THE LITERARY GUIDE REPRINTS.-No. 18.
ORIGINS OF SACRIFICE.
BEING A SUMMARY OF “ THE GOLDEN BOUGH,” BY J. G. FRAZER. M.A.
T he little woodland lake o f Nemi— “ Diana’s Mirror,” as the ancients called it— lies in a green hollow of the Alban hills. Two Italian villages slumber on its banks ; the terraced gardens o f a palazzo descend steeply to its shore. These lonely woodlands are reminiscent of antique and strange tragedies. Near to the lake there was a sacred grove in which grew a certain tree. By day and night a priest with drawn sword prowled as sentinel. Sooner or later he would be murdered. The slayer would, by the rule of the sanctuary, succeed to his office, and hold it till he was slain in turn by a stronger or craftier aspirant who plucked the misletoe spray.
PRIM IT IV E MAN AND THE SU PERNATURAL. Why was the priest called the King of the Wood ? Why his office named a kingdom ?
There were kings and queens of sacrificial or sacred rites in Rome or other Italian cities. Republican Athens and other Greek democracies had State magistrates with priestly functions. These were titular kings. In Sparta State sacrifices were offered by kings as descendants of gods. Teutonic kings were also high priests. The Emperor of China offered public sacrifice as prescribed by ritual.
The idea o f a man-god may be suggested another way. Sympathetic magic is a conception o f all superstitions. For instance, if it is wished to kill a person, an image of him is made, and then destroyed. In Morocco fowls or pigeons have charms tied to their feet to produce corresponding unrest in the mind of the victim o f the charm. The superstition is world-wide that whoever gets possession o f hair or nails, or any severed portion of the body of any person, may work his will at any distance on that person. Resemblance o f qualities, on the other hand, induces Bechuanas to wear ferrets as charms for tenacity of life. Thus, by many instances and inferences, we comprehend that extraordinary powers ascribed to individuals are regarded as divinely exercised. I he making of rain and sunshine, the staying of the sun, the power of making or fighting wind, all lead up to the conception of
INCARNATE GODS.
Man realized his own littleness and feebleness more clearly as his knowledge of the vastness of nature grew. Before he recognised the forces of nature as impersonal, he explained the world by personal agencies. These controlled the machinery of the universe. Man created mangods. So powerful was this necessity that inspiration or incarnation might be only temporary. Each of the South Sea Islands had its own separate human god. The gods o f Samoa were generally animals. In Tonquin every village had its supernatural dog, cat, tiger, or serpent. A sect in Orissa worships Queen Victoria. The Todas, a pastoral people of Southern India, deify the milkman. Grand Lamas die. Their disciples do not sorrow; they are sure o f the Lama’s reappearance. Their only anxiety is to discover the place of his birth when born again. A rainbow guides them to his cradle.
TREE WORSHIP.
T h e immense primeval forests o f Europe, stretching sometimes to vast unknown distances, religiously impressed the Aryan element. Grimm explains, from the Teutonic word for “ temple,” that the oldest sanctuaries were natural woods. Tree-worship is not extinct in modern Germany. The ancient Prussians had their sacred oak, tended by a hierarchy o f priests who kept up a perpetual fire of oakwood in the sacred grove. The Lithuanians worshipped trees till the close o f the fourteenth century. In the Forum, the centre of Roman life, the sacred fig-tree of Romulus was worshipped; the withering of its trunk dismayed the city.
For the savage the world was animate. Trees had souls. Siamese monks held it as sinful to break a branch o f a tree as to break a human limb. In the Moluccas clove-trees in blossom are to be treated like pregnant women. The Diezerie tribe of South Australia regard some trees as their fathers transformed. The Curka Coles of India believe that the tops of trees are inhabited by spirits which resent such injuries, so before thinning a grove a Roman farmer had to sacrifice a pig to the god or goddess of the grove.
But the tree spirit was, in the course of evolution, able to quit its dwelling-place at pleasure. Animism thus passes into polytheism. The tree-spirit may even assume the shape of a man ; the forest-god, with power to give rain or sunshine, to make flocks and herds prolific, and women to bring forth easily and fruitfully. The common European custom of placing a green bush on May Day before the house of a beloved maiden probably originated in the belief in the fertilizing power of the tree-spirit. Among the Kara-Kirgiz barren women roll themselves on the ground under an apple-tree to obtain offspring. In some negro tribes of the Congo region pregnant women make themselves garments from the bark of a sacred tree to facilitate delivery. These and other beneficent attributes, such as fertilizing corn, led to popular festivals in which, among the European peasantry, the May-tree, or May-pole, prominently figured. On the Thursday before Whit Sunday, Russian villagers cut down a young birch-tree, which they dress up in woman’s clothes and ribbons, and carry to the village with song and dance. It remains as an honoured guest till Whit Sunday, when it is flung into a stream for a rain-charm. The root-idea of all these festivals is to secure the fertilizing spirit of vegetation and the fruitfulness of women and cattle, to celebrate the marriage of earth in the spring-time ; or, as with the Greeks, the marriage of divinities of productive vegetation.
Modern folk-custom and the facts of ancient ritual and mythology justify the conclusion that these spring and midsummer festivals were practised by the Greeks and Romans in prehistoric times. And these various forms of treeworship tend to explain the priesthood of Aricia ; for Diana, the goddess, had the attributes of these tree-spirits, or deities ; and the King of the Wood, like the King of May, was the incarnation of the spirit of vegetation. His life could be assailed only by him who had plucked the golden bough of misletoe that hung in the foliage of the holy tree in the sacred grove.
ROYAL AND PRIESTLY TAIIOOS.
It was assumed that the king’s power over nature was exerted through definite acts of will. I f drought, famine, pestilence, or storms arose, it was attributed to the negligence or guilt of the king. His person was as the dynamical centre of the universe ; the turning of his head, the lifting of his hand, might derange some order of nature. He was the point of support on which hung the balance of the world ; the slightest irregularity on his part might overthrow the delicate equipoise. A Japanese mikado, as spiritual monarch and born pope, might not touch the ground with his feet, was not suffered to expose his sacred person to the open air. Every part of his body was ho ly ; neither his hair, nor his beard, nor his nails might be cut. He was washed when asleep, that it might be said the dirt was stolen from him. Such theft did not compromise his holiness. Whatever he ate was dressed in new vessels. The priestly king in Lower Guinea might not touch a woman nor leave his house; indeed, he might never quit his chair even for sleep, lest the winds should cease and navigation be stopped. In West Africa (Congo) there was a supreme pontiff called Chitome, or Chitcombe, who was regarded as god on earth and omnipotent in heaven. Whenever he left his royal residence all married people had to observe strict continence ; any act of incontinence would have been fatal to him. And if he died the world would perish. The earth was not worthy to hold, nor the sun to shine upon, the high pontiff of the Zapotecs
