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
a solemn sacrifice once and once only in the year, it generally or always
means that the animal is divine—that he is spared and respected the rest
of the year as a god and slain, when he is slain, also in the character of
a god.(216) In the second place, the examples of Dionysus and Demeter, if
not of Attis and Adonis, have taught us that the animal which is
sacrificed to a god on the ground that he is the god’s enemy may have
been, and probably was, originally the god himself. Therefore, the fact
that the pig was sacrificed once a year to Osiris, and the fact that he
appears to have been sacrificed on the ground that he was the god’s enemy,
go to show, first, that originally the pig was a god, and, second, that he
was Osiris. At a later age the pig was distinguished from Osiris when the
latter became anthropomorphic and his original relation to the pig was
forgotten; later still, the pig was opposed as an enemy to Osiris by
mythologists who could think of no reason for killing an animal in
connection with the worship of a god except that the animal was the god’s
enemy; or, as Plutarch puts it, not that which is dear to the gods, but
that which is the contrary, is fit to be sacrificed.(217) At this later
stage the havoc which a wild boar notoriously makes amongst the corn would
supply a plausible reason for regarding him as an enemy of the
corn-spirit, though originally, if I am right, the very fact that the boar
was found ranging at will through the corn was the reason for identifying
him with the corn-spirit, to whom he was afterwards opposed as an enemy.
The view which identifies the pig with Osiris derives not a little support
from the fact that the day on which the pigs were sacrificed to him was
the day on which, according to tradition, Osiris was killed;(218) for thus
the killing of the pig was the annual representation of the killing of
Osiris, just as the throwing of the pigs into the caverns at the
Thesmophoria was an annual representation of the descent of Proserpine
into the lower world; and both customs are parallel to the European
practice of killing a goat, cock, etc., at harvest as a representative of
the corn-spirit.
Again, the view that the pig, originally Osiris himself, afterwards came
to be regarded as an embodiment of his enemy Typhon, is supported by the
similar relation of red-haired men and red oxen to Typhon. For in regard
to the red-haired men who were burned and whose ashes were scattered with
winnowing-fans, we have seen fair grounds for believing that originally,
like the red-haired puppies killed at Rome in spring, they were
representatives of the corn-spirit himself, that is, of Osiris, and were
slain for the express purpose of making the corn turn red or golden.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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