James Frazer - The Golden Bough - A Study in Comparative Religion (Vol. 1 of 2)

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. 126 126 Sébillot, Coutumes populaires de la Haute-Bretagne , p. 302 sq. German peasants throw a knife or a hat at a whirlwind because there is a witch or a wizard in it. 127 127 Mannhardt, A. W. F. p. 85.

These examples, drawn from the beliefs and practices of rude peoples all over the world, may suffice to prove that the savage, whether European or otherwise, fails to recognise 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 supernatural beings entirely distinct from and superior to man, and wielding powers to which he possesses nothing comparable in degree and hardly even in kind, has been slowly evolved in the course of history. At first 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 own helplessness does not, however, 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 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 consciously 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 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 nature by his own unaided resources, that is, by magic, and looks more and more to the gods as the sole repositories of those supernatural powers which he once claimed to share with them. With the first advance of knowledge, therefore, prayer and sacrifice 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 gain or lose 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 superstitious 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 men are still viewed as beings of much the same order, and before they are divided by the impassable gulf which, to later thought, opens out between them. Strange, therefore, as may seem to us the idea of a god incarnate in human form, it has nothing very startling for early man, who sees in a man-god or a god-man only a higher degree of the same supernatural powers which he arrogates in perfect good faith to himself. 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 manifestations are divination and prophesy 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 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 world-wide. Certain persons are supposed to be possessed from time to time by a spirit or deity; while the possession lasts, their own personality lies in abeyance, the presence of the spirit is revealed by convulsive shiverings and shakings 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. In Mangaia the priests in whom the gods took up their abode from time to time were called “god-boxes” or, for shortness, “gods.” Before giving oracles as gods, they drank an intoxicating liquor, and in the frenzy thus produced their wild words were received as the voice of the god. 128 128 Gill, Myths and Songs of the South Pacific , p. 35. But examples of such temporary inspiration are so common in every part of the world and are now so familiar through books on ethnology, that it is needless to cite illustrations of the general principle. 129 129 See for examples E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture , 2 ii. 131 sqq. It may be well, however, to refer to two particular modes of producing temporary 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. 130 130 Pausanias, ii. 24, 1. κάτοχος ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ γίνεται is the expression. At Aegira in Achaea the priestess of Earth drank the fresh blood of a bull before she descended into the cave to prophesy. 131 131 Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxviii. 147. Pausanias (vii. 25, 13) mentions the draught of bull's blood as an ordeal to test the chastity of the priestess. Doubtless it was thought to serve both purposes. In Southern India a devil-dancer “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 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.” 132 132 Caldwell, “On demonolatry in Southern India,” Journal of the Anthropological Society of Bombay , i. 101 sq. At a festival of the Minahassa in northern Celebes, after a pig has been killed, the priest rushes furiously at it, thrusts his head into the carcass and drinks of the blood. Then he is dragged away from it by force and set on a chair, whereupon he begins to prophesy how the rice crop will turn out that year. A second time he runs at the carcass and drinks of the blood; a second time he is forced into the chair and continues his predictions. It is thought there is a spirit in him which possesses the power of prophecy. 133 133 J. G. F. Riedel, “De Minahasa in 1825,” Tijdschrift v. Indische Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde , xviii. 517 sq. Cp. N. Graafland, De Minahassa , i. 122; Dumont D'Urville, Voyage autour du Monde et à la recherche de La Perouse , v. 443. At Rhetra, a great religious capital of the Western Slavs, the priest tasted the blood of the sacrificed oxen and sheep in order the better to prophesy. 134 134 F. J. Mone, Geschichte des Heidenthums im nördlichen Europa , i. 188. 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. 135 135 Biddulph, Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh , p. 96. For other instances of priests or representatives of the deity drinking the warm blood of the victim, cp. Tijdschrift v. Nederlandsch Indië , 1849, p. 395; Oldfield, Sketches from Nipal , ii. 296 sq. ; Asiatic Researches , iv. 40, 41, 50, 52 (8vo. ed.); Paul Soleillet, L'Afrique Occidentale , p. 123 sq. To snuff up the savour of the sacrifice was similarly supposed to produce inspiration. Tertullian, Apologet. 23. The other mode of producing temporary inspiration, to which I shall here refer, is by means of a branch or leaves of a sacred tree. Thus in the Hindoo Koosh a fire is kindled with twigs of the sacred cedar; and the Dainyal or sibyl, with a cloth over her head, inhales the thick pungent smoke till she is seized with convulsions and falls senseless to the ground. Soon she rises and raises a shrill chant, which is caught up and loudly repeated by her audience. 136 136 Biddulph, Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh , p. 97. So Apollo's prophetess ate the sacred laurel before she prophesied. 137 137 Lucian, Bis accus. , I; Tzetzes, Schol. ad Lycophr. , 6. It is worth observing that many peoples expect the victim as well as the priest or prophet to give signs of inspiration 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. 138 138 Vambery, Das Türkenvolk , p. 158. Apollo's prophetess could give no oracles unless the victim to be sacrificed 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. 139 139 Plutarch, De defect. oracul. 46, 49. Many other peoples (Tonquinese, Hindoos, Chuwash, etc.) have adopted the same test of a suitable victim; they pour water or wine on its head; if the animal shakes its head it is accepted for sacrifice; if it does not, it is rejected. 140 140 D. Chwolsohn, Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus , ii. 37; Lettres édifiantes et curieuses , xvi. 230 sq. ; Panjab Notes and Queries , iii. No. 721; Journal of the Anthropological Society of Bombay , i. 103; S. Mateer, The Land of Charity , 216; id. , Native Life in Travancore , p. 94; A. C. Lyall, Asiatic Studies , p. 14; Biddulph, Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh , p. 131; Pallas, Reisen in verschiedenen Provinzen des russischen Reiches , i. 91; Vambery, Das Türkenvolk , p. 485; Erman, Archiv für wissenschaftliche Kunde von Russland , i. 377. 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 sacrificed. Panjab Notes and Queries , i. No. 911. This is probably a modern misinterpretation of the old custom.