The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 03 of 12). Frazer James George
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СКАЧАТЬ it up in pieces of red, black, and yellow cloth, taking care to keep the yellow outside; and hang it from the centre of your mosquito curtain with parti-coloured thread. It will then become your victim's soul. To complete the transubstantiation, however, it is needful to switch the packet with a birch composed of seven leaf-ribs from a “green” coco-nut. Do this seven times at sunset, at midnight, and at sunrise, saying, “It is not earth that I switch, but the heart of So-and-so.” Then bury it in the middle of a path where your victim is sure to step over it, and he will unquestionably become distraught.236 Another way is to scrape the wood of the floor where your intended victim has been sitting, mix the scrapings with earth from his or her footprint, and knead the whole with wax from a deserted bees' comb into a likeness of him or her. Then fumigate the figure with incense and beckon to the soul every night for three nights successively by waving a cloth, while you recite the appropriate spell.237 In the following cases the charm takes effect without any contact whatever, whether direct or indirect, with the victim. When the moon, just risen, looks red above the eastern horizon, go out, and standing in the moonlight, with the big toe of your right foot on the big toe of your left, make a speaking-trumpet of your right hand and recite through it the following words:

      “OM. I loose my shaft, I loose it and the moon clouds over,

      I loose it, and the sun is extinguished.

      I loose it, and the stars burn dim.

      But it is not the sun, moon, and stars that I shoot at,

      It is the stalk of the heart of that child of the congregation, So-and-so.

      Cluck! cluck! soul of So-and-so, come and walk with me,

      Come and sit with me,

      Come and sleep and share my pillow.

      Cluck! cluck! soul.”

      Repeat this thrice and after every repetition blow through your hollow fist.238 Or you may catch the soul in your turban, thus. Go out on the night of the full moon and the two succeeding nights; sit down on an ant-hill facing the moon, burn incense, and recite the following incantation:

      “I bring you a betel leaf to chew,

      Dab the lime on to it, Prince Ferocious,

      For Somebody, Prince Distraction's daughter, to chew.

      Somebody at sunrise be distraught for love of me,

      Somebody at sunset be distraught for love of me.

      As you remember your parents, remember me;

      As you remember your house and house-ladder, remember me.

      When thunder rumbles, remember me;

      When wind whistles, remember me;

      When the heavens rain, remember me;

      When cocks crow, remember me;

      When the dial-bird tells its tales, remember me;

      When you look up at the sun, remember me;

      When you look up at the moon, remember me,

      For in that self-same moon I am there.

      Cluck! cluck! soul of Somebody come hither to me.

      I do not mean to let you have my soul,

      Let your soul come hither to mine.”

      Now wave the end of your turban towards the moon seven times each night. Go home and put it under your pillow, and if you want to wear it in the daytime, burn incense and say, “It is not a turban that I carry in my girdle, but the soul of Somebody.”239

      Athenian curse accompanied by the shaking of red cloths.

      Perhaps the magical ceremonies just described may help to explain a curious rite, of immemorial antiquity, which was performed on a very solemn occasion at Athens. On the eve of the sailing of the fleet for Syracuse, when all hearts beat high with hope, and visions of empire dazzled all eyes, consternation suddenly fell on the people one May morning when they rose and found that most of the images of Hermes in the city had been mysteriously mutilated in the night. The impious perpetrators of the sacrilege were unknown, but whoever they were, the priests and priestesses solemnly cursed them according to the ancient ritual, standing with their faces to the west and shaking red cloths up and down.240 Perhaps in these cloths they were catching the souls of those at whom their curses were levelled, just as we have seen that Fijian chiefs used to catch the souls of criminals in scarves and nail them to canoes.241

      Extracting a patient's soul from the stomach of his doctor.

      The Indians of the Nass River, in British Columbia, are impressed with a belief that a physician may swallow his patient's soul by mistake. A doctor who is believed to have done so is made by the other members of the faculty to stand over the patient, while one of them thrusts his fingers down the doctor's throat, another kneads him in the stomach with his knuckles, and a third slaps him on the back. If the soul is not in him after all, and if the same process has been repeated upon all the medical men without success, it is concluded that the soul must be in the head-doctor's box. A party of doctors, therefore, waits upon him at his house and requests him to produce his box. When he has done so and arranged its contents on a new mat, they take the votary of Aesculapius and hold him up by the heels with his head in a hole in the floor. In this position they wash his head, and “any water remaining from the ablution is taken and poured upon the sick man's head.”242 Among the Kwakiutl Indians of British Columbia it is forbidden to pass behind the back of a shaman while he is eating, lest the shaman should inadvertently swallow the soul of the passer-by. When that happens, both the shaman and the person whose soul he has swallowed fall down in a swoon. Blood flows from the shaman's mouth, because the soul is too large for him and is tearing his inside. Then the clan of the person whose soul is doing this mischief must assemble and sing the song of the shaman. In time the suffering sorcerer vomits out the soul, which he exhibits in the shape of a small bloody ball in the open palms of his hands. He restores it to its owner, who is lying prostrate on a mat, by throwing it at him and then blowing on his head. The man whose soul was swallowed has very naturally to pay for the damage he did to the shaman as well as for his own cure.243

      § 3. The Soul as a Shadow and a Reflection

      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.244 After 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.245 In the Babar Islands the demons get power over a man's soul by holding fast his shadow, or by striking and wounding it.246 Among the Tolindoos of central Celebes to tread on a man's shadow is an offence, because it is supposed to make the owner sick;247 СКАЧАТЬ

<p>236</p>

W. W. Skeat, Malay Magic (London, 1900), pp. 568 sq.

<p>237</p>

W. W. Skeat, op. cit. pp. 569 sq.

<p>238</p>

W. W. Skeat, op. cit. pp. 574 sq.

<p>239</p>

W. W. Skeat, op. cit. pp. 576 sq.

<p>240</p>

Lysias, Or. vi. 51, p. 51 ed. C. Scheibe. The passage was pointed out to me by my friend Mr. W. Wyse. As to the mutilation of the Hermae, see Thucydides, vi. 27-29, 60 sq.; Andocides, Or. i. 37 sqq.; Plutarch, Alcibiades, 18.

<p>241</p>

Above, p. 69.

<p>242</p>

J. B. McCullagh, in The Church Missionary Gleaner, xiv. No. 164 (August 1887), p. 91. The same account is copied from the “North Star” (Sitka, Alaska, December 1888) in Journal of American Folk-lore, ii. (1889) pp. 74 sq. Mr. McCullagh's account (which is closely followed in the text) of the latter part of the custom is not quite clear. It would seem that failing to find the soul in the head-doctor's box it occurs to them that he may have swallowed it, as the other doctors were at first supposed to have done. With a view of testing this hypothesis they hold him up by the heels to empty out the soul; and as the water with which his head is washed may possibly contain the missing soul, it is poured on the patient's head to restore the soul to him. We have already seen that the recovered soul is often conveyed into the sick person's head.

<p>243</p>

Fr. Boas in Eleventh Report on the North-Western Tribes of Canada, p. 571 (Report of the British Association for 1896). For other examples of the recapture or recovery of lost, stolen, and strayed souls, in addition to those which have been cited in the preceding pages, see J. N. Vosmaer, Korte Beschrijving van het Zuid-oostelijk Schiereiland van Celebes, pp. 119-123 (this work, of which I possess a copy, forms part of a Dutch journal which I have not identified; it is dated Batavia, 1835); J. G. F. Riedel, “De Topantunuasu of oorspronkelijke volksstammen van Central Selebes,” Bijdragen tot de Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, xxxv. (1886) p. 93; J. B. Neumann, “Het Pane- en Bilastroom-gebeid,” Tijdschrift van het Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig Genootschap, Tweede Serie, dl. iii., Afdeeling, meer uitgebreide artikelen, No. 2 (1886), pp. 300 sq.; J. L. van der Toorn, “Het animisme bei den Minangkabauer,” Bijdragen tot de Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, xxxix. (1890) pp. 51 sq.; H. Ris, “De onderafdeeling Klein Mandailing Oeloe en Pahantan,” Bijdragen tot de Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, xlvi. (1896) p. 529; C. Snouck Hurgronje, De Atjéhers (Batavia and Leyden, 1893-4), i. 426 sq.; W. W. Skeat, Malay Magic, pp. 49-51, 452-455, 570 sqq.; Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxiv. (1895) pp. 128, 287; Chimkievitch, “Chez les Bouriates de l'Amoor,” Tour du monde, N.S. iii. (1897) pp. 622 sq.; Father Ambrosoli, “Notice sur l'île de Rook,” Annales de la Propagation de la Foi, xxvii. (1855) p. 364; A. Bastian, Die Völker des östlichen Asien, ii. 388, iii. 236; id., Völkerstämme am Brahmaputra, p. 23; id., “Hügelstämme Assam's,” Verhandlungen der Berlin. Gesell. für Anthropol., Ethnol. und Urgeschichte, 1881, p. 156; Shway Yoe, The Burman, i. 283 sq., ii. 101 sq.; G. M. Sproat, Scenes and Studies of Savage Life, p. 214; J. Doolittle, Social Life of the Chinese, pp. 110 sq. (ed. Paxton Hood); T. Williams, Fiji and the Fijians,2 i. 242; E. B. Cross, “On the Karens,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, iv. (1854) pp. 309 sq.; A. W. Howitt, “On some Australian Beliefs,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xiii. (1884) pp. 187 sq.; id., “On Australian Medicine Men,” Journ. Anthrop. Inst. xvi. (1887) p. 41; E. P. Houghton, “On the Land Dayaks of Upper Sarawak,” Memoirs of the Anthropological Society of London, iii. (1870) pp. 196 sq.; L. Dahle, “Sikidy and Vintana,” Antananarivo Annual and Madagascar Annual, xi. (1887) pp. 320 sq.; C. Leemius, De Lapponibus Finmarchiae eorumque lingua, vita et religione pristina commentatio (Copenhagen, 1767), pp. 416 sq.; A. E. Jenks, The Bontoc Igorot (Manilla, 1905), pp. 199 sq.; C. G. Seligmann, The Melanesians of British New Guinea (Cambridge, 1910), pp. 185 sq. My friend W. Robertson Smith suggested to me that the practice of hunting souls, which is denounced in Ezekiel xiii. 17 sqq., may have been akin to those described in the text.

<p>244</p>

J. G. F. Riedel, De sluik- en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua, p. 440.

<p>245</p>

A. Bastian, Die Völker des östlichen Asien, v. 455.

<p>246</p>

J. G. F. Riedel, op. cit. p. 340.

<p>247</p>

N. Adriani en A. C. Kruijt, “Van Posso naar Parigi, Sigi en Lindoe,” Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap, xlii. (1898) p. 511; compare A. C. Kruijt, ib. xliv. (1900) p. 247.