EARLY CULTS
+225+. The lowest tribes known to us regard the whole world of nature
and the human dead as things to be feared and usually as things to be
propitiated. In most cases they conceive of some anthropomorphic being
as the creator or arranger of the world. But in all cases they regard
animals, plants, and inanimate objects as capable of doing extraordinary
things. All these beings they think of as akin to men; transformations
from human to nonhuman and from nonhuman to human are believed to be
possible and frequent.
+226+. From the point of view of the savage mind this theory of the
world is inevitable. Ignorant of what we call natural law, they can see
no reason why the phenomena of life should not be under the control of
any of the powers known to them; and for sources of power they look to
the things around them. All objects of nature are mysterious to the
savage--stones, hills, waters, the sky, the heavenly bodies, trees,
plants, fishes, birds, beasts, are full of movement, and seemingly
display capacities that induce the savage to see in them the causes of
things. Since their procedures seem to him to be in general similar to
his own, he credits them with a nature like his own. As they are
mysterious and powerful, he fears them and tries to make allies of them
or to ward off their injurious influences.
+227+. But while he excludes nothing from his list of possible powers,
he is vitally interested only in those objects with which he comes into
contact, and he learns their powers by his own experience or through the
wisdom inherited from his forefathers. His procedure is strictly
scientific; he adopts only what observation has shown him and others to
be true. Different tribes are interested in different things--some are
indifferent to one thing, others to another, according to the
topographical and economic milieu. The savage is not without
discrimination. He is quite capable of distinguishing between the
living and the dead. Not all stones are held by him to be alive in any
important sense, and not all beasts to be powerful. He is a practical
thinker and deals with each phenomenon as it presents itself, and
particularly as it shows itself to be connected with his interests. He
is constantly on the alert to distinguish between the profitable and the
unprofitable, the helpful and the injurious. He himself is the center of
his whole scientific and religious system, and the categories into which
he divides all things are determined by his own sense of
self-interest.[428]
+228+. It is often by accident that one object or another displays
itself as helpful or harmful, just as, in a later and higher form of
religious belief, a theophany is often, as to time and place, a matter
of accident. Indeed, most manifestations of extrahuman power in the
earliest times may be said to come to man incidentally, since he does
not generally demand them from the gods or make experiments in order to
discover them. But in the nature of the case many things meet him as to
which he is obliged to use judgment, and of these a certain number
appear to him to be powerful.
+229+. These objects are held by him to be in some sort akin to man.
This seems to be his view of certain dead things in which a mysterious
power is held to reside. When such objects are parts of animals (bones,
feathers, claws, tails, feet, fat, etc.), or of vegetables that are used
as charms, it may be supposed that they simply retain the power resident
in the objects of which they are parts--objects originally living and
sacred. In other cases an indwelling supernatural being is assumed, as,
for example, in minerals whose shape and color are remarkable.
+230+. Fetish objects in West Africa are believed to be inhabited by
spirits.[429] The Australian sacred object called _churinga_--a thing
of mysterious potency--is believed to be the abode of the soul of an
ancestor endowed with extraordinary power. Many such fetish objects are
found all over the world.
+231+. Further, the conception of a life-force, existing in many things
(perhaps in all things), appears to have been prominent in savage
religious systems. Life implies power; but while it is held to reside in
all things, its manifestations vary according to the relations between
things and human needs. The life-force in its higher manifestations has
been isolated in thought by some more advanced savages, especially in
North America and Polynesia, and has been given a definite name; in
Polynesia and Melanesia it is called _mana_, and other names for it
occur elsewhere.[430]
+232+. It shows itself in any object, nonhuman or human, that produces
extraordinary effects. In the Pacific islands all great achievements of
men are attributed to it--all great chiefs possess it in an eminent
degree;[431] it is then nearly equivalent to what we call capacity or
genius. When it resides in an inanimate thing it may produce a physical
effect: it comes up in the steam of the American sacred sweat lodge, and
gives health to the body (and thus buoyancy to the mind);[432] here it
is identical with the soothing and stimulating power of the steam. It
is, in a word, a term for the force residing in any object.[433] Like
sickness and other evils, blessings, and curses, it is conceived of as
having physical form and may be transmitted from its possessor to
another person or object. In some cases its name is given to the thing
to which it is attached.[434]
+233+. How widely the conception exists is uncertain; further research
may discover it in regions where up to now it has not been recognized.
Scarcely a trace of it exists in the higher ancient religions. The Latin
_genius_, the indwelling power of the man, bears a resemblance to it.
The Old Testament "spirit of God" is said to "come on" a man or to be
"poured out on" him, as if it were a physical thing--it gives courage
and strength to the warrior and knowledge to the worshiper;[435] the
power or energy is here (in the earlier Hebrew writings) identified with
the spirit or animus of the deity, which appears to be thought of as
physical.
+234+. Mana is conceived of by the peoples mentioned above not as a
vague influence diffused through the world, but as a power resident in
certain definite persons or things. It is impersonal in the sense in
which any quality, as courage, is impersonal, but it is not itself an
object of worship; worship is directed toward the thing that possesses
or imparts mana. It may reside in a natural object or in a supernatural
being--the object will be used to secure it, the supernatural being will
be asked to bestow it. In both cases the act will be religious.
+235+. Mana is itself, strictly speaking, a scientific biological
conception, but it necessarily enters into alliance with religion.
Belief in it exists along with belief in ghosts, spirits, and gods--it
is not a rival of these, but an attachment to them. As a thing
desirable, it is one of the good gifts that the great Powers can bestow,
and it thus leads to worship. It is found in distinct form, as is
pointed out above, only in superior tribes--it has not been discovered
in very low communities, and appears not to belong to the earliest
stratum of religious beliefs. But it rests on the view that all things
are endowed with life, and this view may be taken to be universal. The
doctrine of mana gradually vanishes before a better knowledge of the
human constitution,[436] a larger conception of the gods, and a greater
trust in them.[437]
+236+. Things and persons endowed with peculiar power, whether as seats
of mana or as abodes of spirits, are set apart by themselves, are
regarded with feelings of awe, and thus become "sacred." In process of
time the accumulated experience of generations builds up a mass of
sacred objects which become a part of the religious possessions of the
community. The quality of sacredness is sometimes attached to objects
and customs when these are regarded as necessary to the well-being of
the community, or highly convenient. A house, for example, represents
the life of the family, and is therefore a thing to be revered; and in
many tribes the walls, which guard the house against intrusion, and the
door and the threshold, which offer entrance into it, are considered
sacred; the hearth especially, the social center of the dwelling,
becomes a sacred place.
+237+. The savage communities with which we are acquainted all possess
their stock of such things--the beliefs concerning sacred objects are
held by all the members of the tribe. The development of the idea of
'sacred' is a social communal one, but it is impossible for us to say
precisely how all the individual sacred objects were selected, or what
was the exact attitude of primeval man toward all the things that are
now regarded as sacred.
+238+. The conception of power resident in certain things to control
human life is represented by our term "luck." The formulation of "luck"
systems goes on in savage and half-civilized communities up to a certain
point, and is then checked by the rise of higher religious ideas and by
the growth of the conception of natural law. But long after the grounds
of belief in luck have ceased to be accepted by the advanced part of the
community, many individual forms of good luck and bad luck maintain
themselves in popular belief.[438] Some of these beliefs may be traced
back to their savage sources, especially those that are connected with
animals; the origin of most of them is obscure. They coalesce to some
extent with conceptions derived from magic, divination, and taboo. The
persistence of such savage dogma into civilized times enables us to
understand how natural this dogma was for early forms of society.
+239+. In the practices mentioned above there is no worship proper. Mana
is not thought of as being in itself a personal power, and worship is
paid only to objects regarded as having personality. The fetish derives
its value from the spirit supposed to be resident in the fetish objects;
these are commonly worn as charms, and the attitude of the man to such a
charm, though he regards it as powerful, seems to be not exactly that of
worship--he keeps it as a protection so long as it appears to be useful,
but, as is remarked above, he acts as if he were its master. He believes
that the efficient factor is the indwelling spirit, but he commonly
distinguishes between this spirit and a god proper. When, however, the
fetish is regarded as a tutelary divinity, it loses its lower character
and takes its place among the gods.
+240+. We turn now to man's attitude toward other objects, similarly
regarded as sacred, but invested with distinct personality, and supposed
to act consciously on human life. These are all such things as men's
experiences bring them into intimate relations with, this relationship
forming the basis of the high regard in which they are held. They are
animals, plants, mountains, rivers, heavenly bodies, living men, and
ghosts. These are objects of cults, many of them in some cases being
worshiped at the same time in a single community. A chronological order
in the adoption of such cults it is not possible to determine. All
objects stand together in man's consciousness in early cultural strata,
and the data now at command do not enable us to say which of them first
assumed for him a religious character; the chronological order of cults
may have differed in different communities when the general social
conditions were different. We may begin with the cult of animals without
thereby assuming that it came first in order of time.
ANIMALS
+241+. Of all nonhuman natural objects it would seem to have been the
animal that most deeply impressed early man.[439] All objects were
potentially divine for him, and all received worship, but none entered
so intimately into his life as animals. He was doubtless struck, perhaps
awed, by the brightness of the heavenly bodies, but they were far off,
intangible; mountains were grand and mighty, but motionless; stones lay
in his path, but did not approach him; rivers ran, but in an unchanging
way, rarely displaying emotion; plants grew, and furnished food, but
showed little sign of intelligence. Animals, on the other hand, dwelt
with him in his home, met him at every turn, and did things that seemed
to him to exhibit qualities identical with his own, not only physical
but also mental--they showed swiftness, courage, ferocity, and also
skill and cunning. In certain regards they appeared to be his superiors,
and thus became standards of power and objects of reverence.
+242+. At a very early period the belief in social relations between men
and animals appears. The latter were supposed to have souls, to continue
their existence after death, sometimes to come to life on earth after
death. Their social life was supposed to be similar to that of men;[440]
in Samoa the various species form social units,[441] the Ainu see tattoo
marks on frogs and sparrows,[442] the Arabs recognize a clan
organization in beasts.[443]
+243+. From identity of nature comes the possibility of transformation
and transmigration.[444] An Australian of the Kangaroo clan explained
that he might be called either kangaroo or man--it was all the same,
man-kangaroo or kangaroo-man, and the Australian legends constantly
assume change from human to animal and from animal to human.[445] The
same belief appears in Africa and North America, and may be assumed to
be universal among savages. It survives in the Greek transformation
stories and in the werwolf and swan maiden of the European popular
creed. It is the basis of a part of the theory of the transmigration of
souls.[446]
+244+. The relations of early man with animals are partly friendly,
partly hostile. A friendly attitude is induced by admiration of their
powers and desire for their aid. Such an attitude is presupposed in the
myths of intermarriage between beasts and men. It is perhaps visible
also in the custom of giving or assuming names of animals as personal
names of men, though this custom may arise from the opinion that animals
are the best expressions of certain qualities, or from some conception
underlying totemistic organization; the general history of savage proper
names has not yet been written. Beast tales, likewise, bear witness to
man's opinion of the cleverness or folly of his nonhuman brethren, and
perhaps originally to nothing more. The distinctest expression of
friendliness is seen in certain religious customs spoken of below.
+245+. On the other hand, early man necessarily comes into conflict with
animals. Against some of them he is obliged to protect himself by force
or by skillful contrivance; others must be slain for food. With all of
them he deals in such a way as to secure his own well-being, and thus
comes to regard them as things subservient to him, to be used in such
way as he may find profitable. Those that he cannot use he gradually
exterminates, or, at a later stage, these, banished to thickets,
mountains, deserts, caves, and other inhospitable places, are excluded
from human society and identified with demons.[447]
+246+. The two attitudes, of friendliness and of hostility, coexist
throughout the savage period, and, in softened form, even in
half-civilized life. They represent two points of view, both of which
issue from man's social needs. Early man is logical, but he comprehends
the necessity of not pushing logic too far--he is capable of holding at
the same time two mutually contradictory views, and of acting on each as
may suit his convenience; he makes his dogma yield to the facts of life
(a saving principle not confined to savages, but acted on to a greater
or less extent by all societies). He slays sacred animals for divinatory
and other religious purposes, for food, or in self-defense; he fears
their anger, but his fear is overcome by hunger; he offers profuse
apologies, explains that he acts without ill will and that the bones of
the animal will be preserved and honored, or he declares that it is not
he but some one else that is the slayer--but he does not hesitate to
kill.[448]
+247+. This fact--the existence of different points of view--enables us
to understand in part the disrespectful treatment of sacred animals in
folk-tales. Such tales are the product of popular fancy, standing apart
from the serious and solemn conceptions of the tribal religion. The
reciter, who will not fail at the proper time to pay homage to his
tribal patron, does not hesitate at other times to put him into
ridiculous and disgraceful situations.[449]
+248+. Man's social contact with the lower animals is doubtless as old
as man himself, but there are no records of his earliest life, and it is
not possible to say exactly when and how his religious relations with
them began. His attitude toward them; as is remarked above, was a mixed
one; in general, however, it may be assumed that constant intercourse
with them revealed their great qualities and impressed on him the
necessity of securing their good will. This was especially true of those
of them that stood nearest to him and were of greatest importance for
his safety and convenience. These, invested with mystery by reason of
their power and their strangeness, were held in great respect as
quasi-gods, were approached with caution, and thus acquired the
character of sacredness. Gradually, as human society was better and
better organized, as conceptions of government became clearer, and as
the natures of the various animals were more closely studied, means were
devised of guarding against their anger and securing their friendship
and aid. Our earliest information of savage life reveals in every tribe
an inchoate pantheon of beasts. All the essential apparatus of public
religion is present in these communities in embryonic form--later
movements have had for their object merely to clarify ideas and refine
procedures.
+249+. The animals revered by a tribe are those of its vicinage, the
inhabitants of its hunting grounds. Some of these man uses as food, some
he fears. His relation to plains, mountains, forests, lakes, rivers, and
seas, influences his choice of sacred beasts. Usually there are many of
them, and the natural inference is that originally all animals are
sacred, and that gradually those most important for man are singled out
as objects of special regard.
+250+. Thus, to mention the principal of them: in Africa we find lion,
leopard, hyena, hippopotamus, crocodile, bull, ram, dog, cat, ape,
grasshopper; in Oceania, kangaroo, emu, pig, heron, owl, rail, eel,
cuttlefish; in Asia, lion, elephant, bear, horse, bull, dog, pig, eagle,
tiger, water wagtail, whale; in Europe, bear, wolf, horse, bull, goat,
swan; in America, whale, bear, wolf, fox, coyote, hare, opossum, deer,
monkey, tiger, beaver, turtle, eagle, raven, various fishes. The snake
seems to have been generally revered, though it was sometimes regarded
as hostile.[450] Since animals are largely valued as food, changes in
the animals specially honored follow on changes in economic organization
(hunting, pastoral, and agricultural stages).
+251+. Often animals are looked on as the abodes or incarnations of gods
or spirits: so various birds, fishes, and beasts in Polynesia (in Samoa
every man has a tutelary deity, which appears in the form of an
animal[451]), Siberia, Mexico, and elsewhere. In other cases they are
revered as incarnations of deceased men.[452] Where a species of animal
is supposed to represent a god, this view is probably to be regarded not
as a generalization from an individualistic to a specific conception (a
process too refined for savages), but as an attempt to carry over to the
animal world the idea of descent from a common ancestor combined with
the idea of a special creator for every family of animals.[453]
+252+. In the course of religious growth the beast-god may be replaced
or succeeded by an anthropomorphic god, and then the former is regarded
as sacred to the latter--the recollection of the beast form still
remains after the more refined conception has been reached, and the two,
closely connected in popular feeling, can be brought into harmony only
by making one subordinate to the other.[454] A certain element or flavor
of divinity clings to the beast a long time, but finally vanishes under
the light of better knowledge.
+253+. While the cases, very numerous, in which animals are associated
in worship with gods--in composite forms (as in Egypt, Babylonia, and
Assyria) or as symbols of deities or sacred to them--point probably to
early beast-cults, Egypt alone of the ancient civilized nations
maintained the worship of the living animal.[455] For the better
thinkers of Egypt beasts doubtless were incarnations or symbols of
deities; but the mass of the people appear to have regarded them as gods
in their own persons.
+254+. Reverence for animals persists in attenuated form in civilized
nations in various superstitions connected with them. Their appearances
and their cries are believed to portend success or disaster. The great
number of "signs" recognized and relied on by uneducated and educated
persons at the present day bear witness to the strong hold that the cult
of animals had on early man.[456]
+255+. It is in keeping with early ideas that savages often, perhaps
generally, ascribe the creation or construction of the world (so far as
they know it) to animals. The creation (whether by beasts or by other
beings) is not conceived of as produced out of nothing; there is always
preëxisting material, the origin of which is not explained; primitive
thought seems not to have considered the possibility of a situation in
which nothing existed. The "creation" conceived of is the arrangement of
existing material into the forms familiar to man--every tribe accounting
thus for its own environment. The origin of the land, of mountains,
defiles, lakes, rivers, trees, rocks, sun, moon, and stars, wind and
rain, human beings and lower animals, and sometimes of social
organizations and ceremonies, is explained in some way natural to the
thought of the time and place. Not all these details occur in the
cosmogony of every tribe or clan, but the purpose of every cosmogony is
to account for everything in the origin of which the people are
interested.
+256+. The creator in the cosmogonies known to us is not always an
animal--he is sometimes a man, sometimes a god; it is possible, however,
that human and divine creators are the successors of original animal
creators. In Central Australia the production of certain natural
features of the country and the establishment of certain customs are
ascribed to ancestors, mythical beings of the remote past, creatures
both animal and human, or rather, either animal or human--possibly
animals moving toward the anthropomorphic stage.[457] However this may
be, there are instances in which the creator is an animal pure and
simple, though, of course, endowed with extraordinary powers. The beast
to which the demiurgic function is assigned is selected, it would seem,
on the ground of some peculiar skill or other power it is supposed to
possess; naturally the reason for the choice is not always apparent. For
the Ainu the demiurge is the water wagtail;[458] for the Navahos and in
California,[459] the coyote or prairie wolf; among the Lenni-Lenâpé, the
wolf.[460] Various animals--as elephants, boars, turtles, snakes--are
supposed to bear the world on their backs. The grounds of such opinions,
resting on remote social conditions, are obscure.
+257+. Though, in early stadia of culture, animals are universally
revered as in a sort divine, there are few recorded instances of actual
worship offered them.[461] Whether the Bushmen and the Hottentots
worship the mantis (the Bushman god Cagn) as animal is not quite
clear.[462] The bear, when it is ceremonially slain, is treated by the
Ainu as divine--it is approached with food and prayer, but only for the
specific purpose of asking that it will speak well of them to its divine
kin and will return to earth to be slain. The Zuñi cult of the turtle
and the Californian worship of the bird called _panes_[463] present
similar features. The non-Aryan Santhals of Bengal are said to offer
divine worship to the tiger.[464] Such worship appears to be paid to the
snake by the Naga tribes and the Gonds of India, and by the Hopi of
North America.[465]
+258+. In these and similar cases it is sometimes difficult to say
whether the animal is worshiped in its own person merely, or as the
embodiment or representative of a god or of ancestors. The usages in
question are almost entirety confined to low tribes, and disappear with
the advance of civilization; wild animals are banished from society and
cease to be sacred, and the recollection of their early character
survives only in their mythological attachment to deities proper. For a
different reason domesticated animals lose their sacredness--they become
merely servants of men. The Egyptian cult of the bull is the
best-attested instance of actual worship of a domestic animal, and
parallels to this it is hard to find; the Todas, for example, for whom
the buffalo is the central sacred object, do not now pay worship to the
animal--they may have done so in former times.
+259+. The sacredness of animals, and the fact that they are regarded
as embodying the souls of things and human beings, have led to a
coalescence of their cults with other religious observances. They are
abundantly employed in magical procedures and in sacrifices; they are
often identified with spirits of vegetation, any locally revered animal
being chosen for this purpose; they are brought into connection with
astral objects and their forms are fancifully seen in sun, moon, and
constellations; they play a great rôle in apotropaic and purificatory
ceremonies; and they appear in myths of all sorts,[466] especially in
the histories of gods.
+260+. But, though they are in many cases regarded as tutelary beings,
it is doubtful whether they ever develop into anthropomorphic
deities.[467] The creation of such deities followed a different
line[468] and dispensed with the lower quasi-divine forms. Such manlike
attributes as beasts were supposed to have were taken up into the
distincter and nobler conceptions of tribal gods to whom beasts were
more and more subordinated. The latter were allegorized and
spiritualized, and came to serve merely as material for poetry.
+261+. Yet beast worship, such as it was and is, has played an important
part in religious development. It has furnished a point of
crystallization for early ideas, and has supplied interesting objects in
which man's demand for superhuman companionship could find
satisfaction.[469] It has disappeared when it has been no longer needed.
PLANTS
+262+. The cult of plants has been as widespread as that of animals,
and, if its rôle in the history of religion has been less important than
that of the latter, this is because plants show less definite signs of
life than animals and enter less intimately than they into the social
interests of man. But, like all other things, they are regarded by
early man as living, as possessing a nature similar to that of man, and
as having power to work good or ill. Trees are represented as thinking,
speaking, entering into marriage relations, and in general doing
whatever intelligent beings can do. Through thousands of years in the
period before the dawn of written history man was brought into constant
contact with the vegetable world, and learned by experience to
distinguish between plants that were beneficial and those that were
harmful. His observation created an embryonic science of medicine, and
his imagination an embryonic religious cult.
+263+. The value of certain vegetable products (fruits, nuts, wild
plants) as food must have become known at a very early time, and these
would naturally be offered to the extrahuman Powers. At a later time,
when cereals were cultivated, they formed an important part of
sacrificial offerings, and were held--as, for example, among the Greeks
and the Hebrews--to have piacular efficacy.
+264+. Among the discoveries of the early period was that of the
intoxicating quality of certain plants--a quality that came to play a
prominent rôle in religious life. Valued at first, probably, for the
agreeable sensations they produced, such plants were later supposed to
possess magical power, to exert a mysterious influence on the mind, and
to be the source or medium of superhuman communications. Thus employed
by magicians they were connected with the beginnings of religious
ecstasy and prophecy. Their magical power belongs to them primarily as
living things, but came to be attributed to extrahuman beings.
+265+. Plants as living things were supposed to possess souls.[470]
Probably the soul was conceived of at first as simply the vital
principle, and the power of the plant was thought of as similar to the
power of an animal or any other living thing. In the course of time this
soul, the active principle, was distinguished from the vital principle,
was isolated and regarded as an independent being dwelling in the plant.
To it all the powers of the latter were ascribed, and it became a friend
or an enemy, an object of worship or of dread.[471]
+266+. This difference of attitude on man's part toward different plants
probably showed itself at an early period. Those that were found to be
noxious he would avoid; the useful he would enter into relations with,
though on this point for very early times there is in the nature of the
case little information.[472] Unfriendly or demonic spirits of plants
are recognized by savage man in certain forests whose awe-inspiring
gloom, disease-breeding vapors, and wild beasts repel and frighten him.
Demons identified with plants or dwelling in them are of the same nature
as animal demons, and have been dealt with in the same way as
these.[473]
+267+. The progress of society brought men into association with useful
plants, such as medicinal and edible herbs, and fruit-bearing and
shade-giving trees; these, conceived of as inhabited by anthropomorphic
spirits, fulfilled all the functions that attach to friendly animals.
They became guardians and allies, totems and ancestors.[474] Several of
the Central Australian totems are plants, and form part of the mythical
ancestral population constructed by the imagination or ethnographic
science of the people.[475] In Samoa a plant is often the incarnation of
a spirit friendly to a particular family[476]--a conception that is not
improbably a development from an earlier view that a certain plant had a
special relation to a certain clan.[477] In general, a plant important
in a given region (as, for example, the tobacco plant in North America)
is likely to be invested with a sacred character.
+268+. Trees, by reason of their greater dignity (size, beauty,
protective character), have generally been singled out as special cultic
centers.[478] A great tree sometimes served as a boundary mark or
signpost; under trees chiefs of clans sat to decide disputes. Thus
invested with importance as a sort of political center as well as the
abode of a spirit, a tree naturally became a shrine and an asylum.[479]
In India and Greece, and among the ancient Celts and Germans, the gods
were worshiped in groves, by the Canaanites and Hebrews "under every
green tree." To cut down a sacred tree was a sacrilege, and the spirit
of the tree was believed to avenge the crime.[480]
+269+. As might be expected, there is hardly a species of tree that has
not been held sacred by some group of men. The Nagas and other tribes of
Northeast India regard all plants as sacred,[481] and every village has
its sacred tree. In Babylonia and Assyria, it is said, there were
hundreds of trees looked on as invested with more or less sanctity. The
oak was revered in some parts of Greece, and among the Romans and the
Celts. The cult of particular species, as the pipal (_Ficus religiosa_),
the vata or banyan (_Ficus Indica_), the karam and others, has been
greatly systematized in India.[482]
+270+. Vegetable spirits in some cases have developed into real gods. A
notable example of such growth is furnished by the history of the
intoxicating soma plant, which in the Rig-Veda is represented not only
as the inspiring drink of the gods but as itself a deity, doing things
that are elsewhere ascribed to Indra, Pushan, and other
well-established deities.[483] The spirit, coming to be regarded as an
anthropomorphic person, under peculiar circumstances assumes the
character of a god. A similar development appears in the Iranian haoma,
and the cultic identity of soma and haoma shows that the deification of
the plant took place in the early Aryan period.[484]
+271+. Another example has been supposed to be furnished by
corn-spirits. The importance of cereal crops for human life gave them a
prominent position in the cult of agricultural communities. The decay
and revival of the corn was an event of prime significance, and appears
to have been interpreted as the death and resurrection of the spirit
that was the life of the crop. Such is the idea in the modern popular
customs collected by Mannhardt and Frazer.[485] The similarity between
these ceremonies and those connected with the Phoenician Tammuz
(Adonis) and the Phrygian Attis makes it probable that the two are based
on the same ideas; that is, that Adonis and Attis (and so also Osiris
and Ishtar) were deities of vegetation. This, however, does not prove
that they were developed out of spirits of vegetation; they may have
been deities charged with the care of crops.[486] The Phoenician name
Adon is merely a title ('lord') that might be given to any god; he whom
the Greeks called Adonis was a Syrian local deity, identical in origin
with the Babylonian Tammuz, and associated in worship with Astarte, whom
the Greeks identified with their Aphrodite.
+272+. A sacred tree often stood by a shrine; that is, probably, the
shrine was put in the spot made sacred by a tree, and a ritual
connection between the two was thus established. Later, when a shrine
for any reason (in consequence of a theophany, for example) was built
where there was no tree, its place was supplied by a wooden post, which
inherited the cultic value of a sacred tree. In the Canaanite cult,
which was adopted by the Hebrews, the sacred post (called "ashera")
stood by the side of every shrine, and was denounced by the prophets as
an accompaniment of foreign (that is, non-Yahwistic) worship.[487] The
transition from tree to post is illustrated, perhaps, by the
conventionalized form of trees frequent on Babylonian seal
cylinders.[488] How far the sacred post was an object of worship by the
people we have no means of knowing; but by the more intelligent,
doubtless, it came to be regarded simply as a symbol, a sign of the
presence of a deity, and was, in so far, in the same category with
images.[489]
+273+. It is not impossible that totem posts may be connected with
original totem trees or other sacred trees. A tree as totem would
naturally be the object of some sort of cult, and when it took the form
of a post or pole, would have totemic symbols carved on it. Oftener,
probably, it was the sacred pole of a village (itself descended from a
sacred tree) that would be adorned with totemic figures, as among the
Indians of Northwestern America.[490] In all such cases there is a
coalescence of totemism and tree worship.
+274+. It was natural in early times, when most men lived in forests,
which supplied all their needs, that trees should be looked on as
intimately connected with human life. A tree might be regarded as in
itself an independent personality, having, of course, a body and a soul,
but not as dependent on an isolated spirit. A group of men might think
itself descended from a tree--a conception that may have been
widespread, though there is little direct evidence of its
existence.[491] Indirect evidence of such a view is found in the custom
of marrying girls to trees,[492] and in the belief in "trees of life,"
which are sometimes connected with individual men in such a way that
when the tree or a part of it is destroyed the man dies, as in the case
of Meleager whose life depended on the preservation of a piece of
wood,[493] the representative, probably, of a tree, and the priest of
Nemi whose life was bound up in the "golden bough"[494]; sometimes the
tree has a magical power of conferring life on whoever eats of its
fruit, as in the case of the tree of Eden.[495]
+275+. These stories involve the conception of blood-kinship between man
and tree. Closely related to the "tree of life" is the "tree of
knowledge"--life is knowledge and knowledge is life. In the original
form of the story in Genesis there was only one tree--the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil[496]--whose fruit, if eaten, made one the
equal of the gods;[497] that is, the tree (in the original form of the
conception, in remote times) was allied in nature (that is, in blood) to
gods and to men, so that whoever partook of its substance shared its
attribute of knowledge in sharing its life, and the command not to eat
of it was due apparently to Yahweh's unwillingness that man should equal
the gods in knowledge. The serpent-god, who belongs to the inner divine
circle, but for some unexplained reason is hostile to the god of the
garden,[498] reveals the secret.
+276+. Probably, also, it is from this general order of ideas that the
conception of the cosmic tree has sprung. The Scandinavian Yggdrasil is
the source of life to all things and represents also wisdom; though the
details may contain Christian elements, the general conception of the
world as a tree or as nourished by a tree is probably old.[499] The same
conception appears in the cosmic tree of India.[500] Such
quasi-philosophical ideas of the unity of the life of the world suppose,
doubtless, a relatively advanced stage of culture, but they go back to
the simple belief that the tree is endowed with life and is a source of
life for men. The transition to the cosmic conception may be found in
those quasi-divine trees that grant wishes and endow their friends with
wisdom and life.
+277+. The divinatory function of trees follows as a matter of course
from their divine nature (whether this was regarded as innate or as due
to an indwelling spirit). Their counsel was supposed to be expressed by
the rustling of their leaves,[501] or in some way that was interpreted
by priests or priestesses (as at Dodona and elsewhere) or by diviners
(so, perhaps, the Canaanite "terebinth of the diviners").[502] The
predictions of the Cumæan sibyl were said to be written on leaves that
were whirled away by the wind and had to be gathered and interpreted. To
what method of divination this points is not clear--possibly to supposed
indications in the markings of the leaves; it may, however, be merely an
imaginative statement of the difficulty of discovering the sibyl's
meaning.[503]
+278+. The passage from the conception of the tree as a divine thing or
person (necessarily anthropomorphic) to the view that it was the abode
of a spirit was gradual, and it is not always easy to distinguish the
two stages one from the other. The tree-spirits, in the nature of the
case very numerous, were not distinguished by individual names, as the
trees were not so distinguished.[504] The spirits resident in the divine
trees invoked in the Vedas are powerful, but have not definite
personality, and it is hard to say whether it is the tree or the spirit
that is worshiped. The Indian tree-spirits called Nagas appear to be
always nameless, and are not mentioned in the list of deities that pay
reverence to the Buddha (in the Maha Samaya).[505] The large number of
trees accounted sacred in Babylonia were doubtless believed to be
inhabited by spirits, but to no one of these is a name given.
+279+. Thus the divine tree with its nameless spirit stands in a class
apart from that of the gods proper. A particular tree, it is true, may
be connected with a particular god, but such a connection is generally,
if not always, to be traced (as in the parallel case of animals[506]) to
an accidental collocation of cults. When a deity has become the numen of
a tribe, his worship will naturally coalesce with the veneration felt
by the tribe for some tree, which will then be conceived of as sacred to
the god. Such, doubtless, was the history of the oak of Dodona, sacred
to Zeus; when Zeus was established as deity of the place, the revered
tree had to be brought into relation with him, and this relation could
only be one of subordination--the tree became the medium by which the
god communicated his will. There was then no need of the spirit of the
tree, which accordingly soon passed away; the tree had lost its
spiritual divine independence. The god who is said to have appeared to
Moses in a burning bush, and is described as dwelling in the bush, is a
local deity, the _numen loci_ later identified with Yahweh, or called an
angel.[507] That a tree is sacred to a god means only that it has a
claim to respect based on its being the property or instrument of a god.
+280+. While the tree-spirit has undoubtedly played a great rôle in
early religious history, there is not decisive evidence of its ever
having developed into a true god, with name, distinct personality, and
distinct functions.[508] There are many Greek and Roman titles that
connect gods with trees,[509] but these may be explained in the way
suggested above: Zeus Endendros is a god dwelling in a tree, but the
tree is only an abode, not a god, and the god Zeus does not come from
the tree--rather two distinct sacred things have been brought together
and fused into a unity, or the tree is a rude, incipient image. The
Dionysos Hermes-figures may be explained in the same way.[510]
+281+. It appears to be the aloofness of trees that prevents their
becoming gods; they are revered and worshiped, but without becoming
personalities. Babylonian seal engravings and wall pictures often
represent a tree before which men or higher beings stand in adoration;
according to Maspero[511] there was actual worship of trees in Egypt,
and similar cults are found among the wild tribes of India.[512]
Adoration, however, does not necessarily imply a god; the Buddhist's
worship under the bo-tree is not directed to any being; it is only the
recognition of something that he thinks worthy of reverence.[513]
+282+. The cult of the corn-spirit is referred to above,[514] and doubt
is there expressed as to whether such a spirit has grown into a true
god. The question is confessedly a difficult one on account of the
absence of full data for the period involved. The chief ground for the
doubt as to the development in question lies in what we know of early
gods. The term 'Adon,' as is remarked above, is the Phoenician title
of the local deity. The origin of such deities is involved in the
obscurity of the remote past, but they are, each in his community,
universal powers; their functions embrace all that their communities
desire, and they represent each the total life of a people. It is the
general rule that any popular custom may be introduced into the cult of
the local god; of such sort of procedure there are many examples. In the
case under consideration the god may have become the hero of a ceremony
with which he had originally nothing to do, as the Hebrews when they
entered Canaan connected Canaanite festivals with their national god,
Yahweh, and later a cult of the wilderness deity Azazel[515] was adopted
and modified by the Yahwist leaders. Various cults attached themselves
to the worship of Zeus, Apollo, Dionysos, and other Greek deities.[516]
+283+. A similar explanation may be given of the ceremonies of death and
resurrection connected with Attis and Osiris. Of Attis we have only late
accounts, and do not know his early history. Osiris is an old
underground deity (later the judge of the Underworld), with functions
that included more than the vivification of vegetation, and the
absorption of the corn-spirit into his cult would be natural. The
collocation of a male with a female deity, common to the three cults,
may be merely the elaboration of the myth in accordance with human
social usage (the dead deity is mourned by his consort).[517] The
descent of Ishtar has been interpreted of the weakening of the sun's
heat in winter; but as she is obviously a deity of fertility and, in her
descent, disappears entirely from among men, while the sun does not
disappear entirely, she rather, in this story, represents or is
connected with the decay and rebirth of vegetation.
+284+. It is thus possible that, though many ancient ceremonies stand in
relation to the corn-spirit and also to a god, the explanation of this
fact is not that the spirit has grown into a god, but that it has
coalesced with a god. In all such explanations, however, our ignorance
of the exact processes of ancient thought must be borne in mind.
+285+. Trees have been widely credited with the power of bestowing
blessings of all sorts. But, like animals, they rarely receive formal
worship;[518] the reason for this is similar to that suggested
above[519] in the case of animals. The coalescence, spoken of above, of
tree ceremonies with cults of fully developed gods is not uncommon, and
trees figure largely in mythical divine histories.
STONES AND MOUNTAINS
+286+. Like all other objects stones have been regarded, in all parts of
the world, as living, as psychologically anthropomorphic (that is, as
having soul, emotion, will), and, in some cases, as possessing
superhuman powers.[520] The term 'sacred,' as applied to them, may mean
either that they are in themselves endowed with peculiar powers, or that
they have special relations with divine beings; the first meaning is the
earlier, the second belongs to a period when the lesser revered objects
have been subordinated to the greater.
+287+. The basis of the special belief in their sacredness was,
probably, the mystery of their forms and qualities, their hardness,
brilliancy, solidity. They seem to have been accepted, in the earliest
known stages of human life, as ultimate facts. When explanations of
their presence were sought, they were supposed to have been deposited by
ancestors or other beings, sometimes as depositories of their
souls.[521] Meteorites, having fallen from the sky, needed no other
explanation. Popular science (that is, popular imagination), perhaps
from fancied resemblances to the human form, assumed of some stones that
they were human beings turned to stone, and stories grew up to account
for the metamorphoses. In many different ways, according to differences
of physical surroundings and of social conceptions, men accounted for
such of these objects as interested them particularly.
+288+. That stones were believed to be alive and akin to men is shown by
the stories of the birth of men and gods from stones,[522] the turning
of human beings to stone (Niobe, Lot's wife), the accounts of their
movements (rocks in Brittany).[523]
+289+. Small stones, especially such as are of peculiar shape, are in
many parts of the world regarded as having magic power; the peculiarity
of shape seems mysterious and therefore connected with power. Doubtless
accidental circumstances, such as the occurrence of a piece of good
fortune, have often endowed a particular stone with a reputation for
power. Certain forms, especially flat disks with a hole in the center,
have preserved this reputation down to the present day. The Roman lapis
manalis is said by Festus to have been employed to get rain.[524]
+290+. Magical stones were, doubtless, believed to possess souls. In
accordance with the general law such stones and others were regarded
later as the abodes of independent movable spirits.[525] When the power
of a fetish seems to be exhausted, and a new object is chosen and by
appropriate ceremonies a spirit is induced to take up its abode in it,
there seems to be no theory as to whether the incoming spirit is the old
one or a new one, or, if it be a new one, what becomes of the old one,
about which little or no interest is felt.[526] The pneumatology is
vague; the general view is that the air is full of spirits, whose
movements may be controlled by magical means: spirits, that is, are
subject to laws, and these laws are known to properly trained men.
+291+. Reverence for divine stones continues into the period of the rise
of the true gods. When god and stone stand together in a community, both
revered, they may be and generally are combined into a cultic unity: the
stone becomes the symbol or the abode or the person of the god.[527] It
was, doubtless, in some such way as this that a stone came to be
identified with the Magna Mater of Pessinus. When this stone was brought
to Rome toward the end of the Second Punic War, the Roman leaders may
have regarded it simply as a symbol of the goddess, but the people
probably looked on it as itself a divine defense against Hannibal.[528]
The Israelite ark, carried out to the battle against the
Philistines,[529] appears to have contained a stone, possibly a
meteorite, possibly a piece taken from the sacred mountain Sinai, itself
divine, but in the Old Testament narrative regarded as the abode of
Yahweh (a Sinaitic god), though it was probably of independent origin
and only gradually brought into association with the local god of the
mountain.
+292+. Similar interpretations may be given of other stones identified
or connected with deities, as that of Zeus at Seleucia,[530] that of
Aphrodite at Paphos,[531] that of Jupiter Lapis,[532] and the black
stone that represented the Syrian Elagabalos at Emesa.[533] The remark
of Pausanias, after he has described the thirty sacred stones of Pheræ,
that the early Greeks paid divine honors to unhewn stones, doubtless
expresses the traditions and beliefs of his time;[534] and it is
probable that in antiquity there were many divine stones, and that these
were frequently in later times identified with local gods. In many
cases, however, there was no identification, only a collocation and
subordination: the stone became the symbol of the deity, or a sacred
object associated with the deity.[535]
+293+. This seems to be the later conception of the character of the
sacred stones mentioned in the Old Testament, as the one that Jacob is
said to have set up as a masseba and anointed.[536] The Canaanite
massebas, adopted as cultic objects by the Israelites,[537] were stone
pillars standing by shrines and regarded as a normal if not a necessary
element of worship; originally divine in themselves (as may be inferred
from the general history of such objects), they came to be regarded as
mere accessories; there is no indication in the Old Testament that they
were looked on as gods, though they may have been so regarded by the
people[538]--their presence at the Canaanite shrines, as a part of
foreign, non-Yahwistic worship, sufficiently explains the denunciation
of them by the prophets.[539]
+294+. In the story of Jacob he is said to have given the name Bethel to
the place where he anointed the stone. It does not appear that he so
called the stone itself; Bethel (in Hebrew, "house of God"[540]) seems
to have been an old sacred place, and terms compounded with 'beth' in
Hebrew are names of shrines. The relation between this name and the
Semitic word whence, probably, comes Greek _baitulos_[541] (Latin
_baetulus_) is not clear; this last is the designation of a sacred stone
held to have fallen from heaven (meteoric). Such an one is called by
Philo of Byblos "empsuchos," 'endowed with life or with soul.'[542]
Pliny describes the baetulus as a species of ceraunia
(thunderstone).[543] The Greek word is now commonly derived from _betel_
('bethel')--a derivation possible so far as the form of the word is
concerned.[544] According to this view the stone is the abode of a
deity--a conception common in early religion. Such an object would be
revered, and would ultimately be brought into connection with a local
god.[545] If Hebrew bethel was originally a stone considered as the
abode of a deity, then in the Old Testament the earlier form of the
conception has been effaced by the later thought--the word 'bethel' has
become the name of a place, a shrine, the dwelling place of God.[546]
+295+. The origin of the black stone of the Kaaba at Mecca is
unknown--it was doubtless either a meteorite or in some way connected
with a sacred place; it was, and is, regarded as in itself sacred, but
whether it represented originally a deity, and if so what deity, is not
known.[547]
+296+. The belief in the sacred character of stones may account, at
least in part, for the custom of casting stones on the grave of a
chieftain (as in Northern Arabia), though this may be merely intended to
preserve the grave. So also the stones thrown at the foot of a Hermes
pillar may have been meant as a waymark, yet with the feeling that the
stone heap had a sacred character of its own.[548] The stone circles at
Stonehenge and Avebury may have had a religious significance, but their
function is not clear. Boundary stones seem to have had at first simply
a political function, but were naturally dedicated to the deities who
were guardians of tribal boundaries (Roman Terminus, various Babylonian
gods, etc.).
+297+. It is by virtue of their divine character that stones came to be
used as altars.[549] As things divine in themselves or as representing a
deity they receive the blood of the sacred (that is, divine) sacrificial
animal, which is the food of the god. Originally a part of the blood is
applied to the stone, and the rest poured out or eaten (as sacred food)
by the worshiper. In process of time, when the god has been divorced
from the stone, the latter becomes a table on which the victim is
offered;[550] the old conception survives in the custom of slaying the
victim by the side of the altar, and applying the blood to the horns of
the altar as a representative part of the sacred structure. In the late
Jewish ritual this application of blood is interpreted as a purification
of the altar from ceremonial defilements.[551]
+298+. Originally, it seems, it was only natural stones that were sacred
or divine and were employed as representatives of deities; but by a
natural process of thought the custom arose of using artificial stones
in the same way. By means of certain ceremonies, it was held, the deity
could be induced to accept an altar or a house, or to take up his abode
in an image, as a spirit is introduced by the savage into a fetish
object.[552] The basis of this sort of procedure is first the belief in
the amenableness of the deity to magical laws, and, later, the belief in
his friendly disposition, his willingness to accede to the wishes of his
worshipers provided they offer the proper tribute; but even in very late
ceremonies a trace of the magical element remains.
+299+. The significance of the high pillars, of stone or of metal, that
stood at the entrance of certain Semitic temples, is not clear. Examples
are: in Tyre, the temple of the local Baal (Melkart);[553] Solomon's
temple of Yahweh in Jerusalem, and the temple planned by Ezekiel in
imitation of that of Solomon;[554] compare the temple of the
Carthaginian Tanit-Artemis, a form of Ashtart, the votive stela from the
temple of Aphrodite in Idalium (in Cyprus), and similar figures on
Cyprian coins.[555] Of the various explanations offered of these pillars
that which regards them as phallic symbols may be set aside as lacking
proof.[556] It is not probable that they were merely decorative; the
details of ancient temples, as a rule, were connected with worship. It
has been suggested that they were fire altars,[557] in support of which
view may be cited the figures on Cyprian coins (mentioned above), and
the fact that sailors sacrificed at Gades at a place where there were
two high pillars;[558] but such a custom does not prove that the
sacrifices were offered on the pillars, and these latter are generally
too high to serve such a purpose; they are too high also to be
convenient candelabra.[559] It seems more probable that they were
developments from sacred stones (such as the Canaanite massebas), which
originally represented the deity, came to be conventional attachments to
temples, and then were treated in accordance with architectural
principles. They would be placed in pairs, one pillar on each side of
the temple door, for the sake of symmetry, and dignity would be sought
by giving them a considerable height.[560] They might also be utilized,
when they were not too high, as stands for lamps or cressets, but this
would be a secondary use. The obelisks that stood in front of Egyptian
temples, likewise, were probably sacred monuments reared in honor of
deities.[561]
+300+. Images of gods and other extrahuman beings arise through the
natural human impulse to represent familiar objects of thought. Very
rude tribes have stone or wood carvings of spirits and gods, good and
bad. These images are generally in human shape, because all Powers are
thought of as anthropomorphic. Sometimes, as Réville suggests, a root,
or branch of a tree, bearing some resemblance to the human face or
figure, may have led to the making of an image; but the general natural
artistic tendency is sufficient to account for the fact.[562]
+301+. The character assigned to images varies with stages of culture.
In low communities they are themselves divine--the gods have entered
into them and they are not thought of as different from their divine
indwellers. In such cases they are sometimes chained to prevent their
getting away; if they are obstinate, not listening to prayers, they are
cuffed, scourged, or reviled.[563] This conception lingers still among
the peasants of Southern Europe, who treat a saint (a rechristened old
god) as if he were a man to be won by threats or cajolements. In a more
refined age the image becomes simply a symbol, a visible representation
serving to fix the attention and recall divine things. Different races
also differ in the extent of their demand for such representations of
deity.
+302+. Stones and rocks, like other natural objects, are starting-points
for folk-stories and myths. All over the world they lie on the ground or
rise in the shape of hills, and, being mysterious, require explanation.
The explanations given, and handed down from generation to generation,
are always connected with superhuman or with extraordinary persons,
ancestors, heroes, spirits. To each stone or rock a story is attached, a
creation of the fancy suggested by the surroundings and by the popular
traditions; and each story forms an episode in the history of the hero
or spirit. The stones and rocks thus come to constitute a book
chronicling the history of the tribe and the deeds of its great men--a
book quite legible to the man who has been taught the stories. These
grow with every generation, receiving such additions as fancy and
reflection dictate, and gradually taking on literary form. In the
territory of the Australian Arunta every stone is connected with some
incident in the careers of the mythical ancestors, and the stories taken
together form the legendary history of the origin of customs.[564] In
Samoa and New Guinea many stones are pointed out as having been set in
place by local heroes. In North America innumerable rocks and stones are
connected with the mythical ancestors and creators of the tribes.
+303+. Mountains have everywhere been regarded as abodes of spirits or
deities, and therefore sacred. Their height and massiveness invested
them with dignity (even as now they appeal mightily to the imagination),
and their lofty summits and rugged sides were full of danger and
mystery. Sacred mountains are found in North America, Bengal, Africa,
and elsewhere. Naturally they are often abodes of gods of rain; they are
feared on account of the spirits inhabiting them, but they are also
resorted to as places where divine revelations may be obtained.[565] The
Semitic, Hindu, and Greek examples are familiar: the Hebrew and
Canaanite Sinai (or Horeb), Nebo, Carmel, Hermon; the Arabian Arafat,
near Mecca; the Babylonian Ekur; in India, Meru, Mandara, Himavat, and
other mountains; in Greece, Olympus and Parnassus.
+304+. Mountains are also worshiped as being themselves divine.[566] The
cult, however, has not been important; the physical mass is too solid,
lacking in movement, and human interest naturally centered in the spirit
or deity who dwelt therein.[567]
+305+. Mythological fancy has made them the abodes and places of
assembly of gods and glorified saints, usually in the north. The
mythical Ekur was the dwelling place of Babylonian deities.[568] In
India various peaks in the Himalayas, inaccessible to men, were assigned
to groups of deities, and the mythical world-mountain Meru was the
special abode of great gods, who there lived lives of delight.[569] On
the highest peak of the Thessalian Olympus Zeus sat, surrounded by the
inferior gods; here he held councils and announced his decrees.[570] The
two conceptions of the home of the gods--on mountains and in the
sky--existed for a time side by side, having in common the feature of
remoteness and secrecy; gradually the earthly abode was ignored, and the
gods were assigned to the more dignified heavenly home.
WATERS
+306+. To early man waters, fire, winds, are interesting because of
their relation to his life, and sacred because of their power and
mysteriousness.[571] They are regarded by him not as "elements" of the
world, but as individual phenomena that affect well-being. His
conception of them is not cosmogonic or analytic, but personal; they are
entities with which he has to deal.
+307+. The mobility of masses of water, seeming to be a sign of life,
naturally procured them a definite place among sacred things. Any
spring, pond, lake, or river with which a tribe was brought into
intimate relations was regarded as a source of life or of healing, and
of divination. Dwellers by the sea regarded it with awe; its depths were
mysterious and its storms terrible.
+308+. As in the case of animals, plants, and stones, so here: the
earliest conception of water masses is that they are divine in
themselves (every one, of course, having its own soul), and are potent
for bodily help or harm, and for divination. The waters of the Nile,
the Ganges, the Jordan, were held to heal the diseased and purify the
unclean; and a similar power is now ascribed to the water of the well
Zamzam in the Kaaba at Mecca. Hannibal swore, among other things, by the
waters,[572] and the oath by the river Styx was the most binding of
oaths, having power to control even the gods; the thing by which an oath
is taken is always originally divine. In the Hebrew ordeal of jealousy
the sacred water decides whether the accused woman is guilty or
not.[573] The sea is treated as a living thing, whose anger may be
appeased by gifts; it is a monster, a dragon.[574] The Spartan
Cleomenes, about to start on a voyage, sacrifices a bull to the
sea.[575] Offerings to the sea are made in the Maldive Islands.[576]
+309+. Water is abundantly employed in religious ritual as a means of
purification from ceremonial defilement, and in services of initiation.
A bathing-place often stood by a shrine (as in pre-Islamic Arabia and in
Islam now), and immersions came to play a prominent part in highly
developed systems (Jewish, Christian, Mithraic). The purification was
generally symbolic, but in some forms of Christian belief the water of
baptism is held to have regenerating power[577]--a survival of the
ancient conception of the divinity of water.
+310+. It is often hard to say whether a body of water is regarded
simply as itself a living thing, or is conceived of as the dwelling
place of an isolated or independent spirit. In savage systems the
details on this point are hardly ever recorded or obtainable; but the
beliefs involved in later folk-lore make it probable that this latter
stage of the construction of creeds is passed through in savage life.
The water maidens of Greek mythology and the Germanic nixies and water
kelpies are developed forms of spirits. Sacred springs and wells are
still believed to be inhabited by beings that are not gods, but possess
superhuman power.
+311+. While wells and streams of a domestic character (such as are
freely used by human beings) are generally friendly, they have their
unfriendly side. The spirits that dwell in them are sometimes regarded
as being hostile to man. They drag the incautious wanderer into their
depths, and then nothing can save him from drowning. Fear of these
malignant beings sometimes prevents attempts to rescue a drowning
person; such attempts are held to bring down the vengeance of the
water-demon on the would-be rescuer.[578]
+312+. In the course of time true water-gods appear. In Greece every
river had its deity, and in India such deities are found in the
Mahabharata.[579] When in the Iliad the river Xanthos rises to seize and
drown Achilles, it may be a question whether the stream or the god of
the stream is the actor. Nor is it always possible to say whether the
extrahuman Power inhabiting a water mass is a true god or a spirit; the
latter form may pass by invisible gradations into the former.
+313+. Waters originally divine tend to become the abodes of the deity
of the place, or sacred to him, and healing or other power is ascribed
to his presence or agency.[580] Sacred water, being unwilling to retain
anything impure, thus becomes a means of detecting witches and other
criminals, who, when thrown in, cannot sink, but are rejected by the
divine Power.
+314+. Deities of streams and springs do not play an important part in
worship or in mythology; their physical functions are not definite
enough, and their activities are naturally merged in or subsumed under
those of the greater or more definite local gods. If, for example, the
Canaanite Baals are gods or lords of underground irrigation,[581] this
is because they, as divine lords of the particular regions, control all
phenomena; they are, in fact, also gods of rain and thunderstorms,
harvests and war. So rain-gods in general are to be regarded as local
deities, among whose functions that of bestowing rain was regarded as
specially important. In the lowest systems the rain-giver may be a
sacred stone, dipped in a stream,[582] or a royal or priestly magician
who is held responsible and is punished if the expected result is not
attained.[583] In such cases the procedure is often one of imitative
magic.[584]
+315+. If there be, in the next higher stratum of belief, a local or
tribal god, it is he who is looked to for the rain supply; so the early
Hebrews looked to Yahweh,[585] and the Canaanites, doubtless, to the
Baals. The economic importance of rain led, even in low tribes, to the
conception of a special deity charged with its bestowal.[586] In more
elaborate mythologies various deities are credited with rain-making
power. In India, for example, Dyaus, the Maruts, Parjanya, Brihaspati,
Indra, Agni,[587] all concerned with rain, have, all except Agni,
evidently grown from local figures with general functions; this appears
from the great variety of parts they play. The same thing is true,
perhaps, of Zeus and Jupiter in their character of rain-gods--as
all-sufficient divine patrons they would be dispensers of all blessings,
including rain; they seem, however, to have been originally gods of the
sky, and thus naturally the special guardians of rain.[588]
+316+. Great masses of water have given rise to myths, mostly
cosmogonic. The conception of a watery mass as the primeval material of
the world (in Egypt, Babylonia, India, Greece, Rome) belongs not to
religion but to science; in a relatively advanced period, however, this
mass was represented as a monster, the antagonist of the gods of light
and order, and from this representation has come a whole literature of
myths. In Babylonia a great cosmogonic poem grew up in which the dragon
figures of the water chaos (Tiamat, Mummu, Kingu) play a great
part,[589] and echoes of this myth appear in the later Old Testament
books.
+317+. In the more elaborate pantheons the local deities of streams and
springs tend to disappear, and gods of ocean appear: in Babylonia, Ea;
in Greece, Okeanos and Poseidon; in Rome, Neptune; and along with these
are numerous subordinate figures--attendants on the great gods, and
intrusted with various particular duties.
FIRE
+318+. There was, doubtless, a time when man had not learned to produce
fire, and there may now be tribes unacquainted with its domestic uses.
But such ignorance, if it exists, is rare; savages generally know how to
make fire, and to use it for warmth and for the preparation of food.
When men began to reflect on the origin of things, fire seemed to them
so wonderful that they supposed it must have been discovered or
invented, and the knowledge of it bestowed on men by higher beings, gods
or demigods; such benefactors are Hastsezini (of the Navahos), Lightning
(of the Pawnees), the Beaver and the Eagle (of the Thompson River
Indians of British Columbia), Maui (of the Maoris), Agni,
Prometheus.[590]
+319+. Though, like other mysterious things, it has been regarded
generally (perhaps universally) as sacred, there is no clear proof that
it has been worshiped as divine. What may have been the case in remote
ages we cannot tell, but, according to the information we possess, it
has been, and is, merely revered as in itself mysterious or sacred,[591]
or as the abode or production of a spirit or a deity. Possibly in the
early stages of culture known to us there is a fusion of the element
with the indwelling or controlling god or spirit.[592] The divine
patrons of fire are found in all parts of the world, varying in form
and function according to the degrees of advancement of the various
communities, from the beast-gods of the Redmen to the departmental
deities of the Maoris, Babylonians, Mexicans, and others, and to the
more complicated gods of Hindus, Greeks, and Romans.[593]
+320+. The most elaborate and most interesting of all fire-cults is the
Persian. The ritual of the Avesta appears at times to describe a worship
of the element itself: in Fargard xviii the fire implores the
householder to rise, wash his hands, and put pure wood on the flame;
Yaçna lxi is a hymn of homage and petition addressed to the fire, which
is called the son of Ahura Mazda--the householder asks that all the
blessings of life may be his as a reward for his sacrifice. The numerous
temples devoted to the fire-cult, mentioned by later writers,[594] might
seem to look in the same direction. But a comparison of other parts of
the Avesta makes it doubtful whether in the passages just cited anything
more is meant than that the fire, as a creation of Ahura Mazda and
sacred to him, is for his sake worthy of reverence and through him a
source of blessing. Thus Yaçna xvii is a hymn in honor of Ahura Mazda
and all his creatures, among which are mentioned the law of Zarathustra,
the fire (and five different fires are named), the soul of the ox, and
pure deeds, along with the Amesha-Spentas, the heavenly bodies, and good
men. This collection shows vagueness in the conception of the divine and
the sacred, and, to say the least, leaves it uncertain whether the
singer does not think of the fire simply as a symbol of the Supreme God.
+321+. The relation of fire to the gods, and especially its use in
sacrifice, have led to a number of religious ceremonies in which it
plays a principal part.[595] Certain fires must be kindled by specially
appointed sacred persons: among the Todas of Southern India, when a new
dairy is visited or an old dairy is reconsecrated;[596] among the
Lacandones of Central America, on the occasion of the renewal of the
incense-bowls;[597] in the Peruvian temple at the feast of Raymi, when
the flame was intrusted to the care of the Virgins of the Sun, and was
to be kept up during the year;[598] in the temples of Hestia and Vesta;
throughout Greece, when the fires had been polluted by the presence of
the Persians, it was ordered that they should be put out and rekindled
from the sacred fire at Delphi.[599]
+322+. The purificatory power of fire was, doubtless, a fact of early
observation.
+323+. As the physical means of sacrifice, fire acquired a certain
symbolic significance; in the Hebrew ritual "fire-offerings" are
regarded as specially important. By Carthaginians, Moabites, and Hebrews
children were devoted to the deity by fire.[600]
+324+. By reason of its brightness fire connects itself in religious
imagery with the sun, with lightning, and with light in general, and so
appears frequently as a representation of the glory of the deity.[601]