object:1.18 - The Perils of the Soul
book class:The Golden Bough
author class:James George Frazer
subject class:Occultism
class:chapter
XVIII. The Perils of the Soul
1. The Soul as a Mannikin
THE FOREGOING examples have taught us that the office of a sacred
king or priest is often hedged in by a series of burdensome
restrictions or taboos, of which a principal purpose appears to be
to preserve the life of the divine man for the good of his people.
But if the object of the taboos is to save his life, the question
arises, How is their observance supposed to effect this end? To
understand this we must know the nature of the danger which
threatens the king's life, and which it is the intention of these
curious restrictions to guard against. We must, therefore, ask: What
does early man understand by death? To what causes does he attribute
it? And how does he think it may be guarded against?
As the savage commonly explains the processes of inanimate nature by
supposing that they are produced by living beings working in or
behind the phenomena, so he explains the phenomena of life itself.
If an animal lives and moves, it can only be, he thinks, because
there is a little animal inside which moves it: if a man lives and
moves, it can only be because he has a little man or animal inside
who moves him. The animal inside the animal, the man inside the man,
is the soul. And as the activity of an animal or man is explained by
the presence of the soul, so the repose of sleep or death is
explained by its absence; sleep or trance being the temporary, death
being the permanent absence of the soul. Hence if death be the
permanent absence of the soul, the way to guard against it is either
to prevent the soul from leaving the body, or, if it does depart, to
ensure that it shall return. The precautions adopted by savages to
secure one or other of these ends take the form of certain
prohibitions or taboos, which are nothing but rules intended to
ensure either the continued presence or the return of the soul. In
short, they are life-preservers or life-guards. These general
statements will now be illustrated by examples.
Addressing some Australian blacks, a European missionary said, "I am
not one, as you think, but two." Upon this they laughed. "You may
laugh as much as you like," continued the missionary, "I tell you
that I am two in one; this great body that you see is one; within
that there is another little one which is not visible. The great
body dies, and is buried, but the little body flies away when the
great one dies." To this some of the blacks replied, "Yes, yes. We
also are two, we also have a little body within the breast." On
being asked where the little body went after death, some said it
went behind the bush, others said it went into the sea, and some
said they did not know. The Hurons thought that the soul had a head
and body, arms and legs; in short, that it was a complete little
model of the man himself. The Esquimaux believe that "the soul
exhibits the same shape as the body it belongs to, but is of a more
subtle and ethereal nature." According to the Nootkas the soul has
the shape of a tiny man; its seat is the crown of the head. So long
as it stands erect, its owner is hale and hearty; but when from any
cause it loses its upright position, he loses his senses. Among the
Indian tribes of the Lower Fraser River, man is held to have four
souls, of which the principal one has the form of a mannikin, while
the other three are shadows of it. The Malays conceive the human
soul as a little man, mostly invisible and of the bigness of a
thumb, who corresponds exactly in shape, proportion, and even in
complexion to the man in whose body he resides. This mannikin is of
a thin, unsubstantial nature, though not so impalpable but that it
may cause displacement on entering a physical object, and it can
flit quickly from place to place; it is temporarily absent from the
body in sleep, trance, and disease, and permanently absent after
death.
So exact is the resemblance of the mannikin to the man, in other
words, of the soul to the body, that, as there are fat bodies and
thin bodies, so there are fat souls and thin souls; as there are
heavy bodies and light bodies, long bodies and short bodies, so
there are heavy souls and light souls, long souls and short souls.
The people of Nias think that every man, before he is born, is asked
how long or how heavy a soul he would like, and a soul of the
desired weight or length is measured out to him. The heaviest soul
ever given out weighs about ten grammes. The length of a man's life
is proportioned to the length of his soul; children who die young
had short souls. The Fijian conception of the soul as a tiny human
being comes clearly out in the customs observed at the death of a
chief among the Nakelo tribe. When a chief dies, certain men, who
are the hereditary undertakers, call him, as he lies, oiled and
ornamented, on fine mats, saying, "Rise, sir, the chief, and let us
be going. The day has come over the land." Then they conduct him to
the river side, where the ghostly ferryman comes to ferry Nakelo
ghosts across the stream. As they thus attend the chief on his last
journey, they hold their great fans close to the ground to shelter
him, because, as one of them explained to a missionary, "His soul is
only a little child." People in the Punjaub who tattoo themselves
believe that at death the soul, "the little entire man or woman"
inside the mortal frame, will go to heaven blazoned with the same
tattoo patterns which adorned the body in life. Sometimes, however,
as we shall see, the human soul is conceived not in human but in
animal form.
2. Absence and Recall of the Soul
THE SOUL is commonly supposed to escape by the natural openings of
the body, especially the mouth and nostrils. Hence in Celebes they
sometimes fasten fish-hooks to a sick man's nose, navel, and feet,
so that if his soul should try to escape it may be hooked and held
fast. A Turik on the Baram River, in Borneo, refused to part with
some hook-like stones, because they, as it were, hooked his soul to
his body, and so prevented the spiritual portion of him from
becoming detached from the material. When a Sea Dyak sorcerer or
medicine-man is initiated, his fingers are supposed to be furnished
with fish-hooks, with which he will thereafter clutch the human soul
in the act of flying away, and restore it to the body of the
sufferer. But hooks, it is plain, may be used to catch the souls of
enemies as well as of friends. Acting on this principle head-hunters
in Borneo hang wooden hooks beside the skulls of their slain enemies
in the belief that this helps them on their forays to hook in fresh
heads. One of the implements of a Haida medicine-man is a hollow
bone, in which he bottles up departing souls, and so restores them
to their owners. When any one yawns in their presence the Hindoos
always snap their thumbs, believing that this will hinder the soul
from issuing through the open mouth. The Marquesans used to hold the
mouth and nose of a dying man, in order to keep him in life by
preventing his soul from escaping; the same custom is reported of
the New Caledonians; and with the like intention the Bagobos of the
Philippine Islands put rings of brass wire on the wrists or ankles
of their sick. On the other hand, the Itonamas of South America seal
up the eyes, nose, and mouth of a dying person, in case his ghost
should get out and carry off others; and for a similar reason the
people of Nias, who fear the spirits of the recently deceased and
identify them with the breath, seek to confine the vagrant soul in
its earthly tabernacle by bunging up the nose or tying up the jaws
of the corpse. Before leaving a corpse the Wakelbura of Australia
used to place hot coals in its ears in order to keep the ghost in
the body, until they had got such a good start that he could not
overtake them. In Southern Celebes, to hinder the escape of a
woman's soul in childbed, the nurse ties a band as tightly as
possible round the body of the expectant mother. The Minangkabauers
of Sumatra observe a similar custom; a skein of thread or a string
is sometimes fastened round the wrist or loins of a woman in
childbed, so that when her soul seeks to depart in her hour of
travail it may find the egress barred. And lest the soul of a babe
should escape and be lost as soon as it is born, the Alfoors of
Celebes, when a birth is about to take place, are careful to close
every opening in the house, even the keyhole; and they stop up every
chink and cranny in the walls. Also they tie up the mouths of all
animals inside and outside the house, for fear one of them might
swallow the child's soul. For a similar reason all persons present
in the house, even the mother herself, are obliged to keep their
mouths shut the whole time the birth is taking place. When the
question was put, Why they did not hold their noses also, lest the
child's soul should get into one of them? the answer was that breath
being exhaled as well as inhaled through the nostrils, the soul
would be expelled before it could have time to settle down. Popular
expressions in the language of civilised peoples, such as to have
one's heart in one's mouth, or the soul on the lips or in the nose,
show how natural is the idea that the life or soul may escape by the
mouth or nostrils.
Often the soul is conceived as a bird ready to take flight. This
conception has probably left traces in most languages, and it
lingers as a metaphor in poetry. The Malays carry out the conception
of the bird-soul in a number of odd ways. If the soul is a bird on
the wing, it may be attracted by rice, and so either prevented from
flying away or lured back again from its perilous flight. Thus in
Java when a child is placed on the ground for the first time (a
moment which uncultured people seem to regard as especially
dangerous), it is put in a hen-coop and the mother makes a clucking
sound, as if she were calling hens. And in Sintang, a district of
Borneo, when a person, whether man, woman, or child, has fallen out
of a house or off a tree, and has been brought home, his wife or
other kinswoman goes as speedily as possible to the spot where the
accident happened, and there strews rice, which has been coloured
yellow, while she utters the words, "Cluck! cluck! soul! So-and-so
is in his house again. Cluck! cluck! soul!" Then she gathers up the
rice in a basket, carries it to the sufferer, and drops the grains
from her hand on his head, saying again, "Cluck! cluck! soul!" Here
the intention clearly is to decoy back the loitering bird-soul and
replace it in the head of its owner.
The soul of a sleeper is supposed to wander away from his body and
actually to visit the places, to see the persons, and to perform the
acts of which he dreams. For example, when an Indian of Brazil or
Guiana wakes up from a sound sleep, he is firmly convinced that his
soul has really been away hunting, fishing, felling trees, or
whatever else he has dreamed of doing, while all the time his body
has been lying motionless in his hammock. A whole Bororo village has
been thrown into a panic and nearly deserted because somebody had
dreamed that he saw enemies stealthily approaching it. A Macusi
Indian in weak health, who dreamed that his employer had made him
haul the canoe up a series of difficult cataracts, bitterly
reproached his master next morning for his want of consideration in
thus making a poor invalid go out and toil during the night. The
Indians of the Gran Chaco are often heard to relate the most
incredible stories as things which they have themselves seen and
heard; hence strangers who do not know them intimately say in their
haste that these Indians are liars. In point of fact the Indians are
firmly convinced of the truth of what they relate; for these
wonderful adventures are simply their dreams, which they do not
distinguish from waking realities.
Now the absence of the soul in sleep has its dangers, for if from
any cause the soul should be permanently detained away from the
body, the person thus deprived of the vital principle must die.
There is a German belief that the soul escapes from a sleeper's
mouth in the form of a white mouse or a little bird, and that to
prevent the return of the bird or animal would be fatal to the
sleeper. Hence in Transylvania they say that you should not let a
child sleep with its mouth open, or its soul will slip out in the
shape of a mouse, and the child will never wake. Many causes may
detain the sleeper's soul. Thus, his soul may meet the soul of
another sleeper and the two souls may fight; if a Guinea negro
wakens with sore bones in the morning, he thinks that his soul has
been thrashed by another soul in sleep. Or it may meet the soul of a
person just deceased and be carried off by it; hence in the Aru
Islands the inmates of a house will not sleep the night after a
death has taken place in it, because the soul of the deceased is
supposed to be still in the house and they fear to meet it in a
dream. Again, the soul of the sleeper may be prevented by an
accident or by physical force from returning to his body. When a
Dyak dreams of falling into the water, he supposes that this
accident has really befallen his spirit, and he sends for a wizard,
who fishes for the spirit with a hand-net in a basin of water till
he catches it and restores it to its owner. The Santals tell how a
man fell asleep, and growing very thirsty, his soul, in the form of
a lizard, left his body and entered a pitcher of water to drink.
Just then the owner of the pitcher happened to cover it; so the soul
could not return to the body and the man died. While his friends
were preparing to burn the body some one uncovered the pitcher to
get water. The lizard thus escaped and returned to the body, which
immediately revived; so the man rose up and asked his friends why
they were weeping. They told him they thought he was dead and were
about to burn his body. He said he had been down a well to get
water, but had found it hard to get out and had just returned. So
they saw it all.
It is a common rule with primitive people not to waken a sleeper,
because his soul is away and might not have time to get back; so if
the man wakened without his soul, he would fall sick. If it is
absolutely necessary to rouse a sleeper, it must be done very
gradually, to allow the soul time to return. A Fijian in Matuku,
suddenly wakened from a nap by somebody treading on his foot, has
been heard bawling after his soul and imploring it to return. He had
just been dreaming that he was far away in Tonga, and great was his
alarm on suddenly wakening to find his body in Matuku. Death stared
him in the face unless his soul could be induced to speed at once
across the sea and reanimate its deserted tenement. The man would
probably have died of fright if a missionary had not been at hand to
allay his terror.
Still more dangerous is it in the opinion of primitive man to move a
sleeper or alter his appearance, for if this were done the soul on
its return might not be able to find or recognise its body, and so
the person would die. The Minangkabauers deem it highly improper to
blacken or dirty the face of a sleeper, lest the absent soul should
shrink from re-entering a body thus disfigured. Patani Malays fancy
that if a person's face be painted while he sleeps, the soul which
has gone out of him will not recognise him, and he will sleep on
till his face is washed. In Bombay it is thought equivalent to
murder to change the aspect of a sleeper, as by painting his face in
fantastic colours or giving moustaches to a sleeping woman. For when
the soul returns it will not know its own body, and the person will
die.
But in order that a man's soul should quit his body, it is not
necessary that he should be asleep. It may quit him in his waking
hours, and then sickness, insanity, or death will be the result.
Thus a man of the Wurunjeri tribe in Australia lay at his last gasp
because his spirit had departed from him. A medicine-man went in
pursuit and caught the spirit by the middle just as it was about to
plunge into the sunset glow, which is the light cast by the souls of
the dead as they pass in and out of the under-world, where the sun
goes to rest. Having captured the vagrant spirit, the doctor brought
it back under his opossum rug, laid himself down on the dying man,
and put the soul back into him, so that after a time he revived. The
Karens of Burma are perpetually anxious about their souls, lest
these should go roving from their bodies, leaving the owners to die.
When a man has reason to fear that his soul is about to take this
fatal step, a ceremony is performed to retain or recall it, in which
the whole family must take part. A meal is prepared consisting of a
cock and hen, a special kind of rice, and a bunch of bananas. Then
the head of the family takes the bowl which is used to skim rice,
and knocking with it thrice on the top of the houseladder says:
"_Prrrroo!_ Come back, soul, do not tarry outside! If it rains, you
will be wet. If the sun shines, you will be hot. The gnats will
sting you, the leeches will bite you, the tigers will devour you,
the thunder will crush you. _Prrrroo!_ Come back, soul! Here it will
be well with you. You shall want for nothing. Come and eat under
shelter from the wind and the storm." After that the family partakes
of the meal, and the ceremony ends with everybody tying their right
wrist with a string which has been charmed by a sorcerer. Similarly
the Lolos of South-western China believe that the soul leaves the
body in chronic illness. In that case they read a sort of elaborate
litany, calling on the soul by name and beseeching it to return from
the hills, the vales, the rivers, the forests, the fields, or from
wherever it may be straying. At the same time cups of water, wine,
and rice are set at the door for the refreshment of the weary
wandering spirit. When the ceremony is over, they tie a red cord
round the arm of the sick man to tether the soul, and this cord is
worn by him until it decays and drops off.
Some of the Congo tribes believe that when a man is ill, his soul
has left his body and is wandering at large. The aid of the sorcerer
is then called in to capture the vagrant spirit and restore it to
the invalid. Generally the physician declares that he has
successfully chased the soul into the branch of a tree. The whole
town thereupon turns out and accompanies the doctor to the tree,
where the strongest men are deputed to break off the branch in which
the soul of the sick man is supposed to be lodged. This they do and
carry the branch back to the town, insinuating by their gestures
that the burden is heavy and hard to bear. When the branch has been
brought to the sick man's hut, he is placed in an upright position
by its side, and the sorcerer performs the enchantments by which the
soul is believed to be restored to its owner.
Pining, sickness, great fright, and death are ascribed by the Bataks
of Sumatra to the absence of the soul from the body. At first they
try to beckon the wanderer back, and to lure him, like a fowl, by
strewing rice. Then the following form of words is commonly
repeated: "Come back, O soul, whether thou art lingering in the
wood, or on the hills, or in the dale. See, I call thee with a
_toemba bras,_ with an egg of the fowl Rajah _moelija,_ with the
eleven healing leaves. Detain it not, let it come straight here,
detain it not, neither in the wood, nor on the hill, nor in the
dale. That may not be. O come straight home!" Once when a popular
traveller was leaving a Kayan village, the mothers, fearing that
their children's souls might follow him on his journey, brought him
the boards on which they carry their infants and begged him to pray
that the souls of the little ones would return to the familiar
boards and not go away with him into the far country. To each board
was fastened a looped string for the purpose of tethering the
vagrant spirits, and through the loop each baby was made to pass a
chubby finger to make sure that its tiny soul would not wander away.
In an Indian story a king conveys his soul into the dead body of a
Brahman, and a hunchback conveys his soul into the deserted body of
the king. The hunchback is now king and the king is a Brahman.
However, the hunchback is induced to show his skill by transferring
his soul to the dead body of a parrot, and the king seizes the
opportunity to regain possession of his own body. A tale of the same
type, with variations of detail, reappears among the Malays. A king
has incautiously transferred his soul to an ape, upon which the
vizier adroitly inserts his own soul into the king's body and so
takes possession of the queen and the kingdom, while the true king
languishes at court in the outward semblance of an ape. But one day
the false king, who played for high stakes, was watching a combat of
rams, and it happened that the animal on which he had laid his money
fell down dead. All efforts to restore animation proved unavailing
till the false king, with the instinct of a true sportsman,
transferred his own soul to the body of the deceased ram, and thus
renewed the fray. The real king in the body of the ape saw his
chance, and with great presence of mind darted back into his own
body, which the vizier had rashly vacated. So he came to his own
again, and the usurper in the ram's body met with the fate he richly
deserved. Similarly the Greeks told how the soul of Hermotimus of
Clazomenae used to quit his body and roam far and wide, bringing
back intelligence of what he had seen on his rambles to his friends
at home; until one day, when his spirit was abroad, his enemies
contrived to seize his deserted body and committed it to the flames.
The departure of the soul is not always voluntary. It may be
extracted from the body against its will by ghosts, demons, or
sorcerers. Hence, when a funeral is passing the house, the Karens
tie their children with a special kind of string to a particular
part of the house, lest the souls of the children should leave their
bodies and go into the corpse which is passing. The children are
kept tied in this way until the corpse is out of sight. And after
the corpse has been laid in the grave, but before the earth has been
shovelled in, the mourners and friends range themselves round the
grave, each with a bamboo split lengthwise in one hand and a little
stick in the other; each man thrusts his bamboo into the grave, and
drawing the stick along the groove of the bamboo points out to his
soul that in this way it may easily climb up out of the tomb. While
the earth is being shovelled in, the bamboos are kept out of the
way, lest the souls should be in them, and so should be
inadvertently buried with the earth as it is being thrown into the
grave; and when the people leave the spot they carry away the
bamboos, begging their souls to come with them. Further, on
returning from the grave each Karen provides himself with three
little hooks made of branches of trees, and calling his spirit to
follow him, at short intervals, as he returns, he makes a motion as
if hooking it, and then thrusts the hook into the ground. This is
done to prevent the soul of the living from staying behind with the
soul of the dead. When the Karo-Bataks have buried somebody and are
filling in the grave, a sorceress runs about beating the air with a
stick. This she does in order to drive away the souls of the
survivors, for if one of these souls happened to slip into the grave
and to be covered up with earth, its owner would die.
In Uea, one of the Loyalty Islands, the souls of the dead seem to
have been credited with the power of stealing the souls of the
living. For when a man was sick the soul-doctor would go with a
large troop of men and women to the graveyard. Here the men played
on flutes and the women whistled softly to lure the soul home. After
this had gone on for some time they formed in procession and moved
homewards, the flutes playing and the women whistling all the way,
while they led back the wandering soul and drove it gently along
with open palms. On entering the patient's dwelling they commanded
the soul in a loud voice to enter his body.
Often the abduction of a man's soul is set down to demons. Thus fits
and convulsions are generally ascribed by the Chinese to the agency
of certain mischievous spirits who love to draw men's souls out of
their bodies. At Amoy the spirits who serve babies and children in
this way rejoice in the high-sounding titles of "celestial agencies
bestriding galloping horses" and "literary graduates residing
halfway up in the sky." When an infant is writhing in convulsions,
the frightened mother hastens to the roof of the house, and, waving
about a bamboo pole to which one of the child's garments is
attached, cries out several times "My child So-and-so, come back,
return home!" Meantime, another inmate of the house bangs away at a
gong in the hope of attracting the attention of the strayed soul,
which is supposed to recognise the familiar garment and to slip into
it. The garment containing the soul is then placed on or beside the
child, and if the child does not die recovery is sure to follow,
sooner or later. Similarly some Indians catch a man's lost soul in
his boots and restore it to his body by putting his feet into them.
In the Moluccas when a man is unwell it is thought that some devil
has carried away his soul to the tree, mountain, or hill where he
(the devil) resides. A sorcerer having pointed out the devil's
abode, the friends of the patient carry thither cooked rice, fruit,
fish, raw eggs, a hen, a chicken, a silken robe, gold, armlets, and
so forth. Having set out the food in order they pray, saying: "We
come to offer to you, O devil, this offering of food, clothes, gold,
and so on; take it and release the soul of the patient for whom we
pray. Let it return to his body, and he who now is sick shall be
made whole." Then they eat a little and let the hen loose as a
ransom for the soul of the patient; also they put down the raw eggs;
but the silken robe, the gold, and the armlets they take home with
them. As soon as they are come to the house they place a flat bowl
containing the offerings which have been brought back at the sick
man's head, and say to him: "Now is your soul released, and you
shall fare well and live to grey hairs on the earth."
Demons are especially feared by persons who have just entered a new
house. Hence at a house-warming among the Alfoors of Minahassa in
Celebes the priest performs a ceremony for the purpose of restoring
their souls to the inmates. He hangs up a bag at the place of
sacrifice and then goes through a list of the gods. There are so
many of them that this takes him the whole night through without
stopping. In the morning he offers the gods an egg and some rice. By
this time the souls of the household are supposed to be gathered in
the bag. So the priest takes the bag, and holding it on the head of
the master of the house, says, "Here you have your soul; go (soul)
to-morrow away again." He then does the same, saying the same words,
to the housewife and all the other members of the family. Amongst
the same Alfoors one way of recovering a sick man's soul is to let
down a bowl by a belt out of a window and fish for the soul till it
is caught in the bowl and hauled up. And among the same people, when
a priest is bringing back a sick man's soul which he has caught in a
cloth, he is preceded by a girl holding the large leaf of a certain
palm over his head as an umbrella to keep him and the soul from
getting wet, in case it should rain; and he is followed by a man
brandishing a sword to deter other souls from any attempt at
rescuing the captured spirit.
Sometimes the lost soul is brought back in a visible shape. The
Salish or Flathead Indians of Oregon believe that a man's soul may
be separated for a time from his body without causing death and
without the man being aware of his loss. It is necessary, however,
that the lost soul should be soon found and restored to its owner or
he will die. The name of the man who has lost his soul is revealed
in a dream to the medicine-man, who hastens to inform the sufferer
of his loss. Generally a number of men have sustained a like loss at
the same time; all their names are revealed to the medicine-man, and
all employ him to recover their souls. The whole night long these
soulless men go about the village from lodge to lodge, dancing and
singing. Towards daybreak they go into a separate lodge, which is
closed up so as to be totally dark. A small hole is then made in the
roof, through which the medicine-man, with a bunch of feathers,
brushes in the souls, in the shape of bits of bone and the like,
which he receives on a piece of matting. A fire is next kindled, by
the light of which the medicine-man sorts out the souls. First he
puts aside the souls of dead people, of which there are usually
several; for if he were to give the soul of a dead person to a
living man, the man would die instantly. Next he picks out the souls
of all the persons present, and making them all to sit down before
him, he takes the soul of each, in the shape of a splinter of bone,
wood, or shell, and placing it on the owner's head, pats it with
many prayers and contortions till it descends into the heart and so
resumes its proper place.
Again, souls may be extracted from their bodies or detained on their
wanderings not only by ghosts and demons but also by men, especially
by sorcerers. In Fiji, if a criminal refused to confess, the chief
sent for a scarf with which "to catch away the soul of the rogue."
At the sight or even at the mention of the scarf the culprit
generally made a clean breast. For if he did not, the scarf would be
waved over his head till his soul was caught in it, when it would be
carefully folded up and nailed to the end of a chief's canoe; and
for want of his soul the criminal would pine and die. The sorcerers
of Danger Island used to set snares for souls. The snares were made
of stout cinet, about fifteen to thirty feet long, with loops on
either side of different sizes, to suit the different sizes of
souls; for fat souls there were large loops, for thin souls there
were small ones. When a man was sick against whom the sorcerers had
a grudge, they set up these soul-snares near his house and watched
for the flight of his soul. If in the shape of a bird or an insect
it was caught in the snare, the man would infallibly die. In some
parts of West Africa, indeed, wizards are continually setting traps
to catch souls that wander from their bodies in sleep; and when they
have caught one, they tie it up over the fire, and as it shrivels in
the heat the owner sickens. This is done, not out of any grudge
towards the sufferer, but purely as a matter of business. The wizard
does not care whose soul he has captured, and will readily restore
it to its owner, if only he is paid for doing so. Some sorcerers
keep regular asylums for strayed souls, and anybody who has lost or
mislaid his own soul can always have another one from the asylum on
payment of the usual fee. No blame whatever attaches to men who keep
these private asylums or set traps for passing souls; it is their
profession, and in the exercise of it they are actuated by no harsh
or unkindly feelings. But there are also wretches who from pure
spite or for the sake of lucre set and bait traps with the
deliberate purpose of catching the soul of a particular man; and in
the bottom of the pot, hidden by the bait, are knives and sharp
hooks which tear and rend the poor soul, either killing it outright
or mauling it so as to impair the health of its owner when it
succeeds in escaping and returning to him. Miss Kingsley knew a
Kruman who became very anxious about his soul, because for several
nights he had smelt in his dreams the savoury smell of smoked
crawfish seasoned with red pepper. Clearly some ill-wisher had set a
trap baited with this dainty for his dream-soul, intending to do him
grievous bodily, or rather spiritual, harm; and for the next few
nights great pains were taken to keep his soul from straying abroad
in his sleep. In the sweltering heat of the tropical night he lay
sweating and snorting under a blanket, his nose and mouth tied up
with a handkerchief to prevent the escape of his precious soul. In
Hawaii there were sorcerers who caught souls of living people, shut
them up in calabashes, and gave them to people to eat. By squeezing
a captured soul in their hands they discovered the place where
people had been secretly buried.
Nowhere perhaps is the art of abducting human souls more carefully
cultivated or carried to higher perfection than in the Malay
Peninsula. Here the methods by which the wizard works his will are
various, and so too are his motives. Sometimes he desires to destroy
an enemy, sometimes to win the love of a cold or bashful beauty.
Thus, to take an instance of the latter sort of charm, the following
are the directions given for securing the soul of one whom you wish
to render distraught. When the moon, just risen, looks red above the
eastern horizon, go out, and standing in the moonlight, with the big
toe of your right foot on the big toe of your left, make a
speaking-trumpet of your right hand and recite through it the
following words:
"OM. I loose my shaft, I loose it and the moon clouds over,
I loose it, and the sun is extinguished.
I loose it, and the stars burn dim.
But it is not the sun, moon, and stars that I shoot at,
It is the stalk of the heart of that child of the congregation,
So-and-so.
Cluck! cluck! soul of So-and-so, come and walk with me,
Come and sit with me,
Come and sleep and share my pillow.
Cluck! cluck! soul."
Repeat this thrice and after every repetition blow through your
hollow fist. Or you may catch the soul in your turban, thus. Go out
on the night of the full moon and the two succeeding nights; sit
down on an ant-hill facing the moon, burn incense, and recite the
following incantation:
"I bring you a betel leaf to chew,
Dab the lime on to it, Prince Ferocious,
For Somebody, Prince Distraction's daughter, to chew.
Somebody at sunrise be distraught for love of me
Somebody at sunset be distraught for love of me.
As you remember your parents, remember me;
As you remember your house and houseladder, remember me;
When thunder rumbles, remember me;
When wind whistles, remember me;
When the heavens rain, remember me;
When cocks crow, remember me;
When the dial-bird tells its tales, remember me;
When you look up at the sun, remember me;
When you look up at the moon, remember me,
For in that self-same moon I am there.
Cluck! cluck! soul of Somebody come hither to me.
I do not mean to let you have my soul,
Let your soul come hither to mine."
Now wave the end of your turban towards the moon seven times each
night. Go home and put it under your pillow, and if you want to wear
it in the daytime, burn incense and say, "It is not a turban that I
carry in my girdle, but the soul of Somebody."
The Indians of the Nass River, in British Columbia, are impressed
with a belief that a physician may swallow his patient's soul by
mistake. A doctor who is believed to have done so is made by the
other members of the faculty to stand over the patient, while one of
them thrusts his fingers down the doctor's throat, another kneads
him in the stomach with his knuckles, and a third slaps him on the
back. If the soul is not in him after all, and if the same process
has been repeated upon all the medical men without success, it is
concluded that the soul must be in the head-doctor's box. A party of
doctors, therefore, waits upon him at his house and requests him to
produce his box. When he has done so and arranged its contents on a
new mat, they take the votary of Aesculapius and hold him up by the
heels with his head in a hole in the floor. In this position they
wash his head, and "any water remaining from the ablution is taken
and poured upon the sick man's head." No doubt the lost soul is in
the water.
3. The Soul as a Shadow and a Reflection
BUT the spiritual dangers I have enumerated are not the only ones
which beset the savage. Often he regards his shadow or reflection as
his soul, or at all events as a vital part of himself, and as such
it is necessarily a source of danger to him. For if it is trampled
upon, struck, or stabbed, he will feel the injury as if it were done
to his person; and if it is detached from him entirely (as he
believes that it may be) he will die. In the island of Wetar there
are magicians who can make a man ill by stabbing his shadow with a
pike or hacking it with a sword. After Sankara had destroyed the
Buddhists in India, it is said that he journeyed to Nepaul, where he
had some difference of opinion with the Grand Lama. To prove his
supernatural powers, he soared into the air. But as he mounted up
the Grand Lama, perceiving his shadow swaying and wavering on the
ground, struck his knife into it and down fell Sankara and broke his
neck.
In the Banks Islands there are some stones of a remarkably long
shape which go by the name of "eating ghosts," because certain
powerful and dangerous ghosts are believed to lodge in them. If a
man's shadow falls on one of these stones, the ghost will draw his
soul out from him, so that he will die. Such stones, therefore, are
set in a house to guard it; and a messenger sent to a house by the
absent owner will call out the name of the sender, lest the watchful
ghost in the stone should fancy that he came with evil intent and
should do him a mischief. At a funeral in China, when the lid is
about to be placed on the coffin, most of the bystanders, with the
exception of the nearest kin, retire a few steps or even retreat to
another room, for a person's health is believed to be endangered by
allowing his shadow to be enclosed in a coffin. And when the coffin
is about to be lowered into the grave most of the spectators recoil
to a little distance lest their shadows should fall into the grave
and harm should thus be done to their persons. The geomancer and his
assistants stand on the side of the grave which is turned away from
the sun; and the grave-diggers and coffin-bearers attach their
shadows firmly to their persons by tying a strip of cloth tightly
round their waists. Nor is it human beings alone who are thus liable
to be injured by means of their shadows. Animals are to some extent
in the same predicament. A small snail, which frequents the
neighbourhood of the limestone hills in Perak, is believed to suck
the blood of cattle through their shadows; hence the beasts grow
lean and sometimes die from loss of blood. The ancients supposed
that in Arabia, if a hyaena trod on a man's shadow, it deprived him
of the power of speech and motion; and that if a dog, standing on a
roof in the moonlight, cast a shadow on the ground and a hyaena trod
on it, the dog would fall down as if dragged with a rope. Clearly in
these cases the shadow, if not equivalent to the soul, is at least
regarded as a living part of the man or the animal, so that injury
done to the shadow is felt by the person or animal as if it were
done to his body.
Conversely, if the shadow is a vital part of a man or an animal, it
may under certain circumstances be as hazardous to be touched by it
as it would be to come into contact with the person or animal. Hence
the savage makes it a rule to shun the shadow of certain persons
whom for various reasons he regards as sources of dangerous
influence. Amongst the dangerous classes he commonly ranks mourners
and women in general, but especially his mother-in-law. The Shuswap
Indians think that the shadow of a mourner falling upon a person
would make him sick. Amongst the Kurnai of Victoria novices at
initiation were cautioned not to let a woman's shadow fall across
them, as this would make them thin, lazy, and stupid. An Australian
native is said to have once nearly died of fright because the shadow
of his mother-in-law fell on his legs as he lay asleep under a tree.
The awe and dread with which the untutored savage contemplates his
mother-in-law are amongst the most familiar facts of anthropology.
In the Yuin tribes of New South Wales the rule which forbade a man
to hold any communication with his wife's mother was very strict. He
might not look at her or even in her direction. It was a ground of
divorce if his shadow happened to fall on his mother-in-law: in that
case he had to leave his wife, and she returned to her parents. In
New Britain the native imagination fails to conceive the extent and
nature of the calamities which would result from a man's
accidentally speaking to his wife's mother; suicide of one or both
would probably be the only course open to them. The most solemn form
of oath a New Briton can take is, "Sir, if I am not telling the
truth, I hope I may shake hands with my mother-in-law."
Where the shadow is regarded as so intimately bound up with the life
of the man that its loss entails debility or death, it is natural to
expect that its diminution should be regarded with solicitude and
apprehension, as betokening a corresponding decrease in the vital
energy of its owner. In Amboyna and Uliase, two islands near the
equator, where necessarily there is little or no shadow cast at
noon, the people make it a rule not to go out of the house at
mid-day, because they fancy that by doing so a man may lose the
shadow of his soul. The Mangaians tell of a mighty warrior,
Tukaitawa, whose strength waxed and waned with the length of his
shadow. In the morning, when his shadow fell longest, his strength
was greatest; but as the shadow shortened towards noon his strength
ebbed with it, till exactly at noon it reached its lowest point;
then, as the shadow stretched out in the afternoon, his strength
returned. A certain hero discovered the secret of Tukaitawa's
strength and slew him at noon. The savage Besisis of the Malay
Peninsula fear to bury their dead at noon, because they fancy that
the shortness of their shadows at that hour would sympathetically
shorten their own lives.
Nowhere, perhaps, does the equivalence of the shadow to the life or
soul come out more clearly than in some customs practised to this
day in South-eastern Europe. In modern Greece, when the foundation
of a new building is being laid, it is the custom to kill a cock, a
ram, or a lamb, and to let its blood flow on the foundation-stone,
under which the animal is afterwards buried. The object of the
sacrifice is to give strength and stability to the building. But
sometimes, instead of killing an animal, the builder entices a man
to the foundation-stone, secretly measures his body, or a part of
it, or his shadow, and buries the measure under the
foundation-stone; or he lays the foundation-stone upon the man's
shadow. It is believed that the man will die within the year. The
Roumanians of Transylvania think that he whose shadow is thus
immured will die within forty days; so persons passing by a building
which is in course of erection may hear a warning cry, "Beware lest
they take thy shadow!" Not long ago there were still shadow-traders
whose business it was to provide architects with the shadows
necessary for securing their walls. In these cases the measure of
the shadow is looked on as equivalent to the shadow itself, and to
bury it is to bury the life or soul of the man, who, deprived of it,
must die. Thus the custom is a substitute for the old practice of
immuring a living person in the walls, or crushing him under the
foundation-stone of a new building, in order to give strength and
durability to the structure, or more definitely in order that the
angry ghost may haunt the place and guard it against the intrusion
of enemies.
As some peoples believe a man's soul to be in his shadow, so other
(or the same) peoples believe it to be in his reflection in water or
a mirror. Thus "the Andamanese do not regard their shadows but their
reflections (in any mirror) as their souls." When the Motumotu of
New Guinea first saw their likenesses in a looking-glass, they
thought that their reflections were their souls. In New Caledonia
the old men are of opinion that a person's reflection in water or a
mirror is his soul; but the younger men, taught by the Catholic
priests, maintain that it is a reflection and nothing more, just
like the reflection of palm-trees in the water. The reflection-soul,
being external to the man, is exposed to much the same dangers as
the shadow-soul. The Zulus will not look into a dark pool because
they think there is a beast in it which will take away their
reflections, so that they die. The Basutos say that crocodiles have
the power of thus killing a man by dragging his reflection under
water. When one of them dies suddenly and from no apparent cause,
his relatives will allege that a crocodile must have taken his
shadow some time when he crossed a stream. In Saddle Island,
Melanesia, there is a pool "into which if any one looks he dies; the
malignant spirit takes hold upon his life by means of his reflection
on the water."
We can now understand why it was a maxim both in ancient India and
ancient Greece not to look at one's reflection in water, and why the
Greeks regarded it as an omen of death if a man dreamed of seeing
himself so reflected. They feared that the water-spirits would drag
the person's reflection or soul under water, leaving him soulless to
perish. This was probably the origin of the classical story of the
beautiful Narcissus, who languished and died through seeing his
reflection in the water.
Further, we can now explain the widespread custom of covering up
mirrors or turning them to the wall after a death has taken place in
the house. It is feared that the soul, projected out of the person
in the shape of his reflection in the mirror, may be carried off by
the ghost of the departed, which is commonly supposed to linger
about the house till the burial. The custom is thus exactly parallel
to the Aru custom of not sleeping in a house after a death for fear
that the soul, projected out of the body in a dream, may meet the
ghost and be carried off by it. The reason why sick people should
not see themselves in a mirror, and why the mirror in a sick-room is
therefore covered up, is also plain; in time of sickness, when the
soul might take flight so easily, it is particularly dangerous to
project it out of the body by means of the reflection in a mirror.
The rule is therefore precisely parallel to the rule observed by
some peoples of not allowing sick people to sleep; for in sleep the
soul is projected out of the body, and there is always a risk that
it may not return.
As with shadows and reflections, so with portraits; they are often
believed to contain the soul of the person portrayed. People who
hold this belief are naturally loth to have their likenesses taken;
for if the portrait is the soul, or at least a vital part of the
person portrayed, whoever possesses the portrait will be able to
exercise a fatal influence over the original of it. Thus the
Esquimaux of Bering Strait believe that persons dealing in
witchcraft have the power of stealing a person's shade, so that
without it he will pine away and die. Once at a village on the lower
Yukon River an explorer had set up his camera to get a picture of
the people as they were moving about among their houses. While he
was focusing the instrument, the headman of the village came up and
insisted on peeping under the cloth. Being allowed to do so, he
gazed intently for a minute at the moving figures on the ground
glass, then suddenly withdrew his head and bawled at the top of his
voice to the people, "He has all of your shades in this box." A
panic ensued among the group, and in an instant they disappeared
helterskelter into their houses. The Tepehuanes of Mexico stood in
mortal terror of the camera, and five days' persuasion was necessary
to induce them to pose for it. When at last they consented, they
looked like criminals about to be executed. They believed that by
photographing people the artist could carry off their souls and
devour them at his leisure moments. They said that, when the
pictures reached his country, they would die or some other evil
would befall them. When Dr. Catat and some companions were exploring
the Bara country on the west coast of Madagascar, the people
suddenly became hostile. The day before the travellers, not without
difficulty, had photographed the royal family, and now found
themselves accused of taking the souls of the natives for the
purpose of selling them when they returned to France. Denial was
vain; in compliance with the custom of the country they were obliged
to catch the souls, which were then put into a basket and ordered by
Dr. Catat to return to their respective owners.
Some villagers in Sikhim betrayed a lively horror and hid away
whenever the lens of a camera, or "the evil eye of the box" as they
called it, was turned on them. They thought it took away their souls
with their pictures, and so put it in the power of the owner of the
pictures to cast spells on them, and they alleged that a photograph
of the scenery blighted the landscape. Until the reign of the late
King of Siam no Siamese coins were ever stamped with the image of
the king, "for at that time there was a strong prejudice against the
making of portraits in any medium. Europeans who travel into the
jungle have, even at the present time, only to point a camera at a
crowd to procure its instant dispersion. When a copy of the face of
a person is made and taken away from him, a portion of his life goes
with the picture. Unless the sovereign had been blessed with the
years of a Methusaleh he could scarcely have permitted his life to
be distributed in small pieces together with the coins of the
realm."
Beliefs of the same sort still linger in various parts of Europe.
Not very many years ago some old women in the Greek island of
Carpathus were very angry at having their likenesses drawn, thinking
that in consequence they would pine and die. There are persons in
the West of Scotland "who refuse to have their likenesses taken lest
it prove unlucky; and give as instances the cases of several of
their friends who never had a day's health after being
photographed."
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