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
forms a sort of link between the Pyrenees and the Cevennes, they tell how
a woman, who had long been suspected of being a witch, one day fell asleep
at noon among the reapers in the field. Resolved to put her to the test,
the reapers carried her, while she slept, to another part of the field,
leaving a large pitcher on the spot from which they had moved her. When
her soul returned, it entered the pitcher and cunningly rolled it over and
over till the vessel lay beside her body, of which the soul thereupon took
possession.(146)
(M30) But in order that a man’s soul should quit his body, it is not
necessary that he should be asleep. It may quit him in his waking hours,
and then sickness, insanity, or death will be the result. Thus a man of
the Wurunjeri tribe in Victoria lay at his last gasp because his spirit
(_murup_) had departed from him. A medicine-man went in pursuit and caught
the spirit by the middle just as it was about to plunge into the sunset
glow, which is the light cast by the souls of the dead as they pass in and
out of the underworld, where the sun goes to rest. Having captured the
vagrant spirit, the doctor brought it back under his opossum rug, laid
himself down on the dying man, and put the soul back into him, so that
after a time he revived.(147) The Karens of Burma are perpetually anxious
about their souls, lest these should go roving from their bodies, leaving
the owners to die. When a man has reason to fear that his soul is about to
take this fatal step, a ceremony is performed to retain or recall it, in
which the whole family must take part. A meal is prepared consisting of a
cock and hen, a special kind of rice, and a bunch of bananas. Then the
head of the family takes the bowl which is used to skim rice, and knocking
with it thrice on the top of the house-ladder says: “_Prrrroo!_ Come back,
soul, do not tarry outside! If it rains, you will be wet. If the sun
shines, you will be hot. The gnats will sting you, the leeches will bite
you, the tigers will devour you, the thunder will crush you. _Prrrroo!_
Come back, soul! Here it will be well with you. You shall want for
nothing. Come and eat under shelter from the wind and the storm.” After
that the family partakes of the meal, and the ceremony ends with everybody
tying their right wrist with a string which has been charmed by a
sorcerer.(148) Similarly the Lolos, an aboriginal tribe of western China,
believe that the soul leaves the body in chronic illness. In that case
they read a sort of elaborate litany, calling on the soul by name and
beseeching it to return from the hills, the vales, the rivers, the
forests, the fields, or from wherever it may be straying. At the same time
cups of water, wine, and rice are set at the door for the refreshment of
the weary wandering spirit. When the ceremony is over, they tie a red cord
round the arm of the sick man to tether the soul, and this cord is worn by
him until it decays and drops off.(149) So among the Kenyahs of Sarawak a
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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