The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 05 of 12)Frazer, James George
Religion
The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 05 of 12)
Frazer, James George
Magic; Mythology; Religion; Superstition
The Bagobos of Mindanao, one of the Philippine Islands, used annually to
sacrifice human victims for the good of the crops in a similar way. Early
in December, when the constellation Orion appeared at seven o’clock in the
evening, the people knew that the time had come to clear their fields for
sowing and to sacrifice a slave. The sacrifice was presented to certain
powerful spirits as payment for the good year which the people had
enjoyed, and to ensure the favour of the spirits for the coming season.
The victim was led to a great tree in the forest; there he was tied with
his back to the tree and his arms stretched high above his head, in the
attitude in which ancient artists portrayed Marsyas hanging on the fatal
tree. While he thus hung by the arms, he was slain by a spear thrust
through his body at the level of the armpits. Afterwards the body was cut
clean through the middle at the waist, and the upper part was apparently
allowed to dangle for a little from the tree, while the under part
wallowed in blood on the ground. The two portions were finally cast into a
shallow trench beside the tree. Before this was done, anybody who wished
might cut off a piece of flesh or a lock of hair from the corpse and carry
it to the grave of some relation whose body was being consumed by a ghoul.
Attracted by the fresh corpse, the ghoul would leave the mouldering old
body in peace. These sacrifices have been offered by men now living.(877)
(M213) In Greece the great goddess Artemis herself appears to have been
annually hanged in effigy in her sacred grove of Condylea among the
Arcadian hills, and there accordingly she went by the name of the Hanged
One.(878) Indeed a trace of a similar rite may perhaps be detected even at
Ephesus, the most famous of her sanctuaries, in the legend of a woman who
hanged herself and was thereupon dressed by the compassionate goddess in
her own divine garb and called by the name of Hecate.(879) Similarly, at
Melite in Phthia, a story was told of a girl named Aspalis who hanged
herself, but who appears to have been merely a form of Artemis. For after
her death her body could not be found, but an image of her was discovered
standing beside the image of Artemis, and the people bestowed on it the
title of Hecaerge or Far-shooter, one of the regular epithets of the
goddess. Every year the virgins sacrificed a young goat to the image by
hanging it, because Astypalis was said to have hanged herself.(880) The
sacrifice may have been a substitute for hanging an image or a human
representative of Artemis. Again, in Rhodes the fair Helen was worshipped
under the title of Helen of the Tree, because the queen of the island had
caused her handmaids, disguised as Furies, to string her up to a
bough.(881) That the Asiatic Greeks sacrificed animals in this fashion is
proved by coins of Ilium, which represent an ox or cow hanging on a tree
and stabbed with a knife by a man, who sits among the branches or on the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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