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

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СКАЧАТЬ disease, an abode has to be provided for the homeless devil, and this is done by making [pg 104] a wooden idol in human form of which the ejected demon takes possession.292

Effigies used to divert ghostly and other evil influence from people in China

      The Chinese of Amoy make great use of cheap effigies as means of diverting ghostly and other evil influence from people. These effigies are kept in stock and sold in the shops which purvey counterfeit paper money and other spurious wares for the use of simple-minded ghosts and gods, who accept them in all good faith instead of the genuine articles. Nothing could well be cruder than the puppets that are employed to relieve sufferers from the many ills which flesh is heir to. They are composed of two bamboo splinters fastened together crosswise with a piece of paper pasted on one side to represent a human body. Two other shreds of paper, supposed to stand for boots, distinguish the effigy of a man from the effigy of a woman. Armed with one of these “substitutes for a person,” as they are called, you may set fortune at defiance. If a member of your family, for example, is ailing, or has suffered any evil whatever, or even is merely threatened by misfortune, all that you have to do is to send for one of these puppets, pass it all over his body while you recite an appropriate spell, and then burn the puppet. The maleficent influence is thus elicited from the person of the sufferer and destroyed once for all. If your child has tumbled into one of those open sewers which yawn for the unwary in the streets, you need only fish him out, pass the puppet over his filthy little body, and say: “This contact (of the substitute) with the front of the body brings purity and prosperity, and the contact with the back gives power to eat till an old, old, old age; the contact with the left side establishes well-being for years and years, and the contact with the right side bestows longevity; happy fate, come! ill fate, be transferred to the substitute!” So saying you burn the substitute, by choice near the unsavoury spot where the accident happened; and if you are a careful man you will fetch a pail of water and wash the ashes away. Moreover, the child's head should be shaven quite clean; but if the sufferer was an adult, it is enough to lay bare with the razor [pg 105] a small patch on his scalp to let out the evil influence.293 In Corea effigies are employed on much the same principle for the purpose of prolonging life. On the fourteenth and the fifteenth day of the first month all men and women born under the Jen or “Man” star make certain straw images dressed in clothes and containing a number of the copper cash which form the currency of the country. Strictly speaking, there should be as many cash in the image as the person whom it represents has lived years; but the rule is not strictly observed. These images are placed on the path outside the house, and the poor people seize them and tear them up in order to get the cash which they contain. The destruction of the image is supposed to save the person represented from death for ten years. Accordingly the ceremony need only be performed once in ten years, though some people from excess of caution appear to observe it annually.294

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      1

      See above, vol. i. pp. 16 sqq.

      2

      Herodotus, ii. 46; L. Preller, Griechische Mythologie,⁴ i. (Berlin, 1894), pp. 745 sq.; K. Wernicke, in W. H. Roscher's Lexikon der griech. und röm. Mythologie, iii. 1407 sqq.

      3

      L. Preller, Griechische Mythologie,³ i. 600; W. Mannhardt, Antike Wald- und Feldkulte, p. 138.

      4

      W. Mannhardt, op. cit. p. 139.

      5

      Julius Pollux, iv. 118.

      6

      W. Ma

1

See above, vol. i. pp. 16 sqq.

2

Herodotus, ii. 46; L. Preller, Griechische Mythologie,⁴ i. (Berlin, 1894), pp. 745 sq.; K. Wernicke, in W. H. Roscher's Lexikon der griech. und röm. Mythologie, iii. 1407 sqq.

3

L. Preller, Griechische Mythologie,³ i. 600; W. Mannhardt, Antike Wald- und Feldkulte, p. 138.

4

W. Mannhardt, op. cit. p. 139.

5

Julius Pollux, iv. 118.

6

W. Mannhardt, op. cit. pp. 142 sq.

7

Ovid, Fasti, ii. 361, iii. 312, v. 101; id., Heroides, iv. 49.

8

Macrobius, Sat. i. 22. 3.

9

Homer, Hymn to Aphrodite, 262 sqq.

10

Pliny, Nat. Hist. xii. 3; Ovid, Metam. vi. 392; id., Fasti, iii. 303, 309; Gloss. Isid. Mart. Cap. ii. 167, cited by W. Mannhardt, Antike Wald- und Feldkulte, p. 113.

11

Pliny, Nat. Hist. xii. 3; Martianus Capella, ii. 167; Augustine, De civitate Dei, xv. 23; Aurelius Victor, Origo gentis Romanae, iv. 6.

12

Servius on Virgil, Ecl. vi. 14; Ovid, Metam. vi. 392 sq.; Martianus Capella, ii. 167.

13

W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, pp. 138 sq.; id., Antike Wald- und Feldkulte, p. 145.

14

Servius on Virgil, Georg. i. 10.

15

Above, vol. i. pp. 281 sqq.

16

Antike Wald- und Feldkulte, ch. iii. pp. 113-211. In the text I have allowed my former exposition of Mannhardt's theory as to ancient semi-goat-shaped spirits of vegetation to stand as before, but I have done so with hesitation, because the evidence adduced in its favour appears to me insufficient to permit us to speak with any confidence on the subject. Pan may have been, as W. H. Roscher and L. R. Farnell think, nothing more than a herdsman's god, the semi-human, semi-bestial representative of goats in particular. See W. H. Roscher's Lexikon der griech. und röm. Mythologie, СКАЧАТЬ