The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 09 of 12)Frazer, James George
Religion
The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 09 of 12)
Frazer, James George
Magic; Mythology; Religion; Superstition
(M42) Such remedies are not confined to Europe. At Bilda in Algeria, there
is a sacred old olive-tree, in which pilgrims, especially women, knock
nails for the purpose of ridding themselves of their ailments and
troubles.(210) Again, the Majhwars, a Dravidian tribe in the hill country
of South Mirzapur, believe that all disease is due to ghosts, but that
ghosts, when they become troublesome, can be shut up in a certain tree,
which grows on a little islet in a very deep pool of the Sukandar, a
tributary of the Kanhar river. Accordingly, when the country is infested
by ghosts, in other words when disease is raging, a skilful wizard seeks
for a piece of deer-horn in the jungle. When he has found it, he hammers
it with a stone into the tree and thus shuts up the ghost. The tree is
covered with hundreds of such pieces of horn.(211) Again, when a new
settlement is being made in some parts of the North-Western Provinces of
India, it is deemed necessary to apprehend and lay by the heels the local
deities, who might otherwise do a deal of mischief to the intruders on
their domain. A sorcerer is called in to do the business. For days he
marches about the place mustering the gods to the tuck of drum. When they
are all assembled, two men known as the Earthman and the Leafman, who
represent the gods of the earth and of the trees respectively, become full
of the spirit, being taken possession of bodily by the local deities. In
this exalted state they shout and caper about in a fine frenzy, and their
seemingly disjointed ejaculations, which are really the divine voice
speaking through them, are interpreted by the sorcerer. When the critical
moment has come, the wizard rushes in between the two incarnations of
divinity, clutches at the spirits which are hovering about them in the
air, and pours grains of sesame through their hands into a perforated
piece of the wood of the sacred fig-tree. Then without a moment’s delay he
plasters up the hole with a mixture of clay and cow-dung, and carefully
buries the piece of wood on the spot which is to be the shrine of the
local deities. Needless to say that the gods themselves are bunged up in
the wood and are quite incapable of doing further mischief, provided
always that the usual offerings are made to them at the shrine where they
live in durance vile.(212) In this case the source of mischief is
imprisoned, not in a tree, but in a piece of one; but the principle is
clearly the same. Similarly in Corea an English lady observed at a
cross-road a small log with several holes like those of a mouse-trap, one
of which was plugged up doubly with bungs of wood. She was told that a
demon, whose ravages spread sickness in a family, had been inveigled by a
sorceress into that hole and securely bunged up. It was thought proper for
all passers-by to step over the incarcerated devil, whether to express
their scorn and abhorrence of him, or more probably as a means of keeping
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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