James Frazer - The Golden Bough - A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 03 of 12)

A man's soul conceived as his shadow, so that to injure the shadow is to injure the man.

But the spiritual dangers I have enumerated are not the only ones which beset the savage. Often he regards his shadow or reflection as his soul, or at all events as a vital part of himself, and as such it is necessarily a source of danger to him. For if it is trampled upon, struck, or stabbed, he will feel the injury as if it were done to his person; and if it is detached from him entirely (as he believes that it may be) he will die. In the island of Wetar there are magicians who can make a man ill by stabbing his shadow with a pike or hacking it with a sword. 244After Sankara had destroyed the Buddhists in India, it is said that he journeyed to Nepaul, where he had some difference of opinion with the Grand Lama. To prove his supernatural powers, he soared into the air. But as he mounted up, the Grand Lama, perceiving his shadow swaying and wavering on the ground, struck his knife into it and down fell Sankara and broke his neck. 245In the Babar Islands the demons get power over a man's soul by holding fast his shadow, or by striking and wounding it. 246Among the Tolindoos of central Celebes to tread on a man's shadow is an offence, because it is supposed to make the owner sick; 247and for the same reason the Toboongkoos of that region forbid their children to play with their shadows. 248The Ottawa Indians thought they could kill a man by making certain figures on his shadow. 249The Baganda of central Africa regarded a man's shadow as his ghost; hence they used to kill or injure their enemies by stabbing or treading on their shadows. 250Among the Bavili of West Africa it used to be considered a crime to trample on or even to cross the shadow of another, especially if the shadow were that of a married woman. 251Some Caffres are very unwilling to let anybody stand on their shadow, believing that they can be influenced for evil through it. 252They think that “a sick man's shadow dwindles in intensity when he is about to die; for it has such an intimate relation to the man that it suffers with him.” 253The Ja-Luo tribes of Kavirondo, to the east of Lake Victoria Nyanza, tell of the ancestor of all men, Apodtho by name, who descended to earth from above, bringing with him cattle, fowls, and seeds. When he was old, the Ja-Luo plotted to kill him, but for a long time they did not dare to attack him. At last, hearing that he was sick, they thought their chance had come, and sent a girl to see how he was. She took a small horn, used for cupping blood, in her hand, and while she talked with him she placed the cupping-horn on his shadow. To her surprise it drew blood. So she returned and told her friends that, if they wished to kill Apodtho, they must not touch his body, but spear his shadow. They did so, and he died and turned into a rock, which has ever since possessed the property of sharpening spears unusually well. 254In a Chinese book we read of a sage who examined human shadows by lamplight in order to discover the fate of their owners. “A man's shadow,” he said, “ought to be deep, for, if so, he will attain honourable positions, and a great age. Shadows are averse to being reflected in water, or in wells, or in washing-basins. It was on such grounds that the ancients avoided shadows, and that in old days Khü-seu , twan-hu , and other shadow-treading vermin caused injury by hitting the shadows of men. In recent times there have been men versed in the art of cauterizing the shadows of their patients.” Another sapient Chinese writer observes: “I have heard that, if the shadow of a bird is hit with a piece of wood that was struck by thunder, the bird falls to the ground immediately. I never tried it, but on account of the matter stated above I consider the thing certain.” 255The natives of Nias tremble at the sight of a rainbow, because they think it is a net spread by a powerful spirit to catch their shadows. 256

Danger to a person of letting his shadow fall on certain things. Animals and trees also may be injured through their shadows.

In the Banks Islands, Melanesia, there are certain stones of a remarkably long shape which go by the name of tamate gangan or “eating ghosts,” because certain powerful and dangerous ghosts are believed to lodge in them. If a man's shadow falls on one of these stones, the ghost will draw his soul out from him, so that he will die. Such stones, therefore, are set in a house to guard it; and a messenger sent to a house by the absent owner will call out the name of the sender, lest the watchful ghost in the stone should fancy that he came with evil intent and should do him a mischief. 257In Florida, one of the Solomon Islands, there are places sacred to ghosts, some in the village, some in the gardens, and some in the bush. No man would pass one of these places when the sun was so low as to cast his shadow into it, for then the ghost would draw it from him. 258The Indian tribes of the Lower Fraser River believe that man has four souls, of which the shadow is one, though not the principal, and that sickness is caused by the absence of one of the souls. Hence no one will let his shadow fall on a sick shaman, lest the latter should purloin it to replace his own lost soul. 259At a funeral in China, when the lid is about to be placed on the coffin, most of the bystanders, with the exception of the nearest kin, retire a few steps or even retreat to another room, for a person's health is believed to be endangered by allowing his shadow to be enclosed in a coffin. And when the coffin is about to be lowered into the grave most of the spectators recoil to a little distance lest their shadows should fall into the grave and harm should thus be done to their persons. The geomancer and his assistants stand on the side of the grave which is turned away from the sun; and the grave-diggers and coffin-bearers attach their shadows firmly to their persons by tying a strip of cloth tightly round their waists. 260In the Nicobar Islands burial usually takes place at sundown, before midnight, or at early dawn. In no case can an interment be carried out at noon or within an hour of it, lest the shadows of the bearers who lower the body into the earth, or of the mourners taking their last look at the shrouded figure, should fall into the grave; for that would cause them to be sick or die. And when the dead has been laid in his last home, but before the earth is shovelled in upon him, the leaves of a certain jungle tree are waved over the grave, and a lighted torch is brandished inside it, to disperse any souls of the sorrowing bystanders that may be lingering with their departed friend in his narrow bed. Then the signal is given, and the earth or sand is rapidly shovelled in by a party of young men who have been standing in readiness to perform the duty. 261When the Malays are building a house, and the central post is being set up, the greatest precautions are taken to prevent the shadow of any of the workers from falling either on the post or on the hole dug to receive it; for otherwise they think that sickness and trouble will be sure to follow. 262When members of some Victorian tribes were performing magical ceremonies for the purpose of bringing disease and misfortune on their enemies, they took care not to let their shadows fall on the object by which the evil influence was supposed to be wafted to the foe. 263In Darfur people think that they can do an enemy to death by burying a certain root in the earth on the spot where the shadow of his head happens to fall. The man whose shadow is thus tampered with loses consciousness at once and will die if the proper antidote be not administered. In like manner they can paralyse any limb, as a hand or leg, by planting a particular root in the earth in the shadow of the limb they desire to maim. 264Nor is it human beings alone who are thus liable to be injured by means of their shadows. Animals are to some extent in the same predicament. A small snail, which frequents the neighbourhood of the limestone hills in Perak, is believed to suck the blood of cattle through their shadows; hence the beasts grow lean and sometimes die from loss of blood. 265The ancients supposed that in Arabia, if a hyæna trod on a man's shadow, it deprived him of the power of speech and motion; and that if a dog, standing on a roof in the moonlight, cast a shadow on the ground and a hyæna trod on it, the dog would fall down as if dragged with a rope. 266Clearly in these cases the shadow, if not equivalent to the soul, is at least regarded as a living part of the man or the animal, so that injury done to the shadow is felt by the person or animal as if it were done to his body. Even the shadows of trees are supposed by the Caffres to be sensitive. Hence when a Caffre doctor seeks to pluck the leaves of a tree for medicinal purposes, he “takes care to run up quickly, and to avoid touching the shadow lest it should inform the tree of the danger, and so give the tree time to withdraw the medicinal properties from its extremities into the safety of the inaccessible trunk. The shadow of the tree is said to feel the touch of the man's feet.” 267