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
Magical images have often been employed for the amiable purpose of
winning love. Thus to shoot an arrow into the heart of a clay image
was an ancient Hindoo mode of securing a woman’s affection; only the
bow-string must be of hemp, the shaft of the arrow must be of black
_ala_ wood, its plume an owl’s feather, and its barb a thorn.[263]
No doubt the wound inflicted on the heart of the clay image was
supposed to make a corresponding impression on the woman’s heart.
Among the Chippeway Indians there used to be few young men or women
who had not little images of the persons whose love they wished to
win. They pricked the hearts of the images and inserted magical
powders in the punctures, while they addressed the effigies by the
names of the persons whom they represented, bidding them requite their
affection.[264] Ancient witches and wizards melted wax in the fire in
order to make the hearts of their sweethearts to melt of love.[265]
And as the wound of love may be inflicted by an image, so by an image
it may be healed. How that can be done is told by Heine in a poem
based on the experience of one of his own schoolfellows. It is called
_The Pilgrimage to Kevlaar_, and describes how sick people offer waxen
models of their ailing members to the Virgin Mary at Kevlaar in order
that she may heal them of their infirmities. In the poem a lover,
wasting away for love and sorrow at the death of his sweetheart, offers
to the Virgin the waxen model of a heart with a prayer that she would
heal his heart-ache.[266] Such customs, still commonly {p78} observed
in some parts of Catholic Europe, are interesting because they shew
how in later times magic comes to be incorporated with religion. The
moulding of wax images of ailing members is in its origin purely
magical: the prayer to the Virgin or to a saint is purely religious:
the combination of the two is a crude, if pathetic, attempt to turn
both magic and religion to account for the benefit of the sufferer.
[Sidenote: Magical images to maintain domestic harmony.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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