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
be made to shift the burden of misfortune to anybody else.
§ 2. The Transference to Stones and Sticks.
(M7) In the western district of the island of Timor, when men or women are
making long and tiring journeys, they fan themselves with leafy branches,
which they afterwards throw away on particular spots where their
forefathers did the same before them. The fatigue which they felt is thus
supposed to have passed into the leaves and to be left behind. Others use
stones instead of leaves.(22) Similarly in the Babar Archipelago tired
people will strike themselves with stones, believing that they thus
transfer to the stones the weariness which they felt in their own bodies.
They then throw away the stones in places which are specially set apart
for the purpose.(23) A like belief and practice in many distant parts of
the world have given rise to those cairns or heaps of sticks and leaves
which travellers often observe beside the path, and to which every passing
native adds his contribution in the shape of a stone, or stick, or leaf.
Thus in the Solomon and Banks’ Islands the natives are wont to throw
sticks, stones, or leaves upon a heap at a place of steep descent, or
where a difficult path begins, saying, “There goes my fatigue.” The act is
not a religious rite, for the thing thrown on the heap is not an offering
to spiritual powers, and the words which accompany the act are not a
prayer. It is nothing but a magical ceremony for getting rid of fatigue,
which the simple savage fancies he can embody in a stick, leaf, or stone,
and so cast it from him.(24)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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