E-Books & Articles

Of Interest to Theosophists

 

Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales

Theosophy House

206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK. CF24 -1DL

 

 

The Golden Bough

By

Sir James George Frazer

Published 1922

 

 

 

Return to Homepage

 

 

Glossaries Index

 

 

Blavatsky Writings Index

 

 

E-Books & Articles Index

 

 

 

 

PREFACE

THE primary aim of this book is to explain the remarkable rule which regulated the succes-sion

to the priesthood of Diana at Aricia. When I first set myself to solve the problem more

hthan thirty years ago, I thought that the solution could be propounded very briefly, but I soon

found that to render it probable or even intelligible it was necessary to discuss certain more

general questions, some of which had hardly been broached before. In successive editions

the discussion of these and kindred topics has occupied more and more space, the enquiry

has branched out in more and more directions, until the two volumes of the original work

have expanded into twelve. Meantime a wish has often been expressed that the book should

be issued in a more compendious form. This abridgment is an attempt to meet the wish and

thereby to bring the work within the range of a wider circle of readers. While the bulk of the

book has been greatly reduced, I have endeavoured to retain its leading principles, together

with an amount of evidence sufficient to illustrate them clearly. The language of the original

has also for the most part been preserved, though here and there the exposition has been

somewhat condesed. In order to keep as much of the text as possible I have sacrificed all the

notes, and with them all exact reference to my authorities. Readers who desire to ascertain

the source of any particular statement must therefore consult the larger work, which is fully

documented and provided with a complete bibliography.

In the abridgment I have neither added new matter nor altered the views expressed in the last

edition; for the evidence which has come to my knowledge in the meantime has on the whole

served either to confirm my former conclusions or to furnish fresh illustrations of old princi-ples.

Thus, for example, on the crucial question of the practice of putting kings to death either

at the end of a fixed period or whenever their health and strength began to fail, the body of

evidence which points to the wide prevalence of such a custom has been considerably aug-mented

in the interval. A striking instance of a limited monarchy of this sort is furnished by the

powerful mediaeval kingdom of the Khazars in Southern Russia, where the kings were liable

to be put to death either on the expiry of a set of terms or whenever some public calamity,

such as drought, dearth, or defeat in war, seemed to indicate a failure of their natural powers.

The evidence for the systematic killing of Khazar kings, drawn from the accounts of old Arab

travellers, has been collected by me elsewhere. Africa, again, has supplied several fresh

examples of a similar practice of regicide. Among them the most notable perhaps is the cus-tom

formerly observed in Bunyoro of choosing every year from a particular clan a mock king,

who was supposed to incarnate the late king, cohabited with his widows at his temple-tomb,

and after reigning for a week was strangled. The custom presents a close parallel to the

ancient Babylonian festival of the Sacaea, at which a mock king was dressed in the royal

robes, allowed to enjoy the real king’s concubines, and after reigning for five days was

stripped, scourged, and put to death. The festival in its turn has lately received fresh light

from certain Assyrian inscriptions, which seem to confirm the interpretation which I formerly

gave of the festival as a New Year celebration and the parent of the Jewish festival of Purim.

Other recently discovered parallels to the priestly kings of Aricia are African priests and kings

who used to be put to death at the end of seven or of two years, after being liable in the inter-

-------
Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page

1?val to be attacked and killed by a strong man, who thereupon succeeded to the priesthood or

the kingdom.

With these and other instances of like customs before us it is no longer possible to regard the

rule of succession to the priesthood of Diana at Aricia as exceptional; it clearly exemplifies a

widespread institution, of which the most numerous and the most similar cases have thus far

been found in Africa. How far the facts point to an early influence of Africa on Italy, or even to

the existence of an African population in Southern Europe, I do not presume to say. The pre-historic

relations between the two continents are still obscure and still under investigation.

Whether the explanation which I have offered of the institution is correct or not must be left to

the future to determine. I shall always be ready to abandon it if a better can be suggested.

Meantime in committing the book in its new form to the judgment of the public I desire to

guard against a misapprehension of its scope which appears to be still rife, though I have

sought to correct it before now. If in the present work I have dwelt at some length on the wor-ship

of trees, it is not, I trust, because I exaggerate its importance in the history of religion,

still less because I would deduce from it a whole system of mythology; it is simply because I

could not ignore the subject in attempting to explain the significance of a priest who bore the

title of King of the Wood, and one of whose titles to office was the plucking of a bough—the

Golden Bough—from a tree in the sacred grove. But I am so far from regarding the reverence

for trees as of supreme importance for the evolution of religion that I consider it to have been

altogether subordinate to other factors, and in particular to the fear of the human dead, which,

on the whole, I believe to have been probably the most powerful force in the making of primi-tive

religion. I hope that after this explicit disclaimer I shall no longer be taxed with embracing

a system of mythology which I look upon not merely as false but as preposterous and absurd.

But I am too familiar with the hydra of error that by lopping off one of the monster’s heads I

can prevent another, or even the same, from sprouting again. I can only trust to the candour

and intelligence of my readers to rectify this serious misconception of my views by a compari-son

with my own express declaration.

J.G. FRAZER

I Brick Court, Temple

London, June 1922.



-------
Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 2?CONTENTS

Chapter

I. THE KING OF THE WOOD

1. Diana and Virbius

2. Artemis and Hippolytus

3. Recapitulation

II. PRIESTLY KINGS

III. SYMPATHETIC MAGIC

1. The Principles of Magic

2. Homoeopathic or Imitative Magic

3. Contagious Magic

4. The Magician’s Progress

IV. MAGIC AND RELIGION

V. THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER

1. The Public Magician

2. The Magical Control of Rain

3. The Magical Control of the Sun

4. The Magical Control of the Wind

VI. MAGICIANS AS KINGS

VII. INCARNATE HUMAN GODS

VIII. DEPARTMENTAL KINGS OF NATURE

IX. THE WORSHIP OF TREES

1. Tree-spirits

2. Beneficent Powers of Tree-spirits

X. RELICS OF TREE WORSHIP IN MODERN EUROPE

XI. THE INFLUENCE OF THE SEXES ON VEGETATION

XII. THE SACRED MARRIAGE

1. Diana as a Goddess of Fertility

2. The Marriage of the Gods

XIII. THE KINGS OF ROME AND ALBA

1. Numa and Egeria

2. The King as Jupiter

XIV. THE SUCCESSION TO THE KINGDOM IN ANCIENT LATIUM

XV. THE WORSHIP OF THE OAK

XVI. DIANUS AND DIANA

XVII. THE BURDEN OF ROYALTY

1. Royal and Priestly Taboos

2. Divorce of the Spiritual from the Temporal Power

XVIII. THE PERILS OF THE SOUL

1. The Soul as a Mannikin

2. Absence and Recall of the Soul

3. The Soul as a Shadow and a Reflection

XIX. TABOOED ACTS

1. Taboos on Intercourse with Strangers

2. Taboos on Eating and Drinking

3. Taboos on showing the Face

4. Taboos on quitting the House

5. Taboos on Leaving Food over



-------
Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 3?XX. TABOOED PERSONS

1. Chiefs and Kings tabooed

2. Mourners tabooed

3. Women tabooed at Menstruation and Childbirth

4. Warriors tabooed

5. Manslayers tabooed

6. Hunters and Fishers tabooed

XXI. TABOOED THINGS

1. The Meaning of Taboo

2. Iron tabooed

3. Sharp Weapons tabooed

4. Blood tabooed

5. The Head tabooed

6. Hair tabooed

7. Ceremonies at Hair-cutting

8. Disposal of Cut Hair and Nails

9. Spittle tabooed

10. Foods tabooed

11. Knots and Rings tabooed

XXII. TABOOED WORDS

1. Personal Names tabooed

2. Names of Relations tabooed

3. Names of the Dead tabooed

4. Names of Kings and other Sacred Persons tabooed

5. Names of Gods tabooed

XXIII. OUR DEBT TO THE SAVAGE

XXIV. THE KILLING OF THE DIVINE KING

1. The Mortality of the Gods

2. Kings killed when their Strength fails

3. Kings killed at the End of a Fixed Term

XXV. TEMPORARY KINGS

XXVI. SACRIFICE OF THE KING’S SON

XXVII. SUCCESSION TO THE SOUL

XXVIII. THE KILLING OF THE TREE-SPIRIT

1. The Whitsuntide Mummers

2. Burying the Carnival

3. Carrying out Death

4. Bringing in Summer

5. Battle of Summer and Winter

6. Death and Resurrection of Kostrubonko

7. Death and Revival of Vegetation

8. Analogous Rites in India

9. The Magic Spring

XXIX. THE MYTH OF ADONIS

XXX. ADONIS IN SYRIA

XXXI. ADONIS IN CYPRUS

XXXII. THE RITUAL OF ADONIS

XXXIII. THE GARDENS OF ADONIS

XXXIV. THE MYTH AND RITUAL OF ATTIS

XXXVI. ATTIS AS A GOD OF VEGETATION



-------
Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 4?XXXVI. HUMAN REPRESENTATIVES OF ATTIS

XXXVII. ORIENTAL RELIGIONS IN THE WEST

XXXVIII. THE MYTH OF OSIRIS

XXXIX. THE RITUAL OF OSIRIS

1. The Popular Rites

2. The Official Rites

XL. THE NATURE OF OSIRIS

1. Osiris a Corn-god

2. Osiris a Tree-spirit

3. Osiris a God of Fertility

4. Osiris a God of the Dead

XLI. ISIS

XLII. OSIRIS AND THE SUN

XLIII. DIONYSUS

XLIV. DEMETER AND PERSEPHONE

XLV. THE CORN-MOTHER AND THE CORN-MAIDEN IN NORTHERN EUROPE

XLVI. THE CORN-MOTHER IN MANY LANDS

1. The Corn-mother in America

2. The Rice-mother in the East Indies

3. The Spirit of the Corn embodied in Human Beings

4. The Double Personification of the Corn as Mother and Daughter

XLVII. LITYERSES

1. Songs of the Corn Reapers

2. Killing the Corn-spirit

3. Human Sacrifices for the Crops

4. The Corn-spirit slain in his Human Representatives

XLVIII. THE CORN-SPIRIT AS AN ANIMAL

1. Animal Embodiments of the Corn-spirit

2. The Corn-spirit as a Wolf or a Dog

3. The Corn-spirit as a Cock

4. The Corn-spirit as a Hare

5. The Corn-spirit as a Cat

6. The Corn-spirit as a Goat

7. The Corn-spirit as a Bull, Cow, or Ox

8. The Corn-spirit as a Horse or Mare

9. The Corn-spirit as a Pig (Boar or Sow)

10. On the Animal Embodiments of the Corn-spirit

XLIX. ANCIENT DEITIES OF VEGETATION AS ANIMALS

1. Dionysus, the Goat and the Bull

2. Demeter, the Pig and the Horse

3. Attis, Adonis, and the Pig

4. Osiris, the Pig and the Bull

5. Virbius and the Horse

L. EATING THE GOD

1. The Sacrament of First-Fruits

2. Eating the God among the Aztecs

3. Many Manii at Aricia

LI. HOMOEOPATHIC MAGIC OF A FLESH DIET

LII. KILLING THE DIVINE ANIMAL

1. Killing the Sacred Buzzard



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 5?2. Killing the Sacred Ram

3. Killing the Sacred Serpent

4. Killing the Sacred Turtles

5. Killing the Sacred Bear

LIII. THE PROPITIATION OF WILD ANIMALS BY HUNTERS

LIV. TYPES OF ANIMAL SACRAMENT

1. The Egyptian and the Aino Types of Sacrament

2. Processions with Sacred Animals

LV. THE TRANSFERENCE OF EVIL

1. The Transference to Inanimate Objects

2. The Transference to Animals

3. The Transference to Men

4. The Transference of Evil in Europe

LVI. THE PUBLIC EXPULSION OF EVILS

1. The Omnipresence of Demons

2. The Occasional Expulsion of Evils

3. The Periodic Expulsion of Evils

LVII. PUBLIC SCAPEGOATS

1. The Expulsion of Embodied Evils

2. The Occasional Expulsion of Evils in a Material Vehicle

3. The Periodic Expulsion of Evils in a Material Vehicle

4. On Scapegoats in General

LVIII. HUMAN SCAPEGOATS IN CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY

1. The Human Scapegoat in Ancient Rome

2. The Human Scapegoat in Ancient Greece

3. The Roman Saturnalia

LIX. KILLING THE GOD IN MEXICO

LX. BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH

1. Not to touch the Earth

2. Not to see the Sun

3. The Seclusion of Girls at Puberty

4. Reasons for the Seclusion of Girls at Puberty

LXI. THE MYTH OF BALDER

LXII. THE FIRE-FESTIVALS OF EUROPE

1. The Fire-festivals in general

2. The Lenten Fires

3. The Easter Fires.

4. The Beltane Fires.

5. The Midsummer Fires.

6. The Hallowe’en Fires.

7. The Midwinter Fires.

8. The Need-fire.

LXIII. THE INTERPRETATION OF THE FIRE-FESTIVALS

1. On the Fire-festivals in general

2. The Solar Theory of the Fire-festivals

3. The Purificatory Theory of the Fire-festivals

LXIV. THE BURNING OF HUMAN BEINGS IN THE FIRES

1. The Burning of Effigies in the Fires

2. The Burning of Men and Animals in the Fires

LXV. BALDER AND THE MISTLETOE



-------
Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 6?LXVI. THE EXTERNAL SOUL IN FOLK-TALES

LXVII. THE EXTERNAL SOUL IN FOLK-CUSTOM

1. The External Soul in Inanimate Things

2. The External Soul in Plants

3. The External Soul in Animals

4. The Ritual of Death and Resurrection

LXVIII. THE GOLDEN BOUGH

LXIX. FAREWELL TO NEMI



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 7?Chapter I

The King of the Wood

1. DIANA AND VIRBIUS

WHO does not know Turner’s picture of the Golden Bough? The scene, suffused with the

golden glow of imagination in which the divine mind of Turner steeped and transfigured even

the fairest natural landscape, is a dream-like vision of the little woodland lake of Nemi

”Diana’s Mirror,” as it was called by the ancients. No one who has seen that calm water,

lapped in a green hollow of the Alban hills, can ever forget it. The two characteristic Italian vil-lages

which slumber on its banks, and the equally Italian palace whose terraced gardens

descend steeply to the lake, hardly break the stillness and even the solitariness of the scene.

Diana herself might still linger by this lonely shore, still haunt these woodlands wild.

In antiquity this sylvan landscape was the scene of a strange and recurring tragedy. On the

northern shore of the lake, right under the precipitous cliffs on which the modern village of

Nemi is perched, stood the sacred grove and sanctuary of Diana Nemorensis, or Diana of the

Wood. The lake and the grove were sometimes known as the lake and grove of Aricia. But

the town of Aricia (the modern La Riccia) was situated about three miles off, at the foot of the

Alban Mount, and separated by a steep descent from the lake, which lies in a small crater-like

hollow on the mountain side. In this sacred grove there grew a certain tree round which at

any time of the day, and probably far into the night, a grim figure might be seen to prowl. In

his hand he carried a drawn sword, and he kept peering warily about him as if at every

instant he expected to be set upon by an enemy. He was a priest and a murderer; and the

man for whom he looked was sooner or later to murder him and hold the priesthood in his

stead. Such was the rule of the sanctuary. A candidate for the priesthood could only succeed

to office by slaying the priest, and having slain him, he retained office till he was himself slain

by a stronger or a craftier.

The post which he held by this precarious tenure carried with it the title of king; but surely no

crowned head ever lay uneasier, or was visited by more evil dreams, than his. For year in,

year out, in summer and winter, in fair weather and in foul, he had to keep his lonely watch,

and whenever he snatched a troubled slumber it was at the peril of his life. The least relax-ation

of his vigilance, the smallest abatement of his strength of limb or skill of fence, put him

in jeopardy; grey hairs might seal his death-warrant. To gentle and pious pilgrims at the shrine

the sight of him might well seem to darken the fair landscape, as when a cloud suddenly blots

the sun on a bright day. The dreamy blue of Italian skies, the dappled shade of summer

woods, and the sparkle of waves in the sun, can have accorded but ill with that stern and sin-ister

figure. Rather we picture to ourselves the scene as it may have been witnessed by a

belated wayfarer on one of those wild autumn nights when the dead leaves are falling thick,

and the winds seem to sing the dirge of the dying year. It is a sombre picture, set to melan-choly

music—the background of forest showing black and jagged against a lowering and

stormy sky, the sighing of the wind in the branches, the rustle of the withered leaves under

foot, the lapping of the cold water on the shore, and in the foreground, pacing to and fro, now

in twilight and now in gloom, a dark figure with a glitter of steel at the shoulder whenever the

pale moon, riding clear of the cloud-rack, peers down at him through the matted boughs.

The strange rule of this priesthood has no parallel in classical antiquity, and cannot be

explained from it. To find an explanation we must go farther afield. No one will probably deny

that such a custom savours of a barbarous age, and, surviving into imperial times, stands out



-------
Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 8?in striking isolation from the polished Italian society of the day, like a primaeval rock rising

from a smooth-shaven lawn. It is the very rudeness and barbarity of the custom which allow

us a hope of explaining it. For recent researches into the early history of man have revealed

the essential similarity with which, under many superficial differences, the human mind has

elaborated its first crude philosophy of life. Accordingly, if we can show that a barbarous cus-tom,

like that of the priesthood of Nemi, has existed elsewhere; if we can detect the motives

which led to its institution; if we can prove that these motives have operated widely, perhaps

universally, in human society, producing in varied circumstances a variety of institutions

specifically different but generically alike; if we can show, lastly, that these very motives, with

some of their derivative institutions, were actually at work in classical antiquity; then we may

fairly infer that at a remoter age the same motives gave birth to the priesthood of Nemi. Such

an inference, in default of direct evidence as to how the priesthood did actually arise, can

never amount to demonstration. But it will be more or less probable according to the degree

of completeness with which it fulfils the conditions I have indicated. The object of this book is,

by meeting these conditions, to offer a fairly probable explanation of the priesthood of Nemi.

I begin by setting forth the few facts and legends which have come down to us on the sub-ject.

According to one story the worship of Diana at Nemi was instituted by Orestes, who,

after killing Thoas, King of the Tauric Chersonese (the Crimea), fled with his sister to Italy,

bringing with him the image of the Tauric Diana hidden in a faggot of sticks. After his death

his bones were transported from Aricia to Rome and buried in front of the temple of Saturn,

on the Capitoline slope, beside the temple of Concord. The bloody ritual which legend

ascribed to the Tauric Diana is familiar to classical readers; it is said that every stranger who

landed on the shore was sacrificed on her altar. But transported to Italy, the rite assumed a

milder form. Within the sanctuary at Nemi grew a certain tree of which no branch might be

broken. Only a runaway slave was allowed to break off, if he could, one of its boughs.

Success in the attempt entitled him to fight the priest in single combat, and if he slew him he

reigned in his stead with the title of King of the Wood (Rex Nemorensis). According to the

public opinion of the ancients the fateful branch was that Golden Bough which, at the Sibyl’s

bidding, Aeneas plucked before he essayed the perilous journey to the world of the dead. The

flight of the slave represented, it was said, the flight of Orestes; his combat with the priest

was a reminiscence of the human sacrifices once offered to the Tauric Diana. This rule of

succession by the sword was observed down to imperial times; for amongst his other freaks

Caligula, thinking that the priest of Nemi had held office too long, hired a more stalwart ruffian

to slay him; and a Greek traveller, who visited Italy in the age of the Antonines, remarks that

down to his time the priesthood was still the prize of victory in a single combat.

Of the worship of Diana at Nemi some leading features can still be made out. From the votive

offerings which have been found on the site, it appears that she was conceived of especially

as a huntress, and further as blessing men and women with offspring, and granting expectant

mothers an easy delivery. Again, fire seems to have played a foremost part in her ritual. For

during her annual festival, held on the thirteenth of August, at the hottest time of the year, her

grove shone with a multitude of torches, whose ruddy glare was reflected by the lake; and

throughout the length and breadth of Italy the day was kept with holy rites at every domestic

hearth. Bronze statuettes found in her precinct represent the goddess herself holding a torch

in her raised right hand; and women whose prayers had been heard by her came crowned

with wreaths and bearing lighted torches to the sanctuary in fulfilment of their vows. Some

one unknown dedicated a perpetually burning lamp in a little shrine at Nemi for the safety of

the Emperor Claudius and his family. The terra-cotta lamps which have been discovered in

the grove may perhaps have served a like purpose for humbler persons. If so, the analogy of



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 9?the custom to the Catholic practice of dedicating holy candles in churches would be obvious.

Further, the title of Vesta borne by Diana at Nemi points clearly to the maintenance of a per-petual

holy fire in her sanctuary. A large circular basement at the north-east corner of the tem-ple,

raised on three steps and bearing traces of a mosaic pavement, probably supported a

round temple of Diana in her character of Vesta, like the round temple of Vesta in the Roman

Forum. Here the sacred fire would seem to have been tended by Vestal Virgins, for the head

of a Vestal in terra-cotta was found on the spot, and the worship of a perpetual fire, cared for

by holy maidens, appears to have been common in Latium from the earliest to the latest

times. Further, at the annual festival of the goddess, hunting dogs were crowned and wild

beasts were not molested; young people went through a purificatory ceremony in her honour;

wine was brought forth, and the feast consisted of a kid, cakes served piping hot on plates of

leaves, and apples still hanging in clusters on the boughs.

But Diana did not reign alone in her grove at Nemi. Two lesser divinities shared her forest

sanctuary. One was Egeria, the nymph of the clear water which, bubbling from the basaltic

rocks, used to fall in graceful cascades into the lake at the place called Le Mole, because

here were established the mills of the modern village of Nemi. The purling of the stream as it

ran over the pebbles is mentioned by Ovid, who tells us that he had often drunk of its water.

Women with child used to sacrifice to Egeria, because she was believed, like Diana, to be

able to grant them an easy delivery. Tradition ran that the nymph had been the wife or mis-tress

of the wise king Numa, that he had consorted with her in the secrecy of the sacred

grove, and that the laws which he gave the Romans had been inspired by communion with

her divinity. Plutarch compares the legend with other tales of the loves of goddesses for mor-tal

men, such as the love of Cybele and the Moon for the fair youths Attis and Endymion.

According to some, the trysting-place of the lovers was not in the woods of Nemi but in a

grove outside the dripping Porta Capena at Rome, where another sacred spring of Egeria

gushed from a dark cavern. Every day the Roman Vestals fetched water from this spring to

wash the temple of Vesta, carrying it in earthenware pitchers on their heads. In Juvenal’s time

the natural rock had been encased in marble, and the hallowed spot was profaned by gangs

of poor Jews, who were suffered to squat, like gypsies, in the grove. We may suppose that

the spring which fell into the lake of Nemi was the true original Egeria, and that when the first

settlers moved down from the Alban hills to the banks of the Tiber they brought the nymph

with them and found a new home for her in a grove outside the gates. The remains of baths

which have been discovered within the sacred precinct, together with many terra-cotta mod-els

of various parts of the human body, suggest that the waters of Egeria were used to heal

the sick, who may have signified their hopes or testified their gratitude by dedicating likeness-es

of the diseased members to the goddess, in accordance with a custom which is still

observed in many parts of Europe. To this day it would seem that the spring retains medicinal

virtues.

The other of the minor deities at Nemi was Virbius. Legend had it that Virbius was the young

Greek hero Hippolytus, chaste and fair, who learned the art of venery from the centaur

Chiron, and spent all his days in the greenwood chasing wild beasts with the virgin huntress

Artemis (the Greek counterpart of Diana) for his only comrade. Proud of her divine society, he

spurned the love of women, and this proved his bane. For Aphrodite, stung by his scorn,

inspired his stepmother Phaedra with love of him; and when he disdained her wicked

advances she falsely accused him to his father Theseus. The slander was believed, and

Theseus prayed to his sire Poseidon to avenge the imagined wrong. So while Hippolytus

drove in a chariot by the shore of the Saronic Gulf, the sea-god sent a fierce bull forth from

the waves. The terrified horses bolted, threw Hippolytus from the chariot, and dragged him at



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 10?their hoofs to death. But Diana, for the love she bore Hippolytus, persuaded the leech

Aesculapius to bring her fair young hunter back to life by his simples. Jupiter, indignant that a

mortal man should return from the gates of death, thrust down the meddling leech himself to

Hades. But Diana hid her favourite from the angry god in a thick cloud, disguised his features

by adding years to his life, and then bore him far away to the dells of Nemi, where she

entrusted him to the nymph Egeria, to live there, unknown and solitary, under the name of

Virbius, in the depth of the Italian forest. There he reigned a king, and there he dedicated a

precinct to Diana. He had a comely son, Virbius, who, undaunted by his father’s fate, drove a

team of fiery steeds to join the Latins in the war against Aeneas and the Trojans. Virbius was

worshipped as a god not only at Nemi but elsewhere; for in Campania we hear of a special

priest devoted to his service. Horses were excluded from the Arician grove and sanctuary

because horses had killed Hippolytus. It was unlawful to touch his image. Some thought that

he was the sun. “But the truth is,” says Servius, “that he is a deity associated with Diana, as

Attis is associated with the Mother of the Gods, and Erichthonius with Minerva, and Adonis

with Venus.” What the nature of that association was we shall enquire presently. Here it is

worth observing that in his long and chequered career this mythical personage has displayed

a remarkable tenacity of life. For we can hardly doubt that the Saint Hippolytus of the Roman

calendar, who was dragged by horses to death on the thirteenth of August, Diana’s own day,

is no other than the Greek hero of the same name, who, after dying twice over as a heathen

sinner, has been happily resuscitated as a Christian saint.

It needs no elaborate demonstration to convince us that the stories told to account for Diana’s

worship at Nemi are unhistorical. Clearly they belong to that large class of myths which are

made up to explain the origin of a religious ritual and have no other foundation than the

resemblance, real or imaginary, which may be traced between it and some foreign ritual. The

incongruity of these Nemi myths is indeed transparent, since the foundation of the worship is

traced now to Orestes and now to Hippolytus, according as this or that feature of the ritual

has to be accounted for. The real value of such tales is that they serve to illustrate the nature

of the worship by providing a standard with which to compare it; and further, that they bear

witness indirectly to its venerable age by showing that the true origin was lost in the mists of

a fabulous antiquity. In the latter respect these Nemi legends are probably more to be trusted

than the apparently historical tradition, vouched for by Cato the Elder, that the sacred grove

was dedicated to Diana by a certain Egerius Baebius or Laevius of Tusculum, a Latin dictator,

on behalf of the peoples of Tusculum, Aricia, Lanuvium, Laurentum, Cora, Tibur, Pometia, and

Ardea. This tradition indeed speaks for the great age of the sanctuary, since it seems to date

its foundation sometime before 495 B.C., the year in which Pometia was sacked by the

Romans and disappears from history. But we cannot suppose that so barbarous a rule as that

of the Arician priesthood was deliberately instituted by a league of civilised communities, such

as the Latin cities undoubtedly were. It must have been handed down from a time beyond the

memory of man, when Italy was still in a far ruder state than any known to us in the historical

period. The credit of the tradition is rather shaken than confirmed by another story which

ascribes the foundation of the sanctuary to a certain Manius Egerius, who gave rise to the

saying, “There are many Manii at Aricia.” This proverb some explained by alleging that

Manius Egerius was the ancestor of a long and distinguished line, whereas others thought it

meant that there were many ugly and deformed people at Aricia, and they derived the name

Manius from Mania, a bogey or bugbear to frighten children. A Roman satirist uses the name

Manius as typical of the beggars who lay in wait for pilgrims on the Arician slopes. These dif-ferences

of opinion, together with the discrepancy between Manius Egerius of Aricia and

Egerius Laevius of Tusculum, as well as the resemblance of both names to the mythical

Egeria, excite our suspicion. Yet the tradition recorded by Cato seems too circumstantial, and



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 11?its sponsor too respectable, to allow us to dismiss it as an idle fiction. Rather we may sup-pose

that it refers to some ancient restoration or reconstruction of the sanctuary, which was

actually carried out by the confederate states. At any rate it testifies to a belief that the grove

had been from early times a common place of worship for many of the oldest cities of the

country, if not for the whole Latin confederacy.

2. ARTEMIS AND HIPPOLYTUS

I have said that the Arician legends of Orestes and Hippolytus, though worthless as history,

have a certain value in so far as they may help us to understand the worship at Nemi better

by comparing it with the ritual and myths of other sanctuaries. We must ask ourselves, Why

did the author of these legends pitch upon Orestes and Hippolytus in order to explain Virbius

and the King of the Wood? In regard to Orestes, the answer is obvious. He and the image of

the Tauric Diana, which could only be appeased with human blood, were dragged in to render

intelligible the murderous rule of succession to the Arician priesthood. In regard to Hippolytus

the case is not so plain. The manner of his death suggests readily enough a reason for the

exclusion of horses from the grove; but this by itself seems hardly enough to account for the

identification. We must try to probe deeper by examining the worship as well as the legend or

myth of Hippolytus.

He had a famous sanctuary at his ancestral home of Troezen, situated on that beautiful,

almost landlocked bay, where groves of oranges and lemons, with tall cypresses soaring like

dark spires above the garden of Hesperides, now clothe the strip of fertile shore at the foot of

the rugged mountains. Across the blue water of the tranquil bay, which it shelters from the

open sea, rises Poseidon’s sacred island, its peaks veiled in the sombre green of the pines.

On this fair coast Hippolytus was worshipped. Within his sanctuary stood a temple with an

ancient image. His service was performed by a priest who held office for life; every year a

sacrificial festival was held in his honour; and his untimely fate was yearly mourned, with

weeping and doleful chants, by unwedded maids. Youths and maidens dedicated locks of

their hair in his temple before marriage. His grave existed at Troezen, though the people

would not show it. It has been suggested, with great plausibility, that in the handsome

Hippolytus, beloved of Artemis, cut off in his youthful prime, and yearly mourned by damsels,

we have one of those mortal lovers of a goddess who appear so often in ancient religion, and

of whom Adonis is the most familiar type. The rivalry of Artemis and Phaedra for the affection

of Hippolytus reproduces, it is said, under different names, the rivalry of Aphrodite and

Proserpine for the love of Adonis, for Phaedra is merely a double of Aphrodite. The theory

probably does no injustice either to Hippolytus or to Artemis. For Artemis was originally a

great goddess of fertility, and, on the principles of early religion, she who fertilises nature

must herself be fertile, and to be that she must necessarily have a male consort. On this view,

Hippolytus was the consort of Artemis at Troezen, and the shorn tresses offered to him by the

Troezenian youths and maidens before marriage were designed to strengthen his union with

the goddess, and so to promote the fruitfulness of the earth, of cattle, and of mankind. It is

some confirmation of this view that within the precinct of Hippolytus at Troezen there were

worshipped two female powers named Damia and Auxesia, whose connexion with the fertility

of the ground is unquestionable. When Epidaurus suffered from a dearth, the people, in obe-dience

to an oracle, carved images of Damia and Auxesia out of sacred olive wood, and no

sooner had they done so and set them up than the earth bore fruit again. Moreover, at

Troezen itself, and apparently within the precinct of Hippolytus, a curious festival of stone-throwing

was held in honour of these maidens, as the Troezenians called them; and it is easy

to show that similar customs have been practised in many lands for the express purpose of



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 12?ensuring good crops. In the story of the tragic death of the youthful Hippolytus we may dis-cern

an analogy with similar tales of other fair but mortal youths who paid with their lives for

the brief rapture of the love of an immortal goddess. These hapless lovers were probably not

always mere myths, and the legends which traced their spilt blood in the purple bloom of the

violet, the scarlet stain of the anemone, or the crimson flush of the rose were no idle poetic

emblems of youth and beauty fleeting as the summer flowers. Such fables contain a deeper

philosophy of the relation of the life of man to the life of nature—a sad philosophy which gave

birth to a tragic practice. What that philosophy and that practice were, we shall learn later on.

3. RECAPITULATION

We can now perhaps understand why the ancients identified Hippolytus, the consort of

Artemis, with Virbius, who, according to Servius, stood to Diana as Adonis to Venus, or Attis

to the Mother of the Gods. For Diana, like Artemis, was a goddess of fertility in general, and

of childbirth in particular. As such she, like her Greek counterpart, needed a male partner.

That partner, if Servius is right, was Virbius. In his character of the founder of the sacred

grove and first king of Nemi, Virbius is clearly the mythical predecessor or archetype of the

line of priests who served Diana under the title of Kings of the Wood, and who came, like him,

one after the other, to a violent end. It is natural, therefore, to conjecture that they stood to

the goddess of the grove in the same relation in which Virbius stood to her; in short, that the

mortal King of the Wood had for his queen the woodland Diana herself. If the sacred tree

which he guarded with his life was supposed, as seems probable, to be her special embodi-ment,

her priest may not only have worshipped it as his goddess but embraced it as his wife.

There is at least nothing absurd in the supposition, since even in the time of Pliny a noble

Roman used thus to treat a beautiful beech-tree in another sacred grove of Diana on the

Alban hills. He embraced it, he kissed it, he lay under its shadow, he poured wine on its trunk.

Apparently he took the tree for the goddess. The custom of physically marrying men and

women to trees is still practised in India and other parts of the East. Why should it not have

obtained in ancient Latium?

Reviewing the evidence as a whole, we may conclude that the worship of Diana in her sacred

grove at Nemi was of great importance and immemorial antiquity; that she was revered as the

goddess of woodlands and of wild creatures, probably also of domestic cattle and of the fruits

of the earth; that she was believed to bless men and women with offspring and to aid mothers

in childbed; that her holy fire, tended by chaste virgins, burned perpetually in a round temple

within the precinct; that associated with her was a water-nymph Egeria who discharged one

of Diana’s own functions by succouring women in travail, and who was popularly supposed to

have mated with an old Roman king in the sacred grove; further, that Diana of the Wood her-self

had a male companion Virbius by name, who was to her what Adonis was to Venus, or

Attis to Cybele; and, lastly, that this mythical Virbius was represented in historical times by a

line of priests known as Kings of the Wood, who regularly perished by the swords of their

successors, and whose lives were in a manner bound up with a certain tree in the grove,

because so long as that tree was uninjured they were safe from attack.

Clearly these conclusions do not of themselves suffice to explain the peculiar rule of succes-sion

to the priesthood. But perhaps the survey of a wider field may lead us to think that they

contain in germ the solution of the problem. To that wider survey we must now address our-selves.

It will be long and laborious, but may possess something of the interest and charm of

a voyage of discovery, in which we shall visit many strange foreign lands, with strange foreign



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 13?peoples, and still stranger customs. The wind is in the shrouds: we shake out our sails to it,

and leave the coast of Italy behind us for a time.

Chapter II

Priestly Kings

THE questions which we have set ourselves to answer are mainly two: first, why had Diana’s

priest at Nemi, the King of the Wood, to slay his predecessor? second, why before doing so

had he to pluck the branch of a certain tree which the public opinion of the ancients identified

with Virgil’s Golden Bough?

The first point on which we fasten is the priest’s title. Why was he called the King of the

Wood? Why was his office spoken of as a kingdom?

The union of a royal title with priestly duties was common in ancient Italy and Greece. At

Rome and in other cities of Latium there was a priest called the Sacrificial King or King of the

Sacred Rites, and his wife bore the title of Queen of the Sacred Rites. In republican Athens

the second annual magistrate of the state was called the King, and his wife the Queen; the

functions of both were religious. Many other Greek democracies had titular kings, whose

duties, so far as they are known, seem to have been priestly, and to have centered round the

Common Hearth of the state. Some Greek states had several of these titular kings, who held

office simultaneously. At Rome the tradition was that the Sacrificial King had been appointed

after the abolition of the monarchy in order to offer the sacrifices which before had been

offered by the kings. A similar view as to the origin of the priestly kings appears to have pre-vailed

in Greece. In itself the opinion is not improbable, and it is borne out by the example of

Sparta, almost the only purely Greek state which retained the kingly form of government in

historical times. For in Sparta all state sacrifices were offered by the kings as descendants of

the god. One of the two Spartan kings held the priesthood of Zeus Lacedaemon, the other

the priesthood of Heavenly Zeus.

This combination of priestly functions with royal authority is familiar to every one. Asia Minor,

for example, was the seat of various great religious capitals peopled by thousands of sacred

slaves, and ruled by pontiffs who wielded at once temporal and spiritual authority, like the

popes of mediaeval Rome. Such priest-ridden cities were Zela and Pessinus. Teutonic kings,

again, in the old heathen days seem to have stood in the position, and to have exercised the

powers, of high priests. The Emperors of China offered public sacrifices, the details of which

were regulated by the ritual books. The King of Madagascar was high-priest of the realm. At

the great festival of the new year, when a bullock was sacrificed for the good of the kingdom,

the king stood over the sacrifice to offer prayer and thanksgiving, while his attendants slaugh-tered

the animal. In the monarchical states which still maintain their independence among the

Gallas of Eastern Africa, the king sacrifices on the mountain tops and regulates the immola-tion

of human victims; and the dim light of tradition reveals a similar union of temporal and

spiritual power, of royal and priestly duties, in the kings of that delightful region of Central

America whose ancient capital, now buried under the rank growth of the tropical forest, is

marked by the stately and mysterious ruins of Palenque.

When we have said that the ancient kings were commonly priests also, we are far from hav-ing

exhausted the religious aspect of their office. In those days the divinity that hedges a king

was no empty form of speech, but the expression of a sober belief. Kings were revered, in



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 14?many cases not merely as priests, that is, as intercessors between man and god, but as

themselves gods, able to bestow upon their subjects and worshippers those blessings which

are commonly supposed to be beyond the reach of mortals, and are sought, if at all, only by

prayer and sacrifice offered to superhuman and invisible beings. Thus kings are often expect-ed

to give rain and sunshine in due season, to make the crops grow, and so on. Strange as

this expectation appears to us, it is quite of a piece with early modes of thought. A savage

hardly conceives the distinction commonly drawn by more advanced peoples between the

natural and the supernatural. To him the world is to a great extent worked by supernatural

agents, that is, by personal beings acting on impulses and motives like his own, liable like

him to be moved by appeals to their pity, their hopes, and their fears. In a world so conceived

he sees no limit to his power of influencing the course of nature to his own advantage.

Prayers, promises, or threats may secure him fine weather and an abundant crop from the

gods; and if a god should happen, as he sometimes believes, to become incarnate in his own

person, then he need appeal to no higher being; he, the savage, possesses in himself all the

powers necessary to further his own well-being and that of his fellow-men.

This is one way in which the idea of a man-god is reached. But there is another. Along with

the view of the world as pervaded by spiritual forces, savage man has a different, and proba-bly

still older, conception in which we may detect a germ of the modern notion of natural law

or the view of nature as a series of events occurring in an invariable order without the inter-vention

of personal agency. The germ of which I speak is involved in that sympathetic magic,

as it may be called, which plays a large part in most systems of superstition. In early society

the king is frequently a magician as well as a priest; indeed he appears to have often attained

to power by virtue of his supposed proficiency in the black or white art. Hence in order to

understand the evolution of the kingship and the sacred character with which the office has

commonly been invested in the eyes of savage or barbarous peoples, it is essential to have

some acquaintance with the principles of magic and to form some conception of the extraordi-nary

hold which that ancient system of superstition has had on the human mind in all ages

and all countries. Accordingly I propose to consider the subject in some detail.

Chapter III

Sympathetic Magic

1. THE PRINCIPLES OF MAGIC

IF we analyse the principles of thought on which magic is based, they will probably be found

to resolve themselves into two: first, that like produces like, or that an effect resembles its

cause; and, second, that things which have once been in contact with each other continue to

act on each other at a distance after the physical contact has been severed. The former prin-ciple

may be called the Law of Similarity, the latter the Law of Contact or Contagion. From the

first of these principles, namely the Law of Similarity, the magician infers that he can produce

any effect he desires merely by imitating it: from the second he infers that whatever he does

to a material object will affect equally the person with whom the object was once in contact,

whether it formed part of his body or not. Charms based on the Law of Similarity may be

called Homoeopathic or Imitative Magic. Charms based on the Law of Contact or Contagion

may be called Contagious Magic. To denote the first of these branches of magic the term

Homoeopathic is perhaps preferable, for the alternative term Imitative or Mimetic suggests, if

it does not imply, a conscious agent who imitates, thereby limiting the scope of magic too nar-rowly.

For the same principles which the magician applies in the practice of his art are implic-itly

believed by him to regulate the operations of inanimate nature; in other words, he tacitly



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 15?assumes that the Laws of Similarity and Contact are of universal application and are not limit-ed

to human actions. In short, magic is a spurious system of natural law as well as a falla-cious

guide of conduct; it is a false science as well as an abortive art. Regarded as a system

of natural law, that is, as a statement of the rules which determine the sequence of events

throughout the world, it may be called Theoretical Magic: regarded as a set of precepts which

human beings observe in order to compass their ends, it may be called Practical Magic. At

the same time it is to be borne in mind that the primitive magician knows magic only on its

practical side; he never analyses the mental processes on which his practice is based, never

reflects on the abstract principles involved in his actions. With him, as with the vast majority

of men, logic is implicit, not explicit: he reasons just as he digests his food in complete igno-rance

of the intellectual and physiological processes which are essential to the one operation

and to the other. In short, to him magic is always an art, never a science; the very idea of sci-ence

is lacking in his undeveloped mind. It is for the philosophic student to trace the train of

thought which underlies the magician’s practice; to draw out the few simple threads of which

the tangled skein is composed; to disengage the abstract principles from their concrete appli-cations;

in short, to discern the spurious science behind the bastard art.

If my analysis of the magician’s logic is correct, its two great principles turn out to be merely

two different misapplications of the association of ideas. Homoeopathic magic is founded on

the association of ideas by similarity: contagious magic is founded on the association of ideas

by contiguity. Homoeopathic magic commits the mistake of assuming that things which

resemble each other are the same: contagious magic commits the mistake of assuming that

things which have once been in contact with each other are always in contact. But in practice

the two branches are often combined; or, to be more exact, while homoeopathic or imitative

magic may be practised by itself, contagious magic will generally be found to involve an appli-cation

of the homoeopathic or imitative principle. Thus generally stated the two things may be

a little difficult to grasp, but they will readily become intelligible when they are illustrated by

particular examples. Both trains of thought are in fact extremely simple and elementary. It

could hardly be otherwise, since they are familiar in the concrete, though certainly not in the

abstract, to the crude intelligence not only of the savage, but of ignorant and dull-witted peo-ple

everywhere. Both branches of magic, the homoeopathic and the contagious, may conve-niently

be comprehended under the general name of Sympathetic Magic, since both assume

that things act on each other at a distance through a secret sympathy, the impulse being

transmitted from one to the other by means of what we may conceive as a kind of invisible

ether, not unlike that which is postulated by modern science for a precisely similar purpose,

namely, to explain how things can physically affect each other through a space which appears

to be empty.

It may be convenient to tabulate as follows the branches of magic according to the laws of

thought which underlie them:

Sympathetic Magic

(Law of Sympathy)

|

_____________________________________

||

||

Homoeopathic Magic Contagious Magic

(Law of Similarity) (Law of Contact)



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 16?I will now illustrate these two great branches of sympathetic magic by examples, beginning

with homoeopathic magic.

2. HOMOEOPATHIC OR IMITATIVE MAGIC

Perhaps the most familiar application of the principle that like produces like is the attempt

which has been made by many peoples in many ages to injure or destroy an enemy by injur-ing

or destroying an image of him, in the belief that, just as the image suffers, so does the

man, and that when it perishes he must die. A few instances out of many may be given to

prove at once the wide diffusion of the practice over the world and its remarkable persistence

through the ages. For thousands of years ago it was known to the sorcerers of ancient India,

Babylon, and Egypt, as well as of Greece and Rome, and at this day it is still resorted to by

cunning and malignant savages in Australia, Africa, and Scotland. Thus the North American

Indians, we are told, believe that by drawing the figure of a person in sand, ashes, or clay, or

by considering any object as his body, and then pricking it with a sharp stick or doing it any

other injury, they inflict a corresponding injury on the person represented. For example, when

an Ojebway Indian desires to work evil on any one, he makes a little wooden image of his

enemy and runs a needle into its head or heart, or he shoots an arrow into it, believing that

wherever the needle pierces or the arrow strikes the image, his foe will the same instant be

seized with a sharp pain in the corresponding part of his body; but if he intends to kill the per-son

outright, he burns or buries the puppet, uttering certain magic words as he does so. The

Peruvian Indians moulded images of fat mixed with grain to imitate the persons whom they

disliked or feared, and then burned the effigy on the road where the intended victim was to

pass. This they called burning his soul.

A Malay charm of the same sort is as follows. Take parings of nails, hair, eyebrows, spittle,

and so forth of your intended victim, enough to represent every part of his person, and then

make them up into his likeness with wax from a deserted bees’ comb. Scorch the figure slow-ly

by holding it over a lamp every night for seven nights, and say:

“It is not wax that I am scorching,

It is the liver, heart, and spleen of So-and-so that I scorch.”

After the seventh time burn the figure, and your victim will die. This charm obviously com-bines

the principles of homoeopathic and contagious magic; since the image which is made

in the likeness of an enemy contains things which once were in contact with him, namely, his

nails, hair, and spittle. Another form of the Malay charm, which resembles the Ojebway prac-tice

still more closely, is to make a corpse of wax from an empty bees’ comb and of the length

of a footstep; then pierce the eye of the image, and your enemy is blind; pierce the stomach,

and he is sick; pierce the head, and his head aches; pierce the breast, and his breast will suf-fer.

If you would kill him outright, transfix the image from the head downwards; enshroud it as

you would a corpse; pray over it as if you were praying over the dead; then bury it in the mid-dle

of a path where your victim will be sure to step over it. In order that his blood may not be

on your head, you should say:

“It is not I who am burying him,

It is Gabriel who is burying him.”

Thus the guilt of the murder will be laid on the shoulders of the archangel Gabriel, who is a



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 17?great deal better able to bear it than you are.

If homoeopathic or imitative magic, working by means of images, has commonly been prac-tised

for the spiteful purpose of putting obnoxious people out of the world, it has also, though

far more rarely, been employed with the benevolent intention of helping others into it. In other

words, it has been used to facilitate childbirth and to procure offspring for barren women.

Thus among the Bataks of Sumatra a barren woman, who would become a mother, will make

a wooden image of a child and hold it in her lap, believing that this will lead to the fulfilment of

her wish. In the Babar Archipelago, when a woman desires to have a child, she invites a man

who is himself the father of a large family to pray on her behalf to Upulero, the spirit of the

sun. A doll is made of red cotton, which the woman clasps in her arms, as if she would suckle

it. Then the father of many children takes a fowl and holds it by the legs to the woman’s head,

saying, “O Upulero, make use of the fowl; let fall, let descend a child, I beseech you, I entreat

you, let a child fall and descend into my hands and on my lap.” Then he asks the woman,

“Has the child come?” and she answers, “Yes, it is sucking already.” After that the man holds

the fowl on the husband’s head, and mumbles some form of words. Lastly, the bird is killed

and laid, together with some betel, on the domestic place of sacrifice. When the ceremony is

over, word goes about in the village that the woman has been brought to bed, and her friends

come and congratulate her. Here the pretence that a child has been born is a purely magical

rite designed to secure, by means of imitation or mimicry, that a child really shall be born; but

an attempt is made to add to the efficacy of the rite by means of prayer and sacrifice. To put it

otherwise, magic is here blent with and reinforced by religion.

Among some of the Dyaks of Borneo, when a woman is in hard labour, a wizard is called in,

who essays to facilitate the delivery in a rational manner by manipulating the body of the suf-ferer.

Meantime another wizard outside the room exerts himself to attain the same end by

means which we should regard as wholly irrational. He, in fact, pretends to be the expectant

mother; a large stone attached to his stomach by a cloth wrapt round his body represents the

child in the womb, and, following the directions shouted to him by his colleague on the real

scene of operations, he moves this make-believe baby about on his body in exact imitation of

the movements of the real baby till the infant is born.

The same principle of make-believe, so dear to children, has led other peoples to employ a

simulation of birth as a form of adoption, and even as a mode of restoring a supposed dead

person to life. If you pretend to give birth to a boy, or even to a great bearded man who has

not a drop of your blood in his veins, then, in the eyes of primitive law and philosophy, that

boy or man is really your son to all intents and purposes. Thus Diodorus tells us that when

Zeus persuaded his jealous wife Hera to adopt Hercules, the goddess got into bed, and

clasping the burly hero to her bosom, pushed him through her robes and let him fall to the

ground in imitation of a real birth; and the historian adds that in his own day the same mode

of adopting children was practised by the barbarians. At the present time it is said to be still in

use in Bulgaria and among the Bosnian Turks. A woman will take a boy whom she intends to

adopt and push or pull him through her clothes; ever afterwards he is regarded as her very

son, and inherits the whole property of his adoptive parents. Among the Berawans of

Sarawak, when a woman desires to adopt a grownup man or woman, a great many people

assemble and have a feast. The adopting mother, seated in public on a raised and covered

seat, allows the adopted person to crawl from behind between her legs. As soon as he

appears in front he is stroked with the sweet-scented blossoms of the areca palm and tied to

a woman. Then the adopting mother and the adopted son or daughter, thus bound together,

waddle to the end of the house and back again in front of all the spectators. The tie estab-

-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page

18?lished between the two by this graphic imitation of childbirth is very strict; an offence commit-ted

against an adopted child is reckoned more heinous than one committed against a real

child. In ancient Greece any man who had been supposed erroneously to be dead, and for

whom in his absence funeral rites had been performed, was treated as dead to society till he

had gone through the form of being born again. He was passed through a woman’s lap, then

washed, dressed in swaddling-clothes, and put out to nurse. Not until this ceremony had

been punctually performed might he mix freely with living folk. In ancient India, under similar

circumstances, the supposed dead man had to pass the first night after his return in a tub

filled with a mixture of fat and water; there he sat with doubled-up fists and without uttering a

syllable, like a child in the womb, while over him were performed all the sacraments that were

wont to be celebrated over a pregnant woman. Next morning he got out of the tub and went

through once more all the other sacraments he had formerly partaken of from his youth up; in

particular, he married a wife or espoused his old one over again with due solemnity.

Another beneficent use of homoeopathic magic is to heal or prevent sickness. The ancient

Hindoos performed an elaborate ceremony, based on homoeopathic magic, for the cure of

jaundice. Its main drift was to banish the yellow colour to yellow creatures and yellow things,

such as the sun, to which it properly belongs, and to procure for the patient a healthy red

colour from a living, vigorous source, namely, a red bull. With this intention, a priest recited

the following spell: “Up to the sun shall go thy heart-ache and thy jaundice: in the colour of

the red bull do we envelop thee! We envelop thee in red tints, unto long life. May this person

go unscathed and be free of yellow colour! The cows whose divinity is Rohini, they who,

moreover, are themselves red (rohinih)—in their every form and every strength we do envelop

thee. Into the parrots, into the thrush, do we put thy jaundice, and, furthermore, into the yel-low

wagtail do we put thy jaundice.” While he uttered these words, the priest, in order to

infuse the rosy hue of health into the sallow patient, gave him water to sip which was mixed

with the hair of a red bull; he poured water over the animal’s back and made the sick man

drink it; he seated him on the skin of a red bull and tied a piece of the skin to him. Then in

order to improve his colour by thoroughly eradicating the yellow taint, he proceeded thus. He

first daubed him from head to foot with a yellow porridge made of tumeric or curcuma (a yel-low

plant), set him on a bed, tied three yellow birds, to wit, a parrot, a thrush, and a yellow

wagtail, by means of a yellow string to the foot of the bed; then pouring water over the

patient, he washed off the yellow porridge, and with it no doubt the jaundice, from him to the

birds. After that, by way of giving a final bloom to his complexion, he took some hairs of a red

bull, wrapt them in gold leaf, and glued them to the patient’s skin. The ancients held that if a

person suffering from jaundice looked sharply at a stone-curlew, and the bird looked steadily

at him, he was cured of the disease. “Such is the nature,” says Plutarch, “and such the tem-perament

of the creature that it draws out and receives the malady which issues, like a

stream, through the eyesight.” So well recognised among birdfanciers was this valuable prop-erty

of the stone-curlew that when they had one of these birds for sale they kept it carefully

covered, lest a jaundiced person should look at it and be cured for nothing. The virtue of the

bird lay not in its colour but in its large golden eye, which naturally drew out the yellow jaun-dice.

Pliny tells of another, or perhaps the same, bird, to which the Greeks gave their name

for jaundice, because if a jaundiced man saw it, the disease left him and slew the bird. He

mentions also a stone which was supposed to cure jaundice because its hue resembled that

of a jaundiced skin.

One of the great merits of homoeopathic magic is that it enables the cure to be performed on

the person of the doctor instead of on that of his victim, who is thus relieved of all trouble and

inconvenience, while he sees his medical man writhe in anguish before him. For example, the



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 19?peasants of Perche, in France, labour under the impression that a prolonged fit of vomiting is

brought about by the patient’s stomach becoming unhooked, as they call it, and so falling

down. Accordingly, a practitioner is called in to restore the organ to its proper place. After

hearing the symptoms he at once throws himself into the most horrible contortions, for the

purpose of unhooking his own stomach. Having succeeded in the effort, he next hooks it up

again in another series of contortions and grimaces, while the patient experiences a corre-sponding

relief. Fee five francs. In like manner a Dyak medicine-man, who has been fetched

in a case of illness, will lie down and pretend to be dead. He is accordingly treated like a

corpse, is bound up in mats, taken out of the house, and deposited on the ground. After about

an hour the other medicine-men loose the pretended dead man and bring him to life; and as

he recovers, the sick person is supposed to recover too. A cure for a tumour, based on the

principle of homoeopathic magic, is prescribed by Marcellus of Bordeaux, court physician to

Theodosius the First, in his curious work on medicine. It is as follows. Take a root of vervain,

cut it across, and hang one end of it round the patient’s neck, and the other in the smoke of

the fire. As the vervain dries up in the smoke, so the tumour will also dry up and disappear. If

the patient should afterwards prove ungrateful to the good physician, the man of skill can

avenge himself very easily by throwing the vervain into water; for as the root absorbs the

moisture once more, the tumour will return. The same sapient writer recommends you, if you

are troubled with pimples, to watch for a falling star, and then instantly, while the star is still

shooting from the sky, to wipe the pimples with a cloth or anything that comes to hand. Just

as the star falls from the sky, so the pimples will fall from your body; only you must be very

careful not to wipe them with your bare hand, or the pimples will be transferred to it.

Further, homoeopathic and in general sympathetic magic plays a great part in the measures

taken by the rude hunter or fisherman to secure an abundant supply of food. On the principle

that like produces like, many things are done by him and his friends in deliberate imitation of

the result which he seeks to attain; and, on the other hand, many things are scrupulously

avoided because they bear some more or less fanciful resemblance to others which would

really be disastrous.

Nowhere is the theory of sympathetic magic more systematically carried into practice for the

maintenance of the food supply than in the barren regions of Central Australia. Here the tribes

are divided into a number of totem clans, each of which is charged with the duty of multiplying

their totem for the good of the community by means of magical ceremonies. Most of the

totems are edible animals and plants, and the general result supposed to be accomplished by

these ceremonies is that of supplying the tribe with food and other necessaries. Often the

rites consist of an imitation of the effect which the people desire to produce; in other words,

their magic is homoeopathic or imitative. Thus among the Warramunga the headman of the

white cockatoo totem seeks to multiply white cockatoos by holding an effigy of the bird and

mimicking its harsh cry. Among the Arunta the men of the witchetty grub totem perform cere-monies

for multiplying the grub which the other members of the tribe use as food. One of the

ceremonies is a pantomime representing the fully-developed insect in the act of emerging

from the chrysalis. A long narrow structure of branches is set up to imitate the chrysalis case

of the grub. In this structure a number of men, who have the grub for their totem, sit and sing

of the creature in its various stages. Then they shuffle out of it in a squatting posture, and as

they do so they sing of the insect emerging from the chrysalis. This is supposed to multiply

the numbers of the grubs. Again, in order to multiply emus, which are an important article of

food, the men of the emu totem paint on the ground the sacred design of their totem, espe-cially

the parts of the emu which they like best to eat, namely, the fat and the eggs. Round

this painting the men sit and sing. Afterwards performers, wearing head-dresses to represent



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 20?the long neck and small head of the emu, mimic the appearance of the bird as it stands aim-lessly

peering about in all directions.

The Indians of British Columbia live largely upon the fish which abound in their seas and

rivers. If the fish do not come in due season, and the Indians are hungry, a Nootka wizard will

make an image of a swimming fish and put it into the water in the direction from which the

fish generally appear. This ceremony, accompanied by a prayer to the fish to come, will cause

them to arrive at once. The islanders of Torres Straits use models of dugong and turtles to

charm dugong and turtle to their destruction. The Toradjas of Central Celebes believe that

things of the same sort attract each other by means of their indwelling spirits or vital ether.

Hence they hang up the jawbones of deer and wild pigs in their houses, in order that the spir-its

which animate these bones may draw the living creatures of the same kind into the path of

the hunter. In the island of Nias, when a wild pig has fallen into the pit prepared for it, the ani-mal

is taken out and its back is rubbed with nine fallen leaves, in the belief that this will make

nine more wild pigs fall into the pit, just as the nine leaves fell from the tree. In the East

Indian islands of Saparoea, Haroekoe, and Noessa Laut, when a fisherman is about to set a

trap for fish in the sea, he looks out for a tree, of which the fruit has been much pecked at by

birds. From such a tree he cuts a stout branch and makes of it the principal post in his fish-trap;

for he believes that, just as the tree lured many birds to its fruit, so the branch cut from

that tree will lure many fish to the trap.

The western tribes of British New Guinea employ a charm to aid the hunter in spearing

dugong or turtle. A small beetle, which haunts coco-nut trees, is placed in the hole of the

spear-haft into which the spear-head fits. This is supposed to make the spear-head stick fast

in the dugong or turtle, just as the beetle sticks fast to a man’s skin when it bites him. When a

Cambodian hunter has set his nets and taken nothing, he strips himself naked, goes some

way off, then strolls up to the net as if he did not see it, lets himself be caught in it, and cries,

“Hillo! what’s this? I’m afraid I’m caught.” After that the net is sure to catch game. A pan-tomime

of the same sort has been acted within the living memory in our Scottish Highlands.

The Rev. James Macdonald, now of Reay in Caithness, tells us that in his boyhood when he

was fishing with companions about Loch Aline and they had had no bites for a long time, they

used to make a pretence of throwing one of their fellows overboard and hauling him out of the

water, as if he were a fish; after that the trout or silloch would begin to nibble, according as

the boat was on fresh or salt water. Before a Carrier Indian goes out to snare martens, he

sleeps by himself for about ten nights beside the fire with a little stick pressed down on his

neck. This naturally causes the fall-stick of his trap to drop down on the neck of the marten.

Among the Galelareese, who inhabit a district in the northern part of Halmahera, a large

island to the west of New Guinea, it is a maxim that when you are loading your gun to go out

shooting, you should always put the bullet in your mouth before you insert it in the gun; for by

so doing you practically eat the game that is to be hit by the bullet, which therefore cannot

possibly miss the mark. A Malay who has baited a trap for crocodiles, and is awaiting results,

is careful in eating his curry always to begin by swallowing three lumps of rice successively;

for this helps the bait to slide more easily down the crocodile’s throat. He is equally scrupu-lous

not to take any bones out of his curry; for, if he did, it seems clear that the sharp-pointed

stick on which the bait is skewered would similarly work itself loose, and the crocodile would

get off with the bait. Hence in these circumstances it is prudent for the hunter, before he

begins his meal, to get somebody else to take the bones out of his curry, otherwise he may at

any moment have to choose between swallowing a bone and losing the crocodile.

This last rule is an instance of the things which the hunter abstains from doing lest, on the



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 21?principle that like produces like, they should spoil his luck. For it is to be observed that the

system of sympathetic magic is not merely composed of positive precepts; it comprises a

very large number of negative precepts, that is, prohibitions. It tells you not merely what to

do, but also what to leave undone. The positive precepts are charms: the negative precepts

are taboos. In fact the whole doctrine of taboo, or at all events a large part of it, would seem

to be only a special application of sympathetic magic, with its two great laws of similarity and

contact. Though these laws are certainly not formulated in so many words nor even con-ceived

in the abstract by the savage, they are nevertheless implicitly believed by him to regu-late

the course of nature quite independently of human will. He thinks that if he acts in a cer-tain

way, certain consequences will inevitably follow in virtue of one or other of these laws;

and if the consequences of a particular act appear to him likely to prove disagreeable or dan-gerous,

he is naturally careful not to act in that way lest he should incur them. In other words,

he abstains from doing that which, in accordance with his mistaken notions of cause and

effect, he falsely believes would injure him; in short, he subjects himself to a taboo. Thus

taboo is so far a negative application of practical magic. Positive magic or sorcery says, “Do

this in order that so and so may happen.” Negative magic or taboo says, “Do not do this, lest

so and so should happen.” The aim of positive magic or sorcery is to produce a desired

event; the aim of negative magic or taboo is to avoid an undesirable one. But both conse-quences,

the desirable and the undesirable, are supposed to be brought about in accordance

with the laws of similarity and contact. And just as the desired consequence is not really

effected by the observance of a magical ceremony, so the dreaded consequence does not

really result from the violation of a taboo. If the supposed evil necessarily followed a breach

of taboo, the taboo would not be a taboo but a precept of morality or common sense. It is not

a taboo to say, “Do not put your hand in the fire”; it is a rule of common sense, because the

forbidden action entails a real, not an imaginary evil. In short, those negative precepts which

we call taboo are just as vain and futile as those positive precepts which we call sorcery. The

two things are merely opposite sides or poles of one great disastrous fallacy, a mistaken con-ception

of the association of ideas. Of that fallacy, sorcery is the positive, and taboo the nega-tive

pole. If we give the general name of magic to the whole erroneous system, both theoreti-cal

and practical, then taboo may be defined as the negative side of practical magic. To put

this in tabular form:

Magic

|

_________________________________________________

|

|

|

|

Theoretical Practical

(Magic as a pseudo-science) (Magic as a pseudo-art)

|

|

_____________________

|

|



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 22?Positive

Negative

Magic or

Magic or

Sorcery

Taboo

I have made these remarks on taboo and its relations to magic because I am about to give

some instances of taboos observed by hunters, fishermen, and others, and I wished to show

that they fall under the head of Sympathetic Magic, being only particular applications of that

general theory. Thus, among the Esquimaux boys are forbidden to play cat’s cradle, because

if they did so their fingers might in later life become entangled in the harpoon-line. Here the

taboo is obviously an application of the law of similarity, which is the basis of homoeopathic

magic: as the child’s fingers are entangled by the string in playing cat’s cradle, so they will be

entangled by the harpoon-line when he is a man and hunts whales. Again, among the Huzuls

of the Carpathian Mountains the wife of a hunter may not spin while her husband is eating, or

the game will turn and wind like the spindle, and the hunter will be unable to hit it. Here again

the taboo is clearly derived from the law of similarity. So, too, in most parts of ancient Italy

women were forbidden by law to spin on the highroads as they walked, or even to carry their

spindles openly, because any such action was believed to injure the crops. Probably the

notion was that the twirling of the spindle would twirl the corn-stalks and prevent them from

growing straight. So, too, among the Ainos of Saghalien a pregnant woman may not spin nor

twist ropes for two months before her delivery, because they think that if she did so the child’s

guts might be entangled like the thread. For a like reason in Bilaspore, a district of India,

when the chief men of a village meet in council, no one present should twirl a spindle; for

they think that if such a thing were to happen, the discussion, like the spindle, would move in

a circle and never be wound up. In some of the East Indian islands any one who comes to

the house of a hunter must walk straight in; he may not loiter at the door, for were he to do

so, the game would in like manner stop in front of the hunter’s snares and then turn back,

instead of being caught in the trap. For a similar reason it is a rule with the Toradjas of

Central Celebes that no one may stand or loiter on the ladder of a house where there is a

pregnant woman, for such delay would retard the birth of the child; and in various parts of

Sumatra the woman herself in these circumstances is forbidden to stand at the door or on the

top rung of the house-ladder under pain of suffering hard labour for her imprudence in

neglecting so elementary a precaution. Malays engaged in the search for camphor eat their

food dry and take care not to pound their salt fine. The reason is that the camphor occurs in

the form of small grains deposited in the cracks of the trunk of the camphor tree. Accordingly

it seems plain to the Malay that if, while seeking for camphor, he were to eat his salt finely

ground, the camphor would be found also in fine grains; whereas by eating his salt coarse he

ensures that the grains of the camphor will also be large. Camphor hunters in Borneo use the

leathery sheath of the leaf-stalk of the Penang palm as a plate for food, and during the whole

of the expedition they will never wash the plate, for fear that the camphor might dissolve and

disappear from the crevices of the tree. Apparently they think that to wash their plates would

be to wash out the camphor crystals from the trees in which they are imbedded. The chief

product of some parts of Laos, a province of Siam, is lac. This is a resinous gum exuded by a

red insect on the young branches of trees, to which the little creatures have to be attached by

hand. All who engage in the business of gathering the gum abstain from washing themselves

and especially from cleansing their heads, lest by removing the parasites from their hair they

should detach the other insects from the boughs. Again, a Blackfoot Indian who has set a trap

for eagles, and is watching it, would not eat rosebuds on any account; for he argues that if he



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 23?did so, and an eagle alighted near the trap, the rosebuds in his own stomach would make the

bird itch, with the result that instead of swallowing the bait the eagle would merely sit and

scratch himself. Following this train of thought the eagle hunter also refrains from using an

awl when he is looking after his snares; for surely if he were to scratch with an awl, the

eagles would scratch him. The same disastrous consequence would follow if his wives and

children at home used an awl while he is out after eagles, and accordingly they are forbidden

to handle the tool in his absence for fear of putting him in bodily danger.

Among the taboos observed by savages none perhaps are more numerous or important than

the prohibitions to eat certain foods, and of such prohibitions many are demonstrably derived

from the law of similarity and are accordingly examples of negative magic. Just as the savage

eats many animals or plants in order to acquire certain desirable qualities with which he

believes them to be endowed, so he avoids eating many other animals and plants lest he

should acquire certain undesirable qualities with which he believes them to be infected. In

eating the former he practises positive magic; in abstaining from the latter he practises nega-tive

magic. Many examples of such positive magic will meet us later on; here I will give a few

instances of such negative magic or taboo. For example, in Madagascar soldiers are forbid-den

to eat a number of foods lest on the principle of homoeopathic magic they should be

tainted by certain dangerous or undesirable properties which are supposed to inhere in these

particular viands. Thus they may not taste hedgehog, “as it is feared that this animal, from its

propensity of coiling up into a ball when alarmed, will impart a timid shrinking disposition to

those who partake of it.” Again, no soldier should eat an ox’s knee, lest like an ox he should

become weak in the knees and unable to march. Further, the warrior should be careful to

avoid partaking of a cock that has died fighting or anything that has been speared to death;

and no male animal may on any account be killed in his house while he is away at the wars.

For it seems obvious that if he were to eat a cock that had died fighting, he would himself be

slain on the field of battle; if he were to partake of an animal that had been speared, he would

be speared himself; if a male animal were killed in his house during his absence, he would

himself be killed in like manner and perhaps at the same instant. Further, the Malagasy sol-dier

must eschew kidneys, because in the Malagasy language the word for kidney is the

same as that for “shot”; so shot he would certainly be if he ate a kidney.

The reader may have observed that in some of the foregoing examples of taboos the magical

influence is supposed to operate at considerable distances; thus among the Blackfeet Indians

the wives and children of an eagle hunter are forbidden to use an awl during his absence, lest

the eagles should scratch the distant husband and father; and again no male animal may be

killed in the house of a Malagasy soldier while he is away at the wars, lest the killing of the

animal should entail the killing of the man. This belief in the sympathetic influence exerted on

each other by persons or things at a distance is of the essence of magic. Whatever doubts

science may entertain as to the possibility of action at a distance, magic has none; faith in

telepathy is one of its first principles. A modern advocate of the influence of mind upon mind

at a distance would have no difficulty in convincing a savage; the savage believed in it long

ago, and what is more, he acted on his belief with a logical consistency such as his civilised

brother in the faith has not yet, so far as I am aware, exhibited in his conduct. For the savage

is convinced not only that magical ceremonies affect persons and things afar off, but that the

simplest acts of daily life may do so too. Hence on important occasions the behaviour of

friends and relations at a distance is often regulated by a more or less elaborate code of

rules, the neglect of which by the one set of persons would, it is supposed, entail misfortune

or even death on the absent ones. In particular when a party of men are out hunting or fight-ing,

their kinsfolk at home are often expected to do certain things or to abstain from doing



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 24?certain others, for the sake of ensuring the safety and success of the distant hunters or war-riors.

I will now give some instances of this magical telepathy both in its positive and in its

negative aspect.

In Laos when an elephant hunter is starting for the chase, he warns his wife not to cut her

hair or oil her body in his absence; for if she cut her hair the elephant would burst the toils, if

she oiled herself it would slip through them. When a Dyak village has turned out to hunt wild

pigs in the jungle, the people who stay at home may not touch oil or water with their hands

during the absence of their friends; for if they did so, the hunters would all be “butter-fingered”

and the prey would slip through their hands.

Elephant-hunters in East Africa believe that, if their wives prove unfaithful in their absence,

this gives the elephant power over his pursuer, who will accordingly be killed or severely

wounded. Hence if a hunter hears of his wife’s misconduct, he abandons the chase and

returns home. If a Wagogo hunter is unsuccessful, or is attacked by a lion, he attributes it to

his wife’s misbehaviour at home, and returns to her in great wrath. While he is away hunting,

she may not let any one pass behind her or stand in front of her as she sits; and she must lie

on her face in bed. The Moxos Indians of Bolivia thought that if a hunter’s wife was unfaithful

to him in his absence he would be bitten by a serpent or a jaguar. Accordingly, if such an

accident happened to him, it was sure to entail the punishment, and often the death, of the

woman, whether she was innocent or guilty. An Aleutian hunter of sea-otters thinks that he

cannot kill a single animal if during his absence from home his wife should be unfaithful or his

sister unchaste.

The Huichol Indians of Mexico treat as a demi-god a species of cactus which throws the eater

into a state of ecstasy. The plant does not grow in their country, and has to be fetched every

year by men who make a journey of forty-three days for the purpose. Meanwhile the wives at

home contribute to the safety of their absent husbands by never walking fast, much less run-ning,

while the men are on the road. They also do their best to ensure the benefits which, in

the shape of rain, good crops, and so forth, are expected to flow from the sacred mission.

With this intention they subject themselves to severe restrictions like those imposed upon

their husbands. During the whole of the time which elapses till the festival of the cactus is

held, neither party washes except on certain occasions, and then only with water brought

from the distant country where the holy plant grows. They also fast much, eat no salt, and are

bound to strict continence. Any one who breaks this law is punished with illness, and, more-over,

jeopardises the result which all are striving for. Health, luck, and life are to be gained by

gathering the cactus, the gourd of the God of Fire; but inasmuch as the pure fire cannot ben-efit

the impure, men and women must not only remain chaste for the time being, but must

also purge themselves from the taint of past sin. Hence four days after the men have started

the women gather and confess to Grandfather Fire with what men they have been in love

from childhood till now. They may not omit a single one, for if they did so the men would not

find a single cactus. So to refresh their memories each one prepares a string with as many

knots as she has had lovers. This she brings to the temple, and, standing before the fire, she

mentions aloud all the men she has scored on her string, name after name. Having ended

her confession, she throws the string into the fire, and when the god has consumed it in his

pure flame, her sins are forgiven her and she departs in peace. From now on the women are

averse even to letting men pass near them. The cactus-seekers themselves make in like

manner a clean breast of all their frailties. For every peccadillo they tie a knot on a string, and

after they have “talked to all the five winds” they deliver the rosary of their sins to the leader,

who burns it in the fire.



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 25?Many of the indigenous tribes of Sarawak are firmly persuaded that were the wives to commit

adultery while their husbands are searching for camphor in the jungle, the camphor obtained

by the men would evaporate. Husbands can discover, by certain knots in the tree, when the

wives are unfaithful; and it is said that in former days many women were killed by jealous

husbands on no better evidence than that of these knots. Further, the wives dare not touch a

comb while their husbands are away collecting the camphor; for if they did so, the interstices

between the fibres of the tree, instead of being filled with the precious crystals, would be

empty like the spaces between the teeth of a comb. In the Kei Islands, to the southwest of

New Guinea, as soon as a vessel that is about to sail for a distant port has been launched,

the part of the beach on which it lay is covered as speedily as possible with palm branches,

and becomes sacred. No one may thenceforth cross that spot till the ship comes home. To

cross it sooner would cause the vessel to perish. Moreover, all the time that the voyage lasts

three or four young girls, specially chosen for the duty, are supposed to remain in sympathetic

connexion with the mariners and to contribute by their behaviour to the safety and success of

the voyage. On no account, except for the most necessary purpose, may they quit the room

that has been assigned to them. More than that, so long as the vessel is believed to be at

sea they must remain absolutely motionless, crouched on their mats with their hands clasped

between their knees. They may not turn their heads to the left or to the right or make any

other movement whatsoever. If they did, it would cause the boat to pitch and toss; and they

may not eat any sticky stuff, such as rice boiled in coco-nut milk, for the stickiness of the food

would clog the passage of the boat through the water. When the sailors are supposed to have

reached their destination, the strictness of these rules is somewhat relaxed; but during the

whole time that the voyage lasts the girls are forbidden to eat fish which have sharp bones or

stings, such as the sting-ray, lest their friends at sea should be involved in sharp, stinging

trouble.

Where beliefs like these prevail as to the sympathetic connexion between friends at a dis-tance,

we need not wonder that above everything else war, with its stern yet stirring appeal to

some of the deepest and tenderest of human emotions, should quicken in the anxious rela-tions

left behind a desire to turn the sympathetic bond to the utmost account for the benefit of

the dear ones who may at any moment be fighting and dying far away. Hence, to secure an

end so natural and laudable, friends at home are apt to resort to devices which will strike us

as pathetic or ludicrous, according as we consider their object or the means adopted to effect

it. Thus in some districts of Borneo, when a Dyak is out head-hunting, his wife or, if he is

unmarried, his sister must wear a sword day and night in order that he may always be think-ing

of his weapons; and she may not sleep during the day nor go to bed before two in the

morning, lest her husband or brother should thereby be surprised in his sleep by an enemy.

Among the Sea Dyaks of Banting in Sarawak the women strictly observe an elaborate code

of rules while the men are away fighting. Some of the rules are negative and some are posi-tive,

but all alike are based on the principles of magical homoeopathy and telepathy. Amongst

them are the following. The women must wake very early in the morning and open the win-dows

as soon as it is light; otherwise their absent husbands will oversleep themselves. The

women may not oil their hair, or the men will slip. The women may neither sleep nor doze by

day, or the men will be drowsy on the march. The women must cook and scatter popcorn on

the verandah every morning; so will the men be agile in their movements. The rooms must be

kept very tidy, all boxes being placed near the walls; for if any one were to stumble over

them, the absent husbands would fall and be at the mercy of the foe. At every meal a little

rice must be left in the pot and put aside; so will the men far away always have something to

eat and need never go hungry. On no account may the women sit at the loom till their legs



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 26?grow cramped, otherwise their husbands will likewise be stiff in their joints and unable to rise

up quickly or to run away from the foe. So in order to keep their husbands’ joints supple the

women often vary their labours at the loom by walking up and down the verandah. Further,

they may not cover up their faces, or the men would not to be able to find their way through

the tall grass or jungle. Again, the women may not sew with a needle, or the men will tread on

the sharp spikes set by the enemy in the path. Should a wife prove unfaithful while her hus-band

is away, he will lose his life in the enemy’s country. Some years ago all these rules and

more were observed by the women of Banting, while their husbands were fighting for the

English against rebels. But alas! these tender precautions availed them little; for many a man,

whose faithful wife was keeping watch and ward for him at home, found a soldier’s grave.

In the island of Timor, while war is being waged, the high-priest never quits the temple; his

food is brought to him or cooked inside; day and night he must keep the fire burning, for if he

were to let it die out, disaster would befall the warriors and would continue so long as the

hearth was cold. Moreover, he must drink only hot water during the time the army is absent;

for every draught of cold water would damp the spirits of the people, so that they could not

vanquish the enemy. In the Kei Islands, when the warriors have departed, the women return

indoors and bring out certain baskets containing fruits and stones. These fruits and stones

they anoint and place on a board, murmuring as they do so, “O lord sun, moon, let the bullets

rebound from our husbands, brothers, betrothed, and other relations, just as raindrops

rebound from these objects which are smeared with oil.” As soon as the first shot is heard,

the baskets are put aside, and the women, seizing their fans, rush out of the houses. Then,

waving their fans in the direction of the enemy, they run through the village, while they sing,

“O golden fans! let our bullets hit, and those of the enemy miss.” In this custom the ceremony

of anointing stones, in order that the bullets may recoil from the men like raindrops from the

stones, is a piece of pure homoeopathic or imitative magic; but the prayer to the sun, that he

will be pleased to give effect to the charm, is a religious and perhaps later addition. The wav-ing

of the fans seems to be a charm to direct the bullets towards or away from their mark,

according as they are discharged from the guns of friends or foes.

An old historian of Madagascar informs us that “while the men are at the wars, and until their

return, the women and girls cease not day and night to dance, and neither lie down nor take

food in their own houses. And although they are very voluptuously inclined, they would not for

anything in the world have an intrigue with another man while their husband is at the war,

believing firmly that if that happened, their husband would be either killed or wounded. They

believe that by dancing they impart strength, courage, and good fortune to their husbands;

accordingly during such times they give themselves no rest, and this custom they observe

very religiously.”

Among the Tshi-speaking peoples of the Gold Coast the wives of men who are away with the

army paint themselves white, and adorn their persons with beads and charms. On the day

when a battle is expected to take place, they run about armed with guns, or sticks carved to

look like guns, and taking green paw-paws (fruits shaped somewhat like a melon), they hack

them with knives, as if they were chopping off the heads of the foe. The pantomime is no

doubt merely an imitative charm, to enable the men to do to the enemy as the women do to

the paw-paws. In the West African town of Framin, while the Ashantee war was raging some

years ago, Mr. Fitzgerald Marriott saw a dance performed by women whose husbands had

gone as carriers to the war. They were painted white and wore nothing but a short petticoat.

At their head was a shrivelled old sorceress in a very short white petticoat, her black hair

arranged in a sort of long projecting horn, and her black face, breasts, arms, and legs pro-

-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page

27?fusely adorned with white circles and crescents. All carried long white brushes made of buffa-lo

or horse tails, and as they danced they sang, “Our husbands have gone to Ashanteeland;

may they sweep their enemies off the face of the earth!”

Among the Thompson Indians of British Columbia, when the men were on the war-path, the

women performed dances at frequent intervals. These dances were believed to ensure the

success of the expedition. The dancers flourished their knives, threw long sharp-pointed

sticks forward, or drew sticks with hooked ends repeatedly backward and forward. Throwing

the sticks forward was symbolic of piercing or warding off the enemy, and drawing them back

was symbolic of drawing their own men from danger. The hook at the end of the stick was

particularly well adapted to serve the purpose of a life-saving apparatus. The women always

pointed their weapons towards the enemy’s country. They painted their faces red and sang as

they danced, and they prayed to the weapons to preserve their husbands and help them to

kill many foes. Some had eagle-down stuck on the points of their sticks. When the dance was

over, these weapons were hidden. If a woman whose husband was at the war thought she

saw hair or a piece of a scalp on the weapon when she took it out, she knew that her hus-band

had killed an enemy. But if she saw a stain of blood on it, she knew he was wounded or

dead. When the men of the Yuki tribe in California were away fighting, the women at home

did not sleep; they danced continually in a circle, chanting and waving leafy wands. For they

said that if they danced all the time, their husbands would not grow tired. Among the Haida

Indians of the Queen Charlotte Islands, when the men had gone to war, the women at home

would get up very early in the morning and pretend to make war by falling upon their children

and feigning to take them for slaves. This was supposed to help their husbands to go and do

likewise. If a wife were unfaithful to her husband while he was away on the war-path, he

would probably be killed. For ten nights all the women at home lay with their heads towards

the point of the compass to which the war-canoes had paddled away. Then they changed

about, for the warriors were supposed to be coming home across the sea. At Masset the

Haida women danced and sang war-songs all the time their husbands were away at the wars,

and they had to keep everything about them in a certain order. It was thought that a wife

might kill her husband by not observing these customs. When a band of Carib Indians of the

Orinoco had gone on the war-path, their friends left in the village used to calculate as nearly

as they could the exact moment when the absent warriors would be advancing to attack the

enemy. Then they took two lads, laid them down on a bench, and inflicted a most severe

scourging on their bare backs. This the youths submitted to without a murmur, supported in

their sufferings by the firm conviction, in which they had been bred from childhood, that on the

constancy and fortitude with which they bore the cruel ordeal depended the valour and suc-cess

of their comrades in the battle.

Among the many beneficent uses to which a mistaken ingenuity has applied the principle of

homoeopathic or imitative magic, is that of causing trees and plants to bear fruit in due sea-son.

In Thüringen the man who sows flax carries the seed in a long bag which reaches from

his shoulders to his knees, and he walks with long strides, so that the bag sways to and fro

on his back. It is believed that this will cause the flax to wave in the wind. In the interior of

Sumatra rice is sown by women who, in sowing, let their hair hang loose down their back, in

order that the rice may grow luxuriantly and have long stalks. Similarly, in ancient Mexico a

festival was held in honour of the goddess of maize, or “the long-haired mother,” as she was

called. It began at the time “when the plant had attained its full growth, and fibres shooting

forth from the top of the green ear indicated that the grain was fully formed. During this festi-val

the women wore their long hair unbound, shaking and tossing it in the dances which were

the chief feature in the ceremonial, in order that the tassel of the maize might grow in like pro-

-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page

28?fusion, that the grain might be correspondingly large and flat, and that the people might have

abundance.” In many parts of Europe dancing or leaping high in the air are approved

homoeopathic modes of making the crops grow high. Thus in Franche-Comté they say that

you should dance at the Carnival in order to make the hemp grow tall.

The notion that a person can influence a plant homoeopathically by his act or condition

comes out clearly in a remark made by a Malay woman. Being asked why she stripped the

upper part of her body naked in reaping the rice, she explained that she did it to make the

rice-husks thinner, as she was tired of pounding thick-husked rice. Clearly, she thought that

the less clothing she wore the less husk there would be on the rice. The magic virtue of a

pregnant woman to communicate fertility is known to Bavarian and Austrian peasants, who

think that if you give the first fruit of a tree to a woman with child to eat, the tree will bring

forth abundantly next year. On the other hand, the Baganda believe that a barren wife infects

her husband’s garden with her own sterility and prevents the trees from bearing fruit; hence a

childless woman is generally divorced. The Greeks and Romans sacrificed pregnant victims

to the goddesses of the corn and of the earth, doubtless in order that the earth might teem

and the corn swell in the ear. When a Catholic priest remonstrated with the Indians of the

Orinoco on allowing their women to sow the fields in the blazing sun, with infants at their

breasts, the men answered, “Father, you don’t understand these things, and that is why they

vex you. You know that women are accustomed to bear children, and that we men are not.

When the women sow, the stalk of the maize bears two or three ears, the root of the yucca

yields two or three basketfuls, and everything multiplies in proportion. Now why is that?

Simply because the women know how to bring forth, and know how to make the seed which

they sow bring forth also. Let them sow, then; we men don’t know as much about it as they

do.”

Thus on the theory of homoeopathic magic a person can influence vegetation either for good

or for evil according to the good or the bad character of his acts or states: for example, a fruit-ful

woman makes plants fruitful, a barren woman makes them barren. Hence this belief in the

noxious and infectious nature of certain personal qualities or accidents has given rise to a

number of prohibitions or rules of avoidance: people abstain from doing certain things lest

they should homoeopathically infect the fruits of the earth with their own undesirable state or

condition. All such customs of abstention or rules of avoidance are examples of negative

magic or taboo. Thus, for example, arguing from what may be called the infectiousness of

personal acts or states, the Galelareese say that you ought not to shoot with a bow and

arrows under a fruit-tree, or the tree will cast its fruit even as the arrows fall to the ground;

and that when you are eating watermelon you ought not to mix the pips which you spit out of

your mouth with the pips which you have put aside to serve as seed; for if you do, though the

pips you spat out may certainly spring up and blossom, yet the blossoms will keep falling off

just as the pips fell from your mouth, and thus these pips will never bear fruit. Precisely the

same train of thought leads the Bavarian peasant to believe that if he allows the graft of a

fruit-tree to fall on the ground, the tree that springs from that graft will let its fruit fall untimely.

When the Chams of Cochinchina are sowing their dry rice fields and desire that no shower

should fall, they eat their rice dry in order to prevent rain from spoiling the crop.

In the foregoing cases a person is supposed to influence vegetation homoeopathically. He

infects trees or plants with qualities or accidents, good or bad, resembling and derived from

his own. But on the principle of homoeopathic magic the influence is mutual: the plant can

infect the man just as much as the man can infect the plant. In magic, as I believe in physics,

action and reaction are equal and opposite. The Cherokee Indians are adepts in practical



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 29?botany of the homoeopathic sort. Thus wiry roots of the catgut plant are so tough that they

can almost stop a plowshare in the furrow. Hence Cherokee women wash their heads with a

decoction of the roots to make the hair strong, and Cherokee ball-players wash themselves

with it to toughen their muscles. It is a Galelareese belief that if you eat a fruit which has fall-en

to the ground, you will yourself contract a disposition to stumble and fall; and that if you

partake of something which has been forgotten (such as a sweet potato left in the pot or a

banana in the fire), you will become forgetful. The Galelareese are also of opinion that if a

woman were to consume two bananas growing from a single head she would give birth to

twins. The Guarani Indians of South America thought that a woman would become a mother

of twins if she ate a double grain of millet. In Vedic times a curious application of this principle

supplied a charm by which a banished prince might be restored to his kingdom. He had to eat

food cooked on a fire which was fed with wood which had grown out of the stump of a tree

which had been cut down. The recuperative power manifested by such a tree would in due

course be communicated through the fire to the food, and so to the prince, who ate the food

which was cooked on the fire which was fed with the wood which grew out of the tree. The

Sudanese think that if a house is built of the wood of thorny trees, the life of the people who

dwell in that house will likewise be thorny and full of trouble.

There is a fruitful branch of homoeopathic magic which works by means of the dead; for just

as the dead can neither see nor hear nor speak, so you may on homoeopathic principles ren-der

people blind, deaf and dumb by the use of dead men’s bones or anything else that is

tainted by the infection of death. Thus among the Galelareese, when a young man goes a-wooing

at night, he takes a little earth from a grave and strews it on the roof of his sweet-heart’s

house just above the place where her parents sleep. This, he fancies, will prevent

them from waking while he converses with his beloved, since the earth from the grave will

make them sleep as sound as the dead. Burglars in all ages and many lands have been

patrons of this species of magic, which is very useful to them in the exercise of their profes-sion.

Thus a South Slavonian housebreaker sometimes begins operations by throwing a dead

man’s bone over the house, saying, with pungent sarcasm, “As this bone may waken, so may

these people waken”; after that not a soul in the house can keep his or her eyes open.

Similarly, in Java the burglar takes earth from a grave and sprinkles it round the house which

he intends to rob; this throws the inmates into a deep sleep. With the same intention a

Hindoo will strew ashes from a pyre at the door of the house; Indians of Peru scatter the dust

of dead men’s bones; and Ruthenian burglars remove the marrow from a human shin-bone,

pour tallow into it, and having kindled the tallow, march thrice round the house with this can-dle

burning, which causes the inmates to sleep a death-like sleep. Or the Ruthenian will make

a flute out of a human leg-bone and play upon it; whereupon all persons within hearing are

overcome with drowsiness. The Indians of Mexico employed for this maleficent purpose the

left fore-arm of a woman who had died in giving birth to her first child; but the arm had to be

stolen. With it they beat the ground before they entered the house which they designed to

plunder; this caused every one in the house to lose all power of speech and motion; they

were as dead, hearing and seeing everything, but perfectly powerless; some of them, howev-er,

really slept and even snored. In Europe similar properties were ascribed to the Hand of

Glory, which was the dried and pickled hand of a man who had been hanged. If a candle

made of the fat of a malefactor who had also died on the gallows was lighted and placed in

the Hand of Glory as in a candlestick, it rendered motionless all persons to whom it was pre-sented;

they could not stir a finger any more than if they were dead. Sometimes the dead

man’s hand is itself the candle, or rather bunch of candles, all its withered fingers being set

on fire; but should any member of the household be awake, one of the fingers will not kindle.

Such nefarious lights can only be extinguished with milk. Often it is prescribed that the thief’s



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 30?candle should be made of the finger of a new-born or, still better, unborn child; sometimes it is

thought needful that the thief should have one such candle for every person in the house, for

if he has one candle too little somebody in the house will wake and catch him. Once these

tapers begin to burn, there is nothing but milk that will put them out. In the seventeenth centu-ry

robbers used to murder pregnant women in order thus to extract candles from their wombs.

An ancient Greek robber or burglar thought he could silence and put to flight the fiercest

watchdogs by carrying with him a brand plucked from a funeral pyre. Again, Servian and

Bulgarian women who chafe at the restraints of domestic life will take the copper coins from

the eyes of a corpse, wash them in wine or water, and give the liquid to their husbands to

drink. After swallowing it, the husband will be as blind to his wife’s peccadilloes as the dead

man was on whose eyes the coins were laid.

Further, animals are often conceived to possess qualities of properties which might be useful

to man, and homoeopathic or imitative magic seeks to communicate these properties to

human beings in various ways. Thus some Bechuanas wear a ferret as a charm, because,

being very tenacious of life, it will make them difficult to kill. Others wear a certain insect,

mutilated, but living, for a similar purpose. Yet other Bechuana warriors wear the hair of a

hornless ox among their own hair, and the skin of a frog on their mantle, because a frog is

slippery, and the ox, having no horns, is hard to catch; so the man who is provided with these

charms believes that he will be as hard to hold as the ox and the frog. Again, it seems plain

that a South African warrior who twists tufts of rat’s hair among his own curly black locks will

have just as many chances of avoiding the enemy’s spear as the nimble rat has of avoiding

things thrown at it; hence in these regions rats’ hair is in great demand when war is expected.

One of the ancient books of India prescribes that when a sacrifice is offered for victory, the

earth out of which the altar is to be made should be taken from a place where a boar has

been wallowing, since the strength of the boar will be in that earth. When you are playing the

one-stringed lute, and your fingers are stiff, the thing to do is to catch some long-legged field

spiders and roast them, and then rub your fingers with the ashes; that will make your fingers

as lithe and nimble as the spiders’ legs—at least so think the Galelareese. To bring back a

runaway slave an Arab will trace a magic circle on the ground, stick a nail in the middle of it,

and attach a beetle by a thread to the nail, taking care that the sex of the beetle is that of the

fugitive. As the beetle crawls round and round, it will coil the thread about the nail, thus short-ening

its tether and drawing nearer to the centre at every circuit. So by virtue of homoeopath-ic

magic the runaway slave will be drawn back to his master.

Among the western tribes of British New Guinea, a man who has killed a snake will burn it

and smear his legs with the ashes when he goes into the forest; for no snake will bite him for

some days afterwards. If a South Slavonian has a mind to pilfer and steal at market, he has

nothing to do but to burn a blind cat, and then throw a pinch of its ashes over the person with

whom he is higgling; after that he can take what he likes from the booth, and the owner will

not be a bit the wiser, having become as blind as the deceased cat with whose ashes he has

been sprinkled. The thief may even ask boldly, “Did I pay for it?” and the deluded huckster will

reply, “Why, certainly.” Equally simple and effectual is the expedient adopted by natives of

Central Australia who desire to cultivate their beards. They prick the chin all over with a point-ed

bone, and then stroke it carefully with a magic stick or stone, which represents a kind of

rat that has very long whiskers. The virtue of these whiskers naturally passes into the repre-sentative

stick or stone, and thence by an easy transition to the chin, which, consequently, is

soon adorned with a rich growth of beard. The ancient Greeks thought that to eat the flesh of

the wakeful nightingale would prevent a man from sleeping; that to smear the eyes of a blear-sighted

person with the gall of an eagle would give him the eagle’s vision; and that a raven’s



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 31?eggs would restore the blackness of the raven to silvery hair. Only the person who adopted

this last mode of concealing the ravages of time had to be most careful to keep his mouth full

of oil all the time he applied the eggs to his venerable locks, else his teeth as well as his hair

would be dyed raven black, and no amount of scrubbing and scouring would avail to whiten

them again. The hair-restorer was in fact a shade too powerful, and in applying it you might

get more than you bargained for.

The Huichol Indians admire the beautiful markings on the backs of serpents. Hence when a

Huichol woman is about to weave or embroider, her husband catches a large serpent and

holds it in a cleft stick, while the woman strokes the reptile with one hand down the whole

length of its back; then she passes the same hand over her forehead and eyes, that she may

be able to work as beautiful patterns in the web as the markings on the back of the serpent.

On the principle of homoeopathic magic, inanimate things, as well as plants and animals,

may diffuse blessing or bane around them, according to their own intrinsic nature and the skill

of the wizard to tap or dam, as the case may be, the stream of weal or woe. In Samaracand

women give a baby sugar candy to suck and put glue in the palm of its hand, in order that,

when the child grows up, his words may be sweet and precious things may stick to his hands

as if they were glued. The Greeks thought that a garment made from the fleece of a sheep

that had been torn by a wolf would hurt the wearer, setting up an itch or irritation in his skin.

They were also of opinion that if a stone which had been bitten by a dog were dropped in

wine, it would make all who drank of that wine to fall out among themselves. Among the

Arabs of Moab a childless woman often borrows the robe of a woman who has had many

children, hoping with the robe to acquire the fruitfulness of its owner. The Caffres of Sofala, in

East Africa, had a great dread of being struck with anything hollow, such as a reed or a straw,

and greatly preferred being thrashed with a good thick cudgel or an iron bar, even though it

hurt very much. For they thought that if a man were beaten with anything hollow, his inside

would waste away till he died. In eastern seas there is a large shell which the Buginese of

Celebes call the “old man” (kadjâwo). On Fridays they turn these “old men” upside down and

place them on the thresholds of their houses, believing that whoever then steps over the

threshold of the house will live to be old. At initiation a Brahman boy is made to tread with his

right foot on a stone, while the words are repeated, “Tread on this stone; like a stone be firm”;

and the same ceremony is performed, with the same words, by a Brahman bride at her mar-riage.

In Madagascar a mode of counteracting the levity of fortune is to bury a stone at the

foot of the heavy house-post. The common custom of swearing upon a stone may be based

partly on a belief that the strength and stability of the stone lend confirmation to an oath. Thus

the old Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus tells us that “the ancients, when they were to

choose a king, were wont to stand on stones planted in the ground, and to proclaim their

votes, in order to foreshadow from the steadfastness of the stones that the deed would be

lasting.”

But while a general magical efficacy may be supposed to reside in all stones by reason of

their common properties of weight and solidity, special magical virtues are attributed to partic-ular

stones, or kinds of stone, in accordance with their individual or specific qualities of shape

and colour. For example, the Indians of Peru employed certain stones for the increase of

maize, others for the increase of potatoes, and others again for the increase of cattle. The

stones used to make maize grow were fashioned in the likeness of cobs of maize, and the

stones destined to multiply cattle had the shape of sheep.

In some parts of Melanesia a like belief prevails that certain sacred stones are endowed with



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 32?miraculous powers which correspond in their nature to the shape of the stone. Thus a piece

of water-worn coral on the beach often bears a surprising likeness to a bread-fruit. Hence in

the Banks Islands a man who finds such a coral will lay it at the root of one of his bread-fruit

trees in the expectation that it will make the tree bear well. If the result answers his expecta-tion,

he will then, for a proper remuneration, take stones of less-marked character from other

men and let them lie near his, in order to imbue them with the magic virtue which resides in it.

Similarly, a stone with little discs upon it is good to bring in money; and if a man found a large

stone with a number of small ones under it, like a sow among her litter, he was sure that to

offer money upon it would bring him pigs. In these and similar cases the Melanesians ascribe

the marvellous power, not to the stone itself, but to its indwelling spirit; and sometimes, as we

have just seen, a man endeavours to propitiate the spirit by laying down offerings on the

stone. But the conception of spirits that must be propitiated lies outside the sphere of magic,

and within that of religion. Where such a conception is found, as here, in conjunction with

purely magical ideas and practices, the latter may generally be assumed to be the original

stock on which the religious conception has been at some later time engrafted. For there are

strong grounds for thinking that, in the evolution of thought, magic has preceded religion. But

to this point we shall return presently.

The ancients set great store on the magical qualities of precious stones; indeed it has been

maintained, with great show of reason, that such stones

were used as amulets long before they were worn as mere ornaments. Thus the Greeks gave

the name of tree-agate to a stone which exhibits tree-like markings, and they thought that if

two of these gems were tied to the horns or necks of oxen at the plough, the crop would be

sure to be plentiful. Again, they recognised a milk-stone which produced an abundant supply

of milk in women if only they drank it dissolved in honey-mead. Milk-stones are used for the

same purpose by Greek women in Crete and Melos at the present day; in Albania nursing

mothers wear the stones in order to ensure an abundant flow of milk. Again, the Greeks

believed in a stone which cured snake-bites, and hence was named the snake-stone; to test

its efficacy you had only to grind the stone to powder and sprinkle the powder on the wound.

The wine-coloured amethyst received its name, which means “not drunken,” because it was

supposed to keep the wearer of it sober; and two brothers who desired to live at unity were

advised to carry magnets about with them, which, by drawing the twain together, would clear-ly

prevent them from falling out.

The ancient books of the Hindoos lay down a rule that after sunset on his marriage night a

man should sit silent with his wife till the stars begin to twinkle in the sky. When the pole-star

appears, he should point it out to her, and, addressing the star, say, “Firm art thou; I see thee,

the firm one. Firm be thou with me, O thriving one!” Then, turning to his wife, he should say,

“To me Brihaspati has given thee; obtaining offspring through me, thy husband, live with me a

hundred autumns.” The intention of the ceremony is plainly to guard against the fickleness of

fortune and the instability of earthly bliss by the steadfast influence of the constant star. It is

the wish expressed in Keats’s last sonnet:

Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art—

Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night.

Dwellers by the sea cannot fail to be impressed by the sight of its ceaseless ebb and flow,

and are apt, on the principles of that rude philosophy of sympathy and resemblance which

here engages our attention, to trace a subtle relation, a secret harmony, between its tides and

the life of man, of animals, and of plants. In the flowing tide they see not merely a symbol, but



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 33?a cause of exuberance, of prosperity, and of life, while in the ebbing tide they discern a real

agent as well as a melancholy emblem of failure, of weakness, and of death. The Breton

peasant fancies that clover sown when the tide is coming in will grow well, but that if the plant

be sown at low water or when the tide is going out, it will never reach maturity, and that the

cows which feed on it will burst. His wife believes that the best butter is made when the tide

has just turned and is beginning to flow, that milk which foams in the churn will go on foaming

till the hour of high water is past, and that water drawn from the well or milk extracted from

the cow while the tide is rising will boil up in the pot or saucepan and overflow into the fire.

According to some of the ancients, the skins of seals, even after they had been parted from

their bodies, remained in secret sympathy with the sea, and were observed to ruffle when the

tide was on the ebb. Another ancient belief, attributed to Aristotle, was that no creature can

die except at ebb tide. The belief, if we can trust Pliny, was confirmed by experience, so far

as regards human beings, on the coast of France. Philostratus also assures us that at Cadiz

dying people never yielded up the ghost while the water was high. A like fancy still lingers in

some parts of Europe. On the Cantabrian coast they think that persons who die of chronic or

acute disease expire at the moment when the tide begins to recede. In Portugal, all along the

coast of Wales, and on some parts of the coast of Brittany, a belief is said to prevail that peo-ple

are born when the tide comes in, and die when it goes out. Dickens attests the existence

of the same superstition in England. “People can’t die, along the coast,” said Mr. Pegotty,

“except when the tide’s pretty nigh out. They can’t be born, unless it’s pretty nigh in—not

properly born till flood.” The belief that most deaths happen at ebb tide is said to be held

along the east coast of England from Northumberland to Kent. Shakespeare must have been

familiar with it, for he makes Falstaff die “even just between twelve and one, e’en at the turn-ing

o’ the tide.” We meet the belief again on the Pacific coast of North America among the

Haidas. Whenever a good Haida is about to die he sees a canoe manned by some of his

dead friends, who come with the tide to bid him welcome to the spirit land. “Come with us

now,” they say, “for the tide is about to ebb and we must depart.” At Port Stephens, in New

South Wales, the natives always buried their dead at flood tide, never at ebb, lest the retiring

water should bear the soul of the departed to some distant country.

To ensure a long life the Chinese have recourse to certain complicated charms, which con-centrate

in themselves the magical essence emanating, on homoeopathic principles, from

times and seasons, from persons and from things. The vehicles employed to transmit these

happy influences are no other than grave-clothes. These are provided by many Chinese in

their lifetime, and most people have them cut out and sewn by an unmarried girl or a very

young woman, wisely calculating that, since such a person is likely to live a great many years

to come, a part of her capacity to live long must surely pass into the clothes, and thus stave

off for many years the time when they shall be put to their proper use. Further, the garments

are made by preference in a year which has an intercalary month; for to the Chinese mind it

seems plain that grave-clothes made in a year which is unusually long will possess the

capacity of prolonging life in an unusually high degree. Amongst the clothes there is one robe

in particular on which special pains have been lavished to imbue it with this priceless quality.

It is a long silken gown of the deepest blue colour, with the word “longevity” embroidered all

over it in thread of gold. To present an aged parent with one of these costly and splendid

mantles, known as “longevity garments,” is esteemed by the Chinese an act of filial piety and

a delicate mark of attention. As the garment purports to prolong the life of its owner, he often

wears it, especially on festive occasions, in order to allow the influence of longevity, created

by the many golden letters with which it is bespangled, to work their full effect upon his per-son.

On his birthday, above all, he hardly ever fails to don it, for in China common sense bids

a man lay in a large stock of vital energy on his birthday, to be expended in the form of health



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 34?and vigour during the rest of the year. Attired in the gorgeous pall, and absorbing its blessed

influence at every pore, the happy owner receives complacently the congratulations of friends

and relations, who warmly express their admiration of these magnificent cerements, and of

the filial piety which prompted the children to bestow so beautiful and useful a present on the

author of their being.

Another application of the maxim that like produces like is seen in the Chinese belief that the

fortunes of a town are deeply affected by its shape, and that they must vary according to the

character of the thing which that shape most nearly resembles. Thus it is related that long

ago the town of Tsuen-cheu-fu, the outlines of which are like those of a carp, frequently fell a

prey to the depredations of the neighbouring city of Yung-chun, which is shaped like a fishing-net,

until the inhabitants of the former town conceived the plan of erecting two tall pagodas in

their midst. These pagodas, which still tower above the city of Tsuen-cheu-fu, have ever since

exercised the happiest influence over its destiny by intercepting the imaginary net before it

could descend and entangle in its meshes the imaginary carp. Some forty years ago the wise

men of Shanghai were much exercised to discover the cause of a local rebellion. On careful

enquiry they ascertained that the rebellion was due to the shape of a large new temple which

had most unfortunately been built in the shape of a tortoise, an animal of the very worst char-acter.

The difficulty was serious, the danger was pressing; for to pull down the temple would

have been impious, and to let it stand as it was would be to court a succession of similar or

worse disasters. However, the genius of the local professors of geomancy, rising to the occa-sion,

triumphantly surmounted the difficulty and obviated the danger. By filling up two wells,

which represented the eyes of the tortoise, they at once blinded that disreputable animal and

rendered him incapable of doing further mischief.

Sometimes homoeopathic or imitative magic is called in to annul an evil omen by accomplish-ing

it in mimicry. The effect is to circumvent destiny by substituting a mock calamity for a real

one. In Madagascar this mode of cheating the fates is reduced to a regular system. Here

every man’s fortune is determined by the day or hour of his birth, and if that happens to be an

unlucky one his fate is sealed, unless the mischief can be extracted, as the phrase goes, by

means of a substitute. The ways of extracting the mischief are various. For example, if a man

is born on the first day of the second month (February), his house will be burnt down when he

comes of age. To take time by the forelock and avoid this catastrophe, the friends of the

infant will set up a shed in a field or in the cattle-fold and burn it. If the ceremony is to be real-ly

effective, the child and his mother should be placed in the shed and only plucked, like

brands, from the burning hut before it is too late. Again, dripping November is the month of

tears, and he who is born in it is born to sorrow. But in order to disperse the clouds that thus

gather over his future, he has nothing to do but to take the lid off a boiling pot and wave it

about. The drops that fall from it will accomplish his destiny and so prevent the tears from

trickling from his eyes. Again, if fate has decreed that a young girl, still unwed, should see her

children, still unborn, descend before her with sorrow to the grave, she can avert the calamity

as follows. She kills a grasshopper, wraps it in a rag to represent a shroud, and mourns over

it like Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted. Moreover, she takes a

dozen or more other grasshoppers, and having removed some of their superfluous legs and

wings she lays them about their dead and shrouded fellow. The buzz of the tortured insects

and the agitated motions of their mutilated limbs represent the shrieks and contortions of the

mourners at a funeral. After burying the deceased grasshopper she leaves the rest to contin-ue

their mourning till death releases them from their pain; and having bound up her dishev-elled

hair she retires from the grave with the step and carriage of a person plunged in grief.

Thenceforth she looks cheerfully forward to seeing her children survive her; for it cannot be



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 35?that she should mourn and bury them twice over. Once more, if fortune has frowned on a

man at his birth and penury has marked him for her own, he can easily erase the mark in

question by purchasing a couple of cheap pearls, price three halfpence, and burying them.

For who but the rich of this world can thus afford to fling pearls away?

3. CONTAGIOUS MAGIC

Thus far we have been considering chiefly that branch of sympathetic magic which may be

called homoeopathic or imitative. Its leading principle, as we have seen, is that like produces

like, or, in other words, that an effect resembles its cause. The other great branch of sympa-thetic

magic, which I have called Contagious Magic, proceeds upon the notion that things

which have once been conjoined must remain ever afterwards, even when quite dissevered

from each other, in such a sympathetic relation that whatever is done to the one must similar-ly

affect the other. Thus the logical basis of Contagious Magic, like that of Homoeopathic

Magic, is a mistaken association of ideas; its physical basis, if we may speak of such a thing,

like the physical basis of Homoeopathic Magic, is a material medium of some sort which, like

the ether of modern physics, is assumed to unite distant objects and to convey impressions

from one to the other. The most familiar example of Contagious Magic is the magical sympa-thy

which is supposed to exist between a man and any severed portion of his person, as his

hair or nails; so that whoever gets possession of human hair or nails may work his will, at any

distance, upon the person from whom they were cut. This superstition is world-wide;

instances of it in regard to hair and nails will be noticed later on in this work.

Among the Australian tribes it was a common practice to knock out one or more of a boy’s

front teeth at those ceremonies of initiation to which every male member had to submit before

he could enjoy the rights and privileges of a full-grown man. The reason of the practice is

obscure; all that concerns us here is the belief that a sympathetic relation continued to exist

between the lad and his teeth after the latter had been extracted from his gums. Thus among

some of the tribes about the river Darling, in New South Wales, the extracted tooth was

placed under the bark of a tree near a river or water-hole; if the bark grew over the tooth, or if

the tooth fell into the water, all was well; but if it were exposed and the ants ran over it, the

natives believed that the boy would suffer from a disease of the mouth. Among the Murring

and other tribes of New South Wales the extracted tooth was at first taken care of by an old

man, and then passed from one headman to another, until it had gone all round the communi-ty,

when it came back to the lad’s father, and finally to the lad himself. But however it was

thus conveyed from hand to hand, it might on no account be placed in a bag containing magi-cal

substances, for to do so would, they believed, put the owner of the tooth in great danger.

The late Dr. Howitt once acted as custodian of the teeth which had been extracted from some

novices at a ceremony of initiation, and the old men earnestly besought him not to carry them

in a bag in which they knew that he had some quartz crystals. They declared that if he did so

the magic of the crystals would pass into the teeth, and so injure the boys. Nearly a year after

Dr. Howitt’s return from the ceremony he was visited by one of the principal men of the

Murring tribe, who had travelled some two hundred and fifty miles from his home to fetch

back the teeth. This man explained that he had been sent for them because one of the boys

had fallen into ill health, and it was believed that the teeth had received some injury which

had affected him. He was assured that the teeth had been kept in a box apart from any sub-stances,

like quartz crystals, which could influence them; and he returned home bearing the

teeth with him carefully wrapt up and concealed.

The Basutos are careful to conceal their extracted teeth, lest these should fall into the hands



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 36?of certain mythical beings who haunt graves, and who could harm the owner of the tooth by

working magic on it. In Sussex some fifty years ago a maid-servant remonstrated strongly

against the throwing away of children’s cast teeth, affirming that should they be found and

gnawed by any animal, the child’s new tooth would be, for all the world, like the teeth of the

animal that had bitten the old one. In proof of this she named old Master Simmons, who had

a very large pig’s tooth in his upper jaw, a personal defect that he always averred was caused

by his mother, who threw away one of his cast teeth by accident into the hog’s trough. A simi-lar

belief has led to practices intended, on the principles of homoeopathic magic, to replace

old teeth by new and better ones. Thus in many parts of the world it is customary to put

extracted teeth in some place where they will be found by a mouse or a rat, in the hope that,

through the sympathy which continues to subsist between them and their former owner, his

other teeth may acquire the same firmness and excellence as the teeth of these rodents. For

example, in Germany it is said to be an almost universal maxim among the people that when

you have had a tooth taken out you should insert it in a mouse’s hole. To do so with a child’s

milk-tooth which has fallen out will prevent the child from having toothache. Or you should go

behind the stove and throw your tooth backwards over your head, saying “Mouse, give me

your iron tooth; I will give you my bone tooth.” After that your other teeth will remain good. Far

away from Europe, at Raratonga, in the Pacific, when a child’s tooth was extracted, the fol-lowing

prayer used to be recited:

“Big rat! little rat!

Here is my old tooth.

Pray give me a new one.”

Then the tooth was thrown on the thatch of the house, because rats make their nests in the

decayed thatch. The reason assigned for invoking the rats on these occasions was that rats’

teeth were the strongest known to the natives.

Other parts which are commonly believed to remain in a sympathetic union with the body,

after the physical connexion has been severed, are the navel-string and the afterbirth, includ-ing

the placenta. So intimate, indeed, is the union conceived to be, that the fortunes of the

individual for good or evil throughout life are often supposed to be bound up with one or other

of these portions of his person, so that if his navel-string or afterbirth is preserved and proper-ly

treated, he will be prosperous; whereas if it be injured or lost, he will suffer accordingly.

Thus certain tribes of Western Australia believe that a man swims well or ill, according as his

mother at his birth threw the navel-string into water or not. Among the natives on the

Pennefather River in Queensland it is believed that a part of the child’s spirit (cho-i) stays in

the afterbirth. Hence the grandmother takes the afterbirth away and buries it in the sand. She

marks the spot by a number of twigs which she sticks in the ground in a circle, tying their tops

together so that the structure resembles a cone. When Anjea, the being who causes concep-tion

in women by putting mud babies into their wombs, comes along and sees the place, he

takes out the spirit and carries it away to one of his haunts, such as a tree, a hole in a rock,

or a lagoon where it may remain for years. But sometime or other he will put the spirit again

into a baby, and it will be born once more into the world. In Ponape, one of the Caroline

Islands, the navel-string is placed in a shell and then disposed of in such a way as shall best

adapt the child for the career which the parents have chosen for him; for example, if they

wish to make him a good climber, they will hang the navel-string on a tree. The Kei islanders

regard the navel-string as the brother or sister of the child, according to the sex of the infant.

They put it in a pot with ashes, and set it in the branches of a tree, that it may keep a watch-ful

eye on the fortunes of its comrade. Among the Bataks of Sumatra, as among many other



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 37?peoples of the Indian Archipelago, the placenta passes for the child’s younger brother or sis-ter,

the sex being determined by the sex of the child, and it is buried under the house.

According to the Bataks it is bound up with the child’s welfare, and seems, in fact, to be the

seat of the transferable soul, of which we shall hear something later on. The Karo Bataks

even affirm that of a man’s two souls it is the true soul that lives with the placenta under the

house; that is the soul, they say, which begets children.

The Baganda believe that every person is born with a double, and this double they identify

with the afterbirth, which they regard as a second child. The mother buries the afterbirth at

the root of a plantain tree, which then becomes sacred until the fruit has ripened, when it is

plucked to furnish a sacred feast for the family. Among the Cherokees the navel-string of a

girl is buried under a corn-mortar, in order that the girl may grow up to be a good baker; but

the navel-string of a boy is hung up on a tree in the woods, in order that he may be a hunter.

The Incas of Peru preserved the navel-string with the greatest care, and gave it to the child to

suck whenever it fell ill. In ancient Mexico they used to give a boy’s navel-string to soldiers, to

be buried by them on a field of battle, in order that the boy might thus acquire a passion for

war. But the navel-string of a girl was buried beside the domestic hearth, because this was

believed to inspire her with a love of home and taste for cooking and baking.

Even in Europe many people still believe that a person’s destiny is more or less bound up

with that of his navel-string or afterbirth. Thus in Rhenish Bavaria the navel-string is kept for a

while wrapt up in a piece of old linen, and then cut or pricked to pieces according as the child

is a boy or a girl, in order that he or she may grow up to be a skilful workman or a good

sempstress. In Berlin the midwife commonly delivers the dried navel-string to the father with a

strict injunction to preserve it carefully, for so long as it is kept the child will live and thrive and

be free from sickness. In Beauce and Perche the people are careful to throw the navel-string

neither into water nor into fire, believing that if that were done the child would be drowned or

burned.

Thus in many parts of the world the navel-string, or more commonly the afterbirth, is regarded

as a living being, the brother or sister of the infant, or as the material object in which the

guardian spirit of the child or part of its soul resides. Further, the sympathetic connexion sup-posed

to exist between a person and his afterbirth or navel-string comes out very clearly in

the widespread custom of treating the afterbirth or navel-string in ways which are supposed to

influence for life the character and career of the person, making him, if it is a man, a nimble

climber, a strong swimmer, a skilful hunter, or a brave soldier, and making her, if it is a

woman, a cunning sempstress, a good baker, and so forth. Thus the beliefs and usages con-cerned

with the afterbirth or placenta, and to a less extent with the navel-string, present a

remarkable parallel to the widespread doctrine of the transferable or external soul and the

customs founded on it. Hence it is hardly rash to conjecture that the resemblance is no mere

chance coincidence, but that in the afterbirth or placenta we have a physical basis (not nec-essarily

the only one) for the theory and practice of the external soul. The consideration of

that subject is reserved for a later part of this work.

A curious application of the doctrine of contagious magic is the relation commonly believed to

exist between a wounded man and the agent of the wound, so that whatever is subsequently

done by or to the agent must correspondingly affect the patient either for good or evil. Thus

Pliny tells us that if you have wounded a man and are sorry for it, you have only to spit on the

hand that gave the wound, and the pain of the sufferer will be instantly alleviated. In

Melanesia, if a man’s friends get possession of the arrow which wounded him, they keep it in



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 38?a damp place or in cool leaves, for then the inflammation will be trifling and will soon subside.

Meantime the enemy who shot the arrow is hard at work to aggravate the wound by all the

means in his power. For this purpose he and his friends drink hot and burning juices and

chew irritating leaves, for this will clearly inflame and irritate the wound. Further, they keep the

bow near the fire to make the wound which it has inflicted hot; and for the same reason they

put the arrow-head, if it has been recovered, into the fire. Moreover, they are careful to keep

the bow-string taut and to twang it occasionally, for this will cause the wounded man to suffer

from tension of the nerves and spasms of tetanus. “It is constantly received and avouched,”

says Bacon, “that the anointing of the weapon that maketh the wound will heal the wound

itself. In this experiment, upon the relation of men of credit (though myself, as yet, am not

fully inclined to believe it), you shall note the points following: first, the ointment wherewith

this is done is made of divers ingredients, whereof the strangest and hardest to come by are

the moss upon the skull of a dead man unburied, and the fats of a boar and a bear killed in

the act of generation.” The precious ointment compounded out of these and other ingredients

was applied, as the philosopher explains, not to the wound but to the weapon, and that even

though the injured man was at a great distance and knew nothing about it. The experiment,

he tells us, had been tried of wiping the ointment off the weapon without the knowledge of the

person hurt, with the result that he was presently in a great rage of pain until the weapon was

anointed again. Moreover, “it is affirmed that if you cannot get the weapon, yet if you put an

instrument of iron or wood resembling the weapon into the wound, whereby it bleedeth, the

anointing of that instrument will serve and work the effect.” Remedies of the sort which Bacon

deemed worthy of his attention are still in vogue in the eastern counties of England. Thus in

Suffolk if a man cuts himself with a bill-hook or a scythe he always takes care to keep the

weapon bright, and oils it to prevent the wound from festering. If he runs a thorn or, as he

calls it, a bush into his hand, he oils or greases the extracted thorn. A man came to a doctor

with an inflamed hand, having run a thorn into it while he was hedging. On being told that the

hand was festering, he remarked, “That didn’t ought to, for I greased the bush well after I

pulled it out.” If a horse wounds its foot by treading on a nail, a Suffolk groom will invariably

preserve the nail, clean it, and grease it every day, to prevent the foot from festering. Similarly

Cambridgeshire labourers think that if a horse has run a nail into its foot, it is necessary to

grease the nail with lard or oil and put it away in some safe place, or the horse will not recov-er.

A few years ago a veterinary surgeon was sent for to attend a horse which had ripped its

side open on the hinge of a farm gatepost. On arriving at the farm he found that nothing had

been done for the wounded horse, but that a man was busy trying to pry the hinge out of the

gatepost in order that it might be greased and put away, which, in the opinion of the

Cambridge wiseacres, would conduce to the recovery of the animal. Similarly Essex rustics

opine that, if a man has been stabbed with a knife, it is essential to his recovery that the knife

should be greased and laid across the bed on which the sufferer is lying. So in Bavaria you

are directed to anoint a linen rag with grease and tie it on the edge of the axe that cut you,

taking care to keep the sharp edge upwards. As the grease on the axe dries, your wound

heals. Similarly in the Harz Mountains they say that if you cut yourself, you ought to smear

the knife or the scissors with fat and put the instrument away in a dry place in the name of

the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. As the knife dries, the wound heals. Other peo-ple,

however, in Germany say that you should stick the knife in some damp place in the

ground, and that your hurt will heal as the knife rusts. Others again, in Bavaria, recommend

you to smear the axe or whatever it is with blood and put it under the eaves.

The train of reasoning which thus commends itself to English and German rustics, in common

with the savages of Melanesia and America, is carried a step further by the aborigines of

Central Australia, who conceive that under certain circumstances the near relations of a



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 39?wounded man must grease themselves, restrict their diet, and regulate their behaviour in

other ways in order to ensure his recovery. Thus when a lad has been circumcised and the

wound is not yet healed, his mother may not eat opossum, or a certain kind of lizard, or car-pet

snake, or any kind of fat, for otherwise she would retard the healing of the boy’s wound.

Every day she greases her digging-sticks and never lets them out of her sight; at night she

sleeps with them close to her head. No one is allowed to touch them. Every day also she

rubs her body all over with grease, as in some way this is believed to help her son’s recovery.

Another refinement of the same principle is due to the ingenuity of the German peasant. It is

said that when one of his pigs or sheep breaks its leg, a farmer of Rhenish Bavaria or Hesse

will bind up the leg of a chair with bandages and splints in due form. For some days there-after

no one may sit on that chair, move it, or knock up against it; for to do so would pain the

injured pig or sheep and hinder the cure. In this last case it is clear that we have passed

wholly out of the region of contagious magic and into the region of homoeopathic or imitative

magic; the chair-leg, which is treated instead of the beast’s leg, in no sense belongs to the

animal, and the application of bandages to it is a mere simulation of the treatment which a

more rational surgery would bestow on the real patient.

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 hap-pened,

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.



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 40?Again, magic may be wrought on a man sympathetically, not only through his clothes and

severed parts of himself, but also through the impressions left by his body in sand or earth. In

particular, it is a world-wide superstition that by injuring footprints you injure the feet that

made them. Thus the natives of South-eastern Australia think that they can lame a man by

placing sharp pieces of quartz, glass, bone, or charcoal in his footprints. Rheumatic pains are

often attributed by them to this cause. Seeing a Tatungolung man very lame, Mr. Howitt asked

him what was the matter. He said, “some fellow has put bottle in my foot.” He was suffering

from rheumatism, but believed that an enemy had found his foot-track and had buried it in a

piece of broken bottle, the magical influence of which had entered his foot.

Similar practices prevail in various parts of Europe. Thus in Mecklenburg it is thought that if

you drive a nail into a man’s footprint he will fall lame; sometimes it is required that the nail

should be taken from a coffin. A like mode of injuring an enemy is resorted to in some parts of

France. It is said that there was an old woman who used to frequent Stow in Suffolk, and she

was a witch. If, while she walked, any one went after her and stuck a nail or a knife into her

footprint in the dust, the dame could not stir a step till it was withdrawn. Among the South

Slavs a girl will dig up the earth from the footprints of the man she loves and put it in a flower-pot.

Then she plants in the pot a marigold, a flower that is thought to be fadeless. And as its

golden blossom grows and blooms and never fades, so shall her sweetheart’s love grow and

bloom, and never, never fade. Thus the love-spell acts on the man through the earth he trod

on. An old Danish mode of concluding a treaty was based on the same idea of the sympa-thetic

connexion between a man and his footprints: the covenanting parties sprinkled each

other’s footprints with their own blood, thus giving a pledge of fidelity. In ancient Greece

superstitions of the same sort seem to have been current, for it was thought that if a horse

stepped on the track of a wolf he was seized with numbness; and a maxim ascribed to

Pythagoras forbade people to pierce a man’s footprints with a nail or a knife.

The same superstition is turned to account by hunters in many parts of the world for the pur-pose

of running down the game. Thus a German huntsman will stick a nail taken from a coffin

into the fresh spoor of the quarry, believing that this will hinder the animal from escaping. The

aborigines of Victoria put hot embers in the tracks of the animals they were pursuing.

Hottentot hunters throw into the air a handful of sand taken from the footprints of the game,

believing that this will bring the animal down. Thompson Indians used to lay charms on the

tracks of wounded deer; after that they deemed it superfluous to pursue the animal any fur-ther

that day, for being thus charmed it could not travel far and would soon die. Similarly,

Ojebway Indians placed “medicine” on the track of the first deer or bear they met with, sup-posing

that this would soon bring the animal into sight, even if it were two or three days’ jour-ney

off; for this charm had power to compress a journey of several days into a few hours.

Ewe hunters of West Africa stab the footprints of game with a sharp-pointed stick in order to

maim the quarry and allow them to come up with it.

But though the footprint is the most obvious it is not the only impression made by the body

through which magic may be wrought on a man. The aborigines of South-eastern Australia

believe that a man may be injured by burying sharp fragments of quartz, glass, and so forth in

the mark made by his reclining body; the magical virtue of these sharp things enters his body

and causes those acute pains which the ignorant European puts down to rheumatism. We

can now understand why it was a maxim with the Pythagoreans that in rising from bed you

should smooth away the impression left by your body on the bed-clothes. The rule was simply

an old precaution against magic, forming part of a whole code of superstitious maxims which

antiquity fathered on Pythagoras, though doubtless they were familiar to the barbarous forefa-

-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page

41?thers of the Greeks long before the time of that philosopher.

4. THE MAGICIAN’S PROGRESS

We have now concluded our examination of the general principles of sympathetic magic. The

examples by which I have illustrated them have been drawn for the most part from what may

be called private magic, that is from magical rites and incantations practised for the benefit or

the injury of individuals. But in savage society there is commonly to be found in addition what

we may call public magic, that is, sorcery practised for the benefit of the whole community.

Wherever ceremonies of this sort are observed for the common good, it is obvious that the

magician ceases to be merely a private practitioner and becomes to some extent a public

functionary. The development of such a class of functionaries is of great importance for the

political as well as the religious evolution of society. For when the welfare of the tribe is sup-posed

to depend on the performance of these magical rites, the magician rises into a position

of much influence and repute, and may readily acquire the rank and authority of a chief or

king. The profession accordingly draws into its ranks some of the ablest and most ambitious

men of the tribe, because it holds out to them a prospect of honour, wealth, and power such

as hardly any other career could offer. The acuter minds perceive how easy it is to dupe their

weaker brother and to play on his superstition for their own advantage. Not that the sorcerer

is always a knave and impostor; he is often sincerely convinced that he really possesses

those wonderful powers which the credulity of his fellows ascribes to him. But the more saga-cious

he is, the more likely he is to see through the fallacies which impose on duller wits.

Thus the ablest members of the profession must tend to be more or less conscious

deceivers; and it is just these men who in virtue of their superior ability will generally come to

the top and win for themselves positions of the highest dignity and the most commanding

authority. The pitfalls which beset the path of the professional sorcerer are many, and as a

rule only the man of coolest head and sharpest wit will be able to steer his way through them

safely. For it must always be remembered that every single profession and claim put forward

by the magician as such is false; not one of them can be maintained without deception, con-scious

or unconscious. Accordingly the sorcerer who sincerely believes in his own extrava-gant

pretensions is in far greater peril and is much more likely to be cut short in his career

than the deliberate impostor. The honest wizard always expects that his charms and incanta-tions

will produce their supposed effect; and when they fail, not only really, as they always do,

but conspicuously and disastrously, as they often do, he is taken aback: he is not, like his

knavish colleague, ready with a plausible excuse to account for the failure, and before he can

find one he may be knocked on the head by his disappointed and angry employers.

The general result is that at this stage of social evolution the supreme power tends to fall into

the hands of men of the keenest intelligence and the most unscrupulous character. If we

could balance the harm they do by their knavery against the benefits they confer by their

superior sagacity, it might well be found that the good greatly outweighed the evil. For more

mischief has probably been wrought in the world by honest fools in high places than by intelli-gent

rascals. Once your shrewd rogue has attained the height of his ambition, and has no

longer any selfish end to further, he may, and often does, turn his talents, his experience, his

resources, to the service of the public. Many men who have been least scrupulous in the

acquisition of power have been most beneficent in the use of it, whether the power they

aimed at and won was that of wealth, political authority, or what not. In the field of politics the

wily intriguer, the ruthless victor, may end by being a wise and magnanimous ruler, blessed in

his lifetime, lamented at his death, admired and applauded by posterity. Such men, to take

two of the most conspicuous instances, were Julius Caesar and Augustus. But once a fool



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 42?always a fool, and the greater the power in his hands the more disastrous is likely to be the

use he makes of it. The heaviest calamity in English history, the breach with America, might

never have occurred if George the Third had not been an honest dullard.

Thus, so far as the public profession of magic affected the constitution of savage society, it

tended to place the control of affairs in the hands of the ablest man: it shifted the balance of

power from the many to the one: it substituted a monarchy for a democracy, or rather for an

oligarchy of old men; for in general the savage community is ruled, not by the whole body of

adult males, but by a council of elders. The change, by whatever causes produced, and what-ever

the character of the early rulers, was on the whole very beneficial. For the rise of monar-chy

appears to be an essential condition of the emergence of mankind from savagery. No

human being is so hide-bound by custom and tradition as your democratic savage; in no state

of society consequently is progress so slow and difficult. The old notion that the savage is the

freest of mankind is the reverse of the truth. He is a slave, not indeed to a visible master, but

to the past, to the spirits of his dead forefathers, who haunt his steps from birth to death, and

rule him with a rod of iron. What they did is the pattern of right, the unwritten law to which he

yields a blind unquestioning obedience. The least possible scope is thus afforded to superior

talent to change old customs for the better. The ablest man is dragged down by the weakest

and dullest, who necessarily sets the standard, since he cannot rise, while the other can fall.

The surface of such a society presents a uniform dead level, so far as it is humanly possible

to reduce the natural inequalities, the immeasurable real differences of inborn capacity and

temper, to a false superficial appearance of equality. From this low and stagnant condition of

affairs, which demagogues and dreamers in later times have lauded as the ideal state, the

Golden Age, of humanity, everything that helps to raise society by opening a career to talent

and proportioning the degrees of authority to men’s natural abilities, deserves to be welcomed

by all who have the real good of their fellows at heart. Once these elevating influences have

begun to operate—and they cannot be for ever suppressed—the progress of civilisation

becomes comparatively rapid. The rise of one man to supreme power enables him to carry

through changes in a single lifetime which previously many generations might not have suf-ficed

to effect; and if, as will often happen, he is a man of intellect and energy above the com-mon,

he will readily avail himself of the opportunity. Even the whims and caprices of a tyrant

may be of service in breaking the chain of custom which lies so heavy on the savage. And as

soon as the tribe ceases to be swayed by the timid and divided counsels of the elders, and

yields to the direction of a single strong and resolute mind, it becomes formidable to its neigh-bours

and enters on a career of aggrandisement, which at an early stage of history is often

highly favourable to social, industrial, and intellectual progress. For extending its sway, partly

by force of arms, partly by the voluntary submission of weaker tribes, the community soon

acquires wealth and slaves, both of which, by relieving some classes from the perpetual

struggle for a bare subsistence, afford them an opportunity of devoting themselves to that dis-interested

pursuit of knowledge which is the noblest and most powerful instrument to amelio-rate

the lot of man.

Intellectual progress, which reveals itself in the growth of art and science and the spread of

more liberal views, cannot be dissociated from industrial or economic progress, and that in its

turn receives an immense impulse from conquest and empire. It is no mere accident that the

most vehement outbursts of activity of the human mind have followed close on the heels of

victory, and that the great conquering races of the world have commonly done most to

advance and spread civilisation, thus healing in peace the wounds they inflicted in war. The

Babylonians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs are our witnesses in the past: we may yet

live to see a similar outburst in Japan. Nor, to remount the stream of history to its sources, is



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 43?it an accident that all the first great strides towards civilisation have been made under despot-ic

and theocratic governments, like those of Egypt, Babylon, and Peru, where the supreme

ruler claimed and received the servile allegiance of his subjects in the double character of a

king and a god. It is hardly too much to say that at this early epoch despotism is the best

friend of humanity and, paradoxical as it may sound, of liberty. For after all there is more liber-ty

in the best sense—liberty to think our own thoughts and to fashion our own destinies—

under the most absolute despotism, the most grinding tyranny, than under the apparent free-dom

of savage life, where the individual’s lot is cast from the cradle to the grave in the iron

mould of hereditary custom.

So far, therefore, as the public profession of magic has been one of the roads by which the

ablest men have passed to supreme power, it has contributed to emancipate mankind from

the thraldom of tradition and to elevate them into a larger, freer life, with a broader outlook on

the world. This is no small service rendered to humanity. And when we remember further that

in another direction magic has paved the way for science, we are forced to admit that if the

black art has done much evil, it has also been the source of much good; that if it is the child

of error, it has yet been the mother of freedom and truth.

Chapter IV

Magic and Religion

THE examples collected in the last chapter may suffice to illustrate the general principles of

sympathetic magic in its two branches, to which we have given the names of Homoeopathic

and Contagious respectively. In some cases of magic which have come before us we have

seen that the operation of spirits is assumed, and that an attempt is made to win their favour

by prayer and sacrifice. But these cases are on the whole exceptional; they exhibit magic

tinged and alloyed with religion. Wherever sympathetic magic occurs in its pure unadulterated

form, it assumes that in nature one event follows another necessarily and invariably without

the intervention of any spiritual or personal agency. Thus its fundamental conception is identi-cal

with that of modern science; underlying the whole system is a faith, implicit but real and

firm, in the order and uniformity of nature. The magician does not doubt that the same causes

will always produce the same effects, that the performance of the proper ceremony, accompa-nied

by the appropriate spell, will inevitably be attended by the desired result, unless, indeed,

his incantations should chance to be thwarted and foiled by the more potent charms of anoth-er

sorcerer. He supplicates no higher power: he sues the favour of no fickle and wayward

being: he abases himself before no awful deity. Yet his power, great as he believes it to be, is

by no means arbitrary and unlimited. He can wield it only so long as he strictly conforms to

the rules of his art, or to what may be called the laws of nature as conceived by him. To neg-lect

these rules, to break these laws in the smallest particular, is to incur failure, and may

even expose the unskilful practitioner himself to the utmost peril. If he claims a sovereignty

over nature, it is a constitutional sovereignty rigorously limited in its scope and exercised in

exact conformity with ancient usage. Thus the analogy between the magical and the scientific

conceptions of the world is close. In both of them the succession of events is assumed to be

perfectly regular and certain, being determined by immutable laws, the operation of which can

be foreseen and calculated precisely; the elements of caprice, of chance, and of accident are

banished from the course of nature. Both of them open up a seemingly boundless vista of

possibilities to him who knows the causes of things and can touch the secret springs that set

in motion the vast and intricate mechanism of the world. Hence the strong attraction which

magic and science alike have exercised on the human mind; hence the powerful stimulus that

both have given to the pursuit of knowledge. They lure the weary enquirer, the footsore seek-

-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page

44?er, on through the wilderness of disappointment in the present by their endless promises of

the future: they take him up to the top of an exceeding high mountain and show him, beyond

the dark clouds and rolling mists at his feet, a vision of the celestial city, far off, it may be, but

radiant with unearthly splendour, bathed in the light of dreams.

The fatal flaw of magic lies not in its general assumption of a sequence of events determined

by law, but in its total misconception of the nature of the particular laws which govern that

sequence. If we analyse the various cases of sympathetic magic which have been passed in

review in the preceding pages, and which may be taken as fair samples of the bulk, we shall

find, as I have already indicated, that they are all mistaken applications of one or other of two

great fundamental laws of thought, namely, the association of ideas by similarity and the

association of ideas by contiguity in space or time. A mistaken association of similar ideas

produces homoeopathic or imitative magic: a mistaken association of contiguous ideas pro-duces

contagious magic. The principles of association are excellent in themselves, and

indeed absolutely essential to the working of the human mind. Legitimately applied they yield

science; illegitimately applied they yield magic, the bastard sister of science. It is therefore a

truism, almost a tautology, to say that all magic is necessarily false and barren; for were it

ever to become true and fruitful, it would no longer be magic but science. From the earliest

times man has been engaged in a search for general rules whereby to turn the order of natu-ral

phenomena to his own advantage, and in the long search he has scraped together a great

hoard of such maxims, some of them golden and some of them mere dross. The true or gold-en

rules constitute the body of applied science which we call the arts; the false are magic.

If magic is thus next of kin to science, we have still to enquire how it stands related to reli-gion.

But the view we take of that relation will necessarily be coloured by the idea which we

have formed of the nature of religion itself; hence a writer may reasonably be expected to

define his conception of religion before he proceeds to investigate its relation to magic. There

is probably no subject in the world about which opinions differ so much as the nature of reli-gion,

and to frame a definition of it which would satisfy every one must obviously be impossi-ble.

All that a writer can do is, first, to say clearly what he means by religion, and afterwards

to employ the word consistently in that sense throughout his work. By religion, then, I under-stand

a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man which are believed to direct and

control the course of nature and of human life. Thus defined, religion consists of two ele-ments,

a theoretical and a practical, namely, a belief in powers higher than man and an

attempt to propitiate or please them. Of the two, belief clearly comes first, since we must

believe in the existence of a divine being before we can attempt to please him. But unless the

belief leads to a corresponding practice, it is not a religion but merely a theology; in the lan-guage

of St. James, “faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.” In other words, no man

is religious who does not govern his conduct in some measure by the fear or love of God. On

the other hand, mere practice, divested of all religious belief, is also not religion. Two men

may behave in exactly the same way, and yet one of them may be religious and the other not.

If the one acts from the love or fear of God, he is religious; if the other acts from the love or

fear of man, he is moral or immoral according as his behaviour comports or conflicts with the

general good. Hence belief and practice or, in theological language, faith and works are

equally essential to religion, which cannot exist without both of them. But it is not necessary

that religious practice should always take the form of a ritual; that is, it need not consist in the

offering of sacrifice, the recitation of prayers, and other outward ceremonies. Its aim is to

please the deity, and if the deity is one who delights in charity and mercy and purity more

than in oblations of blood, the chanting of hymns, and the fumes of incense, his worshippers

will best please him, not by prostrating themselves before him, by intoning his praises, and by



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 45?filling his temples with costly gifts, but by being pure and merciful and charitable towards

men, for in so doing they will imitate, so far as human infirmity allows, the perfections of the

divine nature. It was this ethical side of religion which the Hebrew prophets, inspired with a

noble ideal of God’s goodness and holiness, were never weary of inculcating. Thus Micah

says: “He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee,

but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” And at a later time

much of the force by which Christianity conquered the world was drawn from the same high

conception of God’s moral nature and the duty laid on men of conforming themselves to it.

“Pure religion and undefiled,” says St. James, “before God and the Father is this, To visit the

fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.”

But if religion involves, first, a belief in superhuman beings who rule the world, and, second,

an attempt to win their favour, it clearly assumes that the course of nature is to some extent

elastic or variable, and that we can persuade or induce the mighty beings who control it to

deflect, for our benefit, the current of events from the channel in which they would otherwise

flow. Now this implied elasticity or variability of nature is directly opposed to the principles of

magic as well as of science, both of which assume that the processes of nature are rigid and

invariable in their operation, and that they can as little be turned from their course by persua-sion

and entreaty as by threats and intimidation. The distinction between the two conflicting

views of the universe turns on their answer to the crucial question, Are the forces which gov-ern

the world conscious and personal, or unconscious and impersonal? Religion, as a concili-ation

of the superhuman powers, assumes the former member of the alternative. For all con-ciliation

implies that the being conciliated is a conscious or personal agent, that his conduct is

in some measure uncertain, and that he can be prevailed upon to vary it in the desired direc-tion

by a judicious appeal to his interests, his appetites, or his emotions. Conciliation is never

employed towards things which are regarded as inanimate, nor towards persons whose

behaviour in the particular circumstances is known to be determined with absolute certainty.

Thus in so far as religion assumes the world to be directed by conscious agents who may be

turned from their purpose by persuasion, it stands in fundamental antagonism to magic as

well as to science, both of which take for granted that the course of nature is determined, not

by the passions or caprice of personal beings, but by the operation of immutable laws acting

mechanically. In magic, indeed, the assumption is only implicit, but in science it is explicit. It is

true that magic often deals with spirits, which are personal agents of the kind assumed by

religion; but whenever it does so in its proper form, it treats them exactly in the same fashion

as it treats inanimate agents, that is, it constrains or coerces instead of conciliating or propiti-ating

them as religion would do. Thus it assumes that all personal beings, whether human or

divine, are in the last resort subject to those impersonal forces which control all things, but

which nevertheless can be turned to account by any one who knows how to manipulate them

by the appropriate ceremonies and spells. In ancient Egypt, for example, the magicians

claimed the power of compelling even the highest gods to do their bidding, and actually

threatened them with destruction in case of disobedience. Sometimes, without going quite so

far as that, the wizard declared that he would scatter the bones of Osiris or reveal his sacred

legend, if the god proved contumacious. Similarly in India at the present day the great Hindoo

trinity itself of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva is subject to the sorcerers, who, by means of their

spells, exercise such an ascendency over the mightiest deities, that these are bound submis-sively

to execute on earth below, or in heaven above, whatever commands their masters the

magicians may please to issue. There is a saying everywhere current in India: “The whole

universe is subject to the gods; the gods are subject to the spells (mantras); the spells to the

Brahmans; therefore the Brahmans are our gods.”



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 46?This radical conflict of principle between magic and religion sufficiently explains the relentless

hostility with which in history the priest has often pursued the magician. The haughty self-suf-ficiency

of the magician, his arrogant demeanour towards the higher powers, and his

unabashed claim to exercise a sway like theirs could not but revolt the priest, to whom, with

his awful sense of the divine majesty, and his humble prostration in presence of it, such

claims and such a demeanour must have appeared an impious and blasphemous usurpation

of prerogatives that belong to God alone. And sometimes, we may suspect, lower motives

concurred to whet the edge of the priest’s hostility. He professed to be the proper medium,

the true intercessor between God and man, and no doubt his interests as well as his feelings

were often injured by a rival practitioner, who preached a surer and smoother road to fortune

than the rugged and slippery path of divine favour.

Yet this antagonism, familiar as it is to us, seems to have made its appearance comparatively

late in the history of religion. At an earlier stage the functions of priest and sorcerer were

often combined or, to speak perhaps more correctly, were not yet differentiated from each

other. To serve his purpose man wooed the good-will of gods or spirits by prayer and sacri-fice,

while at the same time he had recourse to ceremonies and forms of words which he

hoped would of themselves bring about the desired result without the help of god or devil. In

short, he performed religious and magical rites simultaneously; he uttered prayers and incan-tations

almost in the same breath, knowing or recking little of the theoretical inconsistency of

his behaviour, so long as by hook or crook he contrived to get what he wanted. Instances of

this fusion or confusion of magic with religion have already met us in the practices of

Melanesians and of other peoples.

The same confusion of magic and religion has survived among peoples that have risen to

higher levels of culture. It was rife in ancient India and ancient Egypt; it is by no means

extinct among European peasantry at the present day. With regard to ancient India we are

told by an eminent Sanscrit scholar that “the sacrificial ritual at the earliest period of which we

have detailed information is pervaded with practices that breathe the spirit of the most primi-tive

magic.” Speaking of the importance of magic in the East, and especially in Egypt,

Professor Maspero remarks that “we ought not to attach to the word magic the degrading

idea which it almost inevitably calls up in the mind of a modern. Ancient magic was the very

foundation of religion. The faithful who desired to obtain some favour from a god had no

chance of succeeding except by laying hands on the deity, and this arrest could only be

effected by means of a certain number of rites, sacrifices, prayers, and chants, which the god

himself had revealed, and which obliged him to do what was demanded of him.”

Among the ignorant classes of modern Europe the same confusion of ideas, the same mix-ture

of religion and magic, crops up in various forms. Thus we are told that in France “the

majority of the peasants still believe that the priest possesses a secret and irresistible power

over the elements. By reciting certain prayers which he alone knows and has the right to

utter, yet for the utterance of which he must afterwards demand absolution, he can, on an

occasion of pressing danger, arrest or reverse for a moment the action of the eternal laws of

the physical world. The winds, the storms, the hail, and the rain are at his command and obey

his will. The fire also is subject to him, and the flames of a conflagration are extinguished at

his word.” For example, French peasants used to be, perhaps are still, persuaded that the

priests could celebrate, with certain special rites, a Mass of the Holy Spirit, of which the effi-cacy

was so miraculous that it never met with any opposition from the divine will; God was

forced to grant whatever was asked of Him in this form, however rash and importunate might

be the petition. No idea of impiety or irreverence attached to the rite in the minds of those



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 47?who, in some of the great extremities of life, sought by this singular means to take the king-dom

of heaven by storm. The secular priests generally refused to say the Mass of the Holy

Spirit; but the monks, especially the Capuchin friars, had the reputation of yielding with less

scruple to the entreaties of the anxious and distressed. In the constraint thus supposed by

Catholic peasantry to be laid by the priest upon the deity we seem to have an exact counter-part

of the power which the ancient Egyptians ascribed to their magicians. Again, to take

another example, in many villages of Provence the priest is still reputed to possess the faculty

of averting storms. It is not every priest who enjoys this reputation; and in some villages,

when a change of pastors takes place, the parishioners are eager to learn whether the new

incumbent has the power (pouder), as they call it. At the first sign of a heavy storm they put

him to the proof by inviting him to exorcise the threatening clouds; and if the result answers to

their hopes, the new shepherd is assured of the sympathy and respect of his flock. In some

parishes, where the reputation of the curate in this respect stood higher than that of his rec-tor,

the relations between the two have been so strained in consequence that the bishop has

had to translate the rector to another benefice. Again, Gascon peasants believe that to

revenge themselves on their enemies bad men will sometimes induce a priest to say a mass

called the Mass of Saint Sécaire. Very few priests know this mass, and three-fourths of those

who do know it would not say it for love or money. None but wicked priests dare to perform

the gruesome ceremony, and you may be quite sure that they will have a very heavy account

to render for it at the last day. No curate or bishop, not even the archbishop of Auch, can par-don

them; that right belongs to the pope of Rome alone. The Mass of Saint Sécaire may be

said only in a ruined or deserted church, where owls mope and hoot, where bats flit in the

gloaming, where gypsies lodge of nights, and where toads squat under the desecrated altar.

Thither the bad priest comes by night with his light o’ love, and at the first stroke of eleven he

begins to mumble the mass backwards, and ends just as the clocks are knelling the midnight

hour. His leman acts as clerk. The host he blesses is black and has three points; he conse-crates

no wine, but instead he drinks the water of a well into which the body of an unbaptized

infant has been flung. He makes the sign of the cross, but it is on the ground and with his left

foot. And many other things he does which no good Christian could look upon without being

struck blind and deaf and dumb for the rest of his life. But the man for whom the mass is said

withers away little by little, and nobody can say what is the matter with him; even the doctors

can make nothing of it. They do not know that he is slowly dying of the Mass of Saint Sécaire.

Yet though magic is thus found to fuse and amalgamate with religion in many ages and in

many lands, there are some grounds for thinking that this fusion is not primitive, and that

there was a time when man trusted to magic alone for the satisfaction of such wants as tran-scended

his immediate animal cravings. In the first place a consideration of the fundamental

notions of magic and religion may incline us to surmise that magic is older than religion in the

history of humanity. We have seen that on the one hand magic is nothing but a mistaken

application of the very simplest and most elementary processes of the mind, namely the

association of ideas by virtue of resemblance or contiguity; and that on the other hand religion

assumes the operation of conscious or personal agents, superior to man, behind the visible

screen of nature. Obviously the conception of personal agents is more complex than a simple

recognition of the similarity or contiguity of ideas; and a theory which assumes that the course

of nature is determined by conscious agents is more abstruse and recondite, and requires for

its apprehension a far higher degree of intelligence and reflection, than the view that things

succeed each other simply by reason of their contiguity or resemblance. The very beasts

associate the ideas of things that are like each other or that have been found together in their

experience; and they could hardly survive for a day if they ceased to do so. But who attrib-utes

to the animals a belief that the phenomena of nature are worked by a multitude of invisi-

-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page

48?ble animals or by one enormous and prodigiously strong animal behind the scenes? It is

probably no injustice to the brutes to assume that the honour of devising a theory of this latter

sort must be reserved for human reason. Thus, if magic be deduced immediately from ele-mentary

processes of reasoning, and be, in fact, an error into which the mind falls almost

spontaneously, while religion rests on conceptions which the merely animal intelligence can

hardly be supposed to have yet attained to, it becomes probable that magic arose before reli-gion

in the evolution of our race, and that man essayed to bend nature to his wishes by the

sheer force of spells and enchantments before he strove to coax and mollify a coy, capri-cious,

or irascible deity by the soft insinuation of prayer and sacrifice.

The conclusion which we have thus reached deductively from a consideration of the funda-mental

ideas of magic and religion is confirmed inductively by the observation that among the

aborigines of Australia, the rudest savages as to whom we possess accurate information,

magic is universally practised, whereas religion in the sense of a propitiation or conciliation of

the higher powers seems to be nearly unknown. Roughly speaking, all men in Australia are

magicians, but not one is a priest; everybody fancies he can influence his fellows or the

course of nature by sympathetic magic, but nobody dreams of propitiating gods by prayer and

sacrifice.

But if in the most backward state of human society now known to us we find magic thus con-spicuously

present and religion conspicuously absent, may we not reasonably conjecture that

the civilised races of the world have also at some period of their history passed through a

similar intellectual phase, that they attempted to force the great powers of nature to do their

pleasure before they thought of courting their favour by offerings and prayer—in short that,

just as on the material side of human culture there has everywhere been an Age of Stone, so

on the intellectual side there has everywhere been an Age of Magic? There are reasons for

answering this question in the affirmative. When we survey the existing races of mankind

from Greenland to Tierra del Fuego, or from Scotland to Singapore, we observe that they are

distinguished one from the other by a great variety of religions, and that these distinctions are

not, so to speak, merely coterminous with the broad distinctions of race, but descend into the

minuter subdivisions of states and commonwealths, nay, that they honeycomb the town, the

village, and even the family, so that the surface of society all over the world is cracked and

seamed, sapped and mined with rents and fissures and yawning crevasses opened up by the

disintegrating influence of religious dissension. Yet when we have penetrated through these

differences, which affect mainly the intelligent and thoughtful part of the community, we shall

find underlying them all a solid stratum of intellectual agreement among the dull, the weak,

the ignorant, and the superstitious, who constitute, unfortunately, the vast majority of

mankind. One of the great achievements of the nineteenth century was to run shafts down

into this low mental stratum in many parts of the world, and thus to discover its substantial

identity everywhere. It is beneath our feet—and not very far beneath them—here in Europe at

the present day, and it crops up on the surface in the heart of the Australian wilderness and

wherever the advent of a higher civilisation has not crushed it under ground. This universal

faith, this truly Catholic creed, is a belief in the efficacy of magic. While religious systems dif-fer

not only in different countries, but in the same country in different ages, the system of

sympathetic magic remains everywhere and at all times substantially alike in its principles and

practice. Among the ignorant and superstitious classes of modern Europe it is very much

what it was thousands of years ago in Egypt and India, and what it now is among the lowest

savages surviving in the remotest corners of the world. If the test of truth lay in a show of

hands or a counting of heads, the system of magic might appeal, with far more reason than

the Catholic Church, to the proud motto, “Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus,” as



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 49?the sure and certain credential of its own infallibility.

It is not our business here to consider what bearing the permanent existence of such a solid

layer of savagery beneath the surface of society, and unaffected by the superficial changes of

religion and culture, has upon the future of humanity. The dispassionate observer, whose

studies have led him to plumb its depths, can hardly regard it otherwise than as a standing

menace to civilisation. We seem to move on a thin crust which may at any moment be rent by

the subterranean forces slumbering below. From time to time a hollow murmur underground

or a sudden spirt of flame into the air tells of what is going on beneath our feet. Now and then

the polite world is startled by a paragraph in a newspaper which tells how in Scotland an

image has been found stuck full of pins for the purpose of killing an obnoxious laird or minis-ter,

how a woman has been slowly roasted to death as a witch in Ireland, or how a girl has

been murdered and chopped up in Russia to make those candles of human tallow by whose

light thieves hope to pursue their midnight trade unseen. But whether the influences that

make for further progress, or those that threaten to undo what has already been accom-plished,

will ultimately prevail; whether the impulsive energy of the minority or the dead

weight of the majority of mankind will prove the stronger force to carry us up to higher heights

or to sink us into lower depths, are questions rather for the sage, the moralist, and the states-man,

whose eagle vision scans the future, than for the humble student of the present and the

past. Here we are only concerned to ask how far the uniformity, the universality, and the per-manence

of a belief in magic, compared with the endless variety and the shifting character of

religious creeds, raises a presumption that the former represents a ruder and earlier phase of

the human mind, through which all the races of mankind have passed or are passing on their

way to religion and science.

If an Age of Religion has thus everywhere, as I venture to surmise, been preceded by an Age

of Magic, it is natural that we should enquire what causes have led mankind, or rather a por-tion

of them, to abandon magic as a principle of faith and practice and to betake themselves

to religion instead. When we reflect upon the multitude, the variety, and the complexity of the

facts to be explained, and the scantiness of our information regarding them, we shall be

ready to acknowledge that a full and satisfactory solution of so profound a problem is hardly

to be hoped for, and that the most we can do in the present state of our knowledge is to haz-ard

a more or less plausible conjecture. With all due diffidence, then, I would suggest that a

tardy recognition of the inherent falsehood and barrenness of magic set the more thoughtful

part of mankind to cast about for a truer theory of nature and a more fruitful method of turning

her resources to account. The shrewder intelligences must in time have come to perceive that

magical ceremonies and incantations did not really effect the results which they were

designed to produce, and which the majority of their simpler fellows still believed that they did

actually produce. This great discovery of the inefficacy of magic must have wrought a radical

though probably slow revolution in the minds of those who had the sagacity to make it. The

discovery amounted to this, that men for the first time recognised their inability to manipulate

at pleasure certain natural forces which hitherto they had believed to be completely within

their control. It was a confession of human ignorance and weakness. Man saw that he had

taken for causes what were no causes, and that all his efforts to work by means of these

imaginary causes had been vain. His painful toil had been wasted, his curious ingenuity had

been squandered to no purpose. He had been pulling at strings to which nothing was

attached; he had been marching, as he thought, straight to the goal, while in reality he had

only been treading in a narrow circle. Not that the effects which he had striven so hard to pro-duce

did not continue to manifest themselves. They were still produced, but not by him. The

rain still fell on the thirsty ground: the sun still pursued his daily, and the moon her nightly



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 50?journey across the sky: the silent procession of the seasons still moved in light and shadow,

in cloud and sunshine across the earth: men were still born to labour and sorrow, and still,

after a brief sojourn here, were gathered to their fathers in the long home hereafter. All things

indeed went on as before, yet all seemed different to him from whose eyes the old scales had

fallen. For he could no longer cherish the pleasing illusion that it was he who guided the earth

and the heaven in their courses, and that they would cease to perform their great revolutions

were he to take his feeble hand from the wheel. In the death of his enemies and his friends

he no longer saw a proof of the resistless potency of his own or of hostile enchantments; he

now knew that friends and foes alike had succumbed to a force stronger than any that he

could wield, and in obedience to a destiny which he was powerless to control.

Thus cut adrift from his ancient moorings and left to toss on a troubled sea of doubt and

uncertainty, his old happy confidence in himself and his powers rudely shaken, our primitive

philosopher must have been sadly perplexed and agitated till he came to rest, as in a quiet

haven after a tempestuous voyage, in a new system of faith and practice, which seemed to

offer a solution of his harassing doubts and a substitute, however precarious, for that sover-eignty

over nature which he had reluctantly abdicated. If the great world went on its way with-out

the help of him or his fellows, it must surely be because there were other beings, like him-self,

but far stronger, who, unseen themselves, directed its course and brought about all the

varied series of events which he had hitherto believed to be dependent on his own magic. It

was they, as he now believed, and not he himself, who made the stormy wind to blow, the

lightning to flash, and the thunder to roll; who had laid the foundations of the solid earth and

set bounds to the restless sea that it might not pass; who caused all the glorious lights of

heaven to shine; who gave the fowls of the air their meat and the wild beasts of the desert

their prey; who bade the fruitful land to bring forth in abundance, the high hills to be clothed

with forests, the bubbling springs to rise under the rocks in the valleys, and green pastures to

grow by still waters; who breathed into man’s nostrils and made him live, or turned him to

destruction by famine and pestilence and war. To these mighty beings, whose handiwork he

traced in all the gorgeous and varied pageantry of nature, man now addressed himself,

humbly confessing his dependence on their invisible power, and beseeching them of their

mercy to furnish him with all good things, to defend him from the perils and dangers by which

our mortal life is compassed about on every hand, and finally to bring his immortal spirit,

freed from the burden of the body, to some happier world, beyond the reach of pain and sor-row,

where he might rest with them and with the spirits of good men in joy and felicity for

ever.

In this, or some such way as this, the deeper minds may be conceived to have made the

great transition from magic to religion. But even in them the change can hardly ever have

been sudden; probably it proceeded very slowly, and required long ages for its more or less

perfect accomplishment. For the recognition of man’s powerlessness to influence the course

of nature on a grand scale must have been gradual; he cannot have been shorn of the whole

of his fancied dominion at a blow. Step by step he must have been driven back from his

proud position; foot by foot he must have yielded, with a sigh, the ground which he had once

viewed as his own. Now it would be the wind, now the rain, now the sunshine, now the thun-der,

that he confessed himself unable to wield at will; and as province after province of nature

thus fell from his grasp, till what had once seemed a kingdom threatened to shrink into a

prison, man must have been more and more profoundly impressed with a sense of his own

helplessness and the might of the invisible beings by whom he believed himself to be sur-rounded.

Thus religion, beginning as a slight and partial acknowledgment of powers superior

to man, tends with the growth of knowledge to deepen into a confession of man’s entire and



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 51?absolute dependence on the divine; his old free bearing is exchanged for an attitude of lowli-est

prostration before the mysterious powers of the unseen, and his highest virtue is to submit

his will to theirs: In la sua volontade è nostra pace. But this deepening sense of religion, this

more perfect submission to the divine will in all things, affects only those higher intelligences

who have breadth of view enough to comprehend the vastness of the universe and the little-ness

of man. Small minds cannot grasp great ideas; to their narrow comprehension, their pur-blind

vision, nothing seems really great and important but themselves. Such minds hardly rise

into religion at all. They are, indeed, drilled by their betters into an outward conformity with its

precepts and a verbal profession of its tenets; but at heart they cling to their old magical

superstitions, which may be discountenanced and forbidden, but cannot be eradicated by reli-gion,

so long as they have their roots deep down in the mental framework and constitution of

the great majority of mankind.

The reader may well be tempted to ask, How was it that intelligent men did not sooner detect

the fallacy of magic? How could they continue to cherish expectations that were invariably

doomed to disappointment? With what heart persist in playing venerable antics that led to

nothing, and mumbling solemn balderdash that remained without effect? Why cling to beliefs

which were so flatly contradicted by experience? How dare to repeat experiments that had

failed so often? The answer seems to be that the fallacy was far from easy to detect, the fail-ure

by no means obvious, since in many, perhaps in most cases, the desired event did actu-ally

follow, at a longer or shorter interval, the performance of the rite which was designed to

bring it about; and a mind of more than common acuteness was needed to perceive that,

even in these cases, the rite was not necessarily the cause of the event. A ceremony intend-ed

to make the wind blow or the rain fall, or to work the death of an enemy, will always be fol-lowed,

sooner or later, by the occurrence it is meant to bring to pass; and primitive man may

be excused for regarding the occurrence as a direct result of the ceremony, and the best pos-sible

proof of its efficacy. Similarly, rites observed in the morning to help the sun to rise, and

in spring to wake the dreaming earth from her winter sleep, will invariably appear to be

crowned with success, at least within the temperate zones; for in these regions the sun lights

his golden lamp in the east every morning, and year by year the vernal earth decks herself

afresh with a rich mantle of green. Hence the practical savage, with his conservative instincts,

might well turn a deaf ear to the subtleties of the theoretical doubter, the philosophic radical,

who presumed to hint that sunrise and spring might not, after all, be direct consequences of

the punctual performance of certain daily or yearly ceremonies, and that the sun might per-haps

continue to rise and trees to blossom though the ceremonies were occasionally intermit-ted,

or even discontinued altogether. These sceptical doubts would naturally be repelled by

the other with scorn and indignation as airy reveries subversive of the faith and manifestly

contradicted by experience. “Can anything be plainer,” he might say, “than that I light my two-penny

candle on earth and that the sun then kindles his great fire in heaven? I should be glad

to know whether, when I have put on my green robe in spring, the trees do not afterwards do

the same? These are facts patent to everybody, and on them I take my stand. I am a plain

practical man, not one of your theorists and splitters of hairs and choppers of logic. Theories

and speculation and all that may be very well in their way, and I have not the least objection

to your indulging in them, provided, of course, you do not put them in practice. But give me

leave to stick to facts; then I know where I am.” The fallacy of this reasoning is obvious to us,

because it happens to deal with facts about which we have long made up our minds. But let

an argument of precisely the same calibre be applied to matters which are still under debate,

and it may be questioned whether a British audience would not applaud it as sound, and

esteem the speaker who used it a safe man—not brilliant or showy, perhaps, but thoroughly

sensible and hard-headed. If such reasonings could pass muster among ourselves, need we



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 52?wonder that they long escaped detection by the savage?

Chapter V

The Magical Control of the Weather

1. THE PUBLIC MAGICIAN

THE reader may remember that we were led to plunge into the labyrinth of magic by a con-sideration

of two different types of man-god. This is the clue which has guided our devious

steps through the maze, and brought us out at last on higher ground, whence, resting a little

by the way, we can look back over the path we have already traversed and forward to the

longer and steeper road we have still to climb.

As a result of the foregoing discussion, the two types of human gods may conveniently be

distinguished as the religious and the magical man-god respectively. In the former, a being of

an order different from and superior to man is supposed to become incarnate, for a longer or

a shorter time, in a human body, manifesting his super-human power and knowledge by mira-cles

wrought and prophecies uttered through the medium of the fleshly tabernacle in which he

has deigned to take up his abode. This may also appropriately be called the inspired or incar-nate

type of man-god. In it the human body is merely a frail earthly vessel filled with a divine

and immortal spirit. On the other hand, a man-god of the magical sort is nothing but a man

who possesses in an unusually high degree powers which most of his fellows arrogate to

themselves on a smaller scale; for in rude society there is hardly a person who does not dab-ble

in magic. Thus, whereas a man-god of the former or inspired type derives his divinity from

a deity who has stooped to hide his heavenly radiance behind a dull mask of earthly mould, a

man-god of the latter type draws his extraordinary power from a certain physical sympathy

with nature. He is not merely the receptacle of a divine spirit. His whole being, body and soul,

is so delicately attuned to the harmony of the world that a touch of his hand or a turn of his

head may send a thrill vibrating through the universal framework of things; and conversely his

divine organism is acutely sensitive to such slight changes of environment as would leave

ordinary mortals wholly unaffected. But the line between these two types of man-god, howev-er

sharply we may draw it in theory, is seldom to be traced with precision in practice, and in

what follows I shall not insist on it.

We have seen that in practice the magic art may be employed for the benefit either of individ-uals

or of the whole community, and that according as it is directed to one or other of these

two objects it may be called private or public magic. Further, I pointed out that the public

magician occupies a position of great influence, from which, if he is a prudent and able man,

he may advance step by step to the rank of a chief or king. Thus an examination of public

magic conduces to an understanding of the early kingship, since in savage and barbarous

society many chiefs and kings appear to owe their authority in great measure to their reputa-tion

as magicians.

Among the objects of public utility which magic may be employed to secure, the most essen-tial

is an adequate supply of food. The examples cited in preceding pages prove that the pur-veyors

of food—the hunter, the fisher, the farmer—all resort to magical practices in the pursuit

of their various callings; but they do so as private individuals for the benefit of themselves and

their families, rather than as public functionaries acting in the interest of the whole people. It

is otherwise when the rites are performed, not by the hunters, the fishers, the farmers them-selves,

but by professional magicians on their behalf. In primitive society, where uniformity of



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 53?occupation is the rule, and the distribution of the community into various classes of workers

has hardly begun, every man is more or less his own magician; he practises charms and

incantations for his own good and the injury of his enemies. But a great step in advance has

been taken when a special class of magicians has been instituted; when, in other words, a

number of men have been set apart for the express purpose of benefiting the whole commu-nity

by their skill, whether that skill be directed to the healing of diseases, the forecasting of

the future, the regulation of the weather, or any other object of general utility. The impotence

of the means adopted by most of these practitioners to accomplish their ends ought not to

blind us to the immense importance of the institution itself. Here is a body of men relieved, at

least in the higher stages of savagery, from the need of earning their livelihood by hard manu-al

toil, and allowed, nay, expected and encouraged, to prosecute researches into the secret

ways of nature. It was at once their duty and their interest to know more than their fellows, to

acquaint themselves with everything that could aid man in his arduous struggle with nature,

everything that could mitigate his sufferings and prolong his life. The properties of drugs and

minerals, the causes of rain and drought, of thunder and lightning, the changes of the sea-sons,

the phases of the moon, the daily and yearly journeys of the sun, the motions of the

stars, the mystery of life, and the mystery of death, all these things must have excited the

wonder of these early philosophers, and stimulated them to find solutions of problems that

were doubtless often thrust on their attention in the most practical form by the importunate

demands of their clients, who expected them not merely to understand but to regulate the

great processes of nature for the good of man. That their first shots fell very far wide of the

mark could hardly be helped. The slow, the never-ending approach to truth consists in perpet-ually

forming and testing hypotheses, accepting those which at the time seem to fit the facts

and rejecting the others. The views of natural causation embraced by the savage magician no

doubt appear to us manifestly false and absurd; yet in their day they were legitimate hypothe-ses,

though they have not stood the test of experience. Ridicule and blame are the just meed,

not of those who devised these crude theories, but of those who obstinately adhered to them

after better had been propounded. Certainly no men ever had stronger incentives in the pur-suit

of truth than these savage sorcerers. To maintain at least a show of knowledge was

absolutely necessary; a single mistake detected might cost them their life. This no doubt led

them to practise imposture for the purpose of concealing their ignorance; but it also supplied

them with the most powerful motive for substituting a real for a sham knowledge, since, if you

would appear to know anything, by far the best way is actually to know it. Thus, however just-ly

we may reject the extravagant pretensions of magicians and condemn the deceptions

which they have practised on mankind, the original institution of this class of men has, take it

all in all, been productive of incalculable good to humanity. They were the direct predeces-sors,

not merely of our physicians and surgeons, but of our investigators and discoverers in

every branch of natural science. They began the work which has since been carried to such

glorious and beneficent issues by their successors in after ages; and if the beginning was

poor and feeble, this is to be imputed to the inevitable difficulties which beset the path of

knowledge rather than to the natural incapacity or wilful fraud of the men themselves.

2. THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF RAIN

Of the things which the public magician sets himself to do for the good of the tribe, one of the

chief is to control the weather and especially to ensure an adequate fall of rain. Water is an

essential of life, and in most countries the supply of it depends upon showers. Without rain

vegetation withers, animals and men languish and die. Hence in savage communities the

rain-maker is a very important personage; and often a special class of magicians exists for

the purpose of regulating the heavenly water-supply. The methods by which they attempt to



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 54?discharge the duties of their office are commonly, though not always, based on the principle

of homoeopathic or imitative magic. If they wish to make rain they simulate it by sprinkling

water or mimicking clouds: if their object is to stop rain and cause drought, they avoid water

and resort to warmth and fire for the sake of drying up the too abundant moisture. Such

attempts are by no means confined, as the cultivated reader might imagine, to the naked

inhabitants of those sultry lands like Central Australia and some parts of Eastern and

Southern Africa, where often for months together the pitiless sun beats down out of a blue

and cloudless sky on the parched and gaping earth. They are, or used to be, common

enough among outwardly civilised folk in the moister climate of Europe. I will now illustrate

them by instances drawn from the practice both of public and private magic.

Thus, for example, in a village near Dorpat, in Russia, when rain was much wanted, three

men used to climb up the fir-trees of an old sacred grove. One of them drummed with a ham-mer

on a kettle or small cask to imitate thunder; the second knocked two fire-brands together

and made the sparks fly, to imitate lightning; and the third, who was called “the rain-maker,”

had a bunch of twigs with which he sprinkled water from a vessel on all sides. To put an end

to drought and bring down rain, women and girls of the village of Ploska are wont to go naked

by night to the boundaries of the village and there pour water on the ground. In Halmahera, or

Gilolo, a large island to the west of New Guinea, a wizard makes rain by dipping a branch of

a particular kind of tree in water and then scattering the moisture from the dripping bough

over the ground. In New Britain the rain-maker wraps some leaves of a red and green striped

creeper in a banana-leaf, moistens the bundle with water, and buries it in the ground; then he

imitates with his mouth the plashing of rain. Amongst the Omaha Indians of North America,

when the corn is withering for want of rain, the members of the sacred Buffalo Society fill a

large vessel with water and dance four times round it. One of them drinks some of the water

and spirts it into the air, making a fine spray in imitation of a mist or drizzling rain. Then he

upsets the vessel, spilling the water on the ground; whereupon the dancers fall down and

drink up the water, getting mud all over their faces. Lastly, they squirt the water into the air,

making a fine mist. This saves the corn. In spring-time the Natchez of North America used to

club together to purchase favourable weather for their crops from the wizards. If rain was

needed, the wizards fasted and danced with pipes full of water in their mouths. The pipes

were perforated like the nozzle of a watering-can, and through the holes the rain-maker blew

the water towards that part of the sky where the clouds hung heaviest. But if fine weather was

wanted, he mounted the roof of his hut, and with extended arms, blowing with all his might,

he beckoned to the clouds to pass by. When the rains do not come in due season the people

of Central Angoniland repair to what is called the rain-temple. Here they clear away the grass,

and the leader pours beer into a pot which is buried in the ground, while he says, “Master

Chauta, you have hardened your heart towards us, what would you have us do? We must

perish indeed. Give your children the rains, there is the beer we have given you.” Then they

all partake of the beer that is left over, even the children being made to sip it. Next they take

branches of trees and dance and sing for rain. When they return to the village they find a ves-sel

of water set at the doorway by an old woman; so they dip their branches in it and wave

them aloft, so as to scatter the drops. After that the rain is sure to come driving up in heavy

clouds. In these practices we see a combination of religion with magic; for while the scattering

of the water-drops by means of branches is a purely magical ceremony, the prayer for rain

and the offering of beer are purely religious rites. In the Mara tribe of Northern Australia the

rain-maker goes to a pool and sings over it his magic song. Then he takes some of the water

in his hands, drinks it, and spits it out in various directions. After that he throws water all over

himself, scatters it about, and returns quietly to the camp. Rain is supposed to follow. The

Arab historian Makrizi describes a method of stopping rain which is said to have been resort-

-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page

55?ed to by a tribe of nomads called Alqamar in Hadramaut. They cut a branch from a certain

tree in the desert, set it on fire, and then sprinkled the burning brand with water. After that the

vehemence of the rain abated, just as the water vanished when it fell on the glowing brand.

Some of the Eastern Angamis of Manipur are said to perform a some-what similar ceremony

for the opposite purpose, in order, namely, to produce rain. The head of the village puts a

burning brand on the grave of a man who has died of burns, and quenches the brand with

water, while he prays that rain may fall. Here the putting out the fire with water, which is an

imitation of rain, is reinforced by the influence of the dead man, who, having been burnt to

death, will naturally be anxious for the descent of rain to cool his scorched body and assuage

his pangs.

Other people besides the Arabs have used fire as a means of stopping rain. Thus the Sulka

of New Britain heat stones red hot in the fire and then put them out in the rain, or they throw

hot ashes in the air. They think that the rain will soon cease to fall, for it does not like to be

burned by the hot stones or ashes. The Telugus send a little girl out naked into the rain with a

burning piece of wood in her hand, which she has to show to the rain. That is supposed to

stop the downpour. At Port Stevens in New South Wales the medicine-men used to drive

away rain by throwing fire-sticks into the air, while at the same time they puffed and shouted.

Any man of the Anula tribe in Northern Australia can stop rain by simply warming a green

stick in the fire, and then striking it against the wind.

In time of severe drought the Dieri of Central Australia, loudly lamenting the impoverished

state of the country and their own half-starved condition, call upon the spirits of their remote

predecessors, whom they call Mura-muras, to grant them power to make a heavy rain-fall.

For they believe that the clouds are bodies in which rain is generated by their own cere-monies

or those of neighbouring tribes, through the influence of the Mura-muras. The way in

which they set about drawing rain from the clouds is this. A hole is dug about twelve feet long

and eight or ten broad, and over this hole a conical hut of logs and branches is made. Two

wizards, supposed to have received a special inspiration from the Mura-muras, are bled by

an old and influential man with a sharp flint; and the blood, drawn from their arms below the

elbow, is made to flow on the other men of the tribe, who sit huddled together in the hut. At

the same time the two bleeding men throw handfuls of down about, some of which adheres to

the blood-stained bodies of their comrades, while the rest floats in the air. The blood is

thought to represent the rain, and the down the clouds. During the ceremony two large stones

are placed in the middle of the hut; they stand for gathering clouds and presage rain. Then

the wizards who were bled carry away the two stones for about ten or fifteen miles, and place

them as high as they can in the tallest tree. Meanwhile the other men gather gypsum, pound

it fine, and throw it into a water-hole. This the Mura-muras see, and at once they cause

clouds to appear in the sky. Lastly, the men, young and old, surround the hut, and, stooping

down, butt at it with their heads, like so many rams. Thus they force their way through it and

reappear on the other side, repeating the process till the hut is wrecked. In doing this they are

forbidden to use their hands or arms; but when the heavy logs alone remain, they are allowed

to pull them out with their hands. “The piercing of the hut with their heads symbolises the

piercing of the clouds; the fall of the hut, the fall of the rain.” Obviously, too, the act of placing

high up in trees the two stones, which stand for clouds, is a way of making the real clouds to

mount up in the sky. The Dieri also imagine that the foreskins taken from lads at circumcision

have a great power of producing rain. Hence the Great Council of the tribe always keeps a

small stock of foreskins ready for use. They are carefully concealed, being wrapt up in feath-ers

with the fat of the wild dog and of the carpet snake. A woman may not see such a parcel

opened on any account. When the ceremony is over, the foreskin is buried, its virtue being



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 56?exhausted. After the rains have fallen, some of the tribe always undergo a surgical operation,

which consists in cutting the skin of their chest and arms with a sharp flint. The wound is then

tapped with a flat stick to increase the flow of blood, and red ochre is rubbed into it. Raised

scars are thus produced. The reason alleged by the natives for this practice is that they are

pleased with the rain, and that there is a connexion between the rain and the scars.

Apparently the operation is not very painful, for the patient laughs and jokes while it is going

on. Indeed, little children have been seen to crowd round the operator and patiently take their

turn; then after being operated on, they ran away, expanding their little chests and singing for

the rain to beat upon them. However, they were not so well pleased next day, when they felt

their wounds stiff and sore. In Java, when rain is wanted, two men will sometimes thrash

each other with supple rods till the blood flows down their backs; the streaming blood repre-sents

the rain, and no doubt is supposed to make it fall on the ground. The people of

Egghiou, a district of Abyssinia, used to engage in sanguinary conflicts with each other, vil-lage

against village, for a week together every January for the purpose of procuring rain.

Some years ago the emperor Menelik forbade the custom. However, the following year the

rain was deficient, and the popular outcry so great that the emperor yielded to it, and allowed

the murderous fights to be resumed, but for two days a year only. The writer who mentions

the custom regards the blood shed on these occasions as a propitiatory sacrifice offered to

spirits who control the showers; but perhaps, as in the Australian and Javanese ceremonies,

it is an imitation of rain. The prophets of Baal, who sought to procure rain by cutting them-selves

with knives till the blood gushed out, may have acted on the same principle.

There is a widespread belief that twin children possess magical powers over nature, especial-ly

over rain and the weather. This curious superstition prevails among some of the Indian

tribes of British Columbia, and has led them often to impose certain singular restrictions or

taboos on the parents of twins, though the exact meaning of these restrictions is generally

obscure. Thus the Tsimshian Indians of British Columbia believe that twins control the weath-er;

therefore they pray to wind and rain, “Calm down, breath of the twins.” Further, they think

that the wishes of twins are always fulfilled; hence twins are feared, because they can harm

the man they hate. They can also call the salmon and the olachen or candle-fish, and so they

are known by a name which means “making plentiful.” In the opinion of the Kwakiutl Indians

of British Columbia twins are transformed salmon; hence they may not go near water, lest

they should be changed back again into the fish. In their childhood they can summon any

wind by motions of their hands, and they can make fair or foul weather, and also cure dis-eases

by swinging a large wooden rattle. The Nootka Indians of British Columbia also believe

that twins are somehow related to salmon. Hence among them twins may not catch salmon,

and they may not eat or even handle the fresh fish. They can make fair or foul weather, and

can cause rain to fall by painting their faces black and then washing them, which may repre-sent

the rain dripping from the dark clouds. The Shuswap Indians, like the Thompson Indians,

associate twins with the grizzly bear, for they call them “young grizzly bears.” According to

them, twins remain throughout life endowed with supernatural powers. In particular they can

make good or bad weather. They produce rain by spilling water from a basket in the air; they

make fine weather by shaking a small flat piece of wood attached to a stick by a string; they

raise storms by strewing down on the ends of spruce branches.

The same power of influencing the weather is attributed to twins by the Baronga, a tribe of

Bantu negroes who, inhabit the shores of Delagoa Bay in South-eastern Africa. They bestow

the name of Tilo—that is, the sky—on a woman who has given birth to twins, and the infants

themselves are called the children of the sky. Now when the storms which generally burst in

the months of September and October have been looked for in vain, when a drought with its



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 57?prospect of famine is threatening, and all nature, scorched and burnt up by a sun that has

shone for six months from a cloudless sky, is panting for the beneficent showers of the South

African spring, the women perform ceremonies to bring down the longed-for rain on the

parched earth. Stripping themselves of all their garments, they assume in their stead girdles

and head-dresses of grass, or short petticoats made of the leaves of a particular sort of

creeper. Thus attired, uttering peculiar cries and singing ribald songs, they go about from well

to well, cleansing them of the mud and impurities which have accumulated in them. The

wells, it may be said, are merely holes in the sand where a little turbid unwholesome water

stagnates. Further, the women must repair to the house of one of their gossips who has given

birth to twins, and must drench her with water, which they carry in little pitchers. Having done

so they go on their way, shrieking out their loose songs and dancing immodest dances. No

man may see these leaf-clad women going their rounds. If they meet a man, they maul him

and thrust him aside. When they have cleansed the wells, they must go and pour water on

the graves of their ancestors in the sacred grove. It often happens, too, that at the bidding of

the wizard they go and pour water on the graves of twins. For they think that the grave of a

twin ought always to be moist, for which reason twins are regularly buried near a lake. If all

their efforts to procure rain prove abortive, they will remember that such and such a twin was

buried in a dry place on the side of a hill. “No wonder,” says the wizard in such a case, “that

the sky is fiery. Take up his body and dig him a grave on the shore of the lake.” His orders are

at once obeyed, for this is supposed to be the only means of bringing down the rain.

Some of the foregoing facts strongly support an interpretation which Professor Oldenberg has

given of the rules to be observed by a Brahman who would learn a particular hymn of the

ancient Indian collection known as the Samaveda. The hymn, which bears the name of the

Sakvari song, was believed to embody the might of Indra’s weapon, the thunderbolt; and

hence, on account of the dreadful and dangerous potency with which it was thus charged, the

bold student who essayed to master it had to be isolated from his fellow-men, and to retire

from the village into the forest. Here for a space of time, which might vary, according to differ-ent

doctors of the law, from one to twelve years, he had to observe certain rules of life,

among which were the following. Thrice a day he had to touch water; he must wear black gar-ments

and eat black food; when it rained, he might not seek the shelter of a roof, but had to

sit in the rain and say, “Water is the Sakvari song”; when the lightning flashed, he said, “That

is like the Sakvari song”; when the thunder pealed, he said, “The Great One is making a great

noise.” He might never cross a running stream without touching water; he might never set

foot on a ship unless his life were in danger, and even then he must be sure to touch water

when he went on board; “for in water,” so ran the saying, “lies the virtue of the Sakvari song.”

When at last he was allowed to learn the song itself, he had to dip his hands in a vessel of

water in which plants of all sorts had been placed. If a man walked in the way of all these

precepts, the rain-god Parjanya, it was said, would send rain at the wish of that man. It is

clear, as Professor Oldenberg well points out, that “all these rules are intended to bring the

Brahman into union with water, to make him, as it were, an ally of the water powers, and to

guard him against their hostility. The black garments and the black food have the same signif-icance;

no one will doubt that they refer to the rain-clouds when he remembers that a black

victim is sacrificed to procure rain; ‘it is black, for such is the nature of rain.’ In respect of

another rain-charm it is said plainly, ‘He puts on a black garment edged with black, for such is

the nature of rain.’ We may therefore assume that here in the circle of ideas and ordinances

of the Vedic schools there have been preserved magical practices of the most remote antiqui-ty,

which were intended to prepare the rain-maker for his office and dedicate him to it.”

It is interesting to observe that where an opposite result is desired, primitive logic enjoins the



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 58?weather-doctor to observe precisely opposite rules of conduct. In the tropical island of Java,

where the rich vegetation attests the abundance of the rainfall, ceremonies for the making of

rain are rare, but ceremonies for the prevention of it are not uncommon. When a man is

about to give a great feast in the rainy season and has invited many people, he goes to a

weather-doctor and asks him to “prop up the clouds that may be lowering.” If the doctor con-sents

to exert his professional powers, he begins to regulate his behaviour by certain rules as

soon as his customer has departed. He must observe a fast, and may neither drink nor bathe;

what little he eats must be eaten dry, and in no case may he touch water. The host, on his

side, and his servants, both male and female, must neither wash clothes nor bathe so long as

the feast lasts, and they have all during its continuance to observe strict chastity. The doctor

seats himself on a new mat in his bedroom, and before a small oil-lamp he murmurs, shortly

before the feast takes place, the following prayer or incantation: “Grandfather and

Grandmother Sroekoel” (the name seems to be taken at random; others are sometimes

used), “return to your country. Akkemat is your country. Put down your water-cask, close it

properly, that not a drop may fall out.” While he utters this prayer the sorcerer looks upwards,

burning incense the while. So among the Toradjas the rain-doctor, whose special business it

is to drive away rain, takes care not to touch water before, during, or after the discharge of

his professional duties. He does not bathe, he eats with unwashed hands, he drinks nothing

but palm wine, and if he has to cross a stream he is careful not to step in the water. Having

thus prepared himself for his task he has a small hut built for himself outside of the village in

a rice-field, and in this hut he keeps up a little fire, which on no account may be suffered to go

out. In the fire he burns various kinds of wood, which are supposed to possess the property

of driving off rain; and he puffs in the direction from which the rain threatens to come, holding

in his hand a packet of leaves and bark which derive a similar cloud-compelling virtue, not

from their chemical composition, but from their names, which happen to signify something dry

or volatile. If clouds should appear in the sky while he is at work, he takes lime in the hollow

of his hand and blows it towards them. The lime, being so very dry, is obviously well adapted

to disperse the damp clouds. Should rain afterwards be wanted, he has only to pour water on

his fire, and immediately the rain will descend in sheets.

The reader will observe how exactly the Javanese and Toradja observances, which are

intended to prevent rain, form the antithesis of the Indian observances, which aim at produc-ing

it. The Indian sage is commanded to touch water thrice a day regularly as well as on vari-ous

special occasions; the Javanese and Toradja wizards may not touch it at all. The Indian

lives out in the forest, and even when it rains he may not take shelter; the Javanese and the

Toradja sit in a house or a hut. The one signifies his sympathy with water by receiving the rain

on his person and speaking of it respectfully; the others light a lamp or a fire and do their best

to drive the rain away. Yet the principle on which all three act is the same; each of them, by a

sort of childish make-believe, identifies himself with the phenomenon which he desires to pro-duce.

It is the old fallacy that the effect resembles its cause: if you would make wet weather,

you must be wet; if you would make dry weather, you must be dry.

In South-eastern Europe at the present day ceremonies are observed for the purpose of mak-ing

rain which not only rest on the same general train of thought as the preceding, but even in

their details resemble the ceremonies practised with the same intention by the Baronga of

Delagoa Bay. Among the Greeks of Thessaly and Macedonia, when a drought has lasted a

long time, it is customary to send a procession of children round to all the wells and springs

of the neighbourhood. At the head of the procession walks a girl adorned with flowers, whom

her companions drench with water at every halting-place, while they sing an invocation, of

which the following is part:



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 59?“Perperia all fresh bedewed,

Freshen all the neighbourhood;

By the woods, on the highway,

As thou goest, to God now pray:

O my God, upon the plain,

Send thou us a still, small rain;

That the fields may fruitful be,

And vines in blossom we may see;

That the grain be full and sound,

And wealthy grow the folks around.”

In time of drought the Serbians strip a girl to her skin and clothe her from head to foot in

grass, herbs, and flowers, even her face being hidden behind a veil of living green. Thus dis-guised

she is called the Dodola, and goes through the village with a troop of girls. They stop

before every house; the Dodola keeps turning herself round and dancing, while the other girls

form a ring about her singing one of the Dodola songs, and the housewife pours a pail of

water over her. One of the songs they sing runs thus:

“We go through the village;

The clouds go in the sky;

We go faster,

Faster go the clouds;

They have overtaken us,

And wetted the corn and the vine.”

At Poona in India, when rain is needed, the boys dress up one of their number in nothing but

leaves and call him King of Rain. Then they go round to every house in the village, where the

house-holder or his wife sprinkles the Rain King with water, and gives the party food of vari-ous

kinds. When they have thus visited all the houses, they strip the Rain King of his leafy

robes and feast upon what they have gathered.

Bathing is practised as a rain-charm in some parts of Southern and Western Russia.

Sometimes after service in church the priest in his robes has been thrown down on the

ground and drenched with water by his parishioners. Sometimes it is the women who, without

stripping off their clothes, bathe in crowds on the day of St. John the Baptist, while they dip in

the water a figure made of branches, grass, and herbs, which is supposed to represent the

saint. In Kursk, a province of Southern Russia, when rain is much wanted, the women seize a

passing stranger and throw him into the river, or souse him from head to foot. Later on we

shall see that a passing stranger is often taken for a deity or the personification of some natu-ral

power. It is recorded in official documents that during a drought in 1790 the peasants of

Scheroutz and Werboutz collected all the women and compelled them to bathe, in order that

rain might fall. An Armenian rain-charm is to throw the wife of a priest into the water and

drench her. The Arabs of North Africa fling a holy man, willy-nilly, into a spring as a remedy

for drought. In Minahassa, a province of North Celebes, the priest bathes as a rain-charm. In

Central Celebes when there has been no rain for a long time and the rice-stalks begin to

shrivel up, many of the villagers, especially the young folk, go to a neighbouring brook and

splash each other with water, shouting noisily, or squirt water on one another through bamboo

tubes. Sometimes they imitate the plump of rain by smacking the surface of the water with

their hands, or by placing an inverted gourd on it and drumming on the gourd with their fin-

-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page

60?gers.

Women are sometimes supposed to be able to make rain by ploughing, or pretending to

plough. Thus the Pshaws and Chewsurs of the Caucasus have a ceremony called “ploughing

the rain,” which they observe in time of drought. Girls yoke themselves to a plough and drag it

into a river, wading in the water up to their girdles. In the same circumstances Armenian girls

and women do the same. The oldest woman, or the priest’s wife, wears the priest’s dress,

while the others, dressed as men, drag the plough through the water against the stream. In

the Caucasian province of Georgia, when a drought has lasted long, marriageable girls are

yoked in couples with an ox-yoke on their shoulders, a priest holds the reins, and thus har-nessed

they wade through rivers, puddles, and marshes, praying, screaming, weeping, and

laughing. In a district of Transylvania when the ground is parched with drought, some girls

strip themselves naked, and, led by an older woman, who is also naked, they steal a harrow

and carry it across the fields to a brook, where they set it afloat. Next they sit on the harrow

and keep a tiny flame burning on each corner of it for an hour. Then they leave the harrow in

the water and go home. A similar rain-charm is resorted to in some parts of India; naked

women drag a plough across a field by night, while the men keep carefully out of the way, for

their presence would break the spell.

Sometimes the rain-charm operates through the dead. Thus in New Caledonia the rain-mak-ers

blackened themselves all over, dug up a dead body, took the bones to a cave, jointed

them, and hung the skeleton over some taro leaves. Water was poured over the skeleton to

run down on the leaves. They believed that the soul of the deceased took up the water, con-verted

it into rain, and showered it down again. In Russia, if common report may be believed,

it is not long since the peasants of any district that chanced to be afflicted with drought used

to dig up the corpse of some one who had drunk himself to death and sink it in the nearest

swamp or lake, fully persuaded that this would ensure the fall of the needed rain. In 1868 the

prospect of a bad harvest, caused by a prolonged drought, induced the inhabitants of a vil-lage

in the Tarashchansk district to dig up the body of a Raskolnik, or Dissenter, who had

died in the preceding December. Some of the party beat the corpse, or what was left of it,

about the head, exclaiming, “Give us rain!” while others poured water on it through a sieve.

Here the pouring of water through a sieve seems plainly an imitation of a shower, and

reminds us of the manner in which Strepsiades in Aristophanes imagined that rain was made

by Zeus. Sometimes, in order to procure rain, the Toradjas make an appeal to the pity of the

dead. Thus, in the village of Kalingooa, there is the grave of a famous chief, the grandfather

of the present ruler. When the land suffers from unseasonable drought, the people go to this

grave, pour water on it, and say, “O grandfather, have pity on us; if it is your will that this year

we should eat, then give rain.” After that they hang a bamboo full of water over the grave;

there is a small hole in the lower end of the bamboo, so that the water drips from it continual-ly.

The bamboo is always refilled with water until rain drenches the ground. Here, as in New

Caledonia, we find religion blent with magic, for the prayer to the dead chief, which is purely

religious, is eked out with a magical imitation of rain at his grave. We have seen that the

Baronga of Delagoa Bay drench the tombs of their ancestors, especially the tombs of twins,

as a raincharm. Among some of the Indian tribes in the region of the Orinoco it was custom-ary

for the relations of a deceased person to disinter his bones a year after burial, burn them,

and scatter the ashes to the winds, because they believed that the ashes were changed into

rain, which the dead man sent in return for his obsequies. The Chinese are convinced that

when human bodies remain unburied, the souls of their late owners feel the discomfort of

rain, just as living men would do if they were exposed without shelter to the inclemency of the

weather. These wretched souls, therefore, do all in their power to prevent the rain from falling,



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 61?and often their efforts are only too successful. Then drought ensues, the most dreaded of all

calamities in China, because bad harvests, dearth, and famine follow in its train. Hence it has

been a common practice of the Chinese authorities in time of drought to inter the dry bones of

the unburied dead for the purpose of putting an end to the scourge and conjuring down the

rain.

Animals, again, often play an important part in these weather-charms. The Anula tribe of

Northern Australia associate the dollar-bird with rain, and call it the rain-bird. A man who has

the bird for his totem can make rain at a certain pool. He catches a snake, puts it alive into

the pool, and after holding it under water for a time takes it out, kills it, and lays it down by the

side of the creek. Then he makes an arched bundle of grass stalks in imitation of a rainbow,

and sets it up over the snake. After that all he does is to sing over the snake and the mimic

rainbow; sooner or later the rain will fall. They explain this procedure by saying that long ago

the dollar-bird had as a mate at this spot a snake, who lived in the pool and used to make

rain by spitting up into the sky till a rainbow and clouds appeared and rain fell. A common

way of making rain in many parts of Java is to bathe a cat or two cats, a male and a female;

sometimes the animals are carried in procession with music. Even in Batavia you may from

time to time see children going about with a cat for this purpose; when they have ducked it in

a pool, they let it go.

Among the Wambugwe of East Africa, when the sorcerer desires to make rain, he takes a

black sheep and a black calf in bright sunshine, and has them placed on the roof of the com-mon

hut in which the people live together. Then he slits the stomachs of the animals and

scatters their contents in all directions. After that he pours water and medicine into a vessel; if

the charm has succeeded, the water boils up and rain follows. On the other hand, if the sor-cerer

wishes to prevent rain from falling, he withdraws into the interior of the hut, and there

heats a rock-crystal in a calabash. In order to procure rain the Wagogo sacrifice black fowls,

black sheep, and black cattle at the graves of dead ancestors, and the rain-maker wears

black clothes during the rainy season. Among the Matabele the rain-charm employed by sor-cerers

was made from the blood and gall of a black ox. In a district of Sumatra, in order to

procure rain, all the women of the village, scantily clad, go to the river, wade into it, and

splash each other with the water. A black cat is thrown into the stream and made to swim

about for a while, then allowed to escape to the bank, pursued by the splashing of the

women. The Garos of Assam offer a black goat on the top of a very high mountain in time of

drought. In all these cases the colour of the animal is part of the charm; being black, it will

darken the sky with rain-clouds. So the Bechuanas burn the stomach of an ox at evening,

because they say, “The black smoke will gather the clouds and cause the rain to come.” The

Timorese sacrifice a black pig to the Earth-goddess for rain, a white or red one to the Sun-god

for sunshine. The Angoni sacrifice a black ox for rain and a white one for fine weather.

Among the high mountains of Japan there is a district in which, if rain has not fallen for a long

time, a party of villagers goes in procession to the bed of a mountain torrent, headed by a

priest, who leads a black dog. At the chosen spot they tether the beast to a stone, and make

it a target for their bullets and arrows. When its life-blood bespatters the rocks, the peasants

throw down their weapons and lift up their voices in supplication to the dragon divinity of the

stream, exhorting him to send down forthwith a shower to cleanse the spot from its defile-ment.

Custom has prescribed that on these occasions the colour of the victim shall be black,

as an emblem of the wished-for rain-clouds. But if fine weather is wanted, the victim must be

white, without a spot.

The intimate association of frogs and toads with water has earned for these creatures a wide-

-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page

62?spread reputation as custodians of rain; and hence they often play a part in charms designed

to draw needed showers from the sky. Some of the Indians of the Orinoco held the toad to be

the god or lord of the waters, and for that reason feared to kill the creature. They have been

known to keep frogs under a pot and to beat them with rods when there was a drought. It is

said that the Aymara Indians often make little images of frogs and other aquatic animals and

place them on the tops of the hills as a means of bringing down rain. The Thompson Indians

of British Columbia and some people in Europe think that to kill a frog will cause rain to fall. In

order to procure rain people of low caste in the Central Provinces of India will tie a frog to a

rod covered with green leaves and branches of the nîm tree (Azadirachta Indica) and carry it

from door to door singing:

“Send soon, O frog, the jewel of water!

And ripen the wheat and millet in the field.”

The Kapus or Reddis are a large caste of cultivators and landowners in the Madras

Presidency. When rain fails, women of the caste will catch a frog and tie it alive to a new win-nowing

fan made of bamboo. On this fan they spread a few margosa leaves and go from

door to door singing, “Lady frog must have her bath. Oh! rain-god, give a little water for her at

least.” While the Kapu women sing this song, the woman of the house pours water over the

frog and gives an alms, convinced that by so doing she will soon bring rain down in torrents.

Sometimes, when a drought has lasted a long time, people drop the usual hocus-pocus of

imitative magic altogether, and being far too angry to waste their breath in prayer they seek

by threats and curses or even downright physical force to extort the waters of heaven from

the supernatural being who has, so to say, cut them off at the main. In a Japanese village,

when the guardian divinity had long been deaf to the peasants’ prayers for rain, they at last

threw down his image and, with curses loud and long, hurled it head foremost into a stinking

rice-field. “There,” they said, “you may stay yourself for a while, to see how you will feel after

a few days’ scorching in this broiling sun that is burning the life from our cracking fields.” In

the like circumstances the Feloupes of Senegambia cast down their fetishes and drag them

about the fields, cursing them till rain falls.

The Chinese are adepts in the art of taking the kingdom of heaven by storm. Thus, when rain

is wanted they make a huge dragon of paper or wood to represent the rain-god, and carry it

about in procession; but if no rain follows, the mock-dragon is execrated and torn to pieces.

At other times they threaten and beat the god if he does not give rain; sometimes they pub-licly

depose him from the rank of deity. On the other hand, if the wished-for rain falls, the god

is promoted to a higher rank by an imperial decree. In April 1888 the mandarins of Canton

prayed to the god Lung-wong to stop the incessant downpour of rain; and when he turned a

deaf ear to their petitions they put him in a lock-up for five days. This had a salutary effect.

The rain ceased and the god was restored to liberty. Some years before, in time of drought,

the same deity had been chained and exposed to the sun for days in the courtyard of his

temple in order that he might feel for himself the urgent need of rain. So when the Siamese

need rain, they set out their idols in the blazing sun; but if they want dry weather, they unroof

the temples and let the rain pour down on the idols. They think that the inconvenience to

which the gods are thus subjected will induce them to grant the wishes of their worshippers.

The reader may smile at the meteorology of the Far East; but precisely similar modes of

procuring rain have been resorted to in Christian Europe within our own lifetime. By the end

of April 1893 there was great distress in Sicily for lack of water. The drought had lasted six



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 63?months. Every day the sun rose and set in a sky of cloudless blue. The gardens of the Conca

d’Oro, which surround Palermo with a magnificent belt of verdure, were withering. Food was

becoming scarce. The people were in great alarm. All the most approved methods of procur-ing

rain had been tried without effect. Processions had traversed the streets and the fields.

Men, women, and children, telling their beads, had lain whole nights before the holy images.

Consecrated candles had burned day and night in the churches. Palm branches, blessed on

Palm Sunday, had been hung on the trees. At Solaparuta, in accordance with a very old cus-tom,

the dust swept from the churches on Palm Sunday had been spread on the fields. In

ordinary years these holy sweepings preserve the crops; but that year, if you will believe me,

they had no effect whatever. At Nicosia the inhabitants, bare-headed and bare-foot, carried

the crucifixes through all the wards of the town and scourged each other with iron whips. It

was all in vain. Even the great St. Francis of Paolo himself, who annually performs the mira-cle

of rain and is carried every spring through the market-gardens, either could not or would

not help. Masses, vespers, concerts, illuminations, fire-works—nothing could move him. At

last the peasants began to lose patience. Most of the saints were banished. At Palermo they

dumped St. Joseph in a garden to see the state of things for himself, and they swore to leave

him there in the sun till rain fell. Other saints were turned, like naughty children, with their

faces to the wall. Others again, stripped of their beautiful robes, were exiled far from their

parishes, threatened, grossly insulted, ducked in horse-ponds. At Caltanisetta the golden

wings of St. Michael the Archangel were torn from his shoulders and replaced with wings of

pasteboard; his purple mantle was taken away and a clout wrapt about him instead. At Licata

the patron saint, St. Angelo, fared even worse, for he was left without any garments at all; he

was reviled, he was put in irons, he was threatened with drowning or hanging. “Rain or the

rope!” roared the angry people at him, as they shook their fists in his face.

Sometimes an appeal is made to the pity of the gods. When their corn is being burnt up by

the sun, the Zulus look out for a “heaven bird,” kill it, and throw it into a pool. Then the heav-en

melts with tenderness for the death of the bird; “it wails for it by raining, wailing a funeral

wail.” In Zululand women sometimes bury their children up to the neck in the ground, and

then retiring to a distance keep up a dismal howl for a long time. The sky is supposed to melt

with pity at the sight. Then the women dig the children out and feel sure that rain will soon fol-low.

They say that they call to “the lord above” and ask him to send rain. If it comes they

declare that “Usondo rains.” In times of drought the Guanches of Teneriffe led their sheep to

sacred ground, and there they separated the lambs from their dams, that their plaintive bleat-ing

might touch the heart of the god. In Kumaon a way of stopping rain is to pour hot oil in the

left ear of a dog. The animal howls with pain, his howls are heard by Indra, and out of pity for

the beast’s sufferings the god stops the rain. Sometimes the Toradjas attempt to procure rain

as follows. They place the stalks of certain plants in water, saying, “Go and ask for rain, and

so long as no rain falls I will not plant you again, but there shall you die.” Also they string

some fresh-water snails on a cord, and hang the cord on a tree, and say to the snails, “Go

and ask for rain, and so long as no rain comes, I will not take you back to the water.” Then

the snails go and weep, and the gods take pity and send rain. However, the foregoing cere-monies

are religious rather than magical, since they involve an appeal to the compassion of

higher powers.

Stones are often supposed to possess the property of bringing on rain, provided they be

dipped in water or sprinkled with it, or treated in some other appropriate manner. In a

Samoan village a certain stone was carefully housed as the representative of the rain-making

god, and in time of drought his priests carried the stone in procession and dipped it in a

stream. Among the Ta-ta-thi tribe of New South Wales, the rain-maker breaks off a piece of



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 64?quartz-crystal and spits it towards the sky; the rest of the crystal he wraps in emu feathers,

soaks both crystal and feathers in water, and carefully hides them. In the Keramin tribe of

New South Wales the wizard retires to the bed of a creek, drops water on a round flat stone,

then covers up and conceals it. Among some tribes of North-western Australia the rain-maker

repairs to a piece of ground which is set apart for the purpose of rain-making. There he builds

a heap of stones or sand, places on the top of it his magic stone, and walks or dances round

the pile chanting his incantations for hours, till sheer exhaustion obliges him to desist, when

his place is taken by his assistant. Water is sprinkled on the stone and huge fires are kindled.

No layman may approach the sacred spot while the mystic ceremony is being performed.

When the Sulka of New Britain wish to procure rain they blacken stones with the ashes of

certain fruits and set them out, along with certain other plants and buds, in the sun. Then a

handful of twigs is dipped in water and weighted with stones, while a spell is chanted. After

that rain should follow. In Manipur, on a lofty hill to the east of the capital, there is a stone

which the popular imagination likens to an umbrella. When rain is wanted, the rajah fetches

water from a spring below and sprinkles it on the stone. At Sagami in Japan there is a stone

which draws down rain whenever water is poured on it. When the Wakondyo, a tribe of

Central Africa, desire rain, they send to the Wawamba, who dwell at the foot of snowy moun-tains,

and are the happy possessors of a “rain-stone.” In consideration of a proper payment,

the Wawamba wash the precious stone, anoint it with oil, and put it in a pot full of water. After

that the rain cannot fail to come. In the arid wastes of Arizona and New Mexico the Apaches

sought to make rain by carrying water from a certain spring and throwing it on a particular

point high up on a rock; after that they imagined that the clouds would soon gather, and that

rain would begin to fall.

But customs of this sort are not confined to the wilds of Africa and Asia or the torrid deserts of

Australia and the New World. They have been practised in the cool air and under the grey

skies of Europe. There is a fountain called Barenton, of romantic fame, in those “wild woods

of Broceliande,” where, if legend be true, the wizard Merlin still sleeps his magic slumber in

the hawthorn shade. Thither the Breton peasants used to resort when they needed rain. They

caught some of the water in a tankard and threw it on a slab near the spring. On Snowdon

there is a lonely tarn called Dulyn, or the Black Lake, lying “in a dismal dingle surrounded by

high and dangerous rocks.” A row of stepping-stones runs out into the lake, and if any one

steps on the stones and throws water so as to wet the farthest stone, which is called the Red

Altar, “it is but a chance that you do not get rain before night, even when it is hot weather.” In

these cases it appears probable that, as in Samoa, the stone is regarded as more or less

divine. This appears from the custom sometimes observed of dipping a cross in the Fountain

of Barenton to procure rain, for this is plainly a Christian substitute for the old pagan way of

throwing water on the stone. At various places in France it is, or used till lately to be, the

practice to dip the image of a saint in water as a means of procuring rain. Thus, beside the

old priory of Commagny, there is a spring of St. Gervais, whither the inhabitants go in proces-sion

to obtain rain or fine weather according to the needs of the crops. In times of great

drought they throw into the basin of the fountain an ancient stone image of the saint that

stands in a sort of niche from which the fountain flows. At Collobrières and Carpentras a simi-lar

practice was observed with the images of St. Pons and St. Gens respectively. In several

villages of Navarre prayers for rain used to be offered to St. Peter, and by way of enforcing

them the villagers carried the image of the saint in procession to the river, where they thrice

invited him to reconsider his resolution and to grant their prayers; then, if he was still obsti-nate,

they plunged him in the water, despite the remonstrances of the clergy, who pleaded

with as much truth as piety that a simple caution or admonition administered to the image

would produce an equally good effect. After this the rain was sure to fall within twenty-four



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 65?hours. Catholic countries do not enjoy a monopoly of making rain by ducking holy images in

water. In Mingrelia, when the crops are suffering from want of rain, they take a particularly

holy image and dip it in water every day till a shower falls; and in the Far East the Shans

drench the images of Buddha with water when the rice is perishing of drought. In all such

cases the practice is probably at bottom a sympathetic charm, however it may be disguised

under the appearance of a punishment or a threat.

Like other peoples, the Greeks and Romans sought to obtain rain by magic, when prayers

and processions had proved ineffectual. For example, in Arcadia, when the corn and trees

were parched with drought, the priest of Zeus dipped an oak branch into a certain spring on

Mount Lycaeus. Thus troubled, the water sent up a misty cloud, from which rain soon fell

upon the land. A similar mode of making rain is still practised, as we have seen, in Halmahera

near New Guinea. The people of Crannon in Thessaly had a bronze chariot which they kept

in a temple. When they desired a shower they shook the chariot and the shower fell. Probably

the rattling of the chariot was meant to imitate thunder; we have already seen that mock thun-der

and lightning form part of a rain-charm in Russia and Japan. The legendary Salmoneus,

King of Elis, made mock thunder by dragging bronze kettles behind his chariot, or by driving

over a bronze bridge, while he hurled blazing torches in imitation of lightning. It was his impi-ous

wish to mimic the thundering car of Zeus as it rolled across the vault of heaven. Indeed

he declared that he was actually Zeus, and caused sacrifices to be offered to himself as such.

Near a temple of Mars, outside the walls of Rome, there was kept a certain stone known as

the lapis manalis. In time of drought the stone was dragged into Rome, and this was sup-posed

to bring down rain immediately.

3. THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE SUN

As the magician thinks he can make rain, so he fancies he can cause the sun to shine, and

can hasten or stay its going down. At an eclipse the Ojebways used to imagine that the sun

was being extinguished. So they shot fire-tipped arrows in the air, hoping thus to rekindle his

expiring light. The Sencis of Peru also shot burning arrows at the sun during an eclipse, but

apparently they did this not so much to relight his lamp as to drive away a savage beast with

which they supposed him to be struggling. Conversely during an eclipse of the moon some

tribes of the Orinoco used to bury lighted brands in the ground; because, said they, if the

moon were to be extinguished, all fire on earth would be extinguished with her, except such

as was hidden from her sight. During an eclipse of the sun the Kamtchatkans were wont to

bring out fire from their huts and pray the great luminary to shine as before. But the prayer

addressed to the sun shows that this ceremony was religious rather than magical. Purely

magical, on the other hand, was the ceremony observed on similar occasions by the Chilcotin

Indians. Men and women tucked up their robes, as they do in travelling, and then leaning on

staves, as if they were heavy laden, they continued to walk in a circle till the eclipse was over.

Apparently they thought thus to support the failing steps of the sun as he trod his weary

round in the sky. Similarly in ancient Egypt the king, as the representative of the sun, walked

solemnly round the walls of a temple in order to ensure that the sun should perform his daily

journey round the sky without the interruption of an eclipse or other mishap. And after the

autumnal equinox the ancient Egyptians held a festival called “the nativity of the sun’s walk-ing-

stick,” because, as the luminary declined daily in the sky, and his light and heat dimin-ished,

he was supposed to need a staff on which to lean. In New Caledonia when a wizard

desires to make sunshine, he takes some plants and corals to the burial-ground, and fashions

them into a bundle, adding two locks of hair cut from a living child of his family, also two teeth

or an entire jawbone from the skeleton of an ancestor. He then climbs a mountain whose top



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 66?catches the first rays of the morning sun. Here he deposits three sorts of plants on a flat

stone, places a branch of dry coral beside them, and hangs the bundle of charms over the

stone. Next morning he returns to the spot and sets fire to the bundle at the moment when

the sun rises from the sea. As the smoke curls up, he rubs the stone with the dry coral,

invokes his ancestors and says: “Sun! I do this that you may be burning hot, and eat up all

the clouds in the sky.” The same ceremony is repeated at sunset. The New Caledonians also

make a drought by means of a disc-shaped stone with a hole in it. At the moment when the

sun rises, the wizard holds the stone in his hand and passes a burning brand repeatedly into

the hole, while he says: “I kindle the sun, in order that he may eat up the clouds and dry up

our land, so that it may produce nothing.” The Banks Islanders make sunshine by means of a

mock sun. They take a very round stone, called a vat loa or sunstone, wind red braid about it,

and stick it with owls’ feathers to represent rays, singing the proper spell in a low voice. Then

they hang it on some high tree, such as a banyan or a casuarina, in a sacred place.

The offering made by the Brahman in the morning is supposed to produce the sun, and we

are told that “assuredly it would not rise, were he not to make that offering.” The ancient

Mexicans conceived the sun as the source of all vital force; hence they named him

Ipalnemohuani, “He by whom men live.” But if he bestowed life on the world, he needed also

to receive life from it. And as the heart is the seat and symbol of life, bleeding hearts of men

and animals were presented to the sun to maintain him in vigour and enable him to run his

course across the sky. Thus the Mexican sacrifices to the sun were magical rather than reli-gious,

being designed, not so much to please and propitiate him, as physically to renew his

energies of heat, light, and motion. The constant demand for human victims to feed the solar

fire was met by waging war every year on the neighbouring tribes and bringing back troops of

captives to be sacrificed on the altar. Thus the ceaseless wars of the Mexicans and their cruel

system of human sacrifices, the most monstrous on record, sprang in great measure from a

mistaken theory of the solar system. No more striking illustration could be given of the disas-trous

consequences that may flow in practice from a purely speculative error. The ancient

Greeks believed that the sun drove in a chariot across the sky; hence the Rhodians, who

worshipped the sun as their chief deity, annually dedicated a chariot and four horses to him,

and flung them into the sea for his use. Doubtless they thought that after a year’s work his old

horses and chariot would be worn out. From a like motive, probably, the idolatrous kings of

Judah dedicated chariots and horses to the sun, and the Spartans, Persians, and

Massagetae sacrificed horses to him. The Spartans performed the sacrifice on the top of

Mount Taygetus, the beautiful range behind which they saw the great luminary set every

night. It was as natural for the inhabitants of the valley of Sparta to do this as it was for the

islanders of Rhodes to throw the chariot and horses into the sea, into which the sun seemed

to them to sink at evening. For thus, whether on the mountain or in the sea, the fresh horses

stood ready for the weary god where they would be most welcome, at the end of his day’s

journey.

As some people think they can light up the sun or speed him on his way, so others fancy they

can retard or stop him. In a pass of the Peruvian Andes stand two ruined towers on opposite

hills. Iron hooks are clamped into their walls for the purpose of stretching a net from one

tower to the other. The net is intended to catch the sun. Stories of men who have caught the

sun in a noose are widely spread. When the sun is going southward in the autumn, and sink-ing

lower and lower in the Arctic sky, the Esquimaux of Iglulik play the game of cat’s cradle in

order to catch him in the meshes of the string and so prevent his disappearance. On the con-trary,

when the sun is moving northward in the spring, they play the game of cup-and-ball to

hasten his return. When an Australian blackfellow wishes to stay the sun from going down till



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 67?he gets home, he puts a sod in the fork of a tree, exactly facing the setting sun. On the other

hand, to make it go down faster, the Australians throw sand into the air and blow with their

mouths towards the sun, perhaps to waft the lingering orb westward and bury it under the

sands into which it appears to sink at night.

As some people imagine they can hasten the sun, so others fancy they can jog the tardy

moon. The natives of New Guinea reckon months by the moon, and some of them have been

known to throw stones and spears at the moon, in order to accelerate its progress and so to

hasten the return of their friends, who were away from home for twelve months working on a

tobacco plantation. The Malays think that a bright glow at sunset may throw a weak person

into a fever. Hence they attempt to extinguish the glow by spitting out water and throwing

ashes at it. The Shuswap Indians believe that they can bring on cold weather by burning the

wood of a tree that has been struck by lightning. The belief may be based on the observation

that in their country cold follows a thunder-storm. Hence in spring, when these Indians are

travelling over the snow on high ground, they burn splinters of such wood in the fire in order

that the crust of the snow may not melt.

4. THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WIND

Once more, the savage thinks he can make the wind to blow or to be still. When the day is

hot and a Yakut has a long way to go, he takes a stone which he has chanced to find in an

animal or fish, winds a horse-hair several times round it, and ties it to a stick. He then waves

the stick about, uttering a spell. Soon a cool breeze begins to blow. In order to procure a cool

wind for nine days the stone should first be dipped in the blood of a bird or beast and then

presented to the sun, while the sorcerer makes three turns contrary to the course of the lumi-nary.

If a Hottentot desires the wind to drop, he takes one of his fattest skins and hangs it on

the end of a pole, in the belief that by blowing the skin down the wind will lose all its force and

must itself fall. Fuegian wizards throw shells against the wind to make it drop. The natives of

the island of Bibili, off New Guinea, are reputed to make wind by blowing with their mouths. In

stormy weather the Bogadjim people say, “The Bibili folk are at it again, blowing away.”

Another way of making wind which is practised in New Guinea is to strike a “wind-stone” light-ly

with a stick; to strike it hard would bring on a hurricane. So in Scotland witches used to

raise the wind by dipping a rag in water and beating it thrice on a stone, saying:

“I knok this rag upone this stane

To raise the wind in the divellis name,

It sall not lye till I please againe.”

In Greenland a woman in child-bed and for some time after delivery is supposed to possess

the power of laying a storm. She has only to go out of doors, fill her mouth with air, and com-ing

back into the house blow it out again. In antiquity there was a family at Corinth which

enjoyed the reputation of being able to still the raging wind; but we do not know in what man-ner

its members exercised a useful function, which probably earned for them a more solid

recompense than mere repute among the seafaring population of the isthmus. Even in

Christian times, under the reign of Constantine, a certain Sopater suffered death at

Constantinople on a charge of binding the winds by magic, because it happened that the

corn-ships of Egypt and Syria were detained afar off by calms or head-winds, to the rage and

disappointment of the hungry Byzantine rabble. Finnish wizards used to sell wind to storm-stayed

mariners. The wind was enclosed in three knots; if they undid the first knot, a moder-ate

wind sprang up; if the second, it blew half a gale; if the third, a hurricane. Indeed the



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 68?Esthonians, whose country is divided from Finland only by an arm of the sea, still believe in

the magical powers of their northern neighbours. The bitter winds that blow in spring from the

north and north-east, bringing ague and rheumatic inflammations in their train, are set down

by the simple Esthonian peasantry to the machinations of the Finnish wizards and witches. In

particular they regard with special dread three days in spring to which they give the name of

Days of the Cross; one of them falls on the Eve of Ascension Day. The people in the neigh-bourhood

of Fellin fear to go out on these days lest the cruel winds from Lappland should

smite them dead. A popular Esthonian song runs:

Wind of the Cross! rushing and mighty!

Heavy the blow of thy wings sweeping past!

Wild wailing wind of misfortune and sorrow,

Wizards of Finland ride by on the blast.

It is said, too, that sailors, beating up against the wind in the Gulf of Finland, sometimes see

a strange sail heave in sight astern and overhaul them hand over hand. On she comes with a

cloud of canvas—all her studding—sails out—right in the teeth of the wind, forging her way

through the foaming billows, dashing back the spray in sheets from her cutwater, every sail

swollen to bursting, every rope strained to cracking. Then the sailors know that she hails from

Finland.

The art of tying up the wind in three knots, so that the more knots are loosed the stronger will

blow the wind, has been attributed to wizards in Lappland and to witches in Shetland, Lewis,

and the Isle of Man. Shetland seamen still buy winds in the shape of knotted handkerchiefs or

threads from old women who claim to rule the storms. There are said to be ancient crones in

Lerwick now who live by selling wind. Ulysses received the winds in a leathern bag from

Aeolus, King of the Winds. The Motumotu in New Guinea think that storms are sent by an

Oiabu sorcerer; for each wind he has a bamboo which he opens at pleasure. On the top of

Mount Agu in Togo, a district of West Africa, resides a fetish called Bagba, who is supposed

to control the wind and the rain. His priest is said to keep the winds shut up in great pots.

Often the stormy wind is regarded as an evil being who may be intimidated, driven away, or

killed. When storms and bad weather have lasted long and food is scarce with the Central

Esquimaux, they endeavour to conjure the tempest by making a long whip of seaweed,

armed with which they go down to the beach and strike out in the direction of the wind, crying

“Taba (it is enough)!” Once when north-westerly winds had kept the ice long on the coast and

food was becoming scarce, the Esquimaux performed a ceremony to make a calm. A fire was

kindled on the shore, and the men gathered round it and chanted. An old man then stepped

up to the fire and in a coaxing voice invited the demon of the wind to come under the fire and

warm himself. When he was supposed to have arrived, a vessel of water, to which each man

present had contributed, was thrown on the flames by an old man, and immediately a flight of

arrows sped towards the spot where the fire had been. They thought that the demon would

not stay where he had been so badly treated. To complete the effect, guns were discharged

in various directions, and the captain of a European vessel was invited to fire on the wind with

cannon. On the twenty-first of February 1883 a similar ceremony was performed by the

Esquimaux of Point Barrow, Alaska, with the intention of killing the spirit of the wind. Women

drove the demon from their houses with clubs and knives, with which they made passes in

the air; and the men, gathering round a fire, shot him with their rifles and crushed him under a

heavy stone the moment that steam rose in a cloud from the smouldering embers, on which a

tub of water had just been thrown.



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 69?The Lengua Indians of the Gran Chaco ascribe the rush of a whirl-wind to the passage of a

spirit and they fling sticks at it to frighten it away. When the wind blows down their huts, the

Payaguas of South America snatch up firebrands and run against the wind, menacing it with

the blazing brands, while others beat the air with their fists to frighten the storm. When the

Guaycurus are threatened by a severe storm, the men go out armed, and the women and

children scream their loudest to intimidate the demon. During a tempest the inhabitants of a

Batak village in Sumatra have been seen to rush from their houses armed with sword and

lance. The rajah placed himself at their head, and with shouts and yells they hewed and

hacked at the invisible foe. An old woman was observed to be specially active in the defence

of her house, slashing the air right and left with a long sabre. In a violent thunderstorm, the

peals sounding very near, the Kayans of Borneo have been seen to draw their swords threat-eningly

half out of their scabbards, as if to frighten away the demons of the storm. In Australia

the huge columns of red sand that move rapidly across a desert tract are thought by the

natives to be spirits passing along. Once an athletic young black ran after one of these mov-ing

columns to kill it with boomerangs. He was away two or three hours, and came back very

weary, saying he had killed Koochee (the demon), but that Koochee had growled at him and

he must die. Of the Bedouins of Eastern Africa it is said that “no whirl-wind ever sweeps

across the path without being pursued by a dozen savages with drawn creeses, who stab into

the centre of the dusty column in order to drive away the evil spirit that is believed to be riding

on the blast.”

In the light of these examples a story told by Herodotus, which his modern critics have treat-ed

as a fable, is perfectly credible. He says, without however vouching for the truth of the

tale, that once in the land of the Psylli, the modern Tripoli, the wind blowing from the Sahara

had dried up all the water-tanks. So the people took counsel and marched in a body to make

war on the south wind. But when they entered the desert the simoon swept down on them

and buried them to a man. The story may well have been told by one who watched them dis-appearing,

in battle array, with drums and cymbals beating, into the red cloud of whirling

sand.

Chapter VI

Magicians as Kings

THE foregoing evidence may satisfy us that in many lands and many races magic has

claimed to control the great forces of nature for the good of man. If that has been so, the

practitioners of the art must necessarily be personages of importance and influence in any

society which puts faith in their extravagant pretensions, and it would be no matter for sur-prise

if, by virtue of the reputation which they enjoy and of the awe which they inspire, some

of them should attain to the highest position of authority over their credulous fellows. In point

of fact magicians appear to have often developed into chiefs and kings.

Let us begin by looking at the lowest race of men as to whom we possess comparatively full

and accurate information, the aborigines of Australia. These savages are ruled neither by

chiefs nor kings. So far as their tribes can be said to have a political constitution, it is a

democracy or rather an oligarchy of old and influential men, who meet in council and decide

on all measures of importance to the practical exclusion of the younger men. Their delibera-tive

assembly answers to the senate of later times: if we had to coin a word for such a gov-ernment

of elders we might call it a gerontocracy. The elders who in aboriginal Australia thus

meet and direct the affairs of their tribe appear to be for the most part the headmen of their



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 70?respective totem clans. Now in Central Australia, where the desert nature of the country and

the almost complete isolation from foreign influences have retarded progress and preserved

the natives on the whole in their most primitive state, the headmen of the various totem clans

are charged with the important task of performing magical ceremonies for the multiplication of

the totems, and as the great majority of the totems are edible animals or plants, it follows that

these men are commonly expected to provide the people with food by means of magic.

Others have to make the rain to fall or to render other services to the community. In short,

among the tribes of Central Australia the headmen are public magicians. Further, their most

important function is to take charge of the sacred storehouse, usually a cleft in the rocks or a

hole in the ground, where are kept the holy stones and sticks (churinga) with which the souls

of all the people, both living and dead, are apparently supposed to be in a manner bound up.

Thus while the headmen have certainly to perform what we should call civil duties, such as to

inflict punishment for breaches of tribal custom, their principal functions are sacred or magi-cal.

When we pass from Australia to New Guinea we find that, though the natives stand at a far

higher level of culture than the Australian aborigines, the constitution of society among them

is still essentially democratic or oligarchic, and chieftainship exists only in embryo. Thus Sir

William MacGregor tells us that in British New Guinea no one has ever arisen wise enough,

bold enough, and strong enough to become the despot even of a single district. “The nearest

approach to this has been the very distant one of some person becoming a renowned wizard;

but that has only resulted in levying a certain amount of blackmail.”

According to a native account, the origin of the power of Melanesian chiefs lies entirely in the

belief that they have communication with mighty ghosts, and wield that supernatural power

whereby they can bring the influence of the ghosts to bear. If a chief imposed a fine, it was

paid because the people universally dreaded his ghostly power, and firmly believed that he

could inflict calamity and sickness upon such as resisted him. As soon as any considerable

number of his people began to disbelieve in his influence with the ghosts, his power to levy

fines was shaken. Again, Dr. George Brown tells us that in New Britain “a ruling chief was

always supposed to exercise priestly functions, that is, he professed to be in constant com-munication

with the tebarans (spirits), and through their influence he was enabled to bring

rain or sunshine, fair winds or foul ones, sickness or health, success or disaster in war, and

generally to procure any blessing or curse for which the applicant was willing to pay a suffi-cient

price.”

Still rising in the scale of culture we come to Africa, where both the chieftainship and the king-ship

are fully developed; and here the evidence for the evolution of the chief out of the magi-cian,

and especially out of the rain-maker, is comparatively plentiful. Thus among the

Wambugwe, a Bantu people of East Africa, the original form of government was a family

republic, but the enormous power of the sorcerers, transmitted by inheritance, soon raised

them to the rank of petty lords or chiefs. Of the three chiefs living in the country in 1894 two

were much dreaded as magicians, and the wealth of cattle they possessed came to them

almost wholly in the shape of presents bestowed for their services in that capacity. Their prin-cipal

art was that of rain-making. The chiefs of the Wataturu, another people of East Africa,

are said to be nothing but sorcerers destitute of any direct political influence. Again, among

the Wagogo of East Africa the main power of the chiefs, we are told, is derived from their art

of rain-making. If a chief cannot make rain himself, he must procure it from some one who

can.



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 71?Again, among the tribes of the Upper Nile the medicine-men are generally the chiefs. Their

authority rests above all upon their supposed power of making rain, for “rain is the one thing

which matters to the people in those districts, as if it does not come down at the right time it

means untold hardships for the community. It is therefore small wonder that men more cun-ning

than their fellows should arrogate to themselves the power of producing it, or that having

gained such a reputation, they should trade on the credulity of their simpler neighbours.”

Hence “most of the chiefs of these tribes are rain-makers, and enjoy a popularity in proportion

to their powers to give rain to their people at the proper season.... Rain-making chiefs always

build their villages on the slopes of a fairly high hill, as they no doubt know that the hills

attract the clouds, and that they are, therefore, fairly safe in their weather forecasts.” Each of

these rain-makers has a number of rain-stones, such as rock-crystal, aventurine, and

amethyst, which he keeps in a pot. When he wishes to produce rain he plunges the stones in

water, and taking in his hand a peeled cane, which is split at the top, he beckons with it to the

clouds to come or waves them away in the way they should go, muttering an incantation the

while. Or he pours water and the entrails of a sheep or goat into a hollow in a stone and then

sprinkles the water towards the sky. Though the chief acquires wealth by the exercise of his

supposed magical powers, he often, perhaps generally, comes to a violent end; for in time of

drought the angry people assemble and kill him, believing that it is he who prevents the rain

from falling. Yet the office is usually hereditary and passes from father to son. Among the

tribes which cherish these beliefs and observe these customs are the Latuka, Bari, Laluba,

and Lokoiya.

In Central Africa, again, the Lendu tribe, to the west of Lake Albert, firmly believe that certain

people possess the power of making rain. Among them the rain-maker either is a chief or

almost invariably becomes one. The Banyoro also have a great respect for the dispensers of

rain, whom they load with a profusion of gifts. The great dispenser, he who has absolute and

uncontrollable power over the rain, is the king; but he can depute his power to other persons,

so that the benefit may be distributed and the heavenly water laid on over the various parts of

the kingdom.

In Western as well as in Eastern and Central Africa we meet with the same union of chiefly

with magical functions. Thus in the Fan tribe the strict distinction between chief and medicine-man

does not exist. The chief is also a medicine-man and a smith to boot; for the Fans

esteem the smith’s craft sacred, and none but chiefs may meddle with it.

As to the relation between the offices of chief and rain-maker in South Africa a well-informed

writer observes: “In very old days the chief was the great Rain-maker of the tribe. Some

chiefs allowed no one else to compete with them, lest a successful Rain-maker should be

chosen as chief. There was also another reason: the Rain-maker was sure to become a rich

man if he gained a great reputation, and it would manifestly never do for the chief to allow

any one to be too rich. The Rain-maker exerts tremendous control over the people, and so it

would be most important to keep this function connected with royalty. Tradition always places

the power of making rain as the fundamental glory of ancient chiefs and heroes, and it seems

probable that it may have been the origin of chieftainship. The man who made the rain would

naturally become the chief. In the same way Chaka [the famous Zulu despot] used to declare

that he was the only diviner in the country, for if he allowed rivals his life would be insecure.”

Similarly speaking of the South African tribes in general, Dr. Moffat says that “the rain-maker

is in the estimation of the people no mean personage, possessing an influence over the

minds of the people superior even to that of the king, who is likewise compelled to yield to the

dictates of this arch-official.”



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 72?The foregoing evidence renders it probable that in Africa the king has often been developed

out of the public magician, and especially out of the rain-maker. The unbounded fear which

the magician inspires and the wealth which he amasses in the exercise of his profession may

both be supposed to have contributed to his promotion. But if the career of a magician and

especially of a rain-maker offers great rewards to the successful practitioner of the art, it is

beset with many pitfalls into which the unskilful or unlucky artist may fall. The position of the

public sorcerer is indeed a very precarious one; for where the people firmly believe that he

has it in his power to make the rain to fall, the sun to shine, and the fruits of the earth to grow,

they naturally impute drought and dearth to his culpable negligence or wilful obstinacy, and

they punish him accordingly. Hence in Africa the chief who fails to procure rain is often exiled

or killed. Thus, in some parts of West Africa, when prayers and offerings presented to the

king have failed to procure rain, his subjects bind him with ropes and take him by force to the

grave of his forefathers that he may obtain from them the needed rain. The Banjars in West

Africa ascribe to their king the power of causing rain or fine weather. So long as the weather

is fine they load him with presents of grain and cattle. But if long drought or rain threatens to

spoil the crops, they insult and beat him till the weather changes. When the harvest fails or

the surf on the coast is too heavy to allow of fishing, the people of Loango accuse their king

of a “bad heart” and depose him. On the Grain Coast the high priest or fetish king, who bears

the title of Bodio, is responsible for the health of the community, the fertility of the earth, and

the abundance of fish in the sea and rivers; and if the country suffers in any of these respects

the Bodio is deposed from his office. In Ussukuma, a great district on the southern bank of

the Victoria Nyanza, “the rain and locust question is part and parcel of the Sultan’s govern-ment.

He, too, must know how to make rain and drive away the locusts. If he and his medi-cine-

men are unable to accomplish this, his whole existence is at stake in times of distress.

On a certain occasion, when the rain so greatly desired by the people did not come, the

Sultan was simply driven out (in Ututwa, near Nassa). The people, in fact, hold that rulers

must have power over Nature and her phenomena.” Again, we are told of the natives of the

Nyanaza region generally that “they are persuaded that rain only falls as a result of magic,

and the important duty of causing it to descend devolves on the chief of the tribe. If rain does

not come at the proper time, everybody complains. More than one petty king has been ban-ished

his country because of drought.” Among the Latuka of the Upper Nile, when the crops

are withering, and all the efforts of the chief to draw down rain have proved fruitless, the peo-ple

commonly attack him by night, rob him of all he possesses, and drive him away. But often

they kill him.

In many other parts of the world kings have been expected to regulate the course of nature

for the good of their people and have been punished if they failed to do so. It appears that the

Scythians, when food was scarce, used to put their king in bonds. In ancient Egypt the sacred

kings were blamed for the failure of the crops, but the sacred beasts were also held responsi-ble

for the course of nature. When pestilence and other calamities had fallen on the land, in

consequence of a long and severe drought, the priests took the animals by night and threat-ened

them, but if the evil did not abate they slew the beasts. On the coral island of Niue or

Savage Island, in the South Pacific, there formerly reigned a line of kings. But as the kings

were also high priests, and were supposed to make the food grow, the people became angry

with them in times of scarcity and killed them; till at last, as one after another was killed, no

one would be king, and the monarchy came to an end. Ancient Chinese writers inform us that

in Corea the blame was laid on the king whenever too much or too little rain fell and the crops

did not ripen. Some said that he must be deposed, others that he must be slain.



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 73?Among the American Indians the furthest advance towards civilisation was made under the

monarchical and theocratic governments of Mexico and Peru; but we know too little of the

early history of these countries to say whether the predecessors of their deified kings were

medicine-men or not. Perhaps a trace of such a succession may be detected in the oath

which the Mexican kings, when they mounted the throne, swore that they would make the sun

to shine, the clouds to give rain, the rivers to flow, and the earth to bring forth fruits in abun-dance.

Certainly, in aboriginal America the sorcerer or medicine-man, surrounded by a halo of

mystery and an atmosphere of awe, was a personage of great influence and importance, and

he may well have developed into a chief or king in many tribes, though positive evidence of

such a development appears to be lacking. Thus Catlin tells us that in North America the

medicine-men “are valued as dignitaries in the tribe, and the greatest respect is paid to them

by the whole community; not only for their skill in their materia medica, but more especially

for their tact in magic and mysteries, in which they all deal to a very great extent.... In all

tribes their doctors are conjurers—are magicians—are sooth-sayers, and I had like to have

said high-priests, inasmuch as they superintend and conduct all their religious ceremonies;

they are looked upon by all as oracles of the nation. In all councils of war and peace, they

have a seat with the chiefs, are regularly consulted before any public step is taken, and the

greatest deference and respect is paid to their opinions.” Similarly in California “the shaman

was, and still is, perhaps the most important individual among the Maidu. In the absence of

any definite system of government, the word of a shaman has great weight: as a class they

are regarded with much awe, and as a rule are obeyed much more than the chief.”

In South America also the magicians or medicine-men seem to have been on the highroad to

chieftainship or kingship. One of the earliest settlers on the coast of Brazil, the Frenchman

Thevet, reports that the Indians “hold these pages (or medicine-men) in such honour and rev-erence

that they adore, or rather idolise them. You may see the common folk go to meet

them, prostrate themselves, and pray to them, saying, ‘Grant that I be not ill, that I do not die,

neither I nor my children,’ or some such request. And he answers, ‘You shall not die, you shall

not be ill,’ and such like replies. But sometimes if it happens that these pages do not tell the

truth, and things turn out otherwise than they predicted, the people make no scruple of killing

them as unworthy of the title and dignity of pages.” Among the Lengua Indians of the Gran

Chaco every clan has its cazique or chief, but he possesses little authority. In virtue of his

office he has to make many presents, so he seldom grows rich and is generally more shabbi-ly

clad than any of his subjects. “As a matter of fact the magician is the man who has most

power in his hands, and he is accustomed to receive presents instead of to give them.” It is

the magician’s duty to bring down misfortune and plagues on the enemies of his tribe, and to

guard his own people against hostile magic. For these services he is well paid, and by them

he acquires a position of great influence and authority.

Throughout the Malay region the rajah or king is commonly regarded with superstitious vener-ation

as the possessor of supernatural powers, and there are grounds for thinking that he too,

like apparently so many African chiefs, has been developed out of a simple magician. At the

present day the Malays firmly believe that the king possesses a personal influence over the

works of nature, such as the growth of the crops and the bearing of fruit-trees. The same pro-lific

virtue is supposed to reside, though in a lesser degree, in his delegates, and even in the

persons of Europeans who chance to have charge of districts. Thus in Selangor, one of the

native states of the Malay Peninsula, the success or failure of the rice-crops is often attributed

to a change of district officers. The Toorateyas of Southern Celebes hold that the prosperity of

the rice depends on the behaviour of their princes, and that bad government, by which they

mean a government which does not conform to ancient custom, will result in a failure of the



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 74?crops.

The Dyaks of Sarawak believed that their famous English ruler, Rajah Brooke, was endowed

with a certain magical virtue which, if properly applied, could render the rice-crops abundant.

Hence when he visited a tribe, they used to bring him the seed which they intended to sow

next year, and he fertilised it by shaking over it the women’s necklaces, which had been pre-viously

dipped in a special mixture. And when he entered a village, the women would wash

and bathe his feet, first with water, and then with the milk of a young coco-nut, and lastly with

water again, and all this water which had touched his person they preserved for the purpose

of distributing it on their farms, believing that it ensured an abundant harvest. Tribes which

were too far off for him to visit used to send him a small piece of white cloth and a little gold

or silver, and when these things had been impregnated by his generative virtue they buried

them in their fields, and confidently expected a heavy crop. Once when a European remarked

that the rice-crops of the Samban tribe were thin, the chief immediately replied that they could

not be otherwise, since Rajah Brooke had never visited them, and he begged that Mr. Brooke

might be induced to visit his tribe and remove the sterility of their land.

The belief that kings possess magical or supernatural powers by virtue of which they can fer-tilise

the earth and confer other benefits on their subjects would seem to have been shared

by the ancestors of all the Aryan races from India to Ireland, and it has left clear traces of

itself in our own country down to modern times. Thus the ancient Hindoo law-book called The

Laws of Manu describes as follows the effects of a good king’s reign: “In that country where

the king avoids taking the property of mortal sinners, men are born in due time and are long-lived.

And the crops of the husbandmen spring up, each as it was sown, and the children die

not, and no misshaped offspring is born.” In Homeric Greece kings and chiefs were spoken of

as sacred or divine; their houses, too, were divine and their chariots sacred; and it was

thought that the reign of a good king caused the black earth to bring forth wheat and barley,

the trees to be loaded with fruit, the flocks to multiply, and the sea to yield fish. In the Middle

Ages, when Waldemar I., King of Denmark, travelled in Germany, mothers brought their

infants and husbandmen their seed for him to lay his hands on, thinking that children would

both thrive the better for the royal touch, and for a like reason farmers asked him to throw the

seed for them. It was the belief of the ancient Irish that when their kings observed the cus-toms

of their ancestors, the seasons were mild, the crops plentiful, the cattle fruitful, the

waters abounded with fish, and the fruit trees had to be propped up on account of the weight

of their produce. A canon attributed to St. Patrick enumerates among the blessings that

attend the reign of a just king “fine weather, calm seas, crops abundant, and trees laden with

fruit.” On the other hand, dearth, dryness of cows, blight of fruit, and scarcity of corn were

regarded as infallible proofs that the reigning king was bad.

Perhaps the last relic of such superstitions which lingered about our English kings was the

notion that they could heal scrofula by their touch. The disease was accordingly known as the

King’s Evil. Queen Elizabeth often exercised this miraculous gift of healing. On Midsummer

Day 1633, Charles the First cured a hundred patients at one swoop in the chapel royal at

Holyrood. But it was under his son Charles the Second that the practice seems to have

attained its highest vogue. It is said that in the course of his reign Charles the Second

touched near a hundred thousand persons for scrofula. The press to get near him was some-times

terrific. On one occasion six or seven of those who came to be healed were trampled to

death. The cool-headed William the Third contemptuously refused to lend himself to the

hocuspocus; and when his palace was besieged by the usual unsavoury crowd, he ordered

them to be turned away with a dole. On the only occasion when he was importuned into lay-

-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page

75?ing his hand on a patient, he said to him, “God give you better health and more sense.”

However, the practice was continued, as might have been expected, by the dull bigot James

the Second and his dull daughter Queen Anne.

The kings of France also claimed to possess the same gift of healing by touch, which they

are said to have derived from Clovis or from St. Louis, while our English kings inherited it

from Edward the Confessor. Similarly the savage chiefs of Tonga were believed to heal scrof-ula

and cases of indurated liver by the touch of their feet; and the cure was strictly homoeo-pathic,

for the disease as well as the cure was thought to be caused by contact with the royal

person or with anything that belonged to it.

On the whole, then, we seem to be justified in inferring that in many parts of the world the

king is the lineal successor of the old magician or medicine-man. When once a special class

of sorcerers has been segregated from the community and entrusted by it with the discharge

of duties on which the public safety and welfare are believed to depend, these men gradually

rise to wealth and power, till their leaders blossom out into sacred kings. But the great social

revolution which thus begins with democracy and ends in despotism is attended by an intel-lectual

revolution which affects both the conception and the functions of royalty. For as time

goes on, the fallacy of magic becomes more and more apparent to the acuter minds and is

slowly displaced by religion; in other words, the magician gives way to the priest, who,

renouncing the attempt to control directly the processes of nature for the good of man, seeks

to attain the same end indirectly by appealing to the gods to do for him what he no longer

fancies he can do for himself. Hence the king, starting as a magician, tends gradually to

exchange the practice of magic for the priestly functions of prayer and sacrifice. And while the

distinction between the human and the divine is still imperfectly drawn, it is often imagined

that men may themselves attain to godhead, not merely after their death, but in their lifetime,

through the temporary or permanent possession of their whole nature by a great and powerful

spirit. No class of the community has benefited so much as kings by this belief in the possible

incarnation of a god in human form. The doctrine of that incarnation, and with it the theory of

the divinity of kings in the strict sense of the word, will form the subject of the following chap-ter.

Chapter VII

Incarnate Human Gods

THE instances which in the preceding chapters I have drawn from the beliefs and practices of

rude peoples all over the world, may suffice to prove that the savage fails to recognise those

limitations to his power over nature which seem so obvious to us. In a society where every

man is supposed to be endowed more or less with powers which we should call supernatural,

it is plain that the distinction between gods and men is somewhat blurred, or rather has

scarcely emerged. The conception of gods as superhuman beings endowed with powers to

which man possesses nothing comparable in degree and hardly even in kind, has been slow-ly

evolved in the course of history. By primitive peoples the supernatural agents are not

regarded as greatly, if at all, superior to man; for they may be frightened and coerced by him

into doing his will. At this stage of thought the world is viewed as a great democracy; all

beings in it, whether natural or supernatural, are supposed to stand on a footing of tolerable

equality. But with the growth of his knowledge man learns to realise more clearly the vastness

of nature and his own littleness and feebleness in presence of it. The recognition of his help-lessness

does not, however, carry with it a corresponding belief in the impotence of those



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 76?supernatural beings with which his imagination peoples the universe. On the contrary, it

enhances his conception of their power. For the idea of the world as a system of impersonal

forces acting in accordance with fixed and invariable laws has not yet fully dawned or dark-ened

upon him. The germ of the idea he certainly has, and he acts upon it, not only in magic

art, but in much of the business of daily life. But the idea remains undeveloped, and so far as

he attempts to explain the world he lives in, he pictures it as the manifestation of conscious

will and personal agency. If then he feels himself to be so frail and slight, how vast and pow-erful

must he deem the beings who control the gigantic machinery of nature! Thus as his old

sense of equality with the gods slowly vanishes, he resigns at the same time the hope of

directing the course of nature by his own unaided resources, that is, by magic, and looks

more and more to the gods as the sole repositories of those supernatural powers which he

once claimed to share with them. With the advance of knowledge, therefore, prayer and sacri-fice

assume the leading place in religious ritual; and magic, which once ranked with them as

a legitimate equal, is gradually relegated to the background and sinks to the level of a black

art. It is not regarded as an encroachment, at once vain and impious, on the domain of the

gods, and as such encounters the steady opposition of the priests, whose reputation and

influence rise or fall with those of their gods. Hence, when at a late period the distinction

between religion and superstition has emerged, we find that sacrifice and prayer are the

resource of the pious and enlightened portion of the community, while magic is the refuge of

the superstitious and ignorant. But when, still later, the conception of the elemental forces as

personal agents is giving way to the recognition of natural law; then magic, based as it implic-itly

is on the idea of a necessary and invariable sequence of cause and effect, independent of

personal will, reappears from the obscurity and discredit into which it had fallen, and by inves-tigating

the causal sequences in nature, directly prepares the way for science. Alchemy leads

up to chemistry.

The notion of a man-god, or of a human being endowed with divine or supernatural powers,

belongs essentially to that earlier period of religious history in which gods and men are still

viewed as beings of much the same order, and before they are divided by the impassable gulf

which, to later thought, opens out between them. Strange, therefore, as may seem to us the

idea of a god incarnate in human form, it has nothing very startling for early man, who sees in

a man-god or a god-man only a higher degree of the same supernatural powers which he

arrogates in perfect good faith to himself. Nor does he draw any very sharp distinction

between a god and a powerful sorcerer. His gods are often merely invisible magicians who

behind the veil of nature work the same sort of charms and incantations which the human

magician works in a visible and bodily form among his fellows. And as the gods are common-ly

believed to exhibit themselves in the likeness of men to their worshippers, it is easy for the

magician, with his supposed miraculous powers, to acquire the reputation of being an incar-nate

deity. Thus beginning as little more than a simple conjurer, the medicine-man or magi-cian

tends to blossom out into a full-blown god and king in one. Only in speaking of him as a

god we must beware of importing into the savage conception of deity those very abstract and

complex ideas which we attach to the term. Our ideas on this profound subject are the fruit of

a long intellectual and moral evolution, and they are so far from being shared by the savage

that he cannot even understand them when they are explained to him. Much of the controver-sy

which has raged as to the religion of the lower races has sprung merely from a mutual

misunderstanding. The savage does not understand the thoughts of the civilised man, and

few civilised men understand the thoughts of the savage. When the savage uses his word for

god, he has in his mind a being of a certain sort: when the civilised man uses his word for

god, he has in his mind a being of a very different sort; and if, as commonly happens, the two

men are equally unable to place themselves at the other’s point of view, nothing but confu-

-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page

77?sion and mistakes can result from their discussions. If we civilised men insist on limiting the

name of God to that particular conception of the divine nature which we ourselves have

formed, then we must confess that the savage has no god at all. But we shall adhere more

closely to the facts of history if we allow most of the higher savages at least to possess a

rudimentary notion of certain supernatural beings who may fittingly be called gods, though not

in the full sense in which we use the word. That rudimentary notion represents in all probabili-ty

the germ out of which the civilised peoples have gradually evolved their own high concep-tions

of deity; and if we could trace the whole course of religious development, we might find

that the chain which links our idea of the Godhead with that of the savage is one and unbro-ken.

With these explanations and cautions I will now adduce some examples of gods who have

been believed by their worshippers to be incarnate in living human beings, whether men or

women. The persons in whom a deity is thought to reveal himself are by no means always

kings or descendants of kings; the supposed incarnation may take place even in men of the

humblest rank. In India, for example, one human god started in life as a cotton-bleacher and

another as the son of a carpenter. I shall therefore not draw my examples exclusively from

royal personages, as I wish to illustrate the general principle of the deification of living men, in

other words, the incarnation of a deity in human form. Such incarnate gods are common in

rude society. The incarnation may be temporary or permanent. In the former case, the incar-nation-

commonly known as inspiration or possession-reveals itself in supernatural knowledge

rather than in supernatural power. In other words, its usual manifestations are divination and

prophecy rather than miracles. On the other hand, when the incarnation is not merely tempo-rary,

when the divine spirit has permanently taken up its abode in a human body, the god-man

is usually expected to vindicate his character by working miracles. Only we have to

remember that by men at this stage of thought miracles are not considered as breaches of

natural law. Not conceiving the existence of natural law, primitive man cannot conceive a

breach of it. A miracle is to him merely an unusually striking manifestation of a common

power.

The belief in temporary incarnation or inspiration is world-wide. Certain persons are supposed

to be possessed from time to time by a spirit or deity; while the possession lasts, their own

personality lies in abeyance, the presence of the spirit is revealed by convulsive shiverings

and shakings of the man’s whole body, by wild gestures and excited looks, all of which are

referred, not to the man himself, but to the spirit which has entered into him; and in this

abnormal state all his utterances are accepted as the voice of the god or spirit dwelling in him

and speaking through him. Thus, for example, in the Sandwich Islands, the king, personating

the god, uttered the responses of the oracle from his concealment in a frame of wicker-work.

But in the southern islands of the Pacific the god “frequently entered the priest, who, inflated

as it were with the divinity, ceased to act or speak as a voluntary agent, but moved and spoke

as entirely under supernatural influence. In this respect there was a striking resemblance

between the rude oracles of the Polynesians, and those of the celebrated nations of ancient

Greece. As soon as the god was supposed to have entered the priest, the latter became vio-lently

agitated, and worked himself up to the highest pitch of apparent frenzy, the muscles of

the limbs seemed convulsed, the body swelled, the countenance became terrific, the features

distorted, and the eyes wild and strained. In this state he often rolled on the earth, foaming at

the mouth, as if labouring under the influence of the divinity by whom he was possessed,

and, in shrill cries, and violent and often indistinct sounds, revealed the will of the god. The

priests, who were attending, and versed in the mysteries, received, and reported to the peo-ple,

the declarations which had been thus received. When the priest had uttered the response



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 78?of the oracle, the violent paroxysm gradually subsided, and comparative composure ensued.

The god did not, however, always leave him as soon as the communication had been made.

Sometimes the same taura, or priest, continued for two or three days possessed by the spirit

or deity; a piece of a native cloth, of a peculiar kind, worn round one arm, was an indication of

inspiration, or of the indwelling of the god with the individual who wore it. The acts of the man

during this period were considered as those of the god, and hence the greatest attention was

paid to his expressions, and the whole of his deportment.... When uruhia (under the inspira-tion

of the spirit), the priest was always considered as sacred as the god, and was called,

during this period, atua, god, though at other times only denominated taura or priest.”

But examples of such temporary inspiration are so common in every part of the world and are

now so familiar through books on ethnology that it is needless to multiply illustrations of the

general principle. It may be well, however, to refer to two particular modes of producing tem-porary

inspiration, because they are perhaps less known than some others, and because we

shall have occasion to refer to them later on. One of these modes of producing inspiration is

by sucking the fresh blood of a sacrificed victim. In the temple of Apollo Diradiotes at Argos, a

lamb was sacrificed by night once a month; a woman, who had to observe a rule of chastity,

tasted the blood of the lamb, and thus being inspired by the god she prophesied or divined. At

Aegira in Achaia the priestess of Earth drank the fresh blood of a bull before she descended

into the cave to prophesy. Similarly among the Kuruvikkarans, a class of bird-catchers and

beggars in Southern India, the goddess Kali is believed to descend upon the priest, and he

gives oracular replies after sucking the blood which streams from the cut throat of a goat. At a

festival of the Alfoors of Minahassa, in Northern Celebes, after a pig has been killed, the

priest rushes furiously at it, thrusts his head into the carcase, and drinks of the blood. Then

he is dragged away from it by force and set on a chair, whereupon he begins to prophesy

how the rice-crop will turn out that year. A second time he runs at the carcase and drinks of

the blood; a second time he is forced into the chair and continues his predictions. It is thought

that there is a spirit in him which possesses the power of prophecy.

The other mode of producing temporary inspiration, to which I shall here refer, consists in the

use of a sacred tree or plant. Thus in the Hindoo Koosh a fire is kindled with twigs of the

sacred cedar; and the Dainyal or sibyl, with a cloth over her head, inhales the thick pungent

smoke till she is seized with convulsions and falls senseless to the ground. Soon she rises

and raises a shrill chant, which is caught up and loudly repeated by her audience. So Apollo’s

prophetess ate the sacred laurel and was fumigated with it before she prophesied. The

Bacchanals ate ivy, and their inspired fury was by some believed to be due to the exciting

and intoxicating properties of the plant. In Uganda the priest, in order to be inspired by his

god, smokes a pipe of tobacco fiercely till he works himself into a frenzy; the loud excited

tones in which he then talks are recognised as the voice of the god speaking through him. In

Madura, an island off the north coast of Java, each spirit has its regular medium, who is

oftener a woman than a man. To prepare herself for the reception of the spirit she inhales the

fumes of incense, sitting with her head over a smoking censer. Gradually she falls into a sort

of trance accompanied by shrieks, grimaces, and violent spasms. The spirit is now supposed

to have entered into her, and when she grows calmer her words are regarded as oracular,

being the utterances of the indwelling spirit, while her own soul is temporarily absent.

The person temporarily inspired is believed to acquire, not merely divine knowledge, but also,

at least occasionally, divine power. In Cambodia, when an epidemic breaks out, the inhabi-tants

of several villages unite and go with a band of music at their head to look for the man

whom the local god is supposed to have chosen for his temporary incarnation. When found,



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 79?the man is conducted to the altar of the god, where the mystery of incarnation takes place.

Then the man becomes an object of veneration to his fellows, who implore him to protect the

village against the plague. A certain image of Apollo, which stood in a sacred cave at Hylae

near Magnesia, was thought to impart superhuman strength. Sacred men, inspired by it,

leaped down precipices, tore up huge trees by the roots, and carried them on their backs

along the narrowest defiles. The feats performed by inspired dervishes belong to the same

class.

Thus far we have seen that the savage, failing to discern the limits of his ability to control

nature, ascribes to himself and to all men certain powers which we should now call supernat-ural.

Further, we have seen that, over and above this general supernaturalism, some persons

are supposed to be inspired for short periods by a divine spirit, and thus temporarily to enjoy

the knowledge and power of the indwelling deity. From beliefs like these it is an easy step to

the conviction that certain men are permanently possessed by a deity, or in some other unde-fined

way are endued with so high a degree of supernatural power as to be ranked as gods

and to receive the homage of prayer and sacrifice. Sometimes these human gods are restrict-ed

to purely supernatural or spiritual functions. Sometimes they exercise supreme political

power in addition. In the latter case they are kings as well as gods, and the government is a

theocracy. Thus in the Marquesas or Washington Islands there was a class of men who were

deified in their lifetime. They were supposed to wield a supernatural power over the elements:

they could give abundant harvests or smite the ground with barrenness; and they could inflict

disease or death. Human sacrifices were offered to them to avert their wrath. There were not

many of them, at the most one or two in each island. They lived in mystic seclusion. Their

powers were sometimes, but not always, hereditary. A missionary has described one of these

human gods from personal observation. The god was a very old man who lived in a large

house within an enclosure. In the house was a kind of altar, and on the beams of the house

and on the trees round it were hung human skeletons, head down. No one entered the enclo-sure

except the persons dedicated to the service of the god; only on days when human vic-tims

were sacrificed might ordinary people penetrate into the precinct. This human god

received more sacrifices than all the other gods; often he would sit on a sort of scaffold in

front of his house and call for two or three human victims at a time. They were always

brought, for the terror he inspired was extreme. He was invoked all over the island, and offer-ings

were sent to him from every side. Again, of the South Sea Islands in general we are told

that each island had a man who represented or personified the divinity. Such men were called

gods, and their substance was confounded with that of the deity. The man-god was some-times

the king himself; oftener he was a priest or subordinate chief.

The ancient Egyptians, far from restricting their adoration to cats and dogs and such small

deer, very liberally extended it to men. One of these human deities resided at the village of

Anabis, and burnt sacrifices were offered to him on the altars; after which, says Porphyry, he

would eat his dinner just as if he were an ordinary mortal. In classical antiquity the Sicilian

philosopher Empedocles gave himself out to be not merely a wizard but a god. Addressing

his fellow-citizens in verse he said:

“O friends, in this great city that climbs the yellow slope

Of Agrigentum’s citadel, who make good works your scope,

Who offer to the stranger a haven quiet and fair,

All hail! Among you honoured I walk with lofty air.

With garlands, blooming garlands you crown my noble brow,

A mortal man no longer, a deathless godhead now.



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 80?Where e’er I go, the people crowd round and worship pay,

And thousands follow seeking to learn the better way.

Some crave prophetic visions, some smit with anguish sore

Would fain hear words of comfort and suffer pain no more.”

He asserted that he could teach his disciples how to make the wind to blow or be still, the

rain to fall and the sun to shine, how to banish sickness and old age and to raise the dead.

When Demetrius Poliorcetes restored the Athenian democracy in 307 B.C., the Athenians

decreed divine honours to him and his father Antigonus, both of them being then alive, under

the title of the Saviour Gods. Altars were set up to the Saviours, and a priest appointed to

attend to their worship. The people went forth to meet their deliverer with hymns and dances,

with garlands and incense and libations; they lined the streets and sang that he was the only

true god, for the other gods slept, or dwelt far away, or were not. In the words of a contempo-rary

poet, which were chanted in public and sung in private:

“Of all the gods the greatest and the dearest

To the city are come.

For Demeter and Demetrius

Together time has brought.

She comes to hold the Maiden’s awful rites,

And he joyous and fair and laughing,

As befits a god.

A glorious sight, with all his friends about him,

He in their midst,

They like to stars, and he the sun.

Son of Poseidon the mighty, Aphrodite’s son,

All hail!

The other gods dwell far away,

Or have no ears,

Or are not, or pay us no heed.

But thee we present see,

No god of wood or stone, but godhead true.

Therefore to thee we pray.”

The ancient Germans believed that there was something holy in women, and accordingly

consulted them as oracles. Their sacred women, we are told, looked on the eddying rivers

and listened to the murmur or the roar of the water, and from the sight and sound foretold

what would come to pass. But often the veneration of the men went further, and they wor-shipped

women as true and living goddesses. For example, in the reign of Vespasian a cer-tain

Veleda, of the tribe of the Bructeri, was commonly held to be a deity, and in that charac-ter

reigned over her people, her sway being acknowledged far and wide. She lived in a tower

on the river Lippe, a tributary of the Rhine. When the people of Cologne sent to make a treaty

with her, the ambassadors were not admitted to her presence; the negotiations were conduct-ed

through a minister, who acted as the mouthpiece of her divinity and reported her oracular

utterances. The example shows how easily among our rude forefathers the ideas of divinity

and royalty coalesced. It is said that among the Getae down to the beginning of our era there

was always a man who personified a god and was called God by the people. He dwelt on a

sacred mountain and acted as adviser to the king.

According to the early Portuguese historian, Dos Santos, the Zimbas, or Muzimbas, a people



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 81?of South-eastern Africa, “do not adore idols or recognize any god, but instead they venerate

and honour their king, whom they regard as a divinity, and they say he is the greatest and

best in the world. And the said king says of himself that he alone is god of the earth, for which

reason if it rains when he does not wish it to do so, or is too hot, he shoots arrows at the sky

for not obeying him.” The Mashona of Southern Africa informed their bishop that they had

once had a god, but that the Matabeles had driven him away. “This last was in reference to a

curious custom in some villages of keeping a man they called their god. He seemed to be

consulted by the people and had presents given to him. There was one at a village belonging

to a chief Magondi, in the old days. We were asked not to fire off any guns near the village, or

we should frighten him away.” This Mashona god was formerly bound to render an annual

tribute to the king of the Matabele in the shape of four black oxen and one dance. A mission-ary

has seen and described the deity discharging the latter part of his duty in front of the royal

hut. For three mortal hours, without a break, to the banging of a tambourine, the click of cas-tanettes,

and the drone of a monotonous song, the swarthy god engaged in a frenzied dance,

crouching on his hams like a tailor, sweating like a pig, and bounding about with an agility

which testified to the strength and elasticity of his divine legs.

The Baganda of Central Africa believed in a god of Lake Nyanza, who sometimes took up his

abode in a man or woman. The incarnate god was much feared by all the people, including

the king and the chiefs. When the mystery of incarnation had taken place, the man, or rather

the god, removed about a mile and a half from the margin of the lake, and there awaited the

appearance of the new moon before he engaged in his sacred duties. From the moment that

the crescent moon appeared faintly in the sky, the king and all his subjects were at the com-mand

of the divine man, or Lubare (god), as he was called, who reigned supreme not only in

matters of faith and ritual, but also in questions of war and state policy. He was consulted as

an oracle; by his word he could inflict or heal sickness, withhold rain, and cause famine.

Large presents were made him when his advice was sought. The chief of Urua, a large region

to the west of Lake Tanganyika, “arrogates to himself divine honours and power and pretends

to abstain from food for days without feeling its necessity; and, indeed, declares that as a god

he is altogether above requiring food and only eats, drinks, and smokes for the pleasure it

affords him.” Among the Gallas, when a woman grows tired of the cares of housekeeping,

she begins to talk incoherently and to demean herself extravagantly. This is a sign of the

descent of the holy spirit Callo upon her. Immediately her husband prostrates himself and

adores her; she ceases to bear the humble title of wife and is called “Lord”; domestic duties

have no further claim on her, and her will is a divine law.

The king of Loango is honoured by his people “as though he were a god; and he is called

Sambee and Pango, which mean god. They believe that he can let them have rain when he

likes; and once a year, in December, which is the time they want rain, the people come to beg

of him to grant it to them.” On this occasion the king, standing on his throne, shoots an arrow

into the air, which is supposed to bring on rain. Much the same is said of the king of

Mombasa. Down to a few years ago, when his spiritual reign on earth was brought to an

abrupt end by the carnal weapons of English marines and bluejackets, the king of Benin was

the chief object of worship in his dominions. “He occupies a higher post here than the Pope

does in Catholic Europe; for he is not only God’s vicegerent upon earth, but a god himself,

whose subjects both obey and adore him as such, although I believe their adoration to arise

rather from fear than love.” The king of Iddah told the English officers of the Niger Expedition,

“God made me after his own image; I am all the same as God; and he appointed me a king.”

A peculiarly bloodthirsty monarch of Burma, by name Badonsachen, whose very countenance



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 82?reflected the inbred ferocity of his nature, and under whose reign more victims perished by

the executioner than by the common enemy, conceived the notion that he was something

more than mortal, and that this high distinction had been granted him as a reward for his

numerous good works. Accordingly he laid aside the title of king and aimed at making himself

a god. With this view, and in imitation of Buddha, who, before being advanced to the rank of a

divinity, had quitted his royal palace and seraglio and retired from the world, Badonsachen

withdrew from his palace to an immense pagoda, the largest in the empire, which he had

been engaged in constructing for many years. Here he held conferences with the most

learned monks, in which he sought to persuade them that the five thousand years assigned

for the observance of the law of Buddha were now elapsed, and that he himself was the god

who was destined to appear after that period, and to abolish the old law by substituting his

own. But to his great mortification many of the monks undertook to demonstrate the contrary;

and this disappointment, combined with his love of power and his impatience under the

restraints of an ascetic life, quickly disabused him of his imaginary godhead, and drove him

back to his palace and his harem. The king of Siam “is venerated equally with a divinity. His

subjects ought not to look him in the face; they prostrate themselves before him when he

passes, and appear before him on their knees, their elbows resting on the ground.” There is a

special language devoted to his sacred person and attributes, and it must be used by all who

speak to or of him. Even the natives have difficulty in mastering this peculiar vocabulary. The

hairs of the monarch’s head, the soles of his feet, the breath of his body, indeed every single

detail of his person, both outward and inward, have particular names. When he eats or drinks,

sleeps or walks, a special word indicates that these acts are being performed by the sover-eign,

and such words cannot possibly be applied to the acts of any other person whatever.

There is no word in the Siamese language by which any creature of higher rank or greater

dignity than a monarch can be described; and the missionaries, when they speak of God, are

forced to use the native word for king.

But perhaps no country in the world has been so prolific of human gods as India; nowhere

has the divine grace been poured out in a more liberal measure on all classes of society from

kings down to milkmen. Thus amongst the Todas, a pastoral people of the Neilgherry Hills of

Southern India, the dairy is a sanctuary, and the milkman who attends to it has been

described as a god. On being asked whether the Todas salute the sun, one of these divine

milkmen replied, “Those poor fellows do so, but I,” tapping his chest, “I, a god! why should I

salute the sun?” Every one, even his own father, prostrates himself before the milkman, and

no one would dare to refuse him anything. No human being, except another milkman, may

touch him; and he gives oracles to all who consult him, speaking with the voice of a god.

Further, in India “every king is regarded as little short of a present god.” The Hindoo law-book

of Manu goes farther and says that “even an infant king must not be despised from an idea

that he is a mere mortal; for he is a great deity in human form.” There is said to have been a

sect in Orissa some years ago who worshipped the late Queen Victoria in her lifetime as their

chief divinity. And to this day in India all living persons remarkable for great strength or valour

or for supposed miraculous powers run the risk of being worshipped as gods. Thus, a sect in

the Punjaub worshipped a deity whom they called Nikkal Sen. This Nikkal Sen was no other

than the redoubted General Nicholson, and nothing that the general could do or say damped

the ardour of his adorers. The more he punished them, the greater grew the religious awe

with which they worshipped him. At Benares not many years ago a celebrated deity was

incarnate in the person of a Hindoo gentleman who rejoiced in the euphonious name of

Swami Bhaskaranandaji Saraswati, and looked uncommonly like the late Cardinal Manning,

only more ingenuous. His eyes beamed with kindly human interest, and he took what is



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 83?described as an innocent pleasure in the divine honours paid him by his confiding worship-pers.

At Chinchvad, a small town about ten miles from Poona in Western India, there lives a family

of whom one in each generation is believed by a large proportion of the Mahrattas to be an

incarnation of the elephant-headed god Gunputty. That celebrated deity was first made flesh

about the year 1640 in the person of a Brahman of Poona, by name Mooraba Gosseyn, who

sought to work out his salvation by abstinence, mortification, and prayer. His piety had its

reward. The god himself appeared to him in a vision of the night and promised that a portion

of his, that is, of Gunputty’s holy spirit should abide with him and with his seed after him even

to the seventh generation. The divine promise was fulfilled. Seven successive incarnations,

transmitted from father to son, manifested the light of Gunputty to a dark world. The last of

the direct line, a heavy-looking god with very weak eyes, died in the year 1810. But the cause

of truth was too sacred, and the value of the church property too considerable, to allow the

Brahmans to contemplate with equanimity the unspeakable loss that would be sustained by a

world which knew not Gunputty. Accordingly they sought and found a holy vessel in whom the

divine spirit of the master had revealed itself anew, and the revelation has been happily con-tinued

in an unbroken succession of vessels from that time to this. But a mysterious law of

spiritual economy, whose operation in the history of religion we may deplore though we can-not

alter, has decreed that the miracles wrought by the god-man in these degenerate days

cannot compare with those which were wrought by his predecessors in days gone by; and it

is even reported that the only sign vouchsafed by him to the present generation of vipers is

the miracle of feeding the multitude whom he annually entertains to dinner at Chinchvad.

A Hindoo sect, which has many representatives in Bombay and Central India, holds that its

spiritual chiefs or Maharajas, as they are called, are representatives or even actual incarna-tions

on earth of the god Krishna. And as Krishna looks down from heaven with most favour

on such as minister to the wants of his successors and vicars on earth, a peculiar rite called

Self-devotion has been instituted, whereby his faithful worshippers make over their bodies,

their souls, and, what is perhaps still more important, their worldly substance to his adorable

incarnations; and women are taught to believe that the highest bliss for themselves and their

families is to be attained by yielding themselves to the embraces of those beings in whom the

divine nature mysteriously coexists with the form and even the appetites of true humanity.

Christianity itself has not uniformly escaped the taint of these unhappy delusions; indeed it

has often been sullied by the extravagances of vain pretenders to a divinity equal to or even

surpassing that of its great Founder. In the second century Montanus the Phrygian claimed to

be the incarnate Trinity, uniting in his single person God the Father, God the Son, and God

the Holy Ghost. Nor is this an isolated case, the exorbitant pretension of a single ill-balanced

mind. From the earliest times down to the present day many sects have believed that Christ,

nay God himself, is incarnate in every fully initiated Christian, and they have carried this belief

to its logical conclusion by adoring each other. Tertullian records that this was done by his fel-low-

Christians at Carthage in the second century; the disciples of St. Columba worshipped

him as an embodiment of Christ; and in the eighth century Elipandus of Toledo spoke of

Christ as “a god among gods,” meaning that all believers were gods just as truly as Jesus

himself. The adoration of each other was customary among the Albigenses, and is noticed

hundreds of times in the records of the Inquisition at Toulouse in the early part of the four-teenth

century.

In the thirteenth century there arose a sect called the Brethren and Sisters of the Free Spirit,



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 84?who held that by long and assiduous contemplation any man might be united to the deity in

an ineffable manner and become one with the source and parent of all things, and that he

who had thus ascended to God and been absorbed in his beatific essence, actually formed

part of the Godhead, was the Son of God in the same sense and manner with Christ himself,

and enjoyed thereby a glorious immunity from the trammels of all laws human and divine.

Inwardly transported by this blissful persuasion, though outwardly presenting in their aspect

and manners a shocking air of lunacy and distraction, the sectaries roamed from place to

place, attired in the most fantastic apparel and begging their bread with wild shouts and clam-our,

spurning indignantly every kind of honest labour and industry as an obstacle to divine

contemplation and to the ascent of the soul towards the Father of spirits. In all their excur-sions

they were followed by women with whom they lived on terms of the closest familiarity.

Those of them who conceived they had made the greatest proficiency in the higher spiritual

life dispensed with the use of clothes altogether in their assemblies, looking upon decency

and modesty as marks of inward corruption, characteristics of a soul that still grovelled under

the dominion of the flesh and had not yet been elevated into communion with the divine spirit,

its centre and source. Sometimes their progress towards this mystic communion was acceler-ated

by the Inquisition, and they expired in the flames, not merely with unclouded serenity,

but with the most triumphant feelings of cheerfulness and joy.

About the year 1830 there appeared, in one of the States of the American Union bordering on

Kentucky, an impostor who declared that he was the Son of God, the Saviour of mankind,

and that he had reappeared on earth to recall the impious, the unbelieving, and sinners to

their duty. He protested that if they did not mend their ways within a certain time, he would

give the signal, and in a moment the world would crumble to ruins. These extravagant preten-sions

were received with favour even by persons of wealth and position in society. At last a

German humbly besought the new Messiah to announce the dreadful catastrophe to his fel-low-

countrymen in the German language, as they did not understand English, and it seemed

a pity that they should be damned merely on that account. The would-be Saviour in reply con-fessed

with great candour that he did not know German. “What!” retorted the German, “you

the Son of God, and don’t speak all languages, and don’t even know German? Come, come,

you are a knave, a hypocrite, and a madman. Bedlam is the place for you.” The spectators

laughed, and went away ashamed of their credulity.

Sometimes, at the death of the human incarnation, the divine spirit transmigrates into another

man. The Buddhist Tartars believe in a great number of living Buddhas, who officiate as

Grand Lamas at the head of the most important monasteries. When one of these Grand

Lamas dies his disciples do not sorrow, for they know that he will soon reappear, being born

in the form of an infant. Their only anxiety is to discover the place of his birth. If at this time

they see a rainbow they take it as a sign sent them by the departed Lama to guide them to

his cradle. Sometimes the divine infant himself reveals his identity. “I am the Grand Lama,” he

says, “the living Buddha of such and such a temple. Take me to my old monastery. I am its

immortal head.” In whatever way the birthplace of the Buddha is revealed, whether by the

Buddha’s own avowal or by the sign in the sky, tents are struck, and the joyful pilgrims, often

headed by the king or one of the most illustrious of the royal family, set forth to find and bring

home the infant god. Generally he is born in Tibet, the holy land, and to reach him the cara-van

has often to traverse the most frightful deserts. When at last they find the child they fall

down and worship him. Before, however, he is acknowledged as the Grand Lama whom they

seek he must satisfy them of his identity. He is asked the name of the monastery of which he

claims to be the head, how far off it is, and how many monks live in it; he must also describe

the habits of the deceased Grand Lama and the manner of his death. Then various articles,



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 85?as prayer-books, tea-pots, and cups, are placed before him, and he has to point out those

used by himself in his previous life. If he does so without a mistake his claims are admitted,

and he is conducted in triumph to the monastery. At the head of all the Lamas is the Dalai

Lama of Lhasa, the Rome of Tibet. He is regarded as a living god, and at death his divine

and immortal spirit is born again in a child. According to some accounts the mode of discover-ing

the Dalai Lama is similar to the method, already described, of discovering an ordinary

Grand Lama. Other accounts speak of an election by drawing lots from a golden jar.

Wherever he is born, the trees and plants put forth green leaves; at his bidding flowers bloom

and springs of water rise; and his presence diffuses heavenly blessings.

But he is by no means the only man who poses as a god in these regions. A register of all the

incarnate gods in the Chinese empire is kept in the Li fan yiian or Colonial Office at Peking.

The number of gods who have thus taken out a license is one hundred and sixty. Tibet is

blessed with thirty of them, Northern Mongolia rejoices in nineteen, and Southern Mongolia

basks in the sunshine of no less than fifty-seven. The Chinese government, with a paternal

solicitude for the welfare of its subjects, forbids the gods on the register to be reborn any-where

but in Tibet. They fear lest the birth of a god in Mongolia should have serious political

consequences by stirring the dormant patriotism and warlike spirit of the Mongols, who might

rally round an ambitious native deity of royal lineage and seek to win for him, at the point of

the sword, a temporal as well as a spiritual kingdom. But besides these public or licensed

gods there are a great many little private gods, or unlicensed practitioners of divinity, who

work miracles and bless their people in holes and corners; and of late years the Chinese gov-ernment

has winked at the rebirth of these pettifogging deities outside of Tibet. However,

once they are born, the government keeps its eye on them as well as on the regular practi-tioners,

and if any of them misbehaves he is promptly degraded, banished to a distant

monastery, and strictly forbidden ever to be born again in the flesh.

From our survey of the religious position occupied by the king in rude societies we may infer

that the claim to divine and supernatural powers put forward by the monarchs of great histori-cal

empires like those of Egypt, Mexico, and Peru, was not the simple outcome of inflated

vanity or the empty expression of a grovelling adulation; it was merely a survival and exten-sion

of the old savage apotheosis of living kings. Thus, for example, as children of the Sun

the Incas of Peru were revered like gods; they could do no wrong, and no one dreamed of

offending against the person, honour, or property of the monarch or of any of the royal race.

Hence, too, the Incas did not, like most people, look on sickness as an evil. They considered

it a messenger sent from their father the Sun to call them to come and rest with him in heav-en.

Therefore the usual words in which an Inca announced his approaching end were these:

“My father calls me to come and rest with him.” They would not oppose their father’s will by

offering sacrifice for recovery, but openly declared that he had called them to his rest. Issuing

from the sultry valleys upon the lofty tableland of the Colombian Andes, the Spanish con-querors

were astonished to find, in contrast to the savage hordes they had left in the swelter-ing

jungles below, a people enjoying a fair degree of civilisation, practising agriculture, and liv-ing

under a government which Humboldt has compared to the theocracies of Tibet and

Japan. These were the Chibchas, Muyscas, or Mozcas, divided into two kingdoms, with capi-tals

at Bogota and Tunja, but united apparently in spiritual allegiance to the high pontiff of

Sogamozo or Iraca. By a long and ascetic novitiate, this ghostly ruler was reputed to have

acquired such sanctity that the waters and the rain obeyed him, and the weather depended

on his will. The Mexican kings at their accession, as we have seen, took an oath that they

would make the sun to shine, the clouds to give rain, the rivers to flow, and the earth to bring

forth fruits in abundance. We are told that Montezuma, the last king of Mexico, was wor-

-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page

86?shipped by his people as a god.

The early Babylonian kings, from the time of Sargon I. till the fourth dynasty of Ur or later,

claimed to be gods in their lifetime. The monarchs of the fourth dynasty of Ur in particular had

temples built in their honour; they set up their statues in various sanctuaries and commanded

the people to sacrifice to them; the eighth month was especially dedicated to the kings, and

sacrifices were offered to them at the new moon and on the fifteenth of each month. Again,

the Parthian monarchs of the Arsacid house styled themselves brothers of the sun and moon

and were worshipped as deities. It was esteemed sacrilege to strike even a private member

of the Arsacid family in a brawl.

The kings of Egypt were deified in their lifetime, sacrifices were offered to them, and their

worship was celebrated in special temples and by special priests. Indeed the worship of the

kings sometimes cast that of the gods into the shade. Thus in the reign of Merenra a high offi-cial

declared that he had built many holy places in order that the spirits of the king, the ever-living

Merenra, might be invoked “more than all the gods.” “It has never been doubted that the

king claimed actual divinity; he was the ‘great god,’ the ‘golden Horus,’ and son of Ra. He

claimed authority not only over Egypt, but over ‘all lands and nations,’ ‘the whole world in its

length and its breadth, the east and the west,’ ‘the entire compass of the great circuit of the

sun,’ ‘the sky and what is in it, the earth and all that is upon it,’ ‘every creature that walks

upon two or upon four legs, all that fly or flutter, the whole world offers her productions to

him.’ Whatever in fact might be asserted of the Sun-god, was dogmatically predicable of the

king of Egypt. His titles were directly derived from those of the Sun-god.” “In the course of his

existence,” we are told, “the king of Egypt exhausted all the possible conceptions of divinity

which the Egyptians had framed for themselves. A superhuman god by his birth and by his

royal office, he became the deified man after his death. Thus all that was known of the divine

was summed up in him.”

We have now completed our sketch, for it is no more than a sketch, of the evolution of that

sacred kingship which attained its highest form, its most absolute expression, in the monar-chies

of Peru and Egypt. Historically, the institution appears to have originated in the order of

public magicians or medicine-men; logically it rests on a mistaken deduction from the associ-ation

of ideas. Men mistook the order of their ideas for the order of nature, and hence imag-ined

that the control which they have, or seem to have, over their thoughts, permitted them to

exercise a corresponding control over things. The men who for one reason or another,

because of the strength or the weakness of their natural parts, were supposed to possess

these magical powers in the highest degree, were gradually marked off from their fellows and

became a separate class, who were destined to exercise a most far-reaching influence on the

political, religious, and intellectual evolution of mankind. Social progress, as we know, con-sists

mainly in a successive differentiation of functions, or, in simpler language, a division of

labour. The work which in primitive society is done by all alike and by all equally ill, or nearly

so, is gradually distributed among different classes of workers and executed more and more

perfectly; and so far as the products, material or immaterial, of this specialised labour are

shared by all, the whole community benefits by the increasing specialisation. Now magicians

or medicine-men appear to constitute the oldest artificial or professional class in the evolution

of society. For sorcerers are found in every savage tribe known to us; and among the lowest

savages, such as the Australian aborigines, they are the only professional class that exists.

As time goes on, and the process of differentiation continues, the order of medicine-men is

itself subdivided into such classes as the healers of disease, the makers of rain, and so forth;

while the most powerful member of the order wins for himself a position as chief and gradual-

-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page

87?ly develops into a sacred king, his old magical functions falling more and more into the back-ground

and being exchanged for priestly or even divine duties, in proportion as magic is slow-ly

ousted by religion. Still later, a partition is effected between the civil and the religious

aspect of the kingship, the temporal power being committed to one man and the spiritual to

another. Meanwhile the magicians, who may be repressed but cannot be extirpated by the

predominance of religion, still addict themselves to their old occult arts in preference to the

newer ritual of sacrifice and prayer; and in time the more sagacious of their number perceive

the fallacy of magic and hit upon a more effectual mode of manipulating the forces of nature

for the good of man; in short, they abandon sorcery for science. I am far from affirming that

the course of development has everywhere rigidly followed these lines: it has doubtless var-ied

greatly in different societies. I merely mean to indicate in the broadest outline what I con-ceive

to have been its general trend. Regarded from the industrial point of view the evolution

has been from uniformity to diversity of function: regarded from the political point of view, it

has been from democracy to despotism. With the later history of monarchy, especially with

the decay of despotism and its displacement by forms of government better adapted to the

higher needs of humanity, we are not concerned in this enquiry: our theme is the growth, not

the decay, of a great and, in its time, beneficent institution.

Chapter VIII

Departmental Kings of Nature

THE preceding investigation has proved that the same union of sacred functions with a royal

title which meets us in the King of the Wood at Nemi, the Sacrificial King at Rome, and the

magistrate called the King at Athens, occurs frequently outside the limits of classical antiquity

and is a common feature of societies at all stages from barbarism to civilisation. Further, it

appears that the royal priest is often a king, not only in name but in fact, swaying the sceptre

as well as the crosier. All this confirms the traditional view of the origin of the titular and

priestly kings in the republics of ancient Greece and Italy. At least by showing that the combi-nation

of spiritual and temporal power, of which Graeco-Italian tradition preserved the memo-ry,

has actually existed in many places, we have obviated any suspicion of improbability that

might have attached to the tradition. Therefore we may now fairly ask, May not the King of

the Wood have had an origin like that which a probable tradition assigns to the Sacrificial

King of Rome and the titular King of Athens? In other words, may not his predecessors in

office have been a line of kings whom a republican revolution stripped of their political power,

leaving them only their religious functions and the shadow of a crown? There are at least two

reasons for answering this question in the negative. One reason is drawn from the abode of

the priest of Nemi; the other from his title, the King of the Wood. If his predecessors had been

kings in the ordinary sense, he would surely have been found residing, like the fallen kings of

Rome and Athens, in the city of which the sceptre had passed from him. This city must have

been Aricia, for there was none nearer. But Aricia was three miles off from his forest sanctu-ary

by the lake shore. If he reigned, it was not in the city, but in the greenwood. Again his title,

King of the Wood, hardly allows us to suppose that he had ever been a king in the common

sense of the word. More likely he was a king of nature, and of a special side of nature, name-ly,

the woods from which he took his title. If we could find instances of what we may call

departmental kings of nature, that is of persons supposed to rule over particular elements or

aspects of nature, they would probably present a closer analogy to the King of the Wood than

the divine kings we have been hitherto considering, whose control of nature is general rather

than special. Instances of such departmental kings are not wanting.

On a hill at Bomma near the mouth of the Congo dwells Namvulu Vumu, King of the Rain and



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 88?Storm. Of some of the tribes on the Upper Nile we are told that they have no kings in the

common sense; the only persons whom they acknowledge as such are the Kings of the Rain,

Mata Kodou, who are credited with the power of giving rain at the proper time, that is, the

rainy season. Before the rains begin to fall at the end of March the country is a parched and

arid desert; and the cattle, which form the people’s chief wealth, perish for lack of grass. So,

when the end of March draws on, each householder betakes himself to the King of the Rain

and offers him a cow that he may make the blessed waters of heaven to drip on the brown

and withered pastures. If no shower falls, the people assemble and demand that the king

shall give them rain; and if the sky still continues cloudless, they rip up his belly, in which he

is believed to keep the storms. Amongst the Bari tribe one of these Rain Kings made rain by

sprinkling water on the ground out of a handbell.

Among tribes on the outskirts of Abyssinia a similar office exists and has been thus described

by an observer: “The priesthood of the Alfai, as he is called by the Barea and Kunama, is a

remarkable one; he is believed to be able to make rain. This office formerly existed among

the Algeds and appears to be still common to the Nuba negroes. The Alfai of the Barea, who

is also consulted by the northern Kunama, lives near Tembadere on a mountain alone with

his family. The people bring him tribute in the form of clothes and fruits, and cultivate for him

a large field of his own. He is a kind of king, and his office passes by inheritance to his broth-er

or sister’s son. He is supposed to conjure down rain and to drive away the locusts. But if

he disappoints the people’s expectation and a great drought arises in the land, the Alfai is

stoned to death, and his nearest relations are obliged to cast the first stone at him. When we

passed through the country, the office of Alfai was still held by an old man; but I heard that

rain-making had proved too dangerous for him and that he had renounced his office.”

In the backwoods of Cambodia live two mysterious sovereigns known as the King of the Fire

and the King of the Water. Their fame is spread all over the south of the great Indo-Chinese

peninsula; but only a faint echo of it has reached the West. Down to a few years ago no

European, so far as is known, had ever seen either of them; and their very existence might

have passed for a fable, were it not that till lately communications were regularly maintained

between them and the King of Cambodia, who year by year exchanged presents with them.

Their royal functions are of a purely mystic or spiritual order; they have no political authority;

they are simple peasants, living by the sweat of their brow and the offerings of the faithful.

According to one account they live in absolute solitude, never meeting each other and never

seeing a human face. They inhabit successively seven towers perched upon seven moun-tains,

and every year they pass from one tower to another. People come furtively and cast

within their reach what is needful for their subsistence. The kingship lasts seven years, the

time necessary to inhabit all the towers successively; but many die before their time is out.

The offices are hereditary in one or (according to others) two royal families, who enjoy high

consideration, have revenues assigned to them, and are exempt from the necessity of tilling

the ground. But naturally the dignity is not coveted, and when a vacancy occurs, all eligible

men (they must be strong and have children) flee and hide themselves. Another account,

admitting the reluctance of the hereditary candidates to accept the crown, does not counte-nance

the report of their hermit-like seclusion in the seven towers. For it represents the peo-ple

as prostrating themselves before the mystic kings whenever they appear in public, it being

thought that a terrible hurricane would burst over the country if this mark of homage were

omitted. Like many other sacred kings, of whom we shall read in the sequel, the Kings of Fire

and Water are not allowed to die a natural death, for that would lower their reputation.

Accordingly when one of them is seriously ill, the elders hold a consultation and if they think

he cannot recover they stab him to death. His body is burned and the ashes are piously col-

-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page

89?lected and publicly honoured for five years. Part of them is given to the widow, and she keeps

them in an urn, which she must carry on her back when she goes to weep on her husband’s

grave.

We are told that the Fire King, the more important of the two, whose supernatural powers

have never been questioned, officiates at marriages, festivals, and sacrifices in honour of the

Yan or spirit. On these occasions a special place is set apart for him; and the path by which

he approaches is spread with white cotton cloths. A reason for confining the royal dignity to

the same family is that this family is in possession of certain famous talismans which would

lose their virtue or disappear if they passed out of the family. These talismans are three: the

fruit of a creeper called Cui, gathered ages ago at the time of the last deluge, but still fresh

and green; a rattan, also very old but bearing flowers that never fade; and lastly, a sword con-taining

a Yan or spirit, who guards it constantly and works miracles with it. The spirit is said to

be that of a slave, whose blood chanced to fall upon the blade while it was being forged, and

who died a voluntary death to expiate his involuntary offence. By means of the two former tal-ismans

the Water King can raise a flood that would drown the whole earth. If the Fire King

draws the magic sword a few inches from its sheath, the sun is hidden and men and beasts

fall into a profound sleep; were he to draw it quite out of the scabbard, the world would come

to an end. To this wondrous brand sacrifices of buffaloes, pigs, fowls, and ducks are offered

for rain. It is kept swathed in cotton and silk; and amongst the annual presents sent by the

King of Cambodia were rich stuffs to wrap the sacred sword.

Contrary to the common usage of the country, which is to bury the dead, the bodies of both

these mystic monarchs are burnt, but their nails and some of their teeth and bones are reli-giously

preserved as amulets. It is while the corpse is being consumed on the pyre that the

kinsmen of the deceased magician flee to the forest and hide themselves, for fear of being

elevated to the invidious dignity which he has just vacated. The people go and search for

them, and the first whose lurking place they discover is made King of Fire or Water.

These, then, are examples of what I have called departmental kings of nature. But it is a far

cry to Italy from the forests of Cambodia and the sources of the Nile. And though Kings of

Rain, Water, and Fire have been found, we have still to discover a King of the Wood to match

the Arician priest who bore that title. Perhaps we shall find him nearer home.

Chapter IX

The Worship of Trees

1. TREE-SPIRITS

IN the religious history of the Aryan race in Europe the worship of trees has played an impor-tant

part. Nothing could be more natural. For at the dawn of history Europe was covered with

immense primaeval forests, in which the scattered clearings must have appeared like islets in

an ocean of green. Down to the first century before our era the Hercynian forest stretched

eastward from the Rhine for a distance at once vast and unknown; Germans whom Caesar

questioned had travelled for two months through it without reaching the end. Four centuries

later it was visited by the Emperor Julian, and the solitude, the gloom, the silence of the forest

appear to have made a deep impression on his sensitive nature. He declared that he knew

nothing like it in the Roman empire. In our own country the wealds of Kent, Surrey, and

Sussex are remnants of the great forest of Anderida, which once clothed the whole of the

south-eastern portion of the island. Westward it seems to have stretched till it joined another



-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------

Page 90?forest that extended from Hampshire to Devon. In the reign of Henry II. the citizens of London

still hunted the wild bull and the boar in the woods of Hampstead. Even under the later

Plantagenets the royal forests were sixty-eight in number. In the forest of Arden it was said

that down to modern times a squirrel might leap from tree to tree for nearly the whole length

of Warwickshire. The excavation of ancient pile-villages in the valley of the Po has shown that

long before the rise and probably the foundation of Rome the north of Italy was covered with

dense woods of elms, chestnuts, and especially of oaks. Archaeology is here confirmed by

history; for classical writers contain many references to Italian forests which have now disap-peared.

As late as the fourth century before our era Rome was divided from central Etruria by

the dreaded Ciminian forest, which Livy compares to the woods of Germany. No merchant, if

we may trust the Roman historian, had ever penetrated its pathless solitudes; and it was

deemed a most daring feat when a Roman general, after sending two scouts to explore its

intricacies, led his army into the forest and, making his way to a ridge of the wooded moun-tains,

looked down on the rich Etrurian fields spread out below. In Greece beautiful woods of

pine, oak, and other trees still linger on the slopes of the high Arcadian mountains, still adorn

with their verdure the deep gorge through which the Ladon hurries to join the sacred Alpheus,

and were still, down to a few years ago, mirrored in the dark blue waters of the lonely lake of

Pheneus; but they are mere fragments of the forests which clothed great tracts in antiquity,

and which at a more remote epoch may have spanned the Greek peninsula from sea to sea.

From an examination of the Teutonic words for “temple” Grimm has made it probable that

amongst the Germans the oldest sanctuaries were natural woods. However that may be, tree-worship

is well attested for all the great European families of the Aryan stock. Amongst the

Celts the oak-worship of the Druids is familiar to every one, and their old word for sanctuary

seems to be identical in origin and meaning with the Latin nemus, a grove or woodland glade,

which still survives in the name of Nemi. Sacred groves were common among the ancient

Germans, and tree-worship is hardly extinct amongst their descendants at the present day.

How serious that worship was in former times may be gathered from the ferocious penalty

appointed by the old German laws for such as dared to peel the bark of a standing tree. The

culprit’s navel was to be cut out and nailed to the part of the tree which he had peeled, and

he