Elements of Folk Psychology Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind · Wilhelm Max Wundt
14. THE TOTEMIC CULTS.
The primitive stage of human development, discussed in the preceding chapter, possessed no real cults in the strict sense of the term. Occasional suggestions or beginnings of cult acts were to be found, in the form of a number of magical customs. Such, particularly, were the efforts to expel sickness demons; also, the ceremonial dances designed to bring success to joint undertakings, as, for example, the above-mentioned dance of the Veddah about an arrow, whose purpose, perhaps, was to insure a successful hunt, if we would judge, among other things, from the fact that the dancers imitated the movements of animals. In contrast to these meagre magical usages, which, for the most part, served individual purposes, the totemic age developed a great variety of cults. Just as the totemic tribal organization is an impressive phenomenon when compared with the primitive horde, so also do we marvel at the rich development of cults with which we meet as we pass to the totemic age. These cults are associated not only with the most important events of human life but also with natural phenomena, though, of course, only in so far as the latter affect the interests of man, the weal or woe that is in store for the individual or for the tribal community. Generally speaking, therefore, these cults may be divided into two great classes. Though these two classes of cults are, of course, frequently merged and united--for the very reason that both spring from the same emotions of hope, of desire, and of fear--they are nevertheless clearly distinguishable by reference to the immediate purpose which the magic of the cult aims to serve. The first of these classes includes those cults which relate to the most significant events of human life; the second, those concerned with the natural phenomena most important to man.
Human life furnishes motives for cult acts in its origin as in its decline, in birth and in death. Other motives are to be found in significant intervening events, such primarily as the entrance of the youth into manhood, though in the case of the maiden, ceremonies of this sort are very secondary or are entirely lacking. Of these most important events of life, that of birth is practically removed from present consideration. No ceremony or cult is connected with it. Not infrequently, however, the idea prevails that the child becomes capable of life only on condition that its parents endow it with life a second time, as it were, by an express act of will. Thus, many Polynesian tribes allow parents to put to death a new-born infant. Only after the child has lived several hours has it gained a right to existence and does the duty of rearing it devolve upon the parents. There is a survival of similar ideas in the older usages of cultural peoples, though they have not led to the widespread evils of infanticide as they have among many peoples of nature. But even among the early Germans, Romans, and Greeks, the life of a new-born child was secure only after the father had given recognition to it in a symbolical act--such, for example, as lifting it from the earth. On the other hand, the previous act of laying the child on the ground frequently came to be symbolical of the idea that it, as all living things, owes its existence primarily to mother earth. With this act of an express recognition of the child, moreover, there is also bound up the unconditional obedience which the child, even down to a late period, was held to owe to its parents.
The fewer the cult acts connected with entrance upon life, the greater is the number that attend departure from it. Almost all cults of the dead, moreover, originate in the totemic age. Wherever traces of them appear at an earlier stage, one can hardly avoid the suspicion that these are due to the influences of neighbouring peoples. Now, the totemic cults of the dead are closely interrelated with the above-described usages relating to the disposition of the corpse. They make their appearance particularly when the original signs of fear and of flight from the demon of the dead begin to vanish, and when reverence comes into greater and greater prominence, as well as the impulse to provide for a future life of the dead--a life conceived somehow as a continuance of the present. The clansmen solemnly accompany the corpse to its burial; death lamentations assume specific ceremonial forms, for whose observance there is very commonly a special class of female mourners. The cries of these mourners, of course, still appear to express the emotion of fear in combination with that of grief. The main feature of the funeral ceremonies comes to be a _sacrifice to the dead_.
Not only are the usual articles of utility placed in the grave--such, for example, as a man's weapons--but animals are slaughtered and buried with the corpse. Where the idea of rulership has gained particular prominence--as, for example, among the Soudan and Bantu peoples of Africa--slaves and women must also follow the deceased chieftain into the grave. Evidently these sacrifices are intended primarily for the deceased himself. They are designed to help him in his further life, though in part the aim is still doubtless that of preventing his return as a demon. In both cases, these usages are clearly connected with the increased importance attached to the psyche, for they first appear with the spread of the belief in a survival after death and in soul migration. These sacrifices are doubtless regarded partly as directly supplying the necessary means whereby the soul of the dead may carry on its further existence and partly as magical instruments that make it possible for the deceased to enjoy a continuance of life. Thus, these sacrifices already involve ideas of a beyond, though, generally speaking, the latter did not as yet receive further development.
At this point, sacrifice to the dead undergoes further modifications, as a consequence of which there are also changes in the accompanying cult acts. The sacrifice of food dedicated to the use of the deceased and the bloody sacrifice designed to equip him with magical power, are no longer offered merely to the departed. As soon as god-ideas begin to emerge, the sacrifice is brought, in first instance, to these higher beings, who are implored to furnish protection to the deceased. As this latter motive gains the ascendancy, the slaughtered animals are no longer placed in the grave along with the deceased, but their blood is poured out upon it; of their flesh, moreover, only a part is thrown upon the grave as the portion of the dead, while the rest is consumed by the mourners. The feelings of reverence, thus expressed, issue, in the later development of these cults to the dead, in general ancestor worship. Not only the deceased himself and those who have assembled, but particularly the gods under whose protection the deceased is placed, receive a portion of the sacrifice. When this occurs, the offering, which had been devoted to the deceased, becomes sacrifice proper.
The offering was given solely to the one who had died; at first, its purpose was to keep him in his grave, later, to afford him aid in his further life. Real sacrifice to the dead involves _three_ parties--the deceased person, the deity, and the survivors. The deceased gains new life from the blood and flesh of the sacrificial animal; the deity is subjected to a magical influence which is to incline him favourably toward the departed; those who bring the sacrifices participate in this favour, since they enter into a magical union both with the deceased and with the protecting deity. In part, these developments extend on beyond the totemic age; their beginnings, however, are already everywhere present. True, in this early sacrifice to the dead the attempt to exercise a magical influence upon the deity--later, as we shall see, the essential feature of the sacrificial idea--is still in the background. Nevertheless, this magical feature, which characterizes sacrifice at the height of its development, has already made its appearance. Because of it, the original sacrifice to the dead possesses a significance intermediate between the two distinct concepts of a gift which sacrifice has been held to embody.
Though originally a gift to the deceased, an offering laid beside him, sacrifice became a means of protective magic for him and for the survivors. When the deity came to constitute a third member of this magical group, and as he gradually gained the dominant place, the idea of a gift again began to displace the purely magical idea. The gift, however, was now a gift to the deity. This was the final stage in the development of sacrifice and represents the basis of the ordinary rationalistic interpretation. Originally, however, sacrifice possessed a different significance. It was purely a magical act, as is shown by the further circumstance that it is precisely the sacrifice to the dead which was already practised at a time when there were as yet no gods but merely a belief in demons. Additional evidence may be found in the nature of the sacrificial gifts which are deposited in the graves, particularly where ancestor worship prevails--as, for example, in the realms of East Asiatic culture. In these regions, it is not the objects themselves with which the deceased is to be equipped for his future life that are buried, but miniature paper representations of them.
These representations are really not symbols, as is generally held--or, at any rate, this is only a later and retrogressive form of the idea--but they are sensuously embodied desires originally regarded as means of magic. In this case also, we may detect the influence of soul-ideas, which lie at the basis of all beliefs of this sort. As the psyche of the dead is supposed to reincarnate itself in a new organism, so likewise are the object-souls incorporated in these representative miniatures to transform themselves, by means of the magical power attaching to their shape, into corresponding real objects. But in this instance again, the further modifications in the sacrifice to the dead lead on into deity cult. Hence it is not until our next chapter, when we discuss deity cults, that we will deal with the sacrificial idea in its total development.
Connected with another life-event to which this age attaches particular importance is a further significant group of totemic cults. This consists in the celebration of the adolescence of youths in the so-called _initiation ceremonies_. In a period such as this, when intertribal struggles are a matter of increasing concern, the reception of a youth into the association of men, into the community of the hunt and of war, represents the outstanding event of his life. Beginnings of such celebrations were transmitted by the primitive age to the totemic era, but it is only at this later period that they are developed into great cult festivals. It is these festivals, particularly, which everywhere recur in essentially the same form among all the tribes of Australia. They are great folk festivals, frequently assembling the clans of friendly tribes. Their celebration consists of dances and songs, though primarily of ceremonies centring about the youths who are reaching the age of maturity. For a considerable period these youths have been prepared for the festival by the older men. They have been subjected to a strict asceticism for weeks beforehand; meanwhile they have also been trained in the use of weapons, and instructed in certain matters of which the young are kept in ignorance.
The actual celebration, which always occurs at night, includes ceremonies which, in part, involve extreme pain to the novices. The youths are obliged to stand very close to a fire kindled in the centre of the ceremonial ground. The older men, with painted faces, then execute dances, in which the women are forbidden to participate. An important feature of these dances is the imitation of totem animals. This also provides an opportunity for humorous episodes. During these pranks, however, the youths are compelled to remain serious. Moreover, they must give evidence of fortitude by fearlessly leaping over the fire. In many of these regions, there is a further ceremony, which is extremely peculiar and of uncertain significance. This consists in the knocking out of teeth. Generally the operation is performed by the medicine-man or, as he ought perhaps to be called in this capacity, the priest. The latter presses the teeth of his own lower jaw against one of the incisors of the upper jaw of the novice, thus loosening the tooth so that it may easily be knocked out with a stone hammer. This is the most primitive form of tooth deformation, a practice common to numerous peoples of nature as a means of beautification. That the original purpose was not cosmetic is clear.
Whatever other end it was intended to serve, however, is uncertain, though it was doubtless connected with cult. Perhaps its meaning is suggested in the fact that, before marriage, girls also were frequently deprived of a front tooth, and that the idea prevailed, possibly in connection with this custom, that the exchange of breath, and thus the breath-soul, may play a part in the act of procreation. It is not unreasonable to suppose that these ideas may represent the origin of the kiss. At any rate, as Preusz has pointed out, ancient Mexican pictures represent two deities engaged, apparently, in the act of kissing while (perhaps in reminiscence also of the blood-soul) red smoke passes from the mouth of the one to that of the other. Moreover, it may well be that this exchange of souls in the kiss has its analogue in many regions, particularly in Melanesia, in the exchange of breath through the nose--the so-called nose-greeting which might therefore better be called the nose-kiss. That this exchange is mediated through the nose may be due to the fact that among many of these tribes kissing with the lips is impossible because of mouth-rings, lip-blocks, and other deformations, doubtless originally intended as means of magic. Similar ideas concerning the mouth and the nose, moreover, and their relation to the psyche, are suggested even by the Biblical history of the Creation, according to which God rouses Adam to life by breathing a soul into him through his nose. Through the mouth, man breathes out his soul; through the nose, he received it.
Though the festival of initiation into manhood was once associated with magical acts of cult, as the above ceremony seems to show, the meaning of this magic has for the most part been lost to the memory of the natives. For this reason they generally regard the ceremonies, including that of striking out the teeth, as a means of testing the fortitude of the young men. This was doubtless a secondary motive even at a very early time, and when the magical significance dropped out, it remained as the sole purpose. Nevertheless, the character of these alleged tests is much too peculiar to be intelligible on the hypothesis that they were originally intended merely to arouse fear or pain. And so, in view of the widely prevalent use of fire as a means of lustration, we may be allowed to regard also the fire-test, which occupies a central place in these cult forms, as having originally been a means of magical purification.
The second class of ceremonial festivals and cults, as above remarked, is associated with certain objective natural phenomena which exercise a decisive influence upon human life. The natural phenomena most likely to originate a cult, because representing the most important objects of desire and fear, are those connected with the need for food, with the growth of plants, and with the increase of animals, particularly the animals of the chase. For this reason _vegetation cults_ date back to the very beginnings of the totemic period. Very probably they originated in the desire for plant food. Under relatively primitive conditions there was seldom a lack of game, though there was probably a scarcity of the vegetables necessary to supplement the food derived from animals. For plants frequently suffer from unfavourable weather, whether it be from the heat of the sun and from drought, as in tropical and sub-tropical regions, or from deluging rains, as in the temperate zones. Our interpretation of vegetation cults is supported particularly by the conditions prevailing in the original home of totemism, Australia. These cults here occur chiefly in the northern districts, into which there were early Melanesian immigrations; towards the south, they have gained but a relatively small foothold. The more northerly regions, as we have seen, are the very ones in which plant totems also are numerous, whereas they are lacking in the south. The cults of which we have been speaking are called _Intichiuma ceremonies_--an expression of Australian derivation. These ceremonies, moreover, involve the magical use of churingas, the Australian fetishes.
The character of these vegetation festivals is always very much the same. They include dances, in which, in essential distinction from those of the initiation ceremonies, women are generally allowed to participate; their central feature consists of specific magical acts designed to effect an increase of the food supply. In Australia, these acts, in part, take the form of ceremonies in which pieces of artificial animals are strewn about. We speak of them as artificial, of course, only from our own standpoint; to the Australian the material that is scattered represents an actual living being. Thus, for example, a heap of sand is moulded into the form of a large lizard, and, of this, various parts are thrown into the air by those who participate in the festival. The animal germs thus scattered are supposed to effect an increase in the animals of the lizard totem. These vegetation festivals, therefore, are also totem festivals, and their celebration has the secondary significance of a cult dedicated to the totem. The celebration connected with a fish totem is similar to the above, though somewhat more complicated. A member of the clan, whose arms or other parts of the body have been bored through with bone daggers, descends into the water and allows his blood to mingle with it. The totem germs that are to bring about an increase in fish are supposed to emanate from the blood.
In the case of plant totems, the cults are of a simpler nature. The plants themselves, or sometimes their seeds, which, moreover, also serve directly as food, are strewn to the winds. The grass-seed totem, for example, is particularly common in Australia. The seeds of the Australian grasses are gathered in large quantities and constitute an important part of the vegetable food. Thrown into the air, they are supposed to bring about an increased supply of these grasses. Externally regarded, this magical ceremony, primitive as it is, completely represents an act of sowing. It would be incorrect, however, as yet to speak of it as such, in the sense of the later tiller of the soil; the significance of the ceremony is purely magical. An age which merely gathers wild seeds and fruits does not prepare the soil in the way that sowing presupposes. Nevertheless, the magical cult involves an act which later forms an important part of agricultural tasks. Indeed, it is not at all improbable that these magical ceremonies, which in any event already involve the recognition that the strewing of seed conditions the increase of plants, have elsewhere constituted a preparatory step to the development of agriculture. In general it may be said that the ceremony probably originated in connection with plant totems, where the idea of such an increase is very especially apt to suggest itself; doubtless it was only later connected, through a process of external association, with animal totems. In harmony with such a view is the fact that Intichiuma festivals are chiefly prevalent in the regions of plant totemism.
The vegetation cults which preceded the rise of agriculture were finally superseded by _true cults of the soil_. The latter presuppose the preparation of the soil by the efforts of man. This is clear from the fact that they occur more regularly, and at definite seasons of the year; moreover, they are of a more complex character, serving in part a number of other purposes. Typical of the transition are the vegetation festivals of the natives of Central America. These festivals are unique in that they embody elements of celestial mythology; thus they constitute important transitional stages between the demon cults of the totemic era and deity cults. The relation which the seeds are supposed to bear to the sprouts of the various grains is now no longer merely of a magical nature. The hoe-culture, to which the American Indian has attained, has taught him the dependence of the growth of plants upon the act of sowing. But here also there can be no cult until there is community labour. The original hoe-culture carried on by the individual about his hut no more tends to originate a cult than does the erection of the hut, the weaving of baskets, or the other tasks set by the needs of daily life.
Individuals, however, frequently till the soil even prior to the rise of systematic agriculture, as occurs in certain regions of Melanesia, among the prairie peoples of North America, and elsewhere. Besides leading to more advanced ideas concerning the processes of germination and growth, these beginnings of agriculture, which still form part of the household duties of individuals, serve to engender what proves to be a permanent and basal factor in all further development--namely, _provision for the future_. However primitive may be the hoe-culture which the individual carries on about his hut, it is not concerned exclusively with the immediate present, as is the mere gathering of food, but it aims to satisfy a future need. True, even in this case, the beginnings may be traced back to the preceding age. Even such ceremonies as the Intichiuma festivals, in which the totems are strewn about in order magically to influence their growth and increase, are already thoroughly inspired by a regard for the future. Perhaps all human action concerned with the distant future was at first magical in aim.
The establishment of a cult, however, is due not merely to the foresight which provides for a future harvest by the tilling of the soil; it is conditioned also by a second factor--namely, _community labour_. Just as entrance into manhood gives rise to initiation cults only when it becomes of tribal importance, precisely so is the development of cults of the soil dependent upon the association of members of a tribe or a mark in common labour. Moreover, initiation into manhood early came to be of common concern because of the community life of age-associates and of the need for military training created by tribal warfare; the same is true, though at a later stage and, of course, for essentially different reasons, of the tilling of the soil. The most important factor in the latter case is the fact that because the natural conditions are common to all, all are obliged to select the same time both for the sowing and later for the harvest. This is of little moment so long as the population is sparse and the property of one individual is separated from that of the others by wide stretches of uncultivated land. The more closely the members of the mark live together, however, the more do they share in common labour.
Whenever a migrating tribe takes possession of a new territory, moreover, there is a further decisive consideration, namely, the fact that at the outset the soil is common property. In this case, not merely the natural conditions, but also the very ground on which the work of the field is performed, is identical for all the members of a mark. Added to this objective factor there more and more comes to be one of a subjective nature. In common labour, the individual determines his activities by reference to a common end; moreover, he regulates these activities, as to rhythm, tempo, and the accompanying expressive movements, so as to conform to the group in which he finds himself. Since, moreover, the activity of sowing and the subsequent growth of the crop preserve the magical character acquired in an earlier period, the work itself comes to be a cult activity. Just as initiation rites are not merely a declaration of manhood but a cult, designed magically to equip the novice with manly power and fortitude, so the tilling of the soil becomes a cult act through whose inherent magical power the prosperity of the crop is supposed to be secured.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.