SAVAGES--MAGIC--METAMORPHOSIS--METAPHYSIC--PSYCHOLOGY.
Claims of sorcerers--Savage scientific speculation--Theory of
causation--Credulity, except as to new religious ideas--"Post hoc,
ergo propter hoc"--Fundamental ideas of magic--Examples: incantations,
ghosts, spirits--Evidence of rank and other institutions in proof of
confusions of mind exhibited in magical beliefs.
"I mean eftsoons to have a fling at magicians for their abominable lies
and monstrous vanities."--PLINY, ap. Phil. Holland.
"Quoy de ceux qui naturellement se changent en loups, en juments, et
puis encores en hommes?"--MONTAIGNE, Apologie pour Raymond de Sebonde.
The second feature in the savage intellectual condition which we
promised to investigate was the belief in magic and sorcery. The world
and all the things in it being conceived of vaguely as sensible and
rational, are supposed to obey the commands of certain members of each
tribe, such as chiefs, jugglers, or conjurors. These conjurors, like
Zeus or Indra, can affect the weather, work miracles, assume what
shapes, animal, vegetable, or inorganic, they please, and can
metamorphose other persons into similar shapes. It has already been
shown that savage man has regarded all THINGS as PERSONS much on a level
with himself. It has now to be shown WHAT KIND OF PERSON HE CONCEIVES
HIMSELF TO BE. He does not look on men as civilised races regard them,
that is, as beings with strict limitations. On the other hand, he thinks
of certain members of his tribe as exempt from most of the limitations,
and capable of working every miracle that tradition has ever attributed
to prophets or gods. Nor are such miraculous powers, such practical
omnipotence, supposed by savages to be at all rare among themselves.
Though highly valued, miraculous attainments are not believed to be
unusual. This must be kept steadily in mind. When myth-making man
regards the sky or sun or wind as a person, he does not mean merely
a person with the limitations recognised by modern races. He means a
person with the miraculous powers of the medicine-man. The sky, sun,
wind or other elemental personage can converse with the dead, and can
turn himself and his neighbours into animals, stones and trees.
To understand these functions and their exercise, it is necessary to
examine what may be called savage science, savage metaphysics, and the
savage theory of the state of the dead. The medicine-man's supernatural
claims are rooted in the general savage view of the world, of what is
possible, and of what (if anything) is impossible. The savage, even more
than the civilised man, may be described as a creature "moving about in
worlds not realised". He feels, no less than civilised man, the need of
making the world intelligible, and he is active in his search for causes
and effects. There is much "speculation in these eyes that he doth glare
withal". This is a statement which has been denied by some persons
who have lived with savages. Thus Mr. Bates, in his Naturalist on the
Amazon,(1) writes: "Their want of curiosity is extreme.... Vicente (an
Indian companion) did not know the cause of thunder and lightning. I
asked him who made the sun, the stars, the trees. He didn't know, and
had never heard the subject mentioned in his tribe." But Mr. Bates
admits that even Vicente had a theory of the configuration of the world.
"The necessity of a theory of the earth and water had been felt, and
a theory had been suggested." Again, Mr. Bates says about a certain
Brazilian tribe, "Their sluggish minds seem unable to conceive or feel
the want of a theory of the soul"; and he thinks the cause of this
indolence is the lack "of a written language or a leisured class". Now
savages, as a rule, are all in the "leisured class," all sportsmen.
Mr. Herbert Spencer, too, has expressed scepticism about the curiosity
attributed to savages. The point is important, because, in our view, the
medicine-man's powers are rooted in the savage theory of things, and if
the savage is too sluggish to invent or half consciously evolve a theory
of things, our hypothesis is baseless. Again, we expect to find in
savage myths the answer given by savages to their own questions. But
this view is impossible if savages do not ask themselves, and never have
asked themselves, any questions at all about the world. On this topic
Mr. Spencer writes: "Along with absence of surprise there naturally
goes absence of intelligent curiosity".(2) Yet Mr. Spencer admits that,
according to some witnesses, "the Dyaks have an insatiable curiosity,"
the Samoans "are usually very inquisitive," and "the Tahitians are
remarkably curious and inquisitive". Nothing is more common than to
find travellers complaining that savages, in their ardently inquiring
curiosity, will not leave the European for a moment to his own
undisturbed devices. Mr. Spencer's savages, who showed no curiosity,
displayed this impassiveness when Europeans were trying to make them
exhibit signs of surprise. Impassivity is a point of honour with many
uncivilised races, and we cannot infer that a savage has no curiosity
because he does not excite himself over a mirror, or when his European
visitors try to swagger with their mechanical appliances. Mr. Herbert
Spencer founds, on the statements of Mr. Bates already quoted, a notion
that "the savage, lacking ability to think and the accompanying desire
to know, is without tendency to speculate". He backs Mr. Bates's
experience with Mungo Park's failure to "draw" the negroes about the
causes of day and night. They had never indulged a conjecture nor formed
an hypothesis on the matter. Yet Park avers that "the belief in one God
is entire and universal among them". This he "pronounces without the
smallest shadow of doubt". As to "primitive man," according to Mr.
Spencer, "the need for explanations about surrounding appearances does
not occur to him". We have disclaimed all knowledge about "primitive
man," but it is easy to show that Mr. Spencer grounds his belief in the
lack of speculation among savages on a frail foundation of evidence.
(1) Vol. ii. p. 162.
(2) Sociology, p. 98.
Mr. Spencer has admitted speculation, or at least curiosity, among New
Caledonians, New Guinea people, Dyaks, Samoans and Tahitians. Even where
he denies its existence, as among the Amazon tribes mentioned by Mr.
Bates, we happen to be able to show that Mr. Bates was misinformed.
Another traveller, the American geologist, Professor Hartt of Cornell
University, lived long among the tribes of the Amazon. But Professor
Hartt did not, like Mr. Bates, find them at all destitute of theories of
things--theories expressed in myths, and testifying to the intellectual
activity and curiosity which demands an answer to its questions.
Professor Hartt, when he first became acquainted with the Indians of the
Amazon, knew that they were well supplied with myths, and he set to work
to collect them. But he found that neither by coaxing nor by offers of
money could he persuade an Indian to relate a myth. Only by accident,
"while wearily paddling up the Paranamirim of the Ituki," did he
hear the steersman telling stories to the oarsmen to keep them awake.
Professor Hartt furtively noted down the tale, and he found that by
"setting the ball rolling," and narrating a story himself, he could make
the natives throw off reserve and add to his stock of tales. "After one
has obtained his first myth, and has learned to recite it accurately and
spiritedly, the rest is easy." The tales published by Professor Hartt
are chiefly animal stories, like those current in Africa and among the
Red Indians, and Hartt even believed that many of the legends had been
imported by Negroes. But as the majority of the Negro myths, like
those of the Australians, give a "reason why" for the existence of some
phenomenon or other, the argument against early man's curiosity and
vivacity of intellect is rather injured, even if the Amazonian myths
were imported from Africa. Mr. Spencer based his disbelief in the
intellectual curiosity of the Amazonian tribes and of Negroes on the
reports of Mr. Bates and of Mungo Park. But it turns out that both
Negroes and Amazonians have stories which do satisfy an unscientific
curiosity, and it is even held that the Negroes lent the Amazonians
these very stories.(1) The Kamschadals, according to Steller, "give
themselves a reason why for everything, according to their own lively
fancy, and do not leave the smallest matter uncriticised".(2) As far,
then, as Mr. Spencer's objections apply to existing savages, we may
consider them overweighed by the evidence, and we may believe in a naive
savage curiosity about the world and desire for explanations of the
causes of things. Mr. Tylor's opinion corroborates our own: "Man's
craving to know the causes at work in each event he witnesses, the
reasons why each state of things he surveys is such as it is and no
other, is no product of high civilisation, but a characteristic of his
race down to its lowest stages. Among rude savages it is already an
intellectual appetite, whose satisfaction claims many of the moments not
engrossed by war or sport, food or sleep. Even in the Botocudo or
the Australian, scientific speculation has its germ in actual
experience."(3) It will be shown later that the food of the savage
intellectual appetite is offered and consumed in the shape of
explanatory myths.
(1) See Amazonian Tortoise-Myth., pp. 5, 37, 40; and compare Mr.
Harris's Preface to Nights with Uncle Remus.
(2) Steller, p. 267. Cf. Farrer's Primitive Manners, p. 274.
(3) Primitive Culture, i. 369.
But we must now observe that the "actual experience," properly so
called, of the savage is so limited and so coloured by misconception and
superstition, that his knowledge of the world varies very much from the
conceptions of civilised races. He seeks an explanation, a theory of
things, based on his experience. But his knowledge of physical causes
and of natural laws is exceedingly scanty, and he is driven to fall back
upon what we may call metaphysical, or, in many cases "supernatural"
explanations. The narrower the range of man's knowledge of physical
causes, the wider is the field which he has to fill up with
hypothetical causes of a metaphysical or "supernatural" character. These
"supernatural" causes themselves the savage believes to be matters of
experience. It is to his mind a matter of experience that all nature
is personal and animated; that men may change shapes with beasts; that
incantations and supernatural beings can cause sunshine and storm.
A good example of this is given in Charlevoix's work on French
Canada.(1) Charlevoix was a Jesuit father and missionary among the
Hurons and other tribes of North America. He thus describes the
philosophy of the Red Men: "The Hurons attribute the most ordinary
effects to supernatural causes".(2) In the same page the good father
himself attributes the welcome arrival of rainy weather and the cure
of certain savage patients to the prayers of Pere Brebeuf and to the
exhibition of the sacraments. Charlevoix had considerably extended
the field in which natural effects are known to be produced by natural
causes. He was much more scientifically minded than his savage flock,
and was quite aware that an ordinary clock with a pendulum cannot bring
bad luck to a whole tribe, and that a weather-cock is not a magical
machine for securing unpleasant weather. The Hurons, however, knowing
less of natural causes and nothing of modern machinery, were as
convinced that his clock was ruining the luck of the tribe and his
weather-cock spoiling the weather, as Father Charlevoix could be of
the truth of his own inferences. One or two other anecdotes in the good
father's history and letters help to explain the difference between the
philosophies of wild and of Christian men. The Pere Brebeuf was once
summoned at the instigation of a Huron wizard or "medicine-man" before
a council of the tribe. His judges told the father that nothing had gone
right since he appeared among them. To this Brebeuf replied by "drawing
the attention of the savages to the absurdity of their principles". He
admitted(3) the premise that nothing had turned out well in the tribe
since his arrival. "But the reason," said he, "plainly is that God is
angry with your hardness of heart." No sooner had the good father thus
demonstrated the absurdity of savage principles of reasoning, than the
malignant Huron wizard fell down dead at his feet! This event naturally
added to the confusion of the savages.
(1) Histoire de la France-Nouvelle.
(2) Vol. i. p. 191.
(3) Vol. i. p. 192.
Coincidences of this sort have a great effect on savage minds. Catlin,
the friend of the Mandan tribe, mentions a chief who consolidated his
power by aid of a little arsenic, bought from the whites. The chief used
to prophesy the sudden death of his opponents, which always occurred at
the time indicated. The natural results of the administration of arsenic
were attributed by the barbarous people to supernatural powers in the
possession of the chief.(1) Thus the philosophy of savages seeks causas
cognoscere rerum, like the philosophy of civilised men, but it flies
hastily to a hypothesis of "supernatural" causes which are only guessed
at, and are incapable of demonstration. This frame of mind prevails
still in civilised countries, as the Bishop of Nantes showed when, in
1846, he attributed the floods of the Loire to "the excesses of the
press and the general disregard of Sunday". That "supernatural" causes
exist and may operate, it is not at all our intention to deny. But
the habit of looking everywhere for such causes, and of assuming their
interference at will, is the main characteristic of savage speculation.
The peculiarity of the savage is that he thinks human agents can work
supernaturally, whereas even the Bishop reserved his supernatural
explanations for the Deity. On this belief in man's power to affect
events beyond the limits of natural possibility is based the whole
theory of MAGIC, the whole power of sorcerers. That theory, again, finds
incessant expression in myth, and therefore deserves our attention.
(1) Catlin, Letters, ii. 117.
The theory requires for its existence an almost boundless credulity.
This credulity appears to Europeans to prevail in full force among
savages. Bosman is amazed by the African belief that a spider created
the world. Moffat is astonished at the South African notion that the sea
was accidentally created by a girl. Charlevoix says, "Les sauvages
sont d'une facilite a croire ce qu'on leur dit, que les plus facheuse
experiences n'ont jamais pu guerir".(1) But it is a curious fact that
while savages are, as a rule, so credulous, they often laugh at
the religious doctrines taught them by missionaries. Elsewhere they
recognise certain essential doctrines as familiar forms of old.
Dr. Moffat remarks, "To speak of the Creation, the Fall and the
Resurrection, seemed more fabulous, extravagant and ludicrous to them
than their own vain stories of lions and hyaenas." Again, "The Gospel
appeared too preposterous for the most foolish to believe".(2) While
the Zulus declared that they used to accept their own myths without
inquiry,(3) it was a Zulu who suggested to Bishop Colenso his doubts
about the historical character of the Noachian Deluge. Hearne(4) knew
a Red Man, Matorabhee, who, "though a perfect bigot with regard to the
arts and tricks of the jugglers, could yet by no means be impressed with
a belief of any part of OUR religion". Lieutenant Haggard, R.N., tells
the writer that during an eclipse at Lamoo he ridiculed the native
notion of driving away a beast which devours the moon, and explained the
real cause of the phenomenon. But his native friend protested that "he
could not be expected to believe such a story". Yet other savages aver
an old agreement with the belief in a moral Creator.
(1) Vol. ii. p. 378.
(2) Missionary Labours, p. 245.
(3) Callaway, Religion of Amazulus, i. 35.
(4) Journey among the Indians, 1795, p. 350.
We have already seen sufficient examples of credulity in savage
doctrines about the equal relations of men and beasts, stars, clouds
and plants. The same readiness of belief, which would be surprising in
a Christian child, has been found to regulate the rudimentary political
organisations of grey barbarians. Add to this credulity a philosophy
which takes resemblance, or contiguity in space, or nearness in time as
a sufficient reason for predicating the relations of cause and effect,
and we have the basis of savage physical science. Yet the metaphysical
theories of savages, as expressed in Maori, Polynesian, and Zuni hymns,
often amaze us by their wealth of abstract ideas. Coincidence elsewhere
stands for cause.
Post hoc, ergo propter hoc, is the motto of the savage philosophy of
causation. The untutored reasoner speculates on the principles of the
Egyptian clergy, as described by Herodotus.(1) "The Egyptians have
discovered more omens and prodigies than any other men; for when aught
prodigious occurs, they keep good watch, and write down what follows;
and then, if anything like the prodigy be repeated, they expect the same
events to follow as before." This way of looking at things is the very
essence of superstition.
(1) II. p. 82.
Savages, as a rule, are not even so scientific as the Egyptians. When
an untoward event occurs, they look for its cause among all the less
familiar circumstances of the last few days, and select the determining
cause very much at random. Thus the arrival of the French missionaries
among the Hurons was coincident with certain unfortunate events;
therefore it was argued that the advent of the missionaries was the
cause of the misfortune. When the Bechuanas suffered from drought, they
attributed the lack of rain to the arrival of Dr. Moffat, and especially
to his beard, his church bell, and a bag of salt in his possession. Here
there was not even the pretence of analogy between cause and effect.
Some savages might have argued (it is quite in their style), that as
salt causes thirst, a bag of salt causes drought; but no such case could
be made out against Dr. Moffat's bell and beard. To give an example from
the beliefs of English peasants. When a cottage was buried by a little
avalanche in 1772, the accident was attributed to the carelessness of
the cottagers, who had allowed a light to be taken out of their dwelling
in Christmas-tide.(1) We see the same confusion between antecedence and
consequence in time on one side, and cause and effect on the other, when
the Red Indians aver that birds actually bring winds and storms or fair
weather. They take literally the sense of the Rhodian swallow-song:--
The swallow hath come,
Bringing fair hours,
Bringing fair seasons,
On black back and white breast.(2)
(1) Shropshire Folk-Lore, by Miss Burne, iii. 401.
(2) Brinton, Myths of New World, p. 107.
Again, in the Pacific the people of one island always attribute
hurricanes to the machinations of the people of the nearest island to
windward. The wind comes from them; therefore (as their medicine-men can
notoriously influence the weather), they must have sent the wind. This
unneighbourly act is a casus belli, and through the whole of a group
of islands the banner of war, like the flag of freedom in Byron, flies
against the wind. The chief principle, then, of savage science is that
antecedence and consequence in time are the same as effect and cause.(1)
Again, savage science holds that LIKE AFFECTS LIKE, that you can injure
a man, for example, by injuring his effigy. On these principles the
savage explains the world to himself, and on these principles he tries
to subdue to himself the world. Now the putting of these principles into
practice is simply the exercise of art magic, an art to which nothing
seems impossible. The belief that his Shamans or medicine-men practise
this art is universal among savages. It seriously affects their conduct,
and is reflected in their myths.
(1) See account of Zuni metaphysics in chapter on American Divine Myths.
The one general rule which governs all magical reasoning is, that casual
connection in thought is equivalent to causative connection in fact.
Like suggests like to human thought by association of ideas; wherefore
like influences like, or produces analogous effects in practice. Any
object once in a man's possession, especially his hair or his nails, is
supposed to be capable of being used against him by a sorcerer. The
part suggests the whole. A lock of a man's hair was part of the man; to
destroy the hair is to destroy its former owner. Again, whatever event
follows another in time suggests it, and may have been caused by
it. Accompanying these ideas is the belief that nature is peopled by
invisible spiritual powers, over which magicians and sorcerers possess
influence. The magic of the lower races chiefly turns on these two
beliefs. First, "man having come to associate in thought those things
which he found by experience to be connected in fact, proceeded
erroneously to invert their action, and to conclude that association in
thought must involve similar connection in reality. He thus attempted to
discover, to foretell, and to cause events, by means of processes
which we now see to have only an ideal significance."(1) Secondly,
man endeavoured to make disembodied spirits of the dead, or any other
spirits, obedient to his will. Savage philosophy presumes that the
beliefs are correct, and that their practical application is successful.
Examples of the first of the two chief magical ideas are as common in
unscientific modern times or among unscientific modern people as in the
savage world.
(1) Primitive Culture, i. 14.
The physicians of the age of Charles II. were wont to give their
patients "mummy powder," that is, pulverised mummy. They argued that the
mummy had lasted for a very long time, and that the patients ought to do
so likewise. Pliny imagined that diamonds must be found in company with
gold, because these are the most perfect substances in the world, and
like should draw to like. Aurum potabile, or drinkable gold, was a
favourite medical nostrum of the Middle Ages, because gold, being
perfect, should produce perfect health. Among savages the belief that
like is caused by like is exemplified in very many practices. The New
Caledonians, when they wish their yam plots to be fertile, bury in them
with mystic ceremonies certain stones which are naturally shaped like
yams. The Melanesians have reduced this kind of magic to a system. Among
them certain stones have a magical efficacy, which is determined in each
case by the shape of the stone. "A stone in the shape of a pig, of a
bread-fruit, of a yam, was a most valuable find. No garden was planted
without the stones which were to increase the crop."(1) Stones with a
rude resemblance to beasts bring the Zuni luck in the chase.
(1) Rev. R. H. Codrington, Journ. Anth. Inst., February, 1881.
The spiritual theory in some places is mixed up with the "like to like"
theory, and the magical stones are found where the spirits have been
heard twittering and whistling. "A large stone lying with a number of
small ones under it, like a sow among her sucklings, was good for a
childless woman."(1) It is the savage belief that stones reproduce
their species, a belief consonant with the general theory of universal
animation and personality. The ancient belief that diamonds gendered
diamonds is a survival from these ideas. "A stone with little disks upon
it was good to bring in money; any fanciful interpretation of a mark
was enough to give a character to the stone and its associated Vui" or
spirit in Melanesia. In Scotland, stones shaped like various parts
of the human body are expected to cure the diseases with which these
members may be afflicted. "These stones were called by the names of the
limbs which they represented, as 'eye-stone,' 'head-stone'." The patient
washed the affected part of the body, and rubbed it well with the stone
corresponding.(2)
(1) Codrington, Journ. Anth. Soc., x. iii. 276.
(2) Gregor, Folk-Lore of North-East Counties, p. 40.
To return from European peasant-magic to that of savages, we find that
when the Bushmen want wet weather they light fires, believing that
the black smoke clouds will attract black rain clouds; while the Zulus
sacrifice black cattle to attract black clouds of rain.(1) Though this
magic has its origin in savage ignorance, it survives into civilisation.
Thus the sacrifices of the Vedic age were imitations of the natural
phenomena which the priests desired to produce.(2) "C'etait un moyen de
faire tombre la pluie en realisant, par les representations terrestres
des eaux du nuage et de l'eclair, les conditions dans lesquelles
celui-ci determine dans le ciel l'epanchement de celles-la." A good
example of magical science is afforded by the medical practice of the
Dacotahs of North America.(3) When any one is ill, an image of his
disease, a boil or what not, is carved in wood. This little image is
then placed in a bowl of water and shot at with a gun. The image of the
disease being destroyed, the disease itself is expected to disappear.
Compare the magic of the Philistines, who made golden images of the
sores which plagued them and stowed them away in the ark.(4) The custom
of making a wax statuette of an enemy, and piercing it with pins or
melting it before the fire, so that the detested person might waste
as his semblance melted, was common in mediaeval Europe, was known to
Plato, and is practised by Negroes. Some Australians take some of the
hair of an enemy, mix it with grease and the feathers of the eagle, and
burn it in the fire. This is "bar" or black magic. The boarding under
the chair of a magistrate in Barbadoes was lifted not long ago, and the
ground beneath was found covered with wax images of litigants stuck full
of pins.
(1) Callaway, i. 92.
(2) Bergaigne, Religion Vedique, i. 126-138, i., vii., viii.
(3) Schoolcraft, iv. 491.
(4) 1 Samuel vi. 4, 5.
The war-magic of the Dacotahs works in a similar manner. Before a party
starts on the war-trail, the chief, with various ceremonies, takes his
club and stands before his tent. An old witch bowls hoops at him; each
hoop represents an enemy, and for each he strikes a foeman is expected
to fall. A bowl of sweetened water is also set out to entice the spirits
of the enemy.(1) The war-magic of the Aryans in India does not differ
much in character from that of the Dacotahs. "If any one wishes his army
to be victorious, he should go beyond the battle-line, cut a stalk of
grass at the top and end, and throw it against the hostile army with the
words, Prasahe kas trapasyati?--O Prasaha, who sees thee? If one who has
such knowledge cuts a stalk of grass and throws the parts at the hostile
army, it becomes split and dissolved, just as a daughter-in-law becomes
abashed and faints when seeing her father-in-law,"--an allusion,
apparently, to the widespread tabu which makes fathers-in-law,
daughters-in-law, sons-in-law, and mothers-in-law avoid each other.(2)
(1) Schoolcraft, iv. 496.
(2) Aitareya Brahmana, iii. 22.
The hunt-dances of the Red Indians and Australians are arranged like
their war-magic. Effigies of the bears, deer, or kangaroos are made, or
some of the hunters imitate the motions of these animals. The rest of
the dancers pretend to spear them, and it is hoped that this will ensure
success among the real bears and kangaroos.
Here is a singular piece of magic in which Europeans and Australian
blacks agree. Boris Godunoff made his servants swear never to injure him
by casting spells with the dust on which his feet or his carriage wheels
had left traces.(1) Mr. Howitt finds the same magic among the Kurnai.(2)
"Seeing a Tatungolung very lame, I asked him what was the matter. He
said, 'Some fellow has put BOTTLE in my foot'. I found he was probably
suffering from acute rheumatism. He explained that some enemy must have
found his foot-track and have buried in it a piece of broken bottle. The
magic influence, he believed, caused it to enter his foot." On another
occasion a native told Mr. Howitt that he had seen black fellows putting
poison in his foot-tracks. Bosman mentions a similar practice among the
people of Guinea. In Scottish folk-lore a screw nail is fixed into the
footprint of the person who is to be injured.
(1) Rambaud's History of Russia, English trans., i. 351.
(2) Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 250.
Just as these magical efforts to influence like by like work their way
into Vedic and other religions, so they are introduced into the religion
of the savage. His prayers are addresses to some sort of superior being,
but the efficacy of the prayer is often eked out by a little magic,
unless indeed we prefer to suppose that the words of the supplication
are interpreted by gesture-speech. Sproat writes: "Set words and
gestures are used according to the thing desired. For instance, in
praying for salmon, the native rubs the backs of his hands, looks
upwards, and mutters the words, 'Many salmon, many salmon'. If he wishes
for deer, he carefully rubs both eyes; or, if it is geese, he rubs the
back of his shoulder, uttering always in a sing-song way the accustomed
formula.... All these practices in praying no doubt have a meaning. We
may see a steady hand is needed in throwing the salmon-spear, and clear
eyesight in finding deer in the forest."(1)
(1) Savage Life, p. 208.
In addition to these forms of symbolical magic (which might be
multiplied to any extent), we find among savages the belief in the power
of songs of INCANTATION. This is a feature of magic which specially
deserves our attention. In myths, and still more in marchen or household
tales, we shall constantly find that the most miraculous effects are
caused when the hero pronounces a few lines of rhyme. In Rome, as we
have all read in the Latin Delectus, it was thought that incantations
could draw down the moon. In the Odyssey the kinsfolk of Odysseus sing
"a song of healing" over the wound which was dealt him by the boar's
tusk. Jeanne d'Arc, wounded at Orleans, refused a similar remedy.
Sophocles speaks of the folly of muttering incantations over wounds
that need the surgeon's knife. The song that salved wounds occurs in
the Kalewala, the epic poem of the Finns. In many of Grimm's marchen,
miracles are wrought by the repetition of snatches of rhyme. This belief
is derived from the savage state of fancy. According to Kohl,(1) "Every
sorrowful or joyful emotion that opens the Indian's mouth is at once
wrapped up in the garb of a wabanonagamowin (chanson magicale). If you
ask one of them to sing you a simple innocent hymn in praise of Nature,
a spring or jovial hunting stave, he never gives you anything but a form
of incantation, with which he says you will be able to call to you all
the birds from the sky, and all the foxes and wolves from their caves
and burrows."(2) The giant's daughter in the Scotch marchen, Nicht,
Nought, Nothing, is thus enabled to call to her aid "all the birds of
the sky". In the same way, if you ask an Indian for a love-song, he
will say that a philtre is really much more efficacious. The savage, in
short, is extremely practical. His arts, music and drawing, exist not
pour l'art, but for a definite purpose, as methods of getting something
that the artist wants. The young lover whom Kohl knew, like the lover
of Bombyca in Theocritus, believed in having an image of himself and an
image of the beloved. Into the heart of the female image he thrust magic
powders, and he said that this was common, lovers adding songs, "partly
elegiac, partly malicious, and almost criminal forms of incantation".(3)
(1) Page 395.
(2) Cf. Comparetti's Traditional Poetry of the Finns.
(3) Kitchi gami, pp. 395, 397.
Among the Indo-Aryans the masaminik or incantations of the Red Man are
known as mantras.(1) These are usually texts from the Veda, and are
chanted over the sick and in other circumstances where magic is believed
to be efficacious. Among the New Zealanders the incantations are called
karakias, and are employed in actual life. There is a special karakia to
raise the wind. In Maori myths the hero is very handy with his karakia.
Rocks split before him, as before girls who use incantations in Kaffir
and Bushman tales. He assumes the shape of any animal at will, or flies
in the air, all by virtue of the karakia or incantation.(2)
(1) Muir, Sanskrit Texts, v. 441, "Incantations from the Atharva Veda".
(2) Taylor's New Zealand; Theal's Kaffir Folk-Lore, South-African
Folk-Lore Journal, passim; Shortland's Traditions of the New Zealanders,
pp. 130-135.
Without multiplying examples in the savage belief that miracles can be
wrought by virtue of physical CORRESPONDANCES, by like acting on like,
by the part affecting the whole, and so forth, we may go on to the
magical results produced by the aid of spirits. These may be either
spirits of the dead or spiritual essences that never animated mortal
men. Savage magic or science rests partly on the belief that the
world is peopled by a "choir invisible," or rather by a choir only
occasionally visible to certain gifted people, sorcerers and diviners.
An enormous amount of evidence to prove the existence of these tenets
has been collected by Mr. Tylor, and is accessible to all in the
chapters on "Animism" in his Primitive Culture. It is not our business
here to account for the universality of the belief in spirits. Mr.
Tylor, following Lucretius and Homer, derives the belief from the
reasonings of early men on the phenomena of dreams, fainting, shadows,
visions caused by narcotics, hallucinations, and other facts which
suggest the hypothesis of a separable life apart from the bodily
organism. It would scarcely be fair not to add that the kind of "facts"
investigated by the Psychical Society--such "facts" as the appearance
of men at the moment of death in places remote from the scene of their
decease, with such real or delusive experiences as the noises and
visions in haunted houses--are familiar to savages. Without discussing
these obscure matters, it may be said that they influence the thoughts
even of some scientifically trained and civilised men. It is natural,
therefore, that they should strongly sway the credulous imagination of
backward races, in which they originate or confirm the belief that life
can exist and manifest itself after the death of the body.(1)
(1) See the author's Making of Religion, 1898.
Some examples of savage "ghost-stories," precisely analogous to the
"facts" of the Psychical Society's investigations, may be adduced. The
first is curious because it offers among the Kanekas an example of a
belief current in Breton folk-lore. The story is vouched for by Mr. J.
J. Atkinson, late of Noumea, New Caledonia. Mr. Atkinson, we have reason
to believe, was unacquainted with the Breton parallel. To him one day a
Kaneka of his acquaintance paid a visit, and seemed loth to go away. He
took leave, returned, and took leave again, till Mr. Atkinson asked him
the reason of his behaviour. He then explained that he was about to die,
and would never see his English friend again. As he seemed in perfect
health, Mr. Atkinson rallied him on his hypochondria; but the poor
fellow replied that his fate was sealed. He had lately met in the wood
one whom he took for the Kaneka girl of his heart; but he became aware
too late that she was no mortal woman, but a wood-spirit in the guise of
the beloved. The result would be his death within three days, and, as a
matter of fact, he died. This is the groundwork of the old Breton ballad
of Le Sieur Nan, who dies after his intrigue with the forest spectre.(1)
A tale more like a common modern ghost-story is vouched for by Mr. C.
J. Du Ve, in Australia. In the year 1860, a Maneroo black fellow died in
the service of Mr. Du Ve. "The day before he died, having been ill some
time, he said that in the night his father, his father's friend, and a
female spirit he could not recognise, had come to him and said that he
would die next day, and that they would wait for him. Mr. Du Ye adds
that, though previously the Christian belief had been explained to this
man, it had entirely faded, and that he had gone back to the belief of
his childhood." Mr. Fison, who prints this tale in his Kamilaroi and
Kurnai,(2) adds, "I could give many similar instances which have come
within my own knowledge among the Fijians, and, strange to say, the
dying man in all these cases kept his appointment with the ghosts to the
very day".
(1) It may, of course, be conjectured that the French introduced this
belief into New Caledonia.
(2) Page 247.
In the Cruise of the Beagle is a parallel anecdote of a Fuegian, Jimmy
Button, and his father's ghost.
Without entering into a discussion of ghosts, it is plain that the kind
of evidence, whatever its value may be, which convinces many educated
Europeans of the existence of "veridical" apparitions has also played
its part in the philosophy of uncivilised races. On this belief in
apparitions, then, is based the power of the savage sorcerers and
necromants, of the men who converse with the dead and are aided by
disembodied spirits. These men have greatly influenced the beginnings
of mythology. Among certain Australian tribes the necromants are called
Birraark.(1) "The Kurnai tell me," says Mr. Howitt, "that a Birraark
was supposed to be initiated by the 'Mrarts (ghosts) when they met
him wandering in the bush.... It was from the ghosts that he obtained
replies to questions concerning events passing at a distance or yet to
happen, which might be of interest or moment to his tribe." Mr. Howitt
prints an account of a spiritual seance in the bush.(2) "The fires were
let go down. The Birraark uttered a cry 'coo-ee' at intervals. At
length a distant reply was heard, and shortly afterwards the sound as of
persons jumping on the ground in succession. A voice was then heard in
the gloom asking in a strange intonation, 'What is wanted?' Questions
were put by the Birraark and replies given. At the termination of the
seance, the spirit-voice said, 'We are going'. Finally, the Birraark was
found in the top of an almost inaccessible tree, apparently asleep."(3)
There was one Birraark at least to every clan. The Kurnai gave the name
of "Brewin" (a powerful evil spirit) to a Birraark who was once carried
away for several days by the Mrarts or spirits.(4) It is a belief with
the Australians, as, according to Bosman, it was with the people of
the Gold Coast, that a very powerful wizard lives far inland, and the
Negroes held that to this warlock the spirits of the dead went to be
judged according to the merit of their actions in life. Here we have a
doctrine answering to the Greek belief in "the wizard Minos," Aeacus,
and Rhadamanthus, and to the Egyptian idea of Osiris as judge of the
departed.(5) The pretensions of the sorcerer to converse with the dead
are attested by Mr. Brough Smyth.(6) "A sorcerer lying on his stomach
spoke to the deceased, and the other sitting by his side received the
precious messages which the dead man told." As a natural result of these
beliefs, the Australian necromant has great power in the tribe. Mr.
Howitt mentions a case in which a group of kindred, ceasing to use their
old totemistic surname, called themselves the children of a famous
dead Birraark, who thus became an eponymous hero, like Ion among the
Ionians.(7) Among the Scotch Highlanders the position and practice
of the seer were very like those of the Birraark. "A person," says
Scott,(8) "was wrapped up in the skin of a newly slain bullock and
deposited beside a waterfall or at the bottom of a precipice, or in some
other strange, wild and unusual situation, where the scenery around him
suggested nothing but objects of horror. In this situation he revolved
in his mind the question proposed and whatever was impressed on him by
his exalted imagination PASSED FOR THE INSPIRATION OF THE DISEMBODIED
SPIRITS who haunt these desolate recesses." A number of examples are
given in Martin's Description of the Western Islands.(9) In the Century
magazine (July, 1882) is a very full report of Thlinkeet medicine-men
and metamorphoses.
(1) Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 253.
(2) Page 254.
(3) In the Jesuit Relations (1637), p. 51, we read that the Red Indian
sorcerer or Jossakeed was credited with power to vanish suddenly away
out of sight of the men standing around him. Of him, as of Homeric
gods, it might be said, "Who has power to see him come or go against his
will?"
(4) Here, in the first edition, occurred the following passage: "The
conception of Brewin is about as near as the Kurnai get to the idea of a
God; their conferring of his name on a powerful sorcerer is therefore
a point of importance and interest". Mr. Howitt's later knowledge
demonstrates an error here.
(5) Bosman in Pinkerton, xvi. p. 401.
(6) Aborigines of Australia, i. 197.
(7) In Victoria, after dark the wizard goes up to the clouds and brings
down a good spirit. Dawkins, p. 57. For eponymous medicine-men see
Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 231.
(8) Lady of the Lake, note 1 to Canto iv.
(9) P. 112.
The sorcerer among the Zulus is, apparently, of a naturally hysterical
and nervous constitution. "He hears the spirits who speak by whistlings
speaking to him."(1) Whistling is also the language of the ghosts in New
Caledonia, where Mr. Atkinson informs us that he has occasionally put
an able-bodied Kaneka to ignominious flight by whistling softly in the
dusk. The ghosts in Homer make a similar sound, "and even as bats flit
gibbering in the secret place of a wondrous cavern,... even so the
souls gibbered as they fared together" (Odyssey, xxiv. 5). "The familiar
spirits make him" (that Zulu sorcerer) "acquainted with what is about
to happen, and then he divines for the people." As the Birraarks learn
songs and dance-music from the Mrarts, so the Zulu Inyanga or diviners
learn magical couplets from the Itongo or spirits.(2)
(1) Callaway, Religious System of the Amazules, p. 265.
(2) On all this, see "Possession" in The Making of Religion.
The evidence of institutions confirms the reports about savage belief
in magic. The political power of the diviners is very great, as may be
observed from the fact that a hereditary chief needs their consecration
to make him a chief de jure.(1) In fact, the qualities of the diviner
are those which give his sacred authority to the chief. When he has
obtained from the diviners all their medicines and information as to the
mode of using the isitundu (a magical vessel), it is said that he often
orders them to be killed. Now, the chief is so far a medicine-man that
he is lord of the air. "The heaven is the chief's," say the Zulus;
and when he calls out his men, "though the heaven is clear, it becomes
clouded by the great wind that arises". Other Zulus explain this as the
mere hyperbole of adulation. "The word of the chief gives confidence to
his troops; they say, 'We are going; the chief has already seen all that
will happen in his vessel'. Such then are chiefs; they use a vessel
for divination."(2) The makers of rain are known in Zululand as
"heaven-herds" or "sky-herds," who herd the heaven that it may not break
out and do its will on the property of the people. These men are, in
fact, (Greek text omitted), "cloud-gatherers," like the Homeric Zeus,
the lord of the heavens. Their name of "herds of the heavens" has a
Vedic sound. "The herd that herds the lightning," say the Zulus, "does
the same as the herder of the cattle; he does as he does by whistling;
he says, 'Tshu-i-i-i. Depart and go yonder. Do not come here.'" Here
let it be observed that the Zulus conceive of the thunder-clouds and
lightning as actual creatures, capable of being herded like sheep. There
is no metaphor or allegory about the matter,(3) and no forgetfulness of
the original meaning of words. The cloud-herd is just like the cowherd,
except that not every man, but only sorcerers, and they who have eaten
the "lightning-bird" (a bird shot near the place where lightning has
struck the earth), can herd the clouds of heaven. The same ideas prevail
among the Bushmen, where the rainmaker is asked "to milk a nice gentle
female rain"; the rain-clouds are her hair. Among the Bushmen Rain is a
person. Among the Red Indians no metaphor seems to be intended when it
is said that "it is always birds who make the wind, except that of the
east". The Dacotahs once killed a thunder-bird(4) behind Little Crow's
village on the Missouri. It had a face like a man with a nose like an
eagle's bill.(5)
(1) Callaway, p. 340.
(2) Callaway, Religions System of the Amazules, p. 343.
(3) Ibid., p. 385.
(4) Schoolcraft, iii. 486.
(5) Compare Callaway, p. 119.
The political and social powers which come into the hands of the
sorcerers are manifest, even in the case of the Australians. Tribes and
individuals can attempt few enterprises without the aid of the man who
listens to the ghosts. Only he can foretell the future, and, in the case
of the natural death of a member of the tribe, can direct the vengeance
of the survivors against the hostile magician who has committed a murder
by "bar" or magic. Among the Zulus we have seen that sorcery gives the
sanction to the power of the chief. "The winds and weather are at the
command" of Bosman's "great fetisher". Inland from the Gold Coast,(1)
the king of Loango, according to the Abbe Proyart, "has credit to make
rain fall on earth". Similar beliefs, with like political results, will
be found to follow from the superstition of magic among the Red Indians
of North America. The difficulty of writing about sorcerers among the
Red Indians is caused by the abundance of the evidence. Charlevoix
and the other early Jesuit missionaries found that the jongleurs,
as Charlevoix calls the Jossakeeds or medicine-men, were their chief
opponents. As among the Scotch Highlanders, the Australians and the
Zulus, the Red Indian jongleur is visited by the spirits. He covers
a hut with the skin of the animal which he commonly wears, retires
thither, and there converses with the bodiless beings.(2) The good
missionary like Mr. Moffat in Africa, was convinced that the exercises
of the Jossakeeds were verily supernatural. "Ces seducteurs ont un
veritable commerce avec le pere du mensonge."(3) This was denied
by earlier and wiser Jesuit missionaries. Their political power was
naturally great. In time of war "ils avancent et retardent les marches
comme il leur plait". In our own century it was a medicine-man, Ten Squa
Ta Way, who by his magical processes and superstitious rites stirred up
a formidable war against the United States.(4) According to Mr. Pond,(5)
the native name of the Dacotah medicine-men, "Wakan," signifies "men
supernaturally gifted". Medicine-men are believed to be "wakanised"
by mystic intercourse with supernatural beings. The business of the
wakanised man is to discern future events, to lead and direct parties on
the war-trail, "to raise the storm or calm the tempest, to converse with
the lightning or thunder as with familiar friends".(6) The wakanised
man, like the Australian Birraark and the Zulu diviner, "dictates chants
and prayers". In battle "every Dacotah warrior looks to the Wakan man
as almost his only resource". Belief in Wakan men is, Mr. Pond says,
universal among the Dacotahs, except where Christianity has undermined
it. "Their influence is deeply felt by every individual of the tribe,
and controls all their affairs." The Wakan man's functions are absorbed
by the general or war-chief of the tribe, and in Schoolcraft (iv. 495),
Captain Eastman prints copies of native scrolls showing the war-chief
at work as a wizard. "The war-chief who leads the party to war is always
one of these medicine-men." In another passage the medicine-men are
described as "having a voice in the sale of land". It must be observed
that the Jossakeed, or medicine-man, pure and simple, exercises a power
which is not in itself hereditary. Chieftainship, when associated with
inheritance of property, is hereditary; and when the chief, as among the
Zulus, absorbs supernatural power, then the same man becomes diviner
and chief, and is a person of great and sacred influence. The liveliest
account of the performances of the Maori "tohunga" or sorcerer is to be
found in Old New Zealand,(7) by the Pakeha Maori, an English gentleman
who had lived with the natives like one of themselves. The tohunga, says
this author,(8) presided over "all those services and customs which had
something approaching to a religious character. They also pretended to
power by means of certain familiar spirits, to foretell future events,
and even in some cases to control them.... The spirit 'entered into'
them, and, on being questioned, gave a response in a sort of half
whistling, half-articulate voice, supposed to be the proper language
of spirits." In New South Wales, Mrs. Langlot Parker has witnessed
a similar exhibition. The "spirits" told the truth in this case. The
Pakeha Maori was present in a darkened village-hall when the spirit of
a young man, a great friend of his own, was called up by a tohunga.
"Suddenly, without the slightest warning, a voice came out of the
darkness.... The voice all through, it is to be remembered, was not the
voice of the tohunga, but a strange melancholy sound, like the sound of
a wind blowing into a hollow vessel. 'It is well with me; my place is a
good place.' The spirit gave an answer to a question which proved to
be correct, and then 'Farewell,' cried the spirit FROM DEEP BENEATH THE
GROUND. 'Farewell,' again, FROM HIGH IN AIR. 'Farewell,' once more came
moaning through the distant darkness of the night." As chiefs in New
Zealand no less than tohungas can exercise the mystical and magical
power of tabu, that is, of imparting to any object or person an
inviolable character, and can prevent or remit the mysterious punishment
for infringement of tabu, it appears probable that in New Zealand,
as well as among the Zulus and Red Indians, chiefs have a tendency to
absorb the sacred character and powers of the tohungas. This is natural
enough, for a tohunga, if he plays his cards well, is sure to acquire
property and hereditary wealth, which, in combination with magical
influence, are the necessary qualifications for the office of the
chieftain.
(1) Pinkerton, xvi. 401.
(2) Charlevoix, i. 105. See "Savage Spiritualism" in Cock Lane and
Common Sense.
(3) Ibid., iii. 362.
(4) Catlin, ii. 17.
(5) In Schoolcraft, iv. 402.
(6) Pond, in Schoolcraft, iv. 647.
(7) Auckland, 1863.
(8) Page 148.
Here is the place to mention a fact which, though at first sight it may
appear to have only a social interest, yet bears on the development of
mythology. Property and rank seem to have been essential to each other
in the making of social rank, and where one is absent among contemporary
savages, there we do not find the other. As an example of this, we might
take the case of two peoples who, like the Homeric Ethiopians, are the
outermost of men, and dwell far apart at the ends of the world. The
Eskimos and the Fuegians, at the extreme north and south of the American
continent, agree in having little or no private property and no chiefs.
Yet magic is providing a kind of basis of rank. The bleak plains of ice
and rock are, like Attica, "the mother of men without master or lord".
Among the "house-mates" of the smaller settlements there is no head-man,
and in the larger gatherings Dr. Rink says that "still less than among
the house-mates was any one belonging to such a place to be considered
a chief". The songs and stories of the Eskimo contain the praises of men
who have risen up and killed any usurper who tried to be a ruler over
his "place-mates". No one could possibly establish any authority on
the basis of property, because "superfluous property, implements, etc.,
rarely existed". If there are three boats in one household, one of the
boats is "borrowed" by the community, and reverts to the general fund.
If we look at the account of the Fuegians described in Admiral Fitzroy's
cruise, we find a similar absence of rank produced by similar causes.
"The perfect equality among the individuals composing the tribes must
for a long time retard their civilisation.... At present even a piece of
cloth is torn in shreds and distributed, and no one individual becomes
richer than another. On the other hand, it is difficult to understand
how a chief can arise till there is property of some sort by which he
might manifest and still increase his authority." In the same book,
however, we get a glimpse of one means by which authority can be
exercised. "The doctor-wizard of each party has much influence over his
companions." Among the Eskimos this element in the growth of authority
also exists. A class of wizards called Angakut have power to cause fine
weather, and, by the gift of second-sight and magical practices,
can detect crimes, so that they necessarily become a kind of civil
magistrates. These Angekkok or Angakut have familiar spirits called
Torngak, a word connected with the name of their chief spiritual being,
Torngarsak. The Torngak is commonly the ghost of a deceased parent of
the sorcerer. "These men," says Egede, "are held in great honour and
esteem among this stupid and ignorant nation, insomuch that nobody dare
ever refuse the strictest obedience when they command him in the name of
Torngarsak." The importance and actual existence of belief in magic
has thus been attested by the evidence of institutions, even among
Australians, Fuegians and Eskimos.
It is now necessary to pass from examples of tribes who have
superstitious respect for certain individuals, but who have no property
and no chiefs, to peoples who exhibit the phenomenon of superstitious
reverence attached to wealthy rulers or to judges. To take the example
of Ireland, as described in the Senchus Mor, we learn that the chiefs,
just like the Angakut of the Eskimos, had "power to make fair or foul
weather" in the literal sense of the words.(1) In Africa, in the same
way, as Bosman, the old traveller, says, "As to what difference there
is between one negro and another, the richest man is the most honoured,"
yet the most honoured man has the same magical power as the poor
Angakuts of the Eskimos.
(1) Early History of Institutions, p. 195.
"In the Solomon Islands," says Dr. Codrington, "there is nothing to
prevent a common man from becoming a chief, if he can show that he has
the mana (supernatural power) for it."(1)
(1) Journ. Anth. Inst., x. iii. 287, 300, 309.
Though it is anticipating a later stage of this inquiry, we must here
observe that the sacredness, and even the magical virtues of barbarous
chiefs seem to have descended to the early leaders of European races.
The children of Odin and of Zeus were "sacred kings". The Homeric
chiefs, like those of the Zulus and the Red Men, and of the early Irish
and Swedes, exercised an influence over the physical universe. Homer(1)
speaks of "a blameless king, one that fears the gods, and reigns among
many men and mighty, and the black earth bears wheat and barley, and the
sheep bring forth and fail not, and the sea gives store of fish, and all
out of his good sovereignty".
(1) Od., xix. 109.
The attributes usually assigned by barbarous peoples to their
medicine-men have not yet been exhausted. We have found that they can
foresee and declare the future; that they control the weather and the
sensible world; that they can converse with, visit and employ about
their own business the souls of the dead. It would be easy to show at
even greater length that the medicine-man has everywhere the power of
metamorphosis. He can assume the shapes of all beasts, birds, fishes,
insects and inorganic matters, and he can subdue other people to the
same enchantment. This belief obviously rests on the lack of recognised
distinction between man and the rest of the world, which we have so
frequently insisted on as a characteristic of savage and barbarous
thought. Examples of accredited metamorphosis are so common everywhere,
and so well known, that it would be waste of space to give a long
account of them. In Primitive Culture(1) a cloud of witnesses to the
belief in human tigers, hyaenas, leopards and wolves is collected.(2)
Mr. Lane(3) found metamorphosis by wizards as accredited a working
belief at Cairo as it is among Abipones, Eskimo, or the people of
Ashangoland. In various parts of Scotland there is a tale of a witch who
was shot at when in the guise of a hare. In this shape she was
wounded, and the same wound was found on her when she resumed her human
appearance. Lafitau, early in the last century, found precisely the
same tale, except that the wizards took the form of birds, not of hares,
among the Red Indians. The birds were wounded by the magical arrows of
an old medicine-man, Shonnoh Koui Eretsi, and these bolts were found
in the bodies of the human culprits. In Japan, as we learn from several
stories in Mr. Mitford's Tales of Old Japan, people chiefly metamorphose
themselves into foxes and badgers. The sorcerers of Honduras(4) "possess
the power of transforming men into wild beasts, and were much feared
accordingly". Among the Cakchiquels, a cultivated people of Guatemala,
the very name of the clergy, haleb, was derived from their power of
assuming animal shapes, which they took on as easily as the Homeric
gods.(5) Regnard, the French dramatist, who travelled among the Lapps at
the end of the seventeenth century (1681), says: "They believe witches
can turn men into cats;" and again, "Under the figures of swans, crows,
falcons and geese, they call up tempests and destroy ships".(6) Among
the Bushmen "sorcerers assume the forms of beasts and jackals".(7)
Dobrizhoffer (1717-91), a missionary in Paraguay, found that "sorcerers
arrogate to themselves the power of transforming themselves into
tigers".(8) He was present when the Abipones believed that a conversion
of this sort was actually taking place: "Alas," cried the people, "his
whole body is beginning to be covered with tiger-spots; his nails are
growing". Near Loanda, Livingstone found that a "chief may metamorphose
himself into a lion, kill any one he choses, and then resume his proper
form".(9) Among the Barotse and Balonda, "while persons are still
alive they may enter into lions and alligators".(10) Among the Mayas of
Central America "sorcerers could transform themselves into dogs,
pigs and other animals; their glance was death to a victim".(11) The
Thlinkeets think that their Shamans can metamorphose themselves into
animals at pleasure; and a very old raven was pointed out to Mr. C. E.
S. Wood as an incarnation of the soul of a Shaman.(12) Sir A. C. Lyall
finds a similar belief in flourishing existence in India. The European
superstition of the were-wolf is too well known to need description.
Perhaps the most curious legend is that told by Giraldus Cambrensis
about a man and his wife metamorphosed into wolves by an abbot. They
retained human speech, made exemplary professions of Christian faith,
and sent for priests when they found their last hours approaching. In an
old Norman ballad a girl is transformed into a white doe, and hunted and
slain by her brother's hounds. The "aboriginal" peoples of India retain
similar convictions. Among the Hos,(13) an old sorcerer called Pusa
was known to turn himself habitually into a tiger, and to eat his
neighbour's goats, and even their wives. Examples of the power of
sorcerers to turn, as with the Gorgon's head, their enemies into stone,
are peculiarly common in America.(14) Hearne found that the Indians
believed they descended from a dog, who could turn himself into a
handsome young man.(15)
(1) Vol. i. pp. 309-315.
(2) See also M'Lennan on Lykanthropy in Encyclopedia Britannica.
(3) Arabian Nights, i. 51.
(4) Bancroft, Races of Pacific Coast, i. 740.
(5) Brinton, Annals of the Cakchiquels, p. 46.
(6) Pinkerton, i. 471.
(7) Bleek, Brief Account of Bushman Folk-Lore, pp. 15, 40.
(8) English translation of Dobrizhoffer's Abipones, i. 163.
(9) Missionary Travels, p. 615.
(10) Livingstone, p. 642.
(11) Bancroft, ii.
(12) Century Magazine, July, 1882.
(13) Dalton's Ethnology of Bengal, p. 200.
(14) Dorman, pp. 130, 134; Report of Ethnological Bureau, Washington,
1880-81.
(15) A Journey, etc., p. 342.
Let us recapitulate the powers attributed all over the world, by the
lower people, to medicine-men. The medicine-man has all miracles at his
command. He rules the sky, he flies into the air, he becomes visible
or invisible at will, he can take or confer any form at pleasure, and
resume his human shape. He can control spirits, can converse with the
dead, and can descend to their abodes.
When we begin to examine the gods of MYTHOLOGY, savage or civilised, as
distinct from deities contemplated, in devotion, as moral and creative
guardians of ethics, we shall find that, with the general, though
not invariable addition of immortality, they possess the very same
accomplishments as the medicine-man, peay, tohunga, jossakeed, birraark,
or whatever name for sorcerer we may choose. Among the Greeks, Zeus,
mythically envisaged, enjoys in heaven all the attributes of the
medicine-man; among the Iroquois, as Pere le Jeune, the old Jesuit
missionary, observed,(1) the medicine-man enjoys on earth all the
attributes of Zeus. Briefly, the miraculous and supernatural
endowments of the gods of MYTH, whether these gods be zoomorphic or
anthropomorphic, are exactly the magical properties with which the
medicine-man is credited by his tribe. It does not at all follow, as
Euemerus and Mr. Herbert Spencer might argue, that the god was once a
real living medicine-man. But myth-making man confers on the deities of
myth the magical powers which he claims for himself.
(1) Relations (1636), p. 114.