emblems of their totem animal before going on the war-path, {177} and
express the purpose of the dressing with a sententious phrase: “My
little grandfather is always dangerous when he makes an
attempt.”[177.1] Such an utterance, considered formally, is not a
prayer but a statement about the power of the buffalo, “the little
grandfather”; for it is an article of faith in the magic creed that
the supernatural force, which the spell aims at setting in operation,
can be made to work by definite statements that it is working; these
are suggestive assurances that increase one’s own confidence; and the
Sioux formula is of such a nature; only the coaxing and endearing
phrase of kinship seems to imply a half entreaty as well. We discern
more clearly the rudiments of a prayer in the words addressed by the
Santee Indians to the buffalo when they have offered him a feast:
“Grandfather, venerable man, thy children have made this feast for
you: may the food thus taken cause them to live {178} and bring them
good fortune.”[178.1] The account of the Sioux religion preserves a
quaint form of words which are used for the riddance of the ghost, to
despatch the soul of the deceased to the home of the dead: “You are
going to the animals, you are going to your ancestors, you came hither
from the animals and you are going back thither: do not face this way
again: when you go, continue walking.”[178.2] The tone of the words
is kind and considerate, but authoritative rather than supplicatory,
and unlike the formula which the same Indians are reported to use when
praying to their ancestors for good weather or good hunting, “Spirits
of the dead, have mercy on us.”[178.3] Certain prayers used
habitually by the Todas of the Nalgiri hills for the thriving of the
dairy and the buffalo herd have recently been published,[178.4] and
as the formulæ are all {179} in the optative mood--“May it be well
for the buffaloes, may there be no destroyer, etc.,” and there is an
appeal to divine personages or powers--“for the sake of such or such a
god may this happen”--we may class them as prayers; but the appeal is
very faint and the formulæ seem to be used as if they possessed a
self-dependent efficacy. More interesting and fervent is the address
to the sun, proffered by a solitary hunter of the half-christianised
Kekchi tribe of Indians:[179.1] his object is to secure game and food
in the wilderness both for himself and as an oblation to the god; but
in the very long and impassioned utterance, with its many repetitions,
there is very little direct entreaty: the Indian contents himself with
definite and reassuring statements concerning the omnipresence of the
deity and the ease with which the latter can execute his will: “It
will give you no trouble to give me all kind of game”; and a moving
{180} appeal is made on the ground of kinship: “Thou art my father:
who is my mother, who is my father? Only thou, O God.”
We may regard these utterances of the hunter not indeed as spells, for
his attitude is most reverent and loving, but as potent statement
effecting the purpose of prayer. Nor need we see Christian influence
in the striking phrase last quoted, though of course this is possible;
such endearing address is common both in the lower and higher
liturgies: the Egyptian appealed to Isis in similar terms[180.1]--“Oh
my father, my brother, my mother Isis,” the Babylonian addressed Bel
as father and mother,[180.2] and a Vedic hymn contains the phrase,
“Thou, oh Agni, art our father, we are thy kinsmen.”[180.3] Such
appeals, suggested by the affection between kinsmen {181} and the idea
of the kinship of man with God, belong to the alphabet of pure prayer.
Of still more value for the light it throws on the attitude of the
Indian’s mind to the powers of the unseen world, is the so-called
prayer of a Navajo Shaman belonging to the district of Arizona,
recently published in the _American Anthropologist_;[181.1] and to
understand it the circumstances must be briefly stated. The Shaman had
been telling the American inquirer the story of his tribe’s descent
through the lower world and their re-emergence: after the narrative he
fears that speaking about the lower regions may have caused his own
spiritual or astral part to have left his body and departed thither;
and he therefore proceeds to recite a long so-called prayer intended
to deliver his soul from the witchcraft that may be detaining it
below. We should not strictly call it a prayer at all, but a narrative
in the indicative mood stating that the war-gods of the tribe are
actually doing what he specially {182} wants them to do, namely, to go
down and rescue his soul from the woman-chieftain, “the underground
witch.” Every step of their way there and back is carefully recounted
several times over, so that they cannot go wrong; and when they are
supposed to have brought back his soul, the recital ends with the
joyful refrain, “The world before me is restored in beauty: my voice
is restored in beauty,” each phrase repeated five times. It is really
a spell-narrative about the gods, having the same effect as prayer,
and is a twofold illustration of the primitive idea that talking about
a thing makes it happen; an idea not wholly extinct among ourselves,
and possibly underlying some of the liturgies of higher religions.
For the rest, savages often pray very much as the civilised man, and
accompany some of their purifications and medicine-magic with real
prayers to higher gods to give them efficacy: for instance, the
African doctor administering the medicine shown him by {183} the
fetich holds it first up to heaven and prays, “Father Heaven, bless
this medicine that I now give.”[183.1] But I have not been able to
find any example of a savage prayer for moral or spiritual blessings.
An interesting feature is, however, observable in a verbose and very
exacting prayer made by the Khonds of Orissa to the earth-goddess;
after particularising very carefully their material wants, they
conclude with the words, “We are ignorant of what it is good to ask
for. You know what is good for us, give it us.”[183.2] This appears
to be a unique savage version of the great phrase, “Thy will be done.”
Turning now to the liturgies of the more advanced peoples,[183.3] we
may note briefly at the {184} outset one feature that is found in most
of them if not common to all; namely, the idea that the prayer gains
potency from the solemn utterance of the true divine name. The
phenomenon has been examined by recent writers on comparative
religion, especially by Giesebrecht in his treatise on _Die
Alt-testamentliche Schätzung des Gottesnamens_.[184.1] In primitive
psychology, the name is part of the personality, and the soul or power
of the individual inheres in it: therefore he who has the name of the
person, whether human, superhuman, or divine, can exercise a certain
control over him by means of its magical application. Thus in the
appeal to the god Ukko in the Kalevala, “Ukko, oh thou god in heaven,
Ukko come, we call upon thee, Ukko come, we need thee sorely,” there
is virtue in the threefold repetition of the name, and the passage is
part of an address which is called “magic words.” Evidence from {185}
Teutonic paganism, so far as I know, is lacking, although the idea has
left its clear imprint on the human saga. Its influence is strongest
and its operation most interesting in the liturgies of the
Mediterranean and of India. In old Latium, it seems, the pontifices
endeavoured to conceal the true names of the gods, lest they might be
wrongly used by unauthorised persons[185.1] or lest the enemy should
get the knowledge of them and therewith the power to draw the
divinities away. We may thus understand the often misinterpreted
statement in Herodotus, that the Pelasgian deities were nameless; and
the Greeks themselves must have been familiar with the ritual
precaution of keeping secret the divine name, as we may gather from
the phrase in the Euripidean fragment[185.2] about the enlightened
man “who knows the silent names of the gods”: it is curious to find
exactly the same expression in a Vedic hymn,[185.3] {186} in which
the sacrificial post, or tree to which the sacrifices were attached,
is thus addressed: “Where thou knowest, oh tree, the sacred names of
the gods, to that place make the offerings go.” It is possible that
the same superstition may have been the original cause of the custom
that has sometimes been observed of silent or inaudible prayer: the
formulæ with the divine name attached to them being of such potency
that they must be concealed.
The belief that the name belongs to the essence of the personality
explains the curious formula in the Umbrian prayer preserved in the
Tabulæ Iguvinæ, where the god Grabovius is implored to be propitious
to the “Arx Fisia” and to “the name of the Arx Fisia,” as if the name
of the city was a living and independent entity.
In the Greek liturgies we note the anxious care with which particular
qualifying epithets were selected and attached to the personal name of
the divinity, so as to make clear what was the precise operation of
divine {187} favour which the prayer aimed at evoking. This explains
why so many divinities, some of whom were scarcely known outside a
narrow area, were invoked as πολυώνυμε, “thou god of many names,” all
possible titles of power being summed up in one word. Certain passages
in the poets become intelligible only in the light of this idea: such
as the well-known phrase in the chorus of the _Agamemnon_ of
Æschylus:[187.1] “Zeus, whosoever the god is, if this name of Zeus is
dear to him, by this name I now appeal to him.” The thought and the
words of the Vedic poet are often the same as the Greek: Agni is
πολυώνυμος: “Agni, many are the names of thee the Immortal one”; and
again, “The father adoring gives many names to thee, oh Agni, if thou
shouldest take pleasure therein.”[187.2]
But it is in Egypt, the land of magic, where the idea of the potency
of the divine name {188} assumes dimensions that are truly gigantic.
In an early metaphysical theory of the origin of things, which in its
harmonious self-contradiction reaches quite to the level of Hegelian
philosophy, the universe is said to have come into being, and the
first god himself effects his own creation by the utterance of his own
portentous name:[188.1] in the beginning was the name. It is said of
the great god Ra that “his names are manifold and unknown, even the
gods know them not.” Naturally, therefore, the goddess Isis was
desirous of knowing his real name, and having discovered it by a ruse,
she became mistress over him and all gods.[188.2] In certain Egyptian
papyri containing Abraxas prayers, we find the prayer sometimes
coupled with the reminder that the petitioner knows the divine mystic
name;[188.3] thus equipped, the prayer is more than a mere humble
entreaty.
{189}
Was it from Egypt that the early Israelites derived the same mystic
illusion concerning the divine name, which to some of the scholars of
the last generation appeared to be a faith peculiar to the chosen
people? At least we are now enabled, by the recent exposition of the
facts, to understand the inner force of such prayers as the Psalmist’s
“Save me, oh God, by thy name and judge me by thy strength”:[189.1]
of Jahvé’s warning to his people in the Exodus to obey the angel whom
he sends them, “Obey his voice… for my Name is in him:”[189.2] of the
oath taken by those initiated into the Essenian sect not to reveal the
names of the angels:[189.3] of expressions in the New Testament
concerning the casting out of devils and the healing of the sick in
the name of Jesus: finally, of the significant baptismal phrase, “to
baptize into the name of Christ,”[189.4] which reveals the name as a
religious potency into which as into a {190} spiritual atmosphere the
adult catechumen or the initiated infant is brought. And these facts
of old-world religion and religious logic cast a new light on the
name-formulæ which close most of the prayers of the Christian Church,
and which are words of power to speed the prayer home; and though the
modern consciousness may often be unaware of this mystic function of
theirs, we may believe that it was more clearly recognised in the
early days of Christianity, for in the apocryphal acts of St John we
find a long list of mystical names and titles attached to Christ
giving to the prayer much of the tone of an enchantment.[190.1]
Connected as it seems with this superstition about names is the belief
that, in order to gain complete power over a human or divine
personality, it is necessary to know their origin and to express what
one knows about them in the charm: thus in the Kalevala the young
magician is taught the origin {191} of things in order that he may
know the proper enchantment against them, and a long account of the
origin of iron, regarded as a demoniac substance, occurs in the
word-magic used to cure the wound it inflicted. Hence we may account
for the descriptive or, so to speak, biographical element in charms
that are on the borderland of prayer. The exorciser of evil dreams in
the Atharva-Veda prays or sings thus: “We know, oh sleep, thy birth;
thou art the son of the divine women-folk, the instrument of Death.
Thou art the ender, thou art Death. Thus do we know thee, oh sleep: do
thou, oh sleep, protect us from evil dreams.”[191.1] And in the
worship of Agni the belief is expressed that “the prayers fill thee
with power and strengthen thee,” and this is at once followed by an
account of his nature and origin.[191.2] Is it then too far-fetched
to trace the survival of this old-world {192} thought, rooted as it is
in the magic of the word and the statement, in the prominence given to
the dogmatic biographical statement in our own liturgy? We regard it
as a confession of faith: it may also be regarded as an expression of
the worshipper’s knowledge of the divine personality, whereby he
raises himself into communion with it and thus gains power for his
prayer.[192.1]
Considering now in a more general survey the liturgies of the nations
that have attained culture, we might begin with our own fathers. But
so little that touches the inner life of their pre-Christian religion
has been preserved, that probably not much material for our present
purpose is to be discovered from the records. We know that they were
given to the employment of the rune or the spell, the rival or the
parent of prayer; and one of these, used by Odin to heal the sprained
foot of Baldur’s foal, is perhaps {193} the only surviving fragment of
Indo-Germanic poetry.[193.1] Odin sings, “Bone to bone, blood to
blood, limb to limb, as though they were glued together”; in a later
Norwegian, and also in a Scottish version, it is Christ who heals the
foal with the same magic words, strengthened however by the formula,
“Heal in the Holy Ghost’s name.” And this useful medicine-charm was
not forgotten by the Aryan Indians, for we find the words in the
Atharva-Veda, “Fit together, hair with hair, fit together, skin with
skin: thy blood, thy bone shall grow.”[193.2] Neither god nor ghost
was needed to help out the force of such incantations. But probably
some time before Christianity prayer had come to prevail over spell in
the Teutonic North, for there are traces there of a certain {194}
antagonism growing between magic and religion, which led to the
condemnation of certain forms of magic.[194.1]
An interesting question arises about a prayer-charm used by the early
English against sterility of the fields: “Hail be thou, Earth, Mother
of Men, wax fertile in the embrace of God, fulfilled with fruit for
the use of man.”[194.2] This poetic utterance implies a veritable
ἱερὸς γάμος, or holy marriage of earth and heaven in the Greek sense;
and reminds us vividly of the spell-formula, used in the Eleusinian
Mysteries and descending from the period when the purpose of these was
mainly agricultural, Υέ Κύε, “Rain and Conceive,” which was uttered by
the mystes, who folded his arms and glanced up to the sky at the first
word and down to the earth at the second: a spell-prayer for fertility
and human increase. It is probably then correct {195} to call this
phrase of our ancestors, which is the only surviving fragment, so far
as I am aware, of their pre-Christian liturgy, a spell-prayer that was
efficacious by way of suggestion rather than of entreaty.
Of the same ambiguous character was the old Roman chant of the priests
of Mars, “Enos Lases juvate,” “Help us, O spirits of our ancestors,”
repeated with the iteration common in enchantments and accompanied
with dancing and with the utterance of the word “triumpe.” From the
higher point of view the Roman prayers that have come down to us are
barren and dull; the well-known liturgical archive containing Rome’s
address to Jupiter in the critical days of the Hannibalic war is a
wary and cleverly drawn legal document, intended to bind the god as
well as the State.[195.1] In fact the spiritual side of the old Roman
character has left no trace of itself in any ritual or liturgy of
which we have record. The prayer of {196} Cato’s that has been
preserved is merely materialistic.[196.1]
We expect much more from Greece, and in some measure we are not
disappointed. Spell-ritual was no doubt always much in vogue,
especially for the purposes of agriculture and purification: we hear
of certain “magicians” or μάγοι of Cleonae who averted hailstorms with
incantations and the shedding of their own blood.[196.2] And a solemn
part of the State liturgy in Greece was a commination service, which
pronounced a curse on certain offences against the State. The
religious curse is an interesting phenomenon of which it is not easy
to give briefly a full and exact anthropological account; it is taken
up by the higher religions, but it by no means originated in them,
belonging to the sphere of spell rather than of prayer, and working
out its effect by means of magic suggestion. Even the {197} Jewish
service, which we still use on Ash Wednesday, employs curse-formulæ
in which there is no immediate reference to God, and they may have
been regarded originally as having an independent efficacy. This was
certainly the case in Greece, for the curse was itself personified as
an independent, personal power; and the Erinyes themselves, in some
degree the personal embodiments of the curse, work their effect on the
victim by singing a spell-song, according to Æschylus, which binds
his soul and withers him away.[197.1] And the many private
“devotiones” or “diræ” that have come down to us from Greek
antiquity, written usually on leaden tablets and consecrating the
enemy to the powers of the lower world, employ indeed an appeal to
these powers that may be interpreted as prayer, but their essential
quality is magical, and they certainly were supposed to operate as
spells against the individual, while even the divinities to whom they
are addressed appear to be constrained {198} rather than entreated. In
one interesting example of the first century A.D., found in
Ægina,[198.1] of Hellenic-Christian or possibly Judaic origin, the
curse takes on the form of a prayer for righteous vengeance--“I call
on the Highest God, the Lord of all spirits and of all flesh, before
whom every soul this day is humbled with supplication, against those
who have treacherously slain or poisoned the unfortunate Heracleia.”
In the Greek legal procedure a curse was sometimes uttered against
oneself if one forswore oneself or if one was guilty of the charge;
and here as in similar cases in Christian jurisprudence the curse is
an invocation of the high god who will punish perjury; but we find it
similarly employed in the animistic stage of religion, by the African
for instance, who takes an oath by his fetich,[198.2] “May this
fetich slay me if I do not fulfil the contract”; and in such cases we
must regard the curse as a spell working by {199} suggestion against
oneself rather than as a prayer.
Before considering Greek prayer proper, we may note as a last example
of an ambiguous formula, standing midway as it seems between spell and
prayer, the striking liturgical utterance of the old Dodonæan ritual,
employed for an agricultural service: the priestesses chanted the
refrain in two hexameters, the old metre of religion, “God was, God
is, God will be, oh Great God; the earth brings forth fruits,
therefore call on mother earth.”[199.1] The resemblance of this to
the early English formula quoted above is striking enough. The first
line belongs to an elevated religion and seems far removed from the
region of magic; but equally spiritual formulæ concerning the nature
and the attributes of God were used in the Zarathustrian and
Babylonian liturgies for magical purposes, just as texts from the
Bible and Koran have been. And the second line employs the same method
as the Navajo {200} Shaman employed, for it states that the divinity
is doing that very thing which it is the object of the liturgy to
bring about. The appeal to mother earth which is enjoined may have
been merely the invocation of her name, a spell at least as much as a
prayer. The same may be said of the other popular refrains chanted by
the husbandmen of ancient Greece to obtain good crops or fair
weather--“Give us big sheaves, sheaves,” to Demeter,[200.1] or “Come
forth, dear sun,” to the sun-god.[200.2]
The public prayers of Greece, those actually used in the
temple-service and the official liturgies, have not been preserved,
and in this respect the Greek record is very barren compared with the
Babylonian, Vedic, or Iranian. But though the actual formulæ are
lost, we can gather some impression from the inscriptions and other
literary sources as to the objects of prayer. The Athenian state
prayed, “For the {201} health and safety of the people of the
Athenians, their wives and children and all in the country,”[201.1]
and the formula might include a prayer for the prosperity of their
allies, such as Milesians or Platæans. But we have no indications
that the blessings prayed for included others besides the material
ones. The Lacedæmonians are commended by Socrates[201.2] for
refraining from specifying any particular want, either in their
private or public prayers, but contenting themselves with praying that
the gods should grant them τὰ καλὰ ἐπὶ τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς: the phrase has
something of a genuine ring, and is probably derived from a real
liturgy, but it is not absolutely precise; it seems, however, to
comprise spiritual blessings as well as material, and in this respect
to be unique among the public prayers in Greece, if we dare judge them
by the scanty record. Probably the formulæ were very old and the range
of aspiration usually narrow; and the {202} idea that moral advance
could be attained by prayer is perhaps hardly likely to have been
reflected in them; yet we must take note of the plaintive question put
by the Corcyræan state, weary of civic strife and massacre, to the
Dodonæan oracle, asking, “To what god or what hero shall we pray in
order to obtain concord, and to govern our city fairly and
well?”[202.1] and we find an educational official of Cos, in the
second century B.C., praying “for the health and the virtuous
behaviour of the boys.”[202.2]