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
(M6) Sometimes in case of sickness the malady is transferred to an effigy
as a preliminary to passing it on to a human being. Thus among the Baganda
the medicine-man would sometimes make a model of his patient in clay; then
a relative of the sick man would rub the image over the sufferer’s body
and either bury it in the road or hide it in the grass by the wayside. The
first person who stepped over the image or passed by it would catch the
disease. Sometimes the effigy was made out of a plantain-flower tied up so
as to look like a person; it was used in the same way as the clay figure.
But the use of images for this maleficent purpose was a capital crime; any
person caught in the act of burying one of them in the public road would
surely have been put to death.(18) Among the Sena-speaking people to the
north of the Zambesi, when any one is ill, the doctor makes a little pig
of straw to which he transfers the sickness. The little pig is then set on
the ground where two paths meet, and any passer-by who chances to kick it
over is sure to absorb the illness and to draw it away from the
patient.(19) Among the Korkus, a forest tribe of the Central Provinces in
India, when a person wishes to transfer his sickness to another, he
contrives to obtain the loin-cloth of his intended victim and paints two
figures on it in lamp black, one upright and the other upside down. As
soon as the owner of the loin-cloth puts it on, he falls a victim to the
ailment which afflicted the artist who drew the figures.(20) Every nine
years a Mongol celebrates a memorial festival of his birth for the purpose
of ensuring the continuance of his life and welfare. At this solemn
ceremony two lambskins, one black and the other white, are spread on the
floor of the hut, which is further covered with a felt carpet, and on the
carpet are made nine little ridges of earth brought from nine mountains,
the bottom of a river, and a sepulchral mound. The owner of the hut, for
whose benefit the rite is performed, next seats himself on the black
lambskin, and opposite him is set an effigy of himself made of dough by a
lama. The priest then throws a black stone at the effigy, praying that the
black arrow of death may pierce it, after which he throws a white stone at
the master of the hut, praying that the bright beam of life may endow him
with wondrous strength. After that the Mongol gets up, steps over one of
the ridges of earth and says, “I have overcome a mishap, I have escaped a
death.” This ceremony he performs nine times, stepping over all the
ridges, one after the other. Then he sits down on the white lambskin, and
the lama takes the dough effigy, swings it thrice round the man whom it
represents, spits on it thrice, and hands it to attendants who carry it
away into the steppe. A little holy water sprinkled over the Mongol now
completes his protection against perils and dangers.(21) This last is a
case of the beneficent transference of evil; for in it no attempt seems to
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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