Curiosities of Superstition, and Sketches of Some Unrevealed Religions

The magician, like the melodramatist, must have his accompaniment of music, and the Zulu witch-finders are attended by a circle of black girls and women, who, like a Greek chorus, clap their hands together, and drone through a low monotonous chant, the measure and rhythm of which change at times with a stamp and a swing. Not less necessary is a ceremonial dress; for such things appeal directly to the imagination of the crowd, and prepare them to be readily influenced by the necromancer’s devices. The “Isinyanga,” “Abangoma,” or “witch-finders,” whom Lady Barker describes for us, were attired with an eye for effect which would have done credit to a London theatre. It will suffice to depict one of them, by name Nozinyanga. Her fierce face, spotted with gouts of red paint on cheek and brow, was partly overshadowed by a helmet-like plume of the tall feathers of the sakabula bird. In her right hand she carried a light sheaf of assegais or lances, and on her left arm was slung a small and pretty shield of dappled ox-hide. Her petticoat, made of a couple of large gay handkerchiefs, was worn kilt-wise. But if there were little decoration in her skirts, the deficiency was more than compensated by the bravery of the bead-necklaces, the goat’s-hair fringes, and the scarlet tassels which covered her from throat to waist. Her ample chest rose and fell beneath a baldric of leopard skin, fastened across it with huge brazen knobs; while down her back hung a beautifully dried and flattened skin of an enormous boa-constrictor.

The interest attaching to these women is derived from the fact that it was of old the custom, among the Zulu and other South African tribes, to attribute all mishaps or catastrophes, political or social, to the agency of witches. It is not for Englishmen to look down with contempt upon this manifestation of barbarism and ignorance, considering that a similar belief prevailed very generally among us up to the reign of Charles I., and, in truth, is not wholly extinct even now: while the extent to which the science of witch-finding was developed in New England will be known to every reader of Cotton Mather.

When the community had resolved that a certain misfortune was due to the witches, the next step obviously would be to detect and punish them. For this purpose the king would summon a great meeting, and cause his subjects to sit on the ground in a ring or circle, for four or five days. The witch-finders took their places in the centre, and as they gradually worked themselves up to a frantic state of frenzy, resembling demoniacal possession, they lightly switched with their quagga-tail one or other of the trembling spectators, who was immediately dragged away and butchered on the spot. And not only he, but all the living things in his hut – wives and children, dogs and cats – not one was left alive, nor was a stick left standing. Sometimes a whole kraal would be exterminated in this way; and the reader will perceive how terribly the cruel custom could be made to gratify private revenge or to work out the king’s tyrannical inclinations.

A terrible little sorceress is described under the name of Nozilwane,42 whose weird wistful glance had in it something uncanny and uncomfortable. She was really dressed beautifully for her part, in lynx skins folded over and over from waist to knee, the upper part of her body being covered by strings of wild beasts’ teeth and fangs, beads, skeins of gaily-coloured yarn, strips of snake’s skin, and fringes of Angora-goat fleece. This, as a decoration, was both graceful and effective; it was worn round the body and above each elbow, and fell in soft white flakes among the brilliant colouring and against the dusky skin. Lynx-tails depended like lappets on each side of her face, which was overshadowed and almost hidden by a profusion of sakabula feathers. “This bird,” says Lady Barker, “has a very beautiful plumage, and is sufficiently rare for the natives to attach a peculiar value and charm to the tail-feathers; they are like those of a young cock, curved and slender, and of a dark chestnut colour, with a white eye at the extreme tip of each feather.” Among all this thick, floating plumage were interspersed small bladders, and skewers or pins wrought out of tusks. Each witch-finder wore her own hair, or rather wool; highly greased, and twisted up with twine until it ceases to wear the appearance of hair, and hangs around the face like a thick fringe, dyed deep red.

Bent double, and with a creeping, cat-like gait, as if seeking a trail, out stepped Nozilwane. Every movement of her undulating body kept time to the beat of the girls’ hands and their low crooning chant. Presently she pretended to find the thing she sought, and with a series of wild pirouettes leaped into the air, shaking her spears and brandishing her little shield like a Bacchante. Nowamso, another of the party, was determined that her companion should not carry off all the applause, and she too, with a yell and a leap, sprang into the dance to the sound of louder grunts and harder hand-claps. Nowamso showed much anxiety to display her back, where a magnificent snake skin, studded in a regular pattern with brass-headed nails, floated like a stream. She was attired also in a splendid kilt of leopard skins, decorated with red rosettes, and her toilette was considered more careful and artistic than any of the others. Brighter her bangles, whiter her goat-fringes, and more elaborately painted her face. Nozilwane, however, had youth and a wonderful self-reliance on her side. The others, though they all joined in and hunted out an imaginary enemy, and in turn exulted over his discovery, soon became breathless and spent, and were glad when their attendants led them away to be anointed and to drink water.

“As for another of the ‘witch-finders,’ the great, big Nozinyanga, she danced like Queen Elizabeth, ‘high and disposedly,’ and no wonder, for I should think she weighed at least fifteen stone. Ungiteni, in a petticoat of white Angora-goat skin, and a corsage of bladders and teeth, beads and viper skins, was nothing remarkable; neither was Um-à-noujozzla, a melancholy-looking personage, with an enormous wig-like coiffure of red woollen ringlets and white skewers. The physiognomy, too, was a trifle more stolid and commonplace than that of her comrades, and altogether she gave me the impression of being a sensible, respectable woman, who was very much ashamed of herself for playing such antics. However, she brandished her divining brush with the rest, and cut in now and then to ‘keep the fleer’ with the untiring Nozilwane.”

Lady Barker and her friends grew tired of this imaginary “witch-finding,” and to end the affair it was proposed to test the professed power of the “weird women” to discover lost property. A silver pipe stem had recently “gone a-missing,” and they were requested to find what had been lost, and where. They set to work in a curious and interesting way. In front, squatted on heels and haunches, a semicircle of about a dozen men, who were supposed to have invited the assistance of the sisterhood. They had no idea of what was asked for, and were told to go on with their part until a signal was given that the article had been named.

“What is it the Inkos has lost?” they cried; “discover, reveal, make plain to us.”

The witch-finders, by their singing and dancing, had wrought themselves up to a highly-excited and enthusiastic condition, so that they unhesitatingly accepted the challenge, Nowamso crying, “Sing for me: make a cadence for me.” Then, after a moment’s pause, she went on rapidly, in her own language.

“Is this real? is it a test? is it but a show? Do the white chiefs want to laugh at our pretensions? Has the white lady called us only to show other white people that we can do nothing? Is anything really lost? is it not hidden? No, it is lost. Is it lost by a black person? No, a white person has lost it. Is it lost by the great white chief? No, it is lost by an ordinary white man. Let me see what it is that is lost. Is it money? No. Is it a weighty thing? No, it can be always carried about – it is not heavy. All people like to carry it, especially the white Inkosi: it is made of the same metal as money. I could tell you more, but there is no earnestness in all this, – it is only a spectacle.”

Between each of these ejaculations she made a pause, looking eagerly into the faces of the men before her, who, for sole answer, gave a loud, simultaneous snap of finger and thumb, pointing towards the ground as they did so, and shouting the one word, “Yiz-ora,” (the first syllable strongly accented and much prolonged;) “discover, reveal!” They can say nothing more to urge her on, because they themselves are ignorant: but the weird women watch their countenances eagerly, to detect, if they can, some unconscious sign or token that their guesses are near the truth. Suspecting a trick, Nowamso lapses into silence; but Nozilwane rushes about like one possessed, sobbing and quivering with excitement, “It is this – it is that!” The tall Nozinyanga strikes her lance firmly into the ground, and cries haughtily, in her own tongue, “It is his watch!” throwing around a haughty glance, as if daring any one to contradict her. The others then join hands, and gallop round and round, making a suggestion here and a suggestion there, all alike improbable; the “inquirers,” as the kneeling men are called, affording them no assistance. At last Nozilwane strikes home: “His pipe!” she exclaims; “Yoziva, yoziva, a thing which has come off his pipe.”

And so it is. Nozilwane’s pluck, and perseverance, and cunning scrutiny of our faces at each hit she made, have brought her off victoriously.

A murmur, or rather grunt, of admiration goes around. The “inquirers” jump up, and “subside into ebony images of impassive respectability.” The weary chorus disperses in small groups, and the exhausted sisterhood drop, as if by one consent, on their knees, sitting back on their heels, and raise their right hands in salutation.43

CHAPTER XI.

ZABIANISM AND SERPENT-WORSHIP

There can be no question as to the antiquity or universality of Serpent-Worship, whatever may be the difference of opinion as to its origin. According to Bryant it began in Chaldea, and was “the first variation from the purer Zabaism.” But this statement requires from us a brief preliminary explanation of that ancient form of worship.

Zabaism, or Zabism, has had its two sects, – first the Chaldean Zabians of the Kuran, – the “Parsified” Chaldee heathen, or non-Christian Gnostics, – the ancestors of the present Mendaites, or so-called Joannes Christians, who reside in the neighbourhood of the Persian Gulf, and speak a corrupt form of Chaldee-Aramaic. And second, the Pseudo-Zabians, or Syrian Zabians, in Harran, Edessa, Rakkah, and Bagdad. It is the latter who now chiefly represent Zabism.

The first named, or Chaldean Zabians, who transferred the name to the Harranic, and greatly influenced the development of the peculiar system of the latter, are the people so designated in the Kuran, and by the Mohammedans of to-day. The Harranians, who rose about A.D. 830, profess to derive their denomination from one Zâbi, who is variously called a son of Seth, son of Adam, or a son of Enoch or Idris, or a son of Methuselah, or of some fictitious Badi or Mari, a supposed companion of Abraham; while Mohammedan writers trace it to the word ssaba, “to turn, to move,” because its professors turned from the path of true religion, that is, Islam, or, as the Zabians say, because they have turned to the proper faith.

The Zabian creed, as professed by the Harranic Zabians, would appear to resolve itself into the following elements: —

It teaches that the Creator is, in His essence, primitivity, originality, and eternity, One; but in His numerous manifestations in bodily figures, manifold. Chiefly He is personified by the seven principal planets, and by the good, knowing, excellent earthly bodies. This, however, is without any disturbance of His unity. It is, say the Zabians, as if the seven planets were His seven limbs, and as if our seven limbs were His seven spheres in which He manifests Himself, – so that He speaks with our tongues, sees with our eyes, hears with our ears, touches with our hands, comes and goes with our feet, and acts through our members.

It teaches further, that God is too great and too sublime to occupy Himself directly with the affairs of this world; that its government He has therefore entrusted to other gods, and that it is only to the highest things of destiny He Himself devotes His attention, – an attribution of cold superiority and intellectual indifference in striking contrast to the idea of God the Father developed by Christianity, that all-loving, as well as all-powerful God, Who watches over the fall of a sparrow, and listens with tender ear to the prayer of even the meanest of His creatures. Moreover, Zabism inculcates the chilling doctrine that man is too feeble to offer his homage directly to the Supreme, and must therefore address the inferior deities to whom the regimen of the world has been handed. In this way we see that the veneration shown to the planets and the worship of idols are only a symbolism resulting from the humiliating doctrines just defined.

Zabism is a polytheistic system, – it absolutely revels in gods and goddesses. There are the spirits that direct and guide the planets, the spirits that originate or represent every action in this world, – not a natural effect, great or little, which does not emanate from a deity. Whatever appears in the air, whatever is formed near the sky or springs from the earth, must be traced to certain gods that govern these manifestations, so that every flake of snow, every drop of rain has its presiding spirit.

These spirits also “mould and shape everything bodily from one form into the other, and gradually bring all created things to the state of their highest possible perfection, and communicate their powers to all substances, beings, and things. By the movement and guidance of these spiritual beings, the different elements and natural compositions are influenced in such a way that the tenderest plant may pierce the hardest cliff. He who guides this world is called the first spirit. These gods know our most secret thoughts, and all our future is open to them. The female deities seem to have been conceived as the feeling or passive principle. These gods or intelligences emanate directly from God without His will, as rays do from the sun. They are, further, of abstract forms, free of all matter, and neither made of any substance or material. They consist chiefly of a light in which there is no darkness, which the senses cannot conceive by reason of its immense clearness, which the understanding cannot comprehend by reason of its extreme delicacy, and which fancy and imagination cannot fathom.”

Free from all animal desires, these spirits are created wholly for love and harmony, for friendship and unity. They are unaffected by local and temporal changes, and control the planetary spheres, without finding the motion of the heaviest too heavy, or of the lightest too light. Their never-ending existence is a prolonged happiness, owing to their nearness to the Supreme God; whom they praise day and night, like the Angels, with no sense of fatigue or satiety, and whose will they ever obey with the keenest joy. Free agents, they are never inclined towards the evil. They turn towards the good as readily as the flower towards the light.

Passing on to the cosmogonical part of the Zabian system, we find that it is based on the existence of five primæval principles, – the Creator, Reason, the Soul, Space, and the Void. These are the constituents of all creation. But apart from these, or comprehending these, the Zabians seem to have regarded two principles, God and the Soul, as specially active and ever-living. Some writers represent them as believing also in a passive principle, Matter; and in two principles which are neither living nor passive, Time and Space. They appear to have regarded Matter as primeval and everlasting, and to have ascribed to it the origin and duration of Evil. God Himself created only the spheres, and the heavenly bodies which they contain. These spheres (fathers) convey the types or ideas to the elementary substances (mothers), and out of the combination, conjunction, and motion of these spheres and elements are produced the various earthly things (children). According to the Zabians, the world is renewed with every “world-year,” or cycle, that is once every 36,425 ordinary years. And at the close of each cycle, the life, vegetable, animal, and human that had flourished within it cease to multiply, and new forms or types spring into existence.

The vacillating and contending nature of man is due to the contradictory elements of which he is composed. The desires and passions which sway him to and fro, depress him to the low standard of the brute creation, and his fall would be complete but for such religious rites as purifications, sacrifices, and other means of grace. Through these he is able again to draw near to the great gods, and to attain a resemblance unto them. The human soul is dual, that is, it consists partly of the nature of the animal soul and partly of that of the angelic soul. It is immortal, and subject to future recompense and punishment, but not for ever, nor in any world but this, though at different epochs of existence. Hence, our present happiness is a reward for the good deeds done by us in an earlier stage of existence; and our present suffering the just chastisement for evil actions committed in the past. In its nature they hold that the soul is primitive, because otherwise it must be material, and a material soul is an impossibility.

“The soul,” says Kathibi, one of the Zabian teachers, “is thus immaterial, and exists from eternity; is the involuntary reason of the first types, as God is the First Cause of the Intelligences. Once on a time the soul beheld matter and loved it. Glowing with the desire of assuming a bodily shape, it would not again separate itself from that matter of which the world was created. Since that time, the soul forgot itself, its everlasting existence, its original abode, and knew nothing more of what it had formerly known. But God, who converts all things to the best, united it to matter, which it loved, and out of this union the heavens, the elements, and other composite things arose. In order that the soul might not wholly perish within matter, He endowed it with intelligence, whereby it conceived its high origin, the spiritual world, and itself. It further conceived through it that it was but a stranger in this world, in which it was subject to many sufferings, and that even the joys of this world are but the sources of new sufferings. As soon as the soul had perceived all this, it began to yearn again for its spiritual home, as a man who is away from his birthplace pines for his homestead. It then also learned, that, in order to return to its primitive state, it had to shake off the fetters of sensuous desires, and liberate itself from all materialistic tendencies. Far from them all, it would once more regain its heavenly sphere, and enjoy the bliss of the spiritual world.”44

Such is an outline of the religious system which flourished from the middle of the ninth to the middle of the eleventh century, under the name of Zabism.

Evidently, out of this Zabaism Serpent-worship could not spring, because it is of much greater antiquity. What then is the Zabism to which Bryant alludes? A purely imaginary creed, which the mediæval, Jewish, Arabic, and Persian writers identified with star-worship. The Mohammedan and other writers of the twelfth century bestowed the name of Zabians indifferently upon the ancient Chaldeans, the Buddhists, even the ante-Zoroastrian Persians; and Bryant has followed their mistaken example. As a matter of fact, Serpent-worship is a relic of nature-worship, – more particularly of the old solar worship, – and the Serpent at first was unquestionably an emblem of the Sun.

In Babylon large serpents of silver supported the image of the goddess Rhea, in the temple of Bel, or Belus; and the name Bel itself is thought by some writers to be an abbreviation of Ob-el, “the Serpent-God.” In the Apocryphal book of Bel and the Dragon, we read: “In that same place there was a great Dragon, which they of Babylon worshipped. And the king said unto Daniel: Wilt thou say that this is of brass? lo, he eateth and drinketh: thou canst not say he is no living god: therefore worship him.”

Speaking of the earlier stage of the Persian religion, Eusebius remarks that all the Persians worshipped the First Principles under the form of Serpents, having dedicated to them temples in which they performed sacrifices, and held festivals and orgies, esteeming them the greatest of Gods, and governors of the Universe.

These first principles were the principles of Good and Evil, or Ormuzd and Ahriman, whose terrible struggle for the supremacy of the universe was symbolised in Persian mythology by two serpents contending for the mundane egg. They are represented as standing upon their tails, and each of them has fastened its teeth upon the disputed prize. But, more generally, the Evil Principle alone was represented by the serpent, and a fable in the Zendavesta recalls to our recollection the opening of the Book of Genesis; for it says that Ahriman assumed a serpent’s form in order to destroy the first of the human race, whom he accordingly poisoned.

In the Saddu, or Suddu, it is said: “When you kill serpents, you shall repeat the Zendavesta, whereby you will obtain great merit; for it is the same as if you had killed so many devils.”

Mithras, the Persian sun-god, was represented encircled by a serpent; and in his rites a custom was observed similar to that practised in the mysteries of Sebazius: a serpent was cast into the bosom of the neophyte, and taken out at the lower part of his garments.45

The hierogram of the winged circle and serpent is a remarkable and significant emblem of Ophiolatreia, and is found in almost every country where Serpent-worship prevailed. It is to be traced in the Egyptian, the Persian, and even the Aztec hieroglyphics; and on the monuments of China, Greece, Italy, Asia Minor, and India. Enthusiasts allege that it has been discovered in Britain. It seems to have been a general symbol of consecration, and as such mention is made of it by the poet Persius:

“Pinge duos angues; pueri sacer est locus.”

Satir. i. 113.

Reference is here made to two snakes, which, as we have seen, is the hierogram of the worshippers of the Two Principles, each being represented by a serpent. Generally, however, it is one serpent only that issues from the winged circle, and sometimes the circle is without wings. As a consecrating symbol, the ophite hierogram was inscribed upon the massive portals of the Egyptian temples. Mr. Deane contends that the Druids “with the consistent magnificence which characterised their religion,” transferred the symbol from the portal to the temple; and instead of placing the circle and serpent over the entrance into their sanctuaries, erected the whole building in the form of the ophite hierogram, as at Abury in Wiltshire, and Stanton Drew in Somersetshire. The former represents the ophite hierogram with one serpent, the latter is double; in both cases the circle has no wings.

In Argyllshire, near Oban, exists a huge serpent-shaped mound, discovered by Mr. Phené in 1871, which must be mentioned in this connection. Looking down upon it from the high ground to the westward, you see it rising conspicuously from the flat grassy plain, which extends for some distance on either side, with scarcely an undulation, save two artificial circular mounds, in one of which lie several large stones forming a cromlech. A recent visitor writes:

“Finding ourselves in the very presence of the Great Dragon, we hastened to improve our acquaintance, and in a couple of minutes had scrambled on to the ridge which forms his backbone, and thence perceived that we were standing on an artificial mound three hundred feet in length, forming a double curve like a huge letter S, and wonderfully perfect in anatomical outline. This we perceived the more perfectly on reaching the head, which lies at the western end, whence diverge small ridges, which may have represented the paws of the reptile. On the head rests a circle of stones, supposed to be emblematic of the solar disc, and exactly corresponding with the solar circle as represented on the head of the mystic serpents of Egypt and Phœnicia, and in the great American Serpent Mound. At the time of Mr. Phené’s first visit to this spot there still remained in the centre of this circle some traces of an altar, which, thanks to the depredations of cattle and herd-boys, have since wholly disappeared…