three stages of the cult of the hawk among the Kenyahs, the Kayans and
the sea Dyaks. The Kenyahs will not kill it, address to it thanks
for assistance, and formally consult it before leaving home on an
expedition; it seems, however, to be regarded as the messenger of the
supreme god Balli Penyalong. The Kayans have a hawk-god, Laki Neho,
but seem to regard the hawk as the servant of the chief god, Laki
Tenangan. Singalang Burong, the hawk-god of the Dyaks, is completely
anthropomorphized. He is god of omens and ruler of the omen birds; but
the hawk is not his messenger, for he never leaves his house; stories
are, however, told of his attending feasts in human form and flying
away in hawk form when all was over.
_Horse_.--There is some reason to believe that Poseidon, like other
water gods, was originally conceived under the form of a horse. In
the cave of Phigalia Demeter was, according to popular tradition,
represented with the head and mane of a horse, possibly a relic of the
time when a non-specialized corn-spirit bore this form. Her priests
were called Poloi (colts) in Laconia. In Gaul we find a horse-goddess,
Epona; there are also traces of a horse-god, Rudiobus. The Gonds in
India worship a horse-god, Koda Pen, in the form of a shapeless stone;
but it is not clear that the horse is regarded as divine. The horse or
mare is a common form of the corn-spirit in Europe.
_Leopard_.--The cult of the leopard is widely found in West Africa.
Among the Ewe a man who kills one is liable to be put to death;
no leopard skin may be exposed to view, but a stuffed leopard is
worshipped. On the Gold Coast a leopard hunter who has killed his
victim is carried round the town behind the body of the leopard; he
may not speak, must besmear himself so as to look like a leopard and
imitate its movements. In Loango a prince's cap is put upon the head
of a dead leopard, and dances are held in its honour.
_Lion_.--The lion was associated with the Egyptian gods R[=e] and
Horus; there was a lion-god at Baalbek and a lion-headed goddess
Sekhet. The Arabs had a lion-god, Yaghuth. In modern Africa we find a
lion-idol among the Balonda.
_Lizard_.--The cult of the lizard is most prominent in the Pacific,
where it appears as an incarnation of Tangaloa. In Easter Island a
form of the house-god is the lizard; it is also a tutelary deity in
Madagascar.
_Mantis_.--Cagn is a prominent figure in Bushman mythology; the mantis
and the caterpillar, Ngo, are his incarnations. It was called the
"Hottentots' god" by early settlers.
_Monkey_.--In India the monkey-god, Hanuman, is a prominent figure; in
orthodox villages monkeys are safe from harm. Monkeys are said to be
worshipped in Togo. At Porto Novo, in French West Africa, twins have
tutelary spirits in the shape of small monkeys.
_Serpent_.--The cult of the serpent is found in many parts of the Old
World; it is also not unknown in America; in Australia, on the other
hand, though many species of serpent are found, there does not appear
to be any species of cult unless we include the Warramunga cult of the
mythical Wollunqua totem animal, whom they seek to placate by rites.
In Africa the chief centre of serpent worship was Dahomey; but the
cult of the python seems to have been of exotic origin, dating back to
the first quarter of the 17th century. By the conquest of Whydah
the Dahomeyans were brought in contact with a people of serpent
worshippers, and ended by adopting from them the cult which they
at first despised. At Whydah, the chief centre, there is a serpent
temple, tenanted by some fifty snakes; every python of the danh-gbi
kind must be treated with respect, and death is the penalty for
killing one, even by accident. Danh-gbi has numerous wives, who until
1857 took part in a public procession from which the profane crowd was
excluded; a python was carried round the town in a hammock, perhaps as
a ceremony for the expulsion of evils. The rainbow-god of the Ewe was
also conceived to have the form of a snake; his messenger was said to
be a small variety of boa; but only certain individuals, not the whole
species, were sacred. In many parts of Africa the serpent is looked
upon as the incarnation of deceased relatives; among the Amazulu, as
among the Betsileo of Madagascar, certain species are assigned as the
abode of certain classes; the Masai, on the other hand, regard each
species as the habitat of a particular family of the tribe.
In America some of the Amerindian tribes reverence the rattlesnake as
grandfather and king of snakes who is able to give fair winds or cause
tempest. Among the Hopi (Moqui) of Arizona the serpent figures largely
in one of the dances. The rattlesnake was worshipped in the Natchez
temple of the sun; and the Aztec deity Quetzalcoatl was a serpent-god.
The tribes of Peru are said to have adored great snakes in the
pre-Inca days; and in Chile the Araucanians made a serpent figure in
their deluge myth.
Over a large part of India there are carved representations of cobras
(N[=a]gas) or stones as substitutes; to these human food and flowers
are offered and lights are burned before the shrines. Among the
Dravidians a cobra which is accidentally killed is burned like a human
being; no one would kill one intentionally; the serpent-god's image is
carried in an annual procession by a celibate priestess.
Serpent cults were well known in ancient Europe; there does not, it
is true, appear to be much ground for supposing that Aesculapius was
a serpent-god in spite of his connexion with serpents. On the other
hand, we learn from Herodotus of the great serpent which defended the
citadel of Athens; the Roman _genius loci_ took the form of a serpent;
a snake was kept and fed with milk in the temple of Potrimpos, an old
Slavonic god. To this day there are numerous traces in popular belief,
especially in Germany, of respect for the snake, which seems to be a
survival of ancestor worship, such as still exists among the Zulus and
other savage tribes; the "house-snake," as it is called, cares for the
cows and the children, and its appearance is an omen of death, and the
life of a pair of house-snakes is often held to be bound up with that
of the master and mistress themselves. Tradition says that one of the
Gnostic sects known as the Ophites caused a tame serpent to coil round
the sacramental bread and worshipped it as the representative of the
Saviour. See also SERPENT-WORSHIP.
_Sheep_.--Only in Africa do we find a sheep-god proper; Ammon was the
god of Thebes; he was represented as ram-headed; his worshippers held
the ram to be sacred; it was, however, sacrificed once a year, and its
fleece formed the clothing of the idol.
_Tiger_.--The tiger is associated with Siva and Durga, but its cult is
confined to the wilder tribes; in Nepal the tiger festival is known as
Bagh Jatra, and the worshippers dance disguised as tigers. The Waralis
worship Waghia the lord of tigers in the form of a shapeless stone. In
Hanoi and Manchuria tiger-gods are also found.
_Wolf_.--Both Zeus and Apollo were associated with the wolf by the
Greeks; but it is not clear that this implies a previous cult of
the wolf. It is frequently found among the tutelary deities of
North American dancing or secret societies. The Thlinkits had a god,
Khanukh, whose name means "wolf," and worshipped a wolf-headed image.
AUTHORITIES.--For a fuller discussion and full references to these
and other cults, that of the serpent excepted, see N.W. Thomas
in Hastings' _Dictionary of Religions_; Frazer, _Golden Bough_;
Campbell's _Spirit Basis of Belief and Custom_; Maclennan's _Studies_
(series 2); V. Gennep, _Tabou et totémisme à Madagascar_. For the
serpent, see Ellis, _Ewe-speaking Peoples_, p. 54; _Internat. Archiv_,
xvii. 113; Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, ii. 239; Fergusson, _Tree and
Serpent Worship_; Mähly,_Die Schlange im Mythus_; Staniland Wake,
_Serpent Worship, &c._; _16th Annual Report of the American Bureau of
Ethnology_, p. 273, and bibliography, p. 312. For the bull, &c., in
Egypt, see EGYPT: _Religion_.
(N.W.T.)
ANIMÉ, an oleo-resin (said to be so called because in its natural
state it is infested with insects) which is exuded from the locust
tree, _Hymenaea coumaril_, and other species of _Hymenaea_ growing
in tropical South America. It is of a pale brown colour, transparent,
brittle, and in consequence of its agreeable odour is used for
fumigation and in perfumery. Its specific gravity varies from 1.054 to
1.057. It melts readily over the fire, and softens even with the heat
of the mouth; it is insoluble in water, and nearly so in cold alcohol.
It is allied to copal in its nature and appearance, and is much used
by varnish-makers. The name is also given to Zanzibar copal (_q.v._).
[v.02 p.0053]
ANIMISM (from _animus_, or _anima_, mind or soul), according to
the definition of Dr. E.B. Tylor, the doctrine of spiritual beings,
including human souls; in practice, however, the term is often
extended to include panthelism or animatism, the doctrine that a
great part, if not the whole, of the inanimate kingdom, as well as all
animated beings, are endowed with reason, intelligence and volition,
identical with that of man. This latter theory, which in many cases
is equivalent to personification, though it may be, like animism, a
feature of the philosophy of peoples of low culture, should not be
confused with it. But it is difficult in practice to distinguish the
two phases of thought and no clear account of animatism can yet be
given, largely on the ground that no people has yet been discovered
which has not already developed to a greater or less extent an
animistic philosophy. On theoretical grounds it is probable that
animatism preceded animism; but savage thought is no more consistent
than that of civilized man; and it may well be that animistic and
panthelistic doctrines are held simultaneously by the same person. In
like manner one portion of the savage explanation of nature may have
been originally animistic, another part animatistic.
_Origin_.--Animism may have arisen out of or simultaneously with
animatism as a primitive explanation of many different phenomena; if
animatism was originally applied to non-human or inanimate objects,
animism may from the outset have been in vogue as a theory of the
nature of man. Lists of phenomena from the contemplation of which the
savage was led to believe in animism have been given by Dr. Tylor,
Herbert Spencer, Mr. Andrew Lang and others; an animated controversy
arose between the former as to the priority of their respective
lists. Among these phenomena are: trance (_q.v._) and unconsciousness,
sickness, death, clairvoyance (_q.v._), dreams (_q.v._), apparitions
(_q.v._) of the dead, wraiths, hallucinations (_q.v._), echoes,
shadows and reflections.
Primitive ideas on the subject of the soul, and at the same time
the origin of them, are best illustrated by an analysis of the terms
applied to it. Readers of Dante know the idea that the dead have
no shadows; this was no invention of the poet's but a piece of
traditionary lore; at the present day among the Basutos it is held
that a man walking by the brink of a river may lose his life if his
shadow falls on the water, for a crocodile may seize it and draw him
in; in Tasmania, North and South America and classical Europe is
found the conception that the soul--[Greek: skia], _umbra_--is somehow
identical with the shadow of a man. More familiar to the Anglo-Saxon
race is the connexion between the soul and the breath; this
identification is found both in Aryan and Semitic languages; in Latin
we have _spiritus_, in Greek _pneuma_, in Hebrew _ruach_; and the
idea is found extending downwards to the lowest planes of culture in
Australia, America and Asia. For some of the Red Indians the Roman
custom of receiving the breath of a dying man was no mere pious duty
but a means of ensuring that his soul was transferred to a new body.
Other familiar conceptions identify the soul with the liver (see OMEN)
or the heart, with the reflected figure seen in the pupil of the eye,
and with the blood. Although the soul is often distinguished from
the vital principle, there are many cases in which a state of
unconsciousness is explained as due to the absence of the soul; in
South Australia _wilyamarraba_ (without soul) is the word used for
insensible. So too the autohypnotic trance of the magician or _shaman_
is regarded as due to his visit to distant regions or the nether
world, of which he brings back an account. Telepathy or clairvoyance
(_q.v._), with or without trance, must have operated powerfully to
produce a conviction of the dual nature of man, for it seems probable
that facts unknown to the automatist are sometimes discovered by means
of crystal-gazing (_q.v._), which is widely found among savages, as
among civilized peoples. Sickness is often explained as due to the
absence of the soul; and means are sometimes taken to lure back the
wandering soul; when a Chinese is at the point of death and his soul
is supposed to have already left his body, the patient's coat is held
up on a long bamboo while a priest endeavours to bring the departed
spirit back into the coat by means of incantations. If the bamboo
begins to turn round in the hands of the relative who is deputed to
hold it, it is regarded as a sign that the soul of the moribund has
returned (see AUTOMATISM). More important perhaps than all these
phenomena, because more regular and normal, was the daily period of
sleep with its frequent concomitant of fitful and incoherent ideas and
images. The mere immobility of the body was sufficient to show that
its state was not identical with that of waking; when, in addition,
the sleeper awoke to give an account of visits to distant lands, from
which, as modern psychical investigations suggest, he may even
have brought back veridical details, the conclusion must have been
irresistible that in sleep something journeyed forth, which was not
the body. In a minor degree revival of memory during sleep and similar
phenomena of the sub-conscious life may have contributed to the
same result. Dreams are sometimes explained by savages as journeys
performed by the sleeper, sometimes as visits paid by other persons,
by animals or objects to him; hallucinations, possibly more frequent
in the lower stages of culture, must have contributed to fortify
this interpretation, and the animistic theory in general. Seeing the
phantasmic figures of friends at the moment when they were, whether
at the point of death or in good health, many miles distant, must have
led the savage irresistibly to the dualistic theory. But hallucinatory
figures, both in dreams and waking life, are not necessarily those of
the living; from the reappearance of dead friends or enemies primitive
man was inevitably led to the belief that there existed an incorporeal
part of man which survived the dissolution of the body. The soul was
conceived to be a facsimile of the body, sometimes no less material,
sometimes more subtle but yet material, sometimes altogether
impalpable and intangible.
_Animism and Eschatology_.--The psychological side of animism has
already been dealt with; almost equally important in primitive creeds
is the eschatological aspect. In many parts of the world it is held
that the human body is the seat of more than one soul; in the island
of Nias four are distinguished, the shadow and the intelligence, which
die with the body, a tutelary spirit, termed _begoe_, and a second
which is carried on the head. Similar ideas are found among the
Euahlayi of S.E. Australia, the Dakotas and many other tribes. Just as
in Europe the ghost of a dead person is held to haunt the churchyard
or the place of death, although more orthodox ideas may be held and
enunciated by the same person as to the nature of a future life,
so the savage, more consistently, assigns different abodes to the
multiple souls with which he credits man. Of the four souls of a
Dakota, one is held to stay with the corpse, another in the village,
a third goes into the air, while the fourth goes to the land of souls,
where its lot may depend on its rank in this life, its sex, mode of
death or sepulture, on the due observance of funeral ritual, or many
other points (see ESCHATOLOGY). From the belief in the survival of the
dead arose the practice of offering food, lighting fires, &c., at the
grave, at first, maybe, as an act of friendship or filial piety, later
as an act of worship (see ANCESTOR WORSHIP). The simple offering of
food or shedding of blood at the grave develops into an elaborate
system of sacrifice; even where ancestor-worship is not found, the
desire to provide the dead with comforts in the future life may lead
to the sacrifice of wives, slaves, animals, &c., to the breaking or
burning of objects at the grave or to the provision of the ferryman's
toll, a coin put in the mouth of the corpse to pay the travelling
expenses of the soul. But all is not finished with the passage of the
soul to the land of the dead; the soul may return to avenge its death
by helping to discover the murderer, or to wreak vengeance for itself;
there is a widespread belief that those who die a violent death become
malignant spirits and endanger the lives of those who come near the
haunted spot; the woman who dies in child-birth becomes a _pontianak_,
and threatens the life of human beings; and man resorts to magical or
religious means of repelling his spiritual dangers.
_Development of Animism_.--If the phenomena of dreams were, as
suggested above, of great importance for the development of animism,
the belief, which must originally have been a doctrine of human
psychology, cannot have failed to expand speedily into a general
philosophy of nature. Not only human beings but animals and objects
are seen in dreams; and the conclusion would be that they too have
souls; the same conclusion may have been reached by another line of
argument; primitive psychology posited a spirit in a man to account,
amongst other things, for his actions; a natural explanation of
the changes in the external world would be that they are due to the
operations and volitions of spirits.
[v.02 p.0054]
_Animal Souls._--But apart from considerations of this sort, it is
probable that animals must, early in the history of animistic beliefs,
have been regarded as possessing souls. Education has brought with it
a sense of the great gulf between man and animals; but in the lower
stages of culture this distinction is not adequately recognized, if
indeed it is recognized at all. The savage attributes to animals the
same ideas, the same mental processes as himself, and at the same time
vastly greater power and cunning. The dead animal is credited with a
knowledge of how its remains are treated and sometimes with a power of
taking vengeance on the fortunate hunter. Powers of reasoning are not
denied to animals nor even speech; the silence of the brute creation
may be put down to their superior cunning. We may assume that man
attributed a soul to the beasts of the field almost as soon as he
claimed one for himself. It is therefore not surprising to find that
many peoples on the lower planes of culture respect and even worship
animals (see TOTEM; ANIMAL WORSHIP); though we need not attribute
an animistic origin to all the developments, it is clear that the
widespread respect paid to animals as the abode of dead ancestors, and
much of the cult of dangerous animals, is traceable to this principle.
With the rise of species, deities and the cult of individual animals,
the path towards anthropomorphization and polytheism is opened and the
respect paid to animals tends to lose its strict animistic character.
_Plant Souls._--Just as human souls are assigned to animals, so
primitive man often credits trees and plants with souls in both human
or animal form. All over the world agricultural peoples practise
elaborate ceremonies explicable, as Mannhardt has shown, on animistic
principles. In Europe the corn spirit sometimes immanent in the crop,
sometimes a presiding deity whose life does not depend on that of the
growing corn, is conceived in some districts in the form of an ox,
hare or cock, in others as an old man or woman; in the East Indies
and America the rice or maize mother is a corresponding figure; in
classical Europe and the East we have in Ceres and Demeter, Adonis
and Dionysus, and other deities, vegetation gods whose origin we can
readily trace back to the rustic corn spirit. Forest trees, no less
than cereals, have their indwelling spirits; the fauns and satyrs
of classical literature were goat-footed and the tree spirit of the
Russian peasantry takes the form of a goat; in Bengal and the East
Indies wood-cutters endeavour to propitiate the spirit of the tree
which they cut down; and in many parts of the world trees are
regarded as the abode of the spirits of the dead. Just as a process of
syncretism has given rise to cults of animal gods, tree spirits tend
to become detached from the trees, which are thenceforward only their
abodes; and here again animism has begun to pass into polytheism.
_Object Souls._--We distinguish between animate and inanimate nature,
but this classification has no meaning for the savage. The river
speeding on its course to the sea, the sun and moon, if not the stars
also, on their never-ceasing daily round, the lightning, fire, the
wind, the sea, all are in motion and therefore animate; but the savage
does not stop short here; mountains and lakes, stones and manufactured
articles, are for him alike endowed with souls like his own; he
deposits in the tomb weapons and food, clothes and implements, broken,
it may be, in order to set free their souls; or he attains the same
result by burning them, and thus sending them to the Other World for
the use of the dead man. Here again, though to a less extent than in
tree cults, the theriomorphic aspect recurs; in the north of Europe,
in ancient Greece, in China, the water or river spirit is horse or
bull-shaped; the water monster in serpent shape is even more widely
found, but it is less strictly the spirit of the water. The spirit
of syncretism manifests itself in this department of animism too; the
immanent spirit of the earlier period becomes the presiding genius
or local god of later times, and with the rise of the doctrine of
separable souls we again reach the confines of animism pure and
simple.
_Spirits in General._--Side by side with the doctrine of separable
souls with which we have so far been concerned, exists the belief in
a great host of unattached spirits; these are not immanent souls which
have become detached from their abodes, but have every appearance
of independent spirits. Thus, animism is in some directions little
developed, so far as we can see, among the Australian aborigines;
but from those who know them best we learn that they believe in
innumerable spirits and bush bogies, which wander, especially at
night, and can be held at bay by means of fire; with this belief may
be compared the ascription in European folk belief of prophylactic
properties to iron. These spirits are at first mainly malevolent;
and side by side with them we find the spirits of the dead as hostile
beings. At a higher stage the spirits of dead kinsmen are no
longer unfriendly, nor yet all non-human spirits; as fetishes (see
FETISHISM), naguals (see TOTEM), familiars, gods or demi-gods (for
which and the general question see DEMONOLOGY), they enter into
relations with man. On the other hand there still subsists a belief in
innumerable evil spirits, which manifest themselves in the phenomena
of possession (_q.v._), lycanthropy (_q.v._), disease, &c. The fear of
evil spirits has given rise to ceremonies of expulsion of evils (see
EXORCISM), designed to banish them from the community.