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
The soul of a sleeper is supposed to wander away from his body and
actually to visit the very places of which he dreams. But this absence of
the soul has its dangers, for if from any cause it should be permanently
detained away from the body, the person, deprived of his soul, must
die.(411) Many causes may detain the sleeper’s soul. Thus, his soul may
meet the soul of another sleeper and the two souls may fight; if a Guinea
negro wakens with sore bones in the morning, he thinks that his soul has
been thrashed by another soul in sleep.(412) Or it may meet the soul of a
person just deceased and be carried off by it; hence in the Aru Islands
the inmates of a house will not sleep the night after a death has taken
place in it, because the soul of the deceased is supposed to be still in
the house and they fear to meet it in a dream.(413) Again, the soul may be
prevented by physical force from returning. The Santals tell how a man
fell asleep, and growing very thirsty, his soul, in the form of a lizard,
left his body and entered a pitcher of water to drink. Just then the owner
of the pitcher happened to cover it; so the soul could not return to the
body and the man died. While his friends were preparing to burn the body
some one uncovered the pitcher to get water. The lizard thus escaped and
returned to the body, which immediately revived; so the man rose up and
asked his friends why they were weeping. They told him they thought he was
dead and were about to burn his body. He said he had been down a well to
get water but had found it hard to get out and had just returned. So they
saw it all.(414) A similar story is reported from Transylvania as follows.
In the account of a witch’s trial at Mühlbach last century it is said that
a woman had engaged two men to work in her vineyard. After noon they all
lay down to rest as usual. An hour later the men got up and tried to waken
the woman, but could not. She lay motionless with her mouth wide open.
They came back at sunset and still she lay like a corpse. Just at that
moment a big fly came buzzing past, which one of the men caught and shut
up in his leathern pouch. Then they tried again to waken the woman but
could not. Afterwards they let out the fly; it flew straight into the
woman’s mouth and she awoke. On seeing this the men had no further doubt
that she was a witch.(415)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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