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
wizards, taking him for a god in the dark, for it was night. Then all the
gods rose up and went away; but the wizard kept the chief’s soul. In the
morning some women went with a present of fine mats to fetch a famous
physician. The wizards were sitting on the shore as the women passed, and
they said to the women, “Give us the mats and we will heal him.” So they
went to the chief’s house. He was very ill, his jaw hung down, and his end
seemed near. But the wizards undid the leaf and let the soul into him
again, and forthwith he brightened up and lived.(210)
(M45) The Battas or Bataks of Sumatra believe that the soul of a living
man may transmigrate into the body of an animal. Hence, for example, the
doctor is sometimes desired to extract the patient’s soul from the body of
a fowl, in which it has been hidden away by an evil spirit.(211)
(M46) Sometimes the lost soul is brought back in a visible shape. In
Melanesia a woman, knowing that a neighbour was at the point of death,
heard a rustling in her house, as of a moth fluttering, just at the moment
when a noise of weeping and lamentation told her that the soul was flown.
She caught the fluttering thing between her hands and ran with it, crying
out that she had caught the soul. But though she opened her hands above
the mouth of the corpse, it did not revive.(212) In Lepers’ Island, one of
the New Hebrides, for ten days after a birth the father is careful not to
exert himself or the baby would suffer for it. If during this time he goes
away to any distance, he will bring back with him on his return a little
stone representing the infant’s soul. Arrived at home he cries, “Come
hither,” and puts down the stone in the house. Then he waits till the
child sneezes, at which he cries, “Here it is”; for now he knows that the
little soul has not been lost after all.(213) The Salish or Flathead
Indians of Oregon believe that a man’s soul may be separated for a time
from his body without causing death and without the man being aware of his
loss. It is necessary, however, that the lost soul should be soon found
and restored to its owner or he will die. The name of the man who has lost
his soul is revealed in a dream to the medicine-man, who hastens to inform
the sufferer of his loss. Generally a number of men have sustained a like
loss at the same time; all their names are revealed to the medicine-man,
and all employ him to recover their souls. The whole night long these
soulless men go about the village from lodge to lodge, dancing and
singing. Towards daybreak they go into a separate lodge, which is closed
up so as to be totally dark. A small hole is then made in the roof,
through which the medicine-man, with a bunch of feathers, brushes in the
souls, in the shape of bits of bone and the like, which he receives on a
piece of matting. A fire is next kindled, by the light of which the
medicine-man sorts out the souls. First he puts aside the souls of dead
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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