The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 08 of 12)

The Zulus think they can inoculate themselves with celestial power. Some Caffres inoculate themselves against lightning

Again, the Zulus know how to inoculate themselves not merely with moral virtue, but even with celestial power. For you must know that the Zulus have heaven-herds or sky-herds, who drive away clouds big with hail and lightning, just as herdsmen drive cattle before them. These heaven-herds are in sympathy with the heaven. For when the heaven is about to be darkened, and before the clouds appear or the thunder mutters, the heart of the heaven-herd feels it coming, for it is hot within him and he is excited by anger. When the sky begins to be overcast, he too grows dark like it; when it thunders, he frowns, that his face may be black as the scowl of the angry heaven. Now the way in which he thus becomes sympathetic with all the changing moods of the inconstant heaven is this: he eats the heaven and scarifies himself with it. And the way [pg 161] in which he eats the heaven and scarifies himself with it is as follows. When a bullock is struck by lightning, the wizard takes its flesh and puts it in a sherd and eats it while it is hot, mixed with medicine; and thus he eats the heaven by eating the flesh, which came from the beast, which was struck by the lightning, which came down from the heaven. And in like manner he scarifies himself with the heaven, for he makes cuts in his body and rubs in medicine mixed with the flesh of a bullock that was struck by lightning.506 In some Caffre tribes, when an animal or a man has been struck by lightning, the priest comes straightway and vaccinates every person in the kraal, apparently as a sort of insurance against lightning. He sets to work by tying a number of charms round the neck of every man and woman in the village, in order that they may have power to dig the dead man's grave; for in these tribes beasts and men alike that have been struck by lightning are always buried, and the flesh is never eaten. Next a sacrificial beast is killed and a fire kindled, in which certain magic woods or roots are burned to charcoal, and then ground to powder. The priest thereupon makes incisions in various parts of the bodies of each inmate of the kraal, and rubs a portion of the powdered charcoal into the cuts; the rest of the powder he mixes with sour milk, and gives to them all to drink. From the time the lightning strikes the kraal until this ceremony has been performed, the people are obliged to abstain entirely from the use of milk. Their heads are then shaved. Should a house have been struck by lightning it must be abandoned, with everything in it. Until all these rites have been performed, none of the people may leave the kraal or have any intercourse whatever with others; but when the ceremonies have been duly performed, the people are pronounced clean, and may again associate with their neighbours. However, for some months afterwards none of the livestock of the kraal and few other things belonging to it are allowed to pass into other hands, whether by way of sale or of gift.507 Hence it would appear that all persons in a [pg 162] village which has been struck by lightning are supposed to be infected with a dangerous virus, which they might communicate to their neighbours; and the vaccination is intended to disinfect them as well as to protect them against the recurrence of a like calamity. Young Carib warriors used to be inoculated for the purpose of making them brave and hardy. Some time before the ceremony the lad who was to be operated on caught a bird of prey of a particular sort and kept it in captivity till the day appointed. When the time was come and friends had assembled to witness the ceremony, the father of the boy seized the bird by its legs and crushed its head by beating it on the head of his son, who dared not wince under the rain of blows that nearly stunned him. Next the father bruised and pounded the bird's flesh, and steeped it in water together with a certain spice; after which he scored and slashed his son's body in all directions, washed his wounds with the decoction, and gave him the bird's heart to eat, in order, as it was said, that he might be the braver for it.508

Some savages attempt to acquire the physical and mental qualities of the dead by anointing themselves with their remains. The juices of animals are sometimes similarly applied for the same purpose

It is not always deemed necessary either that the mystical substance should be swallowed by the communicant, or that he should receive it by the more painful process of scarification and inoculation. Sometimes it is thought enough merely to smear or anoint him with it. Among some of the Australian blacks it used to be a common practice to kill a man, cut out his caul-fat, and rub themselves with it, in the belief that all the qualities, both physical and mental, which had distinguished the original owner of the fat, were thus communicated by its means to the person who greased himself with it.509 The Kamilaroi tribe of New South Wales sometimes deposited their dead on the forks of trees, and lighting fires underneath caught the fat as it dropped; for they hoped with [pg 163] the droppings to acquire the strength and courage of the deceased.510 The Wollaroi, another tribe of New South Wales, used to place the dead on a stage, and the mourners sat under it and rubbed their bodies with the juices of putrefaction which exuded from the rotten body, believing that this made them strong. Others collected these juices in vessels, and the young men rubbed the stinking liquid into their persons in order to acquire the good qualities of the departed.511 Wherever a like custom has been practised, as it has been, for example, by some of the natives of New Guinea, Timor Laut, and Madagascar,512 we may conjecture that the motive has been similar. Again, the negroes of Southern Guinea regard the brain as the seat of wisdom, and think it a pity that, when a wise man dies, his brain and his wisdom should go to waste together. So they sever his head from his body and hang it up over a mass of chalk, which, as the head decays, receives the drippings of brain and wisdom. Any one who applies the precious dripping to his forehead is supposed to absorb thereby the intelligence of the dead.513 Among the Beku, a tribe of dwarfs attached to the Fans in West Africa, the great charm for success in hunting is procured by killing a man and afterwards, when the corpse has begun to moulder in the grave, detaching the head from the body. The brain, heart, eyes and hairs of the body are then removed and mixed, according to a secret formula, with special incantations. When the compound is dry, the hunter rubs himself [pg 164] with it “in order to acquire a dash of the higher power with which people are endowed in the other life, and in particular their invisibility.”514 Among the Digger Indians of California, when a man died, it was customary to burn the body to ashes, mix the ashes with a thick resinous gum extracted from a pine-tree, and then smear the gum on the head of the mourner, where it was allowed to remain till it gradually wore away.515 The motive for the custom is not mentioned, but it was probably, like the motive for the parallel custom of swallowing the ashes of the dead, a desire to participate in the powers and virtues of the departed. At a certain stage of the ceremonies by which, in the Andaman Islands, a boy is initiated into manhood, the chief takes the carcase of a boar and presses it heavily down on the shoulders, back, and limbs of the young man as he sits, silent and motionless, on the ground. This is done to make him brave and strong. Afterwards the animal is cut up, and its melted fat is poured over the novice, and rubbed into his body.516 The Arabs of Eastern Africa believe that an unguent of lion's fat inspires a man with boldness, and makes the wild beasts flee in terror before him.517 In the forests of North-western Brazil there lives a small falcon with a red beak which is so sharp-sighted that it can detect even a worm on the ground from a considerable height. When a Kobeua Indian has killed one of these birds, he pokes out its eyes and allows the fluid to drip into his own, believing that in this way they will be sharp-sighted like those of the falcon.518 Most of the Baperis, or Malekootoos, a Bechuana tribe of South Africa, revere or, as they say, sing the porcupine, which seems to be their totem, as the sun is the totem of some members of the tribe, and a species of ape the totem of others. Those of them who have the porcupine for their totem swear by the animal, and lament if any one injures it. [pg 165] When a porcupine has been killed, they religiously gather up its bristles, spit on them, and rub their eyebrows with them, saying, “They have slain our brother, our master, one of ourselves, him whom we sing.” They would fear to die if they ate of its flesh. Nevertheless they esteem it wholesome for an infant of the clan to rub into his joints certain portions of the paunch of the animal mixed with the sap of some plants to which they ascribe an occult virtue.519 So at the solemn ceremony which is observed by the Central Australian tribes for the purpose of multiplying kangaroos, men of the kangaroo totem not only eat a little kangaroo flesh as a sacrament, but also have their bodies anointed with kangaroo fat. Doubtless the intention alike of the eating and of the anointing is to impart to the man the qualities of his totem animal, and thus to enable him to perform the ceremonies for the multiplication of the breed.520

Magical ointment used by Mexican priests

In ancient Mexico the priests of the god Tezcatlipoca, before they engaged in religious rites which tried the nerve, used to smear their bodies with a magic ointment, which had the effect of banishing all fear, so that they would confront wild beasts in their dens or slaughter people in sacrifice with the utmost indifference. The ointment which had this marvellous property was compounded of the ashes of venomous reptiles and insects, such as spiders, scorpions, centipedes, and vipers, which were brayed up in a mortar along with living specimens of the same creatures, tobacco, soot, and the ashes of black caterpillars. This precious substance was then set before the god in little pots, because they said it was his victuals; therefore they called it a divine food. And when the priests had besmeared themselves [pg 166] with it, they were ready to discharge the duties of their holy office by butchering their fellow men in the human shambles without one qualm of fear or one visiting of compassion. Moreover, an unction of this ointment was deemed a sovereign remedy for sickness and disease; hence they named it “the divine physic”; and sick people came from all quarters to the priests, as to their saviours, to have their ailing parts anointed with the divine physic and to be made whole.521

Qualities of a person, animal, or thing imparted by fumigation

Sometimes the valuable qualities of an animal or of a person may be imparted to another by the more delicate and ethereal process of fumigation. This refined mode of cultivating the moral virtues is or used to be practised by the Caffres of South Africa. Thus in former times as soon as a baby was born, some dirt was scraped from the forearm and other parts of the father's body and mixed with special medicines. The mixture was then made to smoulder and the baby was fumigated or “washed” in the smoke. This ceremony was deemed of great importance, being the established way of communicating to the child a portion of the ancestral spirit (itongo) through the physical medium of the father's dirt, to which the spirit naturally adheres. But while the dirt was endowed with this spiritual potency, the moral character of the infant depended in a large measure on the nature of the medicines with which the dirt was compounded, and accordingly much thought and skill were devoted to their selection and preparation. Foremost among the ingredients was a meteorite, burnt to a cinder and ground to powder. The effect of this powder, well mixed with the dirt, and introduced into the orifices of the child's body by means of smoke, is to close the anterior fontanelle of the baby's skull, to strengthen the bones of that important part of his person, to communicate vigour to his mind and courage to his disposition, and in general to brace and harden his whole system with the strength and hardness of the [pg 167] meteorite. Other ingredients which have a most beneficial effect are the powdered whiskers of a leopard, the claws of a lion, and the skin of a salamander. The mode of administering the medicine is as follows. You set fire to the compound, and while it smoulders, you hold the infant, wrapt up in a blanket, over the burning mass so as to compel it to inhale the smoke. To make sure of producing the desired effect, some of the powdered medicine is mixed with the baby's food.522 In like manner by holding the smouldering feather of a vulture under a baby's nose you render the child valiant and brave like a vulture, and if you do the same with a peacock's feather, your offspring will be, like a peacock, impavid and never dismayed by thunder or other terrible noises.523

The savage custom of eating a god. Cicero on transubstantiation

It is now easy to understand why a savage should desire to partake of the flesh of an animal or man whom he regards as divine. By eating the body of the god he shares in the god's attributes and powers. And when the god is a corn-god, the corn is his proper body; when he is a vine-god, the juice of the grape is his blood; and so by eating the bread and drinking the wine the worshipper partakes of the real body and blood of his god. Thus the drinking of wine in the rites of a vine-god like Dionysus is not an act of revelry, it is a solemn sacrament.524 Yet a time comes when reasonable men find it hard to understand how any one in his senses can suppose that by eating bread or drinking wine he consumes the body or blood of a deity. “When we call corn Ceres and wine Bacchus,” says Cicero, “we use a common figure of speech; but do you imagine that anybody is so insane as to believe that the thing he feeds upon is a god?”525 In writing thus the Roman philosopher little foresaw that in Rome itself, and in the countries which have derived their creed from her, the belief which he here stigmatises as insane was destined to persist for thousands of years, [pg 168] as a cardinal doctrine of religion, among peoples who pride themselves on their religious enlightenment by comparison with the blind superstitions of pagan antiquity. So little can even the greatest minds of one generation foresee the devious track which the religious faith of mankind will pursue in after ages.[pg 169]

Chapter XIII. Killing The Divine Animal

§ 1. Killing the Sacred Buzzard

Hunting and pastoral tribes, as well as agricultural peoples, have been in the habit of killing and eating the beings whom they worship. The Californian Indians used solemnly to kill the great buzzard which they adored; but they believed that though they slew it annually, it always came to life again

In the preceding chapters we saw that many communities which have progressed so far as to subsist mainly by agriculture have been in the habit of killing and eating their farinaceous deities either in their proper form of corn, rice, and so forth, or in the borrowed shapes of animals and men. It remains to shew that hunting and pastoral tribes, as well as agricultural peoples, have been in the habit of killing the beings whom they worship. Among the worshipful beings or gods, if indeed they deserve to be dignified by that name, whom hunters and shepherds adore and kill are animals pure and simple, not animals regarded as embodiments of other supernatural beings. Our first example is drawn from the Indians of California, who living in a fertile country526 under a serene and temperate sky, nevertheless rank near the bottom of the savage scale. Where a stretch of iron-bound coast breaks the long line of level sands that receive the rollers of the Pacific, there stood in former days, not far from the brink of the great cliffs, the white mission-house of San Juan Capistrano. Among the monks who here exercised over a handful of wretched Indians the austere discipline of Catholic Spain, there was a certain Father Geronimo Boscana who has bequeathed to us a precious record of the customs and superstitions of his savage flock. Thus he tells us that the [pg 170] Acagchemem tribe adored the great buzzard, and that once a year they celebrated a great festival called Panes or bird-feast in its honour. The day selected for the festival was made known to the public on the evening before its celebration and preparations were at once made for the erection of a special temple (vanquech), which seems to have been a circular or oval enclosure of stakes with the stuffed skin of a coyote or prairie-wolf set up on a hurdle to represent the god Chinigchinich. When the temple was ready, the bird was carried into it in solemn procession and laid on an altar erected for the purpose. Then all the young women, whether married or single, began to run to and fro, as if distracted, some in one direction and some in another, while the elders of both sexes remained silent spectators of the scene, and the captains, tricked out in paint and feathers, danced round their adored bird. These ceremonies being concluded, they seized upon the bird and carried it to the principal temple, all the assembly uniting in the grand display, and the captains dancing and singing at the head of the procession. Arrived at the temple, they killed the bird without losing a drop of its blood. The skin was removed entire and preserved with the feathers as a relic or for the purpose of making the festal garment or paelt. The carcase was buried in a hole in the temple, and the old women gathered round the grave weeping and moaning bitterly, while they threw various kinds of seeds or pieces of food on it, crying out, “Why did you run away? Would you not have been better with us? you would have made pinole (a kind of gruel) as we do, and if you had not run away, you would not have become a Panes,” and so on. When this ceremony was concluded, the dancing was resumed and kept up for three days and nights. They said that the Panes was a woman who had run off to the mountains and there been changed into a bird by the god Chinigchinich. They believed that though they sacrificed the bird annually, she came to life again and returned to her home in the mountains. Moreover they thought that “as often as the bird was killed, it became multiplied; because every year all the different Capitanes celebrated the same feast of Panes, and were firm in the [pg 171] opinion that the birds sacrificed were but one and the same female.”527

Perhaps they hoped by the sacrifice of the individual bird to preserve the species

The unity in multiplicity thus postulated by the Californians is very noticeable and helps to explain their motive for killing the divine bird. The notion of the life of a species as distinct from that of an individual, easy and obvious as it seems to us, appears to be one which the Californian savage cannot grasp. He is unable to conceive the life of the species otherwise than as an individual life, and therefore as exposed to the same dangers and calamities which menace and finally destroy the life of the individual. Apparently he imagines that a species left to itself will grow old and die like an individual, and that therefore some step must be taken to [pg 172] save from extinction the particular species which he regards as divine. The only means he can think of to avert the catastrophe is to kill a member of the species in whose veins the tide of life is still running strong, and has not yet stagnated among the fens of old age. The life thus diverted from one channel will flow, he fancies, more freshly and freely in a new one; in other words, the slain animal will revive and enter on a new term of life with all the spring and energy of youth. To us this reasoning is transparently absurd, but so too is the custom. If a better explanation, that is, one more consonant with the facts and with the principles of savage thought, can be given of the custom, I will willingly withdraw the one here proposed. A similar confusion, it may be noted, between the individual life and the life of the species was made by the Samoans. Each family had for its god a particular species of animal; yet the death of one of these animals, for example an owl, was not the death of the god, “he was supposed to be yet alive, and incarnate in all the owls in existence.”528

§ 2. Killing the Sacred Ram

Ancient Egyptian sacrifice of a ram at the festival of Ammon

The rude Californian rite which we have just considered has a close parallel in the religion of ancient Egypt. The Thebans and all other Egyptians who worshipped the Theban god Ammon held rams to be sacred, and would not sacrifice them. But once a year at the festival of Ammon they killed a ram, skinned it, and clothed the image of the god in the skin. Then they mourned over the ram and buried it in a sacred tomb. The custom was explained by a story that Zeus had once exhibited himself to Hercules clad in the fleece and wearing the head of a ram.529 Of course the ram in this case was simply the beast-god of Thebes, as the wolf was the beast-god of Lycopolis, and the goat was the beast-god of Mendes. In other words, the ram was Ammon himself. On the monuments, it is true, Ammon appears in semi-human form with the body of a man and the head of a [pg 173] ram.530 But this only shews that he was in the usual chrysalis state through which beast-gods regularly pass before they emerge as full-blown anthropomorphic gods. The ram, therefore, was killed, not as a sacrifice to Ammon, but as the god himself, whose identity with the beast is plainly shewn by the custom of clothing his image in the skin of the slain ram. The reason for thus killing the ram-god annually may have been that which I have assigned for the general custom of killing a god and for the special Californian custom of killing the divine buzzard. As applied to Egypt, this explanation is supported by the analogy of the bull-god Apis, who was not suffered to outlive a certain term of years.531 The intention of thus putting a limit to the life of the human god was, as I have argued, to secure him from the weakness and frailty of age. The same reasoning would explain the custom – probably an older one – of putting the beast-god to death annually, as was done with the ram of Thebes.

Use of the skin of the sacrificed animal

One point in the Theban ritual – the application of the skin to the image of the god – deserves particular attention. If the god was at first the living ram, his representation by an image must have originated later. But how did it originate? One answer to this question is perhaps furnished by the practice of preserving the skin of the animal which is slain as divine. The Californians, as we have seen, preserved the skin of the buzzard; and the skin of the goat, which is killed on the harvest-field as a representative of the corn-spirit, is kept for various superstitious purposes.532 The skin in fact was kept as a token or memorial of the god, or rather as containing in it a part of the divine life, and it had only to be stuffed or stretched upon a frame to become a regular image of him. At first an image of this kind would be renewed annually,533 the new image being provided by the [pg 174] skin of the slain animal. But from annual images to permanent images the transition is easy. We have seen that the older custom of cutting a new May-tree every year was superseded by the practice of maintaining a permanent May-pole, which was, however, annually decked with fresh leaves and flowers, and even surmounted each year by a fresh young tree.534 Similarly when the stuffed skin, as a representative of the god, was replaced by a permanent image of him in wood, stone, or metal, the permanent image was annually clad in the fresh skin of the slain animal. When this stage had been reached, the custom of killing the ram came naturally to be interpreted as a sacrifice offered to the image, and was explained by a story like that of Ammon and Hercules.

§ 3. Killing the Sacred Serpent

The sacred serpent of Issapoo in Fernando Po

West Africa appears to furnish another example of the annual killing of a sacred animal and the preservation of its skin. The negroes of Issapoo, in the island of Fernando Po, regard the cobra-capella as their guardian deity, who can do them good or ill, bestow riches or inflict disease and death. The skin of one of these reptiles is hung tail downwards from a branch of the highest tree in the public square, and the placing of it on the tree is an annual ceremony. As soon as the ceremony is over, all children born within the past year are carried out and their hands made to touch the tail of the serpent's skin.535 The latter custom is clearly a way of placing the infants under the protection of the tribal god. Similarly in Senegambia a python is expected to visit every child of the Python clan within eight days after birth;536 and the Psylli, a Snake clan of ancient Africa, used to expose [pg 175] their infants to snakes in the belief that the snakes would not harm true-born children of the clan.537