The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and ReligionFrazer, James George
Religion
The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion
Frazer, James George
Magic; Mythology; Religion; Superstition
Nowhere, perhaps, does the equivalence of the shadow to the life or
soul come out more clearly than in some customs practised to this
day in South-eastern Europe. In modern Greece, when the foundation
of a new building is being laid, it is the custom to kill a cock, a
ram, or a lamb, and to let its blood flow on the foundation-stone,
under which the animal is afterwards buried. The object of the
sacrifice is to give strength and stability to the building. But
sometimes, instead of killing an animal, the builder entices a man
to the foundation-stone, secretly measures his body, or a part of
it, or his shadow, and buries the measure under the
foundation-stone; or he lays the foundation-stone upon the man's
shadow. It is believed that the man will die within the year. The
Roumanians of Transylvania think that he whose shadow is thus
immured will die within forty days; so persons passing by a building
which is in course of erection may hear a warning cry, "Beware lest
they take thy shadow!" Not long ago there were still shadow-traders
whose business it was to provide architects with the shadows
necessary for securing their walls. In these cases the measure of
the shadow is looked on as equivalent to the shadow itself, and to
bury it is to bury the life or soul of the man, who, deprived of it,
must die. Thus the custom is a substitute for the old practice of
immuring a living person in the walls, or crushing him under the
foundation-stone of a new building, in order to give strength and
durability to the structure, or more definitely in order that the
angry ghost may haunt the place and guard it against the intrusion
of enemies.
As some peoples believe a man's soul to be in his shadow, so other
(or the same) peoples believe it to be in his reflection in water or
a mirror. Thus "the Andamanese do not regard their shadows but their
reflections (in any mirror) as their souls." When the Motumotu of
New Guinea first saw their likenesses in a looking-glass, they
thought that their reflections were their souls. In New Caledonia
the old men are of opinion that a person's reflection in water or a
mirror is his soul; but the younger men, taught by the Catholic
priests, maintain that it is a reflection and nothing more, just
like the reflection of palm-trees in the water. The reflection-soul,
being external to the man, is exposed to much the same dangers as
the shadow-soul. The Zulus will not look into a dark pool because
they think there is a beast in it which will take away their
reflections, so that they die. The Basutos say that crocodiles have
the power of thus killing a man by dragging his reflection under
water. When one of them dies suddenly and from no apparent cause,
his relatives will allege that a crocodile must have taken his
shadow some time when he crossed a stream. In Saddle Island,
Melanesia, there is a pool "into which if any one looks he dies; the
malignant spirit takes hold upon his life by means of his reflection
on the water."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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