Folklore; Manners and customs; Mythology; Religion
After marriage and after tribal institutions, look at _rank_. Is it not
obvious that the religious elements (magic and necromancy) left out of
his reckoning by Mr. Muller are most powerful in developing rank? Even
among those democratic paupers, the Fuegians, 'the doctor-wizard of each
party has much influence over his companions.' Among those other
democrats, the Eskimo, a class of wizards, called Angakuts, become 'a
kind of civil magistrates,' because they can cause fine weather, and can
magically detect people who commit offences. Thus the germs of rank, in
these cases, are sown by the magic which is fetichism in action. Try the
Zulus: 'the heaven is the chief's,' he can call up clouds and storms,
hence the sanction of his authority. In New Zealand, every Rangatira has
a supernatural power. If he touches an article, no one else dares to
appropriate it, for fear of terrible supernatural consequences. A head
chief is 'tapued an inch thick, and perfectly unapproachable.' Magical
power abides in and emanates from him. By this superstition, an
aristocracy is formed, and property (the property, at least, of the
aristocracy) is secured. Among the Red Indians, as Schoolcraft says,
'priests and jugglers are the persons that make war and have a voice in
the sale of the land.' Mr. E. W. Robertson says much the same thing
about early Scotland. If Odin was not a god with the gifts of a medicine-
man, and did not owe his chiefship to his talent for dealing with magic,
he is greatly maligned. The Irish Brehons also sanctioned legal
decisions by magical devices, afterwards condemned by the Church. Among
the Zulus, 'the Itongo (spirit) dwells with the great man; he who dreams
is the chief of the village.' The chief alone can 'read in the vessel of
divination.' The Kaneka chiefs are medicine-men.
Here then, in widely distant regions, in early European, American,
Melanesian, African societies, we find those factors in religion which
the primitive Aryans are said to have dispensed with, helping to
construct society, rank, property. Is it necessary to add that the
ancestral spirits still 'rule the present from the past,' and demand
sacrifice, and speak to 'him who dreams,' who, therefore, is a strong
force in society, if not a chief? Mr. Herbert Spencer, Mr. Tylor, M.
Fustel de Coulanges, a dozen others, have made all this matter of common
notoriety. As Hearne the traveller says about the Copper River Indians,
'it is almost necessary that they who rule them should profess something
a little supernatural to enable them to deal with the people.' The few
examples we have given show how widely, and among what untutored races,
the need is felt. The rudimentary government of early peoples requires,
and, by aid of dreams, necromancy, 'medicine' (i.e. fetiches), tapu, and
so forth, obtains, a supernatural sanction.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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