The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion (Vol. 2 of 2)Frazer, James George
ReligionComparative
The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion (Vol. 2 of 2)
Frazer, James George
Magic; Mythology; Religion; Superstition
of a Central American Indian, the killing of his _ihlozi_ causes the death
of a Zulu, the killing of his _tamaniu_ causes the death of a Banks
Islander, and the killing of the animal in which his life is stowed away
causes the death of the giant or warlock in the fairy tale.
Thus it appears that the story of “The giant who had no heart in his body”
furnishes the key to the religious aspect of totemism, that is, to the
relation which is supposed to subsist between a man and his totem. The
totem, if I am right, is simply the receptacle in which a man keeps his
life, as Punchkin kept his life in a parrot, and Bidasari kept her soul in
a golden fish. It is no valid objection to this view that when a savage
has both a sex totem and a tribal totem his life must be bound up with two
different animals, the death of either of which would entail his own. If a
man has more vital places than one in his body, why, the savage may think,
should he not have more vital places than one outside it? Why, since he
can externalise his life, should he not transfer one portion of it to one
animal and another to another? The divisibility of life, or, to put it
otherwise, the plurality of souls, is an idea suggested by many familiar
facts, and has commended itself to philosophers like Plato as well as to
savages. It is only when the notion of a soul, from being a
quasi-scientific hypothesis, becomes a theological dogma that its unity
and indivisibility are insisted upon as essential. The savage, unshackled
by dogma, is free to explain the facts of life by the assumption of as
many souls as he thinks necessary. Hence, for example, the Caribs supposed
that there was one soul in the head, another in the heart, and other souls
at all the places where an artery is felt pulsating.(894) Some of the
Hidatsa Indians explain the phenomena of gradual death, when the
extremities appear dead first, by supposing that man has four souls, and
that they quit the body, not simultaneously, but one after the other,
dissolution being only complete when all four have departed.(895) The Laos
suppose that the body is the seat of thirty spirits, which reside in the
hands, the feet, the mouth, the eyes, etc.(896) Hence, from the primitive
point of view, it is perfectly possible that a savage should have one soul
in his sex totem, and another in his tribal totem. However, as I have
observed, sex totems occur nowhere but in Australia; so that as a rule the
savage who practises totemism need not have more than one soul out of his
body at a time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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