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
The sympathetic connexion supposed to exist between a man and the
weapon which has wounded him is probably founded on the notion that
the blood on the weapon continues to feel with the blood in his
body. For a like reason the Papuans of Tumleo, an island off New
Guinea, are careful to throw into the sea the bloody bandages with
which their wounds have been dressed, for they fear that if these
rags fell into the hands of an enemy he might injure them magically
thereby. Once when a man with a wound in his mouth, which bled
constantly, came to the missionaries to be treated, his faithful
wife took great pains to collect all the blood and cast it into the
sea. Strained and unnatural as this idea may seem to us, it is
perhaps less so than the belief that magic sympathy is maintained
between a person and his clothes, so that whatever is done to the
clothes will be felt by the man himself, even though he may be far
away at the time. In the Wotjobaluk tribe of Victoria a wizard would
sometimes get hold of a man's opossum rug and roast it slowly in the
fire, and as he did so the owner of the rug would fall sick. If the
wizard consented to undo the charm, he would give the rug back to
the sick man's friends, bidding them put it in water, "so as to wash
the fire out." When that happened, the sufferer would feel a
refreshing coolness and probably recover. In Tanna, one of the New
Hebrides, a man who had a grudge at another and desired his death
would try to get possession of a cloth which had touched the sweat
of his enemy's body. If he succeeded, he rubbed the cloth carefully
over with the leaves and twigs of a certain tree, rolled and bound
cloth, twigs, and leaves into a long sausage-shaped bundle, and
burned it slowly in the fire. As the bundle was consumed, the victim
fell ill, and when it was reduced to ashes, he died. In this last
form of enchantment, however, the magical sympathy may be supposed
to exist not so much between the man and the cloth as between the
man and the sweat which issued from his body. But in other cases of
the same sort it seems that the garment by itself is enough to give
the sorcerer a hold upon his victim. The witch in Theocritus, while
she melted an image or lump of wax in order that her faithless lover
might melt with love of her, did not forget to throw into the fire a
shred of his cloak which he had dropped in her house. In Prussia
they say that if you cannot catch a thief, the next best thing you
can do is to get hold of a garment which he may have shed in his
flight; for if you beat it soundly, the thief will fall sick. This
belief is firmly rooted in the popular mind. Some eighty or ninety
years ago, in the neighbourhood of Berend, a man was detected trying
to steal honey, and fled, leaving his coat behind him. When he heard
that the enraged owner of the honey was mauling his lost coat, he
was so alarmed that he took to his bed and died.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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