The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion (Vol. 1 of 2)Frazer, James George
Religion
The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion (Vol. 1 of 2)
Frazer, James George
Magic; Mythology; Religion; Superstition
This is one way in which the idea of a man-god is reached. But there is
another. Side by side with the view of the world as pervaded by spiritual
forces, primitive man has another conception in which we may detect a germ
of the modern notion of natural law or the view of nature as a series of
events occurring in an invariable order without the intervention of
personal agency. The germ of which I speak is involved in that sympathetic
magic, as it may be called, which plays a large part in most systems of
superstition. One of the principles of sympathetic magic is that any
effect may be produced by imitating it. To take a few instances. If it is
wished to kill a person an image of him is made and then destroyed; and it
is believed that through a certain physical sympathy between the person
and his image, the man feels the injuries done to the image as if they
were done to his own body, and that when it is destroyed he must
simultaneously perish. Again, in Morocco a fowl or a pigeon may sometimes
be seen with a little red bundle tied to its foot. The bundle contains a
charm, and it is believed that as the charm is kept in constant motion by
the bird a corresponding restlessness is kept up in the mind of him or her
against whom the charm is directed.(26) In Nias when a wild pig has fallen
into the pit prepared for it, it is taken out and its back is rubbed with
nine fallen leaves, in the belief that this will make nine more wild pigs
fall into the pit just as the nine leaves fell from the tree.(27) When a
Cambodian hunter has set his nets and taken nothing, he strips himself
naked, goes some way off, then strolls up to the net as if he did not see
it, lets himself be caught in it and cries, “Hillo! what’s this? I’m
afraid I’m caught.” After that the net is sure to catch game.(28) In
Thüringen the man who sows flax carries the seed in a long bag which
reaches from his shoulders to his knees, and he walks with long strides,
so that the bag sways to and fro on his back. It is believed that this
will cause the flax crop to wave in the wind.(29) In the interior of
Sumatra the rice is sown by women who, in sowing, let their hair hang
loose down their back, in order that the rice may grow luxuriantly and
have long stalks.(30) Again, magic sympathy is supposed to exist between a
man and any severed portion of his person, as his hair or nails; so that
whoever gets possession of hair or nails may work his will, at any
distance, upon the person from whom they were cut. This superstition is
world-wide. Further, the sympathy in question exists between friends and
relations, especially at critical times. Hence, for example, the elaborate
code of rules which regulates the conduct of persons left at home while a
party of their friends is out fishing or hunting or on the war-path. It is
thought that if the persons left at home broke these rules their absent
friends would suffer an injury, corresponding in its nature to the breach
of the rule.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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