(M51) In the foregoing chapter the primitive principle of the transference
of ills to another person, animal, or thing was explained and illustrated.
A consideration of the means taken, in accordance with this principle, to
rid individuals of their troubles and distresses led us to believe that at
Rome similar means had been adopted to free the whole community, at a
single blow of the hammer, from diverse evils that afflicted it. I now
propose to shew that such attempts to dismiss at once the accumulated
sorrows of a people are by no means rare or exceptional, but that on the
contrary they have been made in many lands, and that from being occasional
they tend to become periodic and annual.
(M52) It needs some effort on our part to realise the frame of mind which
prompts these attempts. Bred in a philosophy which strips nature of
personality and reduces it to the unknown cause of an orderly series of
impressions on our senses, we find it hard to put ourselves in the place
of the savage, to whom the same impressions appear in the guise of spirits
or the handiwork of spirits. For ages the army of spirits, once so near,
has been receding further and further from us, banished by the magic wand
of science from hearth and home, from ruined cell and ivied tower, from
haunted glade and lonely mere, from the riven murky cloud that belches
forth the lightning, and from those fairer clouds that pillow the silver
moon or fret with flakes of burning red the golden eve. The spirits are
gone even from their last stronghold in the sky, whose blue arch no longer
passes, except with children, for the screen that hides from mortal eyes
the glories of the celestial world. Only in poets’ dreams or impassioned
flights of oratory is it given to catch a glimpse of the last flutter of
the standards of the retreating host, to hear the beat of their invisible
wings, the sound of their mocking laughter, or the swell of angel music
dying away in the distance. Far otherwise is it with the savage. To his
imagination the world still teems with those motley beings whom a more
sober philosophy has discarded. Fairies and goblins, ghosts and demons,
still hover about him both waking and sleeping. They dog his footsteps,
dazzle his senses, enter into him, harass and deceive and torment him in a
thousand freakish and mischievous ways. The mishaps that befall him, the
losses he sustains, the pains he has to endure, he commonly sets down, if
not to the magic of his enemies, to the spite or anger or caprice of the
spirits. Their constant presence wearies him, their sleepless malignity
exasperates him; he longs with an unspeakable longing to be rid of them
altogether, and from time to time, driven to bay, his patience utterly
exhausted, he turns fiercely on his persecutors and makes a desperate
effort to chase the whole pack of them from the land, to clear the air of
their swarming multitudes, that he may breathe more freely and go on his
way unmolested, at least for a time. Thus it comes about that the
endeavour of primitive people to make a clean sweep of all their troubles
generally takes the form of a grand hunting out and expulsion of devils or
ghosts. They think that if they can only shake off these their accursed
tormentors, they will make a fresh start in life, happy and innocent; the
tales of Eden and the old poetic golden age will come true again.
(M53) Hence, before we review some examples of these spirit-hunts, it may
be well to adduce evidence of the deep hold which a belief in the
omnipresence and malignity of spirits has upon the primitive mind. The
reader will be better able to understand the savage remedy when he has an
inkling of the nature of the evil which it is designed to combat. In
citing the evidence I shall for the most part reproduce the exact words of
my authorities lest I should incur the suspicion of deepening unduly the
shadows in a gloomy picture.
(M54) Thus in regard to the aborigines of Australia we are told that “the
number of supernatural beings, feared if not loved, that they acknowledge
is exceedingly great; for not only are the heavens peopled with such, but
the whole face of the country swarms with them; every thicket, most
watering-places, and all rocky places abound with evil spirits. In like
manner, every natural phenomenon is believed to be the work of demons,
none of which seem of a benign nature, one and all apparently striving to
do all imaginable mischief to the poor blackfellow.”(239) “The negro,”
says another writer, “is wont to regard the whole world around him as
peopled with invisible beings, to whom he imputes every misfortune that
happens to him, and from whose harmful influence he seeks to protect
himself by all kinds of magic means.”(240) The Bantu negroes of Western
Africa “regard their god as the creator of man, plants, animals, and the
earth, and they hold that having made them, he takes no further interest
in the affair. But not so the crowd of spirits with which the universe is
peopled, they take only too much interest, and the Bantu wishes they would
not and is perpetually saying so in his prayers, a large percentage
whereof amounts to, ‘Go away, we don’t want you.’ ‘Come not into this
house, this village, or its plantations.’ ” Almost all these subordinate
spirits are malevolent.(241) A similar but fuller account of the West
African creed is given by a German writer, whose statements apply
particularly to the Ewe-speaking negroes of the Slave Coast. He says:
“Thus the term fetishism denotes the attitude of the Ewes, or of West
African negro tribes in general, towards magic; it forms one of the
principal constituents of their religion. The other main constituent is
their attitude to the gods, which is properly demonolatry. The Ewe names
the gods _drowo_, that is, intermediaries, namely, between a Supreme
Being, whom he calls _Mawu_ (‘the Unsurpassable’), and mankind. The drowo
with whom the Ewe has to do, to whom his offerings and his respects are
paid, are thus subordinate deities, who according to the etymological
meaning of the word _dro_ are conceived as judging, composing disputes,
and mediating among men. The existence of a Supreme Being is by no means
unfamiliar to the Ewe; he has his _Mawu_ often in his mouth, especially in
talking with the missionary, and he willingly acknowledges that _Mawu_
created him and the gods. But he can only conceive of this Supreme Being
on the analogy of his own personality and not as omnipresent and so forth.
It is impossible that this Mawu can trouble himself about details in the
creation or even about every individual man and his petty affairs; what
would be the use of the many higher and lower spirits with which the world
is filled before his eyes? The West African perhaps conceives of God as
transcendant, but not as immanent; a creation he possibly apprehends, but
not an omnipresent government of the world by the Supreme Being. That
government is carried on by Mawu at a distance by means of the many
spirits or subordinate gods whom he has created for the purpose.... A
portion of the gods fills the air, wherefore the forces and the phenomena
of nature are deified as their manifestations. The elements are thought to
be moved by the gods of the air. In the storm and the wind, in thunder and
lightning the Ewe sees the manifestation of particularly powerful gods. In
the mysterious roll and roar of the deep sea the Ewe, like the negro in
general, beholds the sway of a very mighty god or of a whole host of gods.
Further, the earth itself is also the abode of a multitude of spirits or
gods, who have in it their sphere of activity. They inhabit certain great
mountains, great hollow trees, caves, rivers, and especially woods. In
such woods of the gods no timber may be felled. Thus the gods fill not
only the air and the sea, they also walk on earth, on all paths; they lurk
under the trees, they terrify the lonely wayfarer, they disquiet and
plague even the sleeper. When the negro rises from the stool on which he
has been sitting, he never fails to turn it upside down, to prevent a
spirit from sitting down on it.... The spirit-world falls into two main
classes: there are good and kindly spirits, whose help is eagerly sought
by offerings; but there are also gloomy and revengeful spirits, whose
approach and influence people eagerly endeavour to avert, and against whom
all possible means are employed to ban them from the houses and villages.
The people are much more zealous in their devotion to the evil spirits
than in their devotion to the good. The reason is that the feeling of fear
and the consciousness of guilt are much stronger than the emotions of love
and gratitude for benefits received. Hence the worship of the false gods
or spirits among this people, and among the West African negro tribes in
general, is properly speaking a worship of demons or devils.”(242)
(M55) Again, a missionary who spent fifteen years among the Boloki of the
Upper Congo River tells us that “the religion of the Boloki has its basis
in their fear of those numerous invisible spirits which surround them on
every side, and are constantly trying to compass their sickness,
misfortune and death; and the Boloki’s sole object in practising their
religion is to cajole, or appease, cheat, or conquer and kill those
spirits that trouble them—hence their _nganga_ [medicine-men], their
rites, their ceremonies and their charms. If there were no evil spirits to
be circumvented there would be no need of their medicine men and their
charms.”(243) “The Boloki folk believe they are surrounded by spirits
which try to thwart them at every twist and turn, and to harm them every
hour of the day and night. The rivers and creeks are crowded with the
spirits of their ancestors, and the forests and bush are full also of
spirits, ever seeking to injure the living who are overtaken by night when
travelling by road or canoe. I never met among them a man daring enough to
go at night through the forest that divided Monsembe from the upper
villages, even though a large reward was offered. Their invariable reply
was: ‘There are too many spirits in the bush and forest.’ ”(244) The
spirits which these people dread so much are the _mingoli_ or disembodied
souls of the dead; the life of the Boloki is described as “one long drawn
out fear of what the _mingoli_ may next do to them.” These dangerous
beings dwell everywhere, land and water are full of them; they are ever
ready to pounce on the living and carry them away or to smite them with
disease and kill them. Though they are invisible to common eyes, the
medicine-man can see them, and can cork them up in calabashes or cover
them up with saucepans; indeed, if it is made worth his while, he can even
destroy them altogether.(245) Again, of the Bantu tribes of South Africa
we read that “nearer than the spirits of deceased chiefs or of their own
ancestors was a whole host of hobgoblins, water sprites, and malevolent
demons, who met the Bantu turn which way they would. There was no
beautiful fairyland for them, for all the beings who haunted the
mountains, the plains, and the rivers were ministers of evil. The most
feared of these was a large bird that made love to women and incited those
who returned its affection to cause the death of those who did not, and a
little mischievous imp who was also amorously inclined. Many instances
could be gathered from the records of magistrates’ courts in recent years
of demented women having admitted their acquaintance with these fabulous
creatures, as well as of whole communities living in terror of them.”(246)
However, it would be no doubt a great mistake to imagine that the minds of
the Bantu, or indeed of any savages, are perpetually occupied by a dread
of evil spirits;(247) the savage and indeed the civilized man is
incapable, at least in his normal state, of such excessive preoccupation
with a single idea, which, if prolonged, could hardly fail to end in
insanity.
(M56) Speaking of the spirits which the Indians of Guiana attribute to all
objects in nature, Sir Everard F. im Thurn observes that “the whole world
of the Indian swarms with these beings. If by a mighty mental effort we
could for a moment revert to a similar mental position, we should find
ourselves everywhere surrounded by a host of possibly hurtful beings, so
many in number that to describe them as innumerable would fall
ridiculously short of the truth. It is not therefore wonderful that the
Indian fears to move beyond the light of his camp-fire after dark, or, if
he is obliged to do so, carries a fire-brand with him that he may at least
see among what enemies he walks; nor is it wonderful that occasionally the
air round the settlement seems to the Indian to grow so full of beings,
that a peaiman [sorcerer], who is supposed to have the power of
temporarily driving them away, is employed to effect a general clearance
of these beings, if only for a time. That is the main belief, of the kind
that is generally called religious, of the Indians of Guiana.”(248) The
Lengua Indians of the Paraguayan Chaco believe in certain demons which
they call _kilyikhama_. “The _kilyikhama_ are confined to no particular
place. Time and distance do not seem to affect them in the least. They are
held in great awe by the Indian, and whithersoever he turns, whether by
day or night, but particularly at night, he is subject to their malign
influences.... They live in constant dread of these supernatural beings,
and if nothing else contributed to make their life miserable, this
ever-present dread of the _kilyikhama_ would be in itself quite sufficient
to rob it of most of its joy.”(249)
(M57) Very different from the life of these Indians of the South American
forests and prairies is the life of the Esquimaux on the desolate shores
of Labrador; yet they too live in like bondage to the evil creatures of
their own imagination. “All the affairs of life are supposed to be under
the control of spirits, each of which rules over a certain element, and
all of which are under the direction of a greater spirit. Each person is
supposed to be attended by a special guardian who is malignant in
character, ever ready to seize upon the least occasion to work harm upon
the individual whom it accompanies. As this is an evil spirit, its good
offices and assistance can be obtained by propitiation only. The person
strives to keep the good-will of the evil spirit by offerings of food,
water, and clothing.” “Besides this class of spirits, there are the
spirits of the sea, the land, the sky (for be it understood that the
Eskimo know nothing of the air), the winds, the clouds, and everything in
nature. Every cove of the sea-shore, every point, island, and prominent
rock has its guardian spirit. All are of the malignant type, and to be
propitiated only by acceptable offerings from persons who desire to visit
the locality where it is supposed to reside. Of course some of the spirits
are more powerful than others, and these are more to be dreaded than those
able to inflict less harm. These minor spirits are under the control of
the great spirit, whose name is Tung ak. This one great spirit is more
powerful than all the rest besides. The lesser spirits are immediately
under his control and ever ready to obey his command. The shaman (or
conjuror) alone is supposed to be able to deal with the Tung ak. While the
shaman does not profess to be superior to the Tung ak, he is able to
enlist his assistance and thus be able to control all the undertakings his
profession may call for. This Tung ak is nothing more or less than death,
which ever seeks to torment and harass the lives of people that their
spirits may go to dwell with him.”(250)
(M58) Brighter at first sight and more pleasing is the mythology of the
islanders of the Pacific, as the picture of it is drawn for us by one who
seems to have felt the charm of those beliefs which it was his mission to
destroy. “By their rude mythology,” he says, “each lovely island was made
a sort of fairy-land, and the spells of enchantment were thrown over its
varied scenes. The sentiment of the poet that
‘_Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth,_
_Unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep_,’
was one familiar to their minds; and it is impossible not to feel
interested in a people who were accustomed to consider themselves
surrounded by invisible intelligences, and who recognized in the rising
sun—the mild and silver moon—the shooting star—the meteor’s transient
flame—the ocean’s roar—the tempest’s blast, or the evening breeze—the
movements of mighty spirits. The mountain’s summit, and the fleecy mists
that hang upon its brows—the rocky defile—the foaming cataract—and the
lonely dell—were all regarded as the abode or resort of these invisible
beings.”(251) Yet the spiritual powers which compassed the life of the
islanders on every side appear to have been far from friendly to man.
Speaking of their beliefs touching the souls of the dead, the same writer
says that the Polynesians “imagined they lived in a world of spirits,
which surrounded them night and day, watching every action of their lives,
and ready to avenge the slightest neglect or the least disobedience to
their injunctions, as proclaimed by their priests. These dreaded beings
were seldom thought to resort to the habitations of men on errands of
benevolence.”(252) The Tahitians, when they were visited by Captain Cook,
believed that “sudden deaths and all other accidents are effected by the
immediate action of some divinity. If a man only stumble against a stone
and hurt his toe, they impute it to an _Eatooa_; so that they may be
literally said, agreeably to their system, to tread enchanted
ground.”(253) “The Maori gods,” says a well-informed writer, “were demons,
whose evil designs could only be counteracted by powerful spells and
charms; these proving effectual, sacrifices and offerings were made to
soothe the vanquished spirits and appease their wrath.” “The gods in
general appeared in the whirlwind and lightning, answering their votaries
in the clap of thunder. The inferior beings made themselves visible in the
form of lizards, moths, butterflies, spiders, and even flies; when they
spoke it was in a low whistling tone. They were supposed to be so numerous
as to surround the living in crowds, _kei te muia nga wairua penei nga
wairoa_, ‘the spirits throng like mosquitoes,’ ever watching to inflict
evil.”(254)
(M59) Again, we are informed that the popular religion of the Pelew
Islanders “has reference to the gods (_kaliths_) who may be useful or
harmful to men in all their doings. Their imagination peoples the sea, the
wood, the earth with numerous gods, and whatever a man undertakes, be it
to catch fish or fell a tree, he must first propitiate the deities, or
rather guard himself against their spiteful anger, which can only be done
by means of certain spells and incantations. The knowledge of these
incantations is limited to a very few persons, and forms in fact the
secret of the arts and industries which are plied in the islands. A master
of his craft is not he who can build a good house or a faultless canoe,
but he who possesses the _golay_ or magic power to ban the tree-gods, that
they may not prove hurtful to the workmen and to the people who afterwards
use the things. All these gods of the earth, the woods, the mountains, the
brooks are very mischievous and dangerous, and most diseases are caused by
them. Hence the persons who possess the magic power are dreaded,
frequently employed, and well paid; but in extreme cases they are regarded
as sorcerers and treated accordingly. If one of them builds a house for
somebody and is dissatisfied with his remuneration, he stirs up the
tree-god to avenge him. So the inhabitants of the house he has built fall
sick, and if help is not forthcoming they die.”(255) Of the Mortlock
Islanders we are told that “their imagination peopled the whole of nature
with spirits and deities, of whom the number was past finding out.”(256)
(M60) Speaking of the natives of the Philippine Islands a writer observes
that “the basis of all the superstitious beliefs of the Negritos, what
might else be termed their religion, is the constant presence of the
spirits of the dead near where they lived when alive. All places are
inhabited by the spirits. All adverse circumstances, sickness, failure of
crops, unsuccessful hunts, are attributed to them.”(257) As to the
Melanesians of New Britain we read that “another deeply rooted belief
which exercises an extraordinary influence on the life and customs of
these people is a belief in demons. To their thinking the demons,
_tambaran_ (a word synonymous with ‘poor wretch,’ ‘sufferer’) are spirits
entirely perverse, deceitful, maleficent, and ceaselessly occupied in
injuring us. Diseases, death, the perturbations of nature, all unfortunate
events are imputed to them. The demons exist in legions; they live
everywhere, especially in the forests, desert places, and the depths of
the sea.”(258) The beliefs and customs of one particular tribe of this
great island—the Livuans, who occupy the eastern coast of the Gazelle
Peninsula in New Britain—have been described by a Catholic missionary in
similar terms. “The distrustful natives,” he tells us, “have not attained
to a belief in a beneficent, compassionate deity. All the more numerous,
however, are the evil spirits with which they people the universe. These
are legion. The power which the natives ascribe to these spirits extends
not merely to the property of mankind but also to life and death. The
Livuan always believes that he can trace the pernicious influence of these
_tambaran_ (devils) on his actions. In his conviction, the whole thoughts
and endeavours of the evil spirits have no other object than to injure men
in every possible way. This dismal, comfortless superstition weighs heavy
on the native.”(259) Again, another writer who lived for thirty years
among the Melanesians of the Bismarck Archipelago, of which New Britain
forms part, observes that “we often find the view expressed that the
native is a being who lives only for the day, without cares of any kind.
The view is very erroneous, for in fact he leads a life which is plagued
by cares of all sorts. Amongst the greatest plagues of his life is his
bottomless superstition. He sees himself surrounded at every step by evil
spirits and their influences. He trusts nobody, for who knows whether his
nearest neighbour, his professedly best friend, is not plotting to bring
trouble, sickness, and even death on him by means of magic? Everywhere he
sees snares set for him, everywhere he scents treachery and guile. We need
not wonder, therefore, that mistrust is a leading feature in the character
not only of the New Britons, but of the Melanesians generally.... The
native is simply not accessible to rational motives. The only motive he
understands is sorcery on the part of malicious men or the influence of
evil spirits.”(260)
(M61) A Dutch missionary, who spent twenty-five years among the natives of
Dutch New Guinea, tells us that “in their ignorance of a living God the
Papuans people earth and air, land and sea with mysterious malignant
powers, which take up their abode in stones and trees or in men and cause
all kinds of misfortunes, especially sickness and death.”(261) Again,
speaking of the Bukaua, a tribe of German New Guinea, a German missionary
writes that “the Bukaua knows himself to be surrounded by spirits
(_balum_) at every step. An insight into the life and mode of thought of
the natives, as the latter is expressed especially in their stories,
confirms this view completely. What wonder that the fear of spirits
dominates the whole existence of the Bukaua and causes him to tremble even
in the hour of death? There are spirits of the beach, the water, the
fields, the forests, spirits that reside in the villages and particular
places, and a sort of vagabonds, who can take up their abode even in
lifeless things.” Then after describing the demons of the beach, the
water, and the field, the writer proceeds as follows: “Of forest spirits
the number is infinite; for it is above all in the mysterious darkness,
the tangled wildernesses of the virgin forest that the spirits love to
dwell. They hold their meetings in what are called evil places. They are
never bent on good. Especially at nightfall the native fancies he hears
the voice of the spirits in the hum and chirping of the insects in the
forest. They lure hunting dogs from the trail. They make wild boars rabid;
in the form of snakes they make inroads into human dwellings; they drive
men crazy or into fits; they play roguish tricks of all sorts.”(262)
(M62) Among the tribes who inhabit the south-eastern coasts of New Guinea
“a death in a village is the occasion of bringing plenty of ghosts to
escort their new companion, and perhaps fetch some one else. All night the
friends of the deceased sit up and keep the drums going to drive away the
spirits. When I was sleeping one night at Hood Bay, a party of young men
and boys came round with sticks, striking the fences and posts of houses
all through the village. This I found was always done when any one died,
to drive back the spirits to their own quarters on the adjacent mountain
tops. But it is the spirits of the inland tribes, the aborigines of the
country, that the coast tribes most fear. The road from the interior to
Port Moresby passed close to our house, and the natives told us that the
barking of our English dog at night had frightened the evil spirits so
effectually that they had had no ghostly visitors since we came. I was
camping out one night in the bush with some coast natives, at a time when
a number of the natives of the interior were hunting in the neighbourhood;
noticing that the men with me did not go to sleep, I asked if they were
afraid of the mountain men. ‘No,’ they replied, ‘but the whole plain is
full of the spirits who come with them.’ All calamities are attributed to
the power and malice of these evil spirits. Drought and famine, storm and
flood, disease and death are all supposed to be brought by ‘Vata’ and his
hosts.”(263)
(M63) The inhabitants of Timor, an island to the south-west of New Guinea,
revere the lord of heaven, the sun, the mistress of the earth, and the
spirits of the dead. “These last dwell, some with the mistress of the
earth under ground, others on graves, others in stones and springs and
woods, some on mountains and some in the habitations of their kinsfolk,
where they take up their abode in the middle of the principal post of the
house or in copper cymbals, in swords and pikes. Others again assume the
shape of pigs and deer and bees; men who have fallen in battle love
especially to turn into bees, that they may roam over the earth at will.
The ghosts who reside with the mistress of the earth are male and female,
and their offspring swarm by myriads in the air, so that the people think
you cannot stir without striking against one of them. According to their
whim of the moment the ghosts are good or bad.” “All diseases which are
not due to infection or transmitted by inheritance are ascribed to the
mistress of the earth, to the ghosts, and to their wicked offspring, who
inflict them as punishments for insults and injuries, for insufficient
food, for the killing of deer and of wild pigs, in which the ghosts take
up their abode temporarily, and also for the sale of cymbals, swords and
pikes, in which a ghost had settled.”(264) The natives of Amboyna think
that “woods, mountains, trees, stones, indeed the whole universe, is
inhabited by a multitude of spirits, of whom many are the souls of the
dead.”(265) In Bolang Mongondo, a district of Celebes, “all calamities,
great and small, of whatever kind, and by whatever name they are called,
that befall men and animals, villages, gardens and so forth, are
attributed to evil or angry spirits. The superstition is indescribably
great. The smallest wound, the least indisposition, the most trifling
adversity in the field, at the fishing, on a journey or what not, is
believed by the natives to be traceable to the anger of their ancestors.
The superstition cripples every effort to remedy the calamities except by
sacrifice. There is perhaps no country the inhabitants of which know so
little about simples as Bolang Mongondo. What a native of Bolang Mongondo
calls medicine is nothing but sacrifice, magic, and talismans. And the
method of curing a sick man always consists in the use of magic, or in the
propitiation of angry ancestral spirits by means of offerings, or in the
banishment of evil spirits. The application of one or other of these three
methods depends again on the decision of the sorcerer, who plays a great
part in every case of sickness.”(266)
(M64) In the island of Bali “all the attention paid to the sick has its
root solely in the excessive superstition of these islanders, which leads
them to impute every unpleasantness in life, every adversity to the
influence of evil spirits or of men who are in some way in league with
them. The belief in witches and wizards is everywhere great in the Indies,
but perhaps nowhere is it so universal and so strong as in Bali.”(267) In
Java, we are told, it is not merely great shady trees that are believed to
be the abode of spirits. “In other places also, where the vital energy of
nature manifests itself strikingly and impressively, a feeling of
veneration is stirred, as on the sea-shore, in deep woods, on steep
mountain sides. All such spots are supposed to be the abode of spirits of
various kinds, whose mighty power is regarded with reverence and awe,
whose anger is dreaded, and whose favour is hoped for. But wherever they
dwell, whether in scenes of loveliness that move the heart, or in spots
that affect the mind with fright and horror, the nature and disposition of
these spirits appear not to differ. They are a source of fear and anxiety
in the one case just as much as in the other. To none of them did I ever
hear moral qualities ascribed. They are mighty, they are potentates, and
therefore it is well with him who has their favour and ill with him who
has it not; this holds true of them all.” “The number of the spirits is
innumerable and inconceivable. All the phenomena of nature, which we trace
to fixed laws and constant forces, are supposed by the Javanese to be
wrought by spirits.”(268)
(M65) The natives of the valley of the Barito in Borneo hold that “the air
is filled with countless _hantoes_ (spirits). Every object has such a
spirit which watches over it and seeks to defend it from danger. It is
these spirits especially that bring sickness and misfortune on men, and
for that reason offerings are often made to them and also to the powerful
_Sangsangs_ (angels), whereas the supreme God, the original fountain of
all good, is neglected.”(269) Of the Battas or Bataks of Sumatra we are
told that “the key-note of their religious mood is fear of the unknown
powers, a childish feeling of dependence, the outcome of a belief in
supernatural influences to which man is constantly exposed, in wonders and
witchcraft, which hamper his free action. They feel themselves continually
surrounded by unseen beings and dependent on them for everything.” “Every
misfortune bespeaks the ill-will of the hostile spirits. The whole world
is a meeting-place of demons, and most of the phenomena of nature are an
expression of their power. The only means of remedying or counteracting
their baleful influence is to drive away the spirits by means of certain
words, as well as by the use of amulets and the offering of sacrifices to
the guardian spirits.”(270) To the same effect another authority on the
religion of the Battas remarks that “the common man has only a very dim
and misty notion of his triune god, and troubles himself far more about
the legions of spirits which people the whole world around him, and
against which he must always be protected by magic spells.”(271) Again,
speaking of the same people, a Dutch missionary observes that “if there is
still any adherent of Rousseau’s superficial theories about the
idyllically happy and careless life of people ‘in a state of nature,’ he
ought to come and spend a little time among the Bataks and keep his eyes
and ears open. He would soon be convinced of the hollowness and falsehood
of these phrases and would learn to feel a deep compassion for human
beings living in perpetual fear of evil spirits.”(272)
(M66) The religion of the Nicobar Islanders “is an undisguised animism,
and the whole of their very frequent and elaborate ceremonies and
festivals are aimed at exorcising and scaring spirits (‘devils,’ as they
have been taught to call them). Fear of spirits and ghosts (_iwi_) is the
guide to all ceremonies, and the life of the people is _very_ largely
taken up with ceremonials and feasts of all kinds. These are usually held
at night, and whether directly religious or merely convivial, seem all to
have an origin in the overmastering fear of spirits that possesses the
Nicobarese. It has so far proved ineradicable, for two centuries of varied
and almost continuous missionary effort has had no appreciable effect on
it.”(273) The Mantras, an aboriginal race of the Malay Peninsula, “find or
put a spirit everywhere, in the air they breathe, in the land they
cultivate, in the forests they inhabit, in the trees they cut down, in the
caves of the rocks. According to them, the demon is the cause of
everything that turns out ill. If they are sick, a demon is at the bottom
of it; if an accident happens, it is still the spirit who is at work;
thereupon the demon takes the name of the particular evil of which he is
supposed to be the cause. Hence the demon being assumed as the author of
every ill, all their superstitions resolve themselves into enchantments
and spells to appease the evil spirit, to render mild and tractable the
fiercest beasts.”(274) To the mind of the Kamtchatkan every corner of
earth and heaven seemed full of spirits, whom he revered and dreaded more
than God.(275)
(M67) In India from the earliest times down to the present day the real
religion of the common folk appears always to have been a belief in a vast
multitude of spirits, of whom many, if not most, are mischievous and
harmful. As in Europe beneath a superficial layer of Christianity a faith
in magic and witchcraft, in ghosts and goblins has always survived and
even flourished among the weak and ignorant, so it has been and so it is
in the East. Brahmanism, Buddhism, Islam may come and go, but the belief
in magic and demons remains unshaken through them all, and, if we may
judge of the future from the past, is likely to survive the rise and fall
of other historical religions. For the great faiths of the world, just in
so far as they are the outcome of superior intelligence, of purer
morality, of extraordinary fervour of aspiration after the ideal, fail to
touch and move the common man. They make claims upon his intellect and his
heart to which neither the one nor the other is capable of responding. The
philosophy they teach is too abstract, the morality they inculcate too
exalted for him. The keener minds embrace the new philosophy, the more
generous spirits are fired by the new morality; and as the world is led by
such men, their faith sooner or later becomes the professed faith of the
multitude. Yet with the common herd, who compose the great bulk of every
people, the new religion is accepted only in outward show, because it is
impressed upon them by their natural leaders whom they cannot choose but
follow. They yield a dull assent to it with their lips, but in their heart
they never really abandon their old superstitions; in these they cherish a
faith such as they cannot repose in the creed which they nominally
profess; and to these, in the trials and emergencies of life, they have
recourse as to infallible remedies, when the promises of the higher faith
have failed them, as indeed such promises are apt to do.(276)
(M68) To establish for India in particular the truth of the propositions
which I have just advanced, it may be enough to cite the evidence of two
writers of high authority, one of whom deals with the most ancient form of
Indian religion known to us, while the other describes the popular
religion of the Hindoos at the present day. “According to the creed of the
Vedic ages,” says Professor Oldenberg, “the whole world in which man lives
is animated. Sky and earth, mountain, forest, trees and beasts, the
earthly water and the heavenly water of the clouds,—all is filled with
living spiritual beings, who are either friendly or hostile to mankind.
Unseen or embodied in visible form, hosts of spirits surround and hover
about human habitations,—bestial or misshapen goblins, souls of dead
friends and souls of foes, sometimes as kindly guardians, oftener as
mischief-makers, bringing disease and misfortune, sucking the blood and
strength of the living. A soul is attributed even to the object fashioned
by human hands, whose functions are felt to be friendly or hostile. The
warrior pays his devotion to the divine war-chariot, the divine arrow, the
drum; the ploughman to the ploughshare; the gambler to the dice; the
sacrificer, about whom naturally we have the most exact information,
reveres the stone that presses out the juice of the Soma, the straw on
which the gods recline, the post to which the sacrificial victim is bound,
and the divine doors through which the gods come forth to enjoy the
sacrifice. At one time the beings in whose presence man feels himself are
regarded by him as really endowed with souls; at another time, in harmony
with a more advanced conception of the world, they are imagined as
substances or fluids invested with beneficent or maleficent properties:
belief oscillates to and fro between the one mode of thought and the
other. The art of turning to account the operations of these animated
beings, the play of these substances and forces, is magic rather than
worship in the proper sense of the word. The foundations of this faith and
of this magic are an inheritance from the remotest past, from a period, to
put it shortly, of shamanistic faith in spirits and souls, of shamanistic
magic. Such a period has been passed through by the forefathers of the
Indo-Germanic race as well as by other peoples.”(277)
(M69) Coming down to the Hindoos of the present day, we find that their
attitude towards the spiritual world is described as follows by Professor
Monier Williams. “The plain fact undoubtedly is that the great majority of
the inhabitants of India are, from the cradle to the burning-ground,
victims of a form of mental disease which is best expressed by the term
demonophobia. They are haunted and oppressed by a perpetual dread of
demons. They are firmly convinced that evil spirits of all kinds, from
malignant fiends to merely mischievous imps and elves, are ever on the
watch to harm, harass, and torment them, to cause plague, sickness,
famine, and disaster, to impede, injure, and mar every good work.”(278)
Elsewhere the same writer has expressed the same view somewhat more fully.
“In fact,” he says, “a belief in every kind of demoniacal influence has
always been from the earliest times an essential ingredient in Hindu
religious thought. The idea probably had its origin in the supposed
peopling of the air by spiritual beings—the personifications or companions
of storm and tempest. Certainly no one who has ever been brought into
close contact with the Hindus in their own country can doubt the fact that
the worship of at least ninety per cent. of the people of India in the
present day is a worship of fear. Not that the existence of good deities
presided over by one Supreme Being is doubted; but that these deities are
believed to be too absolutely good to need propitiation; just as in
ancient histories of the Slav races, we are told that they believed in a
white god and a black god, but paid adoration to the last alone, having,
as they supposed, nothing to apprehend from the beneficence of the first
or white deity. The simple truth is that evil of all kinds, difficulties,
dangers and disasters, famines, diseases, pestilences and death, are
thought by an ordinary Hindu to proceed from demons, or, more properly
speaking, from devils, and from devils alone. These malignant beings are
held, as we have seen, to possess varying degrees of rank, power, and
malevolence. Some aim at destroying the entire world, and threaten the
sovereignty of the gods themselves. Some delight in killing men, women,
and children, out of a mere thirst for human blood. Some take a mere
mischievous pleasure in tormenting, or revel in the infliction of
sickness, injury, and misfortune. All make it their business to mar or
impede the progress of good works and useful undertakings.”(279)
(M70) It would be easy but tedious to illustrate in detail this general
account of the dread of demons which prevails among the inhabitants of
India at the present day. A very few particular statements must suffice.
Thus, we are told that the Oraons, a Dravidian race in Bengal,
“acknowledge a Supreme God, adored as Dharmi or Dharmesh, the Holy One,
who is manifest in the sun, and they regard Dharmesh as a perfectly pure,
beneficent being, who created us and would in his goodness and mercy
preserve us, but that his benevolent designs are thwarted by malignant
spirits whom mortals must propitiate, as Dharmesh cannot or does not
interfere, if the spirit of evil once fastens upon us. It is, therefore,
of no use to pray to Dharmesh or to offer sacrifices to him; so though
acknowledged, recognised, and reverenced, he is neglected, whilst the
malignant spirits are adored.” Again, it is said of these Oraons that, “as
the sole object of their religious ceremonies is the propitiation of the
demons who are ever thwarting the benevolent intentions of Dharmesh, they
have no notion of a service of thanksgiving.” Once more, after giving a
list of Oraon demons, the same writer goes on: “Besides this superstitious
dread of the spirits above named, the Oraon’s imagination tremblingly
wanders in a world of ghosts. Every rock, road, river, and grove is
haunted.”(280) Again, a missionary who spent many years among the Kacharis
of Assam tells us that “the religion of the Kachári race is distinctly of
the type commonly known as ‘animistic’ and its underlying principle is
characteristically one of fear or dread. The statement _Timor fecit deos_
certainly holds good of this people in its widest and strictest sense; and
their religion thus stands in very marked, not to say violent, contrast
with the teaching of the Faith in Christ. In the typical Kachári village
as a rule neither idol nor place of worship is to be found; but to the
Kachári mind and imagination earth, air, and sky are alike peopled with a
vast number of invisible spiritual beings, known usually as _Modai_, all
possessing powers and faculties far greater than those of man, and almost
invariably inclined to use these powers for malignant and malevolent,
rather than benevolent, purposes. In a certain stage of moral and
spiritual development men are undoubtedly influenced far more by what they
fear than by what they love; and this truth certainly applies to the
Kachári race in the most unqualified way.”(281) Again, the Siyins, who
inhabit the Chin Hills of north-eastern India, on the borders of Burma,
“say that there is no Supreme God and no other world save this, which is
full of evil spirits who inhabit the fields, infest the houses, and haunt
the jungles. These spirits must be propitiated or bribed to refrain from
doing the particular harm of which each is capable, for one can destroy
crops, another can make women barren, and a third cause a lizard to enter
the stomach and devour the bowels.”(282) “Like most mountaineers, the
people of Sikhim and the Tibetans are thorough-going demon-worshippers. In
every nook, path, big tree, rock, spring, waterfall and lake there lurks a
devil; for which reason few individuals will venture out alone after dark.
The sky, the ground, the house, the field, the country have each their
special demons, and sickness is always attributed to malign demoniacal
influence.”(283) “Even the purest of all the Lamaist sects—the
Ge-lug-pa—are thorough-paced devil-worshippers, and value Buddhism chiefly
because it gives them the whip-hand over the devils which everywhere vex
humanity with disease and disaster, and whose ferocity weighs heavily on
all.”(284) The Lushais of Assam believe in a beneficent spirit named
Pathian, who made everything but troubles himself very little about men.
Far more important in ordinary life are the numerous demons (_huai_), who
inhabit every stream, mountain, and forest, and are all malignant. To
their agency are ascribed all the illnesses and misfortunes that afflict
humanity, and a Lushai’s whole life is spent in propitiating them. It is
the sorcerer (_puithiam_) who knows what demon is causing any particular
trouble, and it is he who can prescribe the sort of sacrifice which will
appease the wrath of the fiend. Every form of sickness is set down to the
influence of some demon or other, and all the tales about these spiritual
foes begin or end with the recurrent phrase, “There was much sickness in
our village.”(285) In Travancore “the minor superstitions connected with
demon-worship are well-nigh innumerable; they enter into all the feelings,
and are associated with the whole life of these people. Every disease,
accident, or misfortune is attributed to the agency of the devils, and
great caution is exercised to avoid arousing their fury.”(286)
(M71) With regard to the inhabitants of Ceylon we are told that “the
fiends which they conceive to be hovering around them are without number.
Every disease or trouble that assails them is produced by the immediate
agency of the demons sent to punish them: while, on the other hand, every
blessing or success comes directly from the hands of the beneficent and
supreme God. To screen themselves from the power of the inferior deities,
who are all represented as wicked spirits, and whose power is by no means
irresistible, they wear amulets of various descriptions; and employ a
variety of charms and spells to ward off the influence of witchcraft and
enchantments by which they think themselves beset on all sides.” “It is
probable that, by degrees, intercourse with Europeans will entirely do
away these superstitious fears, as the Cinglese of the towns have already
made considerable progress in subduing their gloomy apprehensions. Not so
the poor wretched peasants who inhabit the more mountainous parts of the
country, and live at a distance from our settlements. These unhappy people
have never for a moment their minds free from the terror of those demons
who seem perpetually to hover around them. Their imaginations are so
disturbed by such ideas that it is not uncommon to see many driven to
madness from this cause. Several Cinglese lunatics have fallen under my
own observation; and upon inquiring into the circumstances which had
deprived them of their reason, I universally found that their wretched
state was to be traced solely to the excess of their superstitious fears.
The spirits of the wicked subordinate demons are the chief objects of fear
among the Ceylonese; and impress their minds with much more awe than the
more powerful divinities who dispense blessings among them. They indeed
think that their country is in a particular manner delivered over to the
dominion of evil spirits.”(287)
(M72) In Eastern as well as Southern Asia the same view of nature as
pervaded by a multitude of spirits, mostly mischievous and malignant, has
survived the nominal establishment of a higher faith. “In spite of their
long conversion, their sincere belief in, and their pure form of,
Buddhism, which expressly repudiates and forbids such worship, the Burmans
and Taleins (or Mons) have in a great measure kept their ancient spirit or
demon worship. With the Taleins this is more especially the case. Indeed,
with the country population of Pegu the worship, or it should rather be
said the propitiation, of the ‘nats’ or spirits, enters into every act of
their ordinary life, and Buddha’s doctrine seems kept for sacred days and
their visits to the kyoung (monastery) or to the pagoda.”(288) Or, as
another writer puts it, “the propitiating of the nats is a question of
daily concern to the lower class Burman, while the worship at the pagoda
is only thought of once a week. For the nat may prove destructive and
hostile at any time, whereas the acquisition of _koothoh_ [merit] at the
pagoda is a thing which may be set about in a business-like way, and at
proper and convenient seasons.”(289) But the term worship, we are
informed, hardly conveys a proper notion of the attitude of the Burmese
towards the nats or spirits. “Even the Karens and Kachins, who have no
other form of belief, do not regard them otherwise than as malevolent
beings who must be looked up to with fear, and propitiated by regular
offerings. They do not want to have anything to do with the nats; all they
seek is to be let alone. The bamboo pipes of spirit, the bones of
sacrificial animals, the hatchets, swords, spears, bows and arrows that
line the way to a Kachin village, are placed there not with the idea of
attracting the spirits, but of preventing them from coming right among the
houses in search of their requirements. If they want to drink, the rice
spirit has been poured out, and the bamboo stoup is there in evidence of
the libation; the blood-stained skulls of oxen, pigs, and the feathers of
fowls show that there has been no stint of meat offerings; should the nats
wax quarrelsome, and wish to fight, there are the axes and dahs with which
to commence the fray. Only let them be grateful, and leave their trembling
worshippers in peace and quietness.”(290)
(M73) Similarly the Lao or Laosians of Siam, though they are nominally
Buddhists, and have monks and pagodas with images of Buddha, are said to
pay more respect to spirits or demons than to these idols.(291) “The
desire to propitiate the good spirits and to exorcise the bad ones is the
prevailing influence upon the life of a Laosian. With _phees_ [evil
spirits] to right of him, to left of him, in front of him, behind him, all
round him, his mind is haunted with a perpetual desire to make terms with
them, and to ensure the assistance of the great Buddha, so that he may
preserve both body and soul from the hands of the spirits.”(292)
“Independently of the demons who are in hell, the Siamese recognise
another sort of devils diffused in the air: they call them _phi_; these
are, they say, the demons who do harm to men and who appear sometimes in
horrible shapes. They put down to the account of these malign spirits all
the calamities which happen in the world. If a mother has lost a child, it
is a _phi_ who has done the ill turn; if a sick man is given over, it is a
_phi_ that is at the bottom of it. To appease him, they invoke him and
make him offerings which they hang up in desert places.”(293) As to the
Thay, a widely spread race of Indo-China,(294) a French missionary writes
as follows: “It may be said that the Thay lives in constant intercourse
with the invisible world. There is hardly an act of his life which is not
regulated by some religious belief. There are two worships, the worship of
the spirits and the worship of the dead, which, however, are scarcely
distinguishable from each other, since the dead become spirits by the mere
fact of their death. His simple imagination represents to him the world of
spirits as a sort of double of the state of things here below. At the
summit is Po Then, the father of the empyrean. Below him are the Then—Then
Bun, Then Kum, Then Kom, of whom the chief is Then Luong, ‘the great
Then.’ The dead go and cultivate his rice-fields in heaven and clear his
mountains, just as they did their own in their life on earth. He has to
wife a goddess Me Bau. Besides these heavenly spirits, the Thay reckons a
multitude of others under the name of _phi_. His science being not very
extensive, many things seem extraordinary to him. If he cannot explain a
certain natural phenomenon, his perplexity does not last long. It is the
work of a _phi_, he says, and his priests take care not to dissuade him.
Hence he sees spirits everywhere. There are _phi_ on the steep mountains,
in the deep woods, the _phi bai_ who, by night on the mountain, imitate
the rain and the storms and leave no trace of their passage. If they shew
themselves, they appear in the form of gigantic animals and cause terrible
stomach troubles, such as diarrhœa, dysentery, and so on.... The large
animals of the forest, wild oxen and buffaloes, rhinoceroses, elephants,
and so on, have their guardian spirits. Hence the prudent hunter learns at
the outset to exorcise them in order that, when he has killed these
animals, he may be able to cut them up and eat their flesh without having
to fear the vengeance of their invisible guardian. Spirits also guard the
clearings whither the deer come by night to drink. The hunter should
sacrifice a fowl to them from time to time, if he would bring down his
game with ease. The gun itself has a spirit who looks to it that the
powder explodes. In short, the Thay cannot take a single step without
meeting a spirit on the path.”(295) “Thus the life of the Thay seems
regulated down to its smallest details by custom founded on his belief in
the spirits. Spirits perpetually watch him, ready to punish his
negligences, and he is afraid. Fear is not only for him the beginning of
wisdom, it is the whole of his wisdom. Love has only a very moderate place
in it. Even the respect in which he holds his dead, and the honours which
he pays them on various occasions, seem to be dominated by a superstitious
fear. It seems that the sacrifices which he offers to them aim rather at
averting from himself the evils which he dreads than at honouring worthily
the memory of his deceased kinsfolk and at paying them the tribute of his
affection and gratitude. Once they sleep their last sleep yonder in the
shadow of the great trees of the forest, none goes to shed a tear and
murmur a prayer on their grave. Nothing but calamity suffices to rescue
them from the oblivion into which they had fallen in the memory of the
living.”(296)
(M74) “The dogma, prevailing in China from the earliest times, that the
universe is filled in all its parts with _shen_ and _kwei_, naturally
implies that devils and demons must also swarm about the homes of men in
numbers inestimable. It is, in fact, an axiom which constantly comes out
in conversing with the people, that they haunt every frequented and lonely
spot, and that no place exists where man is safe from them.”(297) “The
worship and propitiation of the gods, which is the main part of China’s
religion, has no higher purpose than that of inducing the gods to protect
man against the world of evil, or, by descending among men, to drive
spectres away by their intimidating presence. This cult implies invocation
of happiness; but as happiness merely means absence of misfortune which
the spectres cause, such a cult is tantamount to the disarming of spectres
by means of the gods.... Taoism may then actually be defined as Exorcising
Polytheism, a cult of the gods with which Eastern Asiatic imagination has
filled the universe, connected with a highly developed system of magic,
consisting for a great part in exorcism. This cult and magic is, of
course, principally in the hands of priests. But, besides, the lay world,
enslaved to the intense belief in the perilous omnipresence of spectres,
is engaged every day in a restless defensive and offensive war against
those beings.”(298)
(M75) In Corea, “among the reasons which render the shaman a necessity are
these. In Korean belief, earth, air, and sea are peopled by demons. They
haunt every umbrageous tree, shady ravine, crystal spring, and mountain
crest. On green hill-slopes, in peaceful agricultural valleys, in grassy
dells, on wooded uplands, by lake and stream, by road and river, in north,
south, east, and west, they abound, making malignant sport of human
destinies. They are on every roof, ceiling, fireplace, _kang_ and beam.
They fill the chimney, the shed, the living-room, the kitchen—they are on
every shelf and jar. In thousands they waylay the traveller as he leaves
his home, beside him, behind him, dancing in front of him, whirring over
his head, crying out upon him from earth, air, and water. They are
numbered by _thousands of billions_, and it has been well said that their
ubiquity is an unholy travesty of the Divine Omnipresence. This belief,
and it seems to be the only one he has, keeps the Korean in a perpetual
state of nervous apprehension, it surrounds him with indefinite terrors,
and it may truly be said of him that he ‘passes the time of his sojourning
here in fear.’ Every Korean home is subject to demons, here, there, and
everywhere. They touch the Korean at every point in life, making his
well-being depend on a continual series of acts of propitiation, and they
avenge every omission with merciless severity, keeping him under this yoke
of bondage from birth to death.” “Koreans attribute every ill by which
they are afflicted to demoniacal influence. Bad luck in any transaction,
official malevolence, illness, whether sudden or prolonged, pecuniary
misfortune, and loss of power or position, are due to the malignity of
demons. It is over such evils that the _Pan-su_ [shaman] is supposed to
have power, and to be able to terminate them by magical rites, he being
possessed by a powerful demon, whose strength he is able to wield.”(299)
(M76) Of the nomadic Koryaks of north-eastern Asia it is said that “all
their religious customs have only reference to the evil spirits of the
earth. Their religion is thus a cunning diplomacy or negotiation with
these spirits in order, as far as possible, to deter them from actions
which would be injurious to men. Everywhere, on every mountain, in the
sea, by the rivers, in the forest, and on the plains their fancy sees
demons lurking, whom they picture to themselves as purely malignant and
very greedy. Hence the frequent offerings by which they seek to satisfy
the greed of these insatiable beings, and to redeem that which they value
and hold dear. Those of the people who are believed to be able to divine
most easily the wishes of the evil ones and who enjoy their favour to a
certain extent are called shamans, and the religious ceremonies which they
perform are shamanism. In every case the shamans must give their advice as
to how the devils are to be got rid of, and must reveal the wishes of the
demons.”(300) As to these demons of the earth, who infest the Koryaks, we
are told that “when visiting the houses to cause diseases and to kill
people, they enter from under ground, through the hearth-fire, and return
the same way. It happens at times that they steal people, and carry them
away. They are invisible to human beings, and are capable of changing
their size. They are sometimes so numerous in houses, that they sit on the
people, and fill up all corners. With hammers and axes they knock people
over their heads, thus causing headaches. They bite, and cause swellings.
They shoot invisible arrows, which stick in the body, causing death, if a
shaman does not pull them out in time. The _kalau_ [demons] tear out
pieces of flesh from people, thus causing sores and wounds to form on
their bodies.”(301)
(M77) The Gilyaks of the Amoor valley in eastern Asia believe that besides
the gods “there are evil supernatural beings who do him harm. They are
devils, called _mil’k_, _kinr_. These beings appear in the most varied
forms and are distinguished according to the degree of their harmfulness.
They appear now in the form of a Gilyak, now in the form of an animal,
from a bear down to a toad and a lizard. They exist on the land and in the
sea, under the earth and in the sky. Some of them form special tribes of
treacherous beings whose essential nature it is to be destructive. Others
are isolated individuals, ruined beings, ‘lost sons’ of families of
beneficent beings, who are exceptional in their hostility to man. The
former class are naturally the most dangerous. Some are wholly occupied in
robbing the Gilyak on the road (the spirits of loss—_gerniwuch-en_);
others empty his barns, his traps, his pitfalls, and so on; lastly there
are such also, the most dreadful of all, who lie in wait for his life and
bring sickness and death. Were there no such beings, men would not die. A
natural death is impossible. Death is the result of the wiles of these
treacherous beings.”(302)
(M78) In the more westerly parts of the old world the same belief in the
omnipresence and mischievous power of spirits has prevailed from antiquity
to the present day. If we may judge from the fragments of their literature
which have been deciphered, few people seem to have suffered more from the
persistent assaults of demons than the ancient Babylonians and Assyrians,
and the evil spirits that preyed on them were of a peculiarly cruel and
malignant sort; even the gods themselves were not exempt from their
attacks. These baleful beings lurked in solitary places, in graves, in the
shadow of ruins and on the tops of mountains. They dwelt in the
wilderness, in the holes and dens of the earth, they issued from the lower
parts of the ground. Nothing could resist them in heaven above, nothing
could withstand them on earth below. They roamed the streets, they leaped
from house to house. The high and thick fences they penetrated like a
flood, the door could not stay them, nor the bolt make them turn back.
They glided through the door like a serpent, they pierced through the
planks like the wind. There was no place, however small, which they could
not invade, none so large that they could not fill. And their wickedness
was equal to their power. “They are wicked, they are wicked,” says an
incantation. No prayers could move them, no supplications could make them
relent; for they knew no pity, they hearkened not to reason, they knew no
troth. To them all manner of evil was ascribed. Their presence was felt
not only in the terrible winds that swept the land, in the fevers bred of
the marshes, and in the diseases engendered by the damp heat of summer.
All the petty annoyances of life—a sudden fall, an unlucky word, a
headache, a paltry quarrel—were set down to the agency of fiends; and all
the fierce emotions that rend the mind—love, hate, jealousy, and
madness—were equally the work of these invisible tormentors. Men and women
stood in constant danger of them. They tore the wife from the bosom of her
husband, the son from the knees of his father. They ate the flesh and
drank the blood of men, they prevented them from sleeping or taking food,
and to adopt a metaphor from one of the texts, “they ground the country
like flour.” Almost every part of the human frame was menaced by a special
fiend. One demon assailed the head, another the neck, another the hips,
and so on. They bound a man’s hands, they fettered his feet, they spat
poison and gall on him. Day and night must he wander without rest; sighs
and lamentations were his food. They attacked even the animals. They drove
doves from their dovecotes, and swallows from their nests; they smote the
bull and the ass. They pursued the cattle to their stalls: they lodged
with the horses in the stable: they caused the she-ass to miscarry, and
the young ass at its mother’s dugs to pine away. Even lifeless things
could be possessed by them; for there were demons that rushed against
houses and took walls by storm, that shut themselves up in doors, and hid
themselves under bolts. Indeed they threatened the whole world with
destruction, and there was none that could deliver from them save only the
mighty god Marduk.(303)
(M79) In the opinion of the ancient Egyptians “there were good spirits as
well as bad, but the _Book of the Dead_ practically ignores the former,
and its magical formulae were directed entirely against the operations of
evil spirits. Though naturally of a gay and light-hearted disposition, the
Egyptian must have lived in a perpetual state of fear of spirits of all
kinds, spirits of calamity, disease, and sickness, spirits of angry gods
and ancestors, and above all the spirit of Death. His imagination filled
the world with spirits, whose acts seemed to him to be generally
malevolent, and his magical and religious literature and his amulets
testify to the very real terror with which he regarded his future
existence in the world of spirits. Escape from such spirits was
impossible, for they could not die.”(304) In modern Egypt the jinn, a
class of spiritual beings intermediate between angels and men, are
believed to pervade the solid matter of the earth as well as the
firmament, and they inhabit rivers, ruined houses, wells, baths, ovens,
and so forth. So thickly do they swarm that in pouring water or other
liquids on the ground an Egyptian will commonly exclaim or mutter
“_Destoor!_” thereby asking the permission or craving the pardon of any
jinn who might chance to be there, and who might otherwise resent being
suddenly soused with water or unsavoury fluids. So too when people light a
fire, let down a bucket into a well, or perform other necessary functions,
they will say “Permission!” or “Permission, ye blessed!”(305) Again, in
Egypt it is not considered proper to sweep out a house at night, lest in
doing so you should knock against a jinnee, who might avenge the
insult.(306)
(M80) The earliest of the Greek philosophers, Thales, held that the world
is full of gods or spirits;(307) and the same primitive creed was
expounded by one of the latest pagan thinkers of antiquity. Porphyry
declared that demons appeared in the likeness of animals, that every house
and every body was full of them, and that forms of ceremonial
purification, such as beating the air and so forth, had no other object
but that of driving away the importunate swarms of these invisible but
dangerous beings. He explained that evil spirits delighted in food,
especially in blood and impurities, that they settled like flies on us at
meals, and that they could only be kept at a distance by ceremonial
observances, which were directed, not to pleasing the gods, but simply and
solely to beating off devils.(308) His theory of religious purification
seems faithfully to reflect the creed of the savage on this subject,(309)
but a philosopher is perhaps the last person whom we should expect to find
acting as a mirror of savagery. It is less surprising to meet with the
same venerable doctrine, the same world-wide superstition in the mouth of
a mediaeval abbot; for we know that a belief in devils has the authority
of the founder of Christianity and is sanctioned by the teaching of the
church. No Esquimau on the frozen shores of Labrador, no Indian in the
sweltering forests of Guiana, no cowering Hindoo in the jungles of Bengal,
could well have a more constant and abiding sense of the presence of
malignant demons everywhere about him than had Abbot Richalm, who ruled
over the Cistercian monastery of Schönthal in the first half of the
thirteenth century. In the curious work to which he gave the name of
_Revelations_, he set forth how he was daily and hourly infested by
devils, whom, though he could not see, he heard, and to whom he imputed
all the ailments of his flesh and all the frailties of his spirit. If he
felt squeamish, he was sure that the feeling was wrought in him by
demoniacal agency. If puckers appeared on his nose, if his lower lip
drooped, the devils had again to answer for it; a cough, a cold in the
head, a hawking and spitting, could have none but a supernatural and
devilish origin. If, pacing in his orchard on a sunny autumn morning, the
portly abbot stooped to pick up the mellow fruit that had fallen in the
night, the blood that mounted to his purple face was sent coursing thither
by his invisible foes. If the abbot tossed on his sleepless couch, while
the moonlight, streaming in at the window, cast the shadows of the
stanchions like black bars on the floor of his cell, it was not the fleas
and so forth that kept him awake—oh no! “Vermin,” said he sagely, “do not
really bite”; they seem to bite indeed, but it is all the work of devils.
If a monk snored in the dormitory, the unseemly noise proceeded not from
him, but from a demon lurking in his person. Especially dangerous were the
demons of intoxication. These subtle fiends commonly lodged at the taverns
in the neighbouring town, but on feast days they were apt to slip through
the monastery gates and glide unseen among the monks seated at the
refectory table, or gathered round the roaring fire on the hearth, while
the bleak wind whistled in the abbey towers, and a more generous vintage
than usual glowed and sparkled in the flagons. If at such times a jolly,
rosy-faced brother appeared to the carnal eye and ear to grow obstreperous
or maudlin, to speak thick or to reel and stagger in his gait, be sure it
was not the fiery spirit of the grape that moved the holy man; it was a
spirit of quite a different order. Holding such views on the source of all
bodily and mental indisposition, it was natural enough that the abbot
should prescribe remedies which are not to be found in the pharmacopœia,
and which would be asked for in vain at an apothecary’s. They consisted
chiefly of holy water and the sign of the cross; this last he recommended
particularly as a specific for flea-bites.(310)
(M81) It is easy to suggest that the abbot’s wits were unsettled, that he
suffered from hallucinations, and so forth. This may have been so; yet a
mode of thought like his seems to be too common over a great part of the
world to allow us to attribute it purely to mental derangement. In the
Middle Ages, when the general level of knowledge was low, a state of mind
like Richalm’s may have been shared by multitudes even of educated people,
who have not, however, like him, left a monument of their folly to
posterity. At the present day, through the advance and spread of
knowledge, it might be difficult to find any person of acknowledged sanity
holding the abbot’s opinions on the subject of demons; but in remote parts
of Europe a little research might shew that the creed of Porphyry and
Richalm is still held, with but little variation, by the mass of the
people. Thus we are told that the Roumanians of Transylvania “believe
themselves to be surrounded on all sides by whole legions of evil spirits.
These devils are furthermore assisted by _ismejus_ (another sort of
dragon), witches, and goblins, and to each of these dangerous beings are
ascribed particular powers on particular days and at certain places. Many
and curious are therefore the means by which the Roumanians endeavour to
counteract these baleful influences; and a whole complicated study, about
as laborious as the mastering of an unknown language, is required in order
to teach an unfortunate peasant to steer clear of the dangers by which he
supposes himself to be beset on all sides.”(311)
(M82) Similar beliefs are held to this day by the Armenians, who, though
they are not a European people, have basked in the light of Christianity
from a time when Central and Northern Europe was still plunged in heathen
darkness. All the activities, we are told, of these professing Christians
“are paralyzed after sunset, because at every step they quake with fear,
believing that the evil demons are everywhere present in the air, in the
water, on the earth. By day the evil ones are under the earth, therefore
boiling hot water may not be poured on the ground, because it sinks into
the earth and burns the feet of the children of the evil spirits. But in
the evening the superstitious Armenian will pour no water at all on the
earth, because the evil ones are everywhere present on the earth. Some of
them are walking about, others are sitting at table and feasting, so that
they might be disturbed by the pouring out of water, and they would take
vengeance for it. Also by night you should not smite the ground with a
stick, nor sweep out the house, nor remove the dung from the stable,
because without knowing it you might hit the evil spirits. But if you are
compelled to sweep by night, you singe the tip of the broom so as to
frighten the evil ones away in time. You must not go out at night
bareheaded, for the evil ones would smite you on the head. It is also
dangerous to drink water out of a vessel in the dark, especially when the
water is drawn from a brook or river; for the evil ones in the water hit
out, or they pass with the water into a man. Therefore in drinking you
should hold a knife with three blades or a piece of iron in the water. The
baleful influence of the nocturnal demons extends also to useful objects;
hence after sunset people do not lend salt or fire and do not shake out
the tablecloth, because thereby the salt would lose its savour and the
welfare of the house would depart.”(312)