee- woonten op het eiland Rottie," Tijd-
keningen omtrenl de gebruiken bij schrift voor Nehiands Indil, 1843, dl.
zwangerschap en geboorte onder de ii. pp. 637 sq.
Savuneezen," MededeelingeH van ivege
het Nede>-!andsche Zetideliiigge7tootschap, ^ J. G. F. Ricdcl, The Island of
xl\-i. (1902) p. 47. Flores, p. 7 (reprinted from the Kevtu
' O. Heijmering, " Zedcn en ge- Co/oiiiale Internationale).
192 SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap.
removed. For forty days afterwards a light is burned, and
food, water, and betel deposited on the spot,^ doubtless in
order to feed the baby's little brother or sister, and to guard
him or her from evil spirits. In JaVa the afterbirth is also
called the brother or sister of the infant ; it is wrapt in
white cotton, put in a new pot or a coco-nut shell, and
buried by the father beside the door, outside the house if
the child is a boy, but inside the house if the child is a girl.
Every evening until the child's navel has healed a lamp is
lit over the spot where the afterbirth is buried. If the
afterbirth hangs in a rice-pot in the house, as the practice is
with some people, the lamp burns under the place where the
rice-pot is suspended. The purpose of the light is to ward
off demons, to whose machinations the child and its supposed
brother or sister are at this season especially exposed.^
If the child is a boy, a piece of paper inscribed with the
alphabet is deposited in the pot with his placenta, in order
that he may be smart at his learning ; if the child is a girl,
a needle and thread are deposited in the pot, that she may
be a good sempstress, and water with flowers in it is
poured on the spot where the placenta is buried, in order^
that the child may always be healthy ; for many Javanese
think that if the placenta is not properly honoured, the
child will never be well.* Sometimes, however, women in
the interior of Java allow the placenta, surrounded with
fruits and flowers and illuminated by little lamps, to float
down the river in the dusk of the evening as an offering
to the crocodiles, or rather to the ancestors whose souls are
believed to lodge in these animals.*
Cont.Tgious In Mandeling, a district on the west coast of Sumatra,
^^^^ the afterbirth is washed and buried under the house or put
and navel- jn an earthenware pot, which is carefully shut up and thrown
string in
Sumatra.
' Julius Jacobs, Eenigen tijd otider genootschap, xx. (1876) p. 281.
i/<r 53//>rf (Batavia, 1883), p. q. <i t^ t ,, t,- .
3C.F. Winter, " Instellingen, ' B. Louwener, •' Bijgeloov.ge geb-
gewoonten en gebmiken der Javanen '^"'';^"' ^'^ ''°°'^/^? Jf^^"^" ""f*^^" '"
fe Soerakarta," 75;i/..>iW/? voir Nelr- ^"^^ f"°™«" '"J f? /"'"'f °F. j"
lands I,uMi, 1S43, dl. i. pp. 695 sq ; "P^^^ing hunner kmderen," Mede-
P. J. Veth, Ta^^a, i. (Haarlem, :87s) f '''j'f " """ 7Y ^''^'f''^''"''"'''
pp. 639 sg.; "C. Poensen, " lets over de ^"'i''J^"gg'»ooischap, xhx. (1905) pp.
kleeding der Javanen," Mededeelingeii •'^ "'
lan utge het Nederlandsche Zendeling- ^ P. J. Veth, /azvj, i. 231.
Ill CONTAGIOUS MAGIC 193
into the river. This is done to avert the supposed un-
favourable influence of the afterbirth on the child, whose
hands or feet, for example, might be chilled by it. When
the navel-string drops off, it is preserved to be used as a
medicine when its former owner is ill.^ In Mandeling, too,
the midwife prefers to cut the navel-string with a piece of a
flute on which she has first blown, for then the child will be
sure to have a fine voice.^ Among the Minangkabau
people of "Sumatra the placenta is put in a new earthenware
pot, which is then carefully closed with a banana leaf to
prevent the ants and other insects from coming at it ; for
if they did, the child would be sickly and given to squalling.^
In Central Sumatra the placenta is wrapt in white cotton,
deposited in a basket or a calabash, and buried in the court-
yard before the house or under a rice-barn. The hole is
dug by a kinsman or kinswoman according as the baby is
a boy or a girl. Over the hole is placed a stone from the
hearth, and beside it a wooden spoon is stuck in the
ground. Both stone and spoon are sprinkled with the
juice of a citron. During the ceremony koemajen is burned
and a shot fired. For three evenings afterwards candles are
iighted at the spot,* doubtless to keep off demons. Among
the Battas of Sumatra, as among so many other peoples
of the Indian Archipelago, the placenta passes for the
child's younger brother or sister, the sex being determined
by the sex of the child, and it is buried under the house.
According to the Battas it is bound up with the child's
welfare, and seems, in fact, to be the seat of the transferable
soul, of whose wanderings outside of the body we shall
hear something later on." The Karo Battas even affirm
' H. Ris, " De onderafdeeling klein bij de Minangkabausche Maliers,"
Mandailing Oeloe en Pahantan en hare Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal- Land-
Bevolking met uitzondering van de «« Volkenkunde, xliv. (1901) p.
Oeloes," Bijdragen tot de Taal- Land- 493.
en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch- * A. L. van Hasselt, Volksbeschrij-
Indii.', xlvi. (1896) p. 504. ving van Midden-Sumatra (Leyden,
2 A. L. Heyting, " Beschrijving dcr 1882), p. 267.
onderafdeeling Groot Mandeling en * M. Joustra, " Het leven, de reden
Batang - Natal," Tijdschrift van het en gewoonten der Bataks," Mededee-
Nederlandsch Aardrijkskntidig Genool- lingen van wege het Nederlandsche
schap, Tweede Serie, xiv. (1897), p. /.endelinggerwotschap, xlvi. (1902) pp.
292. 407 sq. The transferable soul is in
' J. C. van Eerde, " Een huwelijk Batta tendi, in Malay sumangat.
VOL. I O
1^4 SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap.
that of a man's two souls it is the true soul that lives with
the placenta under the house ; that is the soul, they say,
which begets children.^
Contagious In Pasir, a district of eastern Borneo, the afterbirth is
"Sfenta Carefully treated and kept in an earthen pot or basket in
and navel- the house Until the remains of the navel-string have fallen
Bonira" off- -^'^ ^^ ^ixxift it is in the house candles are burned and
India, and a little food is placed beside the pot. When the navel-
■ ^^"' string has fallen off, it is placed with the placenta in the
pot, and the two are buried in the ground near the house.
The reason why the people take this care of the afterbirth
is that they believe it able to cause the child all kinds of
sickness and mishaps.^ The Malas, a low Telugu caste of
Southern India, bury the placenta in a pot with leaves in
some convenient place, generally in the back yard, lest dogs
or other animals should carry it off; for if that were to
happen they fancy that the child would be of a wandering
disposition.* The Khasis of Assam keep the placenta in a
pot in the house until the child has been formally named.
When that ceremony is over, the father waves the pot contain-
ing the placenta thrice over the child's head, and then hangs
Contagious it to a tree outside of the village.* In some Malayo-Siamese
"^■^ °^ families of the Patani States it is customary to bury the
and navel- afterbirth under a banana-tree, the condition of which is
tS"pat^i thenceforth regarded as ominous of the child's fate for good
States. or ill.^ A Chinese medical work prescribes tjiat " the placenta
Japan! ^ should be stored away in a felicitous spot under the salutary
influences of the sky or the moon, deep in the ground, and
with earth piled up over it carefully, in order that the child
may be ensured a long life. If it is devoured by a swine or
dog, the child loses its intellect ; if insects or ants eat it, the
child becomes scrofulous ; if crows or magpies swallow it,
Mr. Joustra thinks that the placenta kunde van Nederlandsch-Indi'e, Iviii.
is, in the opinion of the Battas, the (1905) pp. 537 sq.
original seat of this soul. 3 e. Thurston, Castes and Tribes oj
> J. H. Neumann, " De tSndi in Southern India, iv. 370.
verband met Si Dajang," Mededee- x t, t> t n a ti. z-i. ■
lingen van wege het Nederlandsche ,^ ' ^- ^- T- Gurdon, The Khasts
Ze,ulelinggenootschap, xlviii. (1904) p. (London, 1907), pp. 124 sq.
loz. ^ N. Annandale, " Customs of the
2 A. H. F. J. Nusselein, "Be- Malayo-Siamese," Fasciculi Malay-
schrijving van het landschap Pasir," enses. Anthropology, part ii. (a) (May
Bijdyagentotde Taal- Latid- en Volken- 1904) p. 5.
'" CONTAGIOUS MAGIC 195
the child will have an abrupt or violent death ; if it is cast
into the fire, the child incurs running sores." ^ The Japanese
preserve the navel-string most carefully and bury it with the
dead in the grave.^
Among the Gallas of East Africa the navel-string Contagious
is carefully kept, sewn up in leather, and serves as an T^''= °^
, placenta
amulet lor female camels, which then become the child's and navel-
property, together with all the young they give birth to.^^f™J'°
The Baganda believe that every person is born with a especially
double, and this double they identify with the afterbirth, Bag^^dL^'
which they regard as a second child. Further, they think
that the afterbirth has a ghost, and that the ghost is in that
portion of the navel-string which remains attached to the
child after birth. This ghost must be preserved if the child
is to be healthy. Hence when the navel-string drops off, it
is rubbed with butter, swathed in bark-cloth, and kept through
life under the name of " the twin " {mulongd). The afterbirth
is wrapt up in plantain leaves and buried by the child's
mother at the root of a plantain tree, where it is protected
against wild beasts. If the child be a boy, the tree chosen
is of the kind whose fruit is made into beer ; if the child be
a girl, the tree is of the kind whose fruit is eaten. The
plantain tree at whose root the afterbirth is buried becomes
sacred until the fruit has ripened and been used. Only the
father's mother may come near it and dig about it ; all
other people are 'kept from it by a rope of plantain fibre
which is tied from tree to tree in a circle round about the
sacred plantain. All the child's secretions are thrown by
the mother at the root of the tree ; when the fruit is ripe,
the father's mother cuts it and rnakes it into beer or cooks
it, according to the sex of the child, and the relatives of the
father's clan then come and partake of the sacred feast.
After the meal the father must go in to his own wife, for
should he neglect to do so, and should some other member of
the clan have sexual relations with his wife first, the child's
spirit would leave it and go into the other woman. Further,
' J. J. M. de Groot, The Religious p. 32.
System of China, iv. (Leyden, 1901) ^ j>j). I'aulitschke, Ethnographic
pp. 396 sq. Nordost Afrikas : die materielle Cultur
^ H. von Siebold, Ethnologische. der Dandkil, Galla und Somdl (Berlin,
Studien iiber die Aino (Berlin, 1 881), 1893), p. 192.
196 5 YMPA THE TIC MA GIC
Contagious the navel-string plays a part at the ceremony of naming a
magic of child, the object of which among the Baganda is to determine
the navel- ' ■' , ° ° , . , ,
string whether the child is legitimate or not. For this purpose the
^^^^^ navel-string (the so-called " twin ") is dropped into a bowl
containing a mixture of beer, milk, and water ; if it floats,
the child is legitimate and the clan accepts it as a member ;
if it sinks, the child is disowned by the clan and the mother
is punished for adultery. Afterwards the navel-string or
" twin " (mulongo) is either kept by the clan or buried along
with the afterbirth at the root of the plantain tree. Such
are the customs observed with regard to the afterbirth and
navel-string of Baganda commoners. The king's navel-string
or "twin," wrapt in bark -cloths and decorated with beads,
is treated like a person and confided to the care of the
Kimbugwe, the second officer of the country, who has
a special house built for it within his enclosure. Every
month, when the new moon first appears in the sky,
the Kimbugwe carries the bundle containing the "twin"
in procession, with fife and drums playing, to the king,
while the royal drum is beating in the royal enclosure.
The king examines it and hands it back to him. After
that, the minister returns the precious bundle to its own
house in his enclosure and places it in the doorway, where
it remains all night. Next morning it is taken from its
wrappings, smeared with butter, and again set in the doorway
until the evening, when it is swathed once more in its bark-
cloths and restored to its proper resting-place. After the
king's death his " twin " is deposited, along with his jaw-
bone, in the huge hut which forms his temple. The spirit of
the dead king is supposed to dwell in these two relics ; they
are placed on the dais when he wishes to hold his court
and when he is oracularly consulted on special occasions.^
Contagious The Incas of Peru preserved the navel-string with the
^^ °^ greatest care, and gave it to the child to suck whenever it
string and fell ill.^ In ancient Mexico they used to give a boy's navel-
afterbirth
in America. j j^ Roscoe, " Further Notes on the In the former of these two accounts Mr.
Manners and Customs of the Baganda," Roscoe speaks of the placenta, not the
Journal of the Anthropological Institute, navel-string, as the "twin " (mulongo).
xxxii. {1902) pp. 33, 45. 46, 63, 76; " Garcilasso de la Vega, HoyaJ Corn-
id. "Kibuka, the War God of the mentaries of the Yncas, bk. ii. ch. 24,
Baganda," Man,-ra. (1907) pp. 164 iy. vol. i. p. 186, Markham's translation.
m CONTAGIOUS MAGIC 197
string to soldiers, to be buried by them on a field of battle,
in order that the boy might thus acquire a passion for war.
But the navel-string of a girl was buried beside the domestic
hearth, because this was believed to inspire her with a love
of home and a taste for cooking and baking.-' Algonquin
women hung the navel-string round the child's neck ; if he
lost it, they thought the child would be stupid and spiritless.^
Among the Thompson Indians of British Columbia the
navel-string was sewed up by the mother in a piece of buck-
skin embroidered with hair, quills, or beads. It was then
tied to the broad buckskin band which extended round the
head of the cradle on the outside. Many thongs hung from
it, each carrying fawn's hoofs and beads that jingled when
the cradle was moved. If the navel-string were lost, they
looked on it as a calamity, for they believed that in after
years the child would become foolish or would be lost in the
chase or on a journey.^ Among the Kwakiutl Indians of
British Columbia the afterbirth of girls is buried at high-
water mark, in the belief that this will render them expert
at digging for clam. The afterbirth of boys is sometimes
exposed at places where ravens will eat it, because the
boys will thus acquire the raven's prophetic vision. The
same Indians are persuaded that the navel-string may be
the means of imparting a variety of accomplishments to its
original owner. Thus, if it is fastened to a dancing mask,
which is then worn by a skilful dancer, the child will dance
well. If it is attached to a knife, which is thereafter used
by a cunning carver, the child will carve well. Again, if
the parents wish their son to sing beautifully, they tie his
navel-string to the baton of a singing-master. Then the
boy calls on the singing-master every morning while the
artist is eating his breakfast. The votary of the Muses
thereupon takes his baton and moves it twice down the
right side and twice down the left side of the boy's body,
after which he gives the lad some of his food to eat. That
' B. de Sahagiin, Histoire ginirale (Canadian reprint).
dts choses de la NcuvelU Espagne, p. ' J. Teit, "The Thompson Indians
310; compare pp. 240, 439, 440 of British Columbia," pp. 304 sg.
(Jourdanet and Simeon's translation). (Memoir of the American Museum of
Natural History, The Jesup North
* Relations des Jisuites, 1639, p. 44 Pacific Expedition, vol. L part iv.).
198 SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap.
is an infallible way of making the boy a beautiful singer.'
Among the Cherokees the navel-string of an infant girl is
buried under the corn mortar, in order that the girl may
grow up to be a good baker ; but the navel-string of a boy
is hung up on a tree in the woods, in order that he may be
a hunter. Among the Kiowas the navel-string of a girl is
sewn up in a small beaded pouch and worn by her at her
belt as she grows to womanhood. If the girl's mother ever
sells the belt and pouch, she is careful to extract the navel-
string from the pouch before the bargain is struck. Should
the child die, the pouch containing her navel-string would be
fastened to a stick and set up over her grave.^
Contagious Even in Europe many people still believe that a person's
^^^ ° destiny is more or less bound up with that of his navel-string
string and or afterbirth. Thus in Rhenish Bavaria the navel-string is
in Europe, kept for a while wrapt up in a piece of old linen, and then
cut or pricked to pieces according as the child is a boy or
a girl, in order that he or she may grow up to be a skilful
workman or a good sempstress.^ In Berlin the midwife
commonly delivers the dried navel-string to the father with
a strict injunction to preserve it carefully, for so long as
it is kept the child will live and thrive and be free from
sickness.* In Beauce and Perche the people are careful
to throw the navel-string neither into water nor into fire,
believing that if that were done the child would be drowned
or burned.* Among the Ruthenians of Bukowina and
Galicia, the owner of a cow sometimes endeavours to increase
its milk by throwing its afterbirth into a spring, " in order
that, just as the water flows from the spring, so milk may
flow in abundance from the udders of the cow."* Some
German peasants think that the afterbirth of a cow must be
hung up in an apple-tree, otherwise the cow would not have
• Fr. Boas in Eleventh Report on * E. Krause, "Aberglaubische Kuren
the North- Western Tribes of Canada, und sonstiger Aberglaube in Berlin und
p. 5 (separate reprint from the Heport nachster Umgebung," Zeitschrift fiir
of the British Association for i8g6). Ethnologie, xv. (1883) p. 84.
^ J. Mooney, "The Indian Navel ' ^- Chy\s^^uLe Folk-lore de la
r^ J „ r 7 r ^ ■ c rt ; Beauce et au Perche (Pans, 1902), 11.
KjaiA, Journal of American Folk-lore, , v > :^ />
xvu. (1904) p. 197. ' 6 R. F. Kaindl, " Zauberglaube bei
' Bavaria, Landes- und Volkskunde den Rutenen in der Bukowina und
ties K'dnigreichs Bayern, iv. 2, p. 346. Galizien," Globus, Ixi. (1892) p. 282.
in CONTAGIOUS MAGIC 199
a calf next year.^ Similarly at Cleveland in Yorkshire, when
a mare foals, it is the custom to hang up the placenta in a
tree, particularly in a thorn-tree, in order to secure luck with
the foal. " Should the birth take place in the fields, this
suspension is most carefully attended to, while as for the
requirements of such events at the homestead, in not a few
instances there is a certain tree not far from the farm-
buildings still specially marked out for the reception of
these peculiar pendants. In one instance lately, I heard of
a larch tree so devoted, but admittedly in default of the
thorn; the old thorn-tree long employed for the purpose
having died out."^ Again, in Europe children born with
a caul are considered lucky ; ^ in Holland, as in the
East Indies, they can see ghosts.* The Icelanders also
hold that a child born with a caul will afterwards
possess the gift of second sight, that he will never be
harmed by sorcery, and will be victorious in every contest
he undertakes, provided he has the caul dried and carries
it with him.^ This latter belief explains why both in ancient
and modern times advocates have bought cauls with the hope
of winning their cases by means of them.*' Probably they
thought that the spirit in the caul would prove an invincible
ally to the person who had purchased its services. In like
manner the aborigines of Central Australia believe that their
sacred sticks or stones (churingd) are intimately associated
with the spirits of the dead men to whom they belonged,
and that in a fight a man who carries one of these sticks or
stones will certainly vanquish an adversary who has no such
talisman.'^ Further, it is an ancient belief in Iceland that Child's
the child's guardian spirit or a part of its soul has its seat s^f'^"
in the chorion or foetal membrane, which usually forms part associated
of the afterbirth, but is known as the caul when the child *horion'?
' A. Kuhn, Alarkische Sagen und ' M. Uartels, " Islandischer Brauch
Marchen (Berlin, 1S43), PP- 379 ■>'?• ""<' Volksglaube in Bezug auf die
^ J. C. Atkinson, in County Folk- Nachkommenscliaft," Zeitschrift fiir
lore, ii. (London, 1 90 1) p. 68. Etknologie, xxxii. (1900) pp. 70 sq.
' A. Wiittke, Der deiUsclie Volks- ^ Aelius Lanipridius, Antoninus
aberglatihe," % 305, p. 203; II. I'loss, Di'adzit/iemis, 4; J. Grimm, loc. cit.;
Das Kind,"^ i. \2 sqq. H. Floss, Das Kindj^ i. pp. 13,
♦ J. Grimm, Deutsclie Akythologie,'^ 14.
ii. 728, note i. As to the East Indian ' Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes
belief see above, pp. 187 sq. of Central Australia, p. 135.
200 SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap.
happens to be born with it. Hence the chorion was itself
known as the fylgia or guardian spirit. It might not be
thrown away under the open sky, lest demons should get
hold of it and work the child harm thereby, or lest wild
beasts should eat it up. It might not be burned, for if it
were burned the child would have no fylgia, which would
be as bad as to have no shadow. Formerly it was customary
to bury the chorion under the threshold, where the mother
stepped over it daily when she rose from bed. If the
chorion was thus treated, the man had in after life a guardian
spirit in the shape of a bear, an eagle, a wolf, an ox, or , a
boar. The guardian spirits of cunning men and wizards
had the shape of a fox, while those of beautiful women
appeared as swans. In all these forms the guardian spirits
formerly announced their coming and presented themselves
to the persons to whom they belonged ; but nowadays both
the belief and the custom have changed in many respects.^
Afterbirth Thus in many parts of the world the navel-string, or
shing'a' niore commonly the afterbirth, is regarded as a living being,
seat of thf; the brother or sister of the infant, or as the tnaterial object
souL in which the guardian spirit of the child or part of its soul
resides. This latter belief we have found among the
aborigines of Queensland, the Battas of Sumatra, and the
Norsemen of Iceland. In accordance with such beliefs it
has been customary to preserve these parts of the body, at
least for a time, with the utmost care, lest the character, the
fate, or even the life of the person to whom they belong
should be endangered by their injury or loss. Further,
the sympathetic connexion supposed to exist between a
person and his afterbirth or navel-string comes out very
clearly in the widespread custom of treating the afterbirth
or navel-string in ways which are supposed to influence for
life the character and career of the person, making him, if it
is a man, a swift runner, a nimble climber, a strong swimmer,
a skilful hunter, or a brave soldier, and making her, if it is
a woman, an expert fisher, a cunning sempstress, a good
cook or baker, and so forth. , Thus the beliefs and usages
• J. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,^ were only the caul which became a
ii. 728 sq., iii. 266 sq.; M. Bartels, fylgia- I follow Dr. Bartels.
op. cit. p. 70. Grimm speaks as if it
"' CONTAGIOUS MAGIC 201
concerned with the afterbirth or placenta, and to a less
extent with the navel-string, present a remarkable parallel
to the widespread doctrine of the transferable or external
soul and the customs founded on it. Hence it is hardly
rash to conjecture that the resemblance is no mere chance
coincidence, but that in the afterbirth or placenta we
have a physical basis (not necessarily the only one) for the
theory and practice of the external soul. The consideration
of that subject is reserved for a later part of this work.-^
A curious application of the doctrine of contagious magic Contagious
is the relation commonly believed to exist between a wounded ""^sic ^f
man and the agent of the wound, so that whatever is sub- in the
sequently done by or to the agent must correspondingly affect ^^^l^'
the patient either for good or evil. Thus Pliny tells us that if connexion
you have wounded a man and are sorry for it, you have only to'^^sT'^
to spit on the hand that gave the wound, and the pain of between
the sufferer will be instantly alleviated.^ In Melanesia, if a andX''
man's friends get possession of the arrow which wounded weapon
him, they keep it in a damp place or in cool leaves, forflictedu.
then the inflammation will be trifling and will soon subside.
Meantime the enemy who shot the arrow is hard at work to
aggravate the wound by all the means in his power. For this
purpose he and his friends drink hot and burning juices and
chew irritating leaves, for this will clearly inflame and
irritate the wound. Further, they keep the bow rlear the
fire to make the wound which it has inflicted hot ; and for
the same reason they put the arrow-head, if *it has been
recovered, into the fire. Moreover, they are careful to keep
the bow-string taut and to twang it occasionally, for this
will cause the wounded man to suffer from tension of the
nerves and spasms of tetanus.^ Similarly when a Kwakiutl
Indian of British Columbia had bitten a piece out of an
enemy's arm, he used to drink hot water afterwards for
the purpose of thereby inflaming the wound in his foe's
' Meantime I may refer to The external soul has already been indicated
Golden Bough, Second Edition, iii. \>y Mr. 'E.Cia.-vAty {The Mystic Rose,
3SO Sfg. For other superstitions con- London, 1902, p. 119).
ceming the afterbirth and navel-string 2 t,i-
see H. Ploss, T>as Kind,-^ i. 15 sqq., P'^^^' ^''*- ^"^- ='='""• 36.
ii. 198 sq. The connexion of these ^ R. H. Codrington, The Melan-
parts of the body with the idea of the esians (Oxford, 1891), p. 310.
202 SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap.
body.' Among the Lkungen Indians of the same region it is
a rule that an arrow, or any other weapon that has wounded
a man, must be hidden by his friends, who have to be
careful not to bring it near the fire till the wound is healed.
If a knife or an arrow which is still covered with a man's
blood were thrown into the fire, the wounded man would suffer
very much." In the Yerkla-mining tribe of south-eastern
Australia it is thought that if any one but the medicine-
man touches the flint knife with which a boy has been
subincised, the boy will thereby be made very ill. So
seriously is this belief held that if the lad chanced thereafter
to fall sick and die, the man who had touched the knife
Bacon on would be killed.^ " It is constantly received and avouched,"
S^a^St'"' ^^y^ Bacon, " that the anointing of the weapon that maketh
ingthe the wound will heal the wound itself. In this experiment,
ordCT'to'" upon the relation of men of credit (though myself, as yet,
heal the am not fully inclined to believe it), you shall note the points
following : first, the ointment wherewith this is done is
made of divers ingredients, whereof the strangest and
hardest to come by are the moss upon the skull of a dead
man unburied, and the fats of a boar and a bear killed in
the act of generation." The precious ointment compounded
out of these and other ingredients was applied, as the
philosopher explains, not to the wound but to the weapon,
and that even though the injured man was at a great
distance and knew nothing about it. The experiment, he
tells us, had been tried of wiping the ointment off the
weapon without the knowledge of the person hurt, with the
result that he was presently in a great rage of pain until
the weapon was anointed again. Moreover, " it is affirmed
that if you cannot get the weapon, yet if you put an
instrument of iron or wood resembling the weapon into
the wound, whereby it bleedeth, the anointing of that instru-
ment will serve and work the effect."* Remedies of the
1 Fr. Boas, '-The Social Orgaiiiza- •'' A. W. Howilt, Native Tribes of
tion and the Secret Societies of the South-East Australia, p. 667.
Kwakiutl Indians," Report of the U.S. * Francis Bacon, Natural History,
National Museum for I Sgj, p. 440. cent. x. § 99S. Compare J. Brand
' Fr. Boas, in Sixth Ki-port on the Popular Antiquities, iii. 305, quoting
North- Western Tribes of Canada, ^. 2<^ Werenfels. In Dryden's play The
(separate reprint from the Report of the Tempest (Act v. Scene i) Ariel directs
British .Association for iS<)0). Prospero to anoint the sword which
Ill CONTAGIOUS MAGIC 203
sort which Bacon deemed worthy of his attention are still
in vogue in the eastern counties of England. Thus in East
Suffolk if a man cuts himself with a bill-hook or a scythe practice of
he always takes care to keep the weapon bright, and oils anointing
it to prevent the wound from festering. If he runs a inst^Tof'
thorn or, as he calls it, a bush into his hand, he oils or the wound,
greases the extracted thorn. A man came to a doctor with
an inflamed hand, having run a thorn into it while he was
hedging. On being told that the hand was festering, he
remarked, " That didn't ought to, for I greased the bush
well arter I pulled it out." If a horse wounds its foot by
treading on a nail, a Suffolk groom will invariably preserve
the nail, clean it, and grease it every day, to prevent the
foot from festering. Arguing in the same way, a Suffolk
woman, whose sister had burnt her face with a flat-iron,
observed that " the face would never heal till the iron had
been put out of the way ; and even if it did heal, it would be
sure to break out again every time the iron was heated." * At
Norwich in June 1902 a woman named Matilda Henry
accidentally ran a nail into her foot. Without examining the
wound, or even removing her stocking, she daused her
daughter to grease the nail, saying that if this were done
no harm would come of the hurt. A few days afterwards
she died of lockjaw.^ Similarly Cambridgeshire labourers
think that if a horse has run a nail into its foot, it is necessary
to grease the nail with lard or oil and put it away in some
safe place, or the horse will not recover. A few years ago
a veterinary surgeon was sent for to attend a horse which
had ripped its side open on the hinge of a farm gatepost.
On arriving at the farm he found that nothing had been
done to the wounded horse, but that a man was busy trying
to pry the hinge out of the gatepost in order that it might
be greased and put away, which, in the opinion of the
Cambridge wiseacres, would conduce to the recovery of the
wounded Hippolito and to wrap it A like belief and practice occur in
up close from the air. See Dryden's Sussex (C. Latham, " West Sussex
Works, ed. Scott, vol. iii. p. 191 (first Superstitions," Folklore Record, i. 43
edition). sq.). See further E. S. Hartland, Ihe
1 VV. W. Groome, "Suffolk I.eech- Legend of Perseus, ii. 169-172.
craft," Folklore, vi. (1895) p. 126. '^ "Death from Lockjaw at Norwich,"
Compare County Folklore: Suffolk, The Peoples Weekly Journal for Nor-
edited by Lady E.G. Gurdon, pp.25 j^. /6tt, July 19, 1902, p. 8.
204 SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap.
Anointing animal.^ Similarly Essex rustics opine that, if a man has
thew^pon [jggjj stabbed with a knife, it is essential to his recovery that
the wound, the knife should be greased and laid across the bed on which
the sufferer is lying." So in Bavaria you are. directed to
anoint a linen rag with grease and tie it on the edge of the
axe that cut you, taking care to keep the sharp edge
upwards. As the grease on the axe dries, your wound heals.^
Similarly in the Harz mountains they say that if you cut
yourself, you ought to smear the knife or the scissors with
fat and put the instrument away in a dry place in the name
of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. As the
knife dries, the wound heals.* Other people, however,
in Germany say that you should stick the knife in some
damp place in the ground, and that your hurt will heal
as the knife rusts.* Others again, in Bavaria, recommend
you to smear the axe or whatever it is with blood and put
it under the eaves.®
Further The train of reasoning which thus commends itself to
ofthis'°"^ English and German rustics, in common with the savages
case of of Melanesia and America, is carried a step further by the
nmi^f' °"^ aborigines of Central Australia, who conceive that under
certain circumstances the near relations of a ws^unded man
must grease themselves, restrict their diet, and regulate
their behaviour in other ways in order to ensure his
recovery. Thus when a lad has been circumcised and the
wound is not yet healed, his mother may not eat opossum,
or a certain kind of lizard, or carpet snake, or any kind of
fat, for otherwise she would retard the healing of the boy's
wound. Every day she greases her digging-sticks and never
lets them out of her sight ; at night she sleeps with them
close to her head. No one is allowed to touch them. Every
day also she rubs her body all over with grease, as in some
way this is believed to help her son's recovery.' Another
1 F. N. Webb, in Folk-lore, xvi. Mythologie, i. p. 225, § 282.
(1905) p. 337. " Bavaria, Landes- und Volkskunde
2 C. Partridge, Cross River Natives des Konigreichs Bayern, iv. I, p. 223.
(London, 1905), p. 295. A further recommendation is to stroke
^ F. Panzer, Beitrag stir deutschen the wound or the instrument with a
Sfythologie, ii. 305, compare 277. twig of an ash-tree and then keep the
* H. Prohle, ffarzbilder (Leipsic, twig in a dark place.
1855), p. 82. ' Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribei
° J. W. Wolf, Beitrage zur deutschen of Central Australia, p. 250.
Ill CONTAGIOUS MAGIC 205
refinement of the same principle is due to the ingenuity of
the German peasant. It is said that when one of his pigs
or sheep breaks its leg, a farmer of Rhenish Bavaria or
Hesse will bind up the leg of a chair with bandages and
splints in due form. For some days thereafter no one may
sit on that chair, move it, or knock up against it ; for to do
so would pain the injured pig or sheep and hinder the cure.^
In this last case it is clear that we have passed wholly out
of the region of contagious magic and into the region of
homoeopathic or imitative magic ; the chair-leg, which is
treated instead of the beast's leg, in no sense belongs to the
animal, and the application of bandages to it is a mere
simulation of the treatment which a more rational surgery
would bestow on the real patient.
The sympathetic connexion supposed to exist between Sympa-
a man and the weapon which has wounded him is probably ''^^V'^ '^°°"
founded on the notion that the blood on the weapon con- between a
tinues to feel with the blood in his body. For a like reason *°"°<^<^ ^
•' person and
the Papuans of Tumleo, an island off German New Guinea, Ws spiu
are careful to throw into the sea the bloody bandages with '''°°'^
which their wounds have been dressed, for they fear that if
these rags fell into the hands of an enemy he might injure
them magically thereby. Once when a man with a wound
in his mouth, which bled constantly, came to the missionaries
to be treated, his faithful wife took great pains to collect all
the blood and cast it into the sea.^ Strained and unnatural a sympa-
as this idea may seem to us, it is perhaps less so than the ''^^'"^ .
'' ' a 1 connexion
belief that magic sympathy is maintained between a person is supposed
and his clothes, so that whatever is done to the clothes will^,^^'j,g
be felt by the man himself, even though he may be far away person and
at the time. That is why these same Papuans of Tumleo so that'an}'
search most anxiously for the smallest scrap which they '"i'^y ^^^'^
may have lost of their scanty garments,^ and why other dothL is
Papuans, travelling through the thick forest, will stop and f'^" ^y "^^
carefully scrape from a bough any clot of red pomade which
' F. Panzer, Beitrag zur deutschen der Insel Tumleo, Berlinhafen, Deutsch-
Mylhologie,i\. 2,02 ; 'W.K.oVDetllessische Neu- Guinea," Mittheilungen der An-
Volks- Sitten und Gebrduche im Lichte thropologischen Gesellsckafi in Wien,
derAeidniscAen Varzeii [Maihuig,lS88), xxxii. (1902) p. 287.
p. 87.
' M. J. Erdweg, " Die Bewohner ' M. J. Erdweg, /oc. cit.
2o6 SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap.
Contagious may have adhered to it from their greasy heads.' In the
d^L"*^ Wotjobaluk tribe of Victoria a wizard would sometimes
get hold of a man's opossum rug and tie it up with some
small spindle-shaped pieces of casuarina wood, on which
he had made certain marks, such as likenesses of his victim
and of a poisonous snake. This bundle he would then roast
slowly in the fire, and as he did so the man who had owned
the opossum rug would fall sick. Should the patient suspect
what was happening, he would send to the wizard and beg
him to let him have the rug back. . If the wizard consented,
" he would give the thing back, telling the sick man's friends
to put it in water, so as to wash the fire out." In such cases,
we are told, the sick man would feel cooled and would
most likely recover.^ In Tanna, one of the New Hebrides,
a man who had a grudge at another and desired his death
would try to get possession of a cloth Vhich had touched
the sweat of his enemy's body. If he succeeded, he rubbed
the cloth carefully over with the leaves and twigs of a
certain tree, rolled and bound cloth, twigs, and leaves into
a long sausage-shaped bundle, and burned it slowly in the
fire. As the bundle was consumed, the victim fell ill, and
when it was reduced to ashes, he died.^ In this last form
of enchantment, however, the magical sympathy may be
supposed to exist not so much between the man and the
cloth as between the man and the sweat which issued from
his body. But in other cases of the same sort it seems that
the garment by itself is enough to give the sorcerer a hold
upon his victim. The witch in Theocritus, while she
melted an image or lump of wax in order that her faithless
lover might melt with love of her, did not forget to throw
into the fire a shred of his cloak which he had dropped in
Prussian her house.* In Prussia they say that if you cannot catch
beating the a thief, the next best thing you can do is to get hold of
garments ^ garment which he may have shed in his flight ; for it
• B. Hagen, Unter den Papuans Islands of the New M€o'aAts" Journal
(Wiesbaden, 1899), p. 269. of the Anthropological Institute, xxiii.
3 A. W. Howitt, "On Australian (1894) p. 19.
'Siedicine Men," Journal 0/ the Anthro- ^ Theocritus, /if. ii. 53 jy. Similarly
pological Institute, xvi. (1887) pp. 28 the witch in Virgil (Eciog. viii. 92 sqq.)
sq. ; id.. Native Tribes of South-East buries under her threshold certain
Australia, pp. 363-365. personal relics (exuviae) which her
3 B. T. Somerville, "Notes on some lover had left behind.
Ill CONTAGIOUS MAGIC 207
you beat it soundly, the thief will fall sick. This belief is which a
firmly rooted in the popular mind. Some seventy or eighty ^"^oppe^^
years ago, in the neighbourhood of Berend, a man was
detected trying to steal honey, and fled, leaving his coat
behind him. When he heard that the enraged owner of
the honey was mauling his lost coat, he was so alarmed
that he took to his bed and died.^ But in Germany it is
not every stick that is good enough to beat an absent man
with. It should be a hazel rod cut before sunrise on Good
Friday. Some say it should be a one-year-old hazel-sapling,
and that you should cut it with three strokes, looking to
the east, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Ghost Others think the best time for cutting the rod is at
the new moon on a Tuesday morning before sunrise. Once
you have got this valuable instrument, you have only to
spread a garment on a mole-hill or on the threshold, and
to lay on with hearty goodwill, mentioning the name of
the person whom you desire to injure. Though he may
be miles off, he will feel every whack as if it descended on
his body.''
Again, magic may be wrought on a man sympathetic- Contagious
ally, not only through his clothes and severed parts ofbe^^jo^^'i
liimself, but also through the impressions left by his body on a man
in sand or earth. In particular, it is a world-wide super- *e°'j!fpres.
stition that by injuring footprints you injure the feet that sions left
made them. Thus the natives of south-eastern . Australia i^^^y'^j^
think that they can lame a man by placing sharp pieces of sand or
quartz, glass, bone, or charcoal in his footprints. Rheumatic ^cuJaVb
pains are often attributed by them to this cause. Seeing a through hL-
Tatungolung man very lame, Mr. Howitt asked him what
was the matter. He said, " Some fellow has put bottle in
my foot." He was suffering from rheumatism, but believed
that an enemy had found his foot-track and had buried in
it a piece of broken bottle, the magical influence of which
' Tettau und Temme, Volissagen sq. ; A. Kuhn, Sag-en, Gebrduche und
Ostpnussens, Lilt/iaiiens und West- MdrcJun ans West/ulen, ii. 1 92 ; id. ,
preitssens (Berlin, 1837), pp. 283 sq. Die Jlerabkunft des Fetters,'' pp. 200
For more evidence of the same sort see sq. ; W. Mannhardt, Die Gblterwelt
E. S. Hartland, Legend of Perseus, ii. der deutschen und nordischen Volker,
S6 sgq. i. 203 note. Compare Montanus, Die
' E. Meier, Deutsche Sagen, Silten deutsche Volksfcste, Volksbrduche und
und Gebrduehe aus Schwaben, pp. 245 dmtscher Volksg^laube, p. 117.
footprints.
208 SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap.
Contagious had entered his foot. On another occasion Mr. Howitt's
magic of party was followed by a number of strange natives who
looked with great interest at the footprints of the horses
and camels. A black fellow with Mr. Howitt was much
alarmed, and declared that the strangers were putting poison
in his footsteps.^ The Wyingurri, a tribe on the border of
western Australia, have a magical instrument made of resin
and rats' teeth which they call a sun, because it is supposed
to contain the solar heat. By placing it on a man's tracks
they think they can throw him into a violent fever, which
will soon burn him up.^ In the Unmatjera tribe of Central
Australia, when a boy has been circumcised he must hide
in the bush, and if>he should see a woman's tracks he must
be very careful to jump over them. For if his foot were to
touch them, the spirit of the louse which lives in the woman's
hair would go to him, and his head would be full of lice.^ In
New Britain it is thought that you can cause the sickness
or death of a man by pricking his footprints with the sting
of a sting-ray.* The Maoris imagine that they can work
grievous harm to an enemy by taking up earth from his
footprints, depositing it in a sacred place, and performing a
ceremony over it.^ In Savage Island a common form of
witchcraft was to take up the soil on which an enemy
had set his foot, and to carry it to a sacred place, where
it was solemnly cursed, in order that the man might
be afflicted with lameness.* The Galelareese think that
if anybody sticks something sharp into your footprints
while you are walking, you will be wounded in your
feet.'' In Japan, if a house has been robbed by night
1 Fison and Howitt, Kamilaroi and sqq. For more instances of the same
Kumai,-^. 250 ; A. W. Howitt, "On sort see E. S. Hartland, The Legend
Australian Medicine Men," Journal of Perseus, ii. (London, 1895) 78-83.
of the Anthropological Institute, xvi. ^ Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes
(1887) pp. 26 sq. ; id.. Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 541.
of SoiUh-East Australia, pp. 366 sq. ^ Id., Northern Tribes of Central
According to one account a cross Australia, pp. 340 sq.
should be made in the footprint with * R. Parkinson, Dreissig Jahre in
a piece of quartz, and round the foot- der Sitdsee (Stuttgart, 1907), p. 605.
print thus marked the bones of kan- ' Elsdon Best, " Spiritual Concepts
garoos should be stuck in the ground. of tlie Maori," Journal of the Poly-
See R. Broiigh Smyth, Aborigines of tiesian Society, ix. (iqoo) p. 196.
Victoria, i. 476 sq. These and many ^ Basil C. Thomson, Savage Island
of the following examples were cited (London, 1902), p. 97.
by me in Folklore, i. {1890) pp. 157 ^ M.J. van Baarda, " Fabelen, Ver-
"' ' CONTAGIOUS MAGIC 209
and the burglar's footprints are visible in the morning, Comagiou,
the householder will burn mugwort on them, hoping ™agic of
thereby to hurt the robber's feet so that he cannot run ^°°'^"°"'
far, and the police may easily overtake him.^ Among
the Karens of Burma some people are said to keep poison
fangs for the purpose of killing their enemies. These they
thrust into the footprints of the person whom they wish to
destroy, and soon he finds himself with a sore foot, as if a
dog had bitten it. The sore rapidly grows worse till death
follows.^ Peasants of northern India commonly attribute
all sorts of pains and sores to the machinations of a witch
or sorcerer who has meddled with their footprints.* For
example, with the Chero, a Dravidian race of labourers in
the hill country of Mirzapur, a favourite mode of harming an
enemy is to measure his footprints in the dust with a straw
and then mutter a spell over them ; that brings on wounds
and sores in his feet.* Such magical operations have been
familiar to the Hindoos from of old. In the Kausika Sutra,
a book of sorcery, it is directed that, while your foe is
walking southward, you should make cuts in his footprint
with the leaf of a certain tree or with the blade of an axe
(it is not quite clear which is to be used) ; then you must
tie dust from the footprint in the leaf of a certain tree
{Butea fivndosa) and throw it into a frying-pan ; if it crackles
in the pan, your enemy is undone.^ Another old Hindoo
charm was to obtain earth from the footprint of a beleaguered
king and scatter it in the wind.s The Herero of South
Africa take earth from the footprints of a lion and throw it
on the track of an enemy, with the wish, " May the lion kill
you." ' The Ovambo of the same region believe that they
can be bewitched by an enemy through the dust or sand
halen en Overleveringen der Calelar- minster, 1896), ii. 280.
eezen," Bijdragtn tot di Taal- Land- < Id., Tribes and Castes of the
en Volkenktinde van Nederlandsch- Ncrth-Westem Provinces and Oudh,
Indie, )dv. (1S95) P- 512- ii. 221.
» L. Heam, Glimpses of unfamiliar « M. Bloomfield, Hymns of the
/fl/a« (London, 1S94), ii. 604. Atharva-Veda, p. 295; W. Caland,
s F. Mason, "On Dwellings, Works Altindisches Zaubei-ritual, pp. 162 sq.
of Art, Laws, etc, of the Karens," 8 A. Hillebrandt, Vedische Opfer
Journal oj th^ Asiatic Society of Bengal, mid Zauber (^Xxsshm^, 1897), p. 173.
xxxvii. (iS68) part ii. p. 149. 7 Josaphat Hahn, " Die Ovaherero, "
W. Crooke, Popular Religion and Zeitschrtft der Gesellschaft fiir Erd-
Folhhn of Norlheryi India (West- hmiU zn Berlin, \\. (\Zt^) ^. e,0T,.
VOL. I p
2 lo 5 VMPA THE TIC MA GIC chap
of their footprints. Hence a man who has special reason
to dread the spite of a foe will carefully efface his foot-
prints with a branch as fast as he makes them.^ The
Ewe-speaking people of West Africa fancy they can drive
an enemy mad by throwing a magic powder on his foot-
prints.'* Among the Shuswap and Carrier Indians of
North-west America shamans used to bewitch a man by
taking earth from the spot on which he had stood and
placing it in their medicine-bags ; then their victim fell sick
or died.* In North Africa the magic of the footprints is
sometimes used for more amiable purposes. A woman who
wishes to attach her husband or lover to herself will take
earth from the print of his right foot, tie it up with some of
his hairs in a packet, and wear the packet next her skin.*
Contagious Similar practices prevail in various parts of Europe.
^!:°[5 Thus in Mecklenburg it is thought that if you drive a
in Europe, nail into a man's footprint he will fall lame ; some-
times it is required that the nail should be taken from a
coffin.^ A like mode of injuring an enemy is resorted to
in some parts of France.® It is said that there was an old
woman who used to frequent Stow in Suffolk, and she was
a witch. If, while she walked, any one went after her and
stuck a nail or a knife into her footprint in the dust, the
dame could not stir a step till it was withdrawn.' More
commonly, it would seem, in Germany earth from the foot-
print is tied up in a cloth and hung in the chimney smoke ;
as it dries up, so the man withers away or his foot shrivels
up.^ The same practice and the same belief are said to be
common in Matogrosso, a province of Brazil.^ A Bohemian
1 H. Schinz, De«tsch - Sudwest- d'autrefois en Saintonge et en Aunis
Afriia, pp. 313 sq. (Saintes, 1891), pp. 169 sq. ; C. de
^ A. B. Ellis, T/ie Ewe-speaking Mensignac, Recherches ethnograpkiques
Peoples of the Slave Coast, p. 94. sur la salive*et le crachat (Bordeaux,
3 J. teit, "The Shuswap" (Ley- 1892), p. 45 note.
den and New York, 1909) p. 613 ' County Folklore: Suffolk, edited
(^^emoh■ of the American Museum of by Lady E. C. Gurdon, p. 201.
Kaiural History, The Jesup North ^ Josaphat Hahn, loc. cit. ; K.
Pacific Expedition, vol. ii. part vii.). Bartsch, op. cit. ii. 330, 334, §§
•> E. Doutte, Magie et religion dans 1599, 161 1"'"', compare p. 332, §
FAfrijueJu Nord, -p. <,<). 1607; R. Andree, Ethnographische
' K. Bartsch, Sagen, Mdrchen und Parallelen und Vergleiche, Neue Folge
Gebrmiche aus Mekleiiburg, ii. 329 (Leipsic, 1889), pp. 8, 11.
-?■. §§ IS97< 1598, i6oi». ' K. von den Sleinen, Unter den
* J. I- M. Nogues, Les Mmirs NaturvolkernZentral-Brasiliens,xi.<iS^-
I" CONTAGIOUS MAGIC 211
variation of the charm is to put the earth from the footprint
in a pot with nails, needles, broken glass, and so forth, then set
the pot on the fire and let it boil till it bursts. After that the
man whose footprint has been boiled will have a lame leg for
the rest of his life.^ Among the Lithuanians the proceeding
is somewhat different. They dig up the earth from the
person's footprint and bury it, with various incantations, in
a graveyard. That causes the person to sicken and die.^
A similar practice is reported from Mecklenburg.^ The
Esthonians of the island of Oesel measure the footprint with
a stick and bury the stick, thereby undermining the health
of the man or woman whose foot made the mark.* Among
the South Slavs a girl will dig up the earth from the foot-
prints of the man she loves and put it in a flower-pot.
Then she plants in the pot a marigold, a flower that is
thought to be fadeless. And as its golden blossom grows
and blooms and never fades, so shall her sweetheart's love
grow and bloom, and never, never fade.^ Thus the love-
spell acts on the man through the earth he trod on. An old
Danish mode of concluding a treaty was based on the same
idea of the sympathetic connexion between a man and his
footprints : the covenanting parties sprinkled each other's
footprints with their own blood, thus giving a pledge of
fidelity.^ In ancient Greece superstitions of the same sort
seem to have been current, for it was thought that if a horse
stepped on the track of a wolf he was seized with numb-
ness ; '^ and a maxim ascribed to Pythagoras forbade people
to pierce a man's footprints with a nail or a knife.*
The same superstition is turned to account by hunters The con-
in many parts of the world for the purpose of running down ^f °^of
the game. Thus a German huntsman will stick a nail footprints
taken from a coffin into the fresh spoor of the quarry, burners 'foi
' J. V, Grohmann, Aberglauben und lungen der gelehrten Estnischm Gesell-
Gtbrduche aus Bbhmen vnd Mdhren, schaft zu Dorpai, vii. (1872) p. 79.
p. 200, § 1402. 6 1,-, t;_ Krauss, Sitte und Branch
2 Tettau and Temme, Die Volks- der Siidslaven, p. 165.
sagen Ostpreussens, Litthauens imd 6 3^x0 Grammaticus, Historia Da-
iV^slpreussens, p. 267 ; A. Bezzen- nica, i. p. 40, ed. P. E. Milller (pp. 28
berger, Litanische Forschungen (Got- sq., O. Elton's English translation),
tingen, 1882), p. 69. 7 Aeli.in, De natura animalium, i.
^ K. Bartsch, op. cit. ii, 330, § 36.
1599- ' Fragmenla Philosophorum Graeco-
* Holzniayer, "Osiliana," VerUand- mm, ed. F. G. A. MuUach, i. 510.
212 5 VMPA THE TIC MA GIC chap.
the pur- believing that this will hinder the animal from escaping.^
P°^°^ The aborigines of Victoria put hot embers in the tracks of
running c> r
down the the animals they were pursuing.^ Hottentot hunters throw
^^^^ into the air a handful of sand taken from the footprints of
the game, believing that this will bring the animal down/
Thompson Indians used to lay charms on the tracks of
wounded deer ; after that they deemed it superfluous to
pursue the animal any further that day, for being thus charmed
it could not travel far and would soon die.'* Similarly,
Ojebway Indians placed " medicine " on the track of the first
deer or bear they met with, supposing that this would soon
bring the animal into sight, even if it were two or three
days' journey off; for this charm had power to compress a
journey of several days into a few hours.* Ewe hunters
of West Africa stab the footprints of game with a sharp-
pointed stick in order to maim the quarry and allow
them to come up with it.^ If Esthonian peasants find
a wolfs dung on a beast's tracks, they burn it and
scatter the ashes to the wind. This gives the wolf a pain
in his stomach and makes him lose his way.'^ The Aino
think that hares bewitch people. Hence if one of them
sees the track of a hare in the snow near his hut, he
should carefully scoop it up \^ith a water-ladle and then
turn it upside down, saying as he does so that he buries the
soul of the hare under the snow, and expressing a wish that
tlie animal may sicken and die.^ In order to recover strayed
cattle, the Zulus take the animals' dung and earth from their
footprints and place both in the chief's vessel, round which
a magic circle is drawn. Then the chief says : " I have
now conquered them. Those cattle are now here ; I am
now sitting upon them. I do not know in what way they
will escape."*
1 A. Wuttke, Der deutsche Volks- way Indians, p. 154.
aberg'.jube^ p. 127, § 186. ' J. Spieth, Die Ewe-Stdmme (Ber-
^ J. Dawson, Australian Aborigines, lin, 1906), p. 389.
p. 54. ' Boecler-Kreutzwald, Der Ehsttn
^ Theophilus Hahn, Tsuni- Goam aberglduhische Gebrduche, Weisen und
(London, iSSi), pp. 84 sq, Gewohnheiien, pp. 121 sg.
* J. Teit, "The Thompson Indians * J. Batchelor, The Ainu and their
of British Columbia," p. 371 (The/esup Folklore (London, 1901), p. 516.
AorlA Padjic Expedition, vol. i. part » H. Callaway, The Religious
iv.). System of the Amazulu, part iii. pp.
' Peter Jones, History of the Ojeb- 345 sq.
I" CONTAGIOUS MAGIC
213
But though the footprint is the most obvious it is not Contagious
the only impression made by the body through which magic ^'rou'^ht
may be wrought on a man. The aborigines of south- through
eastern Australia believe that a man may be injured byjI^^sTr^
burying sharp fragments of quartz, glass, and so forth in o*er parts
the mark made by his reclining body ; the magical virtue of ^^y*
these sharp things enters his body and causes those acute
pains which the ignorant European puts down to rheuma-
tism.^ Sometimes they beat the place where the man sat
with a pointed stick of the he-oak {Casuarina hptocladd),
chanting an appropriate song at the same time ; the stick
will enter his person and kill him, provided the place
operated on is still warm with the heat of his body.^ At
Delena, in British New Guinea, a man will sometimes
revenge himself on a girl who has rejected his love by
thrusting the spine of a sting-ray into the spot where she
has been sitting ; afterwards he puts it in the sun for a day
or two and finally heats it over a fire. In a couple of days
the girl dies.^ The natives of Tumleo, an island ofif German
New Guinea, efface the marks they have left on the ground
where they sat, lest magic should be wrought on them
thereby.* Before they leave a camping-place some of the
natives of German New Guinea are careful to stab the
ground thoroughly with spears, in order to prevent a sorcerer
from making any use of a drop of sweat or any other
personal, remains which they may chance to leave behind.'
We can now understand why it was a maxim with the
Pythagoreans that in rising from bed you should smooth
away the impression left by your body on the bed-clothes.*
The rule was simply an old precaution against magic,
forming part of a whole code of superstitious maxims which
' A. W. Howitt, " On Australian thropologischen GeseUschaft in Wien,
Medicine Men," Journal of the An- xxxii. (1902) p. 287.
thropological Institute, xvi. (1887) pp. ^ K. Vetter, Komm herHber und
26 sq. ; id.. Native Tribes of South- hilf tins I oder die Arbeit der Neuen
East Australia, p. 366. Dettelsauer Mission, Heft iii. (Barmen,
» R. Brough Smyth, Aborigines of '^98) p. 10.
Victoria, i. 475. Jamblichus, Adhortatio ad philo-
3A <-TTjj T sophiam, 21 ; Plutarch, Quaest. con-
A. C. Haddon, Head-hunters ^^V. viii. 7 ; Clement of Alexandria,
(London, 1901), p. 202. strom. v. 5, p. 661, ed. Potter. Com-
' M. J. Erdweg, "Die Bewohner pare Diogenes Laertius, Vit. philos.
der Insel Tumleo, BerIinhafen,Deutsch- viii. i. 17; Suidas, s.v. " Pytha-
Neu- Guinea," Mitteilungen der an- goras."
214 SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap.
Contagious antiquity fathered on Pythagoras, though doubtless they
ImOThits. were familiar to the barbarous forefathers of the Greeks
long before the time of that philosopher.^ To ensure the
good behaviour of an ally with whom they have just had a
conference, the Basutos will cut and preserve the grass on
which the ally sat during the interview.^ Probably they
regard the grass as a hostage for the observance of the
treaty, since through it they could punish the man who sat
on the grass if he should break faith. Moors who write on
the sand are superstitiously careful to obliterate all the
marks they made, never leaving a stroke or a dot in the
sand when they have done writing.^ Another of the
so-called maxims of Pythagoras bade people in lifting a
pot always to smooth away the imprint it left on the ashes.*
So in Cambodia they say that when you lift a pot from the
fire you should not set it down on the ashes ; but that, if
j-ou must do so, you should be careful, in lifting the pot
from the ashes, to efface the impression it has made. Other-
wise they think that want will knock at your door.^ But
tliis seems to be an afterthought, devised to explain a rule
of which the original meaning was forgotten. The bid
notion probably was that a magician could sympathetically
injure any person who ate . out of a pot by means of the
impression which the pot had left on the ashes ; or, to be
more explicit, contagious magic was supposed to work
through the impression of the pot to the pot itself, through
the pot to the meat contained in it, and finally through the
meat to the eater.
I 4. The Magiciaris Progress
Public and We have now concluded our examination of the general
ma^c! principles of sympathetic magic. . The examples by which I
Thepubiic have illustrated them have been drawn for the most part
from what may be called private magic, that is from magical
' For detailed proof of this I may ■* Jamblichus, Plutarch, Clement of
refer to my article, " Some popular Alexandria, Diogenes Laertius, Suidas,
Superstitions of the Ancients," Folklore, II. cc.
i. (1S90) pp. 147 sqq. ' E. Aymonier, "Notes sur ies
- E. Casalis, The Basutos, p. 273. coutumes et croyances superstitieuses
' J. Richardson, Travels in the des Cambodgiens," Cochinchine Fran-
Great Dtsert 0/ Sahara (l^onion, iS^S), (aise : excursions ei reconnaissances,
ii. 65. No. 16 (Saigon, 1883), p. 163.
11) THE MAGICIAN'S PROGRESS 215
rites and incantations practised for the benefit or the injury who prac-
of individuals. But in savage society there is commonly to "^''^'^'\
■' art for the
be found in addition what we may call public magic, that is, good of the
sorcery practised for the benefit of the whole community, wholecom-
J ^ J munity,
Wherever ceremonies of this sort are observed for the common enjoys
good, it is obvious that the magician ceases to be merely fu^'ce^and
a private practitioner and becomes to some extent a public may rise
functionary. The development of such a class of function- ^^j^f ^^
aries is of great importance for the political as well as the king,
religious evolution of society. For when the welfare of the
tribe is supposed to depend on the performance of these
magical rites, the magician rises into a position of much
influence and repute, and may readily acquire the rank and
authority of a chief or king. The profession accordingly
draws into its ranks some of the ablest and most ambitious
men of the tribe, because it holds out to them a prospect of
honour, wealth, and power such as hardly any other career
could offer. The acuter minds perceive how easy it is to
dupe their weaker brother and to play on his superstition for
their own advantage. » Not that the sorcerer is always a
knave and impostor ;^he is often sincerely convinced that he
really possesses those wonderful powers which the credulity
of his fellows ascribes to him. But the more sagacious he
is, the more likely he is to see through the fallacies which
impose on duller wits. Thus the ablest members of the
profession must tend to be more or less conscious deceivers ;
and it is just these men who in virtue of their superior ability
will generally come to the top and win for themselves
positions of the highest dignity and the most commanding
authority. The pitfalls which beset the path of the pro-
fessional sorcerer are many, and as a rule only the man of
coolest head and sharpest wit will he able to steer his way
through them safely. For it must always be remembered
that every single profession and claim put forward by the
magician as such is false ; not one of them can be maintained
without deception, conscious or unconscious. Accordingly
the sorcerer who sincerely believes in his own extravagant
pretensions is in far greater peril and is much more likely to
be cut short in his career than the deliberate impostor. The
honest wizard always expects that his charms and incanta-
2i6 SYMPATHETIC MAGIC chap.
tions will produce their supposed effect ; and when they fail,
not only really, as they always do, but conspicuously and
disastrously, as they often do, he is taken aback : he is not,
like his knavish colleague, ready with a plausible excuse
to account for the failure, and before he can find one he may
be knocked on the head by his disappointed and angry
employers.
Tendency The general result is that at this stage of social
^\^To'* evolution the supreme power tends to fall into the hands of
fall into men of the keenest intelligence and the most unscrupulous
of^the^ character. If we could balance the harm they do by their
ablest and knavery against the benefits they confer by their superior
scrupulous sagacity, it might well be found that the good greatly out-
men, weighed the evil. For more mischief has probably been
wrought in the world by honest fools in high places than by
intelligent rascals. Once your shrewd rogue has attained
the height of his ambition, and has no longer any selfish
end to further, he may, and often does, turn his talents, his
experience, his resources, to the service of the public. Many
men who have been least scrupulous in the acquisition of
power have been most beneficent in the use of it, whether
the power they aimSd at and won was that of wealth, political
authority, or wha* not. In the field of politics the wily
intriguer, the ruthless victor, may end by being a wise and
magnanimous ruler, blessed in his lifetime, lamented at his
death, admired- and applauded by posterity. Such men, to
take two of the most conspicuous instances, were Julius
Caesar and Augustus. But once a fool always a fool, and
the greater the power in his hands the more disastrous is
likely to be the use he makes of it. The heaviest calamity
in English history, the breach with America, might never
have occurred if George the Third had not been an honest
dullard.
The eieva- Thus, SO far as the public profession of magic affected
!l!!!l;oL„= the constitution of savage society, it tended to place the
magicians o ./ ? jr
to power control of affairs in the hands of the ablest man : it shifted
sSistitute a '^'^ balance of power from the many to the one : it substi-
monarchy tuted a monarchy for a democracy, or rather for an oligarchy
primitive o^ old men ; for in general the savage community is ruled,
democracy, npt by the whole body of adult males, but by a council of
in THE MAGICIAN'S PROGRESS 217
elders. The change, by whatever causes produced, and or rather
whatever the character of the early rulers, was on the whole °''^fi*^'^''
■' ' of old men.
very beneficial. For the rise of monarchy appears to be an which is
essential condition of the emergence of mankind from savagery, ifjl^'^o'f'^'^'
No human being is so hidebound by custom and tradition savage
as your democratic savage ; in no state of society conse- anTthe
quently is progress so slow and difficult. The old notion "se of
that the savage is the freest of mankind is the reverse of the ^emTto^
truth. He is a slave, not indeed to a visible master, but to''«''°.
the past, to the spirits of his dead forefathers, who haunt his condition
steps from birth to death, and rule him with a rod of iron. °^ "'^
ciTicrcrcDcc
What they did is the pattern of right, the unwritten law to of mankind
which he yields a blind unquestioning obedience. The least*™™
■' , ^ ° savagery.
possible scope is thus afforded to superior talent to change
old customs for the better. The ablest man is dragged
down by the weakest and dullest, who necessarily sets the
standard, since he cannot rise, while the other can fall. The
surface of such a society presents a uniform dead level, so
far as it is humanly possible to reduce the natural inequali-
ties, the immeasurable real differences of inborn capacity and
temper, to a false superficial appearance of equality. From
this low and stagnant condition of affairs, which demagogues '
and dreamers,in later times have lauded as the ideal state,
the Golden Age, of humanity, everything that helps to raise
society by opening a career to talent and proportioning the
degrees of authority to men's natural abilities, deserves to
be welcomed by all who have the real good of their fellows
at heart. Once these elevating influences have begun to
operate — and they cannot be for ever suppressed — the pro-
gress of civilisation becomes comparatively rapid. The rise
of one man to supreme power enables him to carry through
changes in a single lifetime which previously many genera-
tions might not have sufficed to effect ; and if, as will often
happen, he is a man of intellect and energy above the
common, he will readily avail himself of the opportunity.
Even the whims and caprices of a tyrant may be of service
in breaking the chain of custom which lies so heavy on the
savage. And as soon as the tribe ceases to be swayed by
tlie timid and divided counsels of the elders, and yields to
the direction of a single strong and resolute mind, it
2l8
S YMPA THE TIC MA GIC
Intellectual
progress
dependent
on
economic
progress,
which is
often
furthered
by con-
quest and
empire.
Benefits
rendered to
civilisation
by magic.
becomes formidable to its neighbours and enters on a career
of aggrandisement, which at an early stage of history is often
highly favourable to social, industrial, and intellectual pro-
gress. For extending its sway, partly by force of arms,
partly by the voluntary submission of weaker tribes, the
community soon acquires wealth and slaves, both of which,
by relieving some classes from the perpetual struggle for a
bare subsistence, afford them an opportunity of devoting
themselves to that disinterested pursuit of knowledge which
is the noblest and most powerful instrument to ameliorate
the lot of man.
Intellectual progress, which reveals itself in the growth
of art and science and the spread of more liberal views,
cannot be dissociated from industrial or economic progress,
and that in its turn receives an immense impulse from conquest
and empire. It is no mere accident that the most vehement
outbursts of activity of the human mind have followed close
on the heels of victory, and that the great conquering races
of the world have commonly done most to advance and
spread civilisation, thus healing in peace the wounds they
inflicted in war. The Babylonians, the Greeks, the Romans,
the Arabs are our witnesses in the past : we may yet live to
see a similar outburst m Japan. Nor, to remount the stream
of history to its sources, is it an accident that all the first
great strides towards civilisation have been made under
despotic and theocratic governments, like those of Egypt,
Babylon, and Peru, where the supreme ruler claimed
and received the servile allegiance of his subjects in the
double character of a king and a god. It is hardly too
much to say that at this early epoch despotism is the best
friend of humanity and, paradoxical as it may sound, of
liberty. For after all there is more liberty in the best sense
— liberty to think our own thoughts and to fashion our
own destinies — under the most absolute despotism, the most
grinding tyranny, than under the apparent freedom of savage
life, where the individual's lot is cast from the cradle to the
grave in the iron mould of hereditary custom.
So far, therefore, as the public profession of magic has
been one of the roads by which the ablest men have passed
to supreme power, it has contributed to emancipate mankind
HI THE MAGICIAN'S PROGRESS 219
from the thraldom of tradition and to elevate them into a
larger, freer life, with a broader outlook on the world. This
is no small service rendered to humanity. And when we
remember further that in another direction magic has paved
the way for science, we are forced to admit that if the black
art has done much evil, it has also been the source of much
good ; that if it is the child of error, it has yet been the
mother of freedom and truth.
CHAPTER IV
MAGIC AND RELIGION
Magic like THE examples collected in the last chapter may suffice to
TO^ttjItes illustrate the general principles of sympathetic magic in
the order its two branches, to which we have given the names of
formi^'of Homoeopathic and Contagious respectively. In some cases
nature: of magic which have come before us we have seen that the
aftta^tion operation of spirits is assumed, and that an attempt is
both of made to win their favour by prayer and sacrifice. But.
magic and , i . i . ,
of science, these cascs are on the whole exceptional ; they exhibit
which open magic tinged and alloyed with religion.^ Wherever sym-
boundiess pathetic magic occurs in its pure unadulterated form, it
SSL who ^^^""^^^ that in nature one event follows another necessarily
can pene- and invariably without the intervention of any spiritual
^^^tothcQj. personal agency. Thus its fundamental conception
springs of is identical With that of modern science ; underlying the
"^""^ whole systeiyi is a faith, implicit but real and firm, in the
order and Uniformity of nature. The magician does not
doubt that the same causes will always produce the same
effects, that the performance of the proper ceremony,
accompanied by the appropriate spell, will inevitably be
attended by the desired results, unless, indeed, his in-
cantations should chance to be thwarted and foiled by the
more potent charms of another sorcerer. He supplicates no
higher power : he sues the favour of no fickle and wayward
' Malay magic in particular is deeply 1906), pp. 67 sqq. Here, therefore,
tinctured with a belief in spirits, to religion is encroaching on magic, as
whom the magician appeals by kindly it might naturally be expected to do
words and small gifts of food, drink, in a race so comparatively advanced as
and even money. . See R. J. Wilkinson, the Malays.
Malay Beliefs (London and Leyden,
CHAP. IV MAGIC AND RELIGION 221
being : he abases himself before no awful' deity. Yet his
power, great as he believes it to be, is by no means arbitrary
and unlimited. He can wield it only so long as he strictly
conforms to the rules of his art, or to what may be called the
laws of nature as conceived by him. To neglect these rules,
to break these laws in the smallest particular is to incur
failure, and may even expose the unskilful practitioner
himself to the utmost peril. If he claims a sovereignty over
nature, it is a constitutional sovereignty rigorously limited in
its scope and exercised in exact conformity with ancient
usage. Thus the analogy between the magical and the
scientific conceptions of the world is close. In both of them
the succession of events is perfectly regular and certain, being
determined by immutable laws, the operation of which can
be foreseen and calculated precisely ; the elements of caprice,
of chance, and of accident are banished from the course of
nature. Bpth of them open up a seemingly boundless vista
of possibilities to him who knows the causes of things and
can touch the secret springs that set in motion the vast and
intricate mechanism of the world. Hence the strong attrac-
tion which magic and science alike have exercised on the
human mind ; hence the powerful stimulus that both have
given to the pursuit of knowledge. They lure the weary
enquirer, the footsore seeker, on through the wilderness of
disappointment in the present by their endless promises of
the future : they take him up to the top of an exceeding
high \nountain and shew him, beyond the dark clouds and
rolling mists at his feet, a vision of the celestial city, far off,
it may be, but radiant with unearthly splendour, bathed in
the light of dreams.
The fatal flaw of magic lies not in its general assumption The fatal
of a sequence of events determined by law, but in its total "^^.^f .
' magic lies
misconception of the nature of the particular laws which not in its
govern that sequence. If we analyse the various cases ^"u^^'tj^i,
of sympathetic magic which have been passed in review of the uni-
in the preceding pages, and which may be taken as ^^^"^ na^rl hv.x
samples of the bulk, we shall find, as I have already in- '" 'ts mis-
dicated, that they are all mistaken applications of one Xn'^of^thc
or other of two great fundamental laws of thought, namely, particular
I3.WS wbich
the association of ideas by similarity and the associa- govern the-
222 MAGIC AND RELIGION chap.
sequence tion of idcas by contiguity in space or time. A mistaken
evems""^ association of similar ideas produces homoeopathic or
imitative magic : a mistaken association of contiguous ideas
produces contagious magic. The principles of association
are excellent in themselves, and indeed absolutely essential
to the working of the human mind. Legitimately applied
they yield science ; illegitimately applied they yield magic,
the bastard sister of science. It is therefore a truism,
almost a tautology, to say that all magic is necessarily
false and barren ; for were it ever to become true and
fruitful, it would no longer be magic but science. From
the earliest times man has been engaged in a search for
general rules whereby to turn the order of natural pheno-
mena to his own advantage, and in the long search he has
scraped together a great hoard of such maxims, some of
them golden and some of them mere dross. The true
or golden rules constitute the body of applied science
which we call the arts ; the false are magic.
Relation If magic is thus next of kin to science, we have still to
wreSon ^"quire how it stands related to religion. But the view we
take of that relation will necessarily be coloured by the idea
which we have formed of the nature of religion itself ; hence
a writer may reasonably be expected to define his conception
of religion before he proceeds to investigate its relation to
magic. There is probably no subject in the world about
which opinions differ so much as the nature of religion, and
to frame a definiti6n of it which would satisfy every one must
Religion obviously be impossible. All that a writer can do is, first,
it^Tjjro- *° ^^y clearly what he means by religion, and afterwards
pitiation or to employ the word consistently in that sense throughout
roncu^a- j^j^ work. By religion, then, I understand a propitiation
snper- or conciliation of powers superior to man which are believed
powers to direct and control the course of nature and of human life.^
which are Thus defined, religion consists of two elements, a theoretical
bel:eTea to _ ... , , . - .
control and a practical, namely, a belief in powers higher than man
nature and ^^id an attempt to propitiate or please them. Of the two,
Thusreii- belief clearly comes first, since we must believe in the
gioncom- existence of a divine being before we can attempt to please
' " Religio est, quae supcn'oris ctijus- curam caerimoniamque adfert," Cicero,
dam naturae, giiam divinam vacant, De iiwentione, ii. l6l.
«v MAGIC AND RELIGION 223
him. But unless the behef leads to a corresponding practice, prises two
it is not a religion but merely a theology ; in the language ^'«='"«"'^' ^
of St. James, " faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being and a
alone." -^ In other words, no man is religious who does not orfai'ttT''
govern his conduct in some measure by the fear or love and works,
of God.2 On the other hand, mere practice, divested of all nm Jxisr'
religious belief, is also not religion. Two men may behave without
in exactly the same way, and yet one of them may be retgious "'
religious and the other not. If the one acts from the love or praci^e
fear of God, he is religious ; if the other acts from the love consis""!!!
or fear of man, he is moral or immoral according as his "'"'*' '• ''
behaviour comports or conflicts with the general good, sist in
Hence belief and practice or, in theological language, faith ^o'^^d'^c
and works are equally essential to religion, which cannot that is
exist without both of them. But it is not necessary that ^'^^_ '°
religious practice should always take the form of a ritual ; pleasing to
that is, it need not consist in the offering of sacrifice, the ""^ "^^"^^
recitation of prayers, and other outward ceremonies. Its
aim is to please the deity, and if the deity is one who
delights in charity and mercy and purity more than in
oblations of blood, the chanting of hymns, and the fumes of
incense, his worshippers will best please him, not by prostrat-
ing themselves before him, by intoning his praises, and by
filling his temples with costly gifts, but by being pure and
merciful and charitable towards men, for in so doing they
will imitate, so far as human infirmity allows, the perfections
of the divine nature. It was this ethical side of religion
which the Hebrew prophets, inspired with a noble ideal of
God's goodness and holiness, were never weary of inculcating.
Thus Micah says : * " He hath shewed thee, O man, what is
good ; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do
justly, and to love in^rcy, and to walk humbly with thy
God ? " And at a later time much of the force by which
' James ii. 17. obey certain magistrates, and to adopt
' " Piety is not a religion, thougli it certain ways of living and acting.
is the soul of all religions. A man has Religion is neither a theology nor a
not a religion simply by having pious theosophy ; it is more than all this ; it
inclinations, any more than he has a is a discipline, a law, a yoke, an indis-
country simply by having i>hiIantliropy. soluble engagemont"(Joubert,quotedby
.■V man has not a country until he is a Matthew Arnold, Essays in Criticism,
citizen in a state, until he undertakes First Series, London, l8g8, p. 288).
lo follow and uphold certain laws, to ^ Micah vi. 8.
224 MAGIC AND RELIGION chap.
Christianity conquered the world was drawn from the same
high conception of God's moral nature and the duty laid on
men of conforming themselves to it. " Pure religion and
undefiled," says St. James, " before God and the Father is
this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and
to keep himself unspotted from the world." ^
Etyassum- But if religion involves, first, a belief in superhuman
OTde?of beings who rule the world, and, second, an attempt to win
nature to their favour, it clearly assumes that the course of nature
or vSbie is to some extent elastic or variable, and that we can
religion is persuade or induce the mighty beings who control it to
pri^pie'" deflect, for our benefit, the current of events from the
^"teto channel in which they would otherwise flow. Now this
magic and . , • j , . .
to science, implied elasticity or variability of nature is directly
^h^°f opposed to the principles of magic as well as of science,
assume the both of which assume that the processes of nature are rigid
nitSefobe ^"'^ invariable in their operation, and that they can as little
rigid and be turned from their course by persuasion and entreaty as
.uTanabie. j^^ threats and intimidation. The distinction between the
two conflicting views of the universe turns on their answer to
the crucial question. Are the forces which govern the worid
conscious and personal, or unconscious and impersonal?
Religion, as a conciliation of the superhuman powers, assumes
the former member of the alternative. For all conciliation
implies that the being conciliated is a conscious or personal
agent, that his conduct is in some measure uncertain, and that
he can be prevailed upon to vary it in the desired direc-
tion by a judicious appeal to his interests, his appetites,
or his emotions. Conciliation is never employed towards
things which are regarded as inanimate, nor towards persons
whose behaviour in the particular circumstances is known to be
determined with absolute certainty. Thus in so far as religion
assumes the world to be directed by conscious agents who may
be turned from their purpose by persuasion, it stands in funda-
mental antagonism to magic as well as to science, both of which
take for granted that the course of nature is determined,
not by the passions or caprice of personal beings, but by
the operation of immutable laws acting mechanically.^ In
' James i. 27. tween magic and religion is well
' The opposition of principle be- brought out by Sir A. C. Lyall in his
'V MAGIC AND RELIGION 225
magic, indeed, the assumption is only implicit, but in
science it is explicit. It is true that magic often deals
with spirits, which are personal agents of the kind assumed
by religion ; but whenever it does so in its proper form,
\t treats them exactly in the same fashion as it treats
inanimate agents, that is, it constrains or coerces instead
of conciliating or propitiating them as religion would
do. Thus it assumes that all personal beings, whether
human or divine, are in the last resort subject to those
impersonal forces which control all things, but which
nevertheless can be turned to account by any one who knows
how to manipulate them by the appropriate ceremonies and
spells. In ancient Egypt, for example, the magicians claimed ciaim of
the power of compelling even the highest gods to do their Egyptian
bidding, and actually threatened them with destruction in case ma^dans"
of disobedience.' Sometimes, without going quite so far as *° control
that, the wizard declared that he would scatter the bones of ' * ^° ''
Osiris or reveal liis sacred legend, if the god proved con-
tumacious.- Similarly in India at the present day the
great Hindoo trinity itself of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva is
subject to the sorcerers, who, by means of their spells, exercise
such an ascendency over the mightiest deities, that these
are bound submissively to execute on earth below, or in heaven
above, whatever commands their masters the magicians may
please to issue.* There is a saying everywhere current in
Asiatic Studiis, First Series (London, edition I was unaware that the view
1S99), i. 99 sqq. It is also insisted here taken has the support of his high
on by Mr. F. B, Jevons in his Intro- authority. When I wrote this book
auili^n to the History of /Religion originally I failed to realise the extent
(t.ondon, 1S96). The distinction is of the opposition between magic and
dearly apprehended and sharply main- religion, because I had not formed a
tained by Professor H. Oldenberg in clear general conception of the nature
his notable book Z)Mi?^/4'?(j» flSsf Veda of religion, and was disposed to class
(Berlin, 1S94) i see especially pp. 58 magic loosely under it.
^?-. 311 ^^?-> 476 W. Lord Avebury , . ,,,. , ,, . ,, ,. .
has courteously pointed out to me that ' > '' Tm""' f^" -^t^"". ''"'
the fundamental difference between """' ^^^'"' (funster .. W., 1890),
magic and reUgion was dwelt on by PP.' "^='-'.45. '48; G. Maspero, His-
himmanv years ago. See his Origin '"'^^ ."»"""" des peuples dc F Orient
of Cvifisation (London, 1S70), pp. '^""^e : ks or,gtnes (Pans, 189S),
116, 164 sq., and the Preface to PP- ^12 i?-
the sixth edition of that work ^ Augustine, /Jecmto/'* i?««, x. U,
(London, 1902), p. vi. I am glad to quoting Porphyry,
find mv-self in agreement with Lord •■' J. A. Dubois, Moeurs, institutions
Avebury on this subject, and only ,',t cirimoniesJes peuples deFIn(U(X'&xvi,
r^el that in preparing my second 1825), ii. 60 j-j/y.
VOL. I Q
226 MAGIC AND RELIGION chaf.
India : " The whole universe is subject to the gods ; the gods
are subject to the spells {mantras); the spells to the Brahmans;
therefore the Brahmans are our gods." ^
hostility of This radical conflict of principle between magic and
maSc'Ja" religion sufficiently explains the relentless hostility with
history. which in history the priest has often pursued the magician.
The haughty self-sufficiency of the magician, his arrogant
demeanour towards the higher powers, and his unabashed
claim to exercise a sway like theirs could not but revolt the
priest, to whom, with his awful sense of the divine majesty,
and his humble prostration in presence of it, such claims and
such a demeanour must have appeared, an impious and
blasphemous usurpation of prerogatives that belong to God
alone. And sometimes, we may suspect, lower motives con-
curred to whet the edge of the priest's hostility. He pro-
fessed to be the proper medium, the true intercessor between
God and man, and no doubt his interests as well as his feel-
ings were often injured by a rival practitioner, who preached
a surer and smoother road to fortune than the rugged and
slippery path of divine favour.
This Yet this antagonism, familiar as it is to us, seems to
oompara- ^^"^^ made its appearance comparatively late in the history
tiveiT late : of religion. At an earlier stage ^ the functions of priest and
^'Sr time sorccrer were often combined or, to speak perhaps more
magic CO- correctly, were not yet differentiated from each other. To
aidwa^' serve his purpose man wooed the good-will of gods or
partir con- spirits by prayer and sacrifice, while at the same time he
fused, w-.th
reiisTon. had recourse to ceremonies and forms of words which he
hoped would of themselves bring about the desired result
without the help of god or devil. In short, he performed
religious and magical rites simultaneously; he uttered prayers
and incantations almost in the same breath, knowing or
1 HomeiViiWiaxas, Religious Thought my view, the evolution of thought on
and Life in India (London, 1883), this subject has passed through three
pp. 201 sq. stages : first, a stage in which magic
- To prevent misconception I would existed without religion ; second, a
ask the reader to observe that the stage in which religion, having arisen,
earlier stage here spoken of, in vi^Iuch co-operated, and was to some extent
magic is confused with religion, is confused, with magic; and third, a
not, in my opinion, the earliest of stage in which, the radical difference of
all, having been preceded by a still principle between the two having been
earlier stage in which magic existed recognised, their relation was that of
alone. See below, pp. 233 sqg. On open hostility.
IV MAGIC AND RELIGION 227
recking little of the theoretical inconsistency of his behaviour,
so long as by hook or crook he contrived to get what he
wanted. Instances of this fusion or confusion of magic with Confusion
religion have already met us in the practices of Melanesians "n^'*^"^
and of other peoples.^ So far as the Melanesians are religion in
concerned, the general confusion cannot be better described '^*''=*°«='^
than in the words of Dr. R. H. Codrington : — " That
invisible power which is believed by the natives to cause all
such effects as transcend their conception of the regular
course of nature, and to reside in spiritual beings, whether in
the spiritual part of living men or in the ghosts of the dead,
being imparted by them to their names and to various things
that belong to them, such as stones, snakes, and indeed
objects of all sorts, is that generally known as mana. With-
out some understanding of this it is impossible to understand
the religious beliefs and practices of the Melanesians ; and
this again is the active force in all they do and believe to
be done in magic, white or black. By means of this men
are able to control or direct the forces of nature, to make rain
or sunshine, wind or calm, to cause sickness or remove it, to
know what is far off in time and space, to bring good luck
and prosperity, or to blast and curse." " By whatever name
it is called, it is the belief in this supernatural power, and
in the efficacy of the various means by which spirits and
ghosts can be induced to exercise it for the benefit of men,
that is the foundation of the rites and practices which can be
called religious ; and it is from the same belief that everything
which may be called Magic and Witchcraft draws its origin. '
Wizards, doctors, weather - mongers, prophets, diviners,
dreamers, all alike, everywhere in the islands, work by this
power. There are many of these who may be said to exercise
their art as a profession ; they get their property and in-
fluence in tliis way. Every considerable village or settle-
ment is sure to have some one who can control the weather
and the waves, some one who knows how to treat sickness,
some one who can work mischief with various charms. There
may be one whose skill extends to all these branches ; but
generally one man knows how to do one thing and one
another. This various knowledge is handed down from father
' See above, pp. 72, 77 sq., 130, 163 sq.
228
MAGIC AND RELIGION
Confusion
of magic
and
religion in
ancient
India.
to son, from uncle to sister's son, in the same way as is the
knowledge of the rites and methods of sacrifice and prayer ;
and very often the same man who knows the sacrifice knows
also the making of the weather; and of charms for many
purposes besides. But as tUere is no order of priests, there
is also no order of magicians or medicine-men. Almost
every man of consideration knows how to approach some
ghost or spirit, and has some secret of occult practices."
The same confusion of magic and religion has survived
among peoples that have risen to higher levels of culture.
It was rife in ancient India and ancient Egypt ; it is by no
means extinct among European peasantry at the present
day. With regard to ancient India we are told by an
eminent Sanscrit scholar that "the sacrificial ritual at the
earliest period of which we have detailed information is
pervaded with practices that breathe the spirit of the most
primitive magic." ^ Again, the same writer observes that
"the ritual of the very sacrifices for which the metrical
prayers were composed is described in the other Vedic texts
as saturated from beginning to end with magical practices
which were to be carried out by the sacrificial priests." In
particular he tells us that the rites celebrated on special
occasions, such as marriage, initiation, and the anointment
of a king, " are complete models of magic of every kind, and
in every case the forms of magic employed bear the stamp
of the highest antiquity."^ Speaking of the sacrifices
prescribed in the Brahmanas, Professor Sylvain L^vi says :
" The sacrifice has thus all the characteristics of a magical
operation, independent of the divinities, effective by its own
energy, and capable of producing evil as well as good. It
is hardly distinguished from magic strictly so called, except
by being regular and obligatory ; it can easily be adapted
1 R. H. Codrington,7"^i5 Mdanesians,
pp. 191 sq. The word mana is Poly-
nesian as well as Melanesian. In
the Maori language it means "author-
ity," especially "supernatural power,"
"divine authority," "having qualities
which ordinary persons or things do
not possess." See E. Tregear, Maori-
Polymsian Comparative Dictionary
(Wellington, N.Z., 1891), p. 203.
Compare R. Taylor, Te Ika A Maui,
or New Zealand and its Inhabitants,^
p. 184, "the mana, virtue of the
god."
2 H. Oldenberg, Die Religion des
Veda, p. 59.
3 H. Oldenberg, op. cit. p. 477-
For particular examples of the blend-
ing of magical with religious ritual in
ancient India see pp. 31 1 sqq., 369 sq.,
476 sqq., 522 sq. of the same work.
IV MAGIC AND RELIGION 229
to different objects, but it exists of necessity, independently
of circumstances. That is the sole fairly clear line of
distinction which can be drawn between the two domains ;
in point of fact they are so intimately interfused with each
other that the same class of works treats of both matters.
The Sdmavidhdna Brdhmana is a real handbook of incanta-
tions and sorcery ; the Adbhuta Brdhmana, which forms a
section of the ^adviint^a Brdhmana, has the same character." *
Similarly Professor M. Bloomfield writes : " Even witchcraft
is part of the religion ; it has penetrated and has become
intimately blended with the holiest Vedic rites ; the broad
current of popular religion and superstition has infiltrated
itself through numberless channels into the higher religion
that is presented by the Brahman priests, and it may be
presumed that the priests were neither able to cleanse their
own religious beliefs from the mass of folk-belief with which
it was surrounded, nor is it at all likely that they found it
in their interest to do so." ^ Again, in the introduction to
his translation of the Kausika Sutra, Dr. W. Caland
observes : " He who has been wont to regard the ancient
Hindoos as a highly civilised people, famed for their
philosophical systems, their dramatic poetry, their epic lays,
will be surprised when he makes the acquaintance of their
magical ritual, and will perceive that hitherto he has known
the old Hindoo people from one side only. He will find
that he here stumbles on the lowest strata of Vedic culture,
and will be astonished at the agreement between the magic
ritual of the old Vedas and the shamanism of the so-called
savage. If we drop the peculiar Hindoo expressions and
technical terms, and imagine a shaman instead of a Brahman,
we could almost fancy that we have before us a magical
book belonging to one of the tribes of North American red-
skins."' Some good authorities hold that the very name of
Brahman is derived from brahman, " a magical spell " ; so
that, if they are right, the Brahman would seem to have
been a magician before he was a priest*
1 S. Levi, La Doctrine du sacrifice Books of the East, vol. xlii.).
dans hs Brdhniat}as (Paris, 1898), p. ^ w. Caland, Altindisches Zauber.
129. ritual, p. ix.
* M. Bloomfield, Hymns of the * O. Schrader, Reallexikon der indo-
Atharva- Veda, pp. xlv. sj. (Sacred germanischen Altertumskunde (Stras-
230
MAGIC AND RELIGION chap.
Confiision Speaking of the importance - of magic in the East,
of magic a.nd especially in Egypt, Professor Maspero remarks that
^gion in " we ought not to attach to the word magic the degrading
^1^"" idea which it almost inevitably calls up in the mind of a
modern. Ancient magic was the very foundation of religion.
The faithful who desired to obtain some favour from a god
had no chance of succeeding except by laying hands on the
deity, and this arrest could only be effected by means of a
certain number of rites, sacrifices, prayers, and chants, which
the god himself had revealed, and which obliged him to do
what was demanded of him." ^ According to another
distinguished Egyptologist " the belief that there are words
and actions by which man can influence all the powers of
• nature and all living things, from animals up to gods, was
inextricably interwoven with everything the Egyptians did
and everything they left undone. Above all, the whole
system of burial and of the worship of the dead is com-
pletely dominated by it. The wooden puppets which
relieved the dead man from toil, the figures of the maid-
servants who baked bread for him, the sacrificial formulas
by the recitation of which food was procured for him, what
are these and all the similar practices but magic? And
as men cannot help themselves without magic, so neither
can the gods ; the gods also wear amulets to protect them-
selves, and use magic spells to constrain each other." '^
" The whole doctrine of magic," says Professor Wiedemann,
" formed in the valley of the Nile, not a part of superstition,
but an essential constituent of religious faith, which to a
burg, 1901), pp. 637 sq. In ancient use them is even clearer than that
Arabia the kdhin (etymologically equi- between the sorcerer and the medicine-
valent to the Hebrew kihen, " priest ") man. It is probable that the names
seems to have been rather a sooth- of the gods with the characteristic
sayer than a priest. See J. Well- formulae of the prayer are later addi-
hausen, J?este arabischen Heidentums ^ tions to the magical incantation ; that
(Berlin, 1897), pp. 134, 143. The at some time the sorcerer has added
confusion of magic with religion, of the names of the most important of
spell with prayer, may also be de- his deities to the spells and charms
tected in the incantations employed which at one time were thought to be
by Toda sorcerers at the present day. sufficient for his purpose."
See W. H. R. Rivers, The Todas, ' G. Maspero, Atudes de mythologie
pp. 272 jy. : " The formulae of magic et d'archiologie igyptienne (Vaxii, l?>g'i),
and of the dairy ritual are of the same i. 106.
nature, though the differentiation be- ^ A. Erman, Agypten und dgypti-
tween the sorcerer and the priest who sches Leben im Altertum, p. 471.
IV MAGIC AND RELIGION 231
great extent rested directly on magic, and always remained
most closely bound up with it." ^ But though we can
perceive the union of discrepant elements in the faith and
practice of the ancient Egyptians, it would be rash to assume
that the people themselves did so. " Egyptian religion,"
says the same scholar, " was not one and homogeneous ; it
was compounded of the most heterogeneous elements, which
seemed to the Egyptian to be all equally justified. He did
not care whether a doctrine or a myth belonged to what, in
modern scholastic phraseology, we should call faith or
superstition ; it was indifferent to him whether we should
rank it as religion or magic, as worship or sorcery. All
such classifications were foreign to the Egyptian. To him
no one doctrine seemed more or less justified than another.
Nay, he went so far as to allow the most flagrant contradic-
tions to stand peaceably side by side."^
Among the ignorant classes of modern Europe the same Confusion
confusion of ideas, the same mixture of religion and magic, °n"^^"^
crops up in various forms. Thus we are told that in France religion in
" the majority of the peasants still believe that the priest Europe.
possesses a secret and irresistible power over the elements.
By reciting certain prayers which he alone knows and has
the right to utter, yet for the utterance of which he must
afterwards demand absolution, he can, on an occasion of
pressing danger, arrest or reverse for a moment the action of
the eternal laws of the physical world. The winds, the
storms, the hail, and the rain are at his command and obey
his will. The fire also is subject to him, and the flames of
a conflagration are extinguished at his word." ^ For example,
French peasants used to be, perhaps are still, persuaded that
the priests could celebrate, with certain special rites, a " Mass Mass of
of the Holy Spirit," of which the efficacy was so miraculous spirit °^
that it never met with any opposition from the divine will ;
' A. Wiedemann, Die Religion der 1887), ii. 78. In Beauce and Perche
alien Agyfter (Munster i. W., 1890), it was especially conflagrations caused
p. 154. by lightning which the priest was sup-
9 , „T. J ., T-.- ,... .. posed to extinguish by the recitation of
' A. Wiedemann, "Em altagypti- ^ . ^°r , ~,
I, nr 1.- I," r ^\. » ^ rr ccrtam secret formulas. Inere was a
sober Weltscnopfungsmythus, .^ffz c/r- , • r ^i.- j
ouf/l N F ii fiSnl^ nn ne ,^ - regular expression for this procedure.
quell, N.F. ii. (1898) pp. 95 sq. -
' J. Lecceur, Esquisses du Bi
Normand (Conde-sur-Noireau, 1883- el du Perche, i. 2
namely, " barring the fire." See F.
' J. Lecceur, Esquisses du Socage Chapiseau, Le Folk-lore de la Beauce
232 MAGIC AND RELIGION chap.
God was forced to grant whatever was asked of Him in this
form, however rash and importunate might be the petition.
No idea of impiety or irreverence attached to the rite in the
minds of those who, in some pf the great extremities of life,
sought by this singular means to take the kingdom of
heaven by storm. The secular priests generally refused
to say the " Mass of the Holy Spirit " ; but the monks,
especially the Capuchin friars, had the reputation of yielding
with less scruple to the entreaties of the anxious and dis-
tressed.^ In the constraint thus supposed by Catholic
peasantry to be laid by the priest upon the deity we seem
to have an exact counterpart of the power which, as we saw,
the ancient Egyptians ascribed to their magicians.^ Again,
to take another example, in many villages of Provence the
priest is still reputed to possess the faculty of averting
storms. It is not every priest who enjoys this reputation ;
and in some villages, when a change of pastors takes place,
the parishioners are eager to learn whether the new incum-
bent has the power {pouder), as they call it. At the first
sign of a heavy storm they put him to the proof by inviting
him to exorcise the threatening clouds ; and if the result
answers to their hopes, the new shepherd is assured of the
sympathy and respect of his flock. In some parishes, where
the reputation of the curate in this respect stood higher than
that of his rector, the relations between the two have been
so strained in consequence that the bishop has had to trans-
late the rector to another benefice.^ Again, Gascon peasants
believe that to revenge themselves on their enemies bad men
Mass of will sometimes induce a priest to say a mass called the Mass
of Saint S^caire. Very few priests know this mass, and
three-fourths of those who do know it would not say it for
love or money. None but wicked priests dare to perform
the gruesome ceremony, and you may be quite sure that
they will have a very heavy account to render for it at the
last day. No curate or bishop, not even the archbishop of
' Am^lie Bosquet, La Noi-tnandie i. 455 sq., iii. 217 sq., 222 sqq.
romanesque et merveilleuse (Paris and Compare id., Reminiscences populaires
Rouen, 1845), P- 3°^- ^^ ^^ Provence (Paris, 1885), pp. 288
* See above, p. 225. sqq. ; D. Monnier, Traditions popu-
' L. J. B. Berenger-Feraud, Super- laires comparies (Paris, 1854), pp. 31
stitions et survivaiices (Paris, 1896), sqq.
Saint
S&aire.
IV MAGIC AND RELIGION 23 j
Audi, can pardon them ; that right belongs to the pope of
Rome alone. The Mass of Saint S^caire may be said only
in a ruined or deserted church, where owls mope and hoot,
where bats flit in the gloaming, where gypsies lodge of
nights, and where toads squat under the desecrated altar.
Thither the bad priest comes by night with his light o' love,
and at the first stroke of eleven he begins to mumble the
mass backwards, and ends just as the clocks are knelling
the midnight hour. His leman acts as clerk. The host he
blesses is black and has three points ; he consecrates no
wine, but instead he drinks the water of a well into which
the body of an unbaptized infant has been flung. He makes
the sign of the cross, but it is on the ground and with his
left foot. And many other things he does which no good
Christian could look upon without being struck blind and
deaf and dumb for the rest of his life. But the man for
whom the mass is said withers away little by little, and
nobody can say what is the matter witli him ; even the
doctors can make nothing of it. They do not know that he
is slowly dying of the Mass of Saint S^caire.'
Yet though magic is thus found to fuse and amalgamate The early
with religion in many ages and in many lands, there are '^""f"^'^''
J , , , of magic
some grounds for thmkmg that this fusion is not primitive, with
and that there was a time when man trusted to maeic alone '^''''^'°° ,
• ■.,-.' was prot>-
ior the satisfaction of such wants as transcended his im- ably pre-
mediate animal cravings. In the first place a consideration stlfririier
of the fundamental notions of magic and religion may incline pi^^se of
us to surmise that magic is older than religion in the history ^^^f^'
of humanity. We have seen that on the one hand magic is "^sic
nothing but a mistaken application of the very simplest and wlihom
most elementary processes of the mind, namely the associa- '"'=i>g'°n-
tion of ideas by virtue of resemblance or contiguity ; and
that on the other hand religion assumes the operation of con-
scious or personal agents, superior to man, behind the visible
screen of nature. Obviously the conception of personal
agents is more complex than a simple recognition of the
similarity or contiguity of ideas ; and a theory which
assumes that the course of nature is determined by conscious
• J. F. Blade, Quatorze superstitions fopulaires de la Gascogne (Agen, 1883),
pp. 16 sq.
234 MAGIC AND RELIGION chap.
agents is more abstruse and recondite, and requires for its
apprehension a far higher degree of intelligence and reflection,
than the view that things succeed each other simply by-
reason of their contiguity or resemblance. The very beasts
associate the ideas of things that are like each other or that
have been found together in their experience ; and they
could hardly survive for a day if they ceased to do so. But
who attributes to the animals a belief that the phenomena
of nature are worked by a multitude of invisible animals or
by one enormous and prodigiously strong animal behind the
scenes? It is probably no injustice to the brutes to assume
that the honour of devising a theory of this latter sort must
be reserved for human reason. Thus, if magic be deduced
immediately from elementary processes of reasoning, and be,
in fact, an error into which the mind falls almost spontaneously,
while religion rests on conceptions which the merely animal
intelligence can hardly be supposed to have yet attained to,
it becomes probable that magic arose before religion in the
evolution of our race, and that man essayed to bend nature
to his wishes by the sheer force of spells and enchant-
ments before he strove to coax and mollify a coy, capri-
cious, or irascible deity by the soft insinuation of prayer
and sacrifice.
Among the The conclusion which we have thus reached deductively
aiori"TiiS froni a consideration of the fundamental ideas of religion and
magic is magic is confirmed inductively by the observation that among
bat religion the aborigines of Australia, the rudest savages as to whom
almost \ye possess accurate information, magic is universally practised,
whereas religion in the sense of a propitiation or conciliation
of the higher powers seems to be nearly unknown. Roughly
speaking, all men in Australia are magicians, but not one is
a priest ; everybody fancies he can influence his fellows or
the course of nature by sympathetic magic, but nobody dreams
of propitiating gods by prayer and sacrifice.^
Magic is But if in the most backward state of human society now
Sder than known to US \ve find magic thus conspicuously present and
religion, religion conspicuously absent, may we not reasonably con- .
inhisstiu jecture that the civilised races of the world have also at
oniTosai some period of their history passed through a similar in-
' For the evidence see my Totemism and Exogamy, vol. i. pp. 1 4 1 sqg.
IV MAGIC AND RELIGION 235
tellectual phase, that they attempted to force the great among the
powers of nature to do their pleasure before they thought '5"°''^"'
. . '■ J a and super-
of courting their favour by offerings and prayer — in short stitious.
that, just as on the material side of human culture there
has everywhere been an Age of Stone, so on the intellectual
side there has everywhere been an Age of Magic ? ^ There
are reasons for answering this question in the affirmative.^
When we survey the existing races of mankind from Green-
land to Tierra del Fuego, or from Scotland to Singapore,
we observe that they are distinguished one from the other
by a great variety of religions, and that these distinctions
are not, so to speak, merely coterminous with the broad
distinctions of race, but descend into the minuter sub-
divisions of states and commonwealths, nay, that they
honeycomb the town, the village, and even the family, so
that the surface^of society all over the world is cracked
and seamed, sapped and mined with rents and fissures
and yawning crevasses opened up by the disintegrating
influence of religious dissension. Yet when we have
penetrated through these differences, which affect mainly
the intelligent and thoughtful part of the community, we
shall find underlying them all a solid stratum of intellectual
agreement among the dull, the weak, the ignorant, and the
superstitious, who constitute, unfortunately, the vast majority
of mankind. One of the great achievements of the nine-
teenth century was to run shafts down into this low mental
stratum in many parts of the world, and thus to discover
its substantial identity everywhere. It is beneath our feet
— and not very far beneath them — here in Europe at the
present day, and it crops up on the surface in the heart of
the Australian wilderness and wherever the advent of a
higher civilisation has not crushed it under ground. This
universal faith, this truly Catholic creed, is a belief in the
' The suggestion has been made by to religion, and apparently also as to
Prof. H. Oldenberg {Die Religion des the absence of spirits from primitive
Veda, p. 59), who seems, however, to magic, was held by Hegel. It was
regard a belief in spirits as part of the not until long after the discussion in
raw material of magic. If the view the text had been written that I be-
which I have put forward tentatively came aware that my conclusions had
ij correct, faith in magic is probably been to a large extent anticipated by
older than a belief in spirits. The the C'.eruian philosopher. See Appen-
same view as to the priority of magic dix at the end of this volume.
236 MAGIC AND RELIGION chap.
efficacy of magic. While religious systems differ not only
in different countries, but in the same country in different
ages, the system of sympathetic magic remains everywhere
and at all times substantially alike in its principles and
practice. Among the ignorant and superstitious classes of
modern Europe it is very much what it was thousands of
years ago in Egypt and India, and what it now is among
the lowest savages surviving in the remotest corners of the
world. If the test of truth lay in a show of hands or a
counting of heads, the system of magic might appeal, with
far more reason than the Catholic Church, to the proud
motto, " Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus" as the
sure and certain credential of its own infallibility.
Latent It is n(^t our business here to consider what bearing the
™P^"'™ permanent existence of such a solid layer of savagery
a danger to ^ rr 1 1 1
cmiisation. beneath the surface of society, and unaffected by the super-
ficial changes of religion and culture, has upon the future of
humanity. The dispassionate observer, whose studies have
led him to plumb its depths, can hardly regard it otherwise
than as a standing menace to civilisation.-' We seem to
move on a thin crust which may at any moment be rent by
the subterranean forces slumbering below. From time to
time a hollow murmur underground or a sudden spirt of
flame into the air tells of what is going on beneath our feet.
Now and then the polite world is startled by a paragraph in
a newspaper which tells how in Scotland an image has been
found stuck full of pins for the purpose of killing an
obnoxious laird or minister, how a woman has been slowly
roasted to death as a witch in Ireland, or how a girl has
been murdered and chopped up in Russia to make those
candles of human tallow by whose light thieves hope to
pursue theii" midnight trade unseen.^ But whether the
influences that make for further progress, or those that
threaten to undo what has already been accomplished, will
1 After a visit to the ruined Greek dans le pays mime oil elle est regnante."
temples of Paestum, whose beauty and . See E. Renan et M. Berthelot, Corre-
splendour impressed him all the more spondance (Paris, 1898), pp. 75 sq.
by contrast with the savagery of the 2 See above, pp. 68 J?. ; "TheWitch-
surrounding peasantry, Renan wrote: burning at Clonmel," Folklore, n.
"_paiirembli pour la civilisation, en la (1895) pp. 373-384; F. S. Krauss,
voyant si limi/^e, assise sur nne faible Volksglaube und religiSser Brauch der
assiette, reposant sur si peu dindividus Siidslaven, pp. 144 sqq.
IV MAGIC AND RELIGION 237
ultimately prevail ; whether the impulsive energy of the
minority or the dead weight of the majority of mankind will
prove the stronger force to carry us up to higher heights or
to sink us into lower depths, are questions rather for the
sage, the moralist, and the statesman, whose eagle vision
scans the future, than for the humble student of the present
and the past. Here we are only concerned to ask how far
the uniformity, the universality, and the permanence of a
belief in magic, compared with the endless variety and the
shifting character of religious creeds, raises a presumption
that the former represents a ruder and earlier phase of the
human mind, through which all the races of mankind have
passed or are passing on their way to religion and science.
If an Age of Religion has thus everywhere, as I venture The change
to surmise, been preceded by an Aefe of Magic, it is natural '''o™ ™?g":
■^ ^ o o > to religion
that we should enquire what causes have led mankind, or may have
rather a portion of them, to abandon magic as a principle ^^^" ^^
of faith and practice and to betake themselves to religion about by
instead. When we reflect upon the multitude, the variety, lovety of
and the complexity of the facts to be explained, and the "^e '"-
scantiness of our information regarding them, we shall be majc^ °
ready to acknowledge that a full and satisfactory solution
of so profound a problem is hardly to be hoped for, and
that the most we can do in the present state of our know-
ledge is to hazard a more or less plausible conjecture. With
all due diffidence, then, I would suggest that a tardy
recognition of the inherent falsehood and barrenness of
magic set the more thoughtful part of mankind to cast about
for a truer theory of nature and a more fruitful method
of turning her resources to account. The shrewder intelli-
gences must in time have come to perceive that magical
ceremonies and incantations did not really effect the results
which they were designed to produce, and which the majority
of their simpler fellows still believed that they did actually
produce. This great discovery of the inefficacy of magic must
have wrought a radical though probably slow revolution in
the minds of those who had the sagacity to make it. The dis-
covery amounted to this, that men for the lirst time recognised
their inability to manipulate at pleasure certain natural forces
which hitherto they had believed to be completely within
238 MAGIC AND RELIGION chap.
their control. It was a confession of human ignorance and
weakness. Man saw that he had taken for causes what
were no causes, and that all his efforts to work by means of
these imaginary causes had been vain. His painful toil had
been wasted, his curious ingenuity had been squandered to
no purpose. He had been pulling at strings to which
nothing was attached ; he had been marching, as he thought,
straight to the goal, while in reality he had only been tread-
ing in a narrow circle. Not that the effects which he had
striven so hard to produce did not continue to manifest
themselves. They were still produced, but not by him.
The rain still fell on the thirsty ground : the sun still
pursued his daily, and the moon her nightly journey across
the sky : the silent procession of the seasons still moved in
light and shadow, in cloud and sunshine across the earth :
men were still born to labour and sorrow, and still, after a
brief sojourn here, were gathered to their fathers in the long
home hereafter. All things indeed went on as before, yet
all seemed different to him from whose eyes the old scales
had fallen. For he could no longer cherish the pleasing
illusion that it was he who guided the earth and the
heaven in their courses, and that they would cease to per-
form their great revolutions were he to take his feeble hand
from the wheel. In the death of his enemies and his friends
he no longer saw a proof of the resistless potency of his own
or of hostile enchantments ; he now knew that friends and
foes alike had succumbed to a force stronger than any that
he could wield, and in obedience to a destiny which he was
powerless to control.
Recogn:s- Tlius cut adrift from his ancient moorings and left to
m?n tn-'^ "^^^^ °" ^ troubled sea of doubt and uncertainty, his old
ability to happv confidence in himself and his powers rudely shaken,
^?,j™| our primitive philosopher must have been sadly perplexed
men came and agitated till he came to rest, as in a quiet haven after a
that Unas tcmpestuous voyagc, in a new system of faith and practice,
controUed which Seemed to offer a solution of his harassing doubts and
natS^ a substitute, however precarious, for that sovereignty over
beings. iiature which he had reluctantly abdicated. If the great
world went on its way without the help of him or his fellows,
it must surely be because there were other beings, like him-
rv MAGIC AND RELIGION 239
self, but far stronger, who, unseen themselves, directed its
course and brought about all the varied series of events
which he had hitherto believed to be dependent on his own
magic. It was they, as he now believed, and not he himself,
who made the stormy wind to blow, the lightning to flash,
and the thunder to roll ; who had laid the foundations of
the solid earth and set bounds to the restless sea that it
might not pass ; who caused all the glorious lights of
heaven to shine ; who gave the fowls of the air their meat
and the wild beasts of the desert their prey ; who bade the
fruitful land to bring forth in abundance, the high hills to
be clothed with forests, the bubbling springs to rise under
the rocks in the valleys, and green pastures to grow by still
waters ; who breathed into man's nostrils and made him
live, or turned him to destruction by famine and pestilence
and war. To these mighty beings, whose handiwork he
traced in all the gorgeous and varied pageantry of nature,
man now addressed himself, humbly confessing his depend-
ence on their invisible power, and beseeching them of their
mercy to furnish him with all good things, to defend him
from the perils and dangers by which our mortal life is
compassed about on every hand,' and finally to bring his
immortal spirit, freed from the burden of the body, to some
happier world, beyond the reach of pain and sorrow, where
he might rest with them and with the spirits of good men in
joy and felicity for ever.
In this, or some such way as this, the deeper minds mayThechange
be conceived to have made the great transition from made J^^°'" ™?'S"^
^ o to religion
to religion. But even in them the change can hardly ever must have
have been sudden ; probably it proceeded very slowly, and ^aduai.
required long ages for its more or less perfect accomplish-
ment. For the recognition of man's powerlessness to influence
the course of nature on a grand scale must have been gradual ;
he cannot have been shorn of the whole of his fancied
dominion at a blow. Step by step he must have been driven
back from his proud position ; foot by foot he must have
yielded, with a sigh, the ground which he had once viewed
as his own. Now it would be the wind, now the rain, now
the sunshine, now the thunder, that he confessed himself
unable to wield at will ; and as province after province of
I40 MAGIC AND RELIGION chap.
nature thus fell from his grasp, till what had once seemed a
kingdom threatened to shrink into a prison, man "must have
been more and more profoundly impressed with a sense of
his own helplessness and the might of the invisible beings by
whom he believed himself to be surrounded. Thus religion,
beginning as a slight and partial acknowledgment of powers
superior to man, tends with the growth of knowledge to
deepen into a confession of man's entire and absolute
dependence on the divine ; his old free bearing is exchanged
for an attitude of lowliest prostration before the mysterious
powers of the unseen, and his highest virtue is to submit his
will to theirs : In la sua volontade e nostra pace. But this
deepening sense o/ religion, this more perfect submission to
the divine will in all things, affects only those higher intelli-
gences who have breadth of view enough to comprehend
the vastness of the universe and the littleness of man. Small
minds cannot grasp great ideas ; to their narrow comprehen-
sion, their purblind vision, nothing seems really great and
important but themselves. Such minds hardly rise into
religion at all. They are, indeed, drilled by their betters
into an outward conformity with its precepts and a verbal
profession of its tenets ; but at heart they cling to their old
magical superstitions, which may be discountenanced and
forbidden, but cannot be eradicated by religion, so long as
they have their roots deep down in the mental framework
and constitution of the great majority of mankind.
The belief A vestige of the transition from magic to religion may
^Zit perhaps be discerned in the belief, shared by many peoples,
magicians that the gods themselves are adepts in magic, guarding their
maT mark i_ ^ i- i i • i . .,, , ,,
the'transi- persons by talismans and workmg their will by spells and
tionfrom incantations. Thus the Egyptian gods, we are told, could
magic lo . . A o ' J
religion, ^s Httle dispense with the help of magic as could men ; like
men they wore amulets to protect themselves, and used
spells to overcome each other. Above all the rest Isis was
skilled in sorcery and famous for her incantations.' In
Babylonia the great god Ea was reputed to be the inventor
of magic, and his son Marduk, the chief deity of Babylon,
inherited the art from his father. Marduk is described as
"the master of exorcism, the magician of the gods."
' A. Eiman, ^gypten und agyptisches Ixben im Altertum, p. 471.
■V MAGIC AND RELIGION 241
Another text declares that " the incantation is the incanta-
tion of Marduk, the exorcist is the image of Marduk." ' In
the legend of the creation it is related that when Marduk
was preparing to fight the monster Tiamat he gave a proof
of his magical powers to the assembled gods by causing a
garment to disappear and reappear again at the word of his
mouth. And the other Babylonian deities had in like
manner recourse to magic, especially to magical words or
spells. " The word is above all the instrument of the gods ;
it seems to suit the high conception of their power better
than mere muscular effort ; the hymns celebrate the irre-
sistible might of their word ; it is by their word that they
compel both animate and inanimate beings to answer their
purposes ; in short, they employ almost exclusively the oral
rites of magic." And like men they made use of amulets
and talismans." In the Vedic religion the gods are often
represented as attaining their ends by magical means ; in
particular the god Brhaspati, " the creator of all prayers," is
regarded as " the heavenly embodiment of the priesthood, in
so far as the priesthood is invested with the power, and
charged with the task, of influencing the course of things by
prayers and spells"; in short, he is " the possessor of the
magical power of the holy word." ^ So too in Norse myth-
ology Odin is said to have owed his supremacy and his
dominion over nature to his knowledge of the runes or
magical names of all things in earth and heaven. This
mystical lore he acquired as follows. The runic names of
all things were scratched on the things themselves, then
scraped off and mixed in a magical potion, which was com-
pounded of honey and the blood of the slain Kvasir, the
wisest of beings. A draught of this wonderful mead
imparted to Odin not only the wisdom of Kvasir, but also
a knowledge of all things, since he had swallowed their
runic or mystical names along with the blood of the sage.*
^ C. Fossey, La lilagie Assyn'cntic Assyrian and Jlabylonian Literature
(Paris, 1902), pp. 123, 125. . (New York, 1901), p. 291.
- C. Fossey, "/. cit. p]i. 1^7-139. <* II. Oklenbcrg, Dis Religion des
For the incident of the m.igical dis- Veda, pp. 66-68, 514-517.
appearance and reappearance of the "* Fr. Kauffmann, Balder, Mythui
garment, see P. Jensen, Assyrisch- iind Sage (Strasburg, 1902), pp. 177-
Babyhnischc Mythen iind Ef-cn (15er- 203. (Compare J. Grimm, Deutsche
lin, 1900), p. 23; R. F. Harper, Alylkologie,* n. 1024-1026.
VOL. 1 R
242 MAGIC AND RELIGION chap.
Hence by the utterance of his spells he could heal sickness,
deaden the swords of his enemies, loose himself from bonds,
stop the flight of an arrow in mid-air, stay the raging of the
flames, still the winds and lull the sea ; and by graving and
painting certain runes he could make the corpse of a hanged
man come down from the gallows-tree and talk with Tiim.'
It is easy to conceive how this ascription of magical powers
to the gods may have originated. When a savage sorcerer
fails to effect his purpose, he generally explains his want of
success by saying that he has been foiled by the spells of
some more potent magician. Now if it began to be per-
ceived that certain natural effects, such as the making of
rain or wind or sunshine, were beyond the power of any
human magician to accomplish, the first thought would
naturally be that they were wrought by the more powerful
magic of some great invisible beings, and these superhuman
magicians might readily develop into gods of the type of
Odin, Isis, and Marduk. In short, many gods may at first
have been merely deified sorcerers.
Tiw fallacy The reader may well be tempted to ask, How was it that
oi magic . , , .
is not easy mtelligent men did not sooner detect the fallacy of magic ?
J^^'- How could they continue to cherish expectations that were
iiata.-e invariably doomed to disappointment ? With what heart
^Sai!y persist in playing venerable antics that led to nothing, and
prodticei. mumbling solemn balderdash that remained without effect?
^r^the ^Vhy cling to beliefs which were so flatly contradicted by
effects experience? How dare to repeat experiments that had failed
^agician^ SO often ? The answer seems to be that the fallacy was far
fancies he from easy to detect, the failure by no means obvious, since
produces . , . , , . ,
by his art. '" many, perhaps m most cases, the desired event did actually
follow, at a longer or shorter interval, the performance of the
rite which was designed to bring it about ; and a mind of
more than common acuteness was needed to perceive that,
even in these cases, the rite was not necessarily the cause of
the event. A ceremony intended to make the wind blow or
the rain fall, or to work the death of an enemy, will always
be followed, sooner or later, by the occurrence it is meant to
bring to pass ; and primitive man may be excused for regard-
ing the occurrence as a direct result of the ceremony, and
' G. Vigfusson and F. York Powell, Corpus Poeticum Boreale, i. 24 sqq.
IV MAGIC AND RELIGION 243
the best possible proof of its efficacy. Similarly, rites observed
in the morning to help the sun to rise, and in spring to
wake the dreaming earth from her winter sleep, will invariably
appear to be crowned with success, at least within the tem-
perate zones ; for in these regions the sun lights his golden
lamp in the east every morning, and year by year the vernal
earth decks herself afresh with a rich mantle of green. Hence
the practical savage, with his conservative instincts, might
well turn a deaf ear to the subtleties of the theoretical doubter,
the philosophic radical, who presumed to hint that sunrise
and spring might, not, after all, be direct consequences of the
punctual performance of certain daily or yearly ceremonies,
and that the sun might perhaps continue to rise and trees
to blossom though the ceremonies were occasionally inter-
mitted, or even discontinued altogether. These sceptical
doubts would naturally be repelled by the other with scorn
and indignation as airy reveries subversive of the faith and
manifestly contradicted by experience. " Can anything be
plainer," he might say, " than that I light my twopenny
candle on earth and that the sun then kindles his great fire
in heaven ? I should be glad to know whether, when I have
put on my green robe in spring, the trees do not afterwards
do the same ? These are facts patent to everybody, and on
them I take my stand. I am a plain practical man, not one
of your theorists and splitters of hairs and choppers of logic.
Theories and speculation and all that may be very well in
their way, and I have not the least objection to your indulging
in them, provided, of course, you do not put them in practice.
But give me leave to stick to facts; then I know where I am."
The fallacy of this reasoning is obvious to us, because it
happens to deal with facts about which we have long made
up our minds. But let an argument of precisely the same
calibre be applied to matters which are still under debate,
and it may be questioned whether a British audience would
not applaud it as sound, and esteem the speaker who used it
a safe man — not brilliant or showy, perhaps, but thoroughly
sensible and hard -headed. If such reasonings could pass
muster among ourselves, need we wonder that they long
escaped detection by the savage ?
CHAPTER V
THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER
5 I. The Public Magician
The patient reader maj' remember that we were led to
plunge into the labyrinth of magic, in which we have
wandered for so many pages, by a consideration of two
different types of man-god. This is the clue which has
guided our devious steps through the maze, and brought us
out at last on higher ground, whence, resting a little by
the way, we can look back over the path we have already
traversed and forward to the longer and steeper road we
have still to climb.
Two types As a result of the foregoing discussion, the two types of
^^"^ human gods may conveniently be distinguished as the reli-
reag-k>u3 gious and the magical man-god respectively. In the former,
^I"^;^ a being of an order different from and superior to man is
supposed to become incarnate, for a longer or a shorter time,
in a human bod\-, manifesting his superhuman power and
knowledge by miracles wrought and prophecies uttered
through the medium of the fleshly tabernacle in which he has
deigned to take up his abode. This may also appropriately
be called the inspired or incarnate type of man-god. In it
the human body is merely a frail earthly vessel filled with a
di\-ine and immortal spirit. On the other hand, a man-god
of the magical sort is nothing but a man who possesses in
am unusually high degree powers which most of his fellows
arrogate to themselves on a smaller scale ; for in rude society
there is hardly a person who does not dabble in magic.
Thus, whereas a man-t;(id of the former or inspired type
derives his divinity from a deity who has stooped to hide his
heavenly radiance behind a dull mask of earthly mould, a
244
CHAP. V THE PUBLIC MAGICIAN 245
man-god of the latter type draws his extraordinary power
from a certain physical sympathy with nature. He is not
merely the receptacle of a divine spirit. His whole being,
body and soul, is so delicately attuned to the harmony of
the world that a touch of his hand or a turn of his head
may send a thrill vibrating through the universal framework
of things; and conversely , his divine organism is acutely
sensitive to such slight changes of environment as would
leave ordinary mortals wholly unaffected. But the line
between these two types of man-god, however sharply we
may draw it in theory, is seldom to be traced with precision
in practice, and in what follows I shall not insist on it.
We have seen that in practice the magic art may be Public and
employed for the benefit either of individuals or of the ^^^^^^. ^^^
whole community, and that according as it is directed to public
one or other of these two objects it may be called private ™^^^^l^
or public magic.^ Further, I pointed out that the public king,
magician occupies a position of great influence, from which,
if he is a prudent and able man, he may advance step
by step to the rank of a chief or king. Thus an ex-
amination of public magic conduces to an understanding
of tlie early kingship, since in savage and barbarous society
many chiefs and kings appear to owe their authority in great
measure to their reputation as magicians.
Among the objects of public utility which magic The rise
may be employed to secure, the most essential is an°j^^°^^^^
adequate supply of food. The examples cited in preceding or profes-
pages prove that the purveyors of food — the hunter, the ^°gij,i^jjg
fisher, the farmer — all resort to magical practices in is a great
the pursuit of their various callings ; but they do so as sod'ai"and
private individuals for the benefit of themselves and their intellectual
families, rather than as public functionaries acting in the
interest of the whole people. It is otherwise when the
rites are performed, not by the hunters, the fishers, the
farmers themselves, but by professional magicians on their
behalf. In primitive society, where uniformity of occupation
is the rule, and tiic distributit)n of the community into
various classes of workers has hardly begun, every man is
more or less his own magician ; he practises charms and
' Si:e above, pp. 214 sq.
246 THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER chap.
incantations for his own good anil the injury of his enemies.
But a great step in advance has been taken when a special
class of magicians has been instituted ; when, in other words,
a number of men have been set apart for the express
purpose of benefiting the whole community by their skill,
whether that skill be directed to the healing of diseases, the
forecasting of the future, the regulation of the weather, or
any other object of general utility. The impotence of the
means adopted by most of these practitioners to accomplish
their ends ought not to blind us to the immense importance
of the institution itself. Here is a body of men relieved, at
least in the higher stages of savagery, from the need of
earning their livelihood by hard manual toil, and allowed,
nay, expected and encouraged, to prosecute researches into
the secret ways of nature. It was at once their duty and
their interest to know more than their fellows, to acquaint
tliemse'ives with everything that could aid man in his
arduous struggle with nature, everything that could mitigate
his sufferings and prolong his life. The properties of drugs
and minerals, the causes of rain and drought, of thunder and
lightning, the changes of the seasons, the phases of the
moon, the daily and yearly journeys of the sun, the motions
of the stars, the mystery of life, and the mystery of death, all
tliese things must have excited the wonder of these early
philosophers, and stimulated them to find solutions of
problems that were doubtless oflen thrust on their attention
in the most practical form by the importunate demands of
their clients, who expected them not merely to understand
but to regulate the great processes of nature for the good of
man. That their first shots fell very far wide of the mark
could hardly be helped. The slow, the never-ending ap-
proach to truth consists in perpetually forming and testing
hypotheses, accepting those which at the time seem to fit
the facts and rejecting the others. The views of natural
causation embraced by the savage magician no doubt appear
to us manifestly false and absurd ; yet in their day they were
legitimate hypotheses, though they have not stood the test of
experience. Ridicule and blame are the just meed, not of those
who devised these crude theories, but of those who obstin-
ately adhered to them after better had been propounded.
V THE PUBLIC MAGICIAN ii^i
Certainly no men ever had stronger incentives in the pursuit
of truth than these savage sorcerers. To maintain at least a
show of knowledge was absolutely necessary ; a single mis-
take detected might cost them their life. This no doubt led
them to practise imposture for the purpose of concealing their
ignorance ; but it also supplied them with the most powerful
motive for substituting a real for a sham knowledge, since, if
you would appear to know an}'thing, by far the best way is
actually to know it. Thus, however justly we may reject
the extravagant pretensions of magicians and condemn the
deceptions which they have practised on mankind, the
original institution of this class of men has, take it all in all,
been productive of incalculable good to humanity. They
were the direct predecessors, not merely of our physicians
and surgeons, but of our investigators and discoverers in
every branch of natural science. They began the work which
has since been carried to such glorious and beneficent issues
by tlieir successors in after ages ; and if the beginning was
poor and feeble, this is to be imputed to the inevitable
difticuities which beset the path of knowledge rather than to
the natural incapacity or wilful fraud of the men themselves.
S 2. The Magical Control of Rain
Of the things which the public magician sets himself to One of the
do for the good of the tribe, one of the chief is to control which the
the weather and especially to ensure an adequate fall of rain. puWic
TT' .,- .,/.,.p ,. ., magician
VVater is the first essential of lite, and in most countries the has toper-
supply of it depends upon showers. Without rain vegetation f°'''" 'f '°
. , , 1 • T r • control the
withers, animals and men languish and aie. Hence m weather,
savage communities the rain-maker is a very important ^."'J'^^^P'^"
personage; and often a special class of magicians exists for ensure an
the purpose of regulating the heavenly water-supply. The ^^^'^IL^of
methods by which they attempt to discharge the duties of rain. The
their office are commonly, though not always, based on the ^f^^^^ by
principle of homoeopathic or imitative magic. If they wish the rairi-
to make rain they simulate it by sprinkling water or mimick- commonly
ing clouds : if their object is to stop rain and cause drought, based on
they avoid water and resort to warmth and fire for the sake pathk or
of dr\-inCT up the too abundant moisture. Such attempts imitative
<-, ,• -1 magic; he
are by no means confined, as the cultivated reader might
248 THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER chap.
seeks to
produce
rain by
iraitating
Examples
of making
rsLzx by
boir<oeo-
pathic or
smitative
imagine, to the naked inhabitants of those suhry lands Hke
Central Australia and some parts of Eastern and Southern
Africa, where often for months together the pitiless sun beats
down out of a blue and cloudless sky on the parched and
gaping earth. They are, or used to be, common enough
among outwardly civilised folk in the moister climate of
Europe. I will now illustrate them by instances drawn
from the practice both of public and private magic.
Thus, for example, in a village near Dorpat, in Russia,
when rain was much wanted, three men used to climb up
the fir-trees of an old sacred grove. One of them drummed
with a hammer on a kettle or small cask to imitate thunder ;
the second knocked two fire-brands together and made the
sparks fly, to imitate lightning ; and the third, who was
called '' the rain-maker," had a bunch of twigs with which
he sprinkled water from a vessel on all sides.^ To put
an end to drought and bring down rain, women and girls
of the village of Ploska are wont to go naked by night to
the boundaries of the village and there pour water on the
ground.^ In Halmahera, or Gilolo, a large island to the
west of New Guinea, a wizard makes rain by dipping a
branch of a particular kind of tree in water and then
scattering the moisture from the dripping bough over the
ground.^ In Ceram it is enough to dedicate the bark of a
certain tree to the spirits, and lay it in water.* A Javanese
mode of making rain is to imitate the pattering sound of
rain-drops by brushing a coco-nut leaf over the sheath
of a betel -nut in a mortar.^ In New Britain the rain-
maker wraps some leaves of a red and. green striped creeper
* W. Mannhardt, Antike Wald- und
Feldkults, p. 342, note. The heathen
Swedes appear to have mimicked
thunder, perhaps as a rain-charm, by
means of large bronze hammers, which
they called Thor's hammers. See Saxo
Grammaticus, Historia Danica, lib.
xiii. p. 630, ed. P. E. MUUer ; Olaus
Magnus, Historia^ iii. 8.
- K. V. Bruchhausen, in Globus,
Ixxvi. (1S99) p. 253. There seem to
be two villages in Wallachia that bear
the name of Ploska. The reference
may be to one of them.
3 C. F. H. Campen, " De Gods-
dienstbegrippen der Halmaherasche
Alfoeren," Tijdschrift voor Indische
Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde, xxvii.
(1882) p. 447.
■• J. G. F. Riedel, De sluik- en
kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes e7t
Papiia, p. 114.
^ G. A. J. Hazeu, " Kleine bijdrag-
en tot de ethnograiie en folklore
van Java," Tijdschrift voor Indische
Taal - Land • en Volkenkunde, xlvi.
(1903) p. 298.
V THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF RAIN 249
in a banana -leaf, moistens the bundle with water, and
buries it in the ground; then he imitates with his mouth
the plashing of rain.i Amongst the Omaha Indians of
North America, when the corn is withering for want of
rain, the members of the sacred Buffalo Society fill a large
vessel with water and dance four times round it. One of
them drinks some of the water and spirts it into the air,
making a fine spray in imitation of a mist or drizzling rain.
Then he upsets the vessel, spilling the water on the ground ;
whereupon the dancers fall down and drink up the water,
getting mud all over their faces. Lastly, they squirt the water
into the air, making a fine mist. This saves the corn.^ In
spring-time the Natchez of North America used to club
together to purchase favourable weather for their crops from
the wizards. If rain was needed, the wizards fasted and
danced with pipes full of water in their mouths. The pipes
were perforated like the nozzle of a watering-can, and through
the holes the rain-maker blew the water towards that part of
the sky where the clouds hung heaviest. But if fine weather
was wanted, he mounted the roof of his hut, and with
extended arms, blowing with all his might, he beckoned to
the clouds to pass by.^ In time of drought the Tarahumares
Indians of Mexico will sometimes throw water towards the
sky in order that God may replenish his supply. And in
the month of May they always burn the grass, so that the
whole countrj' is then wrapt in smoke and travelling becomes
verj' difficult. They think that this is necessary to produce
rain, clouds of smoke being, in their opinion, equivalent to
rain-clouds.* Among the Swazies and Hlubies of South-
Eastern Africa the rain-doctor draws water from a river with
various mystic ceremonies, and carries it into a cultivated
field. Here he throws it in jets from his vessel high into
the air, and the falling spray is believed to draw down the
clouds and to make rain by sympathy.* To squirt water
' R. Parkinson, Im Bismarck Archi- Voyage dans I'Amsrique septentrionale,
pel, p. 143. Compare Joachim Graf ii. 187.
'vk\i,StudieinmdBcabacktungenausder ^ Lettres edifiantes et curieuses,
Siid^ee (Brunswick, 1899), pp. 139 sq. Nouvelle Edition, vii. 29 sq..
2 J. Owen Dorsey, " Omaha Socio- * C. Luniholtz, Unknown Mexico
!og\-," Third Annual Report of the (London, 1903), i. 180, 330.
Bureau of Ethnology (Washington, '^ J. Macdonald, Religion and Myth
1SS4), p. 347. Compare Charlevoix, (London, 1893), p. 10.
pG-tH'iC or
imitative
cxagic.
250 THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER chap.
Maiiing from the mouth is a West African mode of making rain/
raia by ^^^^ jj. j^ practised also by the Wajaggas of Kilimanjaro.^
Among the Wahuma, on the Albert Nyanza Lake, the rain-
maker pours water into a vessel in which he has first placed
a dark stone as large as the hand. Pounded plants and the
blood of a black goat are added to the water, and "with a
bunch of magic herbs the sorcerer sprinkles the mixture
towards the sky.^ In this charm special efficacy is no doubt
attributed to the dark stone and the black goat, their colour
being chosen from its resemblance to that of the rain-clouds,
as we shall see presently. When the rains do not come in
due season the people of Central Angoniland repair to what is
called the rain-temple. Here they clear away the grass, and
the leader pours beer into a pot which is buried in the ground,
while he says, " Master Chaiita, you have hardened your heart
towards us, what would you have us do ? We must perish
indeed. Give your children the rains, there is the beer we have
given you." Then they all partake of the beer that is left
over, even the children being made to sip it. Next they take
branches of trees and dance and sing for rain. When they
return to the village they find a vessel of water set at the
doorway by an old woman ; so they dip their branches in it
and wave them aloft, so as to scatter the drops. After that
the rain is sure to come driving up in heavy clouds.* In
these practices we see a combination of religion with magic ;
for while the scattering of the water-drops by means of
branches is a purely magical ceremony, the prayer for rain
and the ottering of beer are purely religious rites. At
Takitount in Algeria, when the drought is severe, the people
prepare a sacrificial banquet {zerdd), in the course of which
they dance, and filling their mouths with water spirt it into
the air crying, " The rain and abundance 1 " Elsewhere in
the course of these banquets it is customary for the same
purpose to sprinkle water on children. At Tlemcen in time
of drought water is thrown from terraces and windows on
' J. B. Labat, Relation historiqtcc de ^ Fr. Stuhlmann, Mit Etnin Pascha
rithu\'-ie Oi-cidaitaJe, ii. I So. ins Ilerz von Afrika (Berlin, 1S94), p.
- M. Marker, Rechtsverkdltnisse tind 588.
Sitten dir JVadschag^a (Gotha, 1902), ■* R. Sutherland Rattray, Some Folk-
p. 34 (Pelirmanns MitUiUmgen, I'"r- lore Stories and Son^s in Chinyanja
ganzungsheft, No. 13S). (London, 1907), pp. 118 sq.
V THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF RAIN 251
small girls, who pass singing.^ During the summer months Making
frequent droughts occur among the Japanese alps. io pro- ^^amoeo-
eure rain a party of hunters armed with guns climb to the top p^^J^^J.°J
of Mount Jonendake, one of the most imposing peaks in the magic
range. By kindling a bonfire, discharging their guns, and
roHing 'great masses of rocks down the cliffs, they represent
the wished-for storm ; and rain is supposed always to follow
within a few days.^ To make rain a party of Ainos will
scatter water by means of sieves, while others will take a
porringer, fit it up with sails and oars as if it were a boat,
and then push or draw it about the village and gardens.^
In Laos the festival of the New Year takes place about the
middle of April and lasts three days. The people assemble
in the pagodas, which are decorated with flowers and illumin-
ated. The Buddhist monks perform the ceremonies, and
when they come to the prayers for the fertility of the earth
the worshippers pour water into little holes in the floor of
the pagoda as a symbol of the rain which they hope Buddha
will send down on the rice-fields in due time.'' In the Mara
tribe of Northern Australia the rain-maker goes to a pool
and sings over it his magic song. Then he takes some of
the water in his hands, drinks it, and spits it out in various
directions. After that he throws water all over himself,
scatters it about, and returns quietly to the camp. Rain is
supposed to follow.* In the Wotjobaluk tribe of Victoria Use of
the rain -maker dipped a bunch of his own hair in water, j,™^^,"
sucked out the water and squirted it westward, or he twirled rain-
1 Y.. TiaxAxt, Magie et Religion dans Myt/iologie,^ i. 213-220; Pausanias,
lAfririie du Nord, p. 583. i. 29. i, with my note.
2 W. Weston, in The Geographical 4 Tournier, jYo/ice sur le Laos
Journal, ni. (1S96) p. 143 ; td., in ^^ -^ (Hanoi, 1900), p. 80. In
Journal ofthe Anthropological Institute, ^^^ ^^^ .^ ^^ j,^^ g^^.;^^ goddess at
xxd. (1S97) p. 30 ; '•"'•. Mountaineer- jii^rapolis on the Euphrates there was
ing a,id Exploration m the Japanese ^ ^j^^^^ .^^^^ ^j^;^^ ^^^^^^ ^^ p^^^^j
Alps. ■^. 161. The ceremony IS not twice a year by people who assembled
purely magical, for it is intended to ^^^ j,^^ ^^ ^^^^^ ^^^ .^^ole of
a:iract the attention of the powerful g j^ ^^^ ^^^^;^_ g^^ Lucian, De
spirit who has a small shrine on the ^^^ _^^,^..^_ ^^ sq. Tlie ceremony was
top of the mountain perhaps a rain-charm. Compare Vmx-
^ r. Batchefor, The Ainu and thezr ^^^.J . ^g^ ^^ .^j, ,^^,^^_
Tc.r.ore (London, 1901), p. 333.
Some of the ancient processions with ^ Spencer and Gillen, Nortliern
5:-.;--s may perhaps have been rain- Tribes of Central Australia, xt-^. 313
charms. See J. Grimm, Deutsche sq.
252 THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER chap.
charms the ball rouiid his liead, making a spray like rain.^ Other
Australian Australian tribes employ human hair as a rain -charm in
aborigines, other ways. In Western Australia the natives pluck hair
from their arm-pits and thighs and blow them in the direc-
tion from which they wish the rain to come. But if they
wish to prevent rain, they light a piece of sandal wood, and
beat the ground with the burning brand.^ When the rivers
were low and water scarce in Victoria, the wizard used to
place human hair in the stream, accompanying the act with
chants and gesticulation. But if he wished to make rain, he
dropped some human hair in the fire. Hair was never burnt
at other times for fear of causing a great fall of rain.* The
Arab historian Makrizi describes a method of stopping rain
which is said to have been resorted to by a tribe of nomads
called Alqamar in Hadramaut. They cut a branch from a
certain tree in the desert, set it on fire, and then sprinkled
the burning brand with water. After that the vehemence
of the rain abated,* just as the water vanished when it fell
on the glowing brand. Some of the Eastern Angamis of
Manipur are said to perform a somewhat similar ceremony
for the opposite purpose, in order, namely, to produce rain.
The head of the village puts a burning brand on the grave
of a man who has died of burns, and quenches the brand
with water, while he prays that rain may fall.^ Here the
putting out the fire with water, v/hich is an imitation of
rain, is reinforced by the influence of the dead man, who,
having been burnt to death, will naturally be anxious for
the descent of rain to cool his scorched body and assuage
his pangs.
Use of fire Other people besides the Arabs have used fire as a means
^j"''P of stopping rain. Thus the Sulka of New Britain heat
stones red hot in the fire and then put them out in the
' A. W. Howitt, " On Australian make rain is peculiar. By analogy we
Medicine-Men, "yo;/r«rt/ of the Anthro- should expect it rather to be resorted
fo'.ogieal Institute, xvi. (1S87) p. 35 ; to as a mode of stopping rain. See
id. , Native Tribes of South - Jiast below.
Australia, p. 398. ^ 1'. B. Noskowyj, Maqrizii de valle
- R. Salvado, Memoires historiqucs Hadliramaut libelhis arabice editus et
sur r Australie (Paris, 1854), p. 262. illustratus (Bonn, 1866), pp. 25 sq.
3 W. Stanbridge, "On the Abori- * x. C. Hodson, "The Native
gines of Victoria," Transactions of tiie Tribes of Manipur," fournal of the
Ethnolcgica! Society of Lor.iiOn,'iii.^.,\. AntJirofological Insiittite, xxxi. (190 1)
(lS5i) p. 300. This use of fire to p. 308.
rain
V THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF RAIN 253
rain, or they throw hot ashes in the air. They think that
the rain will soon cease to fall, for it does not like to be
burned by the hot stones or ashes.^ The Telugus send a
little girl out naked into the rain with a burning piece of
wood in her hand, which she has to shew to the rain. That
is supposed to stop the downpour.^ At Port Stevens in New-
South Wales the medicine-men used to drive away rain by
throwing fire-sticks into the air, while at the same time they
puffed and shouted.^ Any man of the Anula tribe in Northern
Australia can stop rain by simply warming a green stick in
the fire, and then striking it against the wind.^ When a
Thompson Indian of British Columbia wished to put an end
to a spell of heavy rain, he held a stick in the fire, then
described a circle with it, beginning at the east and following
the sun's course till it reached the east again, towards which
quarter he held the stick and addressed the rain as follows :
" Now then, you must stop raining ; the people are miserable.
Ye mountains, become clear." The ceremony was repeated
for all the other quarters of the sky.^ To bring on rain the Various
Ainos of Japan wash their tobacco-boxes and pipes in a^^^^J*^
stream,* and the Toradjas of Central Celebes dip rice-spoons and stop-
in water.'^ On the contrary, during heavy rain the Indians ^"^ "''""'
of Guiana are careful not to wash the inside of their pots,
lest by. so doing they should cause the rain to fall still more
heavily.^ In Bilaspore it is believed that the grain-dealer,
who has stored large quantities of grain and wishes to sell
it dear, resorts to nefarious means of preventing the rain
from falling, lest the abundance of rice which would follow
a copious rainfall should cheapen his wares. To do this
he collects rain-drops from the eaves of his house in an
earthen vessel and buries the vessel under the grinding-mill.
^ Rascher, "Die Sulka," Archiv of the American Museum of Natural
fUr Anthropologie, xxix. (1904) p. History, The Jesup North Pacific Ex-
225 ; R. Parkinson, Dreissig Jahre in pedition, vol. i. part iv.).
der Siidsee, pp. 196 jy. 8 j_ Batchelor, The Ainu and their
^ Indian Antiqtiary, xxiv. (1895) Folklore, p. 333.
P- 359. ' A. C. Kruijt, " Regen lokken en
^ A. W. Howitt, Native Tribes of regen verdrijven bij de Toradja's van
South-East Australia, p. 398. Midden Celebes," Tijdschrift voor
* Spencer and Gillen, Northern Indische Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde,
Tribes of Central Australia, p. 315. xliv. (1901) p. 2.
' J. Teit, "The Thompson Indians ^ J. Crevaux, Voyages dans I'Amer-
of British Columbia," p. 345 (Memoirs ique du Stid {flzxii, 1883), p. 276.
254 THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER chap.
After that you shall hear thunder rumbling in the distance
like the humming sound of the mill at work, but no rain
will fall, for the wicked dealer has shut it up and it cannot
get out.^
Rain- In the torrid clim.ate of Queensland the ceremonies neces-
Que^nf-'" ^^"^y f^"" wringing showers from the cloudless heaven are
laud. naturally somewhat elaborate. A prominent part in them
is played by a " rain-stick." This is a thin piece of wood
about twenty inches long, to which three " rain-stones " and
hair cut from the beard have been fastened. The " rain-
stones" are pieces of white quartz-crystal. Three or four
such sticks may be used in the ceremony. About noon the
men who are to take part in it repair to a lonely pool, into
which one of them dives and fixes a hollow log vertically in
the mud. Then they all go into the water, and, forming a
rough circle round the man in the middle, who holds the
rain-stick aloft, they begin stamping with their feet as well
as they can, and splashing the water with their hands from
all sides on the rain-stick. The stamping, which is accom-
panied by singing, is sometimes a matter of difficulty, since
the water may be four feet deep or more. When the singing
is over, the man in the middle dives out of sight and attaches
the rain-stick to the hollow log under water. Then coming
to the surface, he quickly climbs on to the bank and spits out
on dry land the water which he imbibed in diving. Should
more than one of these rain-sticks have been prepared, the
ceremony is repeated with each in turn. While the men are
returning to camp they scratch the tops of their heads and
the inside of their shins from time to time with twigs ; if
they were to scratch themselves with their fingers alone,
they believe that the whole effect of the ceremony would be
spoiled. On reaching the camp they paint their faces, arms,
and chests with broad bands of gypsum. During the rest of
the day the process of scratching, accompanied by the song,
is repeated at intervals, and thus the performance comes
to a close. No woman may set eyes on the rain-stick or
witness the ceremony of its submergence ; but the wife of
the chief rain-maker is privileged to take part in the subse-
' E. M. Gordon, Indian Folk Tales a7id Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of
(London, 190S), p. -20 ; id. va Journal Bengal, New Series, i. (1905) p. 183.
V THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF RAIN 255
quent rite of scratching herself with a twig. When the rain
does come, the rain-stick is taken out of the water : it has
done its work/ At Roxburgh, in Queensland, the ceremony
is somewhat different. A white quartz-crystal which is to
serve as the rain-stone is obtained in the mountains and
crushed to powder. Next a tree is chosen of which the
stem runs up straight for a long way without any branches.
Against its trunk saplings from fifteen to twenty feet long
are then propped in a circle, so as to form a sort of shed
like a bell-tent, and in front of fhe shed an artificial pond is
made in the ground. The men, who have collected within
the shed, now come forth and, dancing and singing round
the pond, mimic the cries and antics of various aquatic birds
and animals, such as ducks and frogs. Meanwhile the women
are stationed some twenty yards or so away. When the men
have done pretending to be ducks, frogs, and so forth, they
march round the women in single file, throwing the pulver-
ised quartz-crystals over them. On their side the women
hold up wooden troughs, shields, pieces of bark, and so on over
their heads, making believe that they are sheltering them-
selves from a heavy shower of rain.^ Both these ceremonies
are cases of mimetic magic ; the splashing of the water over
the rain-stick is as clearly an imitation of a shower as the
throwing of the powdered quartz-crystal over the women.
The Dieri of Central Australia enact a somewhat similar Rain-
pantomime for the same purpose. In a dry season their lot ^on°„^tije
is a hard one. No fresh herbs or roots are to be had, and Died of
as the parched earth yields no grass, the emus, reptiles, and Australia,
other creatures which generally furnish the natives with food
grow so lean and wizened as to be hardly worth eating. At
such a time of severe drought the Dieri, loudly lamenting the
impoverished state of the country and their own half-starved
condition, call upon the spirits of their remote predecessors,
whom they call Mura-muras, to grant them power to make
a hea\y rainfall. For they believe that the clouds are bodies
in which rain is generated by their own ceremonies or those
1 W. E. Roth, Ethnological Studies ^ W. E. Roth, oJ>. cit. p. 168; id.,
among the North-West-Cent7-al Queens- North Queensland Ethnography, Bul-
lan-i Aborigines (Brisbane and London, letin No. 5 (Brisbane, 1903), p. 10.
1S97), p. 167.
256 THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER chap,
Rain-
making
among
the
Dieri.
Use of
foreskins
in rain-
making.
of neighbouring tribes, through the influence of the Mura-
muras. The way in which they set about drawing rain from
the clouds is this. A hole is dug about twelve feet long and
eight or ten broad, and over this hole a conical hut of logs
and branches is made. Two wizards, supposed to have re-
ceived a special inspiration from the Mura-muras, are bled by
an old and influential rnan with a sharp flint ; and the blood,
drawn from their arms below the elbow, is made to flow on
the other men of the tribe, who sit huddled together in the
hut. At the same time the two bleeding men throw handfuls
of down about, some of which adheres to the blood-stained
bodies of their comrades, while the rest floats in the air.
The blood is thought to represent the rain, and the down the
clouds. During the ceremony two large stones are placed in
the middle of the hut ; they stand for gathering clouds and
presage rain. Then the wizards who were bled carry away
the two stones for about ten or fifteen miles, and place them
as high as they can in the tallest tree. Meanwhile the other
men gather gypsum, pound it fine, and throw it into a water-
hole. This the Mura-muras see, and at once they cause
clouds to appear in the sky. Lastly, the men, young and
old, surround the hut, and, stooping down, butt at it with
their heads, like so many rams. Thus they force their way
through it and reappear on the other side, repeating the
process till the hut is wrecked. In doing this they are for-
bidden to use their hands or arms ; but when the heavy logs
alone remain, they are allowed to pull them out with their
hands. " The piercing of the hut with their heads symbolises
the piercing of the clouds ; the fall of the hut, the fall of the
rain." ^ Obviously, too, the act of placing high up in trees
the two stones, which stand for clouds, is a way of making
the real clouds to mount up in the sky. The Dieri also
imagine that the foreskins taken from lads at circumcision
have a great power of producing rain. Hence the Great
Council of the tribe always keeps a small stock of fore-
' S. Gason, " The Dieyerie Tribe,"
jVative Tribes of Smith- Australia, pp.
276 sqq. ; A. W. Hewitt, "The Dieri
and other Kindred Tribes of Central
Austraiia," Journal of the Anthropo-
logical Institute, xx. {1891) pp. 91 sq.;
id. , Native Tribes of South - East
Australia, pp. 394-396. As to the
Mura-muras, see A. W. Howitt, Native
Tribes of South-East Australia, pp.
475 «??■. 779 ■>■??■
V THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF RAIN 257
skins ready for use. They are carefully concealed, being
wrapt up in feathers with the fat of the wild dog and of
the carpet snake. A woman may not see such a parcel
opened on any account. When the ceremony is over, the Use of
foreskin is buried, its virtue being exhausted. After the broo^ln
rains have fallen, some of the tribe always undergo a surgical rain-
operation, which consists in cutting the skin of their chest ^re-°^
and arms with a sharp flint. The wound is then tapped monies,
with a flat stick to increase the flow of blood, and red ochre
is rubbed into it. Raised scars are thus produced. The
reason alleged by the natives for this practice is that they
are pleased with the rain, and that there is a connexion
between the rain and the scars. Apparently the operation
is not very painful, for the patient laughs and jokes while it
is going on. Indeed, little children have been seen to crowd
round the operator and patiently take their turn ; then after
being operated on, they ran away, expanding their little
chests and singing for the rain to beat upon them. How-
ever, they were not so well pleased next day, when they felt
tlieir wounds stiff and sore.^ The tribes of the Karamundi
nation, on the River Darling, universally believe that rain
can be produced as follows. A vein in the arm of one of
the men is opened, and the blood allowed to flow into a
piece of hollow bark till it forms a little pool. Powdered
gypsum and hair from the man's beard are then added to
the blood, and the whole is stirred into a thick paste.
Afterwards the mixture is placed between two pieces of
bark and put under water in a river or lagoon, pointed
stakes being driven into the ground to keep it down.
When it has all dissolved away, the natives think that a
great cloud will come bringing rain. From the time the
ceremony is performed until rain falls, the men must abstain
from intercourse with their wives, or the charm would be
spoiled.'^ In this custom the bloody paste seems to be an
imitation of a rain-cloud. In Java, when rain is wanted,
two men will sometimes thrash each other with supple rods
' A. W. Howitt, "The Dieri and Native Tribes of South- Hast Australia,
other Kindred Tribes of Central Aus- pp. 396, 744.
XxziiSi," Journal of the Anthropological ^ A. W. Howitt, Native Tribes of
Institute, x.x. {189 1) pp. 92 sq. ; id.. South- East Australia, pp. 396 sq.
VOL. I S
2J8 THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER chap.
till the blood flows down their backs ; the streaming blood
represents the rain, and no doubt is supposed to make it
Sanguinary fall On the ground.' The people of Egghiou, a district of
m^'of^ Abyssinia, used to engage in sanguinary conflicts with each
making other, village against village, for a week together every
'^"' January for the purpose of procuring rain. A few years
ago the emperor Menelik forbade the custom. However,
the following year the rain was deficient, and the popular
outcry so great that the emperor yielded to it, and allowed
the murderous fights to be resumed, but for two days a year
only.^ The writer who mentions the custom regards the
blood shed on these occasions as a propitiatory sacrifice
ofl"ered to spirits who control the showers ; but perhaps, as
in the Australian and Javanese ceremonies, it is an imitation
of rain. The prophets of Baal, who sought to procure rain
by cutting themselves with knives till tlie blood gushed out,*
may have acted on the same principle.
Rain- The Kaitish tribe of Central Australia believe that the
Tmomfthe rainbow is the son of the rain, and with filial regard is
Kaitish. always anxious to prevent his father from falling down,
Hence if it appears in the sky at a time when rain is
wanted, they " sing " or enchant it in order to send it
away. When the head man of the rain totem in this
tribe desires to make rain he goes to the sacred store-
house of his local group. There he paints the holy stones
with red ochre and sings over them, and as he sings
he pours water from a vessel on them and on himself
Moreover, he paints three rainbows in red ochre, one on the
ground, one on his own body, and one on a shield, which
he also decorates with zigzag lines of white clay to represent
lightning. This shield may only be seen by men of the
and the prophets of Baal was as to
whi<-,h of them should mal<e rain in
a time of drought. The prophets of
Baal wrought magic by cutting them-
selves with knives ; Elijah wrought
magic by pouring water on the altar.
Botli ceremonies alike were rain-
charms. Compare my note on the
passage in J'assages of the Bible chosen
for /heir Literary Beauty and Interest,
Second ICdilion (London, 1909), pp.
476 sq.
' J. Kreemer, " Regeninaken, Oed-
joeng, Tooverij onder de Javanen,"
MdJedeelingen van wege het Nederlatid-
sch^ Zendelinggefiootschap, xxx. (1886)
p. 113.
' Coulbeaux, "Au pays de Menelik :
a travers I'Abyssinie," Missions Catlio-
'.iques, .\xx. (iSgS) p. 455.
' I Kings xviii. 28. From the
whole tenour of the narrative it appears
that the real contest between Elijah
V THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF RAIN 259
same exogamous half of the tribe as himself ; if men of the
other half of the tribe were to see it, the charm would be
spoilt. Hence after bringing the shield away from the
sacred place, he hides it in his own camp until the rain
has fallen, after which he destroys the rainbow drawings.
The intention seems to be to keep the rainbow in custody,
and prevent it from appearing in the sky until the clouds
have burst and moistened the thirsty ground. To ensure
that event the rain-maker, on his return from the sacred
storehouse, keeps a vessel of water by his side in camp, and
from time to time scatters white down about, which is
thought to hasten the rain. Meantime the men who
accompanied him to the holy place go away and camp by
themselves, for neither they nor he may have any inter-
course with the women. The leader may not even speak
to his wife, who absents herself from the camp at the time
of his return to it. When later on she comes back, he
imitates the call of the plover, a bird whose cry is always
associated with the rainy season in these parts. Early next
morning he returns to the sacred storehouse and covers the
stones with bushes. After another night passed in silence,
he and the other men and women go out in separate
directions to search for food. When they meet on their
return to camp, they all mimic the cry of the plover.
Then the leader's mouth is touched with some of the food
that has been brought in, and thus the ban of silence is
removed. If rain follows, they attribute it to the magical
virtue of the ceremony ; if it does not, they fall back on
their standing excuse, that some one else has kept off the
rain by stronger magic.^
Among the Arunta tribe of Central Australia a cele- Rain-
brated rain-maker resides at the present day in what is ^on'g the
called by the natives the Rain Country {Kartwia quatckd), a Aruma.
district about fifty miles to the east of Alice Springs. He
is the head of a group of people who have water for their
totem, and when he is about to engage in a ceremony for
the making of rain he summons other men of the water
totem from neighbouring groups to come and help him.
' Spencer and GiJIen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 294-296,
630 sq.
26o THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER chap.
Rain- When all are assembled, they march into camp, painted with
^otT-^the red and yellow ochre and pipeclay, and wearing bunches of
AruDta. eagle-hawk feathers on the crown and sides of the head.
At a signal from the rain-maker they all sit down in a line
and, folding their arms across their breasts, chant certain
words for a time. Then at another signal from the master
of the ceremonies they jump up and march in single file to
a spot some miles off, where they camp for the night. At
break of day they scatter in all directions to look for game,
which is then cooked and eaten ; but on no account may
any water be drunk, or the ceremony would fail. When
they have eaten, they adorn themselves again in a different
style, broad bands of white bird's down being glued by
means of human blood to their stomach, legs, arms, and
forehead. Meanwhile a special hut of boughs has been
made by some older men not far from the main camp. Its
floor is strewn with a thick layer of gum leaves to make it
soft, for a good deal of time has to be spent lying down
here. Close to the entrance of the hut a shallow trench,
some thirty yards long, is excavated in the ground. At
sunset the performers, arrayed in all the finery of white
down, march to the hut. On 'reaching it the young men go
in first and lie face downwards at the inner end, where they
have to stay till the ceremony is over ; none of them is
allowed to quit it on any pretext. Meanwhile, outside the
hut the older men are busy decorating the rain -maker.
Hair girdles, covered with white down, are placed all over
his head, while his cheeks and forehead are painted with
pipeclay; and two broad bands of white down pass across
the face, one over the eyebrows and the other over the nose.
The front of his body is adorned with a broad band of pipe-
clay fringed with white down, and rings of white down
encircle his arms. Thus decorated, with patches of bird's
down adhering by means of human blood to his hair and the
whole of his body, the disguised man is said to present a
spectacle which, once seen, can never be forgotten. He now
takes up a position close to the opening of the hut. Then
the old men sing a song, and when it is finished, the rain-
maker comes out of the hut and stalks slowly twice up and
down the shallow trench, quivering his body and legs in a
V THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF RAIN 261
most extraordinary way, every nerve and fibre seeming to
tremble. While he is thus engaged the young men, who
had been lying flat on their faces, get up and join the old
men in chanting a song with which the movements of the
rain-maker seem to accord. But as soon as he re-enters the
hut, the young men at once prostrate themselves again ;
for they must always be lying down when he is in the hut.
The performance is repeated at intervals during the night,
and the singing goes on with little intermission until, just
when the day is breaking, the rain-maker executes a final
quiver, which lasts longer than any of the others, and seems
to exhaust his remaining strength completely. Then he
declares the ceremony to be over, and at once the young
men jump to their feet and rush out of the hut, screaming
in imitation of the spur-winged plover. The cry is heard
by the men and women who have been left at the main
camp, and they take it up with weird effect.-^
Although we cannot, perhaps, divine the meaning of all Rain-
the details of this curious ceremony, the analog-y of the .'"^'^'".s '°y
J ' aj imitation 01
Queensland and the Dieri ceremonies, described above, clouds and
suggests that we have here a rude attempt to represent the ^'°'^'"'
gathering of rain-clouds and the other accompaniments of a
rising storm. The hut of branches, like the structure of logs
among the Dieri, and perhaps the conical shed in Queensland,
may possibly stand for the vault of heaven, from which the
rain -clouds, represented by the chief actor in his quaint
costume of white down, come forth to move in ever-shifting
shapes across the sky, just as he struts quivering up and
down the trench. The other performers, also adorned with
bird's down, who burst from the tent with the cries of plovers,
probably imitate birds that are supposed to harbinger
or accompany rain.^ This interpretation is confirmed by
other ceremonies in which the performers definitely assimilate
' F. J. Gillen, in Report of the Work above, p. 259. It is curious that the
of the Horn Scientific Expedition to same association has procured for the
Central Australia, part iv., Anthropo- birditsnameinEnglish,French(//»OT>r,
logy (London and Melbourne, 1896), from the Latin pluvia), and German
pp. 177-179; Spencer and Gillen, [Regenpfeifer). Ornithologists are not
Aative Tribes of Central Australia, pp. agreed as to the reason for this associa-
189-193. tion in the popular mind. See Alfred
- As to the connexion of the plover Newton, Dictionary of Birds (London,
with rain in Central Australia, see 1893- 1 896), pp. 730 j'^.
262 THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER chap.
themselves to the celestial or atmospheric phenomena which
they seek to produce. Thus in Mabuiag, a small island in
Torres Straits, when a wizard desired to make rain, he took
some bush or plant and painted himself black and white,
" All along same as clouds, black behind, white he go first."
He further put on a large woman's petticoat to signify
raining clouds. On the other hand, when he wished to
stop the rain, he put red paint on the crown of his
head, "to represent the shining sun," and he inserted a
small ball of red paint in another part of his person. By
and by he expelled this ball, "Like breaking a cloud so
that sun he may shine." He then took some bushes and
leaves of the pandanus, mixed them together, and placed the
compound in the sea. Afterwards he removed them from
the water, dried them, and burnt them so that the smoke
went up, thereby typifying, as Dr. Haddon was informed,
the evaporation and dispersal of the clouds.^ Again,
it is said that if a Malay woman puts upon her head an
inverted earthenware pan, and then, setting it upon the
ground, fills it with water and washes the cat in it till the
animal is nearly drowned, heavy rain will certainly follow.
In this performance the inverted pan is intended, as Mr.
Skeat was told, to symbolise the vault of heaven.^
Belief that There is a widespread belief that twin children possess
S^orSie magical powers over nature, especially over rain and the
weathCT. weather. This curious superstition prevails among some of
the Indian tribes of British Columbia, and has led them
often to impose certain singular restrictions or taboos on the
parents of twins, though the exact meaning of these restric-
Snpersti- tions is generally obscure. Thus the Tsimshian Indians of
tionsasto British Columbia believe that twins control the weather;
twins
among the therefore they pray to wind and rain, "Calm down, breath
a^ °^ of tlie twins." Further, they think that the wishes of twins
Columbia, are always fulfilled ; hence twins are feared, because they
can harm the man they hate. They can also call the
salmon and the olachen or candle -fish, and so they are
* A.C Haddon, "The Ethnography Cambridge Anthropological Expedition
of the Western Tribe of Torres Straits," to Torres Straits, v. 350.
Journal of the Anthropological Institute, ^ W. W. Skeat, Malay Magic, p.
xix. (1890) p. 401 ; Reports of the 108.
" THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF RAIN 263
known by a name which means " making plentiful." ^ In
the opinion of the Kwakiutl Indians of British Columbia
twins are transformed salmon ; hence they may not go near
water, lest they should be changed back again into the fish.
In their childhood they can 'summon any wind by motions of
their hands, and they can make fair or foul weather, and
also cure diseases by swinging a large wooden rattle. Their
parents must live secluded in the woods for sixteen months
after the .birth, doing no work, borrowing nobody's canoes,
paddles, or dishes, and keeping their faces painted red all
the time. If the father were to catch salmon, or the mother
were to dig clams, the salmon and the clams would disappear.
Moreover the parents separate from each other, and must
pretend to be married to a log, with which they lie down
every night. They are forbidden to touch each other, and
even their own hair. A year after the birth they drive
wedges into a tree in the woods, asking it to let them work
again when four more months have passed.^ The Nootka
Indians of British Columbia also believe that twins are
somehow related to salmon. Hence among them twins
may not catch salmon, and they may not eat or even handle
the fresh fish. They can make fair or foul weather, and
can cause rain to fall by painting their faces black and then
washing them, which may represent the rain dripping from
the dark clouds.^ Conversely, among the Angoni of Central
Africa there is a woman who stops rain by tying a strip of
white calico round her black heady* probably in imitation of
the sky clearing after a heavy storm. The parents of twins
among the Nootkas must build a small hut in the woods on
the bank of a river, far from the village, and there they
must live for two years, avoiding other people ; they may
not eat or even touch fresh food, particularly salmon.
' Fr. Boas, in Fifth Report on the p. 5 (separate reprint from the Report
North- Western Tribes of Cciiiada, p. of the British Association for iSgb),
51 (separate reprint from the Report of ^ Fr. Boas, in Sixth Report on the
the British Association for iSSg). North- Western Tribes of Canada, pp.
' Fr. Boas, loc. tit. ; id. in Sixth 39 st/. (separate reprint from the
Report 0)1 the North- Western Tribes of Report of the British Association for
Canada, pp. 58, 62 (separate reprint iSipo).
from the Report of the British Associa- * British Central Africa Gazette,
lion for iSgo) ; id. in Eleventh Report No. 86 (vol. v. no. 6), 30th April
on the North- Western T-ibes of Canada, 1898, p. 3.
Co>jmbia.
264 THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER chap.
Supersti- Wooden images and masks of birds and fish are placed
tions 35 to J 1 1 11 . f, .
t,rins round the hut, and others, representmg fish, are set near the
ainong the river for the purpose of inviting all birds and fish to come
Indians of * ' °
British and sec the twms, and be friendly to them. Moreover the
father sings a special song praising the salmon, and asking
them to come. And the fish do come in great numbers to
see the twins. Therefore the birth of twins is believed to
prognosticate a good year for salmon.' But though a
Nootka father of twins has thus to live in seclusion for two
years, abstaining from fresh meat, and attending none of the
ordinary feasts, he is, by a singular exception, invited to
banquets which consist wholly of dried provisions, and at
them he is treated with great respect and seated among the
chiefs, even though he be himself a mere commoner. The
birth of twins among the Nootkas is said to be very rare,
but one occurred while Jewitt lived with the tribe. He
reports that the father always appeared very thoughtful and
gloomy, and never associated v\'ith other people. " His
dress was very plain, and he wore around his head the red
fillet of bark, the symbol of mourning and devotion. It
was his daily practice to repair to the mountain, with a
chiefs rattle in his hand, to sing and pray, as Maquina
informed me, for the fish to come into their waters. When
not thus employed, he kept continually at home, except
when sent for to sing and perform his ceremonies over the
sick, being considered as a sacred character, and one much
in favour with their gods." ^ Among the Thompson Indians
of British Columbia twins were called " grizzly-bear children "
or " hairy feet," because they were thought to be under the
protection of the grizzly bear, and to be endowed by him
with special powers, such as that of making fair or foul
weather. After their birth the parents moved away from
other people, and lived in a lodge made of fir-boughs and
bark till the children were about four years old. During all
this time great care was taken of the twins. They might
not come into contact with other people, and were washed
with fir-twigs dipped in water. While they were being
1 Fr. Boas, he. cit. Sufferings of John R. Jewitt (Middle-
town, 1820), pp. 173 sq. (p. 198,
' Narrative of the Adventures and Edinburgh, 1824).
V THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF RAIN 265
washed, the father described circles round them with fir- Supersti-
boughs, singing the song of the grizzly bear.^ With these tlX^stn "
American beliefs we may compare an African one. The West
negroes of Porto Novo, on the Bight of Benin, hold that
twins have for their companions certain spirits or genii like
those which animate a kind of small ape, which abounds in
the forests of Guinea. When the twins grow up, they will
not be allowed to eat the flesh of apes, and meantime the
mother carries offerings of bananas and other dainties to
the apes in the forest.^ Precisely similar beliefs and customs
as to twins prevail in the Ho tribe of German Togo-
land. There the twins are called " children of apes " ;
neither they nor their parents may eat the flesh of the
particular species of apes with which they are associated ;
and if a hunter kills one of these animals, the parents must
beat him with a stick.' But to return to America. The
Shuswap Indians of British Columbia, like the Thompson
Indians, associate twins with the grizzly bear, for they call
them "young grizzly bears." According to them, twins
remain throughout life endowed with supernatural powers.
In particular they can make good or bad weather. They
produce rain by spilling water from a basket in the air ;
they make fine weather by shaking a small flat piece of
wood attached to a stick by a string ; they raise storms by
strewing down on the ends of spruce branches.*
The Indians of Peru entertained similar notions as to
^ J. Teit, " The Thompson Indians Missions Catholiques,yis\.{iZ^^)^.2,'^o.
of British Columbia," pp. 310 sq. ^ J. Spieth, Die Ewe Stamme (Her-
{Memoir of the American Museum of lin, 1906), pp. 204, 2o5.
NaturalHistory,TheJesupNorthracific * Fr. Boas, in Sixth Report on the
Expedition, vol. i. part iv. ). The Lil- North- Western Tribes of Canada, p. 92
looet Indians of British Columbia also (separate reprint from the Report of the
believed that twins were the real off- British Association for i8go). The
spring of grizzly bears. Many of them instrument by which the twins make
said that twins were grizzly bears in fine weather appears to be a bull-
human form, and that vihen a twin roarer. Compare J. Teit, " The Shus-
died his soul went back to the grizzly wap" {Leyden and New York, 1909),
bears and became one of them. See pp. 586 sq. {Memoir of the American
J. Teit, " The Lillooet Indians," (Ley- Musetmi of Natural History, The
den and New York, 1906), p. 263 Jesup North Pacific Expedition, \o\.\\.
(Meineir of the American Museum of part vii. ) : "Twins were believed to be
Natural History, The Jesup North endowed with powers over the ele-
Pacific Expedition, vol. ii. part v.). ments, especially over rain and snow.
- Father Baudin, " Le Fetichisme ou If a twin bathed in a lake or stream, it
la religion des Negves de la Guinee," would rain."
266 THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER chap.
Supersti- the special relation in which twins stand to the rain and
fo ,yjj,3 the weather. For they said that one of each pair of twins
among the was a son of the lightning ; and they called the lightning
Peru. the lord and creator of rain, and prayed to him to send
showers. The parents of twins had to fast for many days
after the birth, abstaining from salt and pepper, and they
might not have intercourse with each other. In some parts
of Peru this period of fasting and abstinence lasted six
months. In other parts both the father and mother had to
lie down on one side, with one leg drawn up, and a bean
placed in the hollow of the ham. In this position they had
to lie without moving for five days, till with the heat and
sweat of their bodies the beans began to sprout. Then they
changed over to the other side, and lay on it in like manner
for other five days, fasting in the way described. When
the ten days were up, their relations went out to hunt, and
having killed and skinned a deer they made a robe of its
hide, under which they caused the parents of the twins to
pass, with cords about their necks which they afterwards
wore for many days. If the twins died young, their bodies,
enclosed in pots, were kept in the house as sacred things.
But if they lived, and it happened that a frost set in, the
priests sent for them, together with all persons who had
hare-lips or had been born feet foremost, and rated them
soundly for being the cause of the frost, in that they had
not fasted from salt and pepper. Wherefore they were
ordered to fast for ten days in the usual manner, and to
abstain from their wives, and to wash themselves, and to
acknowledge and confess their sins. After their nominal
conversion to Christianity, the Peruvian Indians retained
their belief that one of twins was always the son of the
lightning, and oddly enough they regularly gave him the
name of St. James (Santiago). The Spanish Jesuit, who
reports the custom, was at a loss to account for it. It could
not, he thought, have originated in the name of Boanerges,
or " sons of thunder," which Christ applied to the two
brothers James and John.^ He suggests two explanations.
1 Mark iii. 17. If James and John had its origin in a superstition like
had been twins, we might have sus- that of the Peruvian Indians. Was it
pected that their name of Boanerges in the character of "sons of thunder"
V THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF RAIN 267
The Indians may have adopted the name because they had
heard a phrase used by Spanish children when it thunders,
" The horse of Santiago is running." Or it may have been
because they saw that the Spanish infantry in battle, before
they fired their arquebuses, always cried out " Santiago !
Santiago ! " For the Indians called an arquebuse illapa,
that is, " lightning," and they might easily imagine that the
name which they heard shouted just before the flash and
roar of the guns was that of the Spanish god of thunder
and lightning. However they came by the name, they
made such frequent and superstitious use of it that the
church forbade any Indian to bear the name of Santiago.^
The same power of influencing the weather is attributed Supersti-
to twins by the Baronga, a tribe of Bantu negroes who ^l^^
inhabit the shores of Delagoa Bay in south-eastern Africa. Africa.
They bestow the name of Tilo — that is, the sky — on a
woman who has given birth to twins, and the infants
themselves are called • the children of the sky. Now
when the storms which generally burst in the months
of September and October have been looked for in
vain, when a drought with its prospect of famine is
threatening, and all nature, scorched and burnt up by a sun
that has shone for six months from a cloudless sky, is
panting for the beneficent showers of the South African
spring, the women perform ceremonies to bring down the
longed-for rain on the parched earth. Stripping themselves
of all their garments, they assume in their stead girdles and
head-dresses of grass, or short petticoats made of the leaves
of a particular sort of creeper. Thus attired, uttering
peculiar cries and singing ribald songs, they go about from
well to well, cleansing them of the mud and impurities which
have accumulated in them. The wells, it may be said, are
merely holes in the sand where a little turbid unwholesome
water stagnates. Further, the women must repair to the
house of one of their gossips who has given birth to twins,
and must drench her with water, which they carry in little
pitchers. Having done so they go on their way, shrieking
that the brothers proposed to call ' P. J. de Arriaga, Extirfacion de
down fire from heaven on a Samaritan la idolairia del Piru (Lima, 162 1), pp.
village (Luke ix. 54)? 16 sq., 32, 33, 119, 130, 132.
268 THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER chap.
Supersii- out their loose songs and dancing immodest dances. No
twki^stn'° "^^'^ "^^y ^^^ these leaf-clad women going their rounds. If
Africa. they meet a man, they maul him and thrust him aside.
When they have cleansed the wells, they must go and pour
water on the graves of their ancestors in the sacred grove.
It often happens, too, that at the bidding of the wizard they
go and pour water on the graves of twins. For they think
that the grave of a twin ought always to be moist, for which
reason twins are regularly buried near a lake. If all their
efforts to procure rain prove abortive, they will remember
that such and such a twin was buried in a dry place on the
side of a hill. " No wonder," says the wizard in such a case,
'■ that the sky is fiery. Take up his body and dig him a
grave on the shore of the lake." His orders are at once
obeyed, for this is supposed to be the only means of bringing
down the rain. The Swiss missionary who reports this
strange superstition has also suggested what appears to be
its true explanation. He points out that as the mother of
twins is called by the Baronga " the sky," they probably
think that to pour water on her is equivalent to pouring
water on the sky itself ; and if water be poured on the sky,
it will of course drip through it, as through the nozzle of a
gigantic watering-pot, and fall on the earth beneath. A
slight extension of the same train of reasoning explains
why the desired result is believed to be expedited by
drenching the graves of twins, who are the Children of the
Sky.^ Among the Zulus twins are supposed to be able to
foretell the weather, and people who want rain will go to a
twin and say, " Tell me, do you feel ill to-day ? " If he
says he feels quite well, they know it will not rain.^ The
Wanyamwesi, a large tribe of Central Africa, to the
south of the Victoria Nyanza, also believe in the special
association of twins with water. For amongst them, when
a twin is about to cross a river, stream, or lake, he must fill
his mouth full of water and spirt it out over the surface of
the river or lake, adding, " I am a twin " {nana mpassa).
^ H. A. Junod. Les Ba-ronga (Neu- in some mysterious way to stand for the
ch?,;el, 1S98), pp. 412, 416 sqq. The sun and moon?
reason for calling tnins " Cliildren of ^ Dudley Kidd, Savage Childhood
the Sky '•' is obscure. .\re they supposed (London, 1906), p. 47.
V THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF RAIN 269
And he must do the same if a storm arises on a lake over
which he is saihng. Were he to omit the ceremony, some
harm might befall him or his companions. In this tribe the
birth of twins is comparatively common and is attended by
a number of ceremonies. Old w^oihen march about the
village collecting gifts for the infants, while they drum with
a hoe on a piece of ox-hide and sing an obscene song in
praise of the father. Further, two little fetish huts are
built for the twins before their mother's house, and here
people sacrifice for them in season and out of season,
especially when somebody is sick or about to go on a
journey or to the wars. If one or both twins die, two aloes
are planted beside the little fetish hut.-' Lastly, the Hindoos
of the Central Provinces in India believe that a twin can
save the crops from the ravages of hail and heavy rain if he
will only paint his right buttock black and his left buttock
some other colour, and thus adorned go and stand in the
direction of the wind.^
Many of the foregoing facts strongly support an inter- The rain-
pretation which Professor Oldenberg has given of the rules '^^^^\,
J i_ Ti assimilates
to be observed by a Brahman who would learn a particular himself
hymn of the ancient Indian collection known as the Samaveda. '° ™°'
The hymn, which bears the name of the Sakvari song, was
believed to embody the might of Indra's weapon, the
thunderbolt ; and hence, on account of the dreadful and
dangerous potency with which it was thus charged, the bold
student who essayed to master it had to be isolated from his
fellow-men, and to retire from the village into the forest. Here
for a space of time, which might vary, according to different
doctors of the law, from one to twelve years, he had to
observe certain rules of life, among which were the following.
Thrice a day he had to touch water ; he must wear black
' P. Reichard, "Die Wanjamuesi," of her wishes, and especially a know-
Zeitschrift der Geselhciiaft fur Efd- ledge of the future. See Missions
kunde zu Berlin, xxiv. (1889), pp. 256 Catholiques, vii. (1875) p. 592. This
sq. Another African superstition as to suggests that elsewhere two - faced
twins may here be mentioned. On the images, like those pf Janus, may have
Slave Coast when a woman }ias brought been intended to represent twins,
forth stillborn twins, she has a statue
made with two faces and sets it up in 2 yi_ n_ Venketswami, '^ Supersti-
a corner of her house. There she tions among Hindus in the Central
offers it fowls, bananas, and palm-oil Provinces," Indian Antiquary, xxviiL
in order to obtain the accomplishment (1899) P. l".
270 THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER chap.
The rain- garments and eat black food ; when it rained, he might
assii^iates "°t ^^^^ ^^e shelter of a roof, but had to sit in ■ the
hunseifto rain and say, "Water is the Sakvari song"; when the
"^ lightning flashed he said, "That is like the Sakvari
song " ; when the thunder pealed he said, " The Great One
is making a great noise." He might never cross a running
stream without touching water ; he might never set foot on
a ship unless his life were in danger, and even then he must
be sure to touch water when he went on board ; " for in
water," so ran the saying, " lies the virtue of the Sakvari
song." When at last he was allowed to learn the song
itself, he had to dip his hands in a vessel of water in which
plants of all sorts had been placed. If a man walked in the
way of all these precepts, the rain-god Parjanya, it was said,
would send rain at the wish of that man. It is clear, as
Professor Oldenberg well points out, that " all these rules are
intended to bring the Brahman into union with water, to
make him, cis it were, an ally of the water powers, and to
guard him against their hostility. The black garments and
the black food have the same significance ; no one will doubt
that they refer to the rain-clouds when he remembers that a
black victim is sacrificed to procure rain ; ' it is black, for
such is the nature of rain.' In respect of another rain-charm
it is said plainly, ' He puts on a black garment edged with
black, for such is the nature of rain.' We may therefore
assume that here in the circle of ideas and ordinances of the
Vedic schools there have been preserved magical practices of
the most remote antiquity, which were intended to prepare
the rain-maker for his office and dedicate him to it." ^
On the It is interesting to observe that where an opposite result
Se^i- is desired, primitive logic enjoins the weather-doctor to
of dry observe precisely opposite rules of conduct. In the tropical
aast 5m- island of Java, where the rich vegetation attests the abun-
se^ be dry. dance of the rainfall, ceremonies for the making of rain
are rare, but ceremonies for the prevention of it are not
uncommon. When a man is about to give a great feast in
the rainy season and has invited many people, he goes to a
1 Tht Gnhya-StUras, translated by xxx. ) ; H. Oldenberg, Die Religion da
H. Oldenbe^, part ii. (Oxford, 1S92) Veda, pp. 420 sq.
pp. 72 sq. (Sacred Books of the East, vol.
V THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF RAIN 271
weather-doctor and asks him to " prop up the clouds that
may be lowering." If the doctor consents to exert his
professional powers, he begins to regulate his behaviour by-
certain rules as soon as his customer has departed. He
must observe a fast, and may neither drink nor bathe ; what
little he eats must be eaten dry, and in no case may he touch
water. The host, on his side, and his servants, both male
and female, must neither wash clothes nor bathe so long as
the feast lasts, and they have all during its continuance to
observe strict chastity. The doctor seats himself on a new
mat in his bedroom, and before a small oil-lamp he murmurs,
shortly before the feast takes place, the following prayer or
incantation : " Grandfather and Grandmother Sroekoel" (the
name seems to be taken at random ; others are sometimes
used), " return to your country. Akkemat is your country.
Put down your water-cask, close it properly, that not a drop
may fall out." While he utters this prayer the sorcerer looks
upwards, burning incense the while.^ So among the Toradjas
of Central Celebes the rain-doctor {sando), whose special
business it is to drive away rain, takes care not to touch
water before, during, or after the discharge of his profes-
sional duties. He does not bathe, he eats with unwashed
hands, he drinks nothing but palm wine, and if he has to
cross a stream he is careful not to step in the water.
Having thus prepared himself for his task he has a small
hut built for himself outside of the village in a rice-field, and
in this hut he keeps up a little fire, which on no account may
be suffered to go out. In the fire he burns various kinds of
wood, w^hich are supposed to possess the property of driving
off rain ; and he puffs in the direction from which the rain
threatens to come, holding in his hand a packet of leaves
and bark which derive a similar cloud-compelling virtue, not
from their chemical composition, but from their names, which
happen to signify something dry or volatile. If clouds
should appear in the sky while he is at work, he takes lime
in the hollow of his hand and blows it towards them. The
lime, being so very dry, is obviously well adapted to disperse
the damp clouds. Should rain afterwards be wanted, he
' G. G. Batten, Glimpses of the Eastern Archipelago (Singapore, 1894), pp.
6S sq.
272 THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER chap.
has only to pour water on his fire, and immediately the rain
will descend in sheets.^ So in Santa Cruz and Reef islands,
when the man who has power over rain wishes to prevent
it from falling, he will abstain from washing his face for a
long time and will do no work, lest he should sweat and
his body be wet ; " for they think that if his body be wet it
will rain." On the other hand when he desires to bring on
rain, he goes into the house where the spirit or ghost of the
rain is believed to reside, and there he sprinkles water at
the head of the ghost-post (diikd) in order that showers
may fall.^
To maks The reader will observe how exactly the Javanese and
^ou'^must'^'^ Toradja observances, which are intended to prevent rain,
be-Aet;to form the antithesis of the Indian observances, which aim at
^^±eP producing it. The Indian sage is commanded to touch
yyi--zsi water thrice a day regularly as well as on various special
'^~' occasions ; the Javanese and Toradja wizards may not touch
it at all. The Indian lives out in the forest, and even when
it rains he may not take shelter ; the Javanese and the
Toradja sit in a house or a hut. The one signifies his
sympathy with water by receiving the rain on his person
and speaking of it respectfully ; the others light a lamp or a
fire and do their best to drive the rain away. Yet the principle
on which all three act is the same ; each of them, by a
sort of childish make-believe, identifies himself with the
phenomenon which he desires to produce. It is the old
fallacy that the effect resembles its cause : if you would
make wet weather, you must be wet ; if you would make
dry weather, you must be dry.
Rain- In south-eastern Europe at the present day ceremonies
mafcng m ^^.g observed for the purpose of making rain which not only
eastern rest On the same general train of thought as the preceding,
Europe by ^^ ■ ^-j^gj^ details resemble the ceremonies practised
rxh water with the same intention by the Baronga of Delagoa Bay.
^.ii^r'tey Among the Greeks of Thessaly and Macedonia, when a
who repre- drought has lasted a long time, it is customary to send a
sects ve^e-
ucon. 1 A. C. Kruijt, " Regen lokken en ^ Rgy. w. O'Ferrall, " Native
regen irerdrijven bij de Toradja's van Stories from Santa Cruz and Reef
Midden Celebes," Tijdschrift voor IsX&nis," Journal of the Anthropological
Indische Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde, Institute, xxxiv. (1904), p. 225.
tliv. (1901) pp. 8-10.
V THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF RAIN 273
procession of children round to ail the wells and springs of
the neighbourhood. At the head of the procession walks a
girl adorned with flowers, whom her companions drench with
water at every halting-place, while they sing an invocation,
of which the following is part : —
Perperia, all fresh bedewed.
Freshen all the neighbourhood ;
By the woods, on the highway.
As thou goest, to God now pray :
O my God, upon the plain.
Send thou us a still, small rains
That the fields may fruitful be.
And vines in blpssom we may see ;
That the grain be full and sound.
And wealthy grow the folks around?-
In time of drought the Servians strip a girl to her skin and Rain-
clothe her from head to foot in grass, herbs, and flowers, ^l^^^ '°
even her face being hidden behind a veil of living green.
Thus disguised she is called the Dodola, and goes through
the village with a troop of girls. They stop before every
house ; the Dodola keeps turning herself round and dancing,
while the other girls form a ring about her singing one of
the Dodola songs, and the housewife pours a pail of water
over her. One of the songs they sing runs thus : —
We go through the "village ;
TJie clouds go in the sky ;
We go faster.
Faster go the clottdsj
They have overtaken us,
And wetted the corn and the vine.
A similar custom is observed in Greece and Roumania.^ Rain-
In Roumania the rain-maker is called Paparuda or Babar- RouJ^fn'i"
uda. She is a gypsy girl, who goes naked except for a
short skirt of dwarf elder {Sambucus ebulus) or of corn and
vines. Thus scantily attired the girls go in procession
from house to house, singing for rain, and are drenched by
1 Lucy M. J. Garnett, The Women Songs of the Russian People, pp. 227
of Turkey and their Folklore: The sqq.; W . SctirmAl, Das fahr und seine
Christian Women, pp. 123 sg. Tage in Meinung und Branch der
- \V. ^lannhardt, Baumkvltus, pp. Romdnen Siebenbilrgens, p. 17 ; E.
329 sqq. ; J. Grimm, Deutsche Mytho- Gerard, The Land beyond the Forest,
iogie,^ i. 493 sq. ; W. R. S. Ralston, ii. 13 ; Folk-lore, i. (1890) p. 520.
VOL. I T
274 THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER chap.
the people with buckets of water. The ceremony regularly
takes place all over Roumania on the third Tuesday after
Easter, but it may be repeated at any time of drought
during the summer. But the Roumanians have another
way of procuring rain. They make a clay figure to repre-
sent Drought, cover it with a pall, and place it in an open
coffin. Girls crouch round the coffin and lament, saying,
" Drought {Scaloi) is dead ! Lord, give us rain 1 " Then
the coffin is carried by children in funeral procession, with a
burning wax candle before it, while lamentations fill the
air. Finally, they throw the coffin and the candle into a
Rain- stream or a well.^ When rain is wanted in Bulgaria the
making in people dress up a girl in branches of nut-trees, flowers, and
Bulgaria. ^ '^ i o . „,
the green stuff of beans, potatoes, and onions, bhe carries
a nosegay of flowers in her hand, and is called Djuldjul or
Peperuga. Attended by a train of followers she goes from
house to house, and is received by the goodman with a
kettleful of water, on which flowers are swimming. With
this water he drenches her, while a song is sung : —
The Peperuga flew;
God give rain.,
That the corn, the millet, and the wheat may thrive.
Rain- Sometimes the girl is dressed in flax to the girdle.^ At
making m •;\ieietiik, a Greek town in Macedonia, a poor orphan boy
and Dal- parades the streets in time of drought, decked with ferns and
'"^"^' flowers, and attended by other boys of about the same age.
The women shower water and money on him from the
windows. He is called Duduld, and as they march along
the boys sing a song, which begins : " Hail, hail, Duduld,
(bring us) both maize and wheat." ^ In Dalmatia also the
custom is observed. The performer is a young unmarried
man, who is dressed up, dances, and has water poured over
him. He goes by the name of Prpats, and is attended by
companions called Prporushe, who are young bachelors like
himself.^ In such customs the leaf-clad person appears to
1 The Graphic, September 9, 1905, ^ G. F. Abbott, Macedonian Folk-
p. 324 ; Dr. Emil Fischer, " Paparuda lore (Cambridge, 1903), pp. 118 sq.
und Scaloian," Globus, xciii. (1908)
pp. 14 sq. * W. R. S. Ralston, Songs of the
- vi'. Mannhardt, Baumktiltus, p. Russian People, p. 228 ; W. Mann-
329. hardt, Baumkultus, pp. 329 sq.
V THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF RAIN 275
personify vegetation, and the drenching of him or her with
water is certainly an imitation of rain. The words of the
Servian song, however, taken in connexion with the constant
movement which the chief actress in the performance seems
expected to keep up, points to some comparison of the girl
or her companions to clouds moving through the sky. This
again reminds us of the odd quivering movement kept up
by the Australian rain-maker, who, in his disguise of white
down, may perhaps represent a cloud.^ At Poona in India, The King
when rain is needed, the boys dress up one of their number i„^^'" '°
in nothing but leaves and call him King of Rain {Mriij raja).
Then they go round to every house in the village, where the
householder or his wife sprinkles the Rain King with water,
and gives the party food of various kinds. When they have
thus visited all the houses, they strip the Rain King of his
leafy robes and feast upon what they have gathered.^
Similar rain -charms are practised in Armenia, except Rain-
that there the representative of vegetation is- an effigy or "'^''"'g '"
■^ ° °-' Armenia.
doll, not a person. The children dress up a broomstick as
a girl and carry it from house to house. Before every house
they sing a song, of which the following is one version : —
Nurin, Nurin is come.
The wondrous maiden is come.
A shirt of red stuff has she put on.
With a red girdle is she girded.
Bring water to pour on her head.
Bring butter to smear on her hair.
Let the blessed rain fall.
Let the fields of your fathers grow green.
Give our Nurin her share.
And we will eat and drink and be merry.
The children are asked, " Will you have it from the door or
from the garret-window?" If they choose the door, the
water is poured on Nurin from the window ; and if they
choose the window, it is poured on her from the door. At
each house they receive presents of butter, eggs, rice, and so
' See above, pp. 260 sq. This per- the explanation of it suggested in the
petual turning or whirling movement text is the true one. But I do not
is required of the actors in other remember to have met with any other.
European ceremonies of a superstitious ^ Father H. S. Moore, in Tht
character. Seebelow, vol. ii. pp. 74, 80, Cowley Evangelist, May 1908, pp.
81,87. I am far from feeling sure that \\\ sq.
276 THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER chap.
forth. Afterwards they take Nurin to a river and throw her
into the water. Sometimes the figure has the head of a pig
or a goat, and is covered with boughs.^ At Egin in Armenia,
when rain is wanted, boys carry about an effigy which they
call Chi-chi Mama or "the drenched Mother," as they in-
terpret the phrase. As they go about they ask, " What does
Chi-chi Mother want ? " The answer is, " She wants wheat
in her bins, she wants bread on her bread-hooks, and she
wants rain from God ! " The people pour water on her
from the roofs, and rich people make presents to the children.^
At Ourfa in Armenia the children in time of drought make
a rain -bride, which they call Chimche-gelin. They say this
means in Turkish " shovel-bride." Vv^iile they carry it about
they say, "What does Chimche-gelin want? She wishes
mercy from God : she wants offerings of lambs and rams."
And the crowd responds, " Give, my God, give rain, give a
Rain- flood." The rain-bride is then thrown into the water.^ At
SMesmif Kerak in Palestine, whenever there is a drought, the Greek
andMoab Christians dress up a winnowing- fork in women's clothes.
Thev call it "the bride of God." The girls and women
carry it from house to house, singing doggerel songs. We
are not told that " the bride of God " is drenched with water
or thrown into a stream, but the charm would hardly be
complete without this feature. Similarly, when rain is much
wanted, the Arabs of Moab attire a dummy in the robes and
ornaments of a woman and call it " the Mother of the
Rain." A woman carries it in procession past the houses of
the village or the tents of the camp, singing : —
O Mother of the Rain, O Immortal, moisten our sleeping seeds.
Moisten the sleeping seeds of the sheikh, who is ever generous.
Site is gone, the Mother of the Rain, to bring the storm j when she
comes back, the crops are as high as the walls.
Site is gone, the Mother of the Rain, to bring the winds; when she
comes back, the plantations have attained the height of lances.
She is gone, the Mother of the Rain, to bring the thunders ; when
she comes back, the crops are as high as camels.
And so on."
1 M. Abeghian, Dcr armenischt * S. I. Curtiss, Primitive Semitic
Vo'.ki^laiibs (Leipsic, 1899), pp. 93 sq. Religion To-day, p. 114.
- T. Rendel Harris, MS. notes of ° A. Jaussen, Coutumes des Arabes
folklore collected in the East. au fays de Moab (Paris, 1908), pp.
3 Rendel Harris, op. cit. 326, 32S.
V THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF RAIN 277
Bathing is practised as a rain-charm in sorne parts of Rain-
southern and western Russia. Sometimes after service in ™jf(j,i°| ^
church the priest in his robes has been thrown down on the and sprink
ground and drenched with water by his parishioners. Some- ^"fg°
times it is the women who, without stripping off their clothes,
bathe in crowds on the day of St. John the Baptist, while
they dip in the water a figure made of branches, grass, and
herbs, which is supposed to represent the saint.-' In Kursk,
a province of southern Russia, when rain is much wanted,
the women seize a passing stranger and throw him into the
river, or souse him from head to foot.^ Later on we shall
see that a passing stranger is often taken for a deity or the
personification of some natural power. It is recorded in
official documents that during a drought in i 790 the peasants
of Scheroutz and Werboutz collected all the women and com-
pelled them to bathe, in order that rain might fall.^ An
Armenian rain-charm is to throw the wife of a priest into
the water and drench her.* The Arabs of North Africa
fling a holy man, willy-nilly, into a spring as a remedy
for drought.^ In Minahassa, a province of North Celebes,
the priest bathes as a rain-charm.^ In Central Celebes
when there has been no rain for a long time and the rice-
stalks begin to shrivel up, many of the villagers, especially
the young folk, go to a neighbouring brook and splash each
other with water, shouting noisily, or squirt water on one
another through bamboo tubes. Sometimes they imitate the
plump of rain by smacking the surface of the water with
their hands, or by placing an inverted gourd on it and drum-
ming on the gourd with their fingers.'^ The Karo-Bataks of
Sumatra have a rain-making ceremony which lasts a week.
The men go about with bamboo squirts and the women with
• J. Polek, " Regenzauber in Ost- Volksgiaiibe. (Leipsic, 1899), p. 93.
e'jropa,'' Zeiischrift des Vereins fiir ° E. Doutte, Magie et religion dans
VolkskuTule, iii. (1893) p. 85. For PAfriqiie du Nord, p. 584.
the bathing of the priest compare ^ J. G. F. Riedel, " De Minahasa
W. Manntiardt, Baujnkitlius^ p. 331, in 1825/' Tijdschrift voor Indische
Eote 2. Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde, xviii.
2 W. Mannhardt, Baiimkultus, p. 524.
331. ' A. C. Kruijt, "Regen lokken en
' R. F. Kaindl, " Zauberglaube bei regen verdrijven bij de Toradja's van
den Ratenen in der Bu',;owina und Midden Celebes," Tijdschrift voor
Ga'izien," G'.oius, Ixi. (1S92) p. 281. Indische Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde,
^ M. ,\beghian, Der arnienische xliv. {1 90 1) pp. I sq.
278 THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER chap.
Rain- bowls of Water, and they drench each other or throw the
bathing ' water into the air and cry, " The rain has come," when it
andsprink- drips down on thcm.^ In Kumaon, a district of north-west
water. India, when rain fails they sink a Brahman up to his lips in
a tank or pond, where he repeats the name of a god of rain
for a day or two. When this rite is duly performed, rain is
sure to fall.^ For the same purpose village girls in the
Punjaub will pour a solution of cow-dung in water upon an
old woman who happens to pass ; or they will make her sit
down under the roof-spout of a house and get a wetting
when it rains.^ In the Solok district of Sumatra, when a
drought has lasted a long time, a number of half- naked
women take a half-witted man to a river; and there
besprinkle him with water as a means of compelling the
rain to fall.* In some parts of Bengal, when drought
threatens the country, troops of children of all ages go from
house to house and roll and tumble in puddles which have
been prepared for the purpose by pouring water into the
Corses sup- courtyards. This is supposed to bring down rain. Again,
in Dubrajpur, a village in the Birbhum district of Bengal,
when rain has been looked for in vain, people will throw
dirt or filth on the houses of their neighbours, who abuse
them for doing so. Or they drench the lame, the halt, the
blind, and other infirm persons, and are reviled for their
pains by the victims. This vituperation is believed to bring
about the desired result by drawing down showers on the
parched earth.^ Similarly, in the Shahpur district of the
Punjaub it is said to be customary in time of drought to
spill a pot of filth on the threshold of a notorious old
shrew, in order that the fluent stream of foul language
in which she vents her feelings may accelerate the linger-
ing rain.®
■ M. Joustra, " De Zending ondet Padangsche Bovenlanden," Bijdragen
de Karo-Batak's," Midedeelingen van lot de Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde van
wege het Kcderlandscke Zetidilitig- Nede>iandsch-/ndu,xY.x.\x.(i?igo)'[>.g^.
genootschap, xii. (1897) p. 158. ^ Sarat Chandra Mitra, "On some
* North Indian Notes and Queries, Ceremonies Tor producing Rain,"y()«r??a/
ill. p. 134, § 285. of the Anthropological Society of Bom-
^ W. Crooke, Popular Religion ami bay,\\\. (1893) pp. 25, 27; id., in North
Folklore of Norther): India (West- Indian Notes and Queries, v. p. 136,
minster, 1896), i. 73 .-y. § 373-
* J. L. van der Toorn, " Hel ani- * Panfab Notes and Queries, i. p.
misme bij den Minangkabauer der 102, § 791.
I to
cause rain,
V THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF RAIN 279
In these latter customs the means adopted for bringing Beneficial
about the desired result appear to be not so much imitative cursts°Ind
magic as the beneficent effect which, curiously enough, is abuse,
often attributed to curses and maledictions.^ Thus in the
Indian district of Behar much virtue is ascribed to abuse,
which is supposed in some cases to bring good luck. People,
for example, who accompany a marriage procession to the
bride's house are often foully abused by the women of the
bride's family in the belief that this contributes to the good
fortune of the newly-married pair. So in Behar on Jamad-
witiya Day, which falls on the second day of the bright period
of the moon next to that during which the Dussera festival
takes place, brothers are reviled by sisters to their heart's
content because it is thought that this will prolong the lives
of the brothers and bring them good luck.^ Further, in Behar
and Bengal it is deemed very unlucky to look at the new
moon of Bhadon (August) ; whoever does so is sure to
meet with some mishap, or to be falsely accused of some-
thing. To avert these evils people are commonly advised to
throw stones or brickbats into their neighbours' houses ; for
if they do so, and are reviled for their pains, they will escape
the threatened evils, and their neighbours who abused them
will suffer in their stead. Hence the day of the new moon
in this month is called the Day of Stones. At Benares a
regular festival is held for this purpose on the fourth day of
Bhadon, which is known as " the clod festival of the fourth." ^
On the Khurda estate in Orissa gardens and fruit-trees are
conspicuously absent. The peasants explain their absence
by saying that from time immemorial they have held it lucky
to be annoyed and abused by their neighbours at a certain
festival, which answers to the Nashti- Chandra in Bengal.
Hence in order to give ample ground of offence they mutilate
the fruit-trees and trample down the gardens of their neigh-
bours, and so court fortune by drawing down on themselves
1 W. Crooke, Popular Religion and 42, § 256 ; W. Crooke, Popular
Folklore of Northern India (West- Religion and Folklore of Northern
minster, 1896), i. lifSq. India (Westminster, 1896), i. 16 so.;
2 Sarat Chandra Mitra, "On Vestiges Sarat Chandra Mitra, m Journal of the
of Moon-worship in Behar and Bengal," Anthropological Society of Bombay, ii.
fournal of the Anthropological Society of 597 j-^. ; id., in Journal of the Royal
Bombay, ii. 59S sg. Asiatic Society, N.S. xxix. (1897) p.
' Panjab Notes and Queries, ii. p. 482.
28o THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER chap.
Beneficial the wrath of the injured owners.-' At Cranganore, in the
curses and ^^'ative State of Cochin, there is a shrine of the goddess
abiise. Bhagavati, which is much frequented by pilgiims in the
month of Minam (March-April). From all parts of Cochin,
Malabar, and Travancore crowds flock to attend the festival
and the highroads ring with their shouts of Nada nada,
"March! march!" They desecrate the shrine of the goddess
in every , conceivable way, discharge volleys of stones and
filth, and level the most opprobrious language at the goddess
herself These proceedings are supposed to be acceptable
to her. The intention of the pilgrimage is to secure
immunity from disease during the succeeding year.^ In
some cases a curse may, like rags and dirt, be supposed
to benefit a man by making him appear vile and con-
temptible, and thus diverting from him the evil eye and
other malignant influences, which are attracted by beauty
and prosperity but repelled by their opposites. Among
the Huzuls of the Carpathians, if a herdsman or cattle-owner
suspects himself of having the evil eye, he will charge one of
his household to call him a devil or a robber every time he
goes near the cattle ; for he thinks that this will undo the
effect of the evil eye.^ Among the Chams of Cambodia and
Annam, while a corpse is being burned on the pyre, a man
who bears the title of the Master of Sorrows remains in the
house of the deceased and loads it with curses, after which
he beseeches the ghost not to come back and torment his
family.* These last curses are clearly intended to make his
old home unattractive to the spirit of the dead. Esthonian
fishermen believe that they never have such good luck as
when some one is angry with them and curses them. Hence
before a fisherman goes out to fish, he will play a rough
practical joke on a comrade in order to be abused and
execrated by him. The more his friend storms and curses,
tlie better he is pleased ; every curse brings at least three
' W. \V. Hunter, Orissa (Loudon, 1909) p. 238.
iS;2), ii. 140 J?.; W. Crooke, oji. cit. „ ir • ji n- ri- ;
■ ='w. Logan, Malabar (Madras, <^ r"^' .'^?-*l,' P', ^^'^ f' l^'""^-
ISS; ., i. 161 «. ; E. Thurston, Casfes ™'=^' ]]"^, y>eh^auber in den Ostkar-
cui Trices cf Souther,, India, vii. 2S7; P"'"''' ^^"^'"^ 1="^- C^^S) p. 386.
L. K. Anantha Krishna Iyer, 7'/ie ■* A. Cabaton, NnuvelUs Kecherches
CAr.in Triies anJ CoitiS, i. (Madras, siir Ics Chams (Paris, igoi), p. 48.
V THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF RAIN 281
fish into his net.^ There is a popular belief in Berlin and Beneficial
the neighbourhood that if you wish a huntsman good luck curses°and
when he is going out to shoot deer he will be certain never abuse,
to get a shot at all. To avert the ill luck caused by such a
wish the hunter must throw a broomstick at the head of his
well-wisher. If he is really to have luck, you must wish
that he may break his neck, or both his neck and his legs.
The wish is expressed with pregnant brevity in the phrase,
" Now then, neck and leg ! " ^ The intention of such curses
may be to put the fish or the deer off their guard ; for, as
we shall see later on, animals are commonly supposed to
understand human speech, and even to overhear what is said
of them many miles off. Accordingly if they hear a fisher-
man or a hunter flouted, and vituperated, they will think too
meanly of him to go out of his way, and so will fall an easy
prey to his net or his gun. When a Greek sower sowed
cummin he had to curse and swear, or the crop would not
turn out well.* Roman writers mention a similar custom
observed by the sowers of rue and basil ; * and hedge doctors
in ancient Greece laid it down as a rule that in cutting black
hellebore you should face eastward and curse.^ Perhaps the
bitter language was supposed to -strengthen the bitter taste,
and hence the medicinal virtue, of these plants. At Lindus
in the island of Rhodes if was customary to sacrifice one or
two plough oxen to Hercules with curses and imprecations ;
indeed we are told that the sacrifice was deemed invalid if
a good word fell from any one's lips during the rite. The
custom was explained by a legend that Hercules had laid
hands on the oxen of a ploughman and cooked and devoured
them, while their owner, unable to defend his beasts, stood
afar off and vented his anger in a torrent of abuse and
execration. Hercules received his maledictions with a roar
of laughter, appointed him his priest, and bade him always
sacrifice with the very same execrations, for he had never
' Boeder- Kreutzwald, Der Ehsten vii. 3. 3, ix. 8. 8 ; Plutarch, Quaest,
abergliinbische Gebrduchs, Weisen und Conviv. vii. 2. 3 ; Pliny, Nat. Hist.
Gcii'ohnJieiten^ pp. 90 sq. xix. 120.
- E. Krause. " AbergUiubische Kuren j t> ,, j- r-.
. ', , " . . * Palladius, Ve re rusttca, iv. 9 :
und S0BSf,ger Aoerglaubem Berlin und ^^^_ ^^.^^_ ^.^_ ^^^_
nachster Lmgebung, Zettschrijt JU7- ■'
Ethiwlogie. xv. (1883) p. 87. ^ 'Y\\io'^\\x3.A\x%, Historia plantarum
2 Thto^'hrnL&iviS.yHistoria plantariim, ix. 8. 8.
282 THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER chap.
dined better in his life.^ The legend is plainly a fiction
devised to explain the ritual. We may conjecture that the
curses were intended to palliate the slaughter of a sacred
animal. The subject will be touched on in a later part of
this work. Here we must return to rain-making.
Rain- Women are sometimes supposed to be able to make
"i^"wn^^ rain by ploughing, or pretending to plough. Thus the
Pshaws and Chewsurs of the Caucasus have a ceremony
called " ploughing the rain," which they observe in tinrie of
drought. Girls yoke themselves to a plough and drag it
into a river, wading in the water up to their girdles.^ In
the same circumstances Armenian girls and women do the
same. The oldest woman, or the priest's wife, wears the priest's
dress, while the others,- dressed^ as men, drag the plough
through the water against the stream.* In the Caucasian
province of Georgia, when a drought has lasted long, marriage-
able girls are yoked in couples with an ox-yoke on their
shoulders, a priest holds the reins, and thus harnessed they
wade through rivers, puddles, and marshes, praying, scream-
ing, weeping, and laughing.* In a district of Transylvania,
when the ground is parched with drought, some girls strip
themselves naked, and, led by an older woman, who is also
naked, they steal a harrow and carry it across the fields to a
brook, where they set it afloat. Next they sit on the harrow
and keep a tiny flame burning on each corner of it for an
hour. Then they leave the harrow in the water and go
home.= A similar rain-charm is resorted to in some parts
of India ; naked women drag a plough across a field by
night, while the men keep carefully out of the way, for
their presence would break the spell.^ As performed at
' Lactantius, Divin. InstitiU. i. 2i; kasus, ii. (Hildesheim and St. Peters-
Ap'jUodorus, Bibliotheca, ii. 5. 11. 8; burg, 1 797), p. 114. Among the
Philostratus, Imagines, ii. 24 ; Conon, Abchases of the Western Caucasus girls
in Photius, Bibliotheca, p. 1 32, ed. make rain by driving an ass into a
Bekker. Lactantius speaks of the sacri- river, placing a puppet dressed as a
hce of a pair of oxen, Philostratus of woman on a raft, and letting the raft
the sacrifice of a single ox. float down stream. See N. von Seid-
- "Die Pschawen und Chewsurier litz, "Die Abchasen," Globus, Ixvi.
im Kaukasus," Zeitschrift fur allge- (1894) pp. 75 sq.
meine ErdkunJe, N.F. ii. (1857) p. ^ W. Mannhardt, Baunikultus, p.
75. 553 ; E. Gerard, The Land beyond tht
^ M. Abeghian, Der armenische Forest, ii. 40.
Volksglaube (Leipsic, 1899), p. 93. ^ Panjab Notes and Queries, iii.
* J. Reinegg, Beschreibung des Kau- pp. 41, 115, §§ 173, 513.
V THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF RAIN 283
Chunar in Bengal on the twenty-fourth of July 189 1 the Rain-
ceremony was this. Between nine and ten in the evening |^ou|,"h1ng^
a barber's wife went from door to door and invited the
women to engage in ploughing. They all assembled in a
field from which men were excluded. Three women of a
husbandman's family then stripped themselves naked ; two
of them were yoked like oxen to the plough, while the third
held the handle. They next began to imitate the operation
of ploughing. The one who held the plough cried out,
" O mother earth ! bring parched grain, water, and chaff.
Our stomachs are breaking to pieces from hunger and
thirst." Then the landlord and accountant approached
them and laid down some grain, water, and chaff in the
field. After that the women dressed and returned home.
" By the grace of God," adds the gentleman who reports the
ceremony, " the weather changed almost immediately, and
we had a good shower." ^ Sometimes as they draw the
plough the women sing a hymn to Vishnu, in which they
seek to enlist his sympathy by enumerating the ills which
the people are suffering from the want of rain.' In some
cases they discharge volleys of abuse at the village officials,
and even at the landlord, whom they compel to drag the
plough.^ These ceremonies are all the more remarkable
because in ordinary circumstances Hindoo women never
engage in agricultural operations like ploughing and har-
rowing. Yet in drought it seems to be women of the
highest or Brahman caste who are chosen to perform what
at other times would be regarded as a menial and degrading
task. Occasionally, when hesitation is felt at subjecting
Brahman ladies to this indignity, they are allowed to get
off by merely touching the plough early in the morning,
before people are astir ; the real work is afterwards done by
the ploughmen.^ In Manipur the prosperity of all classes
' North Indian Azotes and Queries, No. 7 (1898), pp. 384-388.
i. p. 210, § 1 161. ^ Sarat Chandra Mitra, " On some
* Sarat Chandra Mitra, " On the Ceremonies for producing Rain, 'yi)«r«fl/
Har Paraurl, or the Behari Women's of the Anthropological Society of Bom-
Ceremocy for producing Rain,"yOT;r«a/ bay, iii. 25. On these Indian rain-
of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great charms compare W. Crooke, Popular
Britain and Irekmd,"ii.'i,. y.'ixi. {\%C)']) Religion and Folklore of Northern
pp. 471-484; id., in Journal of the Inilia (Westminster, 1896), i. 68 sgg.
Anthropological Society of Bombay, iv. Mr. E. S. Hartland suggests that such
284 THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER chap.
Making
rain by
means of
the dead.
depends on the abundance and regularity of the rainfall ;
hence the people have many rites and ceremonies for the
making of rain. Thus in time of drought one hundred and
eight girls milk one hundred and eight cows in the temple
of Govindji, the most popular incarnation of Krishna in the
country. If this fails, the women throw their <a?^<2«-pounders
into the nearest pool, and at the dead of night strip them-
selves naked and plough.^ There is a Burmese superstition
that if a harrow has a flaw in it no rain will fall till the
faulty harrow has been decked with flowers, broken, and
thrown into the river. Further, the owner should have his
hair cropped, and being adorned with flowers should dance
and carry the harrow to the water. Otherwise the country
is sure to suffer from drought.^ The Tarahumare Indians
of Mexico dip the plough in water before they use it, that
it may draw rain.^
Sometimes the rain-charm operates through the dead.
Thus in New Caledonia the rain-makers blackened them-
selves all over, dug up a dead body, took the bones to a
cave, jointed them, and hung the skeleton over some taro
leaves. Water was poured over the skeleton to run down
on the leaves. They believed that the soul of the deceased
took up the water, converted it into rain, and showered it
down again.* In some parts of New Caledonia the cere-
customs furnish the key to the legend
of Lady Godiva {Folklore, i. (1890)
pp. 223 sqq.). Some of the features of
the ceremonies, though not the plough-
ing, reappear in a rain-charm practised
hv the Rajbansis of Bengal. The
women make two images of Hudum
Deo out of mud or cow-dung, and
carry them aw-ay into the lields by
night. There they strip themselves
naked, and dance round the images
singing obscene songs. See (Sir) H. H.
Risley, The Triks and Castes of
Bengal: Ethnographic Glossary (Cal-
cutta. 1S91-92), i. 49S. Again, in
time of drought the Kapu vomen of
Southern India mould a small figure
of a naked human being to represent
Jokumara, the rain-god. This they
place in a mock palanquin and go
about for several days from door to
door, singing indecent songs and col-
lecting alms. Then they abandon the
figure in a field, where the Malas find
it and go about with it in their turn
for three or four days, singing ribald
songs and collecting alms. See E.
Thurston, Castes and Tribes of SotUhern
India, iii. 244 sq. We have seen (pp.
267 sq.) that lewd songs form part of an
African rain-charm. The link between
ribaldry and rain is not obvious to the
European mind.
1 T. C. Hodson, " The Native
Tribes of Manijuir," Journal of the
Antliropological Institute, xxxi. (1901)
pp. 302 sq.
2 B. Houghton, mindian Antiquary,
XXV. (1896) p. 112.
' C. Lumhollz, Unknown Mexico
(London, 1903), i. 330.
■• C'r. Turner, .Samoa, pp. 345 sq.
V THE MAGICAL CONTKOL OF RAIN 285
mony is somewhat different. A sjreat quantity of provisions
is offered to the ancestors, being laid down before their
skulls in the sacred place. In front of the skulls a number
of pots full of water are set in a row, and in each pot there
is deposited a sacred stone which has more or less the shape
of a skull. The rain-maker then prays to the ancestors to
send rain. After that he climbs a tree with a branch in his
hand, which he waves about to hasten the approach of the
rain-clouds.^ The ceremony is a mixture of magic and
religion ; the prayers and offerings to the ancestors are
purely religious, while the placing of the skull-like stones in
water and the waving of the branch are magical. In Russia,
if common report may be believed, it is not long since the
peasants of any district that chanced to be afflicted with
drought used to dig up the corpse of some one who had
drunk himself to death and sink it in the nearest swamp or
lake, fully persuaded that this would ensure the fall of the
needed rain. In 1868 the prospect of a bad harvest, caused
by a prolonged drought, induced the inhabitants of a village
in the Tarashchansk district to dig up the body of a
Raskolnik, or Dissenter, who had died in the preceding
December. Some of the party beat the corpse, or what was
left of it, about the head, exclaiming, " Give us rain ! " while
others poured water on it through a sieve.^ Here the pour-
ing of water through a sieve seems plainly an imitation of a
shower, and reminds us of the manner in which Strepsiades
in Aristophanes imagined that rain was made by Zeus.^
An Armenian rain-charm is to dig up a skull and throw
it into running water.* At Ourfa for this purpose they
prefer the skull of a Jew, which they cast into the Pool of
Abraham.* In Mysore people think that if a leper is buried,
instead of being burnt, as he ought to be, rain will not fall.
Hence they have been known to disinter buried lepers in
time of drought.* In Halmahera there is a practice of
Father Lambert, vnMissions Catho-
= 3-
iijues, XXV. (1893) p. 116; id., Maurs ^ Aristophanes, Clouds, ZTZ-
et superstitions des Neo ■ Caiedoniens * M. Abeghian, Der armenische
(Xo-amea, 1900), pp. 297 sg. Volksglaube, p. 93.
- \V. R. S. Ralston, The Songs of * J. Rendel Harris, MS. notes.
the Russian People, pp. 425 sq. ; P. v. " R. H. Elliot, Experiences of a
Stenin. " Ueber den Geisterglauben Platiter in the Jimgles of Mysore CLoa-
in Russland," Gh/ni:, Ivii. (1S90) p. don, 1871), i. 76 sq.
286 THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER chap.
Making
rain by
means of
the dead.
throwing stones on a grave, in order that the ghost may fall
into a passion and avenge the disturbance, js he imagines,
by sending heavy rain.^ This may explain a rain-charm
which seems to have been practised by the Mauretanians in
antiquity. A mound in the shape of a man lying on his
back was pointed out as the grave of the giant Antaeus ;
and if any earth were dug up and removed from it, rain
fell till the soil was replaced.^ Perhaps the rain was the
revenge the surly giant took for being wakened from his long
sleep. Sometimes, in order to procure rain, the Toradjas
of Central Celebes make an appeal to the pity of the
dead. Thus, in the village of Kalingooa, in Kadombookoo,
there is the grave of a famous chief, the grandfather of the
present ruler. When the land suffers from unseasonable
drought, the people go to this grave, pour water on it, and
say, " O grandfather, have pity on us ; if it is your will that
this year we should eat, then give rain." After that they
hang a bamboo full of water over the grave ; there is a
small hole in the lower end of the bamboo, so that the
water drips from it continually. The bamboo is always re-
filled with water until rain drenches the ground.^ Here, as
in New Caledonia, we find religion blent with magic, for
the prayer to the dead chief, which is purely religious, is
eked out with a magical imitation of rain at his grave.
We have seen that the Baronga of Delagoa Bay drench
the tombs of their ancestors, especially the tombs of twins,
as a rain-charm.* In Zululand the native girls form a
procession and carry large pots of water to a certain tree
which chances to be on a mission station. When the girls
were asked why they did this, they said that an old ancestor
of theirs had been buried under the tree, and as he was a
great rain-maker in his life, they always came and poured
water on his grave in time of drought, in order that he
might send them rain.^ This ceremony partakes of the
nature of religion, since it implies an appeal for help to a
deceased ancestor. Purely religious, on the other hand, are
1 A. C. Kruijt, " Regen lokken en ^ Mela, Chorografhia, iii. io6.
regen verdrijving bij de Toradja's van ^ A. C. Kruijt, op. cit. pp. 3 sq.
Central Celebes," Tijdsehrift voor * Above, p. 268.
Indische Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde, ^ Dudley Kidd, The Essential Kofi?
xliv. (1901) p. 6, citing v. Baarda. (London, 1904), p. 115.
V THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF RAIN 287
some means adopted by the Herero of south-western Africa
to procure rain. If a drought has lasted long, the whole
tribe goes with its cattle to the grave of some eminent man ;
it may be the father or grandfather of the chief. They lay
offerings of milk and flesh on the grave and utter their
plaint : " Look, O Father, upon your beloved cattle and
children ; they suffer distress, they are so lean, they are
dying of hunger. Give us rain." The ears of the spectator
are deafened by the lowing and bleating of herds and flocks,
the shouts of herdsmen, the barking of dogs, and the
screams of women.\ Among some of the Indian tribes in
the region of the Orinoco it was customary for the relations
of a deceased person to disinter his bones a year after
burial, burn them, and scatter the ashes to the winds, because
they believed that the ashes were changed into rain, which
the dead man sent in return for his obsequies.^ The Chinese
are convinced that when human bodies remain unburied,
the souls of their late owners feel the discomfort of rain, just
as living men would do if they were exposed without shelter
to the inclemency of the weather. These wretched souls,
therefore, do all in their power to prevent the rain from
falling, and often their efforts are only too successful. Then
drought ensues, the most dreaded of all calamities in China,
because bad harvests, dearth, and famine follow in its train.
Hence it has been a common practice of the Chinese
authorities in time of drought to inter the dry bones of the
unburied dead for the purpose of putting an end to the
scourge and conjuring down the rain.*
Animals, again, often play an important part in these Making
weather-charms. The Anula tribe of northern Australia ^g^^^f^,
associate the dollar-bird with rain, and call it the rain-bird, animals.
A man who has the bird for his totem can make rain at
a certain pool. He catches a snake, puts it alive into the
pool, and after holding it under water for a time takes it
1 Missionar P. H. Brincker, " Beo- - A. Caulin, Histaria coro-graphica
bachtungen iiber die Deisilamonie der natural y evangelica dela Nueva Anda-
Eingeborenen Deutsch-Siidwest-Afri- lucia, Provincias de Cumafia, Guayana
kas," Globus, Iviii. {1890) p. 323; y Vertientes del Rio Orinoco, p. ^2.
id. . in Mitteilungen des Seminars fiir
orientalische Sprachen zu Berlin, iii. ^ J. J. M. de Gioot, The Religious
(1900) Dritte Abteilung, p. 89. System of China, iii. 918 sqq.
288 THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER chap.
Making out, kills it, and lays it down by the side of the creek. Then
ram by j^^ niakes an arched bundle of grass stalks in imitation of
means of c>
animals, a rainbow, and sets it up over the snake. After that all
he does is to sing over the snake and the mimic rainbow ;
sooner or later the rain will fall. They explain this pro-
cedure by saying that long ago the dollar-bird had as a
mate at this spot a snake, who lived in the pool and used
to make rain by spitting up into the sky till a rainbow and
clouds appeared and rain fell.-' The Tjingilli of northern
Australia make rain in an odd way. One of them will
catch a fat bandicoot and carry it about, singing over it till
the animal grows very thin and weak. Then he lets it go,
and rain will follow.^ When some of the Blackfoot Indians
were at war in summer and wished to bring on a tempest,
they would take a kit-fox skin and rub it with dirt and
water, which never failed to be followed by a storm of rain.^
The Thompson Indians of British Columbia think that when
the loon calls loud and often, it will soon rain, and that to
mimic the cry of the bird may bring the rain down.* The
fish called the small sculpin, which abounds along the rocky
shore of Norton Sound, is called by the Esquimaux the
rain-maker ; they say that if a person takes one of these fish
in his hand heavy rain will follow.* If Aino fishermen
desire to bring on rain and wind, they pray to the skulls of
racoons and then throw water over each other. Should they
wish the storm to increase they put on gloves and caps of
racoon -skin and dance. Then it blows great guns.* In
Ma-hlaing, a district of Upper Burma, when rain is scarce,
the people pray to a certain fish called nga-yan to send it.
They also catch some fish and put them in a tub, while
offerings of plantains and other food are made to the monks
in the name of the fish. After that the fish are let loose in
' Spencer and Gillen, Northern North Pacific Expedition, vol. i. part
Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 314 iv.).
^?- „ - r--,i .. •. ' E. W. Nelson, "The Eskimo
Spencer and GiUen, op. cU. p. ^^^^^^ j^^^.^^ ^^^^^^,, ^^^^^,,^^^ ^„.
■',■ _ „. ,, „, ,,. ,, nua! Report of the Bureau of American
, B- ^^">"^"' ^^'^^>' ^""^Se Ethnology, part i. (Washington, 1899)
Tales, p. 262.
J. Teit, "The Thompson In<lians,"
p. 446.
p. 374 {Memoir of the American * J. Batchelor, The Ainu and their
Museum of Natural History, The Jesup Folklore (London, 1901), p. 334.
V THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF RAIN 289
a stream or pond, with gold-leaf stuck on their heads. If Making
live fish are not to be had, wooden ones are used and answer means^'of
the purpose just as well.^ When the Chirus of Manipur a°™*'s.
wish to make rain they catch a crab and put it in a pot of
water. Then the headman goes to the gate of the village
and keeps lifting the crab out of the water and putting it
back into it till he is tired.^ An ancient Indian mode of
making rain was to throw an otter into the water.^ If the
sky refuses rain and the cattle are perishing, an Arab sheikh
will sometimes stand in the middle of the camp and cry,
" Redeem yourselves, O people, redeem yourselves ! " At
these words every family sacrifices a sheep, divides it in two,
and hanging the pieces on two poles passes between them.
Children too young to walk are carried by their mother.*
But this custom has rather the appearance of a sacrifice
than of a charm. In southern Celebes people try to make
rain by carrying a cat tied in a sedan chair thrice round the
parched fields, while they drench it with water from bamboo
squirts. When the cat begins to miaul, they say, " O lord,
let rain fall on us." ^ A common way of making rain in
many parts of Java is to bathe a cat or two cats, a male
and a female ; sometimes the animals are carried in pro-
cession with music. Even in Batavia you may from time
to time see children going about with a cat for this purpose ;
when they have ducked it in a pool, they let it go.^
' {^\x)],Q,.%co\X, Gazetteer of upper Africa, p. 278) or of purification
Burma and the Shan States, part ii. (Plutarch, Quaestiones Romanae, ill;
vol. ii. (Rangoon, 1 90 1) p. 280. ApoUodorus, Bibliotheca, iii. 13. 7 ;
2 T. C. Hodson, "The Native Livy, xl. 6; E. Casalis, The Basutos,
Tribes of Manipur," Journal of the p. 256; S. Krascheninnikow, -S^jf^m-
Anthropological Institute, xxxi. (1901) bung des Landes Kamtschatka, pp.277
p. 308. sq.\ Compare my note on Pausanias,
^ H. Oldenberg, Die Religion des iii. 20. 9.
Veda^. 507. ., ^ , 6 B. F. Matthes, "Over de ddSs
■• Fr. A. Taussen, " Coutumes , . j m 1
, ;. „ n-i,- « -1 of gewoonten der Makassaren en
arabes '• Revue Btbhque, Apr.l 1903, g^ i^gezen," Verslagen en Mededee-
p. 248. Elsewhere the same writer ^^^ Koninklijke Akademie van
describes this ceremony as a mode of ^^t.^,,,,^^^ Afdeeling Letterkunde,
putting a stop to cholera. See his ^^^^^ ^J .j_ (Amsterdam, 1885)
Coutumes des Arabes au pays de Moab „ -gg • ji
(Paris, 1908), p. 362. To pass be- ' '
tween the pieces of a sacrificial victim ^ G. A. J. Hazeu, " Kleine bijdra-
is a form of oath (Genesis xv. 9 sag. ; gen tot de ethnografie en folklore van
Jeremiah xxxiv. 18 ; Dictys Cretensis, Java," Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-
Bell. Trojan, i. 15 ; R. Moffat, Mis- Land- en Volkenkunde, xlvi. (1903)
nonary Lal'Ours and Scents in Southern p. 298.
VOL. I U
290 THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER chap.
Making
rain by
means of
black
animals.
Often in order to give effect to the rain-charm the animal
must be black. Thus an ancient Indian way of bringing
on rain was to set a black horse with his face to the west
and rub him with a black cloth till he neighed.-' In the
Beni-Chougran tribe of North Africa women lead a black
cow in procession, while other women sprinkle the whole
group with water as a means of wringing a shower from the
sky.^ To procure rain the Peruvian Indians used to
set a black sheep in a field, poured chica over it, and gave
the animal nothing to eat until rain fell.^ Once when a
drought lasting five months had burnt up their pastures and
withered the corn, the Caffres of Natal had recourse to a
famous witch, who promised to procure rain without delay.
A black sheep having been produced, an incision was made
in the animal near the shoulder and the gall taken out.
Part of this the witch rubbed over her own person, part she
drank, part was mixed with medicine. Some of the medicine
was then rubbed on her body ; the rest of it, attached to a
stick, was fixed in the fence of a calves' pen. The woman
next harangued the clouds. When the sheep was to be
cooked, a new fire was procured by the friction of fire-sticks ;
in ordinary circumstances a brand would have been taken
from one of the huts.* Among the Wambugwe, a Bantu
people of eastern Africa, when the sorcerer desires to make
rain he takes a black sheep and a black calf in bright sun-
shine, and has them placed upon the roof of the large com-
mon hut in which the people live together. Then he slits
open the stomachs of the animals and scatters their contents
in all directions. After that he pours water and medicine
into a vessel ; if the charm has succeeded, the water boils up
and rain follows. On the other hand, if the sorcerer wishes
to prevent rain from falling, he withdraws into the interior
of the hut, and there heats a rock-crystal in a calabash.^ In
order to procure rain the Wagogo of German East Africa
sacrifice black fowls, black sheep, and black cattle at the
• A. Hillebrandt, Vedische Offer
Kna Zoa&r (Strasburg, 1897), p. 120.
- E. Doutte, Magie et religion dans
rAfrique du ' Nord, p. 583.
^ Acosta, History of the Indies, bk.
V. ch. xxviii (vol. ii. p. 376, Hakluyt
Society).
* J. Shooter, The Kafirs of Matal
and the Zulu Country (London, 1857),
pp. 212 syf.
* O. Baumann, Durch Massailand
zur Mlquelle IfiexVm, 1 894), p. 188.
V THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF RAIN 291
graves of dead ancestors, and the rain-maker wears black Making
clothes during the rainy season.^ Among the Matabele the '^'" ^'^ ,
'=' ■/ o means of
rain-charm employed by sorcerers was made from the blood black
and gall of a black ox.^ In a district of Sumatra, in order ^°™^^-
to procure rain, all the women of the village, scantily clad,
go to the river, wade into it, and splash each other with the
water. A black cat is thrown into the stream and made to
swim about for a while, then allowed to escape to the bank,
pursued by the splashing of the women.^ The Garos of
Assam offer a black goat on the top of a very high moun-
tain in time of drought* In all these cases the colour of
the animal is part of the charm ; being black, it will darken
the sky with rain-clouds. So the Bechuanas burn the
stomach of an ox at evening, because they say, " The black
smoke will gather the clouds and cause the rain to come."^
The Timorese sacrifice a black pig to the Earth-goddess for
rain, a white or red one to the Sun-god for sunshine.® The
Angoni, a tribe of Zulu descent to the north of the Zambesi,
sacrifice a black ox for rain and a white one for fine weather.'''
■ Among the high mountains of Japan there is a district in
which, if rain has not fallen for a long time, a party of
villagers goes in procession to the bed of a mountain torrent,
headed by a priest, who leads a black dog. At the chosen
spot they tether the beast to a stone, and make it a target
for their bullets and arrows. When its life-blood bespatters
the rocks, the peasants throw down their weapons and lift
up their voices in supplication to the dragon divinity of the
1 H. Cole, " Notes on the Wagogo Folklore Society, i. (1879) p. 34.
of German East MA^^,yourrml of the , g_ ^ q^^^^, .. £,„, ^^^„d
Anthropologuallnstttute, xxxii. (1902) j^ ^^ binnenlanden vL Timor," Ver-
P' „-^ ^'' , „, „ . f handelingen van het Bataviaasch Ge-
2 L. Decle, Three Years m Savage j 7 1 1^ ^ tjz ^ 7 ^
...,-. ,' oo^ - nootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschap-
4/«<:a (London, 1898), p. 154. ^. 20Q • H Zondervan
■ irvj "!^'"'^"' ^olKsoescnnj .<ximorendeTimoreezen,» Tw^jf^r?//-
vtng van MjOden-Sumara^ pp. 320.?.; ^^^ ^^^ Nederlandsch AardrijkskuJig
J. L. van der Toom, "Het ammisme (;,„,,,,,^^^. Xweede Serie, v. (1888)
bii den Minangkabauer der Ji:'aaangsche acj ,• •■. v, -j X 1
' , , ,f „--j ^ -, J % J Aideelme, meer uitgebreide artikelen,
^M-ve.Ti\s.Xi&ii-a" Bijdragen tot de Taal- ^02 a
Land-enVolkenkundevanNederlandsch- ""' * "'
/WiV, xxxix. (1890) p. 93. ' C. Wiese, " Beitrage zur Ge-
* 'E.T.DsiXion, Descriptive Ethnology schichte der Zulu im Norden des
of Bengal, p. 88. Zambesi, namentlich der Angoni,"
' Folklore Journal, edited by the Zeitschrift fiir Ethnologie, xxyAi. (1^00)
Working Committee of the South African p. 198.
292 THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER chap.
Stream, exhorting him to send down forthwith a shower to
cleanse the spot from its defilement. Custom has prescribed
that on these occasions the colour of the victim shall be
black, as an emblem of the wished-for rain-clouds. But if
fine weather is wanted, the victim must be white, without a
spot.^
Frogs and The intimate association of frogs and toads with water
reMon'to ^^^ earned for these creatures a widespread reputation as
rain- custodians of rain ; and hence they often play a part in
charms designed to draw needed showers from the sky.
Some of the Indians of the Orinoco held the toad to be the
god or lord of the watersj and for that reason feared to kill
the creature, even when they were ordered to do so. They
have been known to keep frogs under a pot and to beat
them with rods when there was a drought.^ It is said that
the Aymara Indians of Peru and Bolivia often make little
images of frogs and other aquatic animals and place them
on the tops of the hills as a means of bringing down rain.^
In some parts of south-eastern Australia, where the rainfall
is apt to be excessive, the natives feared to injure Tidelek,
the frog, or Bluk, the bull-frog, because they were said to be
full of water instead of intestines, and great rains would
follow if one of them were killed. The frog family was
often referred to as Bunjil Willung or Mr. Rain. A tradi-
tion ran that once upon a time long ago the frog drank up
all the water in the lakes and rivers, and then sat in the dry
1 W. Weston, Mountaineering and ii. 237, note. On the supposed rela-
Exphration in the Japanese Alps tion of the frog or toad to water in
(London, 1896), pp. 162 sq. ; id., in America, see further E. J. Payne,
Journal of the Anthropological Insti- History of the New World called
tute, XLxri. (1897) p. 30 ; id., in The America, i. 420 sq., 425 sqq. He
Geographical Journal, vii. (1 896) pp. observes that "throughout the New
143 sq. World, from Florida to Chile, the
,. ^ ,..„.,. ^ . , . worship of the frog or toad, as the
* A, Caulm, Htstoria Loro-graplnca rr ■ c .. jii_ i_ij
, 7-jr»rJj ofisprmg of water and the symbol of
natural y evangelua dela Nueva Anda- ... • ■. • j li. n-
, . ri ■ ■ J /^ ~ 1^ the water-spirit, accompanied the culti-
lucta, Prcrvincias de Lumana, Guayana .. c ■ ,, , ^ a
„ ' . , J , D- n ■ „/: vation 01 maize (p. 425). A species
y Vertientes del Rio Orinoco, p. 96 ; - . ^ , • n j r, .. ^
■'„,,. , . .1 1 • ; J of water toad is called by the Arau-
Courmbia, being a geographical, etc., . r ,-u-i' <i il- i_ • -a
' J- ^r J-.- canians 01 Chill PKKiTf;, " which sigmnes
acccmnt of the country, 1. 642 sq. ; , j r ., . .x. u i- ^i. ..
, _ . •' „ . ^ ,^ ,.. , J , ' lord of the water, as they believe that
A. Basdan, Du Lulturlander des alien '
it .watches over the preservation and
contributes to the salubrity of the
Anurika, ii. 216
^ D. Forbes,
Indians of Boiivi
of the Ethnological Society of London, London, 1809, i. 179).
^ D. Forbes, " On the Aymara waters " (J. I. Molina, Geographical,
Indians of Bolivia and Vt^-a," Journal Natural, and Civil History of Chili,
V THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF RAIN 293
reed beds swollen to an enormous size, saying, " Bluk !
bluk ! " in a deep gurgling voice. All the other animals
wandered about gaping and gasping for a drop of moisture,
but finding none, they agreed that they must all die of
thirst unless they could contrive to make the frog laugh.
So they tried one after the other, but for a long time in
vain. At last the conger eel and his relations, hung round
with lake grass and gay sea-weed, reared themselves on their
tails and pranced round the fire. This was too much for
the frog. He opened his mouth and laughed till the w^ater
ran out and the lakes and streams were full once more.^
We have seen that some of the Queensland aborigines
imitate the movements and cries of frogs as part of a rain-
charm.^ The Thompsori River Indians of British Columbia Frogs used
and some people in Europe think that to kill, a frog brines '" '''''''-
, n 00 chflxins
on rain. In order to procure rain people of low caste in
the Central Provinces of India will tie a frog to a rod
covered with green leaves and branches of the ntni tree
{Azadirachta Indica) and carry it from door to door
singing —
Send soon, O frog, the jewel of water !
And ripen the wheat and millet in the field*
In Kumaon, a district of north-western India, one way
of bringing on rain when it is needed is to hang a frog
with its mouth up on a tall bamboo or on a tree for a
day or two. The notion is that the god of rain, seeing the
creature in trouble, will take pity on it and send the rain.*
In the district of Muzaffarpur in India the vulgar believe
that the cry of a frog is most readily heard by the God of
' Mary E. B. Howitt, Folklore and § 244 ; E. Gerard, The Land beyond
Legends of some Victorian Tribes (in the Forest, ii. 13.
manuscript). The story is told in an 4 at t>t tt ,
abridged form bv Dr. A. W Howitt ^- ^- Venketswami, " Super-
(Journal of the 'Anthropological Insti- ^t^'^ps among Hindus in the Central
tute, xviii. (1889) pp. 54 so ) Provinces," Indian Antiquary, xxvni.
2 Above, p 255 (1899) p. HI. Compare E. Thurston,
s J. Teit, '' The' Thompson Indians ^'''^" ''"'^ ^"^" "f ^'"'''""■^ ^"dia,
of British Columbia," Memoirs of the '^' '~' '^'
American Museum of Natural History, 6 jsiorth Indian Notes and Queries,
The Jesup North Pacific Expedition, iii. p. 134, § 285 ; W. Crooke,
vol. i. part iv. (April 1900) p. 346; Popular Religion and Folklore of
A. Kuhn, Sagen, Gebrduche und Northern India (Westminster, 1896),
Miir'.hen aus Westfalen, ii. p. 80, i. 73.
s
294 THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER chap.
Frogs used Rain. Hence in a year of drought the low-caste females
in rain-
charms.
mrajn- ^f ^ village assemble at, evening and put a frog in a small
earthen pot together with water taken from five different
houses. The pot with the frog is then placed in the hollow
wooden cup into which the lever used for pounding rice
falls. Being raised with the foot and then allowed to
drop, the lever crushes the frog to death ; and while the
creature emits his dying croak the women sing songs in a
loud voice about the dearth of water.^ The Kapus or
Reddis are a large and prosperous caste of cultivators and
landowners in the Madras Presidency. When rain fails,
women of the caste will catch a frog and tie it alive to
a new winnowing fan made of bamboo. On this fan they
spread a few margosa leaves and go from door to door
singing, " Lady frog must have her bath. Oh ! rain-god,
give a little water for her at least." While the Kapu
women sing this song, the woman of the house pours water
over the frog and gives an alms, convinced that by so doing
she will soon bring rain down in torrents.^ Again, in order
to procure rain the Malas, who are the pariahs of the Telugu
country in Southern India, tie a live frog to a mortar and
put a mud figure of Gontiyalamma over it. Then they
carry the mortar, frog, and all in procession, singing, " Mother
frog, playing in water, pour rain by pots full," while the
villagers of other castes pour water over them.^ Beliefs
like these might easily develop into a worship of frogs
regarded as personifying the powers of water and rain. In
the Rig Veda there is a hymn about frogs which appears to
be substantially a rain-charm.* The Newars, the. aboriginal
inhabitants of Nepaul, worship the frog as a creature
associated with the demi-god Nagas in the production and
control of rain and the water-supply, on which the welfare
of the crops depends. A sacred character is attributed to
the little animal, and every care is taken not to molest or
injure it The worship of the frog is performed on the
seventh day of the month Kartik (October), usually at a
' Journal of the Asiatic Society of ^ E. Thurston, op. cit, iv. 387.
Bengal, Ixxii., part 3, Anthropology * M. Bloomfield, "On the ' Frog-
(CalcQtta, 1904), p. 39. hymn,' Rig Veda, vii. \02„" Journal
^ E. Thurston, Castes and Tribes of of the American Oriental Society, xvii.
Southern India, iii. 245. (1896) pp. 173-179.
V THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF RAIN 295
pool which is known to be frequented by frogs, although it
is not essential to the efficacy of the rite that a frog should
be actually seen at the time. After carefully washing his
face and hands, the priest takes five brazen bowls and places
in them five separate offerings, namely, rice, flowers, milk
and vermilion, ghee and incense, and water. Lighting the
pile of ghee and incense, the priest says, " Hail, Parem&vara
Bhlminitha ! I pray you receive these offerings and send
us :imely rain, and bless our crops ! " ^
Some of these customs and beliefs may be, at least in Suggested
part, based on the frog's habit of storing up water in its ^.''p'^"^-
bocy against seasons of drought ; when it is caught at such connexioa
times, it squirts the water out in a jet.^ On seeing a frog °^th°rain
emit a gush of water when all around was dry and parched,
savages might easily infer that the creature had caused the
drought by swallowing all the water, and that in order to
restore its moisture to the thirsty ground they had only
to make the frog disgorge its secret store of the precious
liquid.
Among some tribes of South Africa, when too much rain Stopping
falls, the wizard, accompanied by a large crowd, repairs to ^^n'^of
the house of a family where there has been no death for a rabbits and
ver>' long time, and there he burns the skin of a coney. As ^^"'P™*^-
it burns he shouts, " The rabbit is burning," and the cry is
taken up by the whole crowd, who continue shouting till they
are exhausted.^ This no doubt is supposed to stop the rain.
Equally effective is a method adopted by gypsies in Austria.
When the rain has continued to pour steadily for a long time,
to the great discomfort of these homeless vagrants, the men of
the band assemble at a river and divide themselves into two
parties. Some of them cut branches with which to make a
raft, while the others collect hazel leaves and cover the raft
with them. A witch thereupon lays a dried serpent, wrapt
1 A. L. Waddell, "Frog-Worship instance of a frog thus caught in a
among the Newars," The Indian Anti- drought and made to disgorge its hoard
quary, xxii. (1 893) pp. 292-294. The of water, see E. Aymonier, Voyage dans
title Bhumlnatha, " Lord' or Protector le Laos i^zxSs, 1895-1897), ii. 284 sq.
of the Soil," is specially reserved for 3 J. Macdonald, " Manners, Customs,
the iiog. The title Paremesvara is Superstitions, and Religions of South
given to all the Newar divinities. African Tribes," Journal of the An-
^ Eiuyclepaedia Britannica, 9th edi- thropological Institute, xix. ( 1 890) p.
tion, s.v. "Frog," ix. 796. For an 295.
rio^eikce to
who con-
tzols the
wes-ther.
296 r//£ MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER chap.
in white rags, on the raft, which is then carried by several
men to the river. Women are not allowed to be present at
this part of the ceremony. While the procession moves
towards the river, the witch marches behind the raft singing
a song, of which the burden is a statement that gypsies do
not like water, and have no urgent need of serpents' milk,
coupled with the expression of a hope that the serpent may
see his way to swallow the water, that he may run to his
mother and drink milk from her breasts, and that the sun
may shine out, bringing back mirth and jollity to gypsy
hearts. Transylvanian gypsies will sometimes expose the
dried carcase of a serpent to the pouring rain, " in order that
the serpent may convince himself of the inclemency of the
weather, and so grant the people's wish." ^
i>5:3g This last custom is an example of an entirely different
mode of procuring rain, to which people sometimes have
recourse in extreme cases, when the drought is long and
their temper short. At such times they will drop the usual
hocus-pocus of imitative magic altogether, and being far too
angry to waste their breath in prayer they seek by threats
and curses or even downright physical force to extort the
waters of heaven from the supernatural being who has, so to
say, cut them off at the main. Thus, in Muzaffarnagar, a town
of the Punjaub, when the rains are excessive, the people draw
a figure of a certain Muni or Rishi Agastya on a loin-cloth
and put it out in the rain, or they paint his figure on the
outside of the house and let the rain wash it off. This Muni
or Rishi Agastya is a great personage in the native folklore,
and enjoys the reputation of being able to stop the rain. It
is supposed that he will exercise his power as soon as he is
thus made to feel in effigy the misery of wet weather.^ On
the other hand, when rain is wanted at Chhatarpur, a native
state in Bundelcund, they paint two figures with their legs
up and their heads down on a wall that faces east ;
one of the figures represents Indra, the other Megha Raja,
the lord of rain. They think that in this uncomfortable
position these powerful beings will soon be glad to send
1 H. Ton Wlislocki, Volksglaube 2 w. Crooke, Popular Religion and
und rehgioser Branch dir Zigeuner Folklore of Northern India (West-
(Munster i. W., 1891), pp. (>A, sq. minster, 1896), i. 76.
V THE MAGICAL 'CONTROL OF RAIN 297
the much -needed showers.^ In a Japanese village, when
the guardian divinity had Jong been deaf to the peasants'
prayers for rain, they at iast threw down his image and,
with curses Joud and long, hurled it head foremost into
a stinking rice-field. "There," they said, "you may stay
yourself for a while, to see how you will feel after a few
days' scorching in this broiling sun that is burning the
life from our cracking fields." ^ In the like circum-
stances the Feloupes of Senegambia cast down their
fetishes and drag them about the fields, cursing them till
rain falls.^ In Okunomura, a Japanese village not far
from Tokio, when rain is wanted, an artificial dragon is
made out of straw, reeds, bamboos, and magnolia leaves.
Preceded by a Shinto priest, attended by men carrying
paper flags, and followed by others beating a big drum, the
dragon is carried in procession from the Buddhist temple
and finally thrown into a waterfall.* When the spirits with-
hold rain or sunshine, the Comanches whip a slave ; if the
gods prove obstinate, the victim is almost flayed alive.^
The Chinese are adepts in the art of taking the kingdom Chinese
of heaven by storm. Thus, when rain is wanted they make compeUing
a huse dragon of paper or wood to represent the rain-god, the gods to
and carry it about in procession ; but if no ram toilows, the
mock-dragon is execrated and torn to pieces.^ At other
times they threaten and beat the god if he does not give
rain ; sometimes they publicly depose him from the rank of
deity. On the other hand, if the wished-for rain falls, the
god is promoted to a higher rank by an imperial decree.'^
It is said that in the reign of Kia-King, fifth emperor of the
' W. Crooke, o/. cit. i. 74. rather than a punishment.
'- \V. Weston, Mimntaineering and 5 jj. h. Bancroft, Native Races of
Exp'.oratimi in tht Japanese Alps (Lon- ^^^ Pacific States, i. 520.
don,^896),^p. ^6-^^^^_p,^^^^^ ^^ Hue, VKmfire chinois^ (Paris,
Peuplades de la Siiiigambie (Paris, l°°2), 1. 241.
1879) P- 291. "^ Mg"" Rizzolati, in Annales de la
* R. Lange, "Bitten um Regen in Propagation de la Foi, xvi. (1844) p.
Jacan.^^ Zeitschrift des Vereins ftir 350; Mgr Retord, ib. xxviii. (1856)
Vkkskumi:, uL (1893) pp. 334 -t?- P- 102. In Tonquin also a mandarin
Compare W. G. Aston, Shinto (Lon- has been Imown to whip an image of
doa, 1905), p. 153. However, the Buddha for not sending rain. See
tixovdng of the dragon into the water- Annaiss de f Association de la Propaga-
iM may be a homoeopathic charm tion de la Foi, iv. (1830) p. 330.
cnve rain.
298 THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER chap.
Chinese Manchu dynasty, a long drought desolated several provinces
modes of ^f northern China. Processions were of no avail ; the rain-
compelling ^ , -. ..
the gods to dragon hardened his heart and would not let a drop lalJ.
At last the emperor lost patience and condemned the
recalcitrant deity to perpetual exile on the banks of the
river Illi in the province of Torgot. The decree was in process
of execution ; the divine criminal, with a touching resigna-
tion, was already traversing the deserts of Tartary to work
out his sentence on the borders of Turkestan, when the
judges of the High Court of Peking, moved with compassion,
flung themselves at the feet of the emperor and implored
his pardon for the poor devil. The emperor consented to
revoke his doom, and a messenger set off at full gallop to
bear the tidings to the executors of the imperial justice.
The dragon was reinstated in his office on condition of
performing his duties a little better in future.^ About
the year 1 7 10 the island of Tsong-ming, which belongs to
the province of Nanking, was afflicted with a drought. The
viceroy of the province, after the usual attempts to soften
the heart of the local deity by burning incense-sticks had
been made in vain, sent word to the idol that if rain did not
fall by such and such a day, he would have him turned out
of the city and his temple razed to the ground. The threat
had no effect on the obdurate divinity ; the day of grace
came and went, and yet no rain fell. Then the indignant
viceroy forbade the people to make any more offerings at
the shrine of this unfeeling deity, and commanded that the
temple should be shut up and seals placed on the doors.
This soon produced the desired effect. Cut off from his
base of supplies, the idol had no choice but to surrender at
discretion. Rain fell in a few days, and thus the god was
restored to the affections of the faithful.^ In some parts of
China the mandarins procure rain or fine weather by shutting
the southern or the northern gates of the city. For the
south wind brings drought and the north wind brings showers.
Hence by closing the southern and opening the northern
gates you clearly exclude drought and admit rain ; whereas
contrariwise by shutting the northern and opening the
' Hue, UEmpire chinois,^ i. ^241 sq.
2 Lettres idifiantts el curieiises, Nouvelle fedition, xviii. 210.
V THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF RAIN 299
southern gates you bar out the clouds and the wet and let
in sunshine and genial warmth.^ In April 1888 the man-
darins of Canton prayed to the god Lung-wong to stop the
incessant downpour of rain ; and when he turned a deaf ear to
their petitions they put him in a lock-up for five days. This
had a salutary effect. The rain ceased and the god was re-
stored to liberty. Some years before, in time of drought, the
same deity had been chained and exposed to the sun for days
in the courtyard of his temple in order that he might feel for
himself the urgent need of rain.^ So when the Siamese need Siamese
rain, they setout their idols in the blazing sun ; but if they ^nst^aiL-
want dry weather, they unroof the temples and let the rain ing the
pour down on the idols. They think that the inconvenience |°ve^rain.
to which the gods are thus subjected will induce them to grant
the wishes of their worshippers.' When the rice-crop is
endangered by long drought, the governor of Battambang, a
province of Siam, goes in great state to a certain pagoda
and prays to Buddha for rain. Then, accompanied by his
suite and followed by an enormous crowd, he adjourns to a
plain behind the pagoda. Here a dummy figure has been
made up, dressed in bright colours, and placed in the middle
of the plain. A wild music begins to play ; maddened by
the din of drums and cymbals and crackers, and goaded on
by their drivers, the elephants charge down on the dummy
and trample it to pieces. After this, Buddha will soon give
rain.*
The reader may smile at the meteorology of the Far Compei-
East ; but precisely similar modes of procuring rain have ^^ \q
been resorted to in Christian Europe within our own life- give rain
time. By the end of April 1893 there was great distress
in Sicily for lack of water. The drought had lasted six
months. Every day the sun rose and set in a sky of
cloudless blue. The gardens of the Conca d'Oro, which
surround Palermo with a magnificent belt of verdure, were
1 J. Bertrand, in Annales de la ^ Mgr Brugui^re, in Annales de
Propagation dc la Foi, xxii. (1850) V Association de la Propagation de la
PP- 351-355; VV. W. Rockhill, The Foi, v. (1831), p. 131.
Land of the Lamas (London, 1 89 1),
p. 311. * Brian, " Aper9U sur la province de
' Rev. E. Z. Simmons, " Idols and Battambang," Cochinchine Fran^aise:
Spirits," Chinese Recorder and Mis- excursions et reconnaissances. No. 25
sionar) Journal, xix. (1888) p. 502. (Saigon, 1886), pp. 6 sq.
300 THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER chap.
Compelling withering. Food was becoming scarce. The people were
the saints jj^ ax^z.x, alarm. All the most approved methods of pro-
to give rain *^ ^ ^ ^
in Sicily. Curing rain had been tried without effect. Processions had
traversed the streets and the fieWs. Men, women, and
children, telling their beads, had lain whole nights before
the holy images. Consecrated candles had burned day
and night in the churches. Palm branches, blessed on
Palm Sunday, had been hung on the trees. At Solaparuta,
in accordance with a very old custom, the dust swept from
the churches on Palm Sunday had been spread on the
fields. In ordinary years these holy sweepings preserve the
crops ; but that year, if you will believe me, they had no
effect whatever. At Nicosia the inhabitants, bare-headed
and bare -foot, carried the crucifixes through all the wards
of the town and scourged esich other with iron whips.
It was all in vain. Even the great St. Francis of Paola
himself, who annually performs the miracle of rain and
is carried ever>' spring through the market-gardens, either
could not or would not help. Masses, vespers, concerts,
illuminations, fire-works — ^ nothing could move him. At
last the peasants began to lose patience. Most of the
saints were banished. At Palermo they dumped St.
Joseph in a garden to see the state of things for
himself, and they swore to leave him there in the
sun till rain fell. Other saints were turned, like naughty
children, with their faces to the wall. Others again,
stripped of their beautiful robes, were exiled far from their
parishes, threatened, grossly insulted, ducked in horse-
ponds. At Caltanisetta the golden wings of St. Michael
the Archangel were torn from his shoulders and replaced
with wings of pasteboard ; his purple mantle was taken
away and a clout wrapt about him instead. At Licata
the patron saint, St. Angelo, fared even worse, for he was
left without any garments at all ; he was reviled, he was
put in irons, he was threatened with drowning or hanging.
"Rain or the rope!" roared the angry people at him, as
they shook their fists in his face.''
1 G. Vuillier, " La Sicile, inipres- pare G. Pitre, Usi e costumi, credenze
sions du present et du passe," Toitr du c pregiudizi del popolo sicilianOy iii.
monde, Ixvii. (1894) pp. 54 sq. Com- (Palermo, 1889) pp. 142-144. As to
V THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF RAIN 301
Another way of constraining the rain-god is to disturb Disturbing
him in his haunts. This seems to be the reason why rain is "^Y^'""
J god m his
supposed to follow the troubling of a sacred spring. The haunts.
Dards believe that if a cow-skin or anything impure is placed
in certain springs, storms will follow.'' In the mountains of
Farghana there was a place where rain began to fall as soon
as anything dirty was thrown into a certain famous well.^
Again, in Tabaristan there was said to be a cave in the
mountain of Tak which had only to be defiled by filth or
milk for the rain to begin to fall, and to continue falling till
the cave was cleansed.' Gervasius mentions a spring, into
which if a stone or a stick were thrown, rain would at once
issue from it and drench the thrower.* There was a fountain
in Munster such that if it were touched or even looked at by
a human being, it would at once flood the whole province
with rain.^ In -Normandy a wizard will sometimes repair
to a spring, sprinkle flour on it, and strike the water with
a hazel rod, while he chants his spell. A mist then rises
from the spring and condenses in the shape of heavy clouds,
which discharge volleys of hail on the orchards and corn-
fields.^ When rain was long of coming in the Canary
Islands, the priestesses used to beat the sea with rods to
punish the water-spirit for his niggardliness.^ Among the
natural curiosities of Annam are the caves of Chua-hang
St. Francis of Paola, who died in 1 507 Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde, xlvi.
and was canonised by Leo X. in 1519, (1903) pp. 299 sq. ; Hue, L'Smpire
see P. Ribadeneiri, Flos Sanctoruvi, chinois^ (Paris, 1862), i. 241.
doe Viti de' Santi (Venice, 1763), i. ^ J. Biddulph, Tribes of the Hindoo
252 sq. : Th. Trede, Das Heidentum ICoosh (Calcutta, 1880), p. 95.
in dir rcmischen Kirche, iii. 45-47; ^ Alblrflnt, The Chronology of An-
G. Pitre, Feste fatronali in Sicilia cient Nations, translated and edited by
(Turin and Palermo, 1900), pp. 49 C. E. Sachau (London, 1879), p 235.
sqq. He was sent for by Louis XI. This and the following passage were
of France, and his fame as a worker pointed out to me by my late friend,
of miracles is still spread over all the W. Robertson Smith.
south of Italy. With the entertain- ^ AlbtrflnJ, loc. cit.
ments given in honour of St Francis * Gervasius von Tilbury, Otia Im-
of Paola to wheedle rain out of him perialia, ed. F. Liebrecht, pp. 41 sq.
we may compare the shadow-plays or ' Giraldus Cambrensis, Topography
puppet-shows given by the Ja\anese of Ireland, ch. 7. Compare W, Mann-
and the comedies played by the hardt, Antike Wald- und Feldkulte, p.
Chinese for the same purpose. Sec 341 note.
T. S. Rafl'.es, A'?j/(-n'^/nz)« (London, 'J. Lecoeur, Esquisses du Bocage
1S17), i. 477 ; G. A. J. Hareu, "Klcine Norniand, ii. 79.
bijdragen tot de ethnografie en de folk- ' L. J. B. B^renger-Feraud, Super-
lore van Java," Tijds<hriftvoor Indische stitions et survivances, i. 473.
302 THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER chap.
or Troc. You may sail into them in a boat under-
ground for a distance of half a mile, and a little way
further in you come to the remains of an ancient altar among
magnificent stalactite columns. The Annamites worship the
spirit of the cave and offer sacrifices at its mouth in time of
drought. From all the villages in the neighbourhood come
boats, the boatmen singing, " Let it rain ! let it rain ! " in
time to the measured dip of their oars in the water. Arrived
at the mouth of the cave, they offer rice and wine to the
spirit, prostrating themselves four times before him. Then
the master of the ceremonies recites a prayer, ties a written
copy of it to the neck of a dog, a^nd flings the animal into
the stream which flows from the grotto. This is done in
order to provoke the spirit of the cave to anger by defiling
his pure water ; for he will then send abundant rains to
sweep far away the carcase of the dead dog which pollutes
the sacred grotto.^
PnciEg Two hundred miles to the east of the land of the Huichol
ror^p^,oD Indians in Mexico there is a sacred spring, and away to the
rain-god. west of their country stretches the Pacific Ocean. To ensure
the fall of rain these Indians carry water from the spring to
the sea, and an. equal quantity of sea-water from the sea to
the spring. The two waters thus transferred will, they
think, feel strange in their new surroundings and will
seek to return to their old homes. Hence they will pass
in the shape of clouds across the Huichol country and
Eidting meeting there will descend as rain.^ Sometimes an appeal
^* tem^ ^^ made to the pity of the gods. When their com is being
burnt up by the sun, the Zulus look out for a " heaven bird,"
kill it, and throw it into a pool. Then the heaven melts
with tenderness for the death of the bird ; " it wails for it by
raining, wailing a funeral wail."^ In Zululand women
sometimes bury their children up to the neck in the ground,
and then retiring to a distance keep up a dismal howl for a
long time. The sky is supposed to melt with pity at the
sight. Then the women dig the children out and feel sure
' Le R. P. Cadiere, " Croyances et pp. 204 sq.
dictons populaires de la Vallee du ^ c. Lumholtz, Unknown Mexico, ii.
Nguon-son, Province de Quang-binh 194.
( Annam)," Bulletin de PEcole Franfaise * H. Callaway, Religious System of the
d' Extriiru-Orient, i. (Hanoi, 1901) Amazttlu, part. iv. (1870), pp. 407 sq
tae
who con'
troi the
rain.
V THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF RAIN 303
that rain will soon follow. They say that they call to " the
lord above " and ask him to send rain. If it comes they
declare that " Usondo rains." ^ In times of drought the
Guanches of Teneriffe led their sheep to sacred ground, and
there they separated the lambs from their dams, that their
plaintive bleating might touch the heart of the god.^ In
Kumaon a way of stopping rain is to pour hot oil in the left
ear of a dog. The animal howls with pain, his howls are
heard by Indra, and out of pity for the beast's sufferings the
god stops the rain.^ Sometimes the Toradjas of Central
Celebes attempt to procure rain as follows. They place
the stalks of certain plants in water, saying, " Go and ask
for rain, and so long as no rain falls I will not plant you
again, but there shall you die." Also they string some
fresh-water snails on a cord, and hang the cord on a tree,
and say to the snails, " Go and ask for rain, and so long as
no rain comes, I will not take you back to the water."
Then the snails go and weep and the gods take pity and send
rain.* However, the foregoing ceremonies are religious rather
than magical, since they involve an appeal to the compassion
of higher powers. A peculiar mode of making rain was
adopted by some of the heathen Arabs. They tied two sorts
of bushes to the tails and hind legs of their cattle, and, setting
fire to the bushes, drove the cattle to the top of a mountain,
praying for rain.' This may be, as Wellhausen suggests,
an imitation of lightning on the horizon ; ' but it may also
be a way of threatening the sky, as some West African rain-
makers put a pot of inflammable materials on the fire and
blow up the flames, threatening that if heaven does not soon
give rain they will send up a blaze which will set the sky
on fire.' In time of drought the priests of the Muyscas in
New Granada ascended a mountain and there burned billets
' Dudley Kidd, The Essential Kafir, Indische Taal- Land- en Volken-
pp. 117 sq. kunde, xliv. (1901) p. 2.
* E. Reclus, NouvelU Ghgraphie ^ Rasmussen, Additamenta ad his-
Universelle, xii. 100. toriam Arabum ante Islamismum, pp.
^ North Indian Notes and Queries, 67 sq. ; I. Goldziher, Muhammedan-
"i- P- 135. § 285 ; W. Crooke, Popular ische Studien (Halle a. S., 1888-1890),
Religion and Folklore of Northern i. 34 sq.
India (Westminster, 1896), i. 77. ^ J. Wellhausen, Reste arabischen
* A. C. Kruijt, "Regen lokken en Heidentums, p. 157 (first edition),
regen verdrijven bij de Toradja's van \ J. B. Labat, Relation historique de
Midden Celebes," Tijdschrift voor VEthiopie occidentale, ii. 180.
304 THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER chap.
of wood smeared with resin. The ashes they scattered in
the air, thinking thus to condense the clouds and bring
Making
rain by
means of
stones.
ram.^
Stones are often supposed to possess the property of
bringing on rain, provided they be dipped in water or sprinkled
with it, or treated in some other appropriate manner. In a
Samoan village a certain stone was carefully housed as the
representative of the rain-making god, and in time of drought
his priests carried the stone in procession and dipped it in a
stream.^ Among the Ta-ta-thi tribe of New South Wales,
the rain-maker breaks off a piece of quartz-crystal and spits
it towards the sky ; the rest of the crystal he wraps in emu
feathers, soaks both crystal and feathers in water, and
carefully hides them.^ In the Keramin tribe of New
South Wales the wizard retires to the bed of a creek, drops
water on a round flat stone, then covers up and conceals it.*
Among some tribes of north-western Australia the rain-
maker repairs to a piece of ground which is set apart for the
purpose of rain-making. There he builds a heap of stones
or sand, places on the top of it his magic stone, and walks
or dances round the pile chanting his incantations for hours,
till sheer exhaustion obliges him to desist, when his place is
taken by his assistant. Water is sprinkled on the stone and
huge fires are kindled. No layman may approach the sacred
spot while the mystic ceremony is being performed.® When
the Sulka of New Britain wish to procure rain they blacken
stones with the ashes of certain fruits and set them out, along
with certain other plants and buds, in the sun. Then a
handful of twigs is dipped in water and weighted with stones,
while a spell is chanted. After that rain should follow,'' In
Manipur, on a lofty hill to the east of the capital, there is a
stone which the popular imagination likens to an umbrella,
' H. Ternaux-Compans, Essai stir
VajuUn Cundinaviarca (Paris, n.d. ),
p. 42.
- G. Turner, Samoa, p. 145.
5 A. L. P. Cameron, ' ' Notes on
some Tribes of New South Wales,"
Journal of the Anthropologica,l Institute,
xiv. (1SS5) p. 362. For other uses of
quartz - crystal in ceremonies for the
making of rain, see above, pp. 254, 255.
* A. L. P. Cameron, loc. cit. Com-
pare E. M. Curr, The Australian Race,
"• 377-
* E. Clement, " Ethnographical
Notes on the Western Australian
Aborigines," Internationales Archiv
fiir Ethnographie, xvi. (1904) pp. 5
sq.
^ Rascher, " Die Sulka," Archiv fiir
Anthropologie, xxix. (1904) p. 225.
Compare R. Parkinson, Dreissig Jahrt
in der Siidsee, p. 196.
V • THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF RAIN 305
When rain is wanted, the rajah fetches water from a spring
below and sprinkles it on the stoned At Sagami in Japan
there is a stone which draws down rain whenever water is
poured on it.^ When the Wakondyo, a tribe of Central Africa,
desire rain, they send to the Wawamba, who dwell at the foot
of snowy mountains, and are the happy possessors of a " rain-
stone." In consideration of a proper payment, the Wawamba
wash the precious stone, anoint it with oil, and put it in a pot
full of water. After that the rain cannot fail to come.* In
Behar people think to put an end to drought by keeping
a holy stone named Nardyan-chakra in a vessel of water.^
The Turks of Armenia make rain by throwing pebbles into
the water. At Egin the pebbles are hung in two bags in
the Euphrates ; there should be seventy thousand and one
of them." At Myndus in Asia Minor the number of the
stones used for this purpose is seventy-seven thousand, and
each of them should be licked before it is cast into the sea.^
In some parts of Mongolia, when the people desire rain, they Bezoar
fasten a bezoar stone to a willow twig, and place it in pure ?'°"'== ^
water, uttering incantations or prayers at the same time.'' ments of
At Yakutsk all classes used firmly to believe they could ''*'°'
make rain by means of one of these bezoar stones, provided
it had really been found in the stomach of an animal, and the
fiercer the beast the more powerful the charm. The rain-
maker had to dip the stone in spring water just as the sun
rose, and then holding it between the thumb and fore-finger
of the right hand to present it to the luminary, after which
he made three turns contrary to the direction of the sun.
The virtue of a bezoar stone lasted only nine days.* Con-
versely, when Dr. Radloffs Mongolian guide wished to
stop the rain, he tied a rock-crystal by a short string to a
stick, held the stone over the fire, and then swung the stick
1 T. C. Hodson, " The genna and Folklore of Northern India (West-
amongst the Tribes of Assam, "yi?«?-Ka/ minster, 1896),!. T^ sq.
of the Anthropological Institute, xxxvi. 6 j. Rendel Harris, MS. notes.
''^»°W.^G^^' Aston, Shinto (London, , ° ^- ^- /^'°"' '° ^''"'^''■'' ""•
1905), p. 330. (I90l)p. 216.
3 Fr. Stuhlmann, Mil Emin Pascha ' G. Timkowski, Travels of the
ins Herz von Afrika (Berlin, 1894), Russian Mission through Mongolia to
p. 654. China (London, 1827), i. 402 sq.
^ IndianKotes andQueries,\s.^,2\%, ^ C. H. Cottrell, Recollections of
§ 776 ; W. Crooke, Popular Religion Siberia (London, 1842), p. 140.
VOL. I X
3o6 THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER chap.
about in all directions, while he chanted an incantation.^
Water is scarce with the fierce Apaches, who roam the arid
wastes of Arizona and New Mexico ; for springs are few and
far between in these torrid wildernesses, where the intense
heat would be unendurable were it not for the great dryness
of the air. The stony beds of the streams are waterless
in the plains ; but if you ascend for some miles the profound
canons that worm their way into the heart of the wild and
rugged mountains, you come in time to a current trickling
over the sand, and a mile or two more will bring you to a
stream of a tolerable size flowing over boulders and screened
from the fierce sun by walls of rock that tower on either
hand a thousand feet into the air, their parched sides matted
with the fantastic forms of the prickly cactus, and their
summits crested far overhead with pine woods, like a
black fringe against the burning" blue of the sky. In
such a land we need not wonder that the thirsty Indians
seek to procure rain by magic. They take water from a
certain spring and throw it on a particular point high up
on a rock ; the welcome clouds then soon gather, and rain
begins to fall.^ In the district of Varanda, in Armenia,
there is a rock with a hole in it near a sacred place.
Women light candles on the rock and pour water into the
hole in order to bring on rain. And in the same district
there is another rock on which water is poured and milk
boiled as an offering in time of drought.^
But customs of this sort are not confined to the wilds
of Africa and Asia or the torrid deserts of Australia and the
New World. They have been practised in the cool air and
"'°'*' under the grey skies of Europe. There is a fountain
called Barenton, of romantic fame, in those " wild woods
of Broceliande," where, if legend be true, the wizard Merlin
still sleeps his magic slumber in the hawthorn shade.
Thither the Breton peasants used to resort when they
' W. Radlofif, Aus Sibirien {\^€v^%\c, pp. I sq., \2sq., 23 sq., 30 sq., 34 sq.,
1SS4), ii. !■]<) sq. 41 sqq., 185, 190 sq. See also C.
- The American Antiquarian, viii. Mindeleff, in Seventeenth Annual Re-
339. Vivid descriptions of the scenery port of the Bureau of American Eth-
and climate of Arizona and New tiology, part 2 (Washington, 1898), pp.
Mexico will be found in Captain J. G. 477-481.
Bouike's On the Border with Crook ^ M. Abeghian, Der armenischi
(Xew York, 189 1); see, for example, Volksglaube, p. 94.
Tscssi by
means of
sione? in
V THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF RAIN 307
needed rain. They caught some of the water in a tankard
and threw it on a slab near the spring.-' On Snowdon
there is a lonely tarn called Dulyn, or the Black Lake, lying
" in a dismal dingle surrounded by high and dangerous
rocks." A row of stepping-stones runs out into the lake, and
if any one steps on the stones and throws water so as to wet
the farthest stone, which is called the Red Altar, " it is but
a chance that you do not get rain before night, even when it
is hot weather."^ In these cases it appears probable that, as
in Samoa, the stone is regarded as more or less divine. This
appears from the custom sometimes observed of dipping the
cross in the Fountain of Barenton to procure rain, for this is
plainly a Christian substitute for the old pagan way of
throwing water on the stone.^ At various places in France Dipping
it is, or used till lately to be, the practice to dip the imaee of"".^&^^°^
. . y > i r & samts in
a saint in water as a means of procuring rain. Thus, beside water as
the old priory of Commagny, a mile or two to the south-west ^ha™'
of Moulins-Engilbert, there is a spring of St. Gervais, whither
the inhabitants go in procession to obtain rain or fine weather
according to the needs of the crops. In times of great
drought they throw into the basin of the fountain an ancient
stone image of the saint that stands in a sort of niche from
which the fountain flows."* At Collobrieres and Carpentras,
both in Provence, a similar practice was observed with the
images of St. Pons and St. Gens respectively.* In several
villages of Navarre prayers for rain used to be offered to St.
Peter, and by way of enforcing them the villagers carried the
image of the saint in procession to the river, where they thrice
invited him to reconsider his resolution and to grant their
prayers ; then, if he was still obstinate, they plunged him
in the water, despite the remonstrances of the clergy, who
1 J. Rhys, Celtic I/eatketidoin, p. Anne, near Gevez^, in Brittany. See
184; J. Grimm. Deutsche Mylhologie,'^ P. Sebillot, Traditions et superstitions
i. 494; L. J. B. Berenger - Feraud, de la Haute-Bretagne,\. 72.
Superstitions et sitrvivances, iii. 190 ■* G. Herve, " Quelques superstitions
sq. Compare A. de Nore, Cnitumes, de Morvan," Bulletins de la SociiU
mythes et traditions des pmiiues de d! Anthropologic de Paris, 4me serie,
France, p. 216; San Marte, Die Arthur iii. (1892) p. 530.
Sage, pp. 105 sq., 153 sqq. '> Berenger-Feraud and de Mortillet,
-J- Rhys, Celtic Heathendom, pp. va. Ilulletins de la Society d' Anthropologic
185 sq., quoting an earlier authority. de Paris, 4me serie, ii, (1891) pp. 306,
' J. Rhys, o/. c«V. p. 187. The same 310 sq. ; L. J. B. Berenger- Feraud,
thing is done at the fountain of Sainte Superstitions ct survivanccs, i. 427.
stones.
308 THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER chap.
pleaded with as much truth as piety that a simple caution or
admonition administered to the image would produce an
equally good effect. After this the rain was sure to fall
within twenty-four hours.^ Catholic countries do not enjoy
a monopoly of making rain by ducking holy images in water.
In Mingrelia, when the crops are suffering from want of rain,
they take a particularly holy image and dip it in water every
day till a shower falls ; ^ and in the Far East the Shans
drench the images of Buddha with water when the rice is
perishing of drought.^ In all such cases the practice is
probably at bottom a sympathetic charm, however it may be
disguised under the appearance of a punishment or a threat.
Various The application of water to a miraculous stone is not the
T°' ^ onlv way of securing its good offices in the making of rain.
charms bv ^ -^ 00 ^
means of' In the island of Uist, one of the Outer Hebrides, there is a
stone cross opposite to St. Mary's church, which the natives
used to call the Water-cross. When they needed rain, they
set the cross up ; and when enough rain had fallen, they laid
it flat on the ground.* In Aurora, one of the New Hebrides
islands, the rain- maker puts a tuft of leaves of a certain plant
in the hollow of a stone ; over it he lays some branches of a
pepper-tree pounded and crushed, and to these he adds a
stone which is believed to possess the property of drawing
down showers from the sky. All this he accompanies with
incantations, and finally covers the whole mass up. In time
it ferments, and steam, charged with magical virtue, goes up
and makes clouds and rain. The wizard must be careful,
however, not to pound the pepper too hard, as otherwise the
wind might blow too strong.^ Sometimes the stone derives
its magical virtue from its likeness to a real or imaginary
animal. Thus, at Kota Gadang in Sumatra, there is a stone
which, with the help of a powerful imagination, may perhaps
be conceived to bear a faint and distant resemblance to a cat.
' Le Bran, Hisfc-rie critique des vii. 174 (Amsterdam, 1725).
frcUiqius supcrstiticuses (Amsterdam, ^ H. S. Hallett, A Thousand Miles
1733')' '• 245 sq. ; L. J. B. llerenger- 011 an Elephant in the Shan States
Feraud, Superstitions et survivances, (Edinburgh and London, 1 8go), p. 264.
i. 477. For more examples of such * Martin, " Description of the West-
customs in France see P. Sebillot, Le em Islands of Scotland,'' in Pinkerton's
Fjik-lore di France, ii. 376-37S. Voyages and Travels, iii. 594.
- Lamberti, "Relation de la Col- ' R. H. Codrington, The Melanes-
chide ou Mingrelie," Voyages au Nord, tans, p. 201.
V THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF RAIN 309 .
Naturally, therefore, it possesses the property of eliciting
showers from the sky, since in Sumatra, as we have seen, a
real black cat plays a part in ceremonies for the production
of rain. Hence the stone is sometimes smeared with the
blood of fowls, rubbed, and incensed, while a charm is uttered
over it.^ At Eneti, in Washington State, there is an
irregular basaltic rock on which a face, said to be that of
the thunder-bird, has been hammered. The Indians of the
neighbourhood long believed that to shake the rock would
cause rain by exciting the wrath of the thunder-bird.^
Like other peoples, the Greeks and Romans sought to Rain-
obtain rain by magic, when prayers and processions ^ had ci^s™ai'°
proved ineffectual. For example, in Arcadia, when the corn antiquity.
and trees were parched with drought, the priest of Zeus
dipped an oak branch into a certain spring on Mount
Lycaeus. Thus troubled, the water sent up a misty cloud,
from which rain soon fell upon the land.* A similar mode
of making rain is still practised, as we have seen, in Halma-
hera near New Guinea.* The people of Crannon in Thessaly
had a bronze chariot which they kept in a temple. When
they desired a shower they shook the chariot and the shower
fell.^ Probably the rattling of the chariot was meant to
imitate thunder ; we have already seen that mock thunder
and lightning form part of a rain - charm in Russia and
' J. L. van der Toorn, " Het (Berlin, 1873), pp. 2(> sq.
animisme bij den Minangkabauer der * Pausanias, viii. 38. 4.
Padangsche Bovenlanden," Bijdragen '" See above, p. 248.
tot de Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde ^ Antigonus, Histor. mirab. 15
van Nederlandsch Indie, xxxix. (1890) [Scriptores rerum mirahilium Graeci,
p. 86. As to the cat in rain-making ed. A. Westermann, pp. 64 sq.). An-
ctremonies, see above, pp. 289, 291. tigonus mentions that the badge of the
- llyron Eels, ' ' The Twana, Che- city was a representation of the chariot
maktim, and Klallam Indians of Wash- with a couple of ravens perched on it.
ington Territory," Annual Report of This badge appears on existing coins oi
the Smithsonian Institute for iS8j, Crannon, with the addition of a pitcher
p. 674. resting on the chariot (B. V. Head,
^ As to such prayers, see Pausanias, Historia Numorum, p. 249). Hence
ii. 25. 10 ; Marcus Antoninus, v. 7 ; A. Furtwangler conjectured, with
Petronias, 44 ; TertuUian, Apolog. 40, great probability, that a pitcher full
compare 22 and 23 ; P. Cauer, Delectus of water was placed on the real
Inscriptionum Graecarum? No. 162 ; chariot when rain was wanted, and
H. Collitz und p. Bechtel, Sammlung that the spilling . of the water, as
der grietkischen Dialekt - Inschriften^ the chariot shook, was intended to
Ko. 3718; Ch. Michel, Recueil d'in- imitate a shower of rain. See A.
xriptions grecqties, No. 1 004 ; O. Furtwangler, Meisterwerke der griechi-
Loders, Die dio/iysischen ICiinstler schen Plastik, pp. 257-263.
3IO THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER chap.
Rain-
i:harms in
classical
antiquity.
Japan.^ The legendary Salmoneus, King of Elis, made mock
thunder by dragging bronze kettles behind his chariot, or by
driving over a bronze bridge, while he hurled blazing torches
in imitation of lightning. It was his impious wish to mimic
the thundering car of Zeus as it rolled across the vault of
heaven. Indeed he declared that he was actually Zeus, and
caused sacrifices to be offered to himself as such.^ Near a
temple of Mars, outside the walls of Rome, there was kept a
certain stone known as the lapis manalis. In time of
drought the stone was dragged into Rome, and this was
supposed to bring down rain immediately.^ There were
Etruscan wizards who made rain or discovered springs of
water, it is not certain which. They were thought to bring
the rain or the water out of their bellies.* The legendary
Telchines in Rhodes are described as magicians who could
change their shape and bring clouds, rain, and snow.^ The
Athenians sacrificed boiled, not roast meat to the Seasons,
begging them to avert drought and dry heat and to send
due warmth and timely rain.^ This is an interesting
example of the admixture of religion with sorcery, of
sacrifice with magic. The Athenians dimly conceived that
in some way the water in the pot would be transmitted
through the boiled meat to the deities, and then sent down
again by them in the form of rain.' In a similar spirit
' Above, pp. 24S, 251.
^ Apollodorus, i. 9. 7 ; Virgil, Aen.
vi. 5S5 sqq. ; Servius on Virgil, I.e.
^ Festus, s.w. aqua^lichijn and
mafialem lapidcm, pp. 2, 128, ed.
C. O. Milller ; Nonius Marcellus, s.v.
tru'lum, p. 637, ed. Quicherat; Servius
on Vixgil, Aen. iii. 17S ! Fulgentius,
"Expos, serm. antiq." s.v. manales
latidis, ifythogr. Lat. ed. Staveren,
pp. 769 sq. It has been suggested that
the stone derived its name and its
virtue from the manes or spirits of the
dead (E. Hoffmann, in Rheinisches
^Museum fur Pr.Uologie, N. F. 1.
(1S95), pp. 484-4S6). Mr. O. Gilbert
supposes that the stone was hollow
and filled with water which was poured
out in imitation of rain. See O.
Gilbert, Geschichte and Topographie
dcr Stadt Rom im Altertum, ii. (Leipsic,
1S85) p. 154 note. His suggestion
is thus exactly parallel to that of
Furtwangler as to the pitcher at
Crannon (abovg, p. 309 note 6). Com-
pare W. Warde Fowler, Roman
Festivals of the Period of the Republic
(London, 1899), pp. 232 sq.
* Nonius Marcellus, s.v. aquilex, p.
69, ed. Quicherat. In favour of taking
aquilex as rain - maker is the use of
aqnaelicium in the sense of rain-making.
Compare K. O. Miiller, Die Etrtisker,
ed. W. Deecke, ii. 318 sq.
^ Diodorus Siculus, v. 55-
* Philochorus, cited by Athenaeus,
xiv. 72, p. 656 A.
T Among the Barotse, on the upper
Zambesi, "the sorcerers or witch-
doctors go from village to village with
remedies which they cook in great
cauldrons to make rain " (A. Bertrand,
The Kingdom of the Barotsi, London,
1899, p. 277).
V THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF RAIN 311
the prudent Greeks made it a rule always to pour honey,
but never wine, on the altars of the sun-god, pointing out,
with great show of reason, how expedient it was that
a Tod on whom so much depended should keep strictly
sober.^
§ 3. The Magical Control of the Sun
The rule of total abstinence which Greek prudence and Making
piety imposed on the sun-god introduces us to a second class of '^^ !"°
. , to shme.
natural phenomena which primitive man commonly supposes
to be in some degree under his control and dependent
on his exertions. As the magician thinks he can make Magical
rain, so he fancies he can cause the sun to shine, and can t^rsun °'
hasten or stay its going down. At an eclipse the Ojebways Attempts
used to imagine that the sun was being extinguished. !° ''^^p
„ ° . fc> fc> the sun
ho they shot fire-tipped arrows in the air, hoping thus to at an
rekindle his expiring light.^ The Sencis of eastern Peru ^'^''P^'^'
also shot burning arrows at the sun during an eclipse, but
apparently they did this not so much to relight his lamp as
to drive away a savage beast with which they supposed him
to be struggling.^ Conversely during an eclipse of the moon
some Indian tribes of the Orinoco used to bury lighted
brands in the ground ; because, said they, if the moon were
to be extinguished, all fire on earth would be extinguished
1 Phylarclius, cited by Athenaeus, graphy, ii. No. 133 ; Leges Graecorum
XV. 48, p. 693 E F. If the conjectural sacrae, ed. J. de Prott et L. Ziehen,
reading roi^ 'EfiearivoU were adopted ii. N0.18. In the passage of Athenaeus,
in place of the manuscript reading toTs accordingly, the reading tois 'E^uetri/FoTs,
"EXXtjo-ii', we should have to suppose which has been rashly adopted by the
that the custom was not observed by latest editor of Athenaeus (G. Kaibel),
the Greeks, but by the people of Emesa may be safely rejected in favour of the
in Syri.-i, where there was a famous wor- manuscript reading.
ship of the sun. But Polemo, the highest on.. t rr- , /• .r ^.,
authority in such matters, tells us that ^J, ^jl^-J°'"'''o^"""'^ "-^ "" °^''"
the Athenians offered "sober" sacri- ^ > P- 4-
fices to the sun and to other deities ' W. Smyth and F. Lowe, Nm--
(Schol. on Sophocles, Oed. Colon, 100); rative of a Journey from Lima to Para
and in a Greek inscription found at (London, 1836), p. 230. An eclipse
Piraeus we read of offerings to the sun either of the sun or the moon is com-
and of three •' sober altars," by which monly supposed by savages to be
no doubt are meant altars on which caused by a monster who is trying to
wine was not poured. See Ch. Michel, devour the luminary, and accordingly
Reciieil d/imcriptions grecques. No. they discharge missiles and raise a
672 ; Dittenberger, Sylloge inscrip- clamour in order to drive him away.
tic7nim Gra£.:orum,'^y,o. 631 ; E. S. See E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture,"^
Roberts, Introduction to Greek Epi- i. 328 sqq.
312 THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER chap.
with her, except such as was hidden from her sight.^
During an eclipse of the sun the Kamtchatkans were wont
to bring out fire from their huts and pray the great luminary
to shine as before.^ But the prayer addressed to the san
shews that this ceremony was religious rather than magical.
Purely magical, on the other hand, was the ceremony
observed on similar occasions by the Chilcotin Indians of
north-western America. Men and women tucked up their
robes, as they do in travelling, and then leaning on staves, as if
they were heavy laden, they continued to walk in a circle till
the eclipse was over.^ Apparently they thought thus to
support the failing steps of the sun as he trod his weary round
in the sky. Similarly in ancient Egypt the king, as the
representative of the sun, walked solemnly round the walls of
a temple in order to ensure that the sun should perform his
daily journey round the sky without the interruption of an
eclipse or other mishap.* And after the autumnal equinox
the ancient Egyptians held a festival called " the nativity of
the sun's walking-stick," because, as the luminary declined
daily in the sky, and his light and heat diminished, he was
supposed to need a staff on which to lean.^ In New
Various Caledonia when a wizard desires to make sunshine, he
„„^^,° takes some plants and corals to the burial - ground, and
^ t£> fashions them into a bundle, adding two locks of hair cut
from a living child of his family, also two teeth or an entire
jawbone from the skeleton of an ancestor. He then climbs
a mountain whose top catches the first rays of the morning
sun. Here he deposits three sorts of plants on a flat stone,
places a branch of dry coral beside them, and hangs the
bundle of charms over the stone. Next morning he returns
to the spot and sets fire to the bundle at the moment when
' J. Gumilla, Histoire de VOrinoque pp. 90 sq. ; id., Du caractire religieux
(Avignon, i/S^); ™- 243 sq, de la royauti pharaonique (Paris,
- S. Krascheninnikow. Beschreibung 1902), p. 98.
d^s Landes Kamtscha'ka (Lemgo, ^ Plutarch, his et Osiris, 52. The
1766), p. 217. Esquimaux of Bering Strait give the
^ A. G. Jlorice, ' ' The Western name of " the sun's walking-stick " to
Denes, their Manners and Customs," the vertical bar in a parhelion. See
PrtKsedings of the Canadian Institute, E. W. Nelson, " The Eskimo about
Torcnfo, Third Series, ^-ii. (1888-89) Bering Strait," Eighteenth Annual
p. 154- Report of the Bureau of American
* A. Moret, Le Ritud du culte divin Ethnology, part i. (Washington, 1899)
joumalier en Egypte (Paris, 1902), p. 449.
V THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE SUN 313
the sun rises from the sea. As the smoke curls up, he rubs
the stone with the dry coral, invokes his ancestors and says :
" Sun ! I do this that you may be burning hot, and eat up
all the clouds in the sky." The same ceremony is repeated
at sunset.-* The New Caledonians also make a drought by
means of a disc-shaped stone with a hole in it. At the
moment when the sun rises, the wizard holds the stone in
his hand and passes a burning brand repeatedly into the
hole, while he says : " I kindle the sun, in order that he
may eat up the clouds and dry up our land, so that it may
produce nothing." ^ When the sun rises behind clouds — a
rare event in the bright sky of southern Africa — the Sun
clan of the Bechuanas say that he is grieving their heart. All
work stands still, and all the food of the previous day is given
to matrons or old women. They may eat it and may share
it with the children they are nursing, but no one else may
taste it The people go down to the river and wash them-
selves all over. Each man throws into the river a stone
taken from his domestic hearth, and replaces it with one
picked up in the bed of the river. On their return to the
village the chief kindles a fire in his hut, and all his subjects
come and get a light from it. A general dance follows.^
In these cases it seems that the lighting of the flame on
earth is supposed to rekindle the solar fire. Such a belief
comes naturally to people who, like the Sun clan of the
Bechuanas, deem themselves the veritable kinsmen of the
sun. When the sun is obscured by clouds, the Lengua
Indians of the Gran Chaco hold burning sticks towards
him to encourage the luminary,* or rather perhaps to
^ Father Lambert, in Missions Voyage (V exploration au nord-est de
Caiho'iiqucs, xii. (18S0) p. 216; id., la Colonic du Cap de Bonne-Espirance
M-xurs et superstitions des Nio-Cah^- (Paris, 1842), pp. 350 sq. For the
dcnisns (Noumea, 1900), pp. 193 sq. ; kinship with the sacred object (totem)
Glaismont, " Usages, mceurs et cou- from which the clan takes its
tumes des Neo-Caledonieiis," Revue name, see ibid. pp. 350, 422, 424.
d'ithncgraphie, vii. (1889) p. 116. Other people have claimed kindred
^ Father Lambert, in Missiotis with the sun, as the Natchez of North
CaiAjUqms, xxv. (1893) p. 116; id., America (Voyages au nord, v. 24) and
Ma-urs et superstitions dcs NSo-Cah'- the Incas of J'eru.
dsniens (Noumea, 1900), pp. 296 sij.
The magic formula differs slightly in ■• G. Kurze, " Sitten und Gebrauche
the two passages : in the text I have der Lengua- Indianer," Milteilungen
followed the second. dir Geographischen Gesellschaft zu
^ T. Arbousset et F. Daumas, /•■na, xxiii. (1905) p. 17.
314 THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER chap.
Sun-
charms
among the
American
Indians.
Human
sacrifices
offered to
the sun by
the Mexi-
rekindle his seemingly expiring light. The Banks Islanders
make sunshine by means of a mock sun. They take
a very round stone, called a vat loa or sunstone, wind
red braid about it, and stick it with owls' feathers to
represent rays, singing the proper spell in a low voice.
Then they hang it on some high tree, such as a banyan
or a casuarina, in a sacred place. Or the stone is
laid on the ground with white rods radiating from it to
imitate sunbeams.^ Sometimes the mode of making sun-
shine is the converse of that of making rain. Thus we
have seen that a white or red victim is sacrificed for sunshine,
while a black one is sacrificed for rain.^ Some of the New
Caledonians drench a skeleton to make rain, but burn it to
make sunshine.^
When the mists lay thick on the Sierras of Peru, the
Indian women used to rattle the silver and copper orna-
ments which they wore on their breasts, and they blew
against the fog, hoping thus to disperse it and make the sun
shine through. Another way of producing the same effect
was to burn salt or scatter ashes in the air.^ The Guarayo
Indians also threw ashes in the air for the sake of clearing
up the clouded evening sky.^ In Car Nicobar, when it has
rained for several days without stopping, the natives roll
long bamboos in leaves of various kinds and set them up in
the middle of the village. They call these bamboos " rods
inviting the sun to shine." * The offering made by the
Brahman in the morning is supposed to produce the sun,
and we are. told that "assuredly it would not ri.se, were he
not to make that offering." "^ The ancient Mexicans con-
ceived the sun as the source of all vital force ; hence they
named him Ipalnemohuani, " He by whom men live." But
if he bestowed life on the world, he needed also to receive
' R. H. Codrington, in Jmirnal of
tat Anlhrofolcgical Instit-tiie, x. (1881)
p. 27S; id.. The 3Iela>tesians [OydoiA,
1S91), p. 184.
- Above, pp. 291 sq.
^ G. Turner, Sanioa, p. 346. See
above, p. 2S4.
^ P. J. Arriaga, Extirfacion de la
idc'.jiria dil Pirn (Lima, 1621), p. 37.
' A. d'Orbigny, Voyage dans FAme-
rique MSridionale, iii. (Paris and Stras-
burg, 1844) p. 24.
^ V. Solomon, " Extracts from
Diaries l;ept in Car Nicobar," Journal
of the Anthropological Institute, xxxii.
(1902) p. 213.
'' Satapatha - Brdhmana, translated
tiy J- Eggeling, part i. p. 328 (Sacred
Books of the East, vol. xii. ).
V THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE SUN 315
life from it. And as the heart is tlie seat and symbol of
life, bleeding hearts of men and animals were presented to
the sun to maintain him in vigour and enable him to run
his course across the sky. Thus the Mexican sacrifices to
the sun were magical rather than religious, being designed,
not so much to please and propitiate him, as physically to
renew his energies of heat, light, and motion. The constant
demand for human victims to feed the solar fire was met
by waging war every year on the neighbouring tribes and
bringing back troops of captives to be sacrificed on the altar.
Thus the ceaseless wars of the Mexicans and their cruel
system of human sacrifices, the most monstrous on record,
sprang in great measure from a mistaken theory of the solar
system. No more striking illustration could be given of
the disastrous consequences that may flow in practice from
a purely speculative error.^ The ancient Greeks believed Greek
that the sun drove in a chariot across the sky ; hence the of^orses
Rhodians, who worshipped the sun as their chief deity, to the sun.
annually dedicated a chariot and four horses to him, and
flung them into the sea for his use. Doubtless they thought
that after a year's work his old horses and chariot would be
worn out.^ From a like motive, probably, the idolatrous
kings of Judah dedicated chariots and horses to the sun,^
and the Spartans,^ Persians,^ and Massagetae ^ sacrificed
horses to him. The Spartans performed the sacrifice on the
' E. J. Payne, History of the New ^ 2 Kings xxiii. 1 1 . Compare H.
JVerld called America, i. (Oxford, Zimmern, in E. Sclirader's jDie Keil-
1S92) pp. 520-523; K. Th. Preuss, insihriflen und das Alte Testament^
in Verliandliingen der Betiiver anthro- (Berlin, 1902), pp. 369^1^.
poIogisch^7i Gesells.haftj Xovember 15, "* Pausanias, iii. 20. 4.
1902, pp. (449) /y., (457) sq. ; id., ^ Xenophon, Cyropaed. viii. 3. 24;
"Die Feuergotter als Ausgangspunkt 7'hilostratus, Vit. Apollon. i. 31. 2;
rjm Verstandnis der mexikanischeu Ovid, Fasti, i. 385 sq. ; Pausanias,
Religion," Mittei.iingeii der anthropo- iii. 20. 4. Compare Xenophon,
log. G^sellschaft iti IVien, xxxiii. (1903) Anabasis, iv. <,. 35 ; Trogus Pompeius,
pp. 157 sq., 163. A Mexican legend i. 10. 5.
relates how in the beginning the gods •* Herodotus, i. 216 ; Strabo, xi.
sacrificed themselves by fire in order to S. 6. On the sacrifice of horses see
setthesuninmotion. SeeB. deSahagun, further S. Bochart, Hierozoicon, i. coll.
Hi-toire geti^rale des c hoses de la A^ou- 175 sqq, ; Negelein, in Zeitschrift fUr
vtUc Espiigite, bk. vii. ch. 2, pp. 478 Ethnologie, xxxiii. (1901), pp. 62-66.
sqq. (French trans, by Jourdanet and Many Asiatics held that the sun rode a
Simeon). horse, not a chariot. See Dittenberger,
- Festns, -<■.;'. "October equus," p. Sylloge inscriptionum Graecai-um,^ No.
181, ed. C. O. MuUer. 754, with note*.
3i6 THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER chap.
top of Mount Taygetus, the beautiful range behind which
they saw the great luminary set every night. It was as
natural for the inhabitants of the valley of Sparta to do
this as it was for the islanders of Rhodes to throw the
chariot and horses into the sea, into which the sun seemed
to them to sink at evening. For thus, whether on the
mountain or in the sea, the fresh horses stood ready for the
weary god where they would be most welcome, at the end
of his day's journey.
Staying As some people think they can light up the sun or
bT means Speed him on his way, so others fancy they can retard
of a net or or stop him. In a pass of the Peruvian Andes stand two
°^' ruined towers on opposite hills. Iron hooks are clamped
into their walls for the purpose of stretching a net from one
tower to the other. The net is intended to catch the sun.^
On a small hill in Fiji grew a patch of reeds, and travellers
who feared to be belated used to tie the tops of a handful
of reeds together to prevent the sun from going down.^ As
to this my late friend the Rev. Lorimer Fison wrote to me :
" I have often seen the reeds tied together to keep the sun
from going down. The place is on a hill in Lakomba, one
of the eastern islands of the Fijian group. It is on the side
— not on the top — of the hill. The reeds grow on the right
side of the path. I asked an old man the meaning of the
practice, and he said, ' We used to think the sun would see
us, and know we wanted him not to go down till we got
past on our way home again.' " ^ But perhaps the original
intention was to entangle the sun in the reeds, just as the
Peruvians try to catch him in the net. Stories of men
who have caught the sun in a noose are widely spread.*
When the sun is going southward in the autumn, and sink-
ing lower and lower in the Arctic sky, the Esquimaux
of Iglulik play the game of cat's cradle in order to catch
him in the meshes of the string and so prevent his
' A. Bastian, Die Volker des ostlichen * H. R. Schoolcraft, The American
Asien, iv. 174. The name of the Indians (Buffalo, 1851), pp. 97 sqq. ;
place is Andahuayllas. id., Oneota (New York and London,
^Ta^V^MVizxas, Fiji and the Fijians^, 1845), pp. 75 sqq.; W. W. Gill,
L 250. Myths and Songs of the South Pacific^
2 Mr. Fison's letter is dated August pp. 61 sq.; G. Turner, Samoa, pp,
26, 1898. 200 sq.
V THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE SUN 317
disappearance. On the contrary, when the sun is moving
northward in the spring, they play the game of cup-and-ball
to hasten his return.^ Means like those which the Esqui-
maux take to stop the departing sun are adopted by the
Ewe negroes of the Slave Coast to catch a runaway slave.
They take two sticks, unite them by a string, and then wind
the string round one of them, while at the same time they
pronounce the name of the fugitive. When the string is
quite wound about the stick, the runaway will be bound fast
and unable to stir.^ In New Guinea, when a Motu man is
hunting or travelling late in the afternoon and fears to be
overtaken by darkness, he will sometimes take a piece of
twine, loop it, and look through the loop at the sun. Then
he pulls the loop into a knot and says, " Wait until we get
home, and we will give you the fat of a pig." After that
he passes the string to the man behind him, and then it is
thrown away. In a similar case a Motumotu man of New
Guinea says, " Sun, do not be in a hurry ; just wait until I
get to the end." And the sun waits. The Motumotu do
not like to eat in the dark ; so if the food is not yet ready,
and the sun is sinking, they say, " Sun, stop ; my food is not
ready, and I want to eat by you." ' Here the looking at
the sinking sun through a loop and then drawing the loop
into a knot appears to be a purely magical ceremony
designed to catch the sun in the mesh ; but the request that
the luminary would kindly stand still till home is reached or
the dinner cooked, coupled with the offer of a slice of fat
bacon as an inducement to him to comply with the request,
is thoroughly religious. Jerome of Prague, travelling among
the heathen Lithuanians early in the fifteenth century, found
a tribe who worshipped the sun and venerated a large iron
hammer. The priests told him that once the sun had been
invisible for several months, because a powerful king had
shut it up in a strong tower ; but the signs of the zodiac
' Fr. Boas, " The Eskimo of Baffin Erdkunde zu Berlin, xii. (1877) p.
Land and Hudson Bay," i?a/toOTfl///5£! 411. We have met with a somewhat
American Museum of Natural History, similar charm in North Africa to bring
XV. (1 901) p. 151. back a runaway slave. See above,
2 G. Zundel, "Land und Volk der p. 152.
Eweer auf der Sclavenkiiste in West- ^ j. Chalmers, Pioneering in New
afrika," Zeitschrift der Gcsellschaft fiir Guinea (London, 1887), p. 172.
3l8 THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER chap.
had broken open the tower with this very hammer and
released the sun. Therefore they adored the hammer.^
Staying When an Australian blackfellow wishes to stay the sun from
by* putting S°'"§ down till he gets heme, he puts a sod in the fork of a
a stone or a tree, exactly facing the setting sun.^ For the same purpose
fork of a ^"^ Indian of Yucatan, journeying westward, places a stone
tree. in a tree or pulls out some of his eyelashes and blows them
towards the sun.^ When the Golos, a tribe of the Bahr-el-
Ghazal, are on the march, they will sometimes take a stone
or a small ant-heap, about the size of a man's head,
and place it in the fork of a tree in order to retard
the sunset* South African natives, in travelling, will put
a stone in a fork of a tree or place some grass on the
path with a stone over it, believing that this will cause their
friends to keep the meal waiting till their arrival.^ In
this, as in previous examples, the purpose apparently is to
retard the sun. But why should the act of putting a stone
or a sod in a tree be supposed to effect this? A partial
explanation is suggested by another Australian custom. In
their journeys the natives are accustomed to place stones in
trees at different heights from the ground in order to indicate
the height of the sun in the sky at the moment when they
passed the particular tree. Those who follow are thus made
aware of the time of day when their friends in advance
passed the spot.^ Possibly the natives, thus accustomed to
mark the sun's progress, may have slipped into the confusion
of imagining that to mark the sun's progress was to arrest
it at the point marked. On the other hand, to make it go
1 Aenea5SyK-ius,0/«« (Bale, 1571), vol. i. part i. (Capetown, 1879) p.
p. 41 S [wrongly numbered 420]; A. 34; Dudley Kidd, Savage Childhood
Thevec, Cosmografihie universelle (London, 1906), pp. 147 sq.; Rev.
(Paris, 1575), ii. 851. E. Gottschling, "The Bawenda,"
- R. Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Journalofthe Anthropologicallnstitute,
VicUria, ii. 334; E. M. Curr, The xxxv. (1905) p. 381.
Australian Race. i. 50. ^ £_ j^ Y.jxe, Journals of Expeditions
2 Fancourt, History of Yucatan, p. of Discovery into Central Australia
ilS; Brasseur de Bourbourg, Histoire (London, 1845), "• S^S- The Ova-
uVj nations civi'isies du Mexique et de kumbi of Angola place a stone in the
r Amirique-Centrale , ii. 51. fork of a tree as a memorial at any
* 5. L. Cummins, '• Sub-tribes of place where they have learned some-
ihc Bahr-ei-Ghazal Dinkas," Journal thing which they wish to remember.
of tru Anthroi^ological Institute, ysxiv. See Ch. Wunenberger, "La Mission
(1904) p. 164. et le royaume de Humbe," Missions
* (South African) Folklore Journal, Catholigues, xx. (1888) p. 270.
V THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE SUN 319
down faster, the Australians throw sand into the air and
blow with their mouths towards the sun/ perhaps to waft
the lingering orb westward and bury it under the sands into
which it appears to sink at night.
As some people imagine they can hasten the sun, Acceierat
so others fancy they can jog the tardy moon. The '"^ ""^
natives of German New Guinea reckon months by the
moon, and some of them have been known to throw
stones and spears at the moon, in order to accelerate its pro-
gress and so to hasten the return of their friends, who were
away from home for twelve months working on a tobacco
plantation.^ The Malays think that a bright glow at sunset
may throw a weak person into a fever. Hence they attempt
to extinguish the glow by spitting out water and throwing
ashes at it.^ The Shuswap Indians of British Columbia
believe that they can bring on cold weather by burning the
wood of a tree that has been struck by lightning. The
belief may be based on the observation that in their country
cold follo%vs a thunder-storm. Hence in spring, when these
Indians are travelling over the snow on high ground, they
burn splinters of such wood in the fire in order that the
crust of the snow may not melt*
§ 4. Tlie Magical Control of the Wind
Once more, the savage thinks he can make the wind toMakmgthe
blov,- or to be still. When the day is hot and a Yakut has ™'^ '°
-' blow or
a long way to go, he takes a stone which he has chanced be still.
to find in an animal or fish, winds a horse-hair several times
round it, and ties it to a stick. He then waves the stick
about, uttering a spell. Soon a cool breeze begins to blow.*
In order to procure a cool wind for nine days the stone
should first be dipped in the blood of a bird or beast and
• E. M. Curr, The Australian Race, 92 sq.
, ^■'■,- ,^ , .., jfijr * G. M. Dawson, "Notes on the
5 K. \ etter, Komm heruber und htlf „, „ , r -^ v t /^ 1 i ■ ,>
, , J- , I ■. , T r, i, I Shuswap People of British Columbia,"
tm: ! Oder die Arbeit aer A etten-Dettel- „ ^. '^ j- _,, „ , c ■ ' ^
,,. . . r. J 7 ir /^ • I ransactions of the Royal Society of
sau:r Misswn in Diutsch Nett-Guinea, ^ > • , , ^ ■'
-T, c CI -J ■ Lanaaa, ix. (IQOI, pub. 1002) sec-
u. lEarmen, 1S9S) p. 2Q ■. id., m ^. .. ' „ ^ '
B. Hsgen's Lnfer den Paf^ia's (W les- ^ -"
bades, 1809), p. 287. ^ J. G. Gmelin, Reise durch Sibirien
' W. W. Skeat, Malay Magic, pp. (Gdttingen, 1751-52), ii. 510.
32° THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER chap.
Making then presented to the sun, while the sorcerer makes three
the wind ^xixns, Contrary to the course of the luminary.^ The Wind
be still. clan of the Omahas flap their blankets to start a breeze
which will drive away the mosquitoes.^ When a Haida
Indian wishes to obtain a fair wind, he fasts, shoots a raven,
singes it in the fire, and then going to the edge of the
sea sweeps it over the surface of the water four times in
the direction in which he wishes the wind to blow. He
then throws the raven behind him, but afterwards picks it
up and sets it in a sitting posture at the foot of a spruce-
tree, facing towards the required wind. Propping its beak
open with a stick, he requests a fair wind for a certain
number of days ; then going away he lies covered up in his
mantle till another Indian asks him for how many days he
has desired the wind, which question he answers.^ When a
sorcerer in New Britain wishes to make a wind blow in a
certain direction, he throws burnt lime in the air, chanting
a song all the time. Then he waves sprigs of ginger and
other plants about, throws them up and catches them. Next
he makes a small fire with these sprigs on the spot where
the lime has fallen thickest, and walks round the fire chant-
ing. Lastly, he takes the ashes and throws them on the
water.* If a Hottentot desires the wind to drop, he takes
one of his fattest skins and hangs it on the end of a pole, in
the belief that by blowing the skin down the wind will lose
all its force and must itself fall.* Fuegian wizards throw
shells against the wind to make it drop.^ On the other
hand, when a Persian peasant desires a strong wind to
winnow his corn, he rubs a kind of bastard saffron and
throws it up into the air ; after that the breeze soon begins
to blow.'' Some of the Indians of Canada believed that the
winds were caused by a fish like a lizard. When one of
' C. H. Cottrell, Recollections of Geological Survey of Canada, Report of
5j<5^a (London, 1842), p. 140. Progress for i8y8-i8jg, p. 124B.
- T- Owen Doi-sey, " Omaha Socio- * W. Powell, Wanderings in a Wild
logy," Third Annual Riport of the Country (London, 1883), p. 169.
Bureau of Ethnology (Washington, ^ O.'Dd.^iitr, Description deTAfrique
1S84), p. 241; id., "A Study of (Amsterdam, 1 686), p. 389.
SiouanCnhs," Eisz'enth Annual Report * Mission scientifique du Cap Horn,
of the Bureau of Ethnology {Wsishiug- vii. (Paris, 1891) p. 257.
ton, 1S94), p. 410. ' J. Richardson, A Dictionary of
' G. >i. Dawson, " On the Haida Persian, Arabic, and English, New
Indians of the Queen Charlotte Islands," Edition (London, 1829), pp. liii. sq.
or be
V THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WIND 321
these fish had been caught, the Indians advised the Jesuit Making the
missionaries to put it back into the river as fast as possible ^'""^ '°
in order to calm the wind, which was contrary.^ If astur^"^
Cherokee wizard desires to turn aside an approaching storm,
he faces it and recites a spell with outstretched hand. Then
he gently blows towards the quarter to which he wishes it to
go, waving his hand in the same direction as if he were pushing
away the storm.^ The Ottawa Indians fancied they could
calm a tempest by relating the dreams they had dreamed
during their fast, or by throwing tobacco on the troubled
water.^ When the Kei Islanders wish to obtain a favourable
wind for their friends at sea, they dance in a ring, both men
and women, swaying their bodies to and fro, while the men
hold handkerchiefs in their hands.* In Melanesia there are
everywhere weather-doctors who can control the powers of
the air and are willing to supply wind or calm in return for
a proper remuneration. For instance, in Santa Cruz the
wizard makes wind by waving the branch of a tree and
chanting the appropriate charm.^ In another Melanesian
island a missionary observed a large shell filled with earth,
in which an oblong stone, covered with red ochre, was set
up, while the whole was surrounded by a fence of sticks
strengthened by a creeper which was twined in and out the
uprights. On asking a native what these things meant, he
learned that the wind was here fenced or bound round, lest
it should blow hard ; the imprisoned wind would not be able
to blow again until the fence that kept it in should have
rotted away.« In South Africa, when the Caffres wish to
stop a high wind, they call in a '• wind-doctor," who takes a
pot with a spout and points the spout towards the quarter
from which the wind is blowing. He then places medicines
^Relations des Jesuites, 1636, p. ^ Annates de [ Association de la Pro-
38 (Canadian reprint). On the other pagation de la Foi, iv. (1830) p. 482.
hand, some of the New South Wales * C. M. Pleyte, " Ethnographische
aborigines thought that a wished-for Beschrijving der Kei Eilanden," Tijd-
wind would not rise if shell-fish were schrift van het Nederlandsch Aardrijks-
roasted at night (D. Co\\iT&,Account of kundig Genootschap, Tweede Serie, x.
the English Colony in Neio South Wales, (1893) p. 827.
London, 1804, p. 382). 6 r. h. Codrington, The Melanes-
^ T. Mooney, " Sacred Formulas of ians, pp. 200, 201.
'CtiftC^aaVe^?.;' Seventh Annual Rep>ort ^ J. Palmer, quoted by R. H. Cod-
of ths Bureau of Ethnology {V^nshmg- rington, The Melanesians, p. 201,
ton, 1891), pp. 387 sq. note.
VOL. I
322 THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER chap.
and some of the dust blown by the wind in the vessel, and
seals up every opening of the pot with damp clay. There-
upon the doctor declares, " The head of the wind is now in
my pot, and the wind will cease to blow." ^ The natives of
the island of Bibili, off German New Guinea, are reputed
to make wind by blowing with their mouths. In stormy
weather the Bogadjim people say, " The Bibili folk are at
it again, blowing away." ^ Another way of making wind
which is practised in New Guinea is to strike a "wind-
stone " lightly with a stick ; to strike it hard would bring on
a hurricane.^ So in Scotland witches used to raise the
wind by dipping a rag in water and beating it thrice on
a stone, saying :
" / knok this rag upone this stane
To raise the wind in the divelUs natne.
It sail not lye till I please againe." *
Raising At Victoria, the capital of Vancouver's Island, there are
the wind ^ number of large stones not far from what is called the
Battery. Each of them represents a certain wind. When
an Indian wants any particular wind, he goes and moves
the corresponding stone a little ; were he to move it too
much, the wind would blow very hard.* The natives of
]^Iurray Island in Torres Straits used to make a great wind
blow from the south-east by pointing coco-nut leaves and
other plants at two granitic boulders on the shore. So long
as the leaves remained there the wind sat in that quarter.
But, significantly enough, the ceremony was only performed
during the prevalence of the south-east monsoon. The
natives knew better than to try to raise a south-east wind
while the north-west monsoon was blowing.^ On the altar
of Fladda's chapel, in the island of Fladdahuan (one of the
Hebrides), lay a round bluish stone which was always moist.
Windbound fishermen walked sunwise round the chapel and
' Dudley Kidd, Savage Childhood stitions of Scotland, p. 248.
(London, 1906), p. 151. ' Fr. Boas, in Sixth Report on the
2 B. Hagen, Unter den Papua's North- Western Tribes of Canada, p.
(Wiesbaden, 1899), p. 269. 26 (separate reprint from the Report of
' W. Monckton, "Some Recollec- the British Association for i8go).
tions of Xew Guinea Customs, ''yii«r«a/ ^ A. C. Haddon, Head-hunters, -p.
of the Polyiusian Society, v. (1896) 60; Reports of the Cambridge Anthro-
p. iS6. fological Expedition to Torres Straits,
* J. G. Dalyell, The Darker Super- vi. (Cambridge, igo8) pp. 201 sq.
V THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WIND 323
then poured water on the stone, whereupon a favourable
breeze was sure to spring up.^ In Gigha, an island off the
western coast of Argyleshire, there is a well named Tobar-
rath Bhuathaig or " The lucky well of Beathag," which used
to be famous for its power of raising the wind. It lies at
the foot of a hill facing north-east near an isthmus called
Tarbat. Six feet above where the water gushes out there
is a heap of stones which forms a cover to the sacred spring.
When a person wished for a fair wind, either to leave the
island or to bring home his absent friends, this part was
opened with great solemnity, the stones were carefully
removed, and the well cleaned with a wooden dish or a
clam shell. This being done, the water was thrown several
times in the direction from which the wished-for wind was
to blow, and this action was accompanied by a certain form
of words which the person repeated every time he threw the
water. When the ceremony was over, the well was again
carefully shut up to prevent fatal consequences, it being
firmly believed that, were the place left open, a storm would
arise which would overwhelm the whole island.^ The
Esthonians have various odd ways of raising a wind. They
scratch their finger, or hang up a serpent, or strike an axe
into a house-beam in the direction from which they wish the
wind to blow, while at the same time they whistle. The
notion is that the gentle wind will not let an innocent being
or even a beam suffer without coming and breathing softly
to assuage the pain.^
In Mabuiag, an island between New Guinea and Australia, winds
there were men whose business was to make wind for such ^'^^^'^
as wanted it. When engaged in his professional duties the and
wizard painted himself black behind and red on his face ™"^ ^^'
and chest. The red in front typified the red cloud of morn-
ing, the black represented the dark blue sky of night. Thus
arrayed he took some bushes, and, when the tide was low,
fastened them at the edge of the reef so that the flowing
1 Martin, ' ' Description of the West- Statistical Account of Scotland, viii.
em Islands of Scotland," in Pinker- (Edinburgh, 1793) p. 52, note.
ton's Voyages and Travels, iii. 627 ; ^ Boecler-Kreutzwald, Der Ehsten
Miss C. F. Gordon Gumming, In the abergldubische Gebrduche, Weisen und
Hebrides, pp. i66 sq. Gewohnheiten (St. Petersburg, 1854),
2 W. Fraser, in Sir John Sinclair's pp. 105 sq.
324 THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER chap.
Winds tide made them sway backwards and forwards. But if only
SS^Lid ^ gentle breeze was needed, he fastened them nearer to the
witches. shore. To stop the wind he again painted himself red and
black, the latter in imitation of the clear blue sky, and then
removing the bushes from the reef he dried and burnt them.
The smoke as it curled up was believed to stop the wind :
"Smoke he go up and him clear up on top."^ In some
islands of Torres Straits the wizard made wind by whirling
a bull-roarer ; ^ the booming sound of the instrument probably
seemed to him like the roar or the whistling of the wind.
Amongst the Kurnai tribe of Gippsland in Victoria there used
to be a noted raiser of storms who went by the name of Bunjil
Kraura or " Great West Wind." This wind makes the tall
slender trees of the Gippsland forests to rock and sway so
that the natives could not climb them in search of opossums.
Hence the people were forced to propitiate Bunjil Kraura
by liberal offerings of weapons and rugs whenever the tree-
tops bent before a gale. Having received their gifts, Bunjil
Kraura would bind his head with swathes of stringy bark,
and lull the storm to rest with a song which consisted of
the words " Wear — string — Westwind," repeated again and
again.^ Apparently the wizard identified himself with the
wind, and fancied that he could bind it by tying string round
his own head. The Kwakiutl Indians of British Columbia, as
we have seen, believe that twins can summon any wind by
merely moving their hands.* In Greenland a woman in
child- bed and for some time after delivery is supposed
to possess the power of laying a storm. She has only to
go out of doors, fill her mouth with air, and coming
back into the house blow it out again.* In antiquity
there was a family at Corinth which enjoyed the reputation
of being able to still the raging wind ; but we do not know
in what manner its members exercised a useful function.
1 A, C. Haddon, " The Ethnography v. 352.
ofthe Western Tribe of Torres Straits," 3 Mary E. B. Howitt, Folklore and
Journal of tht Anthropological Institute, Legends of some Victorian Tribes (in
xij.(i89o), pp. 401 J?.; Reports of the manuscript).
Cambridpe Anthropological Expedition , „ ,
,0 Torres Straits, v. (Cambridge, 1 904), ^ee above, p. 263.
pp. 351 sf. ^ H. Tigede, Description of Greenland,
^ Reports of the Cambridge Aiithro- second edition (London, 18 18), p. 196,
pological Expedition to Torres Straits, note.
V THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WIND 325
which probably earned for them a more solid recompense Winds
than mere repute among the seafaring population of the ^^af^^and
isthmus.' Even in Christian times, under the reign of witches.
Constantine, a certain Sopater suffered death at Constanti-
nople on a charge of binding the winds by magic, because
it happened that the corn-ships of Egypt and Syria were
detained afar off by calms or head-winds, to the rage and
disappointment of the hungry Byzantine rabble.^ An
ancient charm to keep storms from damaging the crops was
to bury a toad in a new earthen vessel in the middle of the
field.^ Finnish wizards used to sell wind to storm-stayed
mariners. The wind was enclosed in three knots ; if they
undid the first knot, a • moderate wind sprang up ; if the
second, it blew half a gale ; if the third, a hurricane.* Indeed
the Esthonians, whose country is divided from Finland only
by an arm of the sea, still believe in the magical powers of
their northern neighbours. The bitter winds that blow in
spring from the north and north-east, bringing ague and
rheumatic inflammations in their train, are set down by the
simple Esthonian peasantry to the machinations of the
Finnish wizards and witches. In particular they regard with
special dread three days in spring to which they give the
name of Days of the Cross ; one of them falls on the Eve of
Ascension Day. The people in the neighbourhood of Fellin
fear to go out on these days lest the cruel winds from Lapp-
iand should smite them dead. A popular Esthonian song
runs :
" Wmd of the Cross ! rushing and mighty /
Heavy the How of thy wings sweeping past !
Wild wailing wind of misfortune and sorrow,
Wizards of Finland ride by on the blast." ^
It is said, too, that sailors, beating up against the wind
in the Gulf of Finland, sometimes see a strange sail heave
in sight astern and overhaul them hand over hand. On she
' Hesychius and Suidas, s.v. avefio- Aedesius, p. 463, Didot edition.
KM-ai ; Eustathius, on Homer, Od. x. ^ P'iny, Nat. Hist, xviii. 294.
22, p. 1645. Compare J. Topffer, Compare Geoponica, ii. 18.
Attische Genealogie, p. 112, who con- * Olaus Magnus, Gentium septentr.
jectnres that the Eiidanemi or Heuda- hist. iii. 15.
tjemi at Athens may also have claimed ^ Boecler-Kreutzwald, Der Ehsten
the power of lulling the winds. abei'gldubische Cebrduche, IVeisen und
^ Eunapius, Vitae sophistarum : Gezvohnheiten, pp. 107 sq.
326 THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER chap.
comes with a cloud of canvas— all her studding-sails out —
right in the teeth of the wind, forging her way through the
foaming billows, dashing back the spray in sheets from her
cutwater, every sail swollen to bursting, every rope strained
to cracking. Then the sailors know that she hails from
Finland.^
Enclosing The art of tying up the wind in three knots, so that the
themnds j^Qj-g knots are loosed the stronger will blow the wind, has
m knots, _ _ ° . _ '
bags, and been attributed to wizards in Lappland and to witches in
^^' Shetland, Lewis, and the Isle of Man. Shetland seamen
still buy winds in the shape of knotted handkerchiefs or
threads from old women who claim to rule the storms.
There are said to be ancient crones in Lerwick now who live
by selling wind.^ In the early part of the nineteenth century
Sir Walter Scott visited one of these witches at Stromness
in the Orkneys. He says : " We clomb, by steep and dirty
lanes, an eminence rising above the town, and commanding
a fine view. An old hag lives in a wretched cabin on this
height, and subsists by selling winds. Each captain of a
merchantman, between jest and earnest, gives the old woman
sixpence, and she boils her kettle to procure a favourable
gale. She was a miserable figure ; upwards of ninety, she
told us, and dried up like a mummy. A sort of clay-coloured
cloak, folded over her head, corresponded in colour to her
corpse-like complexion. Fine light-blue eyes, and nose and
chin that almost met, and a ghastly expression of cunning,
gave her quite the effect of Hecate." ^ A Norwegian witch
has boasted of sinking a ship by opening a bag in which she
had shut up a wind.* Ulysses received the winds in a
leathern bag from Aeolus, King of the Winds.^ The
^ Dana, Two \ 'ears before the Mast, serve, then I wish I were in Lapland,
ch. vi. to buy a good wind of one of the honest
^ J. Scheffer, Lapponia (Frankfort, witches, that sell so many winds there
1673), p. 144; J. Train, Account of and so cheap" (Izaac Walton, C»»«//fa;
th^ Isle of Man, ii. 166; Miss C. F. Angler, ch. v.).
Gordon Cumming, In the Hebrides, pp. ^ J. G. Lockhart, Memoirs of the
254 sq.; Ch. Rogers, Social Life Life of Sir Walter Scott, iii. 203 (first
in Scotland, iii. 220 ; Sir W. Scott, edition).
Pirate, note to ch. vii. ; Miss M. * C. Leemius, De Lapponibus Fin-
Cameron, in Folklore, xiv. (1903) pp. marchiae, etc., commentatio (Copen-
301 sq. Compare Shakespeare, Mac- hagfen, 1767). V- 454-
beth. Act i. Sc. 3, line 11. " But, my ^ Homer, Odyssey, x. 19 sqq. It is
loving master, if any wind will not said that Perdoytus, the Lithuanian
V THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WIND 327
Motumotu in New Guinea tiiink tliat storms are sent by an
Oiabu sorcerer ; for each wind he has a bamboo which he
opens at pleasure.^ On the top of Mount Agu in Togo, a
district of German West Africa, resides a fetish called Bagba,
who is supposed to control the wind and the rain. His
priest is said to keep the winds shut up in great pots.^
Often the stormy wind is regarded as an evil being who Frighten-
may be intimidated, driven away, or killed. When the'^^'*^"™^
■' ^ ' ^ ^ •' ' away, and
darkening of the sky indicates the approach of a tornado, killing the
a South African magician will repair to a height whither he thg'wind
collects as many people as can be hastily summoned to his
assistance. Directed by him, they shout and bellow in
imitation of the gust as it swirls roaring about the huts and
among the trees of the forest. Then at a signal they mimic
the crash of the thunder, after which there is a dead silence
for a few seconds ; then follows a screech more piercing and
prolonged than any that preceded, dying away in a tremulous
wail. The magician fills his mouth with a foul liquid which
he squirts in defiant jets against the approaching storm as
a kind of menace or challenge to the spirit of the wind ; and
the shouting and wailing of his assistants are meant to
frighten the spirit away. The performance lasts until the
tornado either bursts or passes away in another direction.
If it bursts, the reason is that the magician who sent the
storm was more powerful than he who endeavoured to avert
it' When storms and bad weather have lasted long and
food is scarce with the Central Esquimaux, they endeavour
to conjure the tempest by making a long whip of seaweed,
armed with which they go down to the beach and strike out
in the direction of the wind, crying, " Tada (it is enough) ! " *
Once when north-westerly winds had kept the ice long on
the coast and food was becoming scarce, the Esquimaux
Aeolus, keeps the \\inds enclosed in a ans den dentsclien Schutzgebieten, v.
leathern bag; when they escape from (1892) pp. 144 sq.; H. Klose, Togo
it he pursues them, beats them, and untcr deutscher Flagge (Berlin, 1899),
shuts them up again. See E. Vecken- p. 1S9.
Si^l.Dii Myi/icn, Sj^ittiimi J.egemien , ., t i\j 1 11 » 7-_- j
■ . ,T ■ . • 1-1 Kev. T. Macdonald, Kelinon and
c^r Zarruiiten (Litauer), i. I5S- -Ihe ., ,? /r j o ^i _
, ;. . '' , -^- J}fyth ihondon, 1893), p. 7.
statements of this writer, however, are '^
to be received with laution. * Fr. Boas, "The Central Eskimo,"
^ J. Chalmers, Fioneeniig in Nnv Sixth Annual Report of the Bureau
Gairiia, p. 1 77. of Ethnology (Washington, 1888), p.
- Lieut. Herold, in Mittciluiigeii 593.
328 THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER chap.
performed a ceremony to make a calm. A fire was kindled
on the shore, and the men gathered round it and chanted.
An old man then stepped up to the fire and in a coaxing
voice invited the demon of the wind to come under the fire
and warm himself. When he was supposed to have arrived, a
vessel of water, to which each man present had contributed,
was thrown on the flames by an old man, and immediately
a flight of arrows sped towards the spot where the fire had
been. They thought that the demon would not stay where
he had been so badly treated. To complete the effect, guns
were discharged in various directions, and the captain of a
European vessel was invited to fire on the wind with cannon.-'
On the twenty-first of February 1883 a similar ceremony was
performed by the Esquimaux of Point Barrow, Alaska, with
the intention of killing the spirit of the wind. Women drove
the demon from their houses with clubs and knives, with
which they made passes in the air ; and the men, gathering
round a fire, shot him with their rifles and crushed him
under a heavy stone the moment that steam rose in a cloud
from the smouldering embers, on which a tub of water had
just been thrown.^
Confront- In ancient India the priest was directed to confront a
^^^Lth storm, armed to the teeth with a bludgeon, a sword, and
swars£ asd a firebrand, while he chanted a magical lay.^ During a
tremendous hurricane the drums of Kadouma, near the
Victoria Nyanza, were heard to beat all night. When next
morning a missionary enquired the cause, he was told that
the sound of the drums is a charm against storms.* The
Sea Dyaks and Kayans of Borneo beat gongs when a
tempest is raging ; but the Dyaks, and perhaps the Kayans
also, do this, not so much to frighten away the spirit of the
storm, as to apprise him of their whereabouts, lest he should
inadvertently knock their houses down. Heard at night
above the howling of the storm, the distant boom of the
'^ Arctic Papers for the Expedition of ^ M. Bloomfield, Hymns of the
1S75 (Royal Geographical Society), Atharva-Veda, p. 249 (Sacred Books
p- 274- of the East, vol. xlii.) ; W. Caland,
^ J. Murdoch, " Ethnological Re- Altindisches Zauberritual, p. 128.
suits of the Point Barrow Expedition,"
NirUh Annual Report of the Bureau of * Father Livinhac, in Annales de la
Ethnology (Washington, 1892), pp. Propagation de la Foi, liii. (1881) p.
432 sq- 209.
cnmiiS-
V THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WIND 329
gongs has a weird effect ; and sometimes, before the notes
can be distinguished for the wind and rain, they strike fear
into a neighbouring village ; lights are extinguished, the
women are put in a place of safety, and the men stand
to their arms to resist an attack. Then with a lull in the
wind the true nature of the gong-beating is recognised, and
the alarm subsides.^
On calm summer days in the Highlands of Scotland Attacking
eddies of wind sometimes go past, whirling about dust and *n^t'[th
straws, though not another breath of air is stirring. The weapons.
Highlanders think that the fairies are in these eddies carry-
ing away men, women, children, or animals, and they will fling
their left shoej or their bonnet, or a knife, or earth from a
mole-hill at the eddy to make the fairies drop their booty.^
When a gust lifts the hay in the meadow, the Breton
peasant throws a knife or a fork at it to prevent the devil from
carrying off the hay.^ Similarly in the Esthpnian island of
Oesel,when the reapers are busy among the corn and the wind
blows about the ears that have not yet been tied into sheaves,
the reapers slash at it with their sickles.* The custom of
flinging a knife or a hat at a whirlwind is observed alike by
German, Slavonian, and Esthonian rustics ; they think that a
witch or wizard is riding on the blast, and that the knife,
if it hits the witch, will be reddened by her blood or will
disappear altogether, sticking in the wound it has inflicted.^
' J. Perham, " Sea Dyak Religion," lungen der gelehrten Estnischen Gesell-
Jourtml of the Straits Branch of the schaft zu Dorpat, vii. 2, p. 54.
Royal Asiatic Society^ No. lo (De- 5 p^_ Kuhn und W. Schwartz, Nord-
cember 1882), pp. 241 sq ; H. Ling deutscheSagen,MdrchenundGebrduche,
Roth, The Natives of Sarawak and p. 454, § 406 ; Von Alpenburg, Mythen
British North Borneo^ i. 201 ; A. W. mid Sagen 7'irols, pp. 262, 365 sq. ;
'Sieuwenhais, In Centraat Borneo {l.ey- W. Mannhardt, Die Goiter der deut-
den, 1900), ii 180 sq. The people schen und nordischen Volker (Berlin,
of Samarcand used to beat drums and i860), p. 99; id., Antike Wcild- und
dance in the eleventh month to demand Fddkulte, p. 85 ; Boecler-Kreutzwald,
cold weather, and they threw water on Der Ehsten abergldubische Gebrduche,
one another. See E. Chavannes, Les Weisen und Gewohnheiten, p. 109 ;
Tou-Kiue (Ttircs) Occidentaux (St. F. S. Krauss, Volksglaube und religi-
Petersbui^, 1903), p. 135. oser Brauch der Siidslaven, p. 117.
- J. G. Campbell, Superstitions of In some parts of Austria and Germany,
the Highlands and Islands of Scotland when a storm is raging, the people
(Glasgow, 1900), pp. 24 sq. open a window and throw out a hand-
' V.S&sil\ot,Cautumespopulairesde ful of meal, saying to the wind,
la Haute-Bretagne, -pp. -^02 sq. "There, that's for you, stop!" See
* Holzmayer, " Osiliana," Verhand- A. Peter, Volksthiimliches aus oster-
330 THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER chap.
wind with
weapons-
Attacking Sometimes Esthonian peasants run shrieking and shout-
ewnir- j^^^ behind a whirlwind, hurling sticks and stones into
the flying dust.^ The Lengua Indians of the Gran
Chaco ascribe the rush of a whirlwind to the passage
of a spirit and they fling sticks at it to frighten it away.^
When the wind blows down their huts, the Payaguas of
South America snatch up firebrands and run against the
wind, menacing it with the blazing brands, while others beat
the air with their fists to frighten the storm.^ When the
Guaycurus are threatened by a severe storm, the men go out
armed, and the women and children scream their loudest to
intimidate the demon.* During a tempest the inhabitants of
a Batta village in Sumatra have been seen to rush from
their houses armed with sword and lance. The rajah placed
himself at their head, and with shouts and yells they hewed
and hacked at the invisible foe. An old woman was observed
to be specially active in the defence of her house, slashing
the air right and left with a long sabre.^ In a violent
thunderstorm, the peals sounding very near, the Kayans
of Borneo have been seen to draw their swords threaten-
ingly half out of their scabbards, as if to frighten away
the demons of the storm.® In Australia the huge columns
of red sand that move rapidly across a desert tract are
thought by the natives to be spirits passing along. Once
reichisch-Schlesuji, iL 259 ; J. Grimm,
Deutsche Mythologie,^ p. 529 ; Zingerle,
Siftsn Brdiuhe und Meiiiungen des
Tiraier Volkes,^ p. 118, § I046.
Similarly an old Irishwoman has been
seen to iling handfuls of grass into a
cioad of dust blown along a road, and
she explained her behaviour by saying
that she wished to give something to
the fairies who were playing in the
dust {Folklore, iv. (1893) p. 352).
But these are sacriiices to appease, not
ceremonies to constrain the spirits of
the air ; thus they belong to the domain
of religion rather than to that of magic.
The ancient Greeks sacrificed to- the
winds- See P. Stengel, "Die Opfer
der Helienen an die Winde," Hermes,
xvi. (1881) pp. 346-350; and my
note on Pausanias, ii. 12. i.
' J. G. Kohl, Die deutsch-russischen
Ostsiepravinzen, ii. 278.
2 G. Kurze, ' ' Sitten und Gebrauche
der 'Ltn^-as.-laAi&ner," Mitteilangen der
Geographischen Gesellschaft zu Jena,
xxiii. (1905) p. 17.
^ F. de Azara, Voyage dans VAmi-
rique Miridionale, ii. 137.
* P. Lozano, Descripcion choro-
graphica del Gran Chaco (Cordova,
■733)) P' 7' ; Charlevoix, Hist aire du
Paraguay, ii. 74 > Guevara, Historia
del Paraguay, p. 23 (in P. de Angelis's
Coleccioit de obras y documentos, etc.,
ii., Buenos Ayres, 1836) ; D. de
Alvear, Relacion geografica e historica
de la provincia de Misiones, p. 14 (P.
de Angelis, op. cit. iv. ).
* W. A. Henry, " Bijdrage tot de
Kennis der Bataklanden," Tijdschrift
voor Indische Taal- Land- en Volken-
kunde, xvii. 23 sq.
^ A. W. Nieuwenhuis, Quer durch
Borneo, i. (Leyden, 1904) p. 97.
V THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WIND 331
an athletic young black ran after one of these moving
columns to kill it with boomerangs. He was away two or
three hours, and came back very weary, saying he had killed
Koochee (the demon), but that Koochee had growled at him
and he must die.^ Of the Bedouins of eastern Africa it is
said that " no whirlwind ever sweeps across the path without
being pursued by a dozen savages with drawn creeses, who
stab into the centre of the dusty column in order to drive
away the evil spirit that is believed to be riding on the
blast." ^ i
In the light of these examples a story told by Herodotus, Fighting
which his modern critics have treated as a fable, is perfectly ^'^^^^^
credible. He says, without however vouching for the truth
of the tale, that once in the land of the Psylli, the modern
Tripoli, the wind blowing from the Sahara had dried up all
the water-tanks. So the people took counsel and marched
in a body to make war on the south wind. But when they
entered the desert the simoom swept down on them and buried
them to a man.^ The story may well have been told by one
who watched them disappearing, in battle array, with drums
and cymbals beating, into the red cloud of whirling sand.
* R. Brough Smyth, Aborigines of nal District, p. 154). The Chevas
Victoria, i. 457 sq. ; compare id., ii. and Tumbucas of South Africa fancy
270 ; A- W. Hewitt, in Journal of them to be the wandering souls of
the Anthropo'ogical Institute, xiii. sorcerers {Zeitschrift fiir allgemeine
(1884) p. 194, note; Spencer and Erdkunde, vi. (Berlin, 1856) pp. 301
Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central sq.). The Baganda and the Pawnees
Australia, p. 632. believe them to be ghosts (J. Roscoe
^ W. Comwallis Harris, The High- va Journal of the Anthropological Insti-
lands of Ethicpia (London, 1844.),!. :a2. tute, xxxii. (1902) p. 73; G. B.
Compare Ph. Paulitschke, £/^«(ijrc/^z« Grinnell, Pawnee Hero-Stories and
Nord-ost-Afrikas : die geistige Cultur Folk-tales,^. '^yj). Californian Indians
der DayiAkil, Galla und Somdl (Berlin, think that they are happy souls ascend-
1896), p. 28. Even where these ing to the heavenly land (Stephen
columns or whirlwinds of dust are not Powers, Tribes of California, p. 328).
attacked th are still regarded with Once when a great Fijian chief died, a
awe. The Ainos believe them to be whirlwind swept across the lagoon,
filled with demons ; hence they will An old man who saw it covered his
hide behind a tree and spit profusely if mouth with his hand and said in an
they see one coming (J. Batchelor, awestruck whisper, "There goes his
TTie Ainu and their Folklore, p. 385). spirit ! " (Rev. Lorimer Fison, in a letter
In some parts of India they are sup- to the author, dated August 26, iS
posed to be bhuts going to bathe in ^ Herodotus, iv. 173 ; Aulus Gellius,
the Ganges (Denzil C. J. Ibbetson, xvi. 1 1. The Cimbrians are said to
Settlement Report of the Panipat, Tah- have taken arms against the tide
til, and Kamal Parganah of the Kar- (Strabo, vii. 2. I).
CHAPTER VI
MAGICIANS AS KINGS
Sodai im- The foregoing evidence may satisfy us that in many lands
^^^°' and many races magic has claimed to control the great
and their forces of nature for the good of man. If that has been
^rioDol' ^°' '■^^ practitioners of the art must necessarily be personages
chiefs or of importance and influence in any society which puts faith
°^' in their extravagant pretensions, and it would be no matter
for surprise if, by virtue of the reputation which they enjoy
and of the awe which they inspire, some of them should
attain to the highest position of authority over their credulous
fellows. In point of fact magicians appear to have often
But magic developed into chiefs and kings. Not that magic is the only
only road °^ perhaps even the main road by which men have travelled
by which to a throne. The lust of power, the desire to domineer over
travelled to onr fellows, is among the commonest and the strongest of
a throne human passions, and no doubt men of a masterful character
have sought to satisfy it in many different ways and have
attained by many different means to the goal of their
ambition. The sword, for example, in a strong hand has
unquestionably done for many what the magician's wand
Complexity in a deft hand appears to have done for some. He who
^^ investigates the history of institutions should constantly bear
phenomena in mind the extreme complexity of the causes which have
dLge/of built up the fabric of human society, and should be on his
simplify- guard agaiust a subtle danger incidental to all science, the
unduly tendency to simplify unduly the infinite variety of the
by our phenomena by fixing our attention on a few of them to the
hypotheses. .
exclusion of the rest. The propensity to excessive simplifi-
cation is indeed natural to the mind of man, since it is only
CHAP. VI MAGICIANS AS KINGS 333
by abstraction and generalisation, which necessarily imply
the neglect of a multitude of particulars, that he can stretch
his puny faculties so as to embrace a minute portion of the
illimitable vastness of the universe. But if the propensity is
natural and even inevitable, it is nevertheless fraught with
peril, since it is apt to narrow and falsify our conception of
any subject under investigation. To correct it partially —
for to correct it wholly would require an infinite intelligence
— we must endeavour to broaden our views by taking account
of a wide range of facts and possibilities ; and when we have
done so to the utmost of our power, we must still remember
that from the very nature of things our ideas fall immeasur-
ably short of the reality.
In no branch of learning, perhaps, has this proneness to This pro-
an attractive but fallacious simplicity wrought more havoc P^nsity to
excessive
than in the investigation of the early history of mankind ; simpiifica-
in particular, the excesses to which it has been carried "™ ^^ ,
nave done much to discredit the study of primitive to discredit
mjiihology and religion. Students of these subjects have ^^® ^'"^f-^^^
been far too ready to pounce on any theory which adequately mythology
explains some of the facts, and forthwith to stretch it so as ^^^^^'^'
to cover them all ; and when the theory, thus unduly strained,
has broken, as was to be expected, in their unskilful hands,
they have pettishly thrown it aside in disgust instead of
restricting it, as they should have done from the outset, to
the particular class of facts to which it is really applicable.
So it fared in our youth with the solar myth theory, which
after being unreasonably exaggerated by its friends has
long been quite as unreasonably rejected altogether by its
adversaries ; and in more recent times the theories of
totemism, magic, and taboo, to take only a few conspicuous
examples, have similarly suffered from the excessive zeal
of injudicious advocates. This instability of judgment, this
tendenc)- of anthropological opinion to swing to and fro
from one extreme to another with every breath of new
discover)-, is perhaps the principal' reason why the whole
study is still viewed askance by men of sober and cautious
temper, who naturally look with suspicion on idols that are
set up and worshipped one day only to be knocked down and
trampled under foot the next. To these cool observers Max
334 MAGICIANS AS KINGS chap.
Miiller and the rosy Dawn in the nineteenth century stand
on the same dusty shelf with Jacob Bryant arid Noah's ark
in the eighteenth, and they expect with a sarcastic smile
the time when the fashionable anthropological topics of the
present day will in their turn be consigned to the same peace-
ful limbo of forgotten absurdities. It is not for the anthro-
pologist himself to anticipate the verdict of posterity on his
labours ; still it is his humble hope that the facts which he
has patiently amassed will be found sufificiently numerous
and solid to bear the weight of some at least of the con-
clusions which he rests upon them, so that these can never
again be lightly tossed aside as the fantastic dreams of a
mere bookish student. At the same time, if he is wise,
he \\\\\ be forward to acknowledge and proclaim that our
hypotheses at best are but partial, not universal, solutions of
the manifold problems which confront us, and that in science
as in daih' life it is vain to look for one key to open all locks,
q^j^g Therefore, to revert to our immediate subject, in putting
practice forward the practice of magic as an explanation of the rise
explains of monarchy in some communities, I am far from thinking
the rise of q^ suggesting that it can explain the rise of it in all, or, in
some com- Other words, that kings are universally the descendants or
mumties, successors of mag^icians ; and if any one should hereafter, as
but not m s> ' j >
all. is likely enough, either enunciate such a theory or attribute
it to me, I desire to enter my caveat against it in advance.
To enumerate and describe all the modes in which men have
pushed, or fought, or wormed their way by force or by fraud,
by their own courage and wisdom or by the cowardice and
folly of others, to supreme power, might furnish the theme
of a political treatise such as I have no pretension to write ;
for my present purpose it suffices if I can trace the magician's
progress in some savage and barbarous tribes from the rank
of a sorcerer to the dignity of a king. The facts which I
am about to lay before the reader seem to exhibit various
steps of this development from simple conjuring up to
Social im- coujuring Compounded with despotism.
ponanre of -^^ begin by looking at the lowest race of men as to
among the whom wc possess Comparatively full and accurate informa-
^Ce?aS tion, the aborigines of Australia. These savages are ruled
Aostraiia. neither by chiefs nor kings. So far as their tribes can be
VI MAGICIANS AS KINGS 335
said to have a political constitution, it is a democracy or
rather an oligarchy of old and influential men, who meet
in council and decide on all measures of importance to the
practical exclusion of the younger men. Their deliberative
assembly answers to the senate of later times : if we had to
coin a word for such a government of elders we might call it
a gerontocracy} The elders who in aboriginal Australia thus
meet and direct the affairs of their tribe appear to be for the
most part the headmen of their respective totem clans. Now
in Central Australia, where the desert nature of the country
and the almost complete isolation from foreign influences
have retarded progress and preserved the natives on the
whole in their most primitive state, the headmen of the
various totem clans are charged with the important task of
performing magical ceremonies for the multiplication of the
totems, and as the great majority of the totems are edible
animals or plants, it follows that these men are commonly
expected to provide the people with food by means of
magic. Others have to make the rain to fall or to render
other services to the community. In short, among the
tribes of Central Australia the headmen are public magicians.
Further, their most important function is to take charge of
the sacred storehouse, usually a cleft in the rocks or a hole in
the ground, where are kept the holy stones and sticks (churingd)
with which the souls of all the people, both living and dead, are
apparently supposed to be in a manner bound up. Thus while
the headmen have certainly to perform what we should call
civil duties, such as to inflict punishment for breaches of
tribal custom, their principal functions are sacred or magical.^
Again, in the tribes of South-Eastern Australia the head- Social im-
man was often, sometimes invariably, a magician. Thus in ma^dans°*
the southern Wiradjuri tribe the headman was always a among the
wizard or a medicine-man. There was one for each local of soSh^
Eastern
' The government of the western sg., 167 sg, Australia,
islanders of Torres Straits is similar.
See A. C. Haddon, in Rej^orts of the ^ Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes
Cambrid~e Anthrofological Expedition of Central Australia, pp. 9-15, 154,
to Torres Straits, v. 263 sq. So, too, 159-205 ; id.. Northern Tribes of
the Bar.toc Igorot of the Philippines Central Australia, pp. 20-27, 285-
have no chiefs and are ruled by councils 297, 309 sq., 316; A. W. Howitt,
of old men. See A. E. Jenks, The Native Tribes of South- East Australia,
Bantoc Igorot (Manila, 1905), pp. 32 pp. 320-326.
336 MAGICIANS AS KINGS chap.
Social im- division. He called the people together for the initiation
portance of ceremonies or to discuss matters of public importance.^ In
magicians ^ ^
among the the Yerkla-mining tribe the medicine-men are the headmen ;
trites of j-hey are called Mobung-bai, from mobung, " magic." They
Eas-OTi decide disputes, arrange marriages, conduct the ceremonies
Australia. ^^ initiation, and in certain circumstances settle the form-
alities to be observed in ordeals of battle. " In fact, they
wield authority in the tribe, and give orders where others
only make requests." ^ Again, in the Yuin tribe there was
a headman for each local division, and in order to be
fitted for his office he had, among other qualifications, to be
a medicine-man ; above all he must be able to perform
magical feats at the initiation ceremonies. The greatest
headman of all was he who on these occasions could bring
up the largest number of things out of his inside.* In fact
the budding statesman and king must be first and foremost
a conjuror in the most literal sense of the word. Some
fort>' or fifty years ago the principal headman of the Dieri
tribe was a certain Jalina piramurana, who was known
among the colonists as the Frenchman on account of his
polished manners. He was not only a brave and skilful
warrior, but also a powerful medicine-man, greatly feared by
the neighbouring tribes, who sent him presents even from a
distance of a hundred miles. He boasted of being the " tree
of life," for he was the head of a totem consisting of a
particular sort of seed which forms at certain times the chief
vegetable food of these tribes. His people spoke of him as
the plant itself {manyura) which yields the edible seed.^
Again, an early writer on the tribes of South-Western
Australia, near King George's Sound, tells us that "the
individuals who possess most influence are the mulgarradocks,
or doctors. ... A mulgarradock is considered to possess
the power of driving away wind or rain, as well as bringing
down lightning or disease upon any object of their or others'
hatred," and they also attempted to heal the sick.^ On the
1 A. W. Howitt, of. cit. p. 303. who are also magicians see ib. pp.
2 A. W. Howitt, op. cit. p. 313. 301 ^?-' 302, 317-
-^ r J J 5 gj,Q(.j Nind, " Description of the
3 A. W. Howitt, op. cit. p. 314- Natives of King George's Sound (Swan
* A. W. Howitt, cp. cit. pp. 297- Kb/ex Colony)," Jotirnal of the Ji. Geo-
299. For more examples of headmen graphical Society, i. (1832) p. 41.
VI MAGICIANS AS KINGS 337
whole, then, it is highly significant that in the most primitive
society about which we are accurately informed it is especially
the magicians or medicine-men who appear to have been in
process of developing into chiefs.
When we pass from Australia to New Guinea we findsodaiim-
that, though the natives stand at a far higher level of culture P°"''t^°'^« °*
' ^ o magicians
than the Australian aborigines, the constitution of society in New
among them is still essentially democratic or oligarchic, and "'"^^'
chieftainship exists only in embryo. Thus Sir William
JiIacGregor tells us that in British New Guinea no one has
ever arisen wise enough, bold enough, and strong enough to
become the despot even of a single district. " The nearest
approach to this has been the very distant one of some
person becoming a renowned wizard ; but that has only
resulted in levying a certain amount of blackmail." ^ To
the same effect a Catholic missionary observes that in New
Guinea the nepu or sorcerers "are everywhere. They boast
of their misdeeds ; everybody fears them, everybody accuses
them, and, after all, nothing positive is known of their secret
practices. This cursed brood is as it were the soul of the
Papuan life. Nothing happens without the sorcerer's inter-
vention : wars, marriages, diseases, deaths, expeditions, fish-
ing, hunting, always and everywhere the sorcerer. . . . One
thing is certain for them, and they do not regard it as an
article of fai^th, but as a fact patent and indisputable, and
that is the extraordinary power of the nepu ; he is the master
of life and of death. Hence it is only natural that they
should fear him and obey him in everything and give him
all that he asks for. The nepu is not a chief, but he domi-
neers over the chiefs, and we may say that the true authority,
the only effective influence in New Guinea, is that of the
mpu. Nothing can resist him." ^ We arc told that in the
Toaripi or Motumotu tribe of British New Guinea chiefs have
not necessarily supernatural powers, but that a sorcerer is
looked upon as a chief. Some years ago, for example, one
man of the tribe was a chief because he was supposed to
rule the sea, calming it or rousing it to fury at his pleasure.
• Sir \V. MacGregor, i^/vV/i/; Ne-io J.es Missions Catholigues,ii.-x.^Vi. (i<)o^)
Ciiitea (I.oiuion, 189;), p. 41. p. 334.
^ Le K, V. Gujs, " Lcs I'apoiis,"
VOL. 1 '^
338 MAGICIANS AS KINGS chap.
Another owed his power to his skill in making the rain to
fall, the sun to shine, and the plantations to bear fruit.^ It
is believed that the chief of Mowat in British New Guinea,
can affect the growth of crops for good or ill, and coax the
turtle and dugong to come from all parts of the sea and
allow themselves to be caught.^ At Bartle Bay in British
New Guinea there are magicians {taniwagd) who are expected
to manage certain departments of nature for the good of
the community by means of charms {pari) which are known
only to them. One of these men, for example, works magic
for rain, another for taro, another for wallaby, and another for
fish. A magician who is believed to control an important
department of nature may be the chief of his community.
Thus the present chief of Wedau is a sorcerer who can make
rain and raise or calm the winds. He is greatly respected
by all and receives many presents.^ A chief of Kolem, on
Finsch Harbour, in German New Guinea, enjoyed a great
reputation as a magician ; it was supposed that he could make
wind and storm, rain and sunshine, and visit his enemies
with sickness and death.*
Supposed Turning now to the natives of the Melanesian islands,
magujai or ^jjj^j^ stretch in an immense quadrant of a circle round New
natural Guinea and Australia on the east, we are told by Dr. Cod-
Skfeto"^ rington that among these savages " as a matter of fact the
Melanesia, power of chiefs has hitherto rested upon the belief in their
supernatural power derived from the spirits or ghosts with
which they had intercourse. As this belief has failed, in the
Banks' Islands for example some time ago, the position of
a chief has tended to become obscure ; and as this belief is
now being generally undermined a new kind of chief must
needs arise, unless a time of anarchy is to begin." ^ Accord-
ing to a native Melanesian account, the origin of the power
of chiefs lies entirely in the belief that they have com-
munication with mighty ghosts {tindald), and wield that
1 J. Chalmeis, " Tojiripi," Journal ^ C. G. Seligmann, The Melanesians
cf tke Anthrop.-logical Institute, xxvii. of British New Guinea (Cambridge,
(iSoS) p. 334. i9lo)> PP- 455 ^?-
2 E. Beardmore, "The Natives of * M. Kiicger, Neu-Guinea (Berlin,
Mowat Daudai. New Gwxwffs^''' Journal n.d.), p. 334.
of the AnJhriy'-ological Institute, xix. ''' R. H. Codiington, The Melanes-
(1890) p. 464.' ians (Oxford, 1891), p. 46.
VI MAGICIANS AS KINGS 339
supernatural power [mand) whereby they can bring the
influence of the ghosts to bear. If a chief imposed a fine,
it was paid because the people universally dreaded his ghostly
power, and firmly believed that he could inflict calamity
and sickness upon such as resisted him. As soon as any
considerable number of his people began to disbelieve in his
influence with the ghosts, his power to levy fines was
shaken.^ In Malo, one of the New Hebrides, the highest
nobility consists of those persons who have sacrificed a
thousand little pigs to the souls of their ancestors. No
one ever resists a man of that exalted rank, because in him
are supposed to dwell all the souls of the ancient chiefs
and all the spirits who preside over the tribe.^ In the
Northern New Hebrides the son does not inherit the chief-
tainship, but he inherits, if his father can manage it, what
gives him the chieftainship, namely, his father's supernatural
power, liis charms, magical songs, stones and apparatus, and
his knowledge of the way to approach spiritual beings.* A
chief in the island of Paramatta informed a European that
he had the power of making rain, wind, storm, thunder and
lightning, and dry weather. He exhibited as his magical
instrument a piece of bamboo with some parti-coloured rags
attached to it. In this bamboo, he said, were kept the
devils of rain and wind, and when he commanded them to
discharge their office or to lie still, they were obliged to obey,
being his subjects and prisoners. When he had given his
orders to these captive devils, the bamboo had to be fastened
to the highest point of his house.* In the Marshall Bennet
Islands to the east of New Guinea it was the duty of each
chief of a clan to cliarm the gardens of his clan so as to
make them productive. The charm consisted of turning up
part of the soil with a long stick and muttering an appro-
priate spell. Each special crop, such as yams, bananas,
• R. H. Codrington, op. cit. p. 52. I'lle Malo (Nouvelles - Hebrides),"
As to the mana or supernatural power T.es Missions Catholiques, xxxiii. (1901)
of chiefs and others, see ibid. pp. 118 p. 347.
sqq. ; above, pp. 227 sg. I have ' R. H. Codrington, op. cit. p.
pointed out (p. iii, note 2) that this 56.
supernatural power supplies, as it were, * C. Ribbe, Zwei Jahren unter
the physical liasis of magic. de,n KannibaUn der Salomo ■ Inseln
* Father A. Deniiiu, " Croyances (Dresden - Blasewitz, 1903), pp. 173
religieuses et nicijurs des indigfines de sq.
340 MAGICIANS AS KINGS chap.
sugar-cane, and coco-nuts, had its special kind of stick and
its special spell.^
Magicians With regard to government among the Melanesians of
as chiefs ■y Britain or the Bismarck Archipelago, I may cite
in New " i • ■ 1 -r> -TN
Britian. the evidence of an experienced missionary, the Kev. Ur.
George Brown, who settled in the islands at a time when
no other white man was living in the group, and who
resided among the savage islanders for some five or six
years. He says : " There was no government so called in
New Britain except that form of jurisdiction or power
represented by the secret societies and that exercised by
chiefs, who were supposed to possess exceptional powers of
sorcery and witchcraft. These powers were very real,
owing, I think, principally to two reasons — one of which
was that the men themselves thoroughly believed that they
were the possessors of the powers which they claimed, and
the other was that the people themselves believed that the
men really possessed them. There was indeed the title of
chief [todaru) claimed and also given to them by the people ;
but this was not the result of any election or necessarily by
inheritance, it was simply that a certain man claimed to be
the possessor of these powers and succeeded in convincing
the people that he really possessed them." ^ Again, Dr.
Brown tells us that in New Britain "a ruling chief was
always supposed to exercise priestly functions, that is,
he professed to be in constant communication with the
tebarans (spirits), and through their influence he was
enabled to bring rain or sunshine, fair winds or foul
ones, sickness or health, success or disaster in war, and
generally to procure any blessing or curse for which the
applicant was willing to pay a sufficient price. If his
spells did not produce the desired effect he always had a
plausible explanation ready, which was generally accepted
as a sufficient excuse. I think much of the success which
these men undoubtedly had was due to their keen observa-
tions of natural phenomena, and to the effects of fear
upon the people." ^
1 C. G. Seligmann, The Melanesians ^ G. Brown, D.D., Melanesians and
cf Ni-.L- Guinea iCambridge, 1910), p. Polynesians (London, 1910), p. 270.
io2. ^ 1^^'- f'- Brown, op. cit. p. 429.
VI MAGICIANS AS KINGS 341
According to Dr. Turner, " The real gods at Tana Dr. Turner
may be said to be the disease-makers. It is surprising ""^^^^^
how these men are dreaded, and how firm the belief is the magical
that they have in their hands the power of life and death, makersin
There are rain-makers and thunder-makers, and fly and Tana,
mosquito-makers, and a liost of other ' sacred men,' but the
disease-makers are the most dreaded. It is believed that
these men can create disease and death by burning what is
called luiJiak. NaJiak, means rubbish, but principally refuse
of food. Everything of the kind they bury or throw into
the sea, lest the disease-makers should get hold of it. These
fellows are always about, and consider it their special business
to pick up and burn, with certain formalities, anything in the
naJuik line which comes in their way. If a disease-maker
sees the skin of a banana, for instance, he picks it up, wraps
it in a leaf, and wears it all day hanging round his neck.
The people stare as they see him go along, and say to
each other, ' He has got something ; he will do for some-
body by-and-by at night.' In the evening he scrapes some
bark off a tree, mixes it up with the banana skin, rolls all up
tightly in a leaf in the form of a cigar, and then puts the one
end close enough to the fire to cause it to singe, and smoulder,
and burn away very gradually. Presently he hears a shell
blowing. ' There,' he says to his friends, ' there it is ; that
is the man whose rubbish I am now burning, he is ill ; let
us stop burning, and see what they bring in the morning.'
When a person is taken ill he believes that it is occasioned
by some one burning his rubbish. Instead of thinking about
medicine, he calls some one to blow a shell, a large conch or
other shell, which, when perforated and blown, can be heard
two or three miles off. The meaning of it is to implore the
person who is supposed to be burning the sick man's rubbish
and causing all the pain to stop burning ; and it is a promise
Jis well that a present will be taken in the morning. The
greater the pain the more they blow the shell, and when the
pain abates they cease, supposing that the disease-maker has
been kind enough to stop burning." Night after night the
silence is broken by the dismal too-too-tooing of these shells;
and in the morning the friends of the sufferer repair to the
disease-maker with present.s of pigs, mats, hatchets, beads.
342 MAGICIANS AS KINGS chap.
whales' teeth, or such like things.^ Thus these sorcerers
attain to a position of immense power and influence and
acquire wealth by purely maleficent magic ; it is not by the
imaginary benefits which they confer on the community, but
by the imaginary evils which they inflict on individuals, that
they climb the steps of a throne or the ladder that leads to
heaven ; for according to Dr. Turner these rascals are on
the highroad to divinity. The process which they employ
to accomplish their ends is a simple application of the
principles of contagious magic : whatever has once been in
contact with a person remains in sympathetic connexion
with him always, and harm done to it is therefore harm
done to him. Side by side with the evil which this super-
stition produces, on the one hand by inspiring men with
baseless terrors, and on the other by leading them to neglect
effectual remedies for real evils, we must recognise the benefit
which it incidentally confers on society by causing people to
clear away and destroy the refuse of their food and other
rubbish, which if suffered to accumulate about their dwell-
ings might, by polluting the atmosphere, prove a real, not
. an imaginary source of disease. In practice, cleanliness
based on motives of superstition may be just as effective
for the preservation of health as if it were founded on the
best-ascertained principles of sanitary science.^
Erotetion Still rising in the scale of culture we come to Africa,
kings om of ^^^''s both the chieftainship and the kingship are fully
magicians, developed ; and here the evidence for the evolution of the
Ota of rain- chief out of the magician, and especially out of the rain-
^«^™ maker, is comparatively plentiful. Thus among the Wam-
Powercrf t)ugwe, a Bantu people of East Africa, the original form of
snagidans government was a family republic, but the enormous power
w^bcs^ of the sorcerers, transmitted by inheritance, soon raised them
wB,Waia- to the rank of petty lords or chiefs. Of the three chiefs
•Vfss.^0 living in the country in 1894 two were much dreaded as
magicians, and the wealth of cattle they possessed came to
them almost wholly in the shape of presents bestowed for
their ser\-ices in that capacity. Their principal art was that
of rain -making.^ The chiefs of the Wataturu, another
* G. Turner, Samoa, pp. 320-322, ^ O. Baumann, Durch Massailand
* See above, p. 175. 2««iV«7^««/^ (Berlin, 1894), pp. 187 ,y?.
(lagogo
(rfEast
Africa.
VI MAGICIANS AS KINGS 343
people of East Africa, are said to be nothing but sorcerers
destitute of any direct political influence.^ Again, among
the Wagogo of German East Africa the main power of the
chiefs, we are told, is derived from their art of rain-making.
If a chief cannot make rain himself, he must procure it from
some one who can.^ Again, in the powerful Masai nation Among the
of the same region the medicine-men are not uncommonly ^^^^1^^*
the chiefs, and the supreme chief of the race is almost chief is
invariably a powerful medicine-man. These Laibon, as they po^/rfij
are called, are priests as well as doctors, skilled in interpret- mediciDc-
ing omens and dreams, in averting ill-luck, and in making
rain.^ The head chief or medicine-man, who has been
called the Masai pope,* is expected not only to make rain,
but to repel and destroy the enemies of the Masai in war
by his magic art.' The following is Captain Merker's
account of the Masai pope: "The most prominent clan of
the whole Masai people is the En gidon, because to it belong
not only the family of the chief {pi otboni), but also the family
of the magicians. The designation chief is, strictly speaking,
not quite correct, since the chief (pi otboni) does not govern
directly and exercises no real administrative function. He
rules only indirectly ; the firm belief of his subjects in his
prophetic gifts arid in his supernatural power of sorcery gives
him an influence on the destinies of the people. Despotism
and cruelty, such as we find among all negro rulers, are alien
to him. He is not so much a ruler as a national saint or
patriarch. The people speak of his sacred person with shy
awe, and no man dares to appear before this mighty person-
age without being summoned. The aim of his policy is to
unite and strengthen the Masai. While he allows free play
to the predatory instincts of the warriors in raids on other
tribes, he guards his own people from the scourge of civil
war, to which the ceaseless quarrels of the various districts
with each other would otherwise continually give occasion.
This influence of his is rendered possible by the belief that
1 O. Baumann, op. cit. p. 173. Protectorate (London, 1902), ii. 830.
2 H. Cole, " Notes on the Wagogo * O. Baumann, Durch Massailand
of German East Africa," Journal of zur Nilqaelle, p. 164.
the Anthropological Institute, xxxii. ^ Baron C. C. von der Decken,
(1902) p. 321. Reisen in Ost-Afrika, ii. (Leipsic and
2 Sir Hair>' Johnston, The Uganda Heidelberg, 1871) p. 24.
344
MAGICIANS AS KINGS
Among the
Nandi of
British East
Africa the
principal
medicine-
man is the
supreme
chief
victory can only be achieved through the secret power of the
war-medicine which none but he can compound, and that
defeat would infallibly follow if he were to predict it.
Neither he nor his nearest relatives march with the army
to war. He supplies remedies, generally in the shape of
magical medicines, for plagues and sicknesses, and he
appoints festivals of prayer in honour of the Masai god
'Ng at. He delivers his predictions by means of an oracular
game like the telling of beads." ^ And just as Samson's
miraculous strength went from him when his hair was
shorn, so it is believed that the head chief of the Masai
would lose his supernatural powers if his chin were shaved.^
According to one writer, the Masai pope has never more
than one eye : the father knocks out his son's eye in order
to qualify him for the holy office.^
Among the Nandi of British East Africa " the Orkoiyot,
or principal medicine man, holds precisely the same position
as the Masai Ol-oiboni, that is to say, he is supreme chief of
the whole race." He is a diviner, and foretells the future
by casting stones, inspecting entrails, interpreting dreams,
and prophesying when he is drunk. The Nandi believe
implicitly in his powers. He tells them when to begin
planting their crops : in time of drought he procures rain for
them either directly or by means of the rainmakers : he
makes women and cattle fruitful ; and no war- party can
expect to be successful if he has not approved of the foray.
His office is hereditary and his person is usually regarded
as absolutely sacred. Nobody may approach him with
weapons in his hand or speak in his presence unless the
great man addresses him ; and it is most important that
nobody should touch his head, else it is feared that his
powers of divination and so forth would depart from him.
However, one of these sacred pontiffs was clubbed to death,
being held responsible for several public calamities, to wit,
famine, sickness, and defeat in war.* The Suk and Turkana,
1 it. Merker, Die Masai (Berlin,
1904}. pp. \% sq. I have slightly
abridged the -ivriter's account.
- M. Merker, Die Masai, p. 21.
As to the medicine-men of the Masai,
see farther A. C. Hcllis, Tie Masai
(Oxford, 1 90S), pp. 324-330.
^ O. Baumann, Durch Massailand
zur Kilquelle, p. 164.
< A. C. HoUis, The Nandi (Oxford,
1909). PP- 49 ■??>
VI MAGICIANS AS KINGS 345
two other peoples of British East Africa, distinguish between
their chiefs and their medicine-men, who wield great power ;
but very often the medicine-man is a chief by virtue of his
skill in medicine or the occult arts.'
Again, among the tribes of the Upper Nile the medicine- Rain-
men are generall}- the chiefs.^ Their authority rests above ^s\h[efs
all upon their supposed power of making rain, for "rain is among the
the one thing which matters to the people in those districts, jj^^ upper
as if it does not come down at the right time it means untold Nile.
hardships for the community. It is therefore small wonder
that men more cunning than their fellows should arrogate to
themselves the power of producing it, or that having gained
such a reputation, they should trade on the credulity of their
simpler neighbours." Hence " most of the chiefs of these
tribes are rainmakers, and enjoy a popularity in proportion
to their powers to give rain to their people at the proper
season. . . . Rain-making chiefs always build their villages
on the slopes of a fairly high hill, as they no doubt know
that the hills attract the clouds, and that they are, therefore,
tairly safe in their weather forecasts." Each of these rain-
makers has a number of rain-stones, such as rock-crystal,
aventurine, and amethyst, which he keeps in a pot. When
he wishes to produce rain he plunges the stones in water,
and taking in his hand a peeled cane, which is split at the
top. he beckons with it to the clouds to come or waves them
away in the way they should go, muttering an incantation
the while. Or he pours water and the entrails of a sheep or
goat into a hollow in a stone and then sprinkles the water
towards the sky. Though the chief acquires wealth by the
exercise of his supposed magical powers, he often, perhaps
generally, comes to a violent end ; for in time of drought .
the angry people assemble and kill him, believing that it is
he who prevents the rain from falling. Yet the office is
usually hereditary and passes from father to son. Among
the tribes which cherish these beliefs and observe these
customs are the Latuka, Bari, Laluba, and Lokoiya.^ Thus,
' Sir H. Johnston, Tlu Ui:amia Pro- making Chiefs, the Gondokoro District,
tutoK-Ue, ii. 851. White Nile," Man, x. (1910) pp. 90-
- Sir H. Johnston, Tht: U!;-a/!tfa Piv- 92 ; Yuzbashi, " Tribes on the Upper
tectiiy.ite, ii. 779. m\c," Journal of the African Society,
' W. E. R. Cole, "African Rain- No. 14 (January, 1905), pp. 228 sq.;
346 MAGICIANS AS KINGS chap.
Riia- for example, with regard to the Latuka we are told that
Esakers as « anjongst the most important but also the most dangerous
amoogthe occupations of the greater chiefs is the procuring of rain
^"^^'^^^ for their country. Almost all the greater chiefs enjoy the
reputation of being rainmakers, and the requisite knowledge
usually passes by inheritance from father to son. However,
there are also here and there among the natives persons who,
without being chiefs, busy themselves with rain-making. If
there has been no rain in a district for a long time and the
people wish to attract it for the sake of the sowing, they
apph- to their chief, bringing him a present of sheep, goats,
or, in urgent cases, cattle or a girl, and if the present seems
to him sufficient he promises to furnish rain ; but if it appears
to him too little he asks for more. If some days pass
without rain, it gives the magician an opportunity for
claiming fresh presents, on the ground that the smallness of
the offered gifts hinders the coming of the rain." When the
cupidity of the rain- maker is satisfied, he goes to work in the
usual way, pouring water over two flat stones, one called the
male and the other the female, till they are covered to a
depth of three inches. The " male " stone is a common
white quartz ; the " female " is brownish. If still no rain
falls, he makes a smoky fire in the open with certain herbs,
and if the smoke mounts straight up, rain is near. Although
an unsuccessful rain-maker is often banished or killed, his
son always succeeds him in the dignity.^ Amongst the
Bari the procedure of the rain-making chief to draw down
the water of heaven is somewhat elaborate. He has many
rain-stones, consisting of rock crj'stal and pink and green
granite. These are deposited in the hollows of some twenty
slabs of gneiss, and across the hollows are laid numerous iron
rods of various shapes and sizes. When rain is to be made,
tliese iron rods are set up in a perpendicular position, and
water is poured on the crystals and stones. Then the rain-
maker takes up the stones one by one and oils them, praying
to his dead father to send the rain. One of the iron rods is
'^xwi-'&.oViA. Le Nil Blanc eth Sou. Im (October, 1905), pp. 15-21.
(Paris, 1855^, pp. 227 i/. ; F. Spire, ' Eiuin Tasha, quoted by Fr. Stuhl-
"Rain-making in Equatorial Afric.i," mann, Klit Emin Pascha ins Heravon
JouniJil cf the A/riam Soiiety, No. 17 4//-/^3 (]>erlin, 1894), pp. 778-780.
VI MAGICIANS AS KINGS 347
provided with a hook, and another is a two-headed spear.
With the hook the rain-maker hooks and attracts the rain-
clouds ; with the two-headed spear he attacks and drives
them away. In this procedure the prayer to the dead
ancestor is religious, while the rest of the ceremony is
magical. Thus, as so often happens, the savage seeks to
compass his object by combining magic with religion. The
logical inconsistency does not trouble him, provided he
attains his end. Further, the rain-maker chief of the Bari is
supposed to be able to make women fruitful. For this
purpose he takes an iron rod with a hollow bulb at each end,
in which are small stones. Grasping the rod by the middle
he shakes it over the would-be mother, rattling the stones
and muttering an incantation.^
Again, among the Bongo, a tribe of the same region, the Magical
influence of the chiefs is said to rest in great part on a ^^^^^ °^
belief in their magical powers ; for the chief is credited with among the
the knowledge of certain roots, which are the only means of 0°°^°^^°'^
communicating with the dangerous spirits of whose mis-
chievous pranks the Bongo stand in great fear.^ In the
Dinka or Denka nation, to the north-east of the Bongo,
men who are supposed to be in close communication
with spirits pass for omnipotent ; it is believed that they
make rain, conjure away all calamities, foresee the future,
exorcise evil spirits, know all that goes on even at a
distance, have the wild beasts in their service, and can
call down every kind of disaster on their enemies. One
of these men became the richest and most esteemed chief
of the Kic tribe through his skill in ventriloquism. He
kept a cage from which the roars of imaginary lions and the
howls of imaginary hyaenas were heard to proceed ; and he
gave out that these beasts guarded his house and were
ready at his bidding to rush forth on his enemies. The
dread which he infused into the tribe and its neighbours was
incredible ; from all sides oxen were sent to him as presents,
so that his herds were the most numerous in the country.
Another of these conjurers in the Tuic tribe had a real tame
* F. Spire, " Rain-making in Equa- 16-1S, 21.
lorial .\hiC3i," Journal of the African ^ G. Schweinfurth, The Heart of
Society, No. 17 (October, 1905), pp. Africa^ (London, 1878), i. 144 sq.
348 MAGICIANS AS KINGS chap.
lion and four real fat snakes, which slept in front of his door,
to the great awe of the natives, who could only attribute the
pacific demeanour of these ferocious animals to sorcery.'
But it does not appear that the real lion inspired nearly
so much terror as the imaginary one ; from which we
may perhaps infer that among these people ventriloquism
is a more solid basis of political power even than lion-
taming.
Chiefs and In Central Africa, again, the Lendu tribe, to the west of
J°|^jj. Lake Albert, firmly believe that certain people possess
makers in the power of making rain. Among them the rain-maker
Africa. either is a chief or almost invariably becomes one.^ The
Banyoro also have a great respect for the dispensers of rain,
whom they load with a profusion of gifts. The great dis-
penser, he who has absolute and uncontrollable power over
the rain, is the king ; but he can depute his power to other
persons, so that the benefit may be distributed and the
heavenly water laid on over the various parts of the kingdom.
A Catholic missionary observes that " a superstition common
to the different peoples of equatorial Africa attributes to the
petty kings of the country the exclusive power of making the
rain to fall ; in extreme cases the power is ascribed to certain
kings more privileged than the rest, such as those of Huilla,
Humb6, Var^, Libeb6, and others. These kings profit by
the superstition in order to draw to themselves many
presents of cattle ; for the rain must fall after the sacrifice
of an ox, and if it tarries, the king, who is never at a loss
for excuses to extricate himself from the scrape, will ascribe
the failure to the defects of the victim, and will seize the
pretext to claim more cattle." * Among the Ba-Yaka, a
tribe of the Kasai district in the Congo Free State,
magicians are exempt from justice, and the chief is the
principal magician ; ^ and among the Ba-Yanzi, another
^ E. D. Pmyssenaere, " Reisen und compare i. 134.
Forschungen im Gebiete des Weissen ^ Ch. Wunenberger, " La Mission
imd B'.auen Nil," Petermanns Mit- et le royaume de Humbe, sur les bords
t'vMiingcit, Erginzungsheft, No. 50 du Cunene," Les Missions Catholigues,
(Gotha, 1S77), PP- 27 sq. xx. (l888) p. 262.
2 Sir H. Johnston, The Uganda Pro- ^ E. Torday and T. A. Joyce,
tutor 2ie, it 555. " Notes on the Ethnography of the Ba-
' G. Casati, Ten Years in Ejuatoria \3.k:i.," Journal of the Anthropological
(London and New York, 1891), ii. 57, Institute, xxxvi. (1906) pp. 48, 51.
vj MAGICIANS AS KINGS 349
tribe of the same district, there is, or was a few years
ago, a chief who passed for the greatest magician in the
country.^
In Western as well as in Eastern and Central Africa we Medicine-
meet with the same union of chiefly with magical functions. '^^^^^\^
Thus in the Fan tribe the strict distinction between chief Western
and medicine-man does not exist. The chief is also a
medicine-raan and a smith to boot ; for the Fans esteem
the smith's craft sacred, and none but chiefs may meddle
with it^ The chiefs of the Ossidinge district in the
Cameroons have as such very little influence over their
subjects ; but ifthe chief happens to be also the fetish-priest,
as he generally is among the Ekois, he has not only powerful
influence in all fetish matters (and most of the vital interests
of the people are bound up with fetish worship), but he also
enjoys great authority in general.^ A few years ago the
head chief of Etatin on the Cross River, in Southern Nigeria,
was an old man whom the people had compelled to take
office in order that he should look after the fetishes or
jujus and work magic for the benefit of the community. In
accordance with an old custom, which is binding on the head
chief, he was never allowed to leave his compound, that is,
the enclosure in which his house stands. He gave the
following account of himself to an English official, who paid
him a visit : " I have been shut up ten years, but, being an
old man, I don't miss my freedom. I am the oldest man of
the town, and they keep me here to look after the jujus, and
to conduct the rites celebrated when women are about to
give birth to children, and other ceremonies of the same
kind. By the observance and performance of these cere-
monies, I bring game to the hunter, cause the yam crop
to be good, bring fish to the fisherman, and make rain
to fall. So they bring me meat, yams, fish, etc. To
make rain, I drink water, and squirt it out, and pray
to our big deities. If I were to go outside this com-
pound, I should fall down dead on returning to this hut.
' E. Torday and T. A. Joyce, " On ^ Q. Lenz, SMzzen aus Westafrika
the Ethnology of the South-Western (Berlin, 1878), p. 87.
Congo Free Itate," lonrnal of the A'. ^ A. Mansfeld, Urwald-Dokumenie,
Anthrofological Institute, xxxvii. ( 1 9°/ ) ^ier Jahre unter den Crossflussnegem
p, [ ,0. ' Kameruns (Berlin, 1908), p. 161.
35°
MAGICIANS AS KINGS
Chiefs
as rain-
makers in
Southern
Africa,
My wives cut my hair and nails, and take great care of
the parings." ^
As to the relation between the offices of chief and rain-
maker in South Africa a well-informed writer observes : " In
very old days the chief was the great Rain-maker of the
tribe. Some chiefs allowed no one else to compete with
them, lest a successful Rain-maker should be chosen as chief
There was also another reason : the Rain-maker was sure to
become a rich man if he gained a great reputation, and it
would manifestly never do for the chief to allow any one to
be too rich. The Rain-maker exerts tremendous control
over the people, and so it would be most important to keep
this function connected with royalty. Tradition always
places the power of making rain as the fundamental glory of
ancient chiefs and heroes, and it seems probable that it may
have been the origin of chieftainship. The man who made
the rain would naturally become the chief. In the same
way Chaka [the famous Zulu despot] used to declare that he
was the only diviner in the country, for if he allowed rivals
his life would be insecure." ^ These South African rain-
makers smear themselves with mud and sacrifice oxen as an
essential part of the charm ; almost everything is thought
to turn on the colour of the beasts. Thus Umbandine, the
old king of the Swazies, had huge herds of cattle of a
peculiar colour, which was particularly well adapted for the
production of rain. Hence deputations came to him from
distant tribes praying and bribing him to make rain by the
sacrifice of his cattle ; and he used to threaten to " bind up
the sky " if they did not satisfy his demands. The power
* Ch. Partridge, Cross River Natives
(London, 1905), pp. 201 sq. The
caie taken of the chiefs cut hair
and nails is a precaution against the
magical use that might be made of
them by his enemies. See TIic
Golden Bmgh, Second Edition, i.
375 -W-
2 Dudley Kidd, The Essential Kafir
(London, 1904), p. 114. "The cliief
collects to himself all mediiinis of
known power ; each doctor has liis
own special medicine or medicines, and
treats some special form of disease, and
the knowledge of such medicines is
transmitted as a portion of the inherit-
ance to the eldest son. When a chief
hears that any doctor has proved suc-
cessful in treating some case where
others have failed, he calls him and
demands the medicine, which is given
up to him. Thus the chief becomes
the great medicine-man of his tribe, and
the uliimate reference is to him. If
he fail, the case is given up as in-
curable " ( H. Callaway, Religious Sys-
tem of the Amazulu, part iv. pp. 419
sq., note). The medicines here referred
VI MAGICIANS AS KINGS 351
which by this means he wielded was enormous.^ Similarly
Mablaan, a chief of the Bawenda, in the north-eastern corner
of the Transvaal, enjoyed a wide reputation and was revered
beyond the limits of his own tribe because he was credited
with the power of rain-making, "a greater power in the eyes
of natives than that of the assegai." Hence he was con-
stantly importuned by other chiefs to exercise his power and
received valuable presents of girls, oxen, and red and green
beads as inducements to turn on the heavenly water-tap.^
Among the Matabeles of South Africa the witch-doctors Power
are supposed to be on speaking terms with spirits, and their ^^kers
influence is described as tremendous ; in the time of King among the
Lo Bengula some years ago " their power was as great as, if '^'^^'^'^'^^^^■
not greater than, the king's." ^ Similarly speaking of the
South African tribes in general. Dr. Moffat says that " the
rain-maker is in the estimation of the people no mean
personage, possessing an influence over the minds of the
people superior even to that of the king, who is likewise
compelled to yield to the dictates of this arch-official."^
In Matabeleland the rainy season falls in November, Decem-
ber, January, and February. For several weeks before the
rain sets in, the clouds gather in heavy banks, dark and
lowering. Then the king is busy with his magicians com-
pounding potions of wondrous strength to make the labour-
ing clouds discharge their pent-up burden on the thirsty earth.
He may be seen gazing at every black cloud, for his people
flock from all parts to beg rain from him, " their rain-maker,"
for their parched fields ; and they thank and praise him when
a heavy rain has fallen.^ A letter dated from Bulawayo, The king
the twentieth of November 1880, records that Lo Bengula, Matabeles
king of the Matabeles, " arrived yesterday evening at his as rain-
kraal of ' the White Rocks.' He brought with him the ™
rain to his people. For according to the ideas of the
Matabeles, it is the king who ought to ' make the rain
to are probably for the most part magical ^_/>-zV3 (London, 1898), p. 154.
rather than medicinal in our sense of * R. Moffat, Missionary Labours
the term. and Scenes in Southern Africa (Lon-
1 Dudley Kidd, op. cit. p. 115. don, 1842), p. 306.
' W. Grant, " Magato and his ' E. A. Maund, "Zambesia, the new
"^THot" Journal of the Anthropological British Possession in Central South
Institute, xxxv. (1905) p. 267. Africa," Proceedings of the Royal Geo
' L. Decle, Three Years in Savage graphical Society, 1890, p. 651.
as rain-
maier.
352 MAGICIANS AS KINGS chap.
Tae kiag and the good season ' in all senses of the word. Now
^r'r^ -_ Lo Ben^ula had chosen well the day and the hour, for it
was in the midst of a tremendous storm that the king made
his solemn entrance into his capital." " You must know
that the arrival of the king and of the rain gives rise every
year to a little festival. For the rain is the great benefit
conferred by the king, the pledge of future harvests and oi
plenty, after eight months of desolating drought." To bring
down the needed showers the king of the Matabeles boils a
magic hell-broth in a cauldron, which sends up volumes
of steam to the blue sky. But to make assurance doubly sure,
he has recourse to religion as well as to magic ; for he
sacrinces twelve black oxen to the spirits of his fathers, and
prays to them : " O great spirits of my father and grandfather,
I thank you for having granted last year to my people more
wheat than to our enemies the Mashonas. This year also,
in gratitude for the twelve black oxen which I am about to
dedicate to you, make us to be the best-fed and the strongest
people in the world ! " ^ Thus the king of the Matabeles
acts not only as a magician but as a priest, for he prays and
sacrifices to the spirits of his forefathers.
Thus in The foregoing evidence renders it probable that in Africa
r?"'^^ the king has often been developed out of the public magician,
probably and especially out of the rain-maker. The unbounded fear
developed which the magician inspires and the wealth which he amasses
out of in the exercise of his profession may both be supposed to
magicians , ., , , . . -r-i -r 1 r
and espe- havc contributed to his promotion. But it the career of a
ciallyout magician and especially of a rain-maker offers great rewards
of ram- a r j &
makers, to the successful practitioner of the art, it is beset with many
pitfalls into which the unskilful or unlucky artist may fall.
The position of the public sorcerer is indeed a very pre-
carious one ; for where the people firmly believe that he has
it in his power to make the rain to fall, the sun to shine, and
the fruits of the earth to grow, they naturally impute drought
and dearth to his culpable negligence or wilful obstinacy,
and they punish him accordingly. We have seen that in
Africa the chief who fails to procure rain is often exiled or
killed.- Examples of such punishments could be multiplied.
1 Father C. Croonenberghs, in liii. (l88l) pp. 262 sq., 267 sq.
Ann-x.es de la Propagatijti de la Foi, ^ See above, pp. 344, 345, 346.
VI MAGICIANS AS KINGS 353
Thus, in some parts of West Africa, when prayers and Kings
offerings presented to the king have failed to procure ' ^^5^^^
rain, his subjects bind him with ropes and take him by for drought
force to the grave of his forefathers that he may obtain '^" ^'^'
from them the needed rain.^ The Banjars in West Africa
ascribe to their king the power of causing rain or fine weather.
So long as the weather is fine they load him with presents
of grain and cattle. But if long drought or rain threatens
to spoil the crops, they insult and beat him till the weather
changes.'^ When the harvest fails or the surf on the coast is
too heavy to allow of fishing, the people of Loango accuse
their king of a " bad heart " and depose him.* On the
Grain Coast the high priest or fetish king, who bears the
title of Bodio, is responsible for the health of the community,
the fertility of the earth, and the abundance of fish in the
sea and rivers ; and if the country suffers in any of these
respects the Bodio is deposed from his office.* In
Ussukuma, a great district on the southern bank of the
Victoria Nyanza, "the rain and locust question is part and
parcel of the Sultan's government. He, too, must know
how to make rain and drive away the locusts. If he and
his medicine-men are unable to accomplish this, his whole
existence is at stake in times of distress. On a certain
occasion, when the rain so greatly desired by the people
did not come, the Sultan was simply driven out (in Ututwa,
near Nassa). The people, in fact, hold that rulers must have
power over Nature and her phenomena." '" Again, we are told
of the natives of the Nyanza region generally that "they are
persuaded that rain only falls as a result of magic, and the
important duty of causing it to descend devolves on the
chief of the tribe. If rain does not come at the proper
time, everybody complains. More than one petty king has
been banished his country because of drought." ^ Similarly
' J. B. Labat, Relation historigus de Africa (London, 1856), pp. 129 sq.;
I'Ethiopie occidcntale (Paris, 1732), ii. Miss Mary H. Kingsley, m Journal of
172-J76. the Anthropological Institute, xxix.
- H. Hecquard, Reise an der Kiistc (1899) p. 62.
und in das Innere von West Afrika ^ P. KoIImann, The Victoria Nyanza
(Leipsic, 1854), p. 78. (London, 1899), p. 168.
' A. Bastian, Die deutsche Expedi- ^ Mgr Livinhac, in Annales de la
tuinanderLoafi^o-Riiste,!. ^$4,n. 2^0. Propagation de la Foi, Ix. (1888) p.
* J. Leighton Wilson, Western 110.
VOL. I 2 A
354 MAGICIANS AS KINGS chap.
among the Antimores of Madagascar the chiefs are held
responsible for the operation of the laws of nature. Hence
if the land is smitten with a blight or devastated by clouds
of locusts, if the cows yield little milk, or fatal epidemics
rage among the people, the chief is not only deposed but
stripped of his property and banished, because they say that
under a good chief such things ought not to happen.^
So, too, of the Antaimorona we read that " although the
chiefs of this tribe are chosen by the people, during their
tenure of power they enjoy a respect which borders on
adoration ; but if a crop of rice fails or any other calamity
happens, they are immediately deposed, sometimes even
killed ; and yet their successor is always chosen from the
family." ^ Among the Latukas of the Upper Nile, when
the crops are withering in the fields and all the efforts
of the chief to bring down rain have proved fruitless, the
people commonly attack him by night, rob him of all he
possesses, and drive him away. But often they kill him.^
In o'Aer In many other parts of the world kings have been
j^"^ ^^ expected to regulate the course of nature for the good of
kings have their people and have been punished if they failed to do so.
i^ed^or ^^ appears that the Scythians, when food was scarce, used
i£i:i:;g :o to put their king in bonds."* In ancient Egypt the
^TOOTse sacred kings were blamed for the failure of the crops,** but
of nature, ^i-^g sacred beasts were also held responsible for the
course of nature. When pestilence and other calamities
had fallen on the land, in consequence of a long and
severe drought, the priests took the animals by night
and threatened them, but if the evil did not abate they
slew the beasts.^ On the coral island of Niue or > Savage
Island, in the South Pacific, there formerly reigned a line
of kings. But as the kings were also high priests, and
1 D'Unienville, Statistiqiic tie Vile ' Schol. on ApoUonius Khodius,
Maurice {Paris, 1S3S) iii. 2S5 sq. Aigoii. ii. 1248 koX 'Kpidapo^ ^hm
- A. %'an Gennep, Tahoti et Totd- ^epl tCiv 5e(TiiG>v tov Wpo^riOiics raOra.
mismc <) Miui^igascar (Vaxis,. 1904), p. dvaiyapa.vThv'S.KvSwv liaai.\ia(p7iffi- Kal
iiS, quotin-j LeCTue%-el de Lacombe, m Svvdfxevov irapixfi-v to'k vTn)Kboi.s rh
7'ffr.jf<- J J/;7..i'<Tj,w-a;-(Paris, 1840), i. 'Vmitoa, Sm rbv /caXoiV^ov 'KeTbv
229 sa. Probably the Antinunrona are y"™/'*" J^Tu-X.-far tA TreSia, ScOr,vaL
identical with the Antimores.
' Eniin Pasha, quoted by Fr. Stiihl- ^ Amniianus Marcellinus, xxviii. 5.
m.ann, Mii Emin Pascha ins Ifers r'o« '4-
Afriia (Berlin, 1S04), pp. 779 sg. " Plutarch, Fsis et Osiris, 73.
VI MAGICIANS AS KINGS 355
were supposed to make the food grow, the people became
angry with them in times of scarcity and killed them ;
till at last, as one after another was killed, no one would be
king, and the monarchy came to an end.^ Ancient Chinese
writers inform us that in Corea the blame was laid on the
king whenever too much or too little rain fell and the crops
did not ripen. Some said that he must be deposed, others
that he must be slain.^ The Chinese emperor himself is
deemed responsible if the drought is at all severe, and
many are the self- condemnatory edicts on this subject
published in the pages of the venerable Peking Gazette.
In extreme cases the emperor, clad in humble vestments,
sacrifices to heaven and implores its protection.^ So,
too, the kings of Tonquin used to take blame to them-
selves when the country was visited by such calamities
as scanty harvests, dearth, floods, destructive hurricanes
and cholera. On these occasions the monarch would
sometimes publicly confess his guilt and impose on
himself a penance as a means of appeasing the wrath of
Heaven.* In former days it sometimes happened that when
the country suffered from drought and dearth the king of
Tonquin was obliged to change his name in the hope that
this would turn the weather to rain. But if the drought
continued even after the change of name the people would
sometimes resort to stronger measures and transfer the title
of king from the legitimate monarch to his brother, son, or
other near relation.''
Among the American Indians the furthest advance
towards civilisation was made under the monarchical and
' G. Turner, Sanwa, pp. 304 sq. the official publication of the Chinese
- A. Pfizmayer, " Nachrichton von government, may be read in Lettres
den alten Bewohnern des lieutigen I'difiantes et curieuses, Nouvelle Edition,
Corea," Sii-^ungsberichfe d,r philos.- xxi. 95-182.
his:jr. Classc der kais. Akadanie der ^ Mgr Ilavard, in Annates de la
W.vww<r/w/'V«(Vienna),lvii. (i868)pp. Propagation de la Foi, vii. (1834) pp.
4S-; Jjf. It voiild seem that tlie Chinese 470-473.
rep'orted sin\ibrly of the Roman em- ' Gio. Filippo de Marini, Historia et
perors. See Hirth, China and the relatione del Tunchino et del Giappone
Roman Orient, pp. 41, 44. 52, 5^, 7°, (Rome, 1665), pp. 137 ^1- \ l^elation
-g^ nouvelle et curieuse des jvyaumes de
' N. B. Dennis, Folklvr,- of China Tunquin et de Lao, traduite de I'ltalien
(London and Hongkong. 1876), p. du 1'. Mariny (sic) Romain (Paris,
12;, An account of the /'£-i'//y'(7as«//'«, 1666), pp. 258 jj'.
3S6
MAGICIANS AS KINGS
Power of
medicine-
men
among
the North
American
Indians.
theocratic governments of Mexico and Peru ; but we know
too little of the early history of these countries to say
whether the predecessors of their deified kings were medicine-
men or not. Perhaps a trace of such a succession may be
detected in the oath which the Mexican kings took when
they mounted the throne : they swore that they would make
the sun to shine, the clouds to give rain, the rivers to flow,
and the earth to bring forth fruits in abundance.^ Certainly,
in aboriginal America the sorcerer or medicine - man,
surrounded by a halo of mystery and an atmosphere of awe,
was a personage of great influence and importance, and he
may well have developed into a chief or king in many
tribes, though positive evidence of such a development
appears to be lacking. Thus Catlin tells us that in North
America the medicine-men " are valued as dignitaries in the
tribe, and the greatest respect is paid to them by the whole
community ; not only for their skill in their materia medica,
but more especially for their tact in magic and mysteries, in
which they all deal to a very great extent. ... In all tribes
their doctors are conjurors — are magicians — are sooth-sayers,
and I had like to have said high-priests, inasmuch as they
. superintend and conduct all their religious ceremonies ; they
are looked upon by all as oracles of the nation. In all
councils of war and peace, they have a seat with the chiefs,
are regularly consulted before any public step is taken, and
the greatest deference and respect is paid to their opinions." ^
Among the Loucheux of North- West America each band is
" headed by a chief and one or more medicine-men. The
latter, however, do not possess any secular power as chiefs,
but they acquire an authority by shamanism to which even
the chiefs themselves are subject." "The Loucheux are
very superstitious, and place implicit faith in the pretended
incantations of their medicine-men, for whom they entertain
great fear. . . . The power of the medicine -men is very
great, and they use every means they can to increase it by
working on the fears and credulity of the people. Their
influence exceeds even that of the chiefs. The power of the
' H. H. Bancroft, The Native Races
of the Pacific States, ii, 146.
2 Geo. Catlin, Maimers, Customs,
and Conditions of the North American
Indians ^ (London, 1 844), i. 40 sg.
VI MAGICIANS AS KINGS 357
latter consists in the quantity of beads they possess, their power of
wealth and the means it affords them to work ill to those to medicine-
whom they may be evil-disposed ; while the power of the among
medicine-man consists in the harm they believe he is able to *® ^°''*
•' . Amencan
do by shamanism, should they happen to displease him in Indians,
any way. It is when sickness prevails that the conjuror
rules supreme ; it is then that he fills his bead bags and
increases his riches." ^ Amongst the Tinneh Indians of the
same region " the social standing of a medicine-man is, on
the whole, a desirable one ; but it has also its drawbacks
and its dark side. The medicine-man is decidedly influential
among his fellow savages. He is consulted and listened to,
on account of the superior knowledge imparted to him by
the spirits. He is feared, on account of his power to do
evil, viz. to cause the death of a person, to ruin his under-
takings, to render him unsuccessful in the hunt by driving
away the game from his path, to cause the loss of his
property, of his strength, of his health, of his faculties, etc.
The medicine -man is rich, because his services, when
summoned, or even when accepted though uncalled for, are
generously remunerated. He is respected on account of
his continual intercourse with the supernatural world. His
words, when said in a peculiar low tone, with a momentary
glow in the ej^es, which [he] seems able to control at will, or
when uttered during his sleep (real or feigned) are taken as
oracles, as the very words of the spirit. In short, for these
tribes who have no chiefs, no religion, no medical knowledge,
he is the nearest approach to a chief, a priest, and a
physician." ^ Similarly in California " the shaman was, and
still is, perhaps the most important individual among the
Maidu. In the absence of any definite system of govern-
ment, the word of a shaman has great weight : as a class
they are regarded with nuich awe, and as a rule are obeyed
much more than the chief" ^ As leader of the local branch
' W. L. Hardisty, "The Louc^ieux ously known as the Tinneh, V)ba.^,
Indians," Report of the Smithsonian Dindjie, etc., according to the taste and
Institutwn for 1866, pp. 312, 316. fancy of the speller.
^ Rev. T. Jett4 " On the Medicine- 3 Roland B. Dixon, "The North-
Men of the Ten'a," Journal of the ern Maidu," Bulletin of the American
R. Anthi.-'pologica' Institute, xxxvii. Museum of Natural History, vol.
(1907) p. 163. By the Tcn'a the xvii. part iii. (New York, 1905) p.
writer means the tribe which is vari- 267.
358
MAGICIANS AS KINGS
CHAP.
Power of
medicine-
men
'among
the Xonb
American
Indians.
Power of
medicine-
men
among
tlie Sou til
American
Indians.
of a secret society the most noted Maidu shaman of each
district was supposed to make rain when it was needed, to
ensure a good crop of edible acorns and a plentiful supply
of salmon, and to drive away evil spirits, disease, and
epidemics from the village. Further, it was his business to
inflict disease and death on hostile villages, which he did
by burning certain roots and blowing the smoke towards the
doomed village, while he said, " Over there, over there, not
here ! To the other place ! Do not come back this way.
We are good. IMake those people sick. Kill them, they
are bad people." ^ Among the Yokuts, another tribe of
Californian Indians, the rain-makers exercised great influence.
One of them by his insinuating address, eloquence, and
juggler)- spread his fame to a distance of two hundred
miles, and cunningly availed himself of two years of drought
to le\-y contributions far and wide from the trembling Indians,
who attributed to his magic the fall of the rain.^ In the
same tribe the m izards drew large profits from the rattle-
snake dance which they danced every spring, capering about
wirh rattlesnakes twined round their arms ; for after this ex-
hibition many simpletons paid them for complete immunity
from snake-bites, which the wizards were believed able to
grant for a year.^
In South America also the magicians or medicine-men
seem to have been on the highroad to chieftainship or
kingship. One of the earliest settlers on the coast of
Brazil, the Frenchman The vet, reports that the Indians
" hold tliese pages (or medicine-men) in such honour and
reverence that they adore, or rather idolise them. You
may see the common folk go to meet them, prostrate them-
selves, and pray to them, saying, 'Grant that I be not ill,
that I do not die, neither I nor my children,' or some
such request. And he answers, ' You shall not die, you
shall not be ill,' and such like replies. But sometimes if
it happens that these pages do not tell the truth, and things
turn out otherwise than they predicted, the people make no
scruple of killing them as unworthy of the title and dignity
1 Ro'.and B. Dixon, op. at. pp. 328, (Washington, 1877), pp. 372 sq.
331-
* S. Powers, Tribes of Califot~nia ^ S. I'ower, op. cit. pp. 380 sq.
VI MAGICIANS AS KINGS 359
of pages." ^ The Indians of Brazil, says a modern writer Power of
who knew them well, " have no priests but only magicians, medicine
who at the same time use medical help and exorcism in among
order to exert influence over the superstition and the dread *® ^°""'
^ American
of spirits felt by the rude multitude. We may perfectly Indians.
compare them with the shamans of the north-eastern Asiatic
peoples. But like the shamans they are not mere magicians,
fetish-men, soothsayers, interpreters of dreams, visionaries,
and casters-out of devils ; their activity has also a political
character in so far as they influence the decisions of the
leaders and of the community in public business, and exert a
certain authority, more than anybody else, as judges, sureties,
and witnesses in private affairs." ^ Among the Lengua Indians
of the Gran Chaco every clan has its cazique or chief, but
he possesses little authority. In virtue of his office he has
to make many presents, so he seldom grows rich and is
generally more shabbily clad than any of his subjects. " As
a matter of fact the magician is the man who has most
power in his hands, and he is accustomed to receive presents
instead of to give them." It is the magician's duty to bring
down misfortune and plagues on the enemies of his tribe,
and to guard his own people against hostile magic. For
these services he is well paid and by them he acquires a
position of great influence and authority.^ Among the
Indians of Guiana also the magician or medicine-man (J>iai,
peaiman) is a personage of great importance. By his magic
art he alone, it is believed, can counteract the machinations
of the great host of evil spirits, to which these savages attri-
bute all the ills of life. It is almost impossible, we are told,
to overestimate the dreadful sense of constant and unavoid-
able danger in which the Indian would live were it not for
his trust in the protecting power of the magician. Every
village has one such spiritual guardian, who is physician,
priest, and magician in one. His influence is immense.
No Indian dare refuse him anything he takes a fancy to,
' F. A. Thevet, Les Singularitez (Leipsic, 1867), p. 76.
dt la France Antarctique, autrement
iwmniie Amirique (Antwerp, 1558), ^ G. Kurze, " Sitten und Gebrauche
p. 65 [wrongly numbered 67]. der Lengua - Indianer," Mitteilungen
^ C. F. Phil. V. Martius, Ztir Ethno- der Geographischen Geselhchaft zu fena,
graphie Amerikas, zumal Brasiliens xxiii. (Jena, 1905) pp. 19, 29.
36o MAGICIANS AS KINGS chap.
from a trifle of food up to a man's wife. Hence these
cunning fellows live in idleness on the fat of the land and
acquire a large harem ; their houses are commonly full of
women who serve them in the capacity of beasts of burden
as well as of wives, plodding wearily along under the weight
of the baggage on long journeys, while their lord and master,
fantastically tricked out in feathers and paint, strolls ahead,
burdened only with his magic rattle and perhaps his bow and
arrows.^
Power of Among the wild pagan tribes of the Malay peninsula the
medicine- connexion between the offices of magician and chief is very
among the close ; indeed the two offices are often united m the same
^^^f ^ person. Among these savages, " as among the Malays, the
the Malay, accredited intermediary between gods and men is in all cases
Paijss2]a. jj^^ medicine-man or sorcerer. In the Semang tribes the
office of chief medicine-man appears to be generally com-
bined with that of chief, but amongst the Sakai and Jakun
these offices are sometimes separated, and although the chief
is almost invariably a medicine-man of some repute, he is
not necessarily the chief medicine-man, any more than the
chief medicine-man is necessarily the administrative head of
the tribe. In both cases there is an unfailing supply of
aspirants to the office, though it may be taken for granted
that, all else being equal, a successful medicine-man would
have much the best prospect of being elected chief, and that
in the vast majority of cases his priestly duties form an
important part of a chiefs work. The medicine-man is, as
• might be expected, duly credited with supernatural powers.
His tasks are to preside as chief medium at all the cere-
monies, to instruct the youth of the tribe, to ward off
as well as to heal all forms of sickness and trouble, to
foretell the future (as affecting the results of any given
act), to avert when necessary the wrath of heaven, and
even when re -embodied after death in the shape of a
wild beast, to extend a benign protection to his devoted
• descendants. Among the Sakai and the Jakun he is
provided with a distinctive form of dress and body-
1 Sir R. Schomburgk, Reisen in im Thurn, Among the Indians of
BrUisch-Guiana, i. 169 sq., compare Guiana (London, 1883), pp. 211, 223
il: i. 423, ii. 431 ; (Sir) Everard F. sq., 328, 333 sq., 339 sg.
VI MAGICIANS AS KINGS 361
painting, and carries an emblematic wand or staff by virtue
of his office." 1
Throughout the Malay region the rajah or king is Develop-
commonly regarded with superstitious veneration as the Pl*"' °^ ,
"■ kings out of
possessor of supernatural powers, and there are grounds magicians
for thinking that he too, like apparently so many African ^""^^ *^
chiefs, has been developed out of a simple magician. At
the present day the Malays firmly believe that the king
possesses a personal influence over' the works of nature,
such as the growth of the crops and the bearing of fruit-
trees. The same prolific virtue is supposed to reside, though
in a lesser degree, in his delegates, and even in the persons
of Europeans who chance to have charge of districts.
Thus, in Selangor, one of the native states of the Malay
Peninsula, the success or failure of the rice crops is often
attributed to a change of district ofificers.^ The Toorateyas
of southern Celebes hold that the prosperity of the rice
depends on the behaviour of their princes, and that bad
government, by which they mean a government which does
not conform to ancient custom, will result in a failure of the
crops.'
The Dyaks of Sarawak believed that their famous English Belief of
ruler, Rajah Brooke, was endowed with a certain magrical f'^^ ^yaks
.... - o m the
vutue which, if properly applied, could render the rice-crops power of
abundant. Hence when he visited a tribe, they used \.of^^^l^^^
bring him the seed which they intended to sow next year, the rice.
and he fertilised it by shaking over it the women's necklaces,
which had been previously dipped in a special mixture.
And when he entered a village, the women would wash and
bathe his feet, first with water, and then with the milk of a
young coco-nut, and lastly with water again, and all this
water which had touched his person they preserved for the
purpose of distributing it on their farms, believing that it
ensured an abundant harvest. Tribes which were too far
• W. W. Skeat and C. O. Blagden, omtrent de zeden en gewoonten der
Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula Toerateya ten opzichte van de rijst-
(Ltrndon, 1906), ii. 196 sq. bouw," Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-
' W. W. Skeat, Malay Magic (Lon- ^'""'^- '!L Volkenkunde, xlvi. (1903) p.
don, 1900), p. 36. 339- The name Toorateya or "in-
lander " is only another form of
' G. Maan, "Erige mededeelingen Toradja
362 MAGICIANS AS KINGS chap.
off for him to visit used to send him a small piece of white
cloth and a little gold or silver, and when these things had
been impregnated by his generative virtue they buried them
in their fields, and confidently expected a heavy crop. Once
when a European remarked that the rice-crops of the
Samban tribe were thin, the chief immediately replied that
they could not be otherwise, since Rajah Brooke had never
visited them, and he begged that Mr. Brooke might be
induced to visit his tribe and remove the sterility of their
land.i
Links Among the Malays the links which unite the king or
between rajah with the magician happen to be unusually plain and
rajahs and conspicuous. Thus the magician shares with the king the
magicians, pj-jyijege of using cloth dyed yellow, the royal colour ; he
has considerable political influence, and he can compel
people to address him in ceremonial language, of which
indeed the phraseology is even more copious in its applica-
tion to a magician than to a king. Moreover, and this is a
fact of great significance, the Malay magician owns certain
insignia which are said to be exactly analogous to the
regalia of the king, and even bear the very same name
{kabesaran)? Now the regalia of a Malay king are not
mere jewelled baubles designed to impress the multitude
with the pomp and splendour of royalty ; they are regarded
as wonder-working talismans,^ the possession of which carries
with it the rigfit to the throne ; if the king loses them, he
thereby forfeits the allegiance of his subjects. It seems,
therefore, to be a probable inference that in the Malay
region the regalia of the kings are only the conjuring
apparatus of their predecessors the magicians, and that in
this part of the world accordingly the magician is the
humble grub or chrysalis which in due time bursts and
discloses that gorgeous butterfly the rajah or king.
In Cekbes Nowhere apparently in the Indian Archipelago is this
^eml^-"^ view of the regalia as the true fount of regal dignity carried
msns or to such lengths as in southern Celebes. Here the royal
' H. Low, Sarawak (London, 1 848), Statistical Account of the British Settle-
pp. 259 sq. ments in the Straits of Malacca, ii.
' 2 W. W. Skeat, Malay Magic, p. 59. 193 ; W. W. Skeat, Malay Magic, pp.
2 T. J. Newbold, Political and 23-29.
VI MAGICIANS AS KINGS 363
authority is supposed to be in some mysterious fashion fetishes, the
embodied in the regalia, while the princes owe all the ^f ^y^h "
power they exercise, and all the respect they enjoy, carries
to their possession of these precious objects. In short, ^'i^j'^^^'j^j,
the regalia reign, and the princes are merely their repre- throne,
sentatives. Hence whoever happens to possess the regalia
is regarded by the people as their lawful king. For example,
if a deposed monarch contrives to keep the regalia, his
former subjects remain loyal to him in their hearts, and look
upon his successor as a usurper who is to be obeyed only in
so far as he can exact obedience by force. And on the
other hand, in an insurrection the first aim of the rebels is
to seize the regalia, for if they can only make themselves
masters of them, the authority of the sovereign is gone. In
short, the regalia are here fetishes, which confer a title to the
throne and control the fate of the kingdom. Houses are
built for them to dwell in, as if they were living creatures ;
furniture, weapons, and even lands are assigned to them.
Like the ark of God, they are carried with the army to battle,
and on various occasions the people propitiate them, as if they
were gods, by prayer and sacrifice and by smearing them with
blood. Some of them serve as instruments of divination, or
are brought forth in times of public disaster for the purpose
of staying the evil, whatever it may be. For example, when
plague is rife among men or beasts, or when there is a
prospect of dearth, the Boogineese bring out the regalia,
smear them with buffalo's blood, and carry them about.
For the most part these fetishes are heirlooms of which the
origin is forgotten ; some of them are said to have fallen
from heaven. Popular tradition traces the foundation of
the oldest states to the discovery or acquisition of one of
these miraculous objects — it may be a stone, a piece of wood,
a fruit, a weapon, or what not, of a peculiar shape or colour.
Often the original regalia have disappeared in course of
time, but their place is taken by the various articles of
property which were bestowed on them, and to which the
people have transferred their pious allegiance. The oldest
dynasties have the most regalia, and the holiest regalia
consist of relics of the bodies of former princes, which are
kept in golden caskets wrapt in silk. At Paloppo, the
364 MAGICIANS AS KINGS chap.
Regalia as Capital of Loowoo, a kingdom on the coast of Celebes, two
taii£mans jq^ cannons, with barrels like thin gas-pipes, are regalia ;
their possession is supposed to render the town impregnable.
Other regalia of this kingdom are veiled from vulgar eyes in
bark-cloth. When a missionary requested to see them, the
official replied that it was strictly forbidden to open the
bundle ; were he to do so, the earth would yawn and
swallow tliem up. In Bima the principal part of the regalia
or public talismans consists of a sacred brown horse, which
no man may ride. It is always stabled in the royal palace.
When the animal passes the government fort on high days
and holidays, it is. saluted with the fire of five guns ; when
it is led to the river to bathe, the royal spear is carried
before it, and any man who does not give way to the beast,
or crosses the road in front of it, has to pay a fine. But the
horse is mortal, and when it goes the way of all horse-flesh,
another steed chosen from the same stud reigns in its place.^
Magical But if in the Malay region the regalia are essentially
rega"uafn wonder-working talismans or fetishes which the kings appear
Egypt and to have derived from their predecessors the magicians, we
^"''''' may conjecture that in other parts of the world the emblems
of royalty may at some time have been viewed in a similar
light and have had a similar origin. In ancient Egypt the
two royal crowns, the white and the red, were supposed to
be endowed with magical virtues, indeed to be themselves
didnities, embodiments of the sun god. One text declares :
'• The white crown is the eye of Ilorus ; the red crown is the
eye of Horus." Another text speaks of a crown as a " great
magician." And applied to the image of a god, the crown
was supposed to confirm the deity in the possession of his
soul and of his form." Among the Yorubas of West Africa
1 G. T. Harrebomee, " Een orna- C. Kruijt, " Van Paloppo naar Posso,"
mentenfeest v.in Gantanmg (Zuid- Med.dedingen van wege het Neder-
Celebes)," Mcdi,ieelii:ge.n van wege hct laiuhche Zendelinggenoolschap, xlii.
K-Sir:^r!dschi Zen.islingger.ootschap, (1S98) pp. 18, 2$ sq.; L. W. C. van
xk. (1S75) pp. 344- 351; G. K. den Berg, "De Mohammedaansche
Xiein.inn, " De Boegineezen en Vorsten in Nederlandsch - Indie,"
Makassaren,"" Bijdrcgen tot dc 7aal- B!jdragen tot deTaal- Land- m Volken-
L::nJ-mVc:x!r.hindc- van Nederlandsch- kiinde van Nederlandsch • India, liii.
InSi:', xxxviii. (iSSqI pp. 270 sq. ; D. (1901) pp. 72-80.
F. van Brsam Morris, in Tiidschrift ^ A. Moret, Le Rituel du culU
voor Iiidisfhe Taal- Land- en Volken- diviii journalier en Bgypte (Paris
kutide, xxxiv. (1S91) pp. 215 ^?. ; A. 1902) pp. 94 sq.
VI MAGICIANS AS KINGS 365
at the present time the king's crown is sacred and is supposed
to be the shrine of a spirit which has to be propitiated.
When the king {Oni) of Ife visited Lagos some years ago,
he had to sacrifice five sheep to his crown between Ibadan
and Ife, a two days' journey on foot.-' Among the Ashan-
tees " the throne or chair of the king or chief is believed to
be inhabited by a spirit to which it is consecrated, and to
which human sacrifices were formerly offered : at present the
victims are sheep. It is the personification of power ; hence
a king is not a king and a chief is not a chief until he has
been solemnly installed on the throne." ^ Among the Hos,
a Ewe tribe of Togoland in German West Africa, the king's
proper throne is small and the king does not sit on it.
Usually it is bound round with magic cords and wrapt up
in a sheep's skin ; but from time to time it is taken out of
the wrappings, washed in a stream, and smeared all over
with the blood of a sheep which has been sacrificed for the
purpose. The flesh of the sheep is boiled and a portion of
it eaten by every man who has been present at the ceremony.'
In Cambodia the regalia are regarded as a palladium on Regalia
which the existence of the kingdom depends ; they are [^"cam-''
committed to Brahmans for safe keeping.* In antiquity bodia,
the Scythian kings treasured as sacred a plough, a yoke, a^^^' "''
battle-axe, and a cup, all of gold, which were said to have ancient
Greece
fallen from heaven ; the}- offered great sacrifices to these
sacred things at an annual festival ; and if the man in
charge of them fell asleep under the open sky, it was
believed that he would die within the year.** The sceptre
of king Agamemnon, or what passed for such, was worshipped
as a god at Chaeronea ; a man acted as priest of the sceptre for
a year at a time, and sacrifices were offered to it daily.* The
golden lamb of Mycenae, on the possession of which, according
to legend, the two rivals Atieus and Thyestes based their claim
to the throne,'' may have been a royal talisman of this sort.
! Sir Will i.ira MacGregor, "Lagos, * A. Bastian, Volkerstdmme am
Abeokuta, and the Ahike," /"'"''«"' "/' Brahmaputra (Berlin, 1883), p. xi.
thi African Society, No. 12 (July, ^ Herodotus, iv. 5-7. Compare K.
1904), p. 472. Neumann, Die Ihlhnen im Skyihen-
> E. Per'regaux, Chez les Achanti lande, i. (Berlin, 1855) pp. 269 sq.
(Keadiatel, 1906), p. 140. « Pausanias, ix. 40. 11 sq.
» J.Spieth,Z)«£a.',-5Ca/«»(«(Eerlin, ' ApoUodorus, Bibliotheca, ed. R.
1906), pp. 76, 78, compare pp. loi sq. Wagner, p. 185. On public talismans
Ireland.
366 MAGICIANS AS KINGS chap.
The belief The belief that kings possess magical or supernatural
that kings powers bv virtue of which they can fertilise the earth and
possess ^ ■' , . , .
magical Confer other benefits on their subjects would seem to have
or super- j^^^^ shared by the ancestors of all the Aryan races from
113. t U r£l 1 "
powers to India to Ireland, and it has left clear traces of itself in our
course'o?*^ own Country down to modern times. Thus the ancient
nature for Hindoo law-book called The Laws of Manu describes as
of 'their follows the effects of a good king's reign : " In that country
subjects where the king avoids taking the property of mortal sinners,
seems to o i- A -'
have been men are born in due time and are long-lived. And the crops
shared by ^^ jj^^ husbandmen spring up, each as it was sown, and the
tors of all children die not, and no misshaped offspring is born." ^ In
race'sfrorn Homeric Greece kings and chiefs were spoken of as sacred
India to or divine ; their houses, too, were divine and their chariots
sacred ; - and it was thought that the reign of a good king
caused the black earth to bring forth wheat and barley,
the trees to be loaded with fruit, the flocks to multiply,
and the sea to yield fish.® A Greek historian of a much
later age tells us that in the reign of a very bad king of
Lydia the country suffered from drought, for which he
would seem to have held the king responsible.* There is
a tradition that once when the land of the Edonians in
Thrace bore no fruit, the god Dionysus intimated to the
people that its fertility could be restored by putting their
king Lycurgus to death. So they took him to Mount
Pangaeum and there caused him to be torn in pieces by
horses.^ When the crops failed, the Burgundians used to
blame their kings and depose them.^ In the time of the
Swedish king Domalde a mighty famine broke out, which
lasted several years, and could be stayed by the blood
neither of beasts nor of men. Therefore, in a great popular
in antiquity see Ch. A. Lobeck, Agia- ally this view was not shared by the en-
opkamus, pp. 278 sqq. ; and my note lightened Greeks of a later age. See
on Pausanias, viiL 40. II. Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus, 31 sqq.;
1 The Laws of Mami, ix. 246 sq., Polybius, Hist. vi. 6 sq.
translated by G. Buliler, p. 385 * Nicolaiis Damascenus, bk. vi. frag.
(Sz'Cr-d Bocks c^' the East, vol. xxv. ). 49, in Fragmenta historicorum Grae-
' Homer, Odyssey, ii. 409, iv. 43^ corum, ed. C. Miiller, iii. 381, 'He 70(1
6gi, vii. 167. viii. 2, xviii. 405; 5?) /caKicrro?, /cat dXXws jSactXefJopros aiirou
77»W. ii. 335, xvii. 464, etc. ijuxw^*" ^ T'?-
2 Homer, Odyssey, xix. 109-114. * K'^oWo&oms, Bibliotheca, iii. 5. i-
The Dassage was pointed out to me by '> Ammianus Marcellinus, xxviii. 5.
my fnend Prof. W. Ridgeway. Natur- 14.
VI MAGICIANS AS KINGS 367
assembly held at Upsala, the chiefs decided that King Swedish
Domalde himself was the cause of the scarcity and must f"'' Danish
, . „ kings.
be sacrificed for good seasons. So they slew him and
smeared with his blood the altars of the gods. Again,
we are told that the Swedes always attributed good or
bad crops to their kings as the cause. Now, in the reign
of King Olaf, there came dear times and famine, and the
people thought that the fault was the king's, because he
was sparing in his sacrifices. So, mustering an army, they
marched against him, surrounded his dwelling, and burned
him in it, " giving him to Odin as a sacrifice for good crops." ^
In the Middle Ages, when Waldemar I,, King of Denmark,
travelled in Germany, mothers brought their infants and
husbandmen their seed for him to lay his hands on, think-
ing that children would both thrive the better for the royal
touch, and for a like reason farmers asked him to throw
the seed for them.^ It was the belief of the ancient Irish
Irish that when their kings observed the customs of their ''^"S*
ancestors, the seasons were mild, the crops plentiful, the
cattle fruitful, the waters abounded with fish, and the fruit
trees had to be propped up on account of the weight
of their produce. A canon attributed to St. Patrick
enumerates among the blessings that attend the reign of
a just king " fine weather, calm seas, crops abundant, and
trees laden with fruit." On the other hand, dearth, dryness
of cows, blight of fruit, and scarcity of corn were regarded
as infallible proofs that the reigning king was bad. For
example, in the reign of the usurper king Carbery Kinncat,
" evil was the state of Ireland : fruitless her corn, for there
used to be only one grain on the stalk ; fruitless her rivers ;
milkless her cattle ; plentiless her fruit, for there used to be
' Snorro Starleson, Chronicle of the stay the plague till the virtuous
Kings of Nonvay (trans, by S. Laing), Kotchene, one of the most venerated
saga i. chs. 18, 47. Compare F. chiefs, had been offered to them in
Liebrecht, Z«?- f^/&i«Krf«(Heilbronn, sacrifice. No one was found hardy
'879), p. 7 ; J. Schetfer, Upsalia enough to raise a sacrilegious hand
(Upsala, 1666), p. 137. In 1814 a against him, and the shamans had to
pestilence broke out among the Chuk- force the chief's own son to cut his
chees of north-eastern Siberia, which father's throat. See De Wrangell,
carried off many of the people and Le Nord de la Sibirie (Paris, 1843),
spread its ravages among the herds of i. 265-267 .
reindeer. The shamans declared that ^ Saxo Grammaticus, Historia Da-
the spirits were angry and would not nica, bk. xiv. p. 779, ed. P. E. Muller.
368
MAGICIANS AS KINGS
CHAP.
Alagical
attributed
to the chiefs
of the
ifacleods.
A n&ic of
this beUe:
is the
codon that
E2g"ish
kings can
heal
scrofula
tOQch.
but one acorn on the stalk." ^ Superstitions of the same sort
seem to have lingered in the Highlands of Scotland down
to the eighteenth century ; for when Dr. Johnson travelled
in Skye it was still held that the return of the laird to
Dun vegan, after any considerable absence, produced a plentiful
capture of herring.^ The laird of Dunvegan is chief of the
clan of the Macleods, and his family still owns a banner
which is called " Macleod's Fairy Banner," on account of the
supernatural powers ascribed to it. When it is unfurled,
victory in war attends it, and it relieves its followers from
imminent danger. But these virtues it can exert only thrice,
and already it has been twice unfurled. When the potato
crop failed, many of the common people desired that the
magical banner should be displayed, apparently in the belief
that the mere sight of it would produce a fine crop of
potatoes. Every woman with child who sees it is taken
with premature labour, and every cow casts her calf.^
Perhaps the last relic of such superstitions which lingered
about our English kings was the notion that they could heal
scrofula by their touch. The disease was accordingly known
as the King's Evil. Queen Elizabeth often exercised this
miraculous gift of healing. On Midsummer Day 1633,
Charles tlie First cured a hundred patients at one swoop in
the chapel royal at Holyrood.* But it was under his son
Charles the Second that the practice seems to have attained
its highest vogue. In this respect the Merry Monarch did
not let the grass grow under his feet. It was the twenty-
ninth of May 1660 when he was brought home in triumph
from exile amid a shouting multitude and a forest of
brandished swords, over roads strewed with flowers and
through streets hung with tapestry, while the fountains ran
wine and all the bells of London rang for joy. And it was
on the sixth of July that he began to touch for the King's
' F. W. Joyce, Serial History of
AK.Uni Irc'and (London, 1903), i.
56 -V'.; T- O'Douovan. The B.vk of
JS-rifs (Dublin, 1S47). p. 8, note.
Compare Eerenger- Feraiul, Sufcr-
sts:L'KS it s:irz'iz\7mds, i, 492.
^ S. Johnson, Josirtuy to the ]Vc:steni
/s/dtt.:^ jEaliimore, 1S15), p. 115.
^ J. G. Campbell, S-.ifcrstiticns of
the ITiglUands and hlands of Scotland
(Glasgow, 1900), ]). 5. As to the
banner see also Th. Pennant, " Second
Tour in Scotland," in Pinkerton's
Kyaof.f and Traveb, iii. 321 sq.
•• J. G. Dalyell, The Darker Super-
stitions of Scotland {&S\vAivx^, 1834),
pp. fi2 sqq.
VI MAGICIANS AS KINGS 369
Evil. The ceremony is thus described by Evelyn, who may charies n.
have witnessed it. " His Majestic began first to touch for y' ^°^'^'^™^
«t'?7, according to costome,thus: HisMa"^ sitting under his state kings
in the Banquetting House, the chirurgeons cause the sick to be f"' ^ ,
brought or led up to the throne, where they kneeling, y° King
strokes their faces or cheekes with both his hands at once,
at which instant a chaplaine in his formalities says, ' He put
his hands upon them and he healed them,' This is sayd to
every one in particular. When they have been all touch'd
they come up again in the same order, and the other
chaplaine kneeling, and having angel gold strung on white
ribbon on his arme, delivers them one by one to his Ma"',
who puts them about the necks of the touched as they pass,
whilst the first chaplaine repeats, ' That is y° true light who
came into y* world.' Then follows an Epistle (as at first a
Gospell) with the liturgy, prayers for the sick, with some
alteration, lastly -f blessing ; and then the Lo. Chamberlaine
and the Comptroller of the Household bring a basin, ewer
and towell, for his Majesty to wash." ^ Pepys witnessed
the same ceremony at the same place on the thirteenth of
April in the following year and he has recorded his opinion
that it was " an ugly office and a simple." ^ It is said that
in the course of his reign Charles the Second touched near a
hundred thousand persons for scrofula. The press to get
near him was sometimes terrific. On one occasion six or
seven of those who came to be healed were trampled to
death. While the hope of a miraculous cure attracted the
pious and sanguine, the certainty of receiving angel gold
attracted the needy and avaricious, and it was not always
easy for the royal surgeons to distinguish between the motives
of the applicants. This solemn mummery cost the state
little less than ten thousand pounds a year. The cool-headed
William the Third contemptuously refused to lend himself to
the hocus-pocus ; and when his palace was besieged by the
usual unsavoury crowd, he ordered them to be turned away
1 Memoirs of John Evelyn, Esq., London, see Evelyn, op. cit. ii. 148
New Edition (London, 1827), ii. 151 sq.
tq., under July 6th, 1660. Angel gold ^ Memoirs of Samuel Pepys, Esq.,
were gold coins with the figure of an edited by Lord Braybrook, Second
ingel stamped on them. As to Edition (London, 1828), i. 187, com-
Charles's triumphal entrance into pare ?'*. p. no, iii. 192.
VOL. I 2 B
370 MAGICIANS AS KINGS chap.
English with a dole. On the only occasion when he was importuned
touchine ^"^° laying his hand on a patient, he said to him, " God give
for scrofula. you better health and more sense." However, the practice
was continued, as might have been expected, by the dull
bigot James the Second ^ and his dull daughter Queen Anne.
In his childhood Dr. Johnson was touched for scrofula by the
queen, and he always retained a faint but solemn recollection
of her as of a lady in diamonds with a long black hood."
To judge by the too faithful picture which his biographer
has drawn of the doctor's appearance in later life we may
conclude that the touch of the queen's hand was not a
perfect remedy for the disorder ; perhaps the stream of
divine grace which had flowed so copiously in the veins of
Charles the Second had been dried up by the interposition
of the sceptical William.
Other The kings of France also claimed to possess the same
chiefs have gift o'" healing b}- touch, which the}- are said to have derived
claimed from Clovis or from St. Louis, while our English kings
to neal
diseases by inherited it from Edward the Confessor.' We may suspect
a touch, j-jjj^j. j-fjggg estimates of the antiquity of the gift were far too
modest, and that the barbarous, nay savage, predecessors both
of the Saxon and of the Merovingian kings had with the same
justice claimed the same powers many ages before. Down
to the nineteentli century the West African tribe of the
Walos, in Senegal, ascribed to their royal family a like power
of healing by touch. Mothers have been seen to bring their
sick children to the queen, who touched them solemnly with
her foot on the back, the stomach, the head, and the legs,
after which the women departed in peace, convinced that
' T. B. Maciulay, History of Eng- tlie eighteenth century it was believed
Uni, chap. xiv. vol. iii. pp. 47S-481 in (he Highlands of Scotland that
(First Edition, London. 1S55). some tribes of Macdonalds had the
■-^ "[.HosweSX, Life of Samueljclmson, power of curing a certain disease by
Ninth Edition (London, iS::;), i. their touch and the use of a particular
iS .<■/. set of words. Hence the disease,
^ T. J. Pettigrew, Superstitions con- which attacked tlie chest and lungs,
nested ■nsifh the History and Practice of was called " the M acdonald's disease."
Medicine and Surgery (London, 1 844), We arc told that the faith of the people
pp. 117- 154; \V. G. Black, Folk- iu tlio touch of a Macdonald was very
.l/;t:.v;>;<; (London, 1SS3), pp. 140 jy^.; great. See Rev. Ilr. Th. Bisset,
W. E. H. Lecky, His:ory of England •• i'arish of Logierait," in Sir John
in tki Eighteenth Century (London, Sinclair's Statistical Account of Scot-
1802), i. S4-90. Down to the end of land, iii. (Edinburgh, 1792) p. 84.
VI MAGICIANS AS KINGS 371
their children had been made whole.^ Similarly the savage
chiefs of Tonga were believed to heal scrofula and cases of in-
durated liver by the touch of their feet; and the cure was strictly
homoeopathic, for the disease as well as the cure was thought
to be caused by contact with the royal person or with any-
thing that belonged to it.^ In fact royal personages in the
Pacific and elsewhere have been supposed to live in a sort of
atmosphere highly charged with what we may call spiritual
electricity, which, if it blasts all who intrude into its charmed
circle, has happily also the gift of making them whole again
by a touch.^ We may conjecture that similar views prevailed
in ancient times as to the predecessors of our English
monarchs, and that accordingly scrofula received its name of
the King's Evil from the belief that it was caused as well as
cured by contact with a king.* In Loango palsy is called
the king's disease, because the negroes imagine it to be
heaven's punishment for treason meditated against the
king.*
On the whole, then, we seem to be justified in inferring on the
that in many parts of the world the king is the lineal '^°^^^^^^
successor of the old magician or medicine-man. When once to have
a special class of sorcerers has been segregated from the^^"^^'^",
community and entrusted by it with the discharge of duties of magi-
on which the public safety and welfare are believed to "^"^'
in course
depend, these men gradually rise to wealth and power, till of t™e to
their leaders blossom out into sacred kings. But the great cijanged
social revolution which thus begins with democracy and ends magical for
in despotism is attended by an intellectual revolution which functions,
affects both the conception and the functions of royalty. '° °*^''
words,
1 Baron Roger, "Notice sur le "the royal disease" {morbus regius).
gouvernement, les nioaurs et les super- See Horace, .,4;'j/»«/«Va, 453 ; Celsus,
stitions du jrays de \\'alo," Bulletin de De medicina, iii. 24. Can this have
la SxUU ^ie Giogiaphie (Paris), viii. been because the malady was believed
(1827) p. ^51. to be caused and cured by kings? Did
2 W. >l.\riner. An Account of the the sight or touch of the king's red or
Kathcs of tJu Ton::.! Islands, Second purple robe ban the yellow tinge from
Edition (Lcudon, 1S18), i. 434, note. the skin of the sufferer? As to such
5 To this subject we shall recur later homoeopathic cures of jaundice, see
on. Mean-.ime I may refer the reader above, pp. 79 sgq.
CO 7>« 6^o.!.>« i?iv/j';, Second luiiiicm, f' I'royart's "History of Loango,
■■ 319 ■'??■' 343 > I^V'I'^'^ Task, pp. Kakons;o, and other Kingdoms in
5 jyj. Africa," in Pinkerton's Voyages and
* A Roman name for jaundice was Travels, xvi. 573.
372
MAGICIANS AS KINGS
to have
become
priests
instead of
sorceTHS.
For as time goes on, the fallacy of magic becomes more and
more apparent to the acuter minds and is slowly displaced
by religion ; in other words, the magician gives way to the
priest, who renouncing the attempt to control directly the
processes of nature for the good of man, seeks to attain
the same end indirectly by appealing to the gods to do for
him what he no longer fancies he can do for himself Hence
the king, starting as a magician, tends gradually to exchange
the practice of magic for the priestly functions of prayer and
sacrifice. And while the distinction between the human and
the divine is still imperfectly drawn, it is often imagined
that men may themselves attain to godhead, not merely
after their death, but in their lifetime, through the temporary
or permanent possession of their whole nature by a great and
powerful spirit. No class of the community has benefited
so much as kings by this belief in the possible incarnation
of a god in human form. The doctrine of that incarnation,
and with it the theory of the divinity of kings in the strict
sense of the word, will form the subject of the following
chapter.
CHAPTER VII
INCARNATE HUMAN GODS
The instances which in the preceding chapters I have drawn The con-
from the beliefs and practices of rude peoples all over the "^^p"™ of
■■ ^ ^ gods has
world, may suffice to prove that the savage fails to recognise been slowly
those limitations to his power over nature which seem so ^™'^^<'-
obvious to us. In a society where every man is supposed
to be endowed more or less with powers which we should
call supernatural, it is plain that the distinction between gods
and men is somewhat blurred, or rather has scarcely emerged.
The conception of gods as superhuman beings endowed
with powers to which man possesses nothing comparable
in degree and hardly even in kind, has been slowly
evolved in the course of history.^ By primitive peoples
the supernatural agents are not regarded as greatly, if
at all, superior to man ; for they may be frightened and
coerced by him into doing his will. At this stage of thought
the world is viewed as a great democracy ; all beings in
it, whether natural or supernatural, are supposed to stand
on a footing of tolerable equality. But with the growth of
his knowledge man learns to realise more clearly the vastness
of nature and his own littleness and feebleness in presence
of it. The recognition of his helplessness does not, how-
ever, carry with it a corresponding belief in the impotence
of those supernatural beings with which his imagination
peoples the universe. On the contrary, it enhances his
' A reminiscence of this evolution is tality and ascended to heaven by means
preserved in the Brahman theology, of sacrifice. See S. L6vi, La Doctrine
according to which the gods were at du sacrifice dans les Br&hmanas i^&x\%^
first mortal and dwelt on earth with 1898), pp. 37-43, 59-61, 84 sq.
men, but afterwards attained immor-
373
374
INCARNA TE HUMAN GODS
grows,
magic
declines
into a
black art.
conception of their power. For the idea of the world as a
system of impersonal forces acting in accordance with fixed
and invariable laws has not yet fully dawned or darkened
upon him. The germ of the idea he certainly has, and he
acts upon it, not only in magic art, but in much of the
business of daily life. But the idea remains undeveloped,
and so far as he attempts to explain the world he lives in,
he pictures it as the manifestation of conscious will and
personal agency. If then he feels himself to be so frail and
slight, how vast and powerful must he deem the beings who
.\s religion control the gigantic machinery of nature ! Thus as his old
sense of equality with the gods slowly vanishes, he resigns at
the same time the hope of directing the course of natui-e by
his own unaided resources, that is, by magic, and looks more
and more to the gods as the sole repositories of those super-
natural powers which he once claimed to share with them.
With the advance of knowledge, therefore, prayer and sacri-
fice assume the leading place in religious ritual ; and magic,
which once ranked with them as a legitimate equal, is
gradually relegated to the background and sinks to the level
of a black art. It is now regarded as an encroachment, at
once vain and impious, on the domain of the gods, and as
such encounters the steady opposition of the priests, whose
reputation and influence rise or fall with those of their gods.
Hence, when at a late period the distinction between religion
and superstition has emerged, we find that sacrifice and
prayer are the resource of the pious and enlightened portion
of the community, while magic is the refuge of the super-
stitious and ignorant. But when, still later, the conception
of the elemental forces as personal agents is giving way to
the recognition of natural law ; then magic, based as it
implicitly is on the idea of a necessary and invariable
sequence of cause and effect, independent of personal will,
reappears from the obscurity and discredit into which it had
fallen, and by investigating the causal sequences in nature,
directly prepares the way for science. Alchemy leads up to
chemistry.
The notion of a man-god, or of a human being endowed
with divine or supernatural powers, belongs essentially to
that earlier period of religious history in which gods and
The con-
ception of
a man-god
or deity
vii INCARNATE HUMAN GODS 375
men are still viewed as beings of much the same order, and incarnate
before they are divided by the impassable gulf which, to later f^^be"
thought, opens out between them. Strange, therefore, as longs to
may seem to us the idea of a god incarnate in human form, jj^gg of
it has nothing very startling for early man, who sees in a religious
, f , . , , r ,1 history.
man-god or a god-man only a higher degree ot the same
supernatural powers which he arrogates in perfect good faith
to himself. Nor does he draw any very sharp distinction
between a god and a powerful sorcerer. His gods, as we
have seen,^ are often merely invisible magicians who behind
the veil of nature work the same sort of charms and incanta-
tions which the human magician works in a visible and
bodily form among his fellows. And as the gods are
commonly believed to exhibit themselves in the likeness of
men to their worshippers, it is easy for the magician, with
his supposed miraculous powers, to acquire the reputation of
being an incarnate deity. Thus beginning as little more
than a simple conjurer, the medicine-man or magician tends
to blossom out into a full-blown god and king in one. Only
in speaking of him as a god we must beware of importing
into the savage conception of deity those very abstract and
complex ideas which we attach to the term. Our 'ideas on
this profound subject are the fruit of a long intellectual and
moral evolution, and they are so far from being shared by
the savage that he cannot even understand them when they
are explained to him. Much of the controversy which has
raged as to the religion of the lower races has sprung merely
from a mutual misunderstanding. The savage does not
understand the thoughts of the civilised man, and few
civilised men understand the thoughts of the savage. When
the savage uses his word for god, he has in his mind a being
of a certain sort : when the civilised man uses his word for
god, he has in his mind a being of a very different sort ;
and if, as commonly happens, the two men are equally
unable to place themselves at the other's point of view,
nothing but confusion and mistakes can result from their
discussions. If we civilised men insist on limiting the. name
of God to that particular conception of the divine nature
which we ourselves have formed, then we must confess that
1 See above, pp. 240-242.
376
INCARNA TE HUMAN GODS
CHAP.
Examples
of incar-
nate
hnman
deities.
The in-
carnation
eitiier
temporary
or jKr-
manent.
the savage has no god at all. But we shall adhere more
closely to the facts of history if we allow most of the higher
savages at least to possess a rudimentary notion of certain
supernatural beings who may fittingly be called gods, though
not in the full sense in which we use the word. That
rudimentary notion represents in all probability the germ out
of which the civilised peoples have gradually evolved their
own high conceptions of deity ; and if we could trace the
whole course of religious development, we might find that
the chain which links our idea of the Godhead with that of
the savage is one and unbroken.
With these explanations and cautions I will now adduce
some examples of gods who have been believed by their
worshippers to be incarnate in living human beings, whether
men or women. The persons in whom a deity is thought to
reveal himself are by no means always kings or descendants
of kings ; the supposed incarnation may take place even in
men of the humblest rank. In India, for example, one
human god started in life as a cotton-bleacher and another
as the son of a carpenter.^ I shall therefore not draw my
examples exclusively from royal personages, as I wish to
illustrate the general principle of the deification of living
men, in other words, the incarnation of a deity in human
form. Such incarnate gods are common in rude society.
The incarnation may be temporary or permanent. In the
former case, the incarnation — commonly known as inspiration
or possession — reveals itself in supernatural knowledge rather
than in supernatural power. In other words, its usual mani-
festations are divination and prophecy rather than miracles.
On the other hand, when the incarnation is not merely
temporary, when the divine spirit has permanently taken up
its abode in a human body, the god-man is usually expected
to vindicate his character by working miracles. Only we
have to remember that by men at this stage of thought
miracles are not considered as breaches of natural law. Not
conceiving the existence of natural law, primitive man cannot
' Monier Williams, Religious Life
and Thought in India, p. 26S. How-
ever, as to the son of the carpenter it
b said that " his followers scarcely
worshipped him as a god, yet they
fully believed in his power of working
miracles.''
vn INCARNA TE HUMAN GODS m
conceive a breach of it. A miracle is to him merely an
unusually striking manifestation of a common power.
The belief in temporary incarnation or inspiration is Temporary
world-wide. Certain persons are supposed to be possessed o"*^'^o^s'|°"
from time to time by a spirit or deity ; while the possession human
lasts, their own personality lies in abeyance, the presence of ^^^'^
the spirit is revealed by convulsive shiverings and shakings the Poiy-
of the man's whole body, by wild gestures and excited looks, "'^^'^"'•
all of which are referred, not to the man himself, but to the
spirit which has entered into him ; and in this abnormal
state all his utterances are accepted as the voice of the god
or spirit dwelling in him and speaking through him. Thus,
for example, in the Sandwich Islands, the king personating
the god, uttered the responses of the oracle from his con-
cealment in a frame of wicker-work. But in the southern
islands of the Pacific the god " frequently entered the
priest, who, inflated as it were with the divinity, ceased to
act or speak as a voluntary agent, but moved and spoke as
entirely under supernatural influence. In this respect there
was a striking resemblance between the rude oracles of the
Polynesians, and those of the celebrated nations of ancient
Greece. As soon as the god was supposed to have entered
the priest, the latter became violently agitated, and worked
himself up to the highest pitch of apparent frenzy, the
muscles of the limbs seemed convulsed, the body swelled,
the countenance became terrific, the features distorted, and
the eyes wild and strained. In this state he often rolled on
the earth, foaming at the mouth, as if labouring under the
influence of the divinity by whom he was possessed, and, in
shrill cries, and violent and often indistinct sounds, revealed
the will of the god. The priests, who were attending, and
versed in the mysteries, received, and reported to the people,
the declarations which had been thus received. When the
priest had uttered the response of the oracle, the violent
paroxysm gradually subsided, and comparative composure
ensued. The god did not, however, always leave him as
soon as the communication had been made. Sometimes the
same taura, or priest, continued for two or three days
possessed by the spirit or deity ; a piece of a native cloth,
of a peculiar kind, worn round one arm, was an indication
378 INCARNATE HUMAN GODS chap.
of inspiration, or of the indwelling of the god with the
individual who wore it. The acts of the man during this
period were considered as those of the god, and hence the
greatest attention was paid to his expressions, and the
whole of his deportment. . . . When uruhia, (under the
inspiration of the spirit,) the priest was always considered as
sacred as the god, and was called, during this period, atua, god,
though at other times only denominated taura or priest." ^
Temporan- In Mangaia, an island of the South Pacific, the priests
LTgodf in" i" whom the gods took up their abode from time to
Mangaia, time wcrc Called " god-boxes " or, for shortness, " gods."
2j ^'^'' Before giving oracles as gods, they drank an intoxi-
Cekbes. eating liquor, and in the frenzy thus produced their wild
whirling words were received as the voice of the deity.^
In Fiji there is in every tribe a certain family who alone are
liable to be thus temporarily inspired or possessed by a
divine spirit. " Their qualification is hereditary, and any one
of the ancestral gods may choose his vehicle from among
them. I have seen this possession, and a horrible sight it is.
In one case, after the fit was over, for some time the man's
muscles and nerves twitched and quivered in an extraordinary
way. He was naked except for his breech-clout, and on his
naked breast little snakes seemed to be wriggling for a
moment or two beneath his skin, disappearing and then
suddenly reappearing in another part of his chest. When
the mbete (which we may translate 'priest' for want of a better
word) is seized by the possession, the god within him calls
out his own name in a stridulous tone, ' It is I! Katouivere!'
or some other name. At the next possession some other
ancestor may declare himself." ^ In Bali there are certain
persons called permas, who are predestined or fitted by nature
to become the temporary abode of the invisible deities.
When a god is to be consulted, the villagers go and compel
some of these mediums to lend their services. Sometimes
the medium leaves his consciousness at home, and is then
conducted with marks of honour to the temple, ready to
1 W. Ellis, Polynesian Researches, the South Pacific (London, 1876), p.
Second Edition (London, 1832-36), 35.
i. 3-2-5. ^ Rev. Lorimer Fison, in a letter to
2 W. W. Gill, Myths and Songs of the author, dated August 26, 1898.
VII INCARNATE HUMAN GODS 379
receive the godhead into his person. Generally, however, Temporary
some time passes before he can be brought into the requisite '^carnation
'■ ° ^ of gods m
frame of body and mind ; but the desired result may be human
hastened by making him inhale the smoke of incense or *^°''"''
surrounding him with a band of singing men or women.
The soul of the medium quits for a time his body, which is
thus placed at the disposal of the deity, and up to the
moment when his consciousness returns all his words and
acts are regarded as proceeding not from himself but from
the god. So long as the possession lasts he is a deiva
kapiragan, that is, a god who has become man, and in that
character he answers the questions put to him. During this
time his body is believed to be immaterial and hence
invulnerable. A dance with swords and pikes follows the
consultation of the oracle ; but these weapons could make no
impression on the ethereal body of the inspired medium."' In
Poso, a district of Central Celebes, sickness is often supposed
to be caused by an alien substance, such as a piece of
tobacco, a stick, or even a chopping-knife, which has been
introduced unseen into the body of the sufferer by the
magic art of an insidious foe. To discover and eject this
foreign matter is a task for a god, who for this purpose
enters into the body of a priestess, speaks through her
mouth, and performs the necessary surgical operation with
her hands. An eye-witness of the ceremony has told how,
when the priestess sat beside the sick man, with her head
covered by a cloth, she began to quiver and shake and to
sing in a strident tone, at which some one observed to
the writer, " Now her own spirit is leaving her body and a
god is taking its place." On removing the cloth from her
head she was no longer a woman but a heavenly spirit, and
gazed about her with an astonished air as if to ask how she
came from her own celestial region to this humble abode.
Yet the divine spirit condescended to chew betel and to
drink palm-wine like any poor mortal of earthly mould.
After she had pretended to extract the cause of the disease
by laying the cloth from her head on the patient's stomach
and pinching it, she veiled her face once more, sobbed,
' F. A. Liefrinck, " Bijdrage tot de voor Tndische Taal- Land- en Volken-
Kennis van het eiland Bali," Tijdschrifi kunde, xxxiii. (1890) pp. 260 sq.
38o INCARNATE HUMAN GODS chap.
quivered, and shook violently, at which the people said,
" The human spirit is returning into her." ^
Deifiea- A Brahman householder who performs the regular
sacrificer"^ half-monthly sacrifices is supposed thereby to become him-
in Brah- self a deity for a time. In the words of the Satapatha-
man n ua . ^^^/^^^^^^la:, " He who is consccrated draws nigh to the
gods and becomes one of the deities." ^ " All formulas
of the consecration are audgrabhana (elevatory), since he
who is consecrated elevates himself (ud-grabh) from this
world to the world of the gods. He elevates himself by
means of these same formulas." ^ " He who is consecrated
indeed becomes both Vishnu and a sacrificer ; for when he
is consecrated, he is Vishnu, and when he sacrifices, he is
the sacrificer." * After he has completed the sacrifice he
becomes man again, divesting himself of his sacred character
with the words, " Now I am he who I really am," which
are thus explained in the Satapatha-Brahmana : "In enter-
ing upon the vow, he becomes, as it were, non-human ; and
as it would not be becoming for him to say, ' I enter from
truth into untruth ' ; and as, in fact, he now again becomes
man, let him therefore divest himself (of the vow) with the
The new text : ' Now I am he v/ho I really am.' " ^ The means by
which the sacrificer passed from untruth to truth, from the
human to the divine, was a simulation of a new birth. He
was sprinkled with water as a symbol of seed. He feigned
to be an embryo, and shut himself up in a special hut,
which represented the womb. Under his robe he wore a
belt, and over it the skin of a black antelope ; the belt
stood for the navel-string, and the robe and the black
antelope skin represented the inner and outer membranes
(the amnion and the chorion) in which an embryo is wrapt.
He might not scratch himself with his nails or a stick
because he was an embryo, and were an embryo scratched
with nails or a stick it would die. If he moved about in
' A. C. Kruijt, " Mijne eerste erva- * Op. cit. p. 29.
ringen te Poso," Mededeelingen van * Satapatha-Brdhmana, part i. p. 4,
-juege he! Nederlandsche Zendelingg noot- translated by J. Eggeling {Sacred Books
xfjia/, xxxvi. (1892) pp. 399-403. oftheEast,^o\.%n.). On the deification
- Satapatha-Brihmana, part ii. pp. of the sacrificer in the Brahman ritual
4, 38, 42, 44, translated by J. Eggeling see H. Hubert and M. Mauss, " Essai
{Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxvi. ). sur le sacrifice," V Annie sociologique,
' Op. cit. p. 20. ii. (1897-1898), pp. 48 sqq.
birth.
VII INCARNATE HUMAN GODS 381
the hut, it was because the child moves about in the womb.
If he kept his fists doubled up, it was because an unborn
babe does the same. If in bathing he put off the black
antelope skin but retained his robe, it was because the
child is born with the amnion but not with the chorion.
By these practices he acquired, in addition to his old natural
and mortal body, a new body that was sacramental and
immortal, invested with superhuman powers, encircled with
an aureole of fire. Thus, by a new birth, a regeneration of
his carnal nature, the man became a god. At his natural
birth, the Brahmans said, man is born but in part ; it is
by sacrifice that he is truly born into the world. The
funeral rites, which ensured the final passage from earth to
heaven, might be considered as a phase of the new birth.
" In truth," they said, " man is born thrice. At first he
is born of his father and mother ; then when he sacri-
fices he is born again ; and lastly, when he dies and is
laid on the fire, he is born again from it, and that is
his third birth. That is why they say that man is born
thrice." 1
But examples of such temporary inspiration are so Temporary
common in every part of the world and are now so familiar orTnTpYra"
through books on ethnology that it is needless to multiply tion pro-
illustrations of the general principle.^ It may be well, how- drfnidng^
ever, to refer to two particular modes of producing temporary blood,
inspiration, because they are perhaps less known than some
others, and because we shall have occasion to refer to them
later on. One of these modes of producing inspiration is by
sucking the fresh blood of a sacrificed victim. In the temple
of Apollo Diradiotes at Argos, a lamb was sacrificed by
night once a month ; a woman, who had to observe a rule
of chastity, tasted the blood of the lamb, and thus being
inspired by the god she prophesied or divined.' At Aegira
in Achaia the priestess of Earth drank the fresh blood of a
1 S. Levi, La Doctrine du sacrifice Primitive Culture,^ ii. 131 sg.
dam les Brdhmanas (Paris, 1898), pp.
102-108; Hubert and Mauss, fe. «V. ; ' Pausanias, ii. 24. I. In 1902
Satafatha - Brdhmana, trans, by J. the site of the temple was identified by
Eggeling, part ii. pp. 18-20, 25-35, means of inscriptions which mention
73, part V. pp. 23 sq. (Sacred Books of the oracle. See Berliner philologischt
//ii! £<u/, vols. xxvi. and xliv. ). Wochenschrift, April 11, 1903, coll.
» See for examples E. B. Tylor, 478 sq.
382
INCARNA TE HUMAN GODS
or inspira-
tion pro-
duced by
drinking
blood.
Temporary bull before she descended into the cave to prophesy.^ In
incarnation gQui-i^gj-n India a devil - dancer "cuts and lacerates his
flesh till the blood flows, lashes himself with a huge whip,
presses a burning torch to his breast, drinks the blood which
flows from his own wounds, or drinks the blood of the
sacrifice, putting the throat of the decapitated goat to his
mouth. Then, as if he had acquired new life, he begins to
brandish his staff of bells, and to dance with a quick but
wild unsteady step. Suddenly the afflatus descends. There
is no mistaking that glare, or those frantic leaps. He snorts,
he stares, he gyrates. The demon has now taken bodily
possession of him ; and, though he retains the power of
utterance and of motion, both are under the demon's control,
and his separate consciousness is in abeyance. The by-
standers signalize the event by raising a long shout, attended
with a peculiar vibratory noise, which is caused by the motion
of the hand and tongue, or of the tongue" alone. The
devil-dancer is now worshipped as a present deity, and every
bystander consults him respecting his disease, his wants, the
welfare of his absent relatives, the offerings to be made for
the accomplishment of his wishes, and, in short, respecting
everything for which superhuman knowledge is supposed to
be available." ' Similarly among the Kuruvikkarans, a class
of bird-catchers and beggars in Southern India, the goddess
Kali is believed to descend upon the priest, and he gives
oracular replies after sucking the blood which streams from
the cut throat of a goat.^ At a festival of the Alfoors of Mina-
hassa, in northern Celebes, after a pig has been killed, the
priest rushes furiously at it, thrusts his head into the carcase,
and drinks of the blood. Then he is dragged away from it
by force and set 00 a chair, whereupon he begins to prophesy
how the rice-crop will turn out that year. A second time he
runs at the carcase and drinks of the blood ; a second time
' Plir.y, Nat. Hist, xxviii. 147.
Pausani.is (vii. 25. 13) mentions the
draught of bull's blood as an ordeal to
test the chastity of the piiestess. Doubt-
less it was tliought to serve both
purposes.
2 BisV.op R. Caldwell, "On Demon-
olatr\- in Southern India," Journal of
thi Anthropologiial Sockty of Bombay,
i. loi sq. For a description of a similar
rite performed at Periepatam in southern
India see Lettres idifiantes et curteuses,
Nouvelle Edition, x. 313 sq. In this
latter case the performer was a woman,
and the animal whose hot blood she
drank was a pig.
5 E. Tlvirston, Castes and Tribes of
Southern India, iv. 187.
VII INCARNATE HUMAN GODS 383
he is forced into the chair and continues his predictions. It Drinking
is thought that there is a spirit in him which possesses the '^'°°^ ^,
° ^ ■ ^ means of
power of prophecy. At Rhetra, a great religious capital of inspiration.
the Western Slavs, the priest tasted the blood of the sacrificed
oxen and sheep in order the better to prophesy.^ The true
test of a Dainyal or diviner among some of the Hindoo
Koosh tribes is to suck the blood from the neck of a
decapitated goat.^ The Takhas on the border of Cashmeer
have prophets who act as inspired mediums between the
deity and his worshippers. At the sacrifices the prophet in-
hales the smoke of the sacred cedar in order to keep off evil
spirits, and sometimes he drinks the warm blood as it spouts
from the neck of the decapitated victim before he utters his
oracle.* The heathen of Harran regarded blood as unclean,
but nevertheless drank it because they believed it to be the
food of demons, and thought that by imbibing it they entered
into communion with the demons, who would thus visit
them and lift the veil that hides the future from mortal
vision.^
The other mode of producing temporary inspiration, to Temporarj
which I shall here refer, consists in the use of a sacred '"'^^™^-
' tion or
tree or plant. Thus in the Hindoo Koosh a fire is kindled inspiration
with twigs of the sacred cedar ; and the Dainyal or sibyl, by°m'^ns
with a cloth over her head, inhales the thick pungent smoke of a sacred
till she is seized with convulsions and falls senseless to the pi^nt.
ground. Soon she rises and raises a shrill chant, which is
1 T. G. F. Riedel, " De Minahasa in H. A. Oldfield, Sketches from Nipal
1S25," Tijcbchrift voor Indische Taal- (London, 1880), ii. 296 sq. ; Asiatic
Land- en VolkenkuTule, xviii. 5'7 •f?- Researches, iv. pp. 40, 41, 50, 52 (Svo
Compare "De godsdienst en gods- ed.); Paul Soleiilet, DAfrique Occi-
dienst-plegtigheden der Alfoeren in de dentate (Paris, 1877), pp. 123 sg. To
Menhassa op het eiland Celebes," snuff up the savour of the sacrifice was
Tijdsihrift van Nedrrlandsch Indiif, similarly supposed to produce inspira-
1849, dl. ii. p. 395 ; N. Graafland, tion (Tertullian, Apologet. 23).
De 3finahassa, i. 122; J. Dumont ^ ^ ^ Oldham "The Nacas "
D'Urville, Voyap-e autour du vwnde et , i ^ _. 7 r> % .. • ^ ■ ^ • !.
J,, 1 7 J r n /our fiat of the Koyal Asiatic itoctety
a la recherche de La Ferouse, -v. 443. ■> ,t j > ^
^ F. J. Mone, Geschichte des Heiden- >' '^oi (London, ^'^oi^,^ pp._^463.
thums im nordlichen Eiiropa (Leipsic 4 j 5'-> 4 /> 4/ ^' /-mj.
J -n. .- J.. ^ • 00 worship the cobra, and Mr. Oldham
and Darmstadt, 1822-23),!. lb8. , ,. '^ ^, . 1, 1 1 1 /■ .u
, T T>-ji 1 u -T- •/ J- t: o- 1 believes them to be descended from the
* J. iiiddulpn, J noes of the Utndoo >, ,,, n^ , , ,
i, I ,^ , .. 00 V a TT Nagas of the Mahabharata.
Koosh (Calcutta, 1880), p. 96. For *»
other instances of priests or repre- ^ Maimonides, quoted by D. Chwol-
sentatives of the deity drinking the sohn, Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus
warm blood of the victim, compare (St. Petersburg, 1856), ii. 480 sq.
384 INCARNATE HUMAN GODS chap.
Inspiration caught up and loudly repeated by her audience.^ So
produced Apollo's prophetess ate the sacred laurel and was fumigfated
by means . . .0
of a sacred with it before she prophesied. The Bacchanals ate ivy, and
P*^"'' their inspired fury was by some believed to be due to the
exciting and intoxicating properties of the plant.^ In
Uganda the priest, in order to be inspired by his god, smokes
a pipe of tobacco fiercely till he works himself into a frenzy ;
the loud excited tones in wjhich he then talks are recognised
as the voice of the god speaking through him.* In Madura,
an island off the north cpast of Java, each spirit has its
regular medium, who is offtener a woman than a man. To
prepare herself for the reception of the spirit she inhales the
fumes of incense, sitting with her head over a smoking
censer. Gradually she falls into a sort of trance accom-
panied by shrieks, grimaces, and violent spasms. , The
spirit is now supposed to have entered into her, and when
she grows calmer her words are regarded as oracular, being
the utterances of the indwelling spirit, while her own soul is
temporarily absent.®
i°rt?ms'^ It is worth observing that many peoples expect the
victim as well as the priest or prophet to give signs of in-
spiration by convulsive movements of the body ; and if the
animal remains obstinately steady, they esteem it unfit for
sacrifice. Thus when the Yakuts sacrifice to an evil spirit,
the beast must bellow and roll about, which is considered
a token that the evil spirit has entered into it." Apollo's
prophetess could give no oracles unless the sacrificial victim
trembled in every limb when the wine was poured on its
head. But for ordinary Greek sacrifices it was enough
that the victim should shake its head ; to make it do so,
water was poured on it.^ Many other peoples (Tonquinese,
" J. Biddulph, Tribes of the Hindoo ^ C. Lekkerkerker, " Enkele op-
Koosh, p. 97. merkingen over sporen van Shaman-
2 Lucian, Bis accus. i ; J. Tretzes, isme bij Madoereezen en Javanen,"
Schol. on Lycophron, 6 ; Plutarch, De Tijd'schrift voor Indische Taal- Land-
E apitd Delphos, 2; id., De Pythiae en Volkenkunde, xlv. (1902) pp. 282-
oraculis, 6. 284.
' Plutarch, Quaestiones Romanae, » H. Vambery, Das Turkenvolk
112. (Leipsic, 1885), p. 158.
* Rev. J. Roscoe, "Further Notes ^ Plutarch, De defect, oracul. 46,
on the Manners and Customs of the 49, 51. The Greeks themselves seem
Baganda," foiimal of the Anthropo- commonly to have interpreted the
i7^tt:a//w<V/'!<.'V, xxxii. '1902) p. 42. shaking or nodding of the victim's
victims.
INCARNATE HUMAN GODS
38s
Hindoos, Chuwash, and so fortH) have adopted the same test
of a suitable victim ; they poiiV water or wine on its head ;
if the animal shakes its head it is accepted for sacrifice ; if it
does not, it is rejected.^ Among the Kafirs of the Hindoo
Koosh the priest or his substitute pours water into the ear
and all down the spine of the intended victim, whether it be
a sheep or a goat. It is not enough that the animal should
merely shake its head to get tte water out of its ear ; it
must shake its whole body as a wet dog shakes himself.
When it does so, a kissing sound rs made by all present, and
the victim is forthwith slaughtered.^
The person temporarily inspired is believed to acquire. Divine
not merely divine knowledge, but also, at least occasionally, a°"y"ed
divine power. In Cambodia, when an epidemic breaks out, by tem-
the inhabitants of several villages imite and go with a band sXa'ifon
of music at their head to look for the man whom the local
god is supposed to have chosen for his temporary incarnation.
head as a token that the animal con-
sented to be sacrificed. See Plutarch,
Quaest. conviv. vili. 8. 7 ! Scholiast
on Aristophanes, Peace, 960 ; Scholiast
on Apollonius Rhodius, Argon, i. 425 ;
and this explanation has been adopted
by modern interpreters. See A. Wil-
lems. Notes sur la Paix cT Aristophajie
(Brussels, 1899), pp. 30-33; E.
Monseur, in Bulletin de Folklon, 1903,
pp. 216-229. But this interpretation
can hardly be extended to the case of
the Delphic victim which was expected
to shake all over. The theory of
possession applies equally to that and
to the other cases, and is therefore
preferable. The theory of consent
may have been invented when the
older view had ceased to be held and
was forgotten.
1 D. Chwolsohn, Die Ssabier und
der Ssabismus, ii. 37; Lettres idifiantes
et curieuses, xvi. 230 sq. ; E. T.
Atkinson, The Himalayan Districts of
the North- Western Provinces of India,
ii. (Allahabad, 1884) p. 827 ; Panjab
Notes and Queries, iii. p. 171, § 721 ;
North Indian Notes and Queries, i.
P- 3> § 4 ; W. Crook e, Popular Fe-
ligion and Folklore of Northern India
(Westminster, 1896), i. 263 ; Indian
VOL. I
Antiquary, xxviii. (1899) p. 161 ;
Journal of the Anthropological Society
of Bombay, i. 103 ; S. Mateer, The
Land of Charity, p. 216; id.. Native
Life in Travancore, p. 94 ; E. T.
Thurston, Castes and Tribes of Southern
India, iii. 466, 469 ; Sir A. C.
Lyall, Asiatic Studies, First Series
(London, 1899), p. 19 ; J. Biddulph,
Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh, p. 131 ;
P. S. Pallas, Reisen in verschiedenen
Prcyvinzen des russischen Reiches, i. 91 ;
H. Vambery, Das Tiirkenvolk, p. 485 ;
Erman, Archiv fiir ■wissenschaflliche
Kunde von Russland, i. 377 ; " Uber
die Religion der heidnischen Tschere-
missen im Gouvernement Kasan,"
Zeiischrift fiir allgemeine Erdkunde,
N.F. iii. (1857) p. 153; Globus,
Ixvii. (1895) p. 366. When the Rao
of Kachh sacrifices a buffalo, water is
sprinkled between its horns ; if it shakes
its head, it is unsuitable ; if it nods its
head, it is sacriiiced [Panjab Notes and
Queries, i. p. 1 20, § 911). This is
probably a modern misinterpretation
of the old custom.
2 Sir George Scott Robertson, The
Kafirs of the Hindu Kush (London,
1896), p. 423. ,
2 C
386 INCARNA TE HUMAN GODS chap.
When found, the man is conducted To the altar of the god
where the mystery of incarnation takes place. Then the man
becomes an object of veneration to his fellows, who implore
him to protect the village against the plague.^ A certain
image of Apollo, which stood in a sacred cave at Hylae near
jragnesia, was thought to impart superhuman strength.
Sacred men, inspired by it, leaped down precipices, tore up
huge trees by the roots, and carried them on their backs
along the narrowest defiles.^ The feats performed by in-
spired den-isbes belong to the same class.
Human Thus far we have seen that the savage, failing to discern
men'pS- *^^ limits of his ability to control nature, ascribes to himself
manentiy and to all men certain powers which we should now call
i)rade;ty. Supernatural. Further, we have seen that, over and above
this general supernaturalism, some persons are supposed to
be inspired for short periods by a divine spirit, and thus
temporarily to enjoy the knowledge and power of the in-
dwelling deity. From beliefs like these it is an easy step
to the conviction that certain men are permanently possessed
by a deity, or in some other undefined way are endued with
so high a degree of supernatural power as to be ranked as
gods and to receive the homage of prayer and sacrifice.
Sometimes these human gods are restricted to purely super-
natural or spiritual functions. Sometimes they exercise
supreme political power in addition. In the latter case
they are kings as well as gods, and the government is a
Haman theocracy. Thus in the Marquesas or Washington Islands
^^" there was a class of men who were deified in their lifetime.
The\- were supposed to wield a supernatural power over the
elements ; they could give abundant harvests or smite the
ground with barrenness ; and they could inflict disease or
death. Human sacrifices were offered to them to avert
their wrath. There were not many of them, at the most one
or two in each island. They lived in mystic seclusion.
' J. lloura, Le Royaume du Cam- 2 Pausanias, x. 32. 6. Coins 0/
bodge (Paris, 1883), i. 177 sq. The Magnesia exhibit on the reverse a man
practice in Tonquin is similar, except carrying an uprooted tree. See F. B.
that there the person possessed seems Baker, in Numismatic Chronicle, Third
only to give oracles. See Annales de Series, xii. (1892) pp. 89 sqq, Mr.
V Association de la Propagation de la Baker suggests that the custom may be
Foi, vs. (1830) pp. 331 sq. a relic of ancient tree-worship.
VII INCARNA TE HUMAN GODS 387
Theit powers were sometimes, but not always, hereditary. Human
A missionary has described one of these human gods from |°^? '" *'
personal observation. The god was a very old man who
lived in a large house within an enclosure. In the house
was a kind of altar, and on the beams of the house and
on the trees round it were hung human skeletons, head
down. No one entered the enclosure except the persons
dedicated to the service of the god ; only on days when
human victims were sacrificed might ordinary people
penetrate into the precinct. This human god received more
sacrifices than all the other gods ; often he would sit on a
sort of scaffold in front of his house and call for two or
three human victims at a time. They were always brought,
for the terror he inspired was extreme. He was invoked all
over the island, and offerings were sent to him from every
side.^ Again, of the South Sea Islands in general we are
told that each island had a man who represented or per-
sonified the divinity. Such men were called gods, and their
substance was confounded with that of the deity. The
man-god was sometimes the king himself; oftener he was a
priest or subordinate chief.^ Tanatoa, king of Raiatea, was
1 C. S. Stewart, A Visit to the life. It is supposed by them that
Smith Seas (London, 1832), i. 244 sg. ; many of the departed spirits of men
Vincendon-Dumoulinet C. Desgraz,//ej also become atuas : and thus the multi-
ilarquises ou Nouka-Hiva (Paris, plicity of their gods is such, that almost
1843), pp. 226, 240 sq. Compare every sound in nature, from the roaring
Mathias G ♦ * * , Lettres sur Us lies of the tempest in the mountains and
J/ar^«!j-« (Paris, 1843), pp. 44 jy. The the bursting of a thunderbolt in the
general name applied to these human clouds, ' to the sighing of a breeze
gods was atttas, which, " with scarce through the cocoa-nut tops and the
a modification, is the term used in chirping of an insect in the grass or in
all the Polynesian dialects to desig- tlie thatch of their huts, is interpreted
Date the ideal beings worshipped into the movements of a god " (C. S.
as gods, in the system of polytheism Stewart, op. cit. i. 243 sq.). The
existing among the people. At the missionary referred to in the text, who
Washington Isla,nds, as at other groups, described one of the human gods from
the atuas, or false gods of the in- personal observation, was the Rev. Mr.
habitants, are numerous and vary in Crooke of the London Missionary
their character and powers. Besides Society, who resided in the island of
those having dominion respectively, as Tahuata in 1 797. On the deification
is supposed, over the different elements of living men see Lord Avebury (Sir
and their most striking phenomena, John Lubbock), Origin of Civilisa-
there are atuas of the mountain and of tion'^ (London, 1882), pp. 354 sqq. ^
the forest, of the seaside and of the ^ J. A. Moerenhout, Voyages aux lies
interior, atuas of peace and of war, of du Grand Ocian (Paris, 1837), i. 479;
the song and of the dance, and of all W. Ellis, Polynesian Researches, Second
the occupations and amusements of Edition (London, 1832-1836), iii. 94.
388 INCARNA TE HUMAN GODS chap.
Human deified by a certain ceremony performed at the chief temple.
gods in the « ^^ ^^^ ^j- ^j^g divinities of his subjects, therefore, the king
was worshipped, consulted as an oracle and had sacrifices and
prayers offered to him." ^ This was not an exceptional case.
The kings of the island regularly enjoyed divine honours,
being deified at the time of their accession.^ At his in-
auguration the king of Tahiti received a sacred girdle of red
and yellow feathers, "which not only raised him to the
highest earthly station, but identified him with their gods." ^
A new piece, about eighteen inches long, was added to the
belt at the inauguration of every king, and three human
victims were sacrificed in the process. * The king's houses
were called the clouds of heaven ; the rainbow was the
name of the canoe in which he voyaged ; his voice was
spoken of as thunder, and the glare of the torches in his
dwelling as lightning ; and when the people saw them
in the evening, as they passed near his house, instead of
saying the torches were burning in the palace, they would
remark that the lightning was flashing in the clouds of
heaven. When he moved from one district to another on
the shoulders of his bearers, he was said to be flying.^ The
natives of Futuna, an island in the South Pacific, " are not
content with deifying the evils that afflict them ; they place
gods everywhere, and even go so far as to suppose that the
greatest of all the spirits resides in the person of their prince
as in a living sanctuary. From this belief springs a strange
mode of regarding their king, and of behaving under his
authority. In their eyes the sovereign is not responsible for
his acts ; they deem him inspired by the divine spirit whose
tabernacle he is ; hence his will is sacred ; even his whims
and rages are revered ; and if it pleases him to play the
tyrant, his subjects submit from conscientious motives to
' D. Tyerman and G. Hexm^t, Jour- of red and yellow feathers with a
nal of Voy'ages and Travels in the feather helmet, also two very hand-
Soiith Sea Islands, China, India, etc. some tippets of the same materials.
(London, 1831), i. 524; comps.ie Hid. They were the insignia of the royal
pp. 529 sg. family of Hawaii, and might be worn
2 Tyerman and Bennet, <;/. cit. i. by no one else. ■
529 s^. * J. Williams, Narrative of Mission-
^ \V. Ellis, Polynesian Researches,''' ary Enterprises in the South Sea
iii. 108. The Ethnological Museum Islands (London, 1838), pp. 471 sq.
at Berlin possesses a magnificent robe ' W. Ellis, op. cit. iii. 113 sq.
ni INCARNATE HUMAN GODS 389
the vexations he inflicts on them." ^ The gods of Samoa Human
generally appeared in animal form, but sometimes they |°^?j;j," ""■
were permanently incarnate in men, who gave oracles,
received offerings (occasionally of human flesh), healed the
sick, answered prayers, and so on.^ In regard to the old
religion of the Fijians, and especially of the inhabitants of
Somosomo, it is said that " there appears to be no certain
line of demarcation between departed spirits and gods, nor
between gods and living men, for many of the priests and
old chiefs are considered as sacred persons, and not a few
of them will also claim to themselves the right of divinity.
' I am a god,' Tuikilakila would say ; and he believed it
too." ^ In the Pelew Islands it is thought that every god
can take possession of a man and speak through him.
The possession may be either temporary or permanent ; in
the latter case the chosen person is called a korong. The
god is free in his choice, so the position of korong is not
hereditary. After the death of a korong the god is for some
time unrepresented, until he suddenly makes his appearance
in a new Avatar. The person thus chosen gives signs of
the divine presence by behaving in a strange way ; he
gapes, runs about, and performs a number of senseless acts.
At first people laugh at him, but his sacred mission is in
time recognised, and he is invited to assume his proper
position in the state. Generally this position is a dis-
tinguished one and confers on him a powerful influence over
the whole community. In some of the islands the god is
political sovereign of the land ; and hence his new incarna-
tion, however humble his origin, is raised to the same high
rank, and rules, as god and king, over all the other chiefs.*
The ancient Egyptians, far from restricting their
' Missionar)' Chevron, in Annates de Williams, Fiji and the Fijians,^ i. 219
ta Propagation de la Foi, xv. (1843) sq. ; R. H. Codrington, The Metan-
p. 37. Compare id. xiii. (1841) p. esians, p. 122. "A great chief [in
378. Fiji] really believed himself to be a
2 G. Turner, Samoa, pp. 37, 48, god — «.«. a reincarnation of an ancestor
57) 58, 59, 73. who had grown into a god" (Rev.
' Hazlewood, in J. E. Erskine's Lorimer Fison, in a letter to the author,
Cruise among the Islands of the Western dated August 26, 1898).
Pacific (London, 1853), pp. 246 sq. * J. Kubary, "Die Religion der
Compare Ch. Wilkes, A'arra//w« 0/^ Me Pelauer," in A. Bastian's Allerlei aus
U.S. Exploring Expedition, New Edi- Volks- und Menschenkunde (Berlin,
tion (New Vork, 1851), iii. 87; Th. 1888), i. Z^ sqq.
390 INCARNA TE HUMAN GODS chap.
Human adoration to cats and dogs and such small deer, very liberally
gods in extended it to men. One of these human deities resided at
ancient
Egypt. the village of Anabis, and burnt sacrifices were offered to
him on the altars ; after which, says Porphyry, he would eat
Human his dinner just as if he were an ordinary mortal.^ In
Lciem classical antiquity the Sicilian philosopher Empedocles
Greece. gave himself out to be not merely a wizard but a god.
Addressing his fellow-citizens in verse he said : —
" O friends, in this great city that cli?nbs the yellow slope
Of Agrigentum's citadel, who tnake good works your scope.
Who offer to the stranger a haven quiet and fair.
All kail ! Among you honoured I walk with lofty air.
With garlands, blooming garlands you crown my noble brow,
A mortal man no longer, a deathless godhead now.
Where ^er I go, the people crowd round and worship pay.
And thousands follow seeking to learn the better way.
Some crave prophetic visions, some smit with anguish sore
Would fain hear words of comfort and suffer pain no more."
He asserted that he could teach his disciples how to make
the wind to blow or be still, the rain to fall and the sun to
shine, how to banish sickness and old age and to raise the
dead.^ When Demetrius Poliorcetes restored the Athenian
democracy in 307 B.C., the Athenians decreed divine honours
to him and his father Antigonus, both of them being then
alive, under the title of the Saviour Gods. Altars were set
up to the Saviours, and a priest appointed to attend to their
worship. The people went forth to meet their deliverer
with hymns and dances, with garlands and incense and
libations ; they lined the streets and sang that he was the
only true god, for the other gods slept, or dwelt far away, or
were not In the words of a contemporary poet, which were
chanted in public and sung in private : —
' Porphyr)', De abstinentia, iv. 9 ; ^ Diogenes Laertius, Vit. Philosoph.
YMSf^\\iS,,PraeparatioEvangelii,\\\,\2; viii. 59-62; Fragmenta philosofhorum
compare Minucius Felix, Ocicaiius, 29. Graecorum, ed. F. G. A. Mullach, i.
The titles of the nomarchs or provincial pp. 12, 14; H. Diels, Die Fragmentt
governors of Egypt seem to shew that der Vorsokratiker^ i. (Berlin, 1906),
they were all originally worshipped as p. 205. I owe this and the following
gods by their subjects (A. Wiedemann, case of a human god to a lecture on
Di: Religion der alien Agypter, p. 93 ; Greek religion by my friend Professor
id. " Menschenvergotterung im alten H. Diels, which I was privileged to
Agypten," Am Urquell, N.F. i. hear at Berlin in December 1902.
(1S97) pp. 290 sq.).
VII INCARNATE HUMAN GODS 391
« Of all the gods the greatest and the dearest
To the city are come.
For Demeter and Demetrius
Together time has brought.
She comes to hold the Maiden's awful rites,
And he joyous and fair and laughing.
As befits a god.
A glorious sight, with all his friends about him.
He in their midst.
They like to stars, and he the sun.
Son of Poseidon the mighty, Aphrodite's son.
All hail !
The other gods dwell far away.
Or have no ears.
Or are not, or pay us no heed.
But thee we present see,
No god of wood or stone, but godhead true.
Therefore to thee we pray." '^
The ancient Germans believed that there was something Human
holy in women, and accordingly consulted them as oracles, goddesses
„, . ,1 among the
Their sacred women, we are told, looked on the eddying ancient
rivers and listened to the murmur or the roar of the water, ^«''™^'^
and from the sight and sound foretold what would come to
pass.^ But often the veneration of the men went further,
and they worshipped women as true and living goddesses.
For example, in the reign of Vespasian a certain Veleda, of
the tribe of the Bructeri, was commonly held to be a deity,
and in that character reigned over her people, her sway
being acknowledged far and wide. She lived in a tower on
the river Lippe, a tributary of the Rhine. When the people
of Cologne sent to make a treaty with her, the ambassadors
were not admitted to her presence ; the negotiations were
conducted through a minister, who acted as the mouthpiece
of her divinity and reported her oracular utterances.' The
' Plutarch, Demetrius, 10-13; among the Greeks see Mi'. A. B.
Athenaeus, vi. 62 sq., pp. 253 sq. Cook, in Folk-lore, xv. (1904) pp.
Apparently the giddy young man sub- 299 sqq.
mitted to deification with a better ^ Tacitus, Germania,%% id., Histor.
grace than his rough old father iv. 61 ; Clement of Alexandria, .S^roOT.
Antigonus; who, when a poet called i. 15. 72, p. 360, ed. Potter; Caesar,
him a god and a child of the sun. Bell. Gall. i. 50.
bluntly remarked, "That's not my ^ Tacitus, Germania,%; id.,Histor.
ralel's opinion of me." See Plutarch, iv. 61, 65, v. " 22. Compare K.
Isis et Osiris, 24. For more evidence Mullenhoff, Deutsche Altertumskunde,
of the deification of li^ang men iv. 208 sqq.
392 INCARNA TE HUMAN GODS chap.
example sheiys how easily among our rude forefathers the
ideas of divinity and royalty coalesced. It is said that
among the Getae down to the beginning of our era there
was always a man who personified a god and was called
God by the people. He dwelt on a sacred mountain and
acted as adviser to the king.^
Human An early Portuguese historian informs us that the Quiteve
louth'.'kast C"" l^ing of Sofala, in south-eastern Africa, " is a woolly-haired
Africa. Kaffir, a heathen who adores nothing whatever, and has no
knowledge of God ; on the contrary he esteems himself the
god of all his lands, and is so looked upon and reverenced by
his subjects." " When they suffer necessity or scarcity they
have recourse to the king, firmly believing that he can give
them all that they desire or have need of, and can obtain any-
thing from his dead predecessors, with whom they believe that
he holds converse. For this reason they ask the king to give
them rain when it is required, and other favourable weather
for their harvest, and in coming to ask for any of these things
they bring him valuable presents, which the king accepts,
bidding them return to their homes and he will be careful
to grant their petitions. They are such barbarians that
though they see how often the king does not give them
what they ask for, they are not undeceived, but make him
still greater offerings, and many days are spent in these
comings and goings, until the weather turns to rain, and the
Kaffirs are satisfied, believing that the king did not grant
their request until he had been well bribed and importuned,
as he himself affirms, in order to maintain them in their
error." - The Zimbas, or Muzimbas, another people of
south-eastern Africa, " do not adore idols or recognise any
god, but instead they venerate and honour their king, whom
they regard as a divinity, and they say he is the greatest
and best in the world. And the said king says of himself
that he alone is god of the earth, for which reason if it rains
when he does not wish it to do so, or is too hot, he shoots
arrows at the sky for not obeying him.'" Amongst the Barotse,
a tribe on the upper Zambesi, " there is an old but waning
' Strabo, vii. 3, 5, pp. 297 sg. Eastern Africa, vii. (1901) pp. 190
- J. Dos Santos, "Eastern Ethiopia," sq., 199.
in G. M'Call Theal's Jieio>-ds of South- ^ J. Dos Santos, op. cit. p. 295.
vii INCARNATE HUMAN GODS 393
belief that a chief is a demigod, and in heavy thunderstorms
the Barotse flock to the chief's yard for protection from the
lightning. I have been greatly distressed at seeing them
fall on their knees before the chief, entreating him to open
the water-pots of heaven and send rain upon their gardens."
" The king's servants declare themselves to be invincible,
because they are the servants of God (meaning the king)." ^
The Maraves of South Africa " have a spiritual head to Human
whom they ascribe supernatural powers, revering him as a |°^(J"
prophet and designating him by the name of Chissumpe. Africa.
Besides a considerable territory, which he owns and rules,
he receives tribute from all, even from the king (unde).
They believe that this being is invisible and immortal,
and they consult him as an oracle, in which case he makes
himself heard. He is personified by a Fumo-a-Chissumpe,
that is, by an intimate of the Chissumpe, whose dignity
is hereditary and who is revered exactly like the supposed
Chissumpe, with whom he is naturally identical. As he
names his own successor, disputes as to the succession
do not arise. His oracles are as unintelligible and ambigu-
ous as can well be imagined. He derives great profit from
impostors of both sexes, who purchase the gift of soothsaying
from him. In the settlement {Muzindd) of the Chissumpe
there are women whom the people regard as his wives, but
who, according to the universal belief, cannot bear children.
If these women are convicted of an offence with a man, they
are burnt along with the partner of their guilt." ^ The
Mashona of southern Africa informed their bishop that they
had once had a god, but that the Matabeles had driven him
away. " This last was in reference to a curious custom in
some villages of keeping a man they called their god. He
seemed to be consulted by the people and had presents given
to him. There was one at a village belonging to a chief
• F. S. Amot, Garengauze ; or, the results of a Portuguese expedi-
Se:xn Years' Pioneer Mission Work in tion conducted by Major Monteiro in
Cwt/ro/ .-l/rjV-a (London, N.D., preface, 183 1 and 1832. The territory of the
dated March 1S89), p. 78. Maraves is described as bounded on
the south by the Zambesi and on the
^ZeitschriftfiirallgemeineErdkutuie, east by the Portuguese possessions.
tL (1856) pp. 273 sq. This is from Probably things have changed greatly
X German abstract (pp. 257-313, in the seventy years which have elapsed
369-420) of a work, which embodies since the expedition.
394 INCARNATE HUMAN GODS chap.
Magondi, in the old days. We were asked not to fire off
any guns near the village, or we should frighten him away." ^
This Mashona god was formerly bound to render an annual
tribute to the king of the Matabeles in the shape of four black
oxen and one dance. A missionary has seen and described
the deity discharging the latter part of his duty in front of
the royal hut. For three mortal hours, without a break, to
the banging of a tambourine, the click of castanettes, and the
drone of a monotonous song, the swarthy god engaged in a
frenzied dance, crouching on his hams like a tailor, sweating
like a pig, and bounding dbout with an agility which testified
to the strength and elasticity of his divine legs.^
Human " In the Makalaka hills, to the west of Matabeleland, the
iS^aLfc^ natives all acknowledge there dwells a god whom they name
Ngwali, much worshipped by the bushmen and Makalakas,
and feared even by the Matabele : even Lo Bengula paid
tribute and sent presents to him often. This individual has
only been seen by a few of those who live close by, and
who doubtless profit by the numberless offerings made to this
strange being ; but the god never dies ; and the position is
supposed to be hereditary in the one family who are the
intermediaries for and connexion between Ngwali and the
outer world." ^ This Makalaka god " resides in the depth of
a cave, in the midst of a labyrinth. Nobody has ever seen
him, but he has sons and daughters, who are priests and
priestesses and dwell in the neighbourhood of the grotto. It
is rather odd that not long ago three sons of this god were
put to death like common mortals for having stolen wheat
from the king. Lo Bengula probably thought that they
should practise justice even more strictly than other folk. . . .
In the middle of the cavern, they say, there is a shaft, very
deep and very black. From this gulf there issue from time
to time terrike noises like the crash of thunder. On the
edge of the abyss the worshippers tremblingly lay flesh and
I G. W. H. Knight-Bruce, Memories xiv. (1S82) pp. 452 sq.
of Mashona:aiui (London and New ' Ch. L. Norris Newman, Matabele-
York, 1S95), p. 43; id.,'m Proceed- land and how we ^oi it [London, sSgS),
in^ 'of tht Koval G,-o^aphical Society, pp. ^67 sq. These particulars were
1S90. pp. 346 sg. ' communicated to Captain Newman by
- Father Croonenberghs, " I>a Jlis- Mr. W. E. Thomas, son of the first
sion du Zamheze," Missions Catholitjues, missionary to Matabeleland.
VII INCARNATE HUMAN GODS 395
wheat, fowls, cakes, and other presents to appease the hunger
of the dreadful god and secure his favour. After making
this offering the poor suppliants declare aloud their wishes
and the object of their application. They ask to know
hidden things, future events, the names of those who have
cast a spell on them, the issue of such and such an enter-
prise. After some moments of profound silence there are
heard, amid the crash of subterranean thunder, inarticulate
sounds, strange broken words, of which it is hard to make
out the sense, and which the medicine-men {amazizis), who
are hand in glove with the makers of thunder, explain to
these credulous devotees." ^
The Baganda of Central Africa believed in a god of Lake Human
Nyanza, who sometimes took up his abode in a man or woman. ^°^ '"
T,, . Central
1 he incarnate god was much feared by all the people, includ- and East
ing the king and the chiefs. When the mystery of incarnation ^^'^'^'
had taken place, the man, or rather the god, removed about
a mile and a half from the margin of the lake, and there
awaited the appearance of the new moon before he engaged
in his sacred duties. From the moment that the crescent
moon appeared faintly in the sky, the king and all his subjects
were at the command of the divine man, or Lubare (god),
as he was called, who reigned supreme not only in matters of
faith and ritual, but also in questions of war and state policy.
He was consulted as an oracle ; by his word he could inflict
or heal sickness, withhold rain, and cause famine. Large
presents were made him when his advice was sought.^ The
chief of Urua, a large region to the west of Lake Tanganyika,
" arrogates to himself divine honours and power and pretends
to abstain from food for days without feeling its necessity ;
and, indeed, declares that as a god he is altogether above
requiring food and only eats, drinks, and smokes for the
pleasure it affords him."' Among the Gallas, when a
woman grows tired of the cares of housekeeping, she
I Annaks de la Propagation de la Edinburgh, xiii. (1885-86) p. 762;
Foi, lii. (1880) pp. 443-445. Com- C. T. Wilson and R. W. Felkin,
pare Father Croonenberghs, " La Mis- Uganda and the Egyptian Soudan,
^viAaZaxrAxie.," Missions Catholiques, i. 206; J. Macdonald, Religion and
liv. {1SS2) p. 452. Myth, pp. 15 sq.
' R. W. Felkin, " Notes on the
Waganda Tribe of Central Africa," ' V. L. Cameron, Across Africa
Proceedings of the Royal Society of (London, 1877), ii. 69.
396 INCARNA TE HUMAN GODS chap.
begins to talk incoherently and to demean herself extrava-
gantly. This is a sign of the descent of the holy spirit Callo
upon her. Immediately her husband prostrates himself and
adores her ; she ceases to bear the humble title of wife and
is called " Lord " ; domestic duties have no further claim on
her, and her will is a divine law.^
Human The king of Loango is honoured by his people "as
West'" though he were a god ; and he is . called Sambee and
Africa. Pango, which mean god. They believe that he can let
them have rain when he likes ; and once a year , in
December, which is the time they want rain, the people
come to beg of him to grant it to them." On this occasion
the king, standing on his throne, shoots an arrow into the
air, which is supposed to bring on rain.^ Much the
same is said of the king of Mombasa.^ Down to a few
years ago, when his spiritual reign on earth was brought
to an abrupt end by the carnal weapons of English marines
and bluejackets, the king of Benin was the chief object of
worship in his dominions. " He occupies a higher post
here than the Pope does in Catholic Europe ; for he is not
only God's vicegerent upon earth, but a god himself, whose
subjects both obey and adore him as such, although I believe
their adoration to arise rather from fear than love." * The
king of Iddah told the English officers of the Niger Expedi-
tion, " God made me after his own image ; I am all the same
as God ; and he appointed me a king." ^ In the language
of the Hos, a Ewe tribe of Togoland, the word for god
is Ma-Mu and the Great God is Mawu gd. They personify
the blessing of god and say that the Great God dwells
1 Mgi. Mas5aja, in Annates de la Cape Palmas to the River Congo (Lon-
Propa^alion de la Foi, xxx. (1858) p. don, 1823), p. III. Compare "My
- J _ Wanderings in Africa, " by an F. R. G. S.
2 "The Strange Adventures of [R. F. Burton], Fraser's Magazine,
Andrew Battel," in ¥mVe.rt.on'& Voyages Ixvii. (April 1863) p. 414.
and Travels, xvi 330 ; Proyart, " His- » W. Allen and T. R. H. Thomson,,
tory of Loango, Kakongo, and other Narrative of the Expedition to the
Kingdoms in Africa," in Pinkerton, op. River Niger in 1841 (London, 1848),
cit.im. ^TJ; O-Dsi^-pe^i, Description de i. 288. A slight mental confusion
FAfrique, p. 335. may perhaps be detected in this utter-
* Ogilby, Africa, p. 615; Dapper, ance of the dark-skinned deity. But
op. cif°p. '400. such confusion, or rather obscurity, is
* J. Adams, Sketches taken during almost inseparable from any attempt
ten 'Voyages to Africa, p. 29; id., to define with philosophic precision the
Remarks on the Country extending from profound mystery of incarnation.
VII INCARNATE HUMAN GODS 397
with a rich man. " From the personification of the divine
blessing to the deification of the man himself the step is
not a long one, and as a matter of fact it is taken. The
Hos know men in whose life are to be seen so many
resemblances to the Great God that they call them simply
Mawu. In the neighbourhood of Ho there lived a good
many years ago a man who enjoyed an extraordinary
reputation in the whole of the neighbourhood, and who
accordingly named himself Wuwo, that is, ' more than the
others.' The people actually paid him divine honours, not
indeed in the sense that they sacrificed to him, but in the
sense that they followed his words absolutely. They worked
on his fields and brought him rich presents. On the coast
there lived a respected old chief, who called himself Mawu.
He was richer than all the other chiefs, and the inhabitants
of twenty-seven towns rendered him unconditional obedience.
In the circumstance that he was richer and more honoured
than all the other chiefs he saw his resemblance to the
deity." ^
Among the Hovas and other tribes of Madagascar Divinity
there is said to be a deep sense of the divinity of"^^'"^^^^
kings ; and down to the acceptance of Christianity by in Mada-
the late queen, the Hova sovereigns were regularly termed s^si^ar.
" the visible God " {Andriamdnitra hita- mdso), and other
terms of similar import were also applied to them.^ The
chiefs of the Betsileo in Madagascar " are considered as
far above the common people and are looked upon almost
as if they were gods." "For the chiefs are supposed to
have power as regards the words they utter, not, however,
merely the power which a king possesses, but power like
that of God ; a power which works of itself on account of
its inherent virtue, and not power exerted through soldiers
and strong servants." ^ " The Ampandzaka-inandzaka or
sovereign whom the Sakkalava of the north often call
■ J. Spieth, Die Ewe-Stdmme (Ber- Anthropological Institute, xxi. (1892)
lin, 1906), p. 419. p. 218.
- Rev. J. Sibree, "Curiosities of * Rev. J. Sibree, in Antananarivo
■Words connected with Royalty and Annual and Madagascar Magazine,
Chieftainship," Antananarivo Annual No. xi. (1887) p. 307 ; id. in Journal
and Madagascar Afagnzine, No. xi. of the Anthropological Instilute, xxi,
(18S7) p. 302; id. m Jotirnal of the (1892) p. 225.
398 INCARNATE HUMAN GODS chap.
also Zanahari dntani, God on earth, is surrounded by
them with a veneration which resembles idolatry, and the
vulgar are simple enough to attribute the creation of the
world to his ancestors. The different parts of his body and
his least actions are described by nouns and verbs which
are foreign to the ordinary language, forming a separate
vocabulary called Voula fdli, sacred words, or Voula n'
ampandzdka, princely words. The person and the goods
of the Ampandzaka-mandzaka a.re fait, sacred."^
Divine The theory of the real divinity of a king is said to be held
Se^M^a strongly in the Malay region. Not only is the king's person
region. considered sacred, but the sanctity of his body is supposed
to communicate itself to his regalia and to slay those who
break the royal taboos. Thus it is firmly believed that any
one who seriously offends the royal person, who imitates or
Miraculous touches even for a moment the chief objects of the regalia,
P°*?" ^ or who wrongfully makes use of the insignia or privileges of
annbated o j , i , , r
to regalia, royalty, will be kena daulat, that is, struck dead by a sort oi
electric discharge of that divine power which the Malays
suppose to reside in the king's person and to which they
give the name of daulat or sanctity.^ The regalia of every
petty Malay state are believed to be endowed with super-
natural powers ; ^ and we are told that " the extraordinary
strength of the Malay belief in the supernatural powers of
the regalia of their sovereigns can only be thoroughly realised
after a study of their' romances, in which their kings are
credited with all the attributes of inferior gods, whose birth,
as indeed every subsequent act of their after-life, is attended
by the most amazing prodigies." *
Drdce .\mong the Battas of Central Sumatra there is a prince
kings aud ^^.j^q bears the hereditary title of Singa Mangaradja and
roefi in the ^ , t^ i
East is worshipped as a deity. He reigns over Bakara, a
'°'^*^' village on the south-western shore of Lake Toba ; but his
worship is diffused among the tribes both near and far.
All sorts of strange stories are told of him. It is said that
• V. Noel, " tie de Madagascar : ^ x. J. Newbold, Political and
recherches sur les Sakkalava," Bulletin Statistical Account of the British Settle-
de la Sociite de Geograpkie (Paris), vient in the Straits of Malacca, ii.
Deaxieme Serie, xx. (1843) p. 56. 193. See above, pp. 362-364.
'- W. W. Skeat, Malay Magic, pp.
23 sj. * W. W. Skeat, op. cit. p. 29.
VII INCARNA TE HUMAN GODS 399
he was seven years in his mother's womb, and thus came Divine
into the world a seven-year-old child ; that he has a black j^"f [^"he
hairy tongue, the sight of which is fatal, so that in speaking East
he keeps his mouth as nearly shut as possible and gives all " ' "
his orders in writing. Sometimes he remains seven months
without eating, or sleeps for three months together. He
can make the sun to shine or the rain to fall at his pleasure ;
hence the people pray to him for a good harvest, and wor-
shippers hasten to Bakara from all sides with offerings in
the hope of thereby securing his miraculous aid. Wherever
he goes, the gongs are solemnly beaten and the public peace
may not be broken. He is said to eat neither pork nor
dog's flesh.^ The Battas used to cherish a superstitious
veneration for the Sultan of Minangkabau, and shewed a
blind submission to his relations and emissaries, real or
pretended, when these persons appeared among, them for the
purpose of levying contributions. Even when insulted and
put in fear of their lives they made no attempt at resistance ;
for they believed that their affairs would never prosper, that
their rice would be blighted and their buffaloes die, and that
they would remain under a sort of spell if they offended
these sacred messengers.^ In the kingdom of Loowoo the
great majority of the people have never seen the king, and
they believe that were they to see him their belly would
swell up and they would die on the spot. The farther you
go from the capital, the more firmly rooted is this belief.^
In time of public calamity, as during war or pestilence, some
of the Molucca Islanders used to celebrate a festival of
heaven. If no good result followed, they bought a slave,
took him at the next festival to the place of sacrifice, and
set him on a raised place under a certain bamboo-tree. This
tree represented heaven, and had been honoured as its image
1 G. K. N[iemanii], " Bijdrage tot Nederlandsch - Indti (Leyden, 1893),
de Kennis van den Godsdienst der pp. 369 sq., 612; J. Freiherr von
Bataks," Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch- Brenner, Besuch bei den Kanniialen
Indii, iii. Serie, iv. (1870) pp. 289 Sumatras (Wurzburg, 1894), pp. 340.
sq. ; B. Hagen " Beitrage rur Kennt- 5, ^_ Marsden, History of Sumatra
xxviji. 537 sq. ; G. A. Wilken, ' A. C. Kruijt, " Van Paloppo naar
" Het animisme," I>e Indische Gids, Posso," Mededeelingen van wege het
July 1884, p. 85; id.^ Handleiding Nederlandsche Zendelit^genootschaf,
voor dt vergtlijkende Volkenkunde van xlu. (1898) p. 22.
400 INCARNA TE HUMAN GODS chap.
at former festivals. The portion of the sacrifice which had
previously been offered to heaven was now given to the
slave, who ate and drank it in the name and stead of heaven.
Henceforth he was well treated, kept for the festivals of
heaven, and employed to represent heaven and receive the
offerings in its name.^ Every Alfoor village of northern
Ceram has usually six priests, of whom the most intelligent
discharges the duties of high priest. This man is the most
powerful person in the village ; all the inhabitants, even the
regent, are subject to him and must do his bidding. The
common herd regard him as a higher being, a sort of demi-
god. He aims at surrounding himself with an atmosphere
of mystery, and for this purpose lives in great seclusion,
generally in the council-house of the village, where he con-
ceals himself from vulgar eyes behind a screen or partition.^
However, in this case the god seems to be in process of
incubation rather than full-fledged.
Divine A peculiarly bloodthirsty monarch of Burma, by name
kings in Badonsachen, whose- very countenance reflected the inbred
Burma and , . . , , i • ■ ^•
Siam. ferocity of his nature, and under whose reign more victims
perished by the executioner than by the common enemy,
conceived the notion that he was something more than
mortal, and that this high distinction had been granted him
as a reward for his numerous good works. Accordingly he
laid aside the title of king and aimed at making himself
a god. With this view, and in imitation of Buddha, who,
before being advanced to the rank of a divinity, had quitted
his royal palace and seraglio and retired from the world,
Badonsachen withdrew from his palace to an immense
pagoda, the largest in the empire, which he had been
' engaged in constructing for many years. Here he held
conferences with the most learned monks, in which he
sought to persuade them that the five thousand years
assigned for the observance of the law of Buddha were now
elapsed, and that he himself was the god who was destined
to appear after that period, and to abolish the old law by
• F. Valent)-n, Oud at nicuw Oost- Nederlandsch Aardrijkskitndig Gemot-
Iniiin, iii. 7 sq. schaf, Tweede Sede, x. (1893) pp.
2 T. Boot. " Korte schets dcr noord- 1 198 sj.
liusl vin Cer.\m," TijdsihiiJ'l van lut
VII INCARNATE HUMAN GODS 401
substituting his own. But to his great mortification many
of the monks undertook to demonstrate the contrary ; and
this disappointment, combined with his love of power and
his impatience under the restraints of an ascetic life, quickly
disabused him of his imaginary godhead, and drove him
back to his palace and his harem.' The king of Siam " is Divinity of
venerated equally with a divinity. His subjects ought not g'^am.'"^ °'
to look him in the face ; they prostrate themselves before
him when he passes, and appear before him on their knees,
their elbows resting on the ground."^ There is a special
language devoted to his sacred person and attributes, and it
must be used by all who speak to or of him. Even the
natives have difficulty in mastering this peculiar vocabulary.
The hairs of the monarch's head, the soles of his feet, the
breath of his body, indeed every single detail of his person,
both outward and inward, have particular names. When he
eats or drinks, sleeps or walks, a special word indicates that
these acts are being performed by the sovereign, and such
words cannot possibly be applied to the acts of any other
person whatever. There is no word in the Siamese language
by which any creature of higher rank or greater dignity
than a monarch can be described ; and the missionaries,
when they speak of God, are forced to use the native word
for king.^ In Tonquin every village chooses its guardian
1 Sangermano, Description cf the sai Vons.^e" Eihnologisckes Notiiblatf,
Burmese Empire (reprinted at Ran- ii. Heft 2 (Berlin, 1901), p. 5),
goon, 1885), pp. 63 sg. Samoa (L. Th. Violette, in Missions
2 E. Aymonier, Le Cambodge, ii. Catholiques, iii. (1870) p. igo ; J. E.
(Paris, 1901) p. 25. Newell, " Chief s Language in Samoa,"
2 E. Young, The Kingdom of the Transactions of the Ninth International
Yellmo Robe (Westminster, 1898), pp. Congress of Orientalists, London, 1893,
\a,2, sq. Similarly, special sets of terms ii. 784-799), the Maldives (Fr. Pyrard,
are or have been used with reference Voyage to the East Imlies, the Maldives,
to persons of royal blood in Burma the Moluccas, and Brazil, Hakluyt
(Forbes, British Burma, pp. 71 sq.; Society, i. 226), in some parts of
Shway Yoe, The Burman, ii. 118 Madagascar (J. Sibree, in The An-
sqq.), Cambodia (Lemire, Cochinchine tananarivo Annual and Madagascar
fraiifaise et le royaume de Cambodge, Magazine, No. xi., Christmas 1887,
p. 447), the Malay Peninsula (W. W. pp. 310 sqq. ; id., rev Journal of the
Skeat, Malay Magic, p. 35), Travan- Anthropological Institute, xxi. (1892)
core(S. MaXe^r, Native Life in Travan- pp. 215 sqq.), among the Bawenda of
core, p. 129), the Pelew Islands (K. the Transvaal (Beuster, "Das Volk
Semper, Die Patau- Inseln, pp. 309 der Vawenda," Zeitschrift der Gesell-
sq.), Ponape, one of the Caroline schaft fiir Erdkunde zu Berlin, xiv.
Islands (Dr. Hahl, " Milteilungen (1879) p. 238), and among the
iiber Sittcn und rechtliche Verhaltnisse Natchez Indians of North America
VOL. J 2 D
402
INCARNA TE HUMAN GODS
Divine
meD in
Tonquin.
Divine
head of the
Babites.
Human
gods in
DirsDe
dairymen
among the
Todas.
spirit, often in the form of an animal, as a dog, tiger, cat, or
serpent. Sometimes a living person is selected as patron-
divinity. Thus a beggar persuaded the people of a village
that he was their guardian spirit ; so they loaded him with
honours and entertained him with their best.-' At the
present day the head of the great Persian sect of the
Babites, Abbas Effendi by name, resides at Acre in Syria,
and is held by Frenchmen, Russians, and Americans,
especially by rich American ladies, to be an incarnation of
God himself. The late Professor S. I. Curtiss of Chicago
had the honour of dining with "the master," as he is
invariably called by his followers, when the incarnation
expressed a kindly hope that he might have the pleasure
of drinking tea with the professor in the kingdom of
heaven."
But perhaps no country in the world has been so
prolific of human gods as India ; nowhere has the divine
grace been poured out in a more liberal measure on all
classes of society from kings down to milkmen. Thus
amongst the Todas, a pastoral people of the Neilgherry
Hills of southern India, the dairy is a sanctuary, and the
milkman who attends to it has been described as a god.
On being asked whether the Todas salute the sun, one
of these divine milkmen replied, " Those poor fellows do so,
but I," tapping his chest, " I, a god ! why should I salute
the sun ? " Every one, even his own father, prostrates him-
self before the milkman, and no one would dare to refuse
him anything. No human being, except another milkman.
(Da Pratz, History of Louisiana, p.
32S). When we remember that special
Tocabularies of this sort have been
emplored with regard to kings or
chiefs who are known to have enjoj'ed
a divine or semi-divine character, as
in Tahiti (see above, p. 388), Fiji
(Th. Williams, Fiji and the Fijians,^ i.
37), and Tonga (W. Mariner, Tonga
/s.'jnds, ii. 79K we shall be inclined to
surmise that the existence of such a
practice anywhere is indicative of a
tendency to deify royal personages,
who are thus marked oft' from their
fellows. This would not necessarily
apply to a custom of using a special
dialect or particular forms of speech in
addressing social superiors generally,
such as prevails in Java (T. S. Raffles,
History of Java, i. 310, 366 sqq.,
London, 1817), and Bali (R. Friederich,
"Voorloopig Verslag van het eiland
Bali," VerhaitdeMngen van het Batavia-
asch Geiiootschap van Kunsten en Weten-
schappen, xxii. 4 ; J. Jacobs, Eenigen
tijd onder de BaliSrs, p. 36).
1 A. Bastian, Die Volker des ostlichm
Asien, iv. 383.
2 S. I. Curtiss, Primitive Semitic
Religion To-day (Chicago, 1902), p.
102.
VII INCARNATE HUMAN GODS 403
may touch him ; and he gives oracles to all who consult
him, speaking with the voice of a god.^
Further, in India " every king is regarded as little short of Kings and
a present god." ^ The Hindoo law-book of Manu goes farther B'^^i^™ans
i- *=> ^ ^ o considered
and says that " even an infant king must not be despised from as gods
an idea that he is a mere mortal ; for he is a great deity in '" '"'''*■
human form."^ As to the Brahmans it is laid down in the
same treatise that a Brahman, " be he ignorant or learned,
is a great divinity, just as the fire, whether carried forth (for
the performance of a burnt-oblation) or not carried forth, is
a great divinity." Further, it is said that though Brahmans
" employ themselves in all sorts of mean occupations, they
must be honoured in every way ; for each of them is a very
great deity." * In another ancient Hindoo book we read
that " verily, there are two kinds of gods ; for, indeed, the
gods are the gods ; and the Brahmans who have studied
and teach sacred lore are the human gods. The sacrifice of
these is divided into two kinds : oblations constitute the
sacrifice to the gods ; and gifts to the priests that to the
human gods, the Brahmans who have studied and teach
sacred lore." * The spiritual power of a Brahman priest is
described as unbounded. " His anger is as terrible as that
of the gods. His blessing makes rich, his curse withers.
Nay, more, he is himself actually worshipped as a god. No
marvel, no prodigy in nature is believed to be beyond the
limits of his power to accomplish. If the priest were to
threaten to bring down the sun from the sky or arrest it in
its daily course in the heavens, no villager would for a
moment doubt his ability to do so." ^ As to the mantras,
or sacred texts by means of which the Brahmans exercise
' W. E. Marshall, Travels amongst of a god. See W. H. R. Rivers, The
the Todas (London, 1873), pp. 136, Todas (London, 1906), pp. 448 sq.
137; cp. pp. 141, 142 ; F. Metz, TW&j ^ Monier Williams, Religious Life
inhabiting the Neilgherry Hills , Second and Thought in India, p. 259.
Edition (Mangalore, 1864), pp. 19 sqq. ^ The Laws of Manu, vii. 8, p. 217,
However, at the present day, accord- translated by G. Biihler [^Sacred Books
ing to Dr. W. H. R. Rivers, the palol of the East, vol. xxv.).
or milkman of the highest class is rather * Id. ix. 317, 319, pp. 398, 399.
a sacred priest than a god. But there ^ Satapatha ■ Brdhmana, trans, by
is a tradition that the gods held the J. Eggeling, part i. pp. 309 sq. ; corn-
office of milkman, and even now the pare id., part ii. p. 341 (Sacred Books
human milkman of one particular dairy of the East, vols. xii. and xxvi. ).
is believed to be the direct successor ^ Monier Williams, op, cit. p. 457.
404
INCARNATE HUMAN GODS
Other
human
gods in
India
their miraculous powers, there is a saying everywhere current
in India : " Tlie whole universe is subject to the gods ; the
gods are subject to the Mantras ; the Mantras to the
Brahmans ; therefore the Brahmans are our gods." ^ There
is said to have been a sect in Orissa some years ago who
worshipped the late Queen Victoria in her lifetime as
their chief divinity. And to this day in India all living
persons remarkable for great strength or valour or for
supposed miraculous powers run the risk of being wor-
shipped as gods. Thus, a sect in the Punjaub worshipped
a deity whom they called Nikkal Sen. This Nikkal Sen
was no other than the redoubted General Nicholson, and
nothing that the general could do or say damped the ardour
of his adorers. The more he punished them, the greater
grew the religious awe with which they worshipped him.^
At Benares a few years ago a celebrated deity was incar-
nate in the person of a Hindoo gentleman who rejoiced in
the euphonious name of Swami Bhaskaranandaji Saraswati,
and looked uncommonly like the late Cardinal Manning, only
more ingenuous. His eyes beamed with kindly human
interest, and he took what is described as an innocent pleasure
in the divine honours paid him by his confiding worshippers.*
The Lingayats are the Unitarians of Hindooism, for they
worsMpped believe in only one god, Siva, rejecting the other two persons
as gods, of the Hindoo Trinity. Yet " they esteem the Jangam or
priest as superior even to the deity. They pay homage to
the Jangam first and to Siva afterwards. The Jangam is
regarded as an incarnation of the deity. ... In practice the
Jangam is placed first and, as stated above, is worshipped as
Lingayat
priests
1 Stonier Williams,!?/, cit. pp. 201 sq.
- Monier Williams, cp. cit. pp. I'^c) sq.
' I have borrowed the description
of this particular deity from the Rev.
Dr. A. M. Fairbairn, who knew him
personally {Cont,:mforary Hevie-w, June
1S99. p. 76S). It is melancholy to
reflect that in our less liberal land
the divine Swami would probably have
been consigned to the calm seclusion of
a gaol or a madhouse. The difl'erence
between a god and a madman or a
criminal is often merely a question of
latimde and longitude.
Swami departed this life in August
1899 at the age of about seventy.
It is only fair to his memory to
add that the writer who records his
death bears high and honourable testi-
mony to the noble and unselfish
character of the deceased, who is said
to have honestly repudiated the miracu-
lous powers ascribed to him by his
followers. He was worshipped in
temples during his life, and other
temples have been erected to him since
his death. See Rai Bahadur Lala
Baij Nath, B.A. , Hinduism Ancient
and Modern (Meerut, 1905), pp. 94
sq.
.^11 INCARNA TE HUMAN GODS 405
god upon earth." ^ In 1 900 a hill-man in Vizagapatam
gave out that he was an incarnate god, and his claims to
divinity were accepted by a following of five thousand
people, who, when a sceptical government sent an armed
force to suppress the movement, which threatened political
trouble, testified to the faith that was in them by resisting
even to the shedding of their blood. Two policemen who
refused to bow the knee to the new god were knocked on
the head. However, in the scuffle the deity himself was
arrested and laid by the heels in gaol, where he died just
like a common mortal.^ At Chinchvad, a small town about Human
ten miles from Poona in western India, there lives a family ;?'^^°*;
' ^ tions of the
of whom one in each generation is believed by a large elephant-
proportion of the Mahrattas to be an incarnation of the Qunputfy'^
elephant-headed god Gunputty. That celebrated deity was
first made flesh about the year 1640 in the person of a
Brahman of Poona, by name Mooraba Gpsseyn, who sought
to work out his salvation by abstinence, mortification, and
prayer. His piety had its reward. The god himself
appeared to him in a vision of the night and promised that
a portion of his, that is, of Gunputty's holy spirit should
abide with him and with his seed after him even to the
seventh generation. The divine promise was fulfilled. Seven
successive incarnations, transmitted from father to son,
manifested the light of Gunputty to a dark world. The
last of the direct line, a heavy-looking god with very weak
eyes, died in the year 1 8 1 o. But the cause of truth was too
sacred, and the value of the church property too considerable,
to allow the Brahmans to contemplate with equanimity the
unspeakable loss that would be sustained by a world which
knew not Gunputty. Accordingly they sought and found
a holy vessel in whom the divine spirit of the master had
revealed itself anew, and the revelation has been happily
continued in an unbroken succession of vessels from that
time to this. But a mysterious law of spiritual economy,
whose operation in the history of religion we may deplore
though we cannot alter, has decreed that the miracles
' E. Thurston, Castes and Tribes in Southern India (Madras, 1906),
of Southern India, iv. 236, 280. p. 301.
^ E. Thurston, Ethnographic Notes
4o6 INCARNATE HUMAN GODS chap.
wrought by the god-man in these degenerate days cannot
compare with those which were wrought by his predecessors
in days gone by; and it is even reported that the only sign
vouchsafed by him to the present generation of vipers is the
miracle of feeding the multitude whom he annually entertains
to dinner at Chinchvad.^
Worship A Hindoo sect, which has many representatives in Bombay
Maharaas ^"^^ Central India, holds that its spiritual chiefs or Maharajas,
as incarna- as they are called, are representatives or even actual in-
Krishna carnations on earth of the god Krishna. Hence in the
temples where the Maharajas do homage to the idols, men
and women do homage to the Maharajas, prostrating them-
selves at their feet, offering them incen.se, fruits, and flowers,
and waving lights before them, as the Maharajas themselves
do before the images of the gods. One mode of worship-
ping Krishna is by swinging his images in swings. Hence,
in every district presided over by a Maharaja, the women
are wont to worship not Krishna but the Maharaja by
swinging him in pendulous seats. The leavings of his food,
the dust on which he treads, the water in which his dirty
linen is washed, are all eagerly swallowed by his devotees,
who worship his wooden shoes, and prostrate themselves
before his seat and his painted portraits. And as Krishna
looks down from heaven with most favour on such as
minister to the wants of his successors and vicars on earth,
a peculiar rite called Self-devotion has been instituted,
whereby his faithful worshippers make over their bodies,
their souls, and, what is perhaps still more important, their
worldly substance to his adorable incarnations ; and women
are taught to believe that the highest bliss for themselves
and their families is to be attained by yielding themselves
to the embraces of those beings in whom the divine nature
> Captain Edward Moor, "Account and fourth of these works. To be
of an Heredit-irj- Living Deity," Asiatic exact, I should say that I have no
Rtsvirc}ses,\\\. (London, 1S03) pp. 381- information as to this particular deity
395 ; Viscount Valentia, Voyages and later than the account given of him in
Trmvels, ii. 151-159; Ch. Coleman, the eighteenth volume of the Bombay
Myikclcgy of the Hindus (London, Gazetteer, published some twenty-five
1S32), pp. 106-111; Gat^tteer of the years ago. But I think we may assume
Bamijy PrcsiJ^ncy, x™i. part iii. that the same providential reasons
(BomliiT, 1SS5) pp. 125 sq. I have which prolonged the revelation down
to thank my friend Mr. W. Crooke to the publication of the Gazetteer
for calling my attention to the second have continued it to the present time.
vii INCARNATE HUMAN GODS 407
mysteriously coexists with the form and even the appetites
of true humanity/
Christianity itself has not uniformly escaped the taint of Pretenders
these unhappy delusions ; indeed it has often been sullied '° '''"""y
^ ^ •' ' among
by the extravagances of vain pretenders to a divinity equal Christians.
to or even surpassing that of its great Founder. In the
second century Montanus the Phrygian claimed to be the
incarnate Trinity, uniting in his single person God the
Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost.^ Nor is
this an isolated case, the exorbitant pretension of a single
ill -balanced mind. From the earliest times down to the
present day many sects have believed that Christ, nay God
himself, is incarnate in every fully initiated Christian, and
they have carried this belief to its logical conclusion by
adoring each other. Tertullian records that this was done
by his fellow-Christians at Carthage in the second century ;
the disciples of St. Columba worshipped him as an embodi-
ment of Christ ; and in the eighth century Elipandus of
Toledo spoke of Christ as " a god among gods," meaning
that all believers were gods just as truly as Jesus himself.
The adoration of each other was customary among the
Albigenses, and is noticed hundreds of times in the records
of the Inquisition at Toulouse in the early part of the
fourteenth century. It is still practised by the Paulicians
of Armenia and the Bogomiles about Moscow. The
Paulicians, indeed, presume to justify their faith, if not their
practice, by the authority of St. Paul, who said, " It is not I
that speak, but Christ that dwelleth in me." ^ Hence the
members of this Russian sect are known as the Christs.
" Among them men and women alike take upon themselves
the calling of teachers and prophets, and in this character
they lead a strict, ascetic life, refrain from the most ordinary
and innocent pleasures, exhaust themselves by long fasting
* Monier Williams, op. cit. pp. 136 geschichte, i. 321.
sq. A foil account of the doctrines ^ F. C. Conybeare, "The History
and practices of the sect may be found of Christmas, " American Journal of
in the History of the Sect of the Maha- Theology, iii. (1899) pp. i S sq. Mr.
rajas or Vallabhacharyas, published by Conybeare kindly lent me a proof of
Triibner at London in 1865. My this article, and the statement in the
attention was directed to it by my text is based on it. In the published
friend Mr. W. Crooke. article the author has made some
- A. Harnack, Lehrbuch derDogmen- changes.
4o8 INCARNATE HUMAN GODS chap.
and wild ecstatic religious exercises, and abhor marriage.
Under the excitement caused by their supposed holiness and
inspiration, they call themselves not only teachers and
prophets, but also ' Saviours,' ' Redeemers,' ' Christs,' ' Mothers
of God.' Generally speaking, they call themselves simply
Gods, and pray to each other as to real gods and living
Christs or Madonnas."^
Brethren In the thirteenth century there arose a sect called the
of the fS Brethren and Sisters of the Free Spirit, who held that by long
Spirit. and assiduous contemplation any man might be united to the
deity in an ineffable manner and become one with the source
and parent of all things, and that he who had thus ascended to
God and been absorbed in his beatific essence, actually formed
part of the Godhead, was the Son of God in the same sense
and manner with Christ himself, and enjoyed thereby a
glorious immunity from the trammels of all laws human and
divine. Inwardly transported by this blissful persuasion,
though outwardly presenting in their aspect and manners a
shocking air of lunacy and distraction, the sectaries roamed
from place to place, attired in the most fantastic apparel and
begging their bread with wild shouts and clamour, spurning
indignantly every kind of honest labour and industry as an
obstacle to divine contemplation and to the ascent of the
soul towards the Father of spirits. In all their excursions
they were followed by women with whom they lived on
terms of the closest familiarity. Those of them who con-
ceived they had made the greatest proficiency in the higher
spiritual life dispensed with the use of clothes altogether
in their assemblies, looking upon decency and modesty as
marks of inward corruption, characteristics of a soul that still
grovelled under the dominion of the flesh and had not yet
been elevated into communion with the divine spirit, its
centre and source. Sometimes their progress towards this
mystic communion was accelerated by the Inquisition,
• D. Mackenzie Wallace, Russia La Russie sectaire (Paris, N.D.), pp.
(London, Paris, and New York, N.D.), 63 sqq. Amongst the means which
p. 302. The passage in the text is these sectaries take to produce a state
"a short extract from a description of of religious exaltation are wild, whirling
the ' Khlysti ' by one who was initiated dances like those of the dancing
into their mysteries." As to these Dervishes.
Ru^ian Christs see further N. Tsakni,
vii INCARNATE HUMAN GODS 409
and they expired in the flames, not merely with un-
clouded serenity, but with the most triumphant feelings of
cheerfulness and joy.^ In the same century a Bohemian incaina-
woman named Wilhelmina, whose head had been turned by '!,°",?'^,
' ^ the Holy
brooding over some crazy predictions about a coming age of Ghost.
the Holy Ghost, persuaded herself and many people besides
that the Holy Ghost had actually become incarnate in her
person for the salvation of a great part of mankind. She
died at Milan in the year 128 1 in the most fragrant odour
of sanctity, and her memory was held in the highest venera-
tion by a numerous following, and even honoured with
religious worship both public and private.^
About the year 1830 there appeared, in one of the Modem in-
states of the American Union bordering on Kentucky, an of^"^"""''
impostor who declared that he was the Son of God, Christ.
the Saviour of mankind, and that he had reappeared
on earth to recall the impious, the unbelieving, and
sinners to their duty. He protested that if they did not
mend their ways within a certain time, he would give the
signal, and in a moment the world would crumble to ruins.
These extravagant pretensions were received with favour
even by persons of wealth and position in society. At last
a German humbly besought the new Messiah to announce
the dreadful catastrophe to his fellow-countrymen in the
German language, as they did not understand English, and
it seemed a pity that they should be damned merely on that
account. The would-be Saviour in reply confessed with
great candour that he did not know German. " What ! "
retorted the German, " you the Son of God, and don't speak
all languages, and don't even know German ? Come, come,
you are a knave, a hypocrite, and a madman. Bedlam is
the place for you." The spectators laughed, and went
away ashamed of their credulity.^ About thirty years
ago a new sect was founded at Patiala in the Punjaub
by a wretched creature named Hakim Singh, who lived
in extreme poverty and filth, gave himself out to be a
' J. L. Mosheim, Ecclesiastical His- 84. Mgr Flaget was bishop of Bards-
tory (London, 1819), iii. 278 sgq. town, and his letter is dated May 4,
^ J. L. Mosheim, op. cit. iii. 288 sq. 1833. He says that the events hap-
' Mgr Flaget, in Annales de la pened in a neighbouring state about
Propagation de la Foi, vii. (1834) p. three years before he wrote.
410 INCARNATE HUMAN GODS chap.
reincarnation of Jesus Christ, and offered to baptize the
missionaries who attempted to argue with him. He pro-
posed shortly to destroy the British Governrnent, and to
convert and conquer the world. His gospel was accepted
by four thousand believers in his immediate neighbourhood.-'
Cases like these verge on, if they do not cross, the wavering
and uncertain line which divides the raptures of religion
from insanity.
Trans- Sometimes, at the death of the human incarnation, the
rftonan* divine spirit transmigrates into another man. In the king-
deities. dom of Kaffa, in eastern Africa, the heathen part of the
people worship a spirit called Debce, to whom they offer
prayer and sacrifice, and whom they invoke on all important
occasions. This spirit is incarnate in the grand magician or
pope, a person of great wealth and influence, ranking almost
with the king, and wielding the spiritual, as the king wields
the temporal power. It happened that, shortly before the
arrival of a Christian missionary in the kingdom, this African
pope died, and the priests, fearing lest the missionary might
assume the position vacated by the deceased prelate, declared
that the Debce had passed into the king, who henceforth,
uniting the spiritual with the temporal power, reigned as
god and king.- Before beginning to work at the salt-pans in
a Laosian village, the workmen offer sacrifice to the divinity
of the salt-pans. This divinity is incarnate in a woman and
transmigrates at her death into another woman.^ In Bhotan
the spiritual head of the government is a dignitary called the
Dhurma Rajah, who is supposed to be a perpetual incarnation
of the deity. At his death the new incarnate god shews
himself in an infant by the refusal of his mother's milk and
a preference for that of a cow.*
The Buddhist Tartars believe in a great number of
living Buddhas, who officiate as Grand Lamas at the
ID. C. J. Ibbetson, Outlines of (Paris), Vme S&ie, xvii. (1869) p. 307.
Panjab Ethnography (Calcutta, 1883), 3 g. Aymonier, Notes sur le Laos
P- 123. (Saigon, 1885), pp. 141 sq. ; id.,
2 G. Massaja, / miei trentacinqtte Voyage dans le Laos, ii. (Paris, 1897)
anni di niissione nelP alia Etiopia P- 47*
(Rome and Milan, 1888), v. 53 sq. * W . Kohmson, Descriptive Account
Compare Father Leon des Avanchers, (7/".i4iJfl:»« (London and Calcutta, 1841),
\a Bul'etin de la Society de Geographie ^\>.'^^2sq.; Asiatic Researches, 7iv.n6.
VII INCARNATE HUMAN GODS 411
head of the most important monasteries. When one ofxrans-
these Grand Lamas dies his disciples do not sorrow, for ™'g^^"°°^
they know that he will soon reappear, being born in the divine
form of an infant. Their only anxiety is to discover the ^™^^'
place ot his birth. If at this time they see a rainbow
they take it as a sign sent them by the departed Lama to
guide them to his cradle. Sometimes the divine infant him-
self reveals his identity. " I am the Grand Lama," he says,
" the living Buddha of such and such a temple. Take me
to my old monastery. I am its immortal head." In what-
ever way the birthplace of the Buddha is revealed, whether
by the Buddha's own avowal or by the sign in the sky, tents
are struck, and the joyful pilgrims, often headed by the king
or one of the most illustrious of the royal family, set forth
to find and bring home the infant god. Generally he is
born in Tibet, the holy land, and to reach him the caravan
has often to traverse the most frightful deserts. When at
last they find the child they fall down and worship him.
Before, however, he is acknowledged as the Grand Lama
whom they seek he must satisfy them of his identity. He
is asked the name of the monastery of which he claims to be
the head, how far off it is, and how many monks live in it ;
he must also describe the habits of the deceased Grand
Lama and the manner of his death. Then various articles,
as prayer-books, tea-pots, and cups, are placed before him,
and he has to point out those used by himself in his previous
life. If he does so without a mistake his claims are
admitted, and he is conducted in triumph to the monastery.^
At the head of all the Lamas is the Dalai Lama of Lhasa,
* Hue, Sotnienirs iTun voyage dans Sandberg, Tibet and the Tibetans
la Tartaric et U Thibet, i. 279 sqq., (London, 1906), pp. \2% sqq. In the
ed. l2mo. For more details, see L. A. Delta of the Niger the souls of little
WaddeU, TTu Buddhism of Tibet CLan- negro babies are identified by means of
don, 1895), pp. 245 sqq. Compare a similar test. An assortment of small
G. Timkowski, Travels of the Russian wares that belonged to deceased mem-
Mission through Mongolia to China, i. hers of the family is shewn to the new
23-25; Abbe Armand David, "Voy- baby, and the first thing he grabs at
a^ en MoTi^aMe," Bulletin de la Soci^td identifies him. "Why, he's uncle
de Gfographie (Paris), VIme Serie, ix. John," they say; "see ! he knows his
(1875) pp. 132-134; Mgr Bruguiere, own pipe." Or, "That's cousin
in ^Innales de la Propagation de la Foi, Emma ; see ! she knows her market
ix. ;iS36) pp. 296^5?.; Father Gabet, calabash" (Miss M. H. Kingsley,
ib. XI. (1S4S) pp. 229-231 ; G. Travels in West Africa, p. 493).
412
INCARNATE HUMAN GODS
Divinity of
the Grand
Lama of
Lhasa.
Incarnate
human
gods in the
Chinese
empire
the Rome of Tibet. He is regarded as a living god, and at
death his divine and immortal spirit is born again in a child.
According to some accounts the mode of discovering the
Dalai Lama is similar to the method, already described, of
discovering an ordinary Grand Lama. Other accounts speak
of an election by drawing lots from a golden jar. Wherever
he is born, the trees and plants put forth green leaves ; at
his bidding flowers bloom and springs of water rise ; and his
presence diffuses heavenly blessings. His palace stands on
a commanding height ; its gilded cupolas are seen sparkling
in the sunlight for miles.^ In 1661 or 1662 Fathers Grueber
and d'Orville, on their return from Peking to Europe, spent
two months at Lhasa waiting for a caravan, and they report
that the Grand Lama was worshipped as a true and living
god, that he received the title of the Eternal and Heavenly
Father, and that he was believed to have risen from the
dead no less than seven times. He lived withdrawn from
the business of this passing world in the recesses of his palace,
where, seated aloft on a cushion and precious carpets, he
received the homage of his adorers in a chamber screened from
the garish eye of day, but glittering with gold and silver, and
lit up by the blaze of a multitude of torches. His worshippers,
with heads bowed to the earth, attested their veneration by
kissing his feet, and even bribed the attendant Lamas with
great sums to give them a little of the natural secretions of
his divine person, which they either swallowed with their
food or wore about their necks as an amulet that fortified
them against the assaults of every ailment.^
But he is by no means the only man who poses as a
god in these regions. A register of all the incarnate gods
in the Chinese empire is kept in the Li fan yiian or Colonial
Potala. Views of it from a photograph
and from a drawing are given by Sarat
Chandra Das. In the Journal of the
Royal Geographical Society, I.e., the
Lama in question is called the Lama
Gflru ; but the context shows that he
is the great Lama of Lhasa.
1 Hue, op. cit. ii. 279, 347 sq.;
C. Meiners, Geschichte der Reiigionen,
•- 333 ^J- ; J- G. Georgi, Beschreibtmg
filer Xationen des russischen Reichs,
p. 415 ; A. Erman, Travels in Siberia,
ii. 303 sqq. ; Jour7ial of the Roy.
Ceogr. Soc. xxx\-iii. (1868) pp. 168,
169; Proceedings of the Roy. Geogr.
Soc. X.S. viL {1885) p. 67; Sarat
Chandra Das, Journey to Lhasa and
dniral Tiiet {'London, 1902), pp. 159
^. The Grand Lama's palace is called
^ Thevenot, Relations des divers voy-
ages, iv. Partie (Paris, 1672), "Voyage
a la Chine des PP. I. Grueber et
d'Orville," pp. i sq., 22.
VI! INCARNATE HUMAN GODS 413
Office at Peking. The number of gods who have thus
taken out a license is one hundred and sixty. Tibet is
blessed with thirty of them, northern Mongolia rejoices in
nineteen, and southern Mongolia basks in the sunshine of no
less than fifty-seven. The Chinese government, with a paternal
solicitude for the welfare of its subjects, forbids the gods on
the register to be reborn anywhere but in Tibet. They
fear lest the birth of a god in Mongolia should have serious
political consequences by stirring the dormant patriotism
and warlike spirit of the Mongols, who might rally round
an ambitious native deity of royal lineage and seek to
win for him, at the point of the sword, a temporal as well
as a spiritual kingdom. But besides these public or licensed
gods there are a great many little private gods, or unlicensed
practitioners of divinity, who work miracles and bless their
people in holes and corners ; and of late years the Chinese
government has winked at the rebirth of these pettifogging
deities outside of Tibet. However, once they are born, the
government keeps its eye on them as well as on the regular
practitioners, and if any of them misbehaves he is promptly
degraded, banished to a distant monastery, and strictly
forbidden ever to be born again in the flesh.^
At the head of Taoism, the most numerous religious Divine
sect of China, is a pope who goes by the name of the !jf^'! °^ "'^
Heavenly Master and is believed to be an incarnation and religion in
representative on earth of the god of heaven. His official '"''""^
title is Chen-yen, or " the True Man." When one of these
pontiffs or incarnate deities departs this life, his soul passes
into a male member of his family, the ancient house of
Chang. In order to determine the chosen vessel, all the
male members of the clan assemble at the palace, their
names are engraved on tablets of lead, the tablets are
thrown into a vase full of water, and the one which bears
the name of the new incarnation floats on the surface. The
reputation and power of the pope are very great. He lives
in princely style at his palace on the Dragon and Tiger
' E. Pander (professor at the Uni- des Lamaismus," Verhandhmgen der
Tersity of Peking), "Das lamaische Berliner Geselhchafi fur Anthropologic,
VtJUheoxi" Zeitschri/t fiir Ethnologie, Ethnologic und Urgeschichte, 1889, p.
Jxl (18S9) p. 76; id., "Geschichte (202).
414 INCARNATE HUMAN GODS chap.
Diraie mountains in the province of Kiang-si, about twenty-five
bead of the j^jjgg ^^ ^j^g south-west of Kuei-Ki. The road, which is
Taoist '
religion in kept in good repair, partly flagged, and provided at regular
intervals with stone halls for the repose of weary pilgrims,
leads gradually upward through a bleak and barren district,
treeless and thinly peopled, to the summit of a pass, from
which a beautiful prospect suddenly opens up of a wide and
fertile valley watered by a little stream. The scene charms
the traveller all the more by contrast with the desert country
which he has just traversed. This is the beginning of the
pope's patrimony, which he holds from the emperor free of
taxes. The palace stands in the middle of a little town.
It is new and of no special interest, having been rebuilt
after the Taiping rebellion. For in their march northward
the rebels devastated the papal domains with great fury.
About a mile to the east of the palace lie the ruins of
stately temples, which also perished in the great rising
and have only in part been rebuilt. However, the principal
temple is well preserved. It is dedicated to the god of
heaven and contains a colossal image of that deity. The
papal residence naturally swarms with monks and priests of
all ranks. But the courts and gardens of the monasteries,
littered with heaps of broken bricks and stones and moulder-
ing wood, present a melancholy spectacle of decay. And
the ruinous state of the religious capital reflects the decline
of the papacy. The number of pilgrims has fallen off" and
with them the revenues of the holy see. Of old the pope
ranked with viceroys and the highest dignitaries of the
empire ; now he is reduced to the level of a mandarin of
the third class, and wears a blue button instead of a red.
Formerly he repaired every year to the imperial court at
Peking or elsewhere in order to procure peace and prosperity
for the whole kingdom by means of his ceremonies ; and on
his journey the gods and spirits were bound to come from
every quarter to pay him homage, unless he considerately
hung out on his palanquin a board with the notice, " You
need not trouble to salute." The people, too, gathered up
the dust or mud from under his feet to preserve it as a
priceless talisman. Nowadays, if he goes to court at all, it
seems to be not oftener than once in three years ; and his
vii INCARNATE HUMAN GODS 415
services are seldom wanted except to ban the demons of
plague. But he still exercises the right of elevating deceased
mandarins to the rank of local deities, and as he receives a
fee for every deification, the ranks of the celestial hierarchy
naturally receive many recruits. He also draws a con-
siderable revenue from the manufacture and sale of red
and green papers inscribed with cabalistic characters, which
are infallible safeguards against demons, disease, and
calamities of every sort.^
From our survey of the religious position occupied by Divine
the king in rude societies we may infer that the claim to p"^^ °'
divine and supernatural powers put forward by the monarchs
of great historical empires like those of Egypt, China, Mexico,
and Peru, was not the simple outcome of inflated vanity or
the empty expression of a grovelling adulation ; it was merely
a survival and extension of the old savage apotheosis of
living kings. Thus, for example, as children of the Sun the
Incas of Peru were revered like gods ; they could do no
wrong, and no one dreamed of offending against the person,
honour, or property of the monarch or of any of the royal
race. Hence, too, the Incas did not, like most people, look
on sickness as an evil. They considered it a messenger sent
from their father the Sun to call them to come and rest
with him in heaven. Therefore the usual words in which
an Inca announced his approaching end were these : " My
father calls me to come and rest with him." They would
not oppose their father's will by offering sacrifice for re-
covery, but openly declared that he had called them to his
rest.^ Issuing from the sultry valleys upon the lofty table-
' Mgr Danicourt, "Rapport sur writer tells us that the Peruvian In-
I'origine, les progres et la decadence dians "held their kings not only to
de la secte des Tao-sse, en Chine," be possessed of royal majesty, but to
Annales de la Propagation de la Fbi, be gods " (ib. bk. iv. ch. v. vol. i. p.
xxx. (1858) pp. 15-20; J. H. Gray, 303, Markham's Trans.). Mr. E. J.
China (London, 1878), i. 103 sq. ; Payne denies that the Incas believed
Dr. Merz, " Bericht uber seine erste in their descent from the sun, and stig-
Reise von Amoy nach Kui-kiang," matises as a ridiculous fable the notion
Zeiischrift der Gesellschaft filr Erd- that they were worshipped as gods {His-
kunde zu Berlin, xxiii. (1 888) pp. tory of the New World called America,
413-416. i. 506, 512). I content myself with
2 Garcilasso de la Vega, Fiist Part reproducing the statements of Garci-
ofthe Royal Commentaries of the Yncas, lasso de la Vega, who had ample means
bk. ii. chs. 8 and 15 (vol. i. pp. 131, of ascertaining the truth. His good
155, Markham's translation). This faith has been questioned, but, as I
4i6
INCARNA TE HUMAN GODS
CHAP.
Divine
rulers
among the
Ghibchas.
Divine
kings of
Mexico.
Divinity
of the
Chinese
emperors
land of the Colombian Andes, the Spanish conquerors were
astonished to find, in contrast to the savage hordes they had
left in the sweltering jungles below, a people enjoying a fair
degree of civilisation, practising agriculture, and living under
a government which Humboldt has compared to the theo-
cracies of Tibet and Japan. These were the Chibchas,
Muyscas, or Mozcas, divided into two kingdoms, with
capitals at Bogota and Tunja, but united apparently in
spiritual allegiance to the high pontiff of Sogamozo or Iraca.
By a long and ascetic novitiate, this ghostly ruler was
reputed to have acquired such sanctity that the waters and
the rain obeyed him, and the weather depended on his
will.^ The Mexican kings at their accession, as we have
seen,^ took an oath that they would make the sun to shine,
the clouds to give rain, the rivers to flow, and the earth to
bring forth fruits in abundance.' We are told that Monte-
zuma, the last king of Mexico, was worshipped by his people
as a god.*
In China, if the emperor is not himself worshipped
as a deity, he is supposed by his subjects to be the lord
and master of all the gods. On this subject a leading
authority on Chinese religion observes : " To no son of
China would it ever occur to question the supreme authority
wielded by the emperor and his proxies, the mandarins,
not only over mankind, but also over the gods. For the
gods or shen are souls of intrinsically the same nature as
those existing in human beings ; why then, simply because
the\- have no human bodies, should they be placed above the
emperor, who is no less than a son of Heaven, that is to say,
a magnitude second to none but Heaven or the Power above
telieve, on insufficient grounds. See
bsSow, vol. ii. p. 244 note '.
' .\Iex. von Humboldt, Researches
ccnaritinz the Institutions and Monn-
mtnis of the Ancient Inhabitants of
Ammea, ii. 106 sqq. ; H. Ternaux-
Coaipans, Ejsai sur taiuien Cundiiia-
ns.3r:a, pp. 14 -'?-, 1 9 sq., 40 sq. ; Th.
Waiiz, Anthrofs.'og-ie der NaturvSlker,
IT. 352 sqq. ; j. G. MlUler, Geschichte
dir nmerikjni-rhen Urreligimen, pp.
430 sq. ; C. F. Ph. v. Martins, Ziir
Eihjt:!-^j^r.i£ AmefikaSy p. 455 ! A*
Bastian, Die Culturldnder des alien
Ainerika, ii. 204 sq.
^ See above, p. 356.
' H. H. Bancroft, Native Races of
the Pacific States, ii. 146.
♦ Manuscrit Ramirez: Histoire de
Vorigine des Indiens qui habitent la
Nouvelle Esfagiu, publid par D. •
Charnay (Paris, 1903), p. 107 ; J. de
Acosta, Natural and Moral History
of the Indies, ii. 505, 508 (Hakluyt
Society, London, 1880).
vii INCARNATE HUMAN GODS 417
whom there is none — who governs the universe and all that
moves and exists therein ? Such absurdity could not
possibly be entertained by Chinese reason. So it is a first
article of China's political creed that the emperor, as well as
Heaven, is lord and master of all the gods, and delegates
this dignity to his mandarins, each in his jurisdiction.
With them then rests the decision which of the gods are
entitled to receive the people's worship, and which are not.
It is the imperial government which deifies disembodied
souls of men, and also divests them of their divine rank.
Their worship, if established against its will or without its
consent, can be exterminated at its pleasure, without
revenge having to be feared from the side of the god for
any such radical measure ; for the power of ' even the
mightiest and strongest god is as naught compared with
that of the august Celestial Being with whose will and under
whose protection the Son reigns supreme over everything
existing below the empyrean, unless he forfeits this
omnipotent support through neglect of his imperial duties." ^
As the emperor of China is believed to be a Son of Divinity
Heaven, so the Emperor of Japan, the Mikado, is supposed Mikado
to be an incarnation of the sun goddess, the deity who
rules the universe, gods and men included. Once a year
all the gods wait upon him, and spend a month at his
court During that month, the name of which means
" without gods," no one frequents the temples, for they are
believed to be deserted.^
The early Babylonian kings, from the time of Sargon Divinity
I. till the fourth dynasty of Ur or later, claimed to beSff^'^.
•' ■> ' Babylonian
gods in their lifetime. The monarchs of the fourth dynasty kings.
of Ur in particular had temples built in their honour ; they
set up their statues in various sanctuaries and commanded
the people to sacrifice to them ; the eighth month was
especially dedicated to the kings, and sacrifices were offered
to them at the new moon and on the fifteenth of each
month.^ Again, the Parthian monarchs of the Arsacid house
' J. J. M. de Groot, Sectarianism from recent Dutch visitors to Japan
and Religious Persecution in China, i. and the German of Dr. Ph. Fr. von
(Amsterdam, 1903), pp. 17 sq. Siebold (London, 1841), pp. 141 sqq.
- McuiTiers and Customs of the ^ H. Radau, Early Babylonian
Japanese in the Nineteenth Century : History (New York and London,
VOL. I 2 E
4i8 INCARNATE HUMAN GODS ' chap.
Styled themselves brothers of the sun and moon and were
worshipped as deities. It was esteemed sacrilege to strike
even a private member of the Arsacid family in a brawl.^
Divinity of The kings of Egypt were deified in their lifetime, sacrifices
^^"^ were offered to them, and their worship was celebrated in
special temples and by special priests. Indeed the worship
of the kings sometimes cast that of the gods into the shade.
Thus in the reign of Merenra a high official declared that
he had built many holy places in order that the spirits of
the king, the ever-living Merenra, might be invoked " more
than all the gods." ^ " It has never been doubted that the king
claimed actual divinity ; he was the ' great god,' the ' golden
Horus,' and son of Ra. He claimed authority not only over
Egypt, but over ' all lands and nations,' ' the whole world in
its length and its breadth, the east and the west,' ' the entire
compass of the great circuit of the sun,' ' the sky and what
is in it, the earth and all that is upon it,' ' every creature
that walks upon two or upon four legs, all that fly or flutter,
the whole world offers her productions to him.' Whatever in
fact might be asserted of the Sun-god, was dogmatically pre-
dicable of the king of Egypt. His titles were directly derived
from those of the sun-god." ' " In the course of his existence,"
we are told, " the king of Egypt exhausted all the possible
conceptions of divinity which the Egyptians had framed for
themselves. A superhuman god by his birth and by his
royal office, he became the deified man after his death.
1900), pp. 307-317. Compare C. Gotter und GdUersagen, pp. 467 sqq. x
Brockelmann, "^Vesen und Ursprung A. '^x^&e.xaz.yixi. Die Religion der alten
des EponjTnats in Assyrien," ZszVi-frArj/? Agypter, pp. 92 sq, ; id., "Menschen-
fiir Assyrioiogie, x\-i. (1902) p. 394; vergotterung im alten Agypten," Am
H. Zimmera, in E. Schrader's Die ^/r^i/^/Zc, N. F. i. (1897), pp. 289 J^j'. ;
Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament^ id., Herodots zweites Buck, pp. 274^5^. ;
(Berlin, 1903), pp. 379, 639 sq. G. Maspero, Histoire ancienne des
1. -.r ,i- ••-£ peuples de V Orient classioue; les
1 Ammianus Marcemnus, xxui. b, ^ .^. c ^ -r, -^-r ■,.
^, , ^j g origines, pp. 258-267 ; E. Naville,
'* ■' ■ La Religion des anciens Egyptiens
2 C. P. Tiele, History of the (Paris, 1906), pp. 225 sqq. Diodorus
Es:,-ptian Religion, 'p'p. lOT, sq. On the Siculus observed (i. 90) that "the
worship of the kings see also E. Meyer, Egyptians seem to worship and honour
Gesckiihie des Altertums,^ i. 2. § 2 19, their kings as very gods."
pp. 142 sq. ; A. Erman, Agypten und 3 p_ jg p_ Rgnouf, "The priestly
iigyfiisihes Lebett im Altertum, pp. 91 Character of the earliest Egyptian Civil-
sqq. ; id., Die agyptische Religion isation," Proceedings of the Society of
(Berlin, 1905), pp. 39 sq. ; V. von Biblical Archaeology, xii. (1890) p.
Strauss und Carnen, Die altdgyptischen 355.
vn INCARNATE HUMAN GODS 419
Thus all that was known of the divine was summed up in Divinity oi
him." ^ " The divinity of the king was recognised in all the ^l^f'^"
circumstances of the public life of the sovereign. It was not
enough to worship Pharaoh in the temple ; beyond the limits
of the sanctuary he remained the ' good god ' to whom all
men owed a perpetual adoration. The very name of the
sovereign was sacred like his person ; people swore by his
name as by that of the gods, and he who took the oath in
vain was punished. " ^ In particular the king of Egypt
was identified with the great sun-god Ra. " Son of the
sun, decked with the solar crowns, armed with the solar
weapons, gods and men adored him as Ra, defended him as
Ra from the attacks which menaced in him the divine being
who, in his human existence, knew the glory and the
dangers of being ' an incarnate sun ' and ' the living image
on earth of his father Tum of Heliopolis.' " ^ Even the life
of the gods depended on the divine life of the king. Gods
and men, it is said, " live by the words of his mouth." * " O
gods," said the king before celebrating divine worship, " you
are safe, if I am safe. Your doubles are safe if my double is
safe at the head of all living doubles. All live, if I live." ^
The king was addressed as " Lord of heaven, lord of earth,
sun, life of the whole world, lord of time, measurer of the
sun's course, Tum for men, lord of well-being, creator
of the harvest, maker and fashioner of mortals, bestower of
breath upon_ all men, giver of life to all the host of gods,
pillar of heaven, threshold of the earth, weigher of the equi-
poise of both worlds, lord of rich gifts, increaser of the
corn," and so forth.® Yet, as we should expect, the exalted
powers thus ascribed to the king differ in degree rather than
in kind from those which every Egyptian claimed for
himself Professor Tiele observes that " as every good man
at his death became Osiris, as every one in danger or need
could by the use of magic sentences assume the form of a
deity, it is quite comprehensible how the king, not only after
• A. Moret, Dttcaractirereli^uux lie ^ A. Mo el, o/>. cit. p. 299.
la royauti pharaonique (Paris, 1902), ^ A. Moret, op. cit. p. 233.
pp. 27S sq.; compare ib. pp. 313. * V. von Strauss und Carnen, op.
s A. Moret, op. cit. p. 306. f ' ?: 470- On the titles of the
Egyptian kings see further A. Moret,
' A. Moret, op. cit. p. 310. op. cit. pp. 17-38.
420 INCARNA TE HUMAN GODS chap.
death, but already during his life, was placed on a level
with the deity." ^
Eroiution We have now completed our sketch, for it is no more
kL^outof *^^" ^ sketch, of the evolution of that sacred kingship which
magicians, attained its highest form, its most absolute expression, in the
monarchies of Peru and Egypt, of China and Japan. His-
torically, the institution appears to have originated in the
order of public magicians or medicine-men ; logically it rests
on a mistaken deduction from the association of ideas. Men
mistook the order of their ideas for the order of nature, and
hence imagined that the control which they have, or seem to
have, over their thoughts, permitted them to exercise a
corresponding control over things. The men who for one
reason or another, because of the strength or the weakness
of their natural parts, were supposed to possess these
magical powers in the highest degree, were gradually
marked off from their fellows and became a separate class,
who were destined to exercise a most far-reaching influence
on the political, religious, and intellectual evolution of
mankind. Social progress, as we know, consists mainly
in a successive differentiation of functions, or, in simpler
language, a division of labour. The work which in primitive
society is done by all alike and by all equally ill, or nearly
so, is gradually distributed among different classes of
workers and executed more and more perfectly ; and so
far as the products, material or immaterial, of this
specialised labour are shared by all, the whole com-
Magicians munity benefits by the increasing specialisation. Now
or medi- . : , . '. . , , ,
cine-men magicians or medicme-men appear to constitute the oldest
theoidest artificial or professional class in the evolution ot society.^
profes- "^ ■'
sionai For sorcerers are found in every savage tribe known to us ;
'^'^^ and among the lowest savages, such as the Australian
aborigines, they are the only professional class that exists.
As time goes on, and the process of differentiation continues,
• C. p. Tiele, History of the stituted the only professional class
Egyptian Religion, p. 105. Compare among these democratic islanders"
A. Moret, op. cil. pp. 71 sq., 312. {Reports of the Cambridge Anthropo-
- In regard to the natives of the logical Expedition to Torres Straits, v.
western islands of Torres Straits it has 321). The same observation could
been remarked by Dr. A. C. Haddon be applied to many other savage
that the magicians or sorcerers ' ' con- tribes.
VII INCARNATE HUMAN GODS 421
the order of medicine-men is itself subdivided into such
classes as the healers of disease, the makers of rain, and so
forth ; ^ while the most powerful member of the order wins
for himself a position as chief and gradually develops into a
sacred king, his old magical functions falling more and more
into the background and being exchanged for priestly or
even divine duties, in proportion as magic is slowly ousted
by religion. Still later, a partition is effected between the
civil and the religious aspect of the kingship, the temporal
power being committed to one man and the spiritual to
another. Meanwhile the magicians, who may be repressed
but cannot be extirpated by the predominance of religion,
still addict themselves to their old occult arts in preference
to the newer ritual of sacrifice and prayer ; and in time the
more sagacious of their number perceive the fallacy of magic
and hit upon a more effectual mode of manipulating the
forces of nature for the good of man ; in short, they abandon
sorcery for science. I am far from affirming that the course
of development has everywhere rigidly followed these lines:
it has doubtless varied greatly in different societies. I
merely mean to indicate in the broadest outline what I
conceive to have been its general trend. Regarded from
the industrial point of view the evolution has been from
uniformity to diversity of function : regarded from the
political point of view, it has been from democracy to
despotism. With the later history of monarchy, especia-lly
with the decay of despotism and its displacement by forms of
government better adapted to the higher needs of humanity, we
are not concerned in this enquiry : our theme is the growth, not
the decay, of a great and, in its time, beneficent institution.
1 For example, amongst the Totlas means to remove these ills as are
the medicine-man has been differen- employed to remove those brought
tiated from the sorcerer ; yet their about by human agency. The advance
common origin is indicated by their of the Todas is shown most clearly by
both using the same kind of magical the differentiation of function between
formulae or spells to accomplish their pilikbren and utkbren, between sorcerers
ditTerent ends. See Dr. W. H. R. and medicine-men, and we seem to have
Rivers, The Todas, p. 271 : "It seems here a clear indication of the differen-
clear that the Todas have advanced tiation between magic and medicine,
beyond the stage of human culture in The two callings are followed by differ-
which all misfortunes are produced by ent men, who are entirely distinct from
magic They recognise that some ills one another, but both use the same kind
are not due to human intervention, but of formula to bring about the effect
yet they employ the same kind of they desire to produce,"
APPENDIX
HEGEL ON MAGIC AND RELIGION
My friend Professor James Ward has pointed out to me that the
view which I have taken of the nature and historical relations of
magic and religion was anticipated by Hegel in his Lectures on the
Philosophy of Religion} So far as I understand the philosopher's
exposition, the agreement between us amounts to this : we both hold
that in the mental evolution of humanity an age of magic preceded
an age of religion, and that the characteristic difference between
magic and religion is that, whereas magic aims at controlling nature
directly, religion aims at controlling it indirectly through the media-
tion of a powerful supernatural being or beings to whom man
appeals for help and protection. That I take to be the substance
of Hegel's meaning in the following passages which I extract from
his lectures on the philosophy of religion.
Speaking of what he calls the religion of nature he observes :
" Fear of the powers of nature, of the sun, of thunder-storms, etc.,
is here not as yet fear which might be called religious fear, for this
has its seat in freedom. The fear of God is a different fear from
the fear of natural forces. It is said that ' fear is the beginning of
wisdom ' ; this fear cannot present itself in immediate religion. It
first appears in man when he knows himself to be powerless in his
particularity, when his particularity trembles within him. ... It is
not, however, fear in this higher sense only that is not present here,
but even the fear of the powers of nature, so far as it enters at all
at this first stage of the religion of nature, changes round into its
opposite, and becomes magic.
"The absolutely primary form of religion, to which we give the
name of magic, consists in this, that the Spiritual is the ruling
power over nature. This spiritual element does not yet exist,
' Vorlesungen iiber die Philosophic works, Berlin, 1832). The coincidence
dir Religion, i. 220 sqq. (vol. xi. of was also pointed out to me by my
the first collected edition of Hegel's friend Dr. J. M. E. McTaggart.
423
424 HEGEL ON MAGIC AND RELIGION appendix
however, as Spirit; it is not yet found in its universality, but is
merely the particular, contingent, empirical self-consciousness of
man, which, although it is only mere passion, knows itself to be
higher in its self-consciousness than nature — knows that it is a
power ruling over nature. . . . This power is a direct power over
nature in general, and is not to be likened to the indirect power,
which we exercise by means of implements over riatural objects in
their separate forms. . . . Here the power over nature acts in a
direct way. It thus is magic or sorcery.
"As regards the external mode in which this idea actually
appears, it is found in a form which implies that this magic is what
is highest in the self-consciousness of those peoples. But in a
subordinate way magic steals up to higher standpoints too, and
insinuates itself into higher religions, and thus into the popular
conception of witches, although in that form it is recognised as
something which is partly impotent, and partly improper and
godless.
" There has been an inclination on the part of some (as, for
example, in the Kantian philosophy) to consider prayer too as
magic, because man seeks to make it effectual, not through media-
tion, but by starting direct from Spirit. The distinction here,
however, is that man appeals to an absolute will, for which even
the individual or unit is an object of care, and which can either
grant the prayer or not, and which in so acting is determined by
general purposes of good. Magic, however, in the general sense,
simply amounts to this, — that man has the mastery as he is in his
natural state, as possessed of passions and desires.
•■' Such is the general character of this primal and wholly imme-
diate standpoint, namely, that the human consciousness, any definite
human being, is recognised as the ruling power over nature in
virtue of his own will. The natural has, however, by no means
that wide range which it has in our idea of it. For here the
greater part of nature still remains indifferent to man, or is just as
he is accustomed to see it. Everything is stable. Earthquakes,
thunder-storms, floods, animals, which threaten him with death,
enemies, and the like, are another matter. To defend himself
against these recourse is had to magic.i g^-h ig the oldest mode
of religion, the wildest, most barbarous form. ...
" By recent travellers, such as Captain Parry, and before him
Captain Ross, this religion has been found among the Esquimaux,
wholly without the element of mediation and as the crudest
consciousness. Among other peoples a mediation is already
present
1 Simikrlv I have pointed out else- irregular, incalculable element in nature
•K'aexe {Tote'mism and Exogamy,!. 169 which the magician particularly aims
sq.) that it is the unsuble, apparently at controlling, while so far as the
APPENDIX HEGEL ON MAGIC AND RELIGION 425
" Captain Parry says of them ^ : '. . . They have not the slightest
idea of Spirit, of a higher existence, of an essential substance as
contrasted with their empirical mode of existence. . . . On the
other hand, they have amongst them individuals whom they call
Angekoks, magicians, conjurers. Those assert that they have it in
their power to raise a storm, to create a calm, to bring whales near,
etc., and say that they learnt these arts from old Angekoks. The
people regard them with fear ; in every family, however, there is at
least one. A young Angekok wished to make the wind rise, and
he proceeded to do it by dint of phrases and gestures. These
phrases had no meaning and were directed toward no Supreme
Being as a medium, but were addressed in an immediate way to
the natural object over which the Angekok wished to exercise power ;
he required no aid from any one whatever.' ...
" This religion of magic is very prevalent in Africa, as well as
among the Mongols and Chinese ; here, however, it is no longer
found in the absolute crudeness of its first form, but mediations
already come in, which owe their origin to the fact that the
Spiritual has begun to assume an objective form for self-con-
sciousness.
" In its first form this religion is more magic than religion ; it
is in Africa among the negroes that it prevails most extensively.
... In this sphere of magic the main principle is the direct
domination of nature by means of the will, of self-consciousness —
in other words that Spirit is something of a higher kind than nature.
However bad this magic may look regarded in one aspect, still in
course of nature is observed to be directly with mankind, aiming for ex-
stable, regular, and uniform it lies ample at the cure or infliction of disease,
comparatively outside the operations tends for obvious reasons to be dif-
of magic. ' ' To put it generally, the fused equally over the globe without
practice of magic for the control of distinction of latitude or climate "
nature will be found on the whole to (Totemism and Exogamy, i. 170).
increase with the variability and to The reason why the latter branch of
decrease with the uniformity of nature magic tends to be equally prevalent
throughout the year. Hence the in- in all parts of the world is, of coarse,
crease will tend to become more and that in all parts of the world human
more conspicuous as we recede from nature is equally unstable, seemingly
the equator, where the annual changes irregular, and incalculable by com-
of natural conditions are much less parison with the stability, regularity,
marked than elsewhere. This general and uniformity of nature,
rule is no doubt subject to many ' I have not found the passage of
exceptions which depend on local Captain Parry which Hegel here quotes,
varieties of climate. . . . But, on the whether from the English original or
whole, this department of magic, if not from a German translation. I should
checked by civilisation or other causes, doubt whether the gallant English
would naturally attain its highest explorer would have spoken of an
TO<nje in the temperate and polar "empirical mode of existence," which
zones rather than in the equatorial appears to me to savour rather of the
regions ; while, on the other hand, the professor's lecture-room than of the
branch of magical art which deals captain's quarter-deck.
426
HEGEL ON MAGIC AND RELIGION appendix
another it is higher than a condition of dependence upon nature
and fear of it. . . .
" Such, then, is the very first form of religion, which cannot
indeed as yet be properly called religion. To religion essentially
pertains the moment of objectivity, and this means that spiritual
power shows itself as a mode of the Universal relatively to self-
consciousness, for the individual, for the particular empirical con-
sciousness. This objectivity is an essential characteristic, on which
all depends. Not until it is present does religion begin, does a
God exist, and even in the lowest condition there is at least a
beginning of it The mountain, the river, is not in its character
as this particular mass of earth, as this particular water, the Divine,
but as a mode of the existence of the Divine, of an essential,
universal Being. But we do not yet find this in magic as such.
It is the individual consciousness as this particular consciousness,
and consequently the very negation of the Universal, which is
what has the power here ; not a god in the magician, but the
magician himself is the conjurer and conqueror of nature. . . .
Out of magic the religion of magic is developed."^
^ G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the
Phih-'c-thy of Religion, translated by
the ReV. E." B. Spiers, B.D,, and J.
Burdon Sanderson, i. (London, 1895)
pp. 290-298. Further, Hegel observes
(p. 300) that "magic has existed
among all peoples and at every
period."
END OF VOL. I
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