Ritual and belief : $b Studies in the history of religionHartland, Edwin Sidney
Religion
Ritual and belief : $b Studies in the history of religion
Hartland, Edwin Sidney
Ethnopsychology; Magic; Religion; Rites and ceremonies
Divine beings may even be made accomplices in Black or antisocial
Magic without any compulsion. The white-headed carrion-hawk
(_Haliaster intermedius_) is the most important bird of omen observed
by the Kenyahs of Borneo. Under the name of Bali Flaki he is looked
upon as messenger and intermediary between themselves and Bali
Penyalong, the Supreme Being. Apparently every individual hawk is such
a messenger, but his sacred character appears in his title Bali: a
word probably derived from the Sanskrit and sometimes translated
_holy_, but having the force of “an adjectival equivalent of the
_mana_ of the Melanesians, or of the _wakanda_ or _orenda_ of North
American tribes, words which seem to connote all power other than
purely mechanical.”[144.1] Bali Flaki is appealed to publicly on
behalf of the community on various occasions, as on sowing or
harvesting the rice-crop, making war or peace, or in fact before any
undertaking or decision. His aid may also “be sought privately by any
man who wishes to injure another. For this purpose a man makes a rough
wooden image in human form, and retires to some quiet spot on the
river-bank, where he sets up a _tegulun_, a horizontal pole supported
about a yard above the ground by a pair of vertical poles. He lights a
small fire beside the _tegulun_, and taking a fowl in one hand, he
sits on the ground behind it, so as to see through it a square patch
of sky, and so waits until a hawk becomes visible upon the patch. As
{145} soon as a hawk appears he kills the fowl, and with a frayed
stick smears its blood on the wooden image, saying: ‘Put fat in his
mouth.’” This appears to be addressed to the hawk. In the description
of what is in effect the same rite as practised among some of the
Klemantans of the same island, we are definitely told it is so
addressed. The expression means, “Let his head be taken”; for the
people are head-hunters, and fat is put in the mouth of every head
taken. Messrs Hose and M‘Dougall, whom I am quoting, proceed: “And he
puts a bit of fat in the mouth of the image. Then he strikes at the
breast of the image with a wooden spear, and throws it into a pool of
water reddened with red earth, and then takes it out and buries it in
the ground,” in the manner in which only persons dying by violence or
some much feared disease are buried. “While the hawk is visible he
waves it towards the left; for he knows that if it flies to the left
he will prevail over his enemy, but that if it goes to the right his
enemy is too strong for him.” In the Klemantan rite, as described for
us, he also shouts to the hawk to go to the left. When it has gone in
the desired direction he addresses a prayer beginning “O Bali Flaki,
go your way, let this man (naming him) die; go and put him in the lake
of blood, O Bali Flaki; stab him in the chest, Bali Flaki,” and so on,
invoking all sorts of evil deaths upon him.[145.1] Now here we have a
well-known rite of antisocial magic. But to make it effectual the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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