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
the other, and that, before hunters think of worshipping the game as a
means of ensuring an abundant supply of it, they seek to attain the same
end by sympathetic magic. This, again, would show—what there is good
reason for believing—that sympathetic magic is one of the earliest means
by which man endeavours to adapt the agencies of nature to his needs.
Corresponding to the two distinct types of animal worship, there are two
distinct types of the custom of killing the animal god. On the one hand,
when the revered animal is habitually spared, it is nevertheless
killed—and sometimes eaten—on rare and solemn occasions. Examples of this
custom have been already given and an explanation of them offered. On the
other hand, when the revered animal is habitually killed, the slaughter of
any one of the species involves the killing of the god, and is atoned for
on the spot by apologies and sacrifices, especially when the animal is a
powerful and dangerous one; and, in addition to this ordinary and everyday
atonement, there is a special annual atonement, at which a select
individual of the species is slain with extraordinary marks of respect and
devotion. Clearly the two types of sacramental killing—the Egyptian and
the Aino types, as we may call them for distinction—are liable to be
confounded by an observer; and, before we can say to which type any
particular example belongs, it is necessary to ascertain whether the
animal sacramentally slain belongs to a species which is habitually
spared, or to one which is habitually killed by the tribe. In the former
case the example belongs to the Egyptian type of sacrament, in the latter
to the Aino type.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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