The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 03 of 12)Frazer, James George
Religion
The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 03 of 12)
Frazer, James George
Magic; Mythology; Religion; Superstition
are bathed, anointed, and clad in new garments.(546)
§ 4. Warriors tabooed.
(M100) Once more, warriors are conceived by the savage to move, so to say,
in an atmosphere of spiritual danger which constrains them to practise a
variety of superstitious observances quite different in their nature from
those rational precautions which, as a matter of course, they adopt
against foes of flesh and blood. The general effect of these observances
is to place the warrior, both before and after victory, in the same state
of seclusion or spiritual quarantine in which, for his own safety,
primitive man puts his human gods and other dangerous characters. Thus
when the Maoris went out on the war-path they were sacred or taboo in the
highest degree, and they and their friends at home had to observe strictly
many curious customs over and above the numerous taboos of ordinary life.
They became, in the irreverent language of Europeans who knew them in the
old fighting days, “tabooed an inch thick”; and as for the leader of the
expedition, he was quite unapproachable.(547) Similarly, when the
Israelites marched forth to war they were bound by certain rules of
ceremonial purity identical with rules observed by Maoris and Australian
blackfellows on the war-path. The vessels they used were sacred, and they
had to practise continence and a custom of personal cleanliness of which
the original motive, if we may judge from the avowed motive of savages who
conform to the same custom, was a fear lest the enemy should obtain the
refuse of their persons, and thus be enabled to work their destruction by
magic.(548) Among some Indian tribes of North America a young warrior in
his first campaign had to conform to certain customs, of which two were
identical with the observances imposed by the same Indians on girls at
their first menstruation: the vessels he ate and drank out of might be
touched by no other person, and he was forbidden to scratch his head or
any other part of his body with his fingers; if he could not help
scratching himself, he had to do it with a stick.(549) The latter rule,
like the one which forbids a tabooed person to feed himself with his own
fingers, seems to rest on the supposed sanctity or pollution, whichever we
choose to call it, of the tabooed hands.(550) Moreover among these Indian
tribes the men on the war-path had always to sleep at night with their
faces turned towards their own country; however uneasy the posture they
might not change it. They might not sit upon the bare ground, nor wet
their feet, nor walk on a beaten path if they could help it; when they had
no choice but to walk on a path, they sought to counteract the ill effect
of doing so by doctoring their legs with certain medicines or charms which
they carried with them for the purpose. No member of the party was
permitted to step over the legs, hands, or body of any other member who
chanced to be sitting or lying on the ground; and it was equally forbidden
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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