Pagan and Christian creeds Part 6

(1) See Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism, by Thomas Inman (Trubner, 1874), p. 55.

(2) Zoological Mythology, vol. ii, pp. 410 sq.

Thus we see the natural-magic tendency of the human mind a.s.serting itself. To some of us indeed this tendency is even greater in the case of the Snake than in that of the Tree. W. H. Hudson, in Far Away and Long Ago, speaks of "that sense of something supernatural in the serpent, which appears to have been universal among peoples in a primitive state of culture, and still survives in some barbarous or semi-barbarous countries." The fascination of the Snake--the fascination of its mysteriously gliding movement, of its vivid energy, its glittering eye, its intensity of life, combined with its fatal dart of Death--is a thing felt even more by women than by men--and for a reason (from what we have already said) not far to seek. It was the Woman who in the story of the Fall was the first to listen to its suggestions.

No wonder that, as Professor Murray says, (1) the Greeks worshiped a gigantic snake (Meilichios) the lord of Death and Life, with ceremonies of appeas.e.m.e.nt, and sacrifices, long before they arrived at the worship of Zeus and the Olympian G.o.ds.

(1) Four Stages of Greek Religion, p. 29.

Or let us take the example of an Ear of Corn. Some people wonder--hearing nowadays that the folk of old used to worship a Corn-spirit or Corn-G.o.d--wonder that any human beings could have been so foolish. But probably the good people who wonder thus have never REALLY LOOKED (with their town-dazed eyes) at a growing spike of wheat. (1) Of all the wonderful things in Nature I hardly know any that thrills one more with a sense of wizardry than just this very thing--to observe, each year, this disclosure of the Ear within the Blade--first a swelling of the sheath, then a transparency and a whitey-green face within a hooded shroud, and then the perfect spike of grain disengaging itself and spiring upward towards the sky--"the resurrection of the wheat with pale visage appearing out of the ground."

(1) Even the thrice-learned Dr. Famell quotes apparently with approval the scornful words of Hippolytus, who (he says) "speaks of the Athenians imitating people at the Eleusinian mysteries and showing to the epoptae (initiates) that great and marvelous mystery of perfect revelation--in solemn silence--a CUT CORNSTALK ([gr teqerismenon] [gr stacon])."--Cults of the Greek States, vol. iii, p. 182.

If this spectacle amazes one to-day, what emotions must it not have aroused in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the earlier folk, whose outlook on the world was so much more direct than ours--more 'animistic' if you like! What wonderment, what grat.i.tude, what deliverance from fear (of starvation), what certainty that this being who had been ruthlessly cut down and sacrificed last year for human food had indeed arisen again as a savior of men, what readiness to make some human sacrifice in return, both as an acknowledgment of the debt, and as a gift of something which would no doubt be graciously accepted!--(for was it not well known that where blood had been spilt on the ground the future crop was so much more generous?)--what readiness to adopt some magic ritual likely to propitiate the unseen power--even though the outline and form of the latter were vague and uncertain in the extreme! Dr. Frazer, speaking of the Egyptian Osiris as one out of many corn-G.o.ds of the above character, says (1): "The primitive conception of him as the corn-G.o.d comes clearly out in the festival of his death and resurrection, which was celebrated the month of Athyr. That festival appears to have been essentially a festival of sowing, which properly fell at the time when the husbandman actually committed the seed to the earth. On that occasion an effigy of the corn-G.o.d, moulded of earth and corn, was buried with funeral rites in the ground in order that, dying there, he might come to life again with the new crops. The ceremony was in fact a charm to ensure the growth of the corn by sympathetic magic, and we may conjecture that as such it was practised in a simple form by every Egyptian farmer on his fields long before it was adopted and transfigured by the priests in the stately ritual of the temple." (2)

(1) The Golden Bough, iv, p. 330.

(2) See ch. xv.

The magic in this case was of a gentle description; the clay image of Osiris sprouting all over with the young green blade was pathetically poetic; but, as has been suggested, bloodthirsty ceremonies were also common enough. Human sacrifices, it is said, had at one time been offered at the grave of Osiris. We bear that the Indians in Ecuador used to sacrifice men's hearts and pour out human blood on their fields when they sowed them; the p.a.w.nee Indians used a human victim the same, allowing his blood to drop on the seed-corn. It is said that in Mexico girls were sacrificed, and that the Mexicans would sometimes GRIND their (male) victim, like corn, between two stones. ("I'll grind his bones to make me bread.") Among the Khonds of East India--who were particularly given to this kind of ritual--the very TEARS of the sufferer were an incitement to more cruelties, for tears of course were magic for Rain.

(1)

(1) The Golden Bough, vol. vii, "The Corn-Spirit," pp. 236 sq.

And so on. We have referred to the Bull many times, both in his astronomical aspect as pioneer of the Spring-Sun, and in his more direct role as plougher of the fields, and provider of food from his own body.

"The tremendous mana of the wild bull," says Gilbert Murray, "occupies almost half the stage of pre-Olympic ritual." (1) Even to us there is something mesmeric and overwhelming in the sense of this animal's glory of strength and fury and s.e.xual power. No wonder the primitives worshiped him, or that they devised rituals which should convey his power and vitality by mere contact, or that in sacramental feasts they ate his flesh and drank his blood as a magic symbol and means of salvation.

(1) Four Stages, p. 34.

VI. MAGICIANS, KINGS AND G.o.dS

It is perhaps necessary, at the commencement of this chapter, to say a few more words about the nature and origin of the belief in Magic.

Magic represented on one side, and clearly enough, the beginnings of Religion--i.e. the instinctive sense of Man's inner continuity with the world around him, TAKING SHAPE: a fanciful shape it is true, but with very real reaction on his practical life and feelings. (1) On the other side it represented the beginnings of Science. It was his first attempt not merely to FEEL but to UNDERSTAND the mystery of things.

(1) For an excellent account of the relation of Magic to Religion see W. McDougall, Social Psychology (1908), pp. 317-320.

Inevitably these first efforts to understand were very puerile, very superficial. As E. B. Tylor says (1) of primitive folk in general, "they mistook an imaginary for a real connection." And he instances the case of the inhabitants of the City of Ephesus, who laid down a rope, seven furlongs in length, from the City to the temple of Artemis, in order to place the former under the protection of the latter! WE should lay down a telephone wire, and consider that we established a much more efficient connection; but in the beginning, and quite naturally, men, like children, rely on surface a.s.sociations. Among the Dyaks of Borneo (2) when the men are away fighting, the WOMEN must use a sort of telepathic magic in order to safeguard them--that is, they must themselves rise early and keep awake all day (lest darkness and sleep should give advantage to the enemy); they must not OIL their hair (lest their husbands should make any SLIPS); they must eat sparingly and put aside rice at every meal (so that the men may not want for food). And so on.

Similar superst.i.tions are common. But they gradually lead to a little thought, and then to a little more, and so to the discovery of actual and provable influences. Perhaps one day the cord connecting the temple with Ephesus was drawn TIGHT and it was found that messages could be, by tapping, transmitted along it. That way lay the discovery of a fact. In an age which worshiped fertility, whether in mankind or animals, TWINS were ever counted especially blest, and were credited with a magic power. (The Constellation of the Twins was thought peculiarly lucky.) Perhaps after a time it was discovered that twins sometimes run in families, and in such cases really do bring fertility with them. In cattle it is known nowadays that there are more twins of the female s.e.x than of the male s.e.x. (3)

(1) Primitive Culture, vol. i, p. 106.

(2) See The Golden Bough, i, 127.

(3) See Evolution of s.e.x, by Geddes and Thomson (1901), p. 41, note.

Observations of this kind were naturally made by the ablest members of the tribe--who were in all probability the medicine-men and wizards--and brought in consequence power into their hands. The road to power in fact--and especially was this the case in societies which had not yet developed wealth and property--lay through Magic. As far as magic represented early superst.i.tion land religion it laid hold of the HEARTS of men--their hopes and fears; as far as it represented science and the beginnings of actual knowledge, it inspired their minds with a sense of power, and gave form to their lives and customs. We have no reason to suppose that the early magicians and medicine-men were peculiarly wicked or bent on mere self-aggrandizement--any more than we have to think the same of the average country vicar or country doctor of to-day. They were merely men a trifle wiser or more instructed than their flocks.

But though probably in most cases their original intentions were decent enough, they were not proof against the temptations which the possession of power always brings, and as time went on they became liable to trade more and more upon this power for their own advancement. In the matter of Religion the history of the Christian priesthood through the centuries shows sufficiently to what misuse such power can be put; and in the matter of Science it is a warning to us of the dangers attending the formation of a scientific priesthood, such as we see growing up around us to-day. In both cases--whether Science or Religion--vanity, personal ambition, l.u.s.t of domination and a hundred other vices, unless corrected by a real devotion to the public good, may easily bring as many evils in their train as those they profess to cure.

The Medicine-man, or Wizard, or Magician, or Priest, slowly but necessarily gathered power into his hands, and there is much evidence to show that in the case of many tribes at any rate, it was HE who became ultimate chief and leader and laid the foundations of Kingship. The Basileus was always a sacred personality, and often united in himself as head of the clan the offices of chief in warfare and leader in priestly rites--like Agamemnon in Homer, or Saul or David in the Bible. As a magician he had influence over the fertility of the earth and, like the blameless king in the Odyssey, under his sway

"the dark earth beareth in season Barley and wheat, and the trees are laden with fruitage, and alway Yean unfailing the flocks, and the sea gives fish in abundance." (1)

(1) Odyssey xix, 109 sq. Translation by H. B. Cotterill.

As a magician too he was trusted for success in warfare; and Schoolcraft, in a pa.s.sage quoted by Andrew Lang, (1) says of the Dacotah Indians "the war-chief who leads the party to war is always one of these medicine-men." This connection, however, by which the magician is transformed into the king has been abundantly studied, and need not be further dwelt upon here.

And what of the transformation of the king into a G.o.d--or of the Magician or Priest directly into the same? Perhaps in order to appreciate this, one must make a further digression.

For the early peoples there were, as it would appear, two main objects in life: (1) to promote fertility in cattle and crops, for food; and (2) to placate or ward off Death; and it seemed very obvious--even before any distinct figures of G.o.ds, or any idea of prayer, had arisen--to attain these objects by magic ritual. The rites of Baptism, of Initiation (or Confirmation) and the many ceremonies of a Second Birth, which we a.s.sociate with fully-formed religions, did belong also to the age of Magic; and they all implied a belief in some kind of re-incarnation--in a life going forward continually and being renewed in birth again and again. It is curious that we find such a belief among the lowest savages even to-day. Dr. Frazer, speaking of the Central Australian tribes, says the belief is firmly rooted among them "that the human soul undergoes an endless series of re-incarnations--the living men and women of one generation being nothing but the spirits of their ancestors come to life again, and destined themselves to be reborn in the persons of their descendants. During the interval between two re-incarnations the souls live in their nanja spots, or local totem-centres, which are always natural objects such as trees or rocks.

Each totem-clan has a number of such totem-centres scattered over the country. There the souls of the dead men and women of the totem, but no others, congregate, and are born again in human form when a favorable opportunity presents itself." (2)

(1) Myth, Ritual and Religion, vol. i, p. 113.

(2) The Golden Bough, vol. i, p. 96.

And what the early people believed of the human spirit, they believed of the corn-spirits and the tree and vegetation spirits also. At the great Spring-ritual among the primitive Greeks "the tribe and the growing earth were renovated together: the earth arises afresh from her dead seeds, the tribe from its dead ancestors." And the whole process projects itself in the idea of a spirit of the year, who "in the first stage is living, then dies with each year, and thirdly rises again from the dead, raising the whole dead world with him. The Greeks called him in this stage 'The Third One' (Tritos Soter) or 'the Saviour'; and the renovation ceremonies were accompanied by a casting-off of the old year, the old garments, and everything that is polluted by the infection of death." (1) Thus the multiplication of the crops and the renovation of the tribe, and at the same time the evasion and placation of death, were all a.s.sured by similar rites and befitting ceremonial magic. (2)

(1) Gilbert Murray, Four Stages, p. 46.

(2) It is interesting to find, with regard to the renovation of the tribe, that among the Central Australians the foreskins or male members of those who died were deposited in the above-mentioned nanja spots--the idea evidently being that like the seeds of the corn the seeds of the human crop must be carefully and ceremonially preserved for their re-incarnation.

In all these cases, and many others that I have not mentioned--of the magical worship of Bulls and Bears and Rams and Cats and Emus and Kangaroos, of Trees and Snakes, of Sun and Moon and Stars, and the spirit of the Corn in its yearly and miraculous resurrection out of the ground--there is still the same idea or moving inspiration, the sense mentioned in the foregoing chapter, the feeling (hardly yet conscious of its own meaning) of intimate relationship and unity with all this outer world, the instinctive conviction that the world can be swayed by the spirit of Man, if the man can only find the right ritual, the right word, the right spell, wherewith to move it. An aura of emotion surrounded everything--of terror, of tabu, of fascination, of desire.

The world, to these people, was transparent with presences related to themselves; and though hunger and s.e.x may have been the dominant and overwhelmingly practical needs of their life, yet their outlook on the world was essentially poetic and imaginative.

Moreover it will be seen that in this age of magic and the belief in spirits, though there was an intense sense of every thing being alive, the G.o.ds, in the more modern sense of the world, hardly existed (1)--that is, there was no very clear vision, to these people, of supra-mundane beings, sitting apart and ordaining the affairs of earth, as it were from a distance. Doubtless this conception was slowly evolving, but it was only incipient. For the time being--though there might be orders and degrees of spirits (and of G.o.ds)--every such being was only conceived of, and could only be conceived of, as actually a part of Nature, dwelling in and interlaced with some phenomenon of Earth and Sky, and having no separate existence.

(1) For a discussion of the evolution of RELIGION out of MAGIC, see Westermarck's Origin of Moral Ideas, ch. 47.

How was it then, it will be asked, that the belief in separate and separable G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses--each with his or her well-marked outline and character and function, like the divinities of Greece, or of India, or of the Egyptian or Christian religions, ultimately arose? To this question Jane Harrison (in her Themis and other books) gives an ingenious answer, which as it chimes in with my own speculations (in the Art of Creation and elsewhere) I am inclined to adopt. It is that the figures of the supranatural G.o.ds arose from a process in the human mind similar to that which the photographer adopts when by photographing a number of faces on the same plate, and so superposing their images on one another, he produces a so-called "composite" photograph or image.

Thus, in the photographic sphere, the portraits of a lot of members of the same family superposed upon one another may produce a composite image or ideal of that family type, or the portraits of a number of Aztecs or of a number of Apache Indians the ideals respectively of the Aztec or of the Apache types. And so in the mental sphere of each member of a tribe the many images of the well-known Warriors or Priests or wise and gracious Women of that tribe did inevitably combine at last to composite figures of G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses--on whom the enthusiasm and adoration of the tribe was concentrated. (1) Miss Harrison has ingeniously suggested how the leading figures in the magic rituals of the past--being the figures on which all eyes would be concentrated; and whose importance would be imprinted on every mind--lent themselves to this process. The suffering Victim, bound and scourged and crucified, recurring year after year as the centre-figure of a thousand ritual processions, would at last be dramatized and idealized in the great race-consciousness into the form of a Suffering G.o.d--a Jesus Christ or a Dionysus or Osiris--dismembered or crucified for the salvation of mankind. The Priest or Medicine-Man--or rather the succession of Priests or Medicine-Men--whose figures would recur again and again as leaders and ordainers of the ceremonies, would be glorified at last into the composite-image of a G.o.d in whom were concentrated all magic powers.

"Recent researches," says Gilbert Murray, "have shown us in abundance the early Greek medicine-chiefs making thunder and lightning and rain."

Here is the germ of a Zeus or a Jupiter. The particular medicine-man may fail; that does not so much matter; he is only the individual representative of the glorified and composite being who exists in the mind of the tribe (just as a present-day King may be unworthy, but is surrounded all the same by the agelong glamour of Royalty). "The real [gr qeos], tremendous, infallible, is somewhere far away, hidden in clouds perhaps, on the summit of some inaccessible mountain. If the mountain is once climbed the G.o.d will move to the upper sky. The medicine-chief meanwhile stays on earth, still influential. He has some connection with the great G.o.d more intimate than that of other men... he knows the rules for approaching him and making prayers to him." (2) Thus did the Medicine-man, or Priest, or Magician (for these are but three names for one figure) represent one step in the evolution of the G.o.d.

(1) See The Art of Creation, ch. viii, "The G.o.ds as Apparitions of the Race-Life."