TOTEMIC BELIEFS--_continued_
_The Totemic Animal and Man_
But totemic images are not the only sacred things. There are real things
which are also the object of rites, because of the relations which they
have with the totem: before all others, are the beings of the totemic
species and the members of the clan.
I
First of all, since the designs which represent the totem arouse
religious sentiments, it is natural that the things whose aspect these
designs reproduce should have this same property, at least to a certain
degree.
For the most part, these are animals or plants. The profane function of
vegetables and even of animals is ordinarily to serve as food; then the
sacred character of the totemic animal or plant is shown by the fact
that it is forbidden to eat them. It is true that since they are sacred
things, they can enter into the composition of certain mystical repasts,
and we shall see, in fact, that they sometimes serve as veritable
sacraments; yet normally they cannot be used for everyday consumption.
Whoever oversteps this rule, exposes himself to grave dangers. It is not
that the group always intervenes to punish this infraction artificially;
it is believed that the sacrilege produces death automatically. A
redoubtable principle is held to reside in the totemic plant or animal,
which cannot enter into the profane organism without disorganizing it or
destroying it.[365] In certain tribes at least, only the old men are
free from this prohibition;[366] we shall see the reason for this later.
However, if this prohibition is formal in a large number of
tribes[367]--with certain exceptions which will be mentioned later--it
is incontestable that it tends to weaken as the old totemic organization
is disturbed. But the restrictions which remain even then prove that
these attenuations are not admitted without difficulty. For example,
when it is permitted to eat the plant or animal that serves as totem, it
is not possible to do so freely; only a little bit may be taken at a
time. To go beyond this amount is a ritual fault that has grave
consequences.[368] Elsewhere, the prohibition remains intact for the
parts that are regarded as the most precious, that is to say, as the
most sacred; for example, the eggs or the fat.[369] In still other
parts, consumption is not allowed except when the animal in question has
not yet reached full maturity.[370] In this case, they undoubtedly think
that its sacred character is not yet complete. So the barrier which
isolates and protects the totemic being yields but slowly and with
active resistance, which bears witness to what it must have been at
first.
It is true that according to Spencer and Gillen these restrictions are
not the remnants of what was once a rigorous prohibition now losing
hold, but the beginnings of an interdiction which is only commencing to
establish itself. These writers hold[371] that at first there was a
complete liberty of consumption and that the limitations which were
presently brought are relatively recent. They think they find the proof
of their theory in the two following facts. In the first place, as we
just said, there are solemn occasions when the members of the clan or
their chief not only may, but must eat the totemic animal or plant.
Moreover, the myths relate that the great ancestors, the founders of the
clans, ate their totems regularly: now, it is said, these stories cannot
be understood except as an echo of a time when the present prohibitions
did not exist.
But the fact that in the course of certain solemn ceremonies a
consumption of the totem, and a moderate one at that, is ritually
required in no way implies that it was once an ordinary article of food.
Quite on the contrary, the food that one eats at a mystical repast is
essentially sacred, and consequently forbidden to the profane. As for
the myths, a somewhat summary critical method is employed, if they are
so readily given the value of historical documents. In general, their
object is to interpret existing rites rather than to commemorate past
events; they are an explanation of the present much more than a history.
In this case, the traditions according to which the ancestors of the
fabulous epoch ate their totem are in perfect accord with the beliefs
and rites which are always in force. The old men and those who have
attained a high religious dignity are freed from the restrictions under
which ordinary men are placed:[372] they can eat the sacred thing
because they are sacred themselves; this rule is in no way peculiar to
totemism, but it is found in all the most diverse religions. Now the
ancestral heroes were nearly gods. It is therefore still more natural
that they should eat the sacred food;[373] but that is no reason why the
same privilege should be awarded to the simple profane.[374]
However, it is neither certain nor even probable that the prohibition
was ever absolute. It seems to have always been suspended in case of
necessity, as, for example, when a man is famished and has nothing else
with which to nourish himself.[375] A stronger reason for this is found
when the totem is a form of nourishment which a man cannot do without.
Thus there are a great many tribes where water is a totem; a strict
prohibition is manifestly impossible in this case. However, even here,
the privilege granted is submitted to certain restrictions which greatly
limit its use and which show clearly that it goes against a recognized
principle. Among the Kaitish and the Warramunga, a man of this totem is
not allowed to drink water freely; he may not take it up himself; he may
receive it only from the hands of a third party who must belong to the
phratry of which he is not a member.[376] The complexity of this
procedure and the embarrassment which results from it are still another
proof that access to the sacred thing is not free. This same rule is
applied in certain central tribes every time that the totem is eaten,
whether from necessity or any other cause. It should also be added that
when this formality is not possible, that is, when a man is alone or
with members of his own phratry only, he may, on necessity, do without
an intermediary. It is clear that the prohibition is susceptible of
various moderations.
Nevertheless, it rests upon ideas so strongly ingrained in the mind that
it frequently survives its original cause for being. We have seen that
in all probability, the different clans of a phratry are only
subdivisions of one original clan which has been dismembered. So there
was a time when all the clans, being welded together, had the same
totem; consequently, wherever the souvenir of this common origin is not
completely effaced, each clan continues to feel itself united to the
others and to consider that their totems are not completely foreign to
it. For this reason an individual may not eat freely of the totems held
by the different clans of the phratry of which he is a member; he may
touch them only if the forbidden plant or animal is given him by a
member of the other phratry.[377]
Another survival of the same sort is the one concerning the maternal
totem. There are strong reasons for believing that at first, the totem
was transmitted in the uterine line. Therefore, wherever descent in the
paternal line has been introduced, this probably took place only after a
long period, during which the opposite principle was applied and the
child had the totem of his mother along with all the restrictions
attached to it. Now in certain tribes where the child inherits the
paternal totem to-day, some of the interdictions which originally
protected the totem of his mother still survive: he cannot eat it
freely.[378] In the present state of affairs, however, there is no
longer anything corresponding to this prohibition.
To this prohibition of eating is frequently added that of killing the
totem, or picking it, when it is a plant.[379] However, here also there
are exceptions and tolerations. These are especially in the case of
necessity, when the totem is a dangerous animal,[380] for example, or
when the man has nothing to eat. There are even tribes where men are
forbidden to hunt the animals whose names they bear, on their own
accounts, but where they may kill them for others.[381] But the way in
which this act is generally accomplished clearly indicates that it is
something illicit. One excuses himself as though for a fault, and bears
witness to the chagrin which he suffers and the repugnance which he
feels,[382] while precautions are taken that the animal may suffer as
little as possible.[383]
In addition to these fundamental interdictions, certain cases of a
prohibition of contact between a man and his totem are cited. Thus among
the Omaha, in the clan of the Elk, no one may touch any part of the body
of a male elk; in the sub-clan of the Buffalo, no one is allowed to
touch the head of this animal.[384] Among the Bechuana, no man dares to
clothe himself in the skin of his totem.[385] But these cases are rare;
and it is natural that they should be exceptional, for normally a man
must wear the image of his totem or something which brings it to mind.
The tattooings and the totemic costumes would not be possible if all
contact were forbidden. It has also been remarked that this prohibition
has not been found in Australia, but only in those societies where
totemism has advanced far from its original form; it is therefore
probably of late origin and due perhaps to the influence of ideas that
are really not totemic at all.[386]
If we now compare these various interdictions with those whose object is
the totemic emblem, contrarily to all that could be foreseen, it appears
that these latter are more numerous, stricter, and more severely
enforced than the former. The figures of all sorts which represent the
totem are surrounded with a respect sensibly superior to that inspired
by the very being whose form these figures reproduce. The churinga, the
nurtunja and the waninga can never be handled by the women or the
uninitiated, who are even allowed to catch glimpses of it only very
exceptionally, and from a respectful distance. On the other hand, the
plant or animal whose name the clan bears may be seen and touched by
everybody. The churinga are preserved in a sort of temple, upon whose
threshold all noises from the profane life must cease; it is the domain
of sacred things. On the contrary, the totemic animals and plants live
in the profane world and are mixed up with the common everyday life.
Since the number and importance of the interdictions which isolate a
sacred thing, and keep it apart, correspond to the degree of sacredness
with which it is invested, we arrive at the remarkable conclusion that
_the images of totemic beings are more sacred than the beings
themselves_. Also, in the ceremonies of the cult, it is the churinga and
the nurtunja which have the most important place; the animal appears
there only very exceptionally. In a certain rite, of which we shall have
occasion to speak,[387] it serves as the substance for a religious
repast, but it plays no active rôle. The Arunta dance around the
nurtunja, and assemble before the image of their totem to adore it, but
a similar demonstration is never made before the totemic being itself.
If this latter were the primarily sacred object, it would be with it,
the sacred animal or plant, that the young initiate would communicate
when he is introduced into the religious life; but we have seen that on
the contrary, the most solemn moment of the initiation is the one when
the novice enters into the sanctuary of the churinga. It is with them
and the nurtunja that he communicates. The representations of the totem
are therefore more actively powerful than the totem itself.
II
We must now determine the place of man in the scheme of religious
things.
By the force of a whole group of acquired habits and of language itself,
we are inclined to consider the common man, the simple believer, as an
essentially profane being. It may well happen that this conception is
not literally true for any religion;[388] in any case, it is not
applicable to totemism. Every member of the clan is invested with a
sacred character which is not materially inferior to that which we just
observed in the animal. This personal sacredness is due to the fact that
the man believes that while he is a man in the usual sense of the word,
he is also an animal or plant of the totemic species.
In fact, he bears its name; this identity of name is therefore supposed
to imply an identity of nature. The first is not merely considered as an
outward sign of the second; it supposes it logically. This is because
the name, for a primitive, is not merely a word or a combination of
sounds; it is a part of the being, and even something essential to it. A
member of the Kangaroo clan calls himself a kangaroo; he is therefore,
in one sense, an animal of this species. "The totem of any man," say
Spencer and Gillen, "is regarded as the same thing as himself; a native
once said to us when we were discussing the matter with him, 'That one,'
pointing to his photograph which we had taken, 'is the same thing as me:
so is a kangaroo' (his totem)."[389] So each individual has a double
nature: two beings coexist within him, a man and an animal.
In order to give a semblance of intelligibility to this duality, so
strange for us, the primitive has invented myths which, it is true,
explain nothing and only shift the difficulty, but which, by shifting
it, seem at least to lessen the logical scandal. With slight variations
of detail, all are constructed on the same plan: their object is to
establish genealogical connections between the man and the totemic
animal, making the one a relative of the other. By this common origin,
which, by the way, is represented in various manners, they believe that
they account for their common nature. The Narrinyeri, for example, have
imagined that certain of the first men had the power of transforming
themselves into beasts.[390] Other Australian societies place at the
beginning of humanity either strange animals from which the men were
descended in some unknown way,[391] or mixed beings, half-way between
the two kingdoms,[392] or else unformed creatures, hardly representable,
deprived of all determined organs, and even of all definite members, and
the different parts of whose bodies were hardly outlined.[393] Mythical
powers, sometimes conceived under the form of animals, then intervened
and made men out of these ambiguous and innumerable beings which Spencer
and Gillen say represent "stages in the transformation of animals and
plants into human beings."[394] These transformations are represented to
us under the form of violent and, as it were, surgical operations. It is
under the blows of an axe or, if the operator is a bird, blows of the
beak, that the human individual was carved out of this shapeless mass,
his members separated from each other, his mouth opened and his nostrils
pierced.[395] Analogous legends are found in America, except that owing
to the more highly developed mentality of these peoples, the
representations which they employ do not contain confusions so
troublesome for the mind. Sometimes it is a legendary personage who, by
an act of his power, metamorphosed the animal who gives its name to the
clan into a man.[396] Sometimes the myth attempts to explain how, by a
series of nearly natural events and a sort of spontaneous evolution, the
animal transformed himself little by little, and finally took a human
form.[397]
It is true that there are societies (the Haida, Tlinkit, Tsimshian)
where it is no longer admitted that man was born of an animal or plant;
but the idea of an affinity between the animals of the totemic species
and the members of the clan has survived there nevertheless, and
expresses itself in myths which, though differing from the preceding,
still retain all that is essential in them. Here is one of the
fundamental themes. The ancestor who gives his name to the clan is here
represented as a human being, but who, in the course of various
wanderings, has been led to live for a while among the fabulous animals
of the very species which gave the clan its name. As the result of this
intimate and prolonged connection, he became so like his new companions
that when he returned to men, they no longer recognized him. He was
therefore given the name of the animal which he resembled. It is from
his stay in this mythical land that he brought back the totemic emblem,
together with the powers and virtues believed to be attached to it.[398]
Thus in this case, as in the others, men are believed to participate in
the nature of the animal, though this participation may be conceived in
slightly different forms.[399]
So man also has something sacred about him. Though diffused into the
whole organism, this characteristic is especially apparent in certain
privileged places. There are organs and tissues that are specially
marked out: these are particularly the blood and the hair.
In the first place, human blood is so holy a thing that in the tribes of
Central Australia, it frequently serves to consecrate the most respected
instruments of the cult. For example, in certain cases, the nurtunja is
regularly anointed from top to bottom with the blood of a man.[400] It
is upon ground all saturated with blood that the men of the Emu, among
the Arunta, trace their sacred images.[401] We shall presently see that
streams of blood are poured upon the rocks which represent the totemic
animals and plants.[402] There is no religious ceremony where blood does
not have some part to play.[403] During the initiation, the adults open
their veins and sprinkle the novice with their blood; and this blood is
so sacred a thing that women may not be present while it is flowing; the
sight of it is forbidden them, just as the sight of a churinga is.[404]
The blood lost by a young initiate during the very violent operations he
must undergo has very particular virtues: it is used in various
ceremonies.[405] That which flows during the sub-incision is piously
kept by the Arunta and buried in a place upon which they put a piece of
wood warning passers-by of the sacredness of the spot; no woman should
approach it.[406] The religious nature of blood also explains the equal
importance, religiously, of the red ochre, which is very frequently
employed in ceremonies; they rub the churinga with it and use it in
ritual decorations.[407] This is due to the fact that because of its
colour, it is regarded as something kindred to blood. Many deposits of
red ochre which are found in the Arunta territory are even supposed to
be the coagulated blood which certain heroines of the mythical period
shed on to the soil.[408]
Hair has similar properties. The natives of the centre wear belts made
of human hair, whose religious functions we have already pointed out:
they are also used to wrap up certain instruments of the cult.[409]
Does one man loan another one of his churinga? As a sign of
acknowledgment, the second makes a present of hair to the first; these
two sorts of things are therefore thought to be of the same order and of
equivalent value.[410] So the operation of cutting the hair is a ritual
act, accompanied by definite ceremonies: the individual operated upon
must squat on the ground, with his face turned in the direction of the
place where the fabulous ancestors from which the clan of his mother is
believed to be descended, are thought to have camped.[411] For the same
reason, as soon as a man is dead, they cut his hair off and put it away
in some distant place, for neither women nor the non-initiated have the
right of seeing it: it is here, far from profane eyes, that the belts
are made.[412]
Other organic tissues might be mentioned which have similar properties,
in varying degrees: such are the whiskers, the foreskin, the fat of the
liver, etc.[413] But it is useless to multiply examples. Those already
given are enough to prove that there is something in man which holds
profane things at a distance and which possesses a religious power; in
other words, the human organism conceals within its depths a sacred
principle, which visibly comes to the surface in certain determined
cases. This principle does not differ materially from that which causes
the religious character of the totem. In fact, we have just seen that
the different substances in which it incarnates itself especially enter
into the ritual composition of the objects of the cult (nurtunja,
totemic designs), or else are used in the anointings whose object is to
renew the virtues either of the churinga or of the sacred rocks; they
are things of the same species.
Sometimes the religious dignity which is inherent in each member of the
clan on this account is not equal for all. Men possess it to a higher
degree than women; in relation to them, women are like profane
beings.[414] Thus, every time that there is an assembly, either of the
totemic group or of the tribe, the men have a separate camp, distinct
from that of the women, and into which these latter may not enter: they
are separated off.[415] But there are also differences in the way in
which men are marked with a religious character. The young men not yet
initiated are wholly deprived of it, since they are not admitted to the
ceremonies. It is among the old men that it reaches its greatest
intensity. They are so very sacred that certain things forbidden to
ordinary people are permissible for them: they may eat the totemic
animal more freely and, as we have seen, there are even some tribes
where they are freed from all dietetic restrictions.
So we must be careful not to consider totemism a sort of animal worship.
The attitude of a man towards the animals or plants whose name he bears
is not at all that of a believer towards his god, for he belongs to the
sacred world himself. Their relations are rather those of two beings who
are on the same level and of equal value. The most that can be said is
that in certain cases, at least, the animal seems to occupy a slightly
more elevated place in the hierarchy of sacred things. It is because of
this that it is sometimes called the father or the grandfather of the
men of the clan, which seems to show that they feel themselves in a
state of moral dependence in regard to it.[416] But in other, and
perhaps even more frequent cases, it happens that the expressions used
denote rather a sentiment of equality. The totemic animal is called the
friend or the elder brother of its human fellows.[417] Finally, the
bonds which exist between them and it are much more like those which
unite the members of a single family; the animals and the men are made
of the same flesh, as the Buandik say.[418] On account of this kinship,
men regard the animals of the totemic species as kindly associates upon
whose aid they think they can rely. They call them to their aid[419] and
they come, to direct their blows in the hunt and to give warning of
whatever dangers there may be.[420] In return for this, men treat them
with regard and are never cruel to them;[421] but these attentions in no
way resemble a cult.
Men sometimes even appear to have a mysterious sort of property-right
over their totems. The prohibition against killing and eating them is
applied only to members of the clan, of course; it could not be extended
to other persons without making life practically impossible. If, in a
tribe like the Arunta, where there is such a host of different totems,
it were forbidden to eat, not only the animal or plant whose name one
bears, but also all the animals and all the plants which serve as totems
to other clans, the sources of food would be reduced to nothing. Yet
there are tribes where the consumption of the totemic plant or animal is
not allowed without restrictions, even to foreigners. Among the
Wakelbura, it must not take place in the presence of men of this
totem.[422] In other places, their permission must be given. For
example, among the Kaitish and the Unmatjera, whenever a man of the Emu
totem happens to be in a place occupied by a grass-seed clan, and
gathers some of these seed, before eating them he must go to the chief
and say to him, "I have gathered these seeds in your country." To this
the chief replies, "All right; you may eat them." But if the Emu man ate
them before demanding permission, it is believed that he would fall sick
and run the risk of dying.[423] There are even cases where the chief of
the group must take a little of the food and eat it himself: it is a
sort of payment which must be made.[424] For the same reason, the
churinga gives the hunter a certain power over the corresponding animal:
by rubbing his body with a Euro churinga, for example, a man acquires a
greater chance of catching euros.[425] This is the proof that the fact
of participating in the nature of a totemic being confers a sort of
eminent right over this latter. Finally, there is one tribe in northern
Queensland, the Karingbool, where the men of the totem are the only ones
who have a right to kill the animal or, if the totem is a tree, to peel
off its bark. Their aid is indispensable to all others who want to use
the flesh of this animal or the wood of this tree for their own personal
ends.[426] So they appear as proprietors, though it is quite evidently
over a special sort of property, of which we find it hard to form an
idea.