The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 01 of 12)Frazer, James George
Religion
The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 01 of 12)
Frazer, James George
Magic; Mythology; Religion; Superstition
by sticking it firmly in the sandy bottom of the sea.[203] When the
Lerons of Borneo wish to be revenged on an enemy, they make a wooden
image of him and leave it in the jungle. As it decays, he dies.[204]
More elaborate is the proceeding adopted by the Kenyahs of Borneo in
similar circumstances. The operator retires with the image to a quiet
spot on the river bank, and when a hawk appears in a certain part of
the sky, he kills a fowl, smears its blood on the image, and puts a
bit of fat in the mouth of the figure, saying, “Put fat in his mouth.”
By that he means, “May {p60} his head be cut off, hung up in an enemy’s
house, and fed with fat in the usual way.” Then he strikes at the
breast of the image with a small wooden spear, throws it into a pool of
water reddened with red earth, and afterwards takes it out and buries
it in the ground.[205]
[Sidenote: Magical images in Japan and China.]
If an Aino of Japan desires to compass the destruction of an enemy, he
will make a likeness of him out of mugwort or the guelder-rose and bury
it in a hole upside down or under the trunk of a rotten tree, with a
prayer to a demon to carry off the man’s soul or to make his body rot
away with the tree. Sometimes an Aino woman will attempt to get rid of
her husband in this fashion by wrapping up his head-dress in the shape
of a corpse and burying it deep in the ground, while she breathes a
prayer that her husband may rot and die with the head-dress.[206] The
Japanese themselves are familiar with similar modes of enchantment.
In one of their ancient books we read of a rebellious minister who
made figures of the heir to the throne with intent, no doubt, to do
him grievous bodily harm thereby; and sometimes a woman who has been
deserted by her lover will make a straw effigy of the faithless gallant
and nail it to a sacred tree, adjuring the gods to spare the tree and
to visit the sacrilege on the traitor. At a shrine of Kompira there
stood a pine-tree studded with nails which had been thus driven in
for the purpose of doing people to death.[207] The Chinese also are
perfectly aware that you can harm a man by maltreating or cursing an
image of him, especially if you have taken care to write on it his
name and horoscope. This mode of venting spite on an enemy is said to
be commonly practised in China. In Amoy such images, roughly made of
bamboo splinters and paper, are called “substitutes of persons” and may
be bought very cheap for a cash or so apiece at any shop which sells
paper articles for the use of the dead or the gods; for the frugal
Chinese are in the habit of palming off paper imitations of all kinds
of valuables on the simple-minded ghosts and gods, who take them in all
good faith for the genuine articles. As {p61} usual, the victim suffers
a hurt corresponding to the hurt done to his image. Thus if you run a
nail or a needle into the eyes of the puppet, your man will go more or
less blind; if you stick a pin in its stomach, he will be doubled up
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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