The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 10 of 12)Frazer, James George
Religion
The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 10 of 12)
Frazer, James George
Magic; Mythology; Religion; Superstition
(M104) Scenes of the same sort, though on a less ambitious scale, are
witnessed among the Catholics of South America on the same day. In Brazil
the mourning for the death of Christ ceases at noon on Easter Saturday and
gives place to an extravagant burst of joy at his resurrection. Shots are
fired everywhere, and effigies of Judas are hung on trees or dragged about
the streets, to be finally burned or otherwise destroyed.(317) In the
Indian villages scattered among the wild valleys of the Peruvian Andes
figures of the traitor, made of pasteboard and stuffed with squibs and
crackers, are hanged on gibbets before the door of the church on Easter
Saturday. Fire is set to them, and while they crackle and explode, the
Indians dance and shout for joy at the destruction of their hated
enemy.(318) Similarly at Rio Hacha, in Colombia, Judas is represented
during Holy Week by life-sized effigies, and the people fire at them as if
they were discharging a sacred duty.(319)
(M105) But usages of this sort are not confined to the Latin Church; they
are common to the Greek Church also. Every year on the Saturday before
Easter Sunday a new fire is miraculously kindled at the Holy Sepulchre in
Jerusalem. It descends from heaven and ignites the candles which the
patriarch holds in his hands, while with closed eyes he wrestles in prayer
all alone in the chapel of the Angel. The worshippers meanwhile wait
anxiously in the body of the church, and great are their transports of joy
when at one of the windows of the chapel, which had been all dark a minute
before, there suddenly appears the hand of an angel, or of the patriarch,
holding a lighted taper. This is the sacred new fire; it is passed out to
the expectant believers, and the desperate struggle which ensues among
them to get a share of its blessed influence is only terminated by the
intervention of the Turkish soldiery, who restore peace and order by
hustling the whole multitude impartially out of the church. In days gone
by many lives were often lost in these holy scrimmages. For example, in
the year 1834, the famous Ibrahim Pasha witnessed the frantic scene from
one of the galleries, and, being moved with compassion at the sight,
descended with a few guards into the arena in the chimerical hope of
restoring peace and order among the contending Christians. He contrived to
force his way into the midst of the dense crowd, but there the heat and
pressure were so great that he fainted away; a body of soldiers, seeing
his danger, charged straight into the throng and carried him out of it in
their arms, trampling under foot the dying and dead in their passage.
Nearly two hundred people were killed that day in the church. The
fortunate survivors on these occasions who succeeded in obtaining a
portion of the coveted fire applied it freely to their faces, their
beards, and their garments. The theory was that the fire, being
miraculous, could only bless and not burn them; but the practical results
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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