classes ::: The_Golden_Bough, James_George_Frazer, Occultism, chapter,
children :::
branches :::
see also :::

Instances, Classes, See Also, Object in Names
Definitions, . Quotes . - . Chapters .


object:1.63 - The Interpretation of the Fire-Festivals
book class:The Golden Bough
author class:James George Frazer
subject class:Occultism
class:chapter


LXIII. The Interpretation of the Fire-Festivals



1. On the Fire-festivals in general

THE FOREGOING survey of the popular fire-festivals of Europe
suggests some general observations. In the first place we can hardly
help being struck by the resemblance which the ceremonies bear to
each other, at whatever time of the year and in whatever part of
Europe they are celebrated. The custom of kindling great bonfires,
leaping over them, and driving cattle through or round them would
seem to have been practically universal throughout Europe, and the
same may be said of the processions or races with blazing torches
round fields, orchards, pastures, or cattle-stalls. Less widespread
are the customs of hurling lighted discs into the air and trundling
a burning wheel down hill. The ceremonial of the Yule log is
distinguished from that of the other fire-festivals by the privacy
and domesticity which characterise it; but this distinction may well
be due simply to the rough weather of midwinter, which is apt not
only to render a public assembly in the open air disagreeable, but
also at any moment to defeat the object of the assembly by
extinguishing the all-important fire under a downpour of rain or a
fall of snow. Apart from these local or seasonal differences, the
general resemblance between the fire-festivals at all times of the
year and in all places is tolerably close. And as the ceremonies
themselves resemble each other, so do the benefits which the people
expect to reap from them. Whether applied in the form of bonfires
blazing at fixed points, or of torches carried about from place to
place, or of embers and ashes taken from the smouldering heap of
fuel, the fire is believed to promote the growth of the crops and
the welfare of man and beast, either positively by stimulating them,
or negatively by averting the dangers and calamities which threaten
them from such causes as thunder and lightning, conflagration,
blight, mildew, vermin, sterility, disease, and not least of all
witchcraft.

But we naturally ask, How did it come about that benefits so great
and manifold were supposed to be attained by means so simple? In
what way did people imagine that they could procure so many goods or
avoid so many ills by the application of fire and smoke, of embers
and ashes? Two different explanations of the fire-festivals have
been given by modern enquirers. On the one hand it has been held
that they are sun-charms or magical ceremonies intended, on the
principle of imitative magic, to ensure a needful supply of sunshine
for men, animals, and plants by kindling fires which mimic on earth
the great source of light and heat in the sky. This was the view of
Wilhelm Mannhardt. It may be called the solar theory. On the other
hand it has been maintained that the ceremonial fires have no
necessary reference to the sun but are simply purificatory in
intention, being designed to burn up and destroy all harmful
influences, whether these are conceived in a personal form as
witches, demons, and monsters, or in an impersonal form as a sort of
pervading taint or corruption of the air. This is the view of Dr.
Edward Westermarck and apparently of Professor Eugen Mogk. It may be
called the purificatory theory. Obviously the two theories postulate
two very different conceptions of the fire which plays the principal
part in the rites. On the one view, the fire, like sunshine in our
latitude, is a genial creative power which fosters the growth of
plants and the development of all that makes for health and
happiness; on the other view, the fire is a fierce destructive power
which blasts and consumes all the noxious elements, whether
spiritual or material, that menace the life of men, of animals, and
of plants. According to the one theory the fire is a stimulant,
according to the other it is a disinfectant; on the one view its
virtue is positive, on the other it is negative.

Yet the two explanations, different as they are in the character
which they attribute to the fire, are perhaps not wholly
irreconcilable. If we assume that the fires kindled at these
festivals were primarily intended to imitate the sun's light and
heat, may we not regard the purificatory and disinfecting qualities,
which popular opinion certainly appears to have ascribed to them, as
attributes derived directly from the purificatory and disinfecting
qualities of sunshine? In this way we might conclude that, while the
imitation of sunshine in these ceremonies was primary and original,
the purification attributed to them was secondary and derivative.
Such a conclusion, occupying an intermediate position between the
two opposing theories and recognising an element of truth in both of
them, was adopted by me in earlier editions of this work; but in the
meantime Dr. Westermarck has argued powerfully in favour of the
purificatory theory alone, and I am bound to say that his arguments
carry great weight, and that on a fuller review of the facts the
balance of evidence seems to me to incline decidedly in his favour.
However, the case is not so clear as to justify us in dismissing the
solar theory without discussion, and accordingly I propose to adduce
the considerations which tell for it before proceeding to notice
those which tell against it. A theory which had the support of so
learned and sagacious an investigator as W. Mannhardt is entitled to
a respectful hearing.



2. The Solar Theory of the Fire-festivals

IN AN EARLIER part of this work we saw that savages resort to charms
for making sunshine, and it would be no wonder if primitive man in
Europe did the same. Indeed, when we consider the cold and cloudy
climate of Europe during a great part of the year, we shall find it
natural that sun-charms should have played a much more prominent
part among the superstitious practices of European peoples than
among those of savages who live nearer the equator and who
consequently are apt to get in the course of nature more sunshine
than they want. This view of the festivals may be supported by
various arguments drawn partly from their dates, partly from the
nature of the rites, and partly from the influence which they are
believed to exert upon the weather and on vegetation.

First, in regard to the dates of the festivals it can be no mere
accident that two of the most important and widely spread of the
festivals are timed to coincide more or less exactly with the summer
and winter solstices, that is, with the two turning-points in the
sun's apparent course in the sky when he reaches respectively his
highest and his lowest elevation at noon. Indeed with respect to the
midwinter celebration of Christmas we are not left to conjecture; we
know from the express testimony of the ancients that it was
instituted by the church to supersede an old heathen festival of the
birth of the sun, which was apparently conceived to be born again on
the shortest day of the year, after which his light and heat were
seen to grow till they attained their full maturity at midsummer.
Therefore it is no very far-fetched conjecture to suppose that the
Yule log, which figures so prominently in the popular celebration of
Christmas, was originally designed to help the labouring sun of
midwinter to rekindle his seemingly expiring light.

Not only the date of some of the festivals but the manner of their
celebration suggests a conscious imitation of the sun. The custom of
rolling a burning wheel down a hill, which is often observed at
these ceremonies, might well pass for an imitation of the sun's
course in the sky, and the imitation would be especially appropriate
on Midsummer Day when the sun's annual declension begins. Indeed the
custom has been thus interpreted by some of those who have recorded
it. Not less graphic, it may be said, is the mimicry of his apparent
revolution by swinging a burning tar-barrel round a pole. Again, the
common practice of throwing fiery discs, sometimes expressly said to
be shaped like suns, into the air at the festivals may well be a
piece of imitative magic. In these, as in so many cases, the magic
force may be supposed to take effect through mimicry or sympathy: by
imitating the desired result you actually produce it: by
counterfeiting the sun's progress through the heavens you really
help the luminary to pursue his celestial journey with punctuality
and despatch. The name "fire of heaven," by which the midsummer fire
is sometimes popularly known, clearly implies a consciousness of a
connexion between the earthly and the heavenly flame.

Again, the manner in which the fire appears to have been originally
kindled on these occasions has been alleged in support of the view
that it was intended to be a mock-sun. As some scholars have
perceived, it is highly probable that at the periodic festivals in
former times fire was universally obtained by the friction of two
pieces of wood. It is still so procured in some places both at the
Easter and the Midsummer festivals, and it is expressly said to have
been formerly so procured at the Beltane celebration both in
Scotland and Wales. But what makes it nearly certain that this was
once the invariable mode of kindling the fire at these periodic
festivals is the analogy of the needfire, which has almost always
been produced by the friction of wood, and sometimes by the
revolution of a wheel. It is a plausible conjecture that the wheel
employed for this purpose represents the sun, and if the fires at
the regularly recurring celebrations were formerly produced in the
same way, it might be regarded as a confirmation of the view that
they were originally sun-charms. In point of fact there is, as Kuhn
has indicated, some evidence to show that the midsummer fire was
originally thus produced. We have seen that many Hungarian
swine-herds make fire on Midsummer Eve by rotating a wheel round a
wooden axle wrapt in hemp, and that they drive their pigs through
the fire thus made. At Obermedlingen, in Swabia, the "fire of
heaven," as it was called, was made on St. Vitus's Day (the
fifteenth of June) by igniting a cart-wheel, which, smeared with
pitch and plaited with straw, was fastened on a pole twelve feet
high, the top of the pole being inserted in the nave of the wheel.
This fire was made on the summit of a mountain, and as the flame
ascended, the people uttered a set form of words, with eyes and arms
directed heavenward. Here the fixing of a wheel on a pole and
igniting it suggests that originally the fire was produced, as in
the case of the need-fire, by the revolution of a wheel. The day on
which the ceremony takes place (the fifteenth of June) is near
midsummer; and we have seen that in Masuren fire is, or used to be,
actually made on Midsummer Day by turning a wheel rapidly about an
oaken pole, though it is not said that the new fire so obtained is
used to light a bonfire. However, we must bear in mind that in all
such cases the use of a wheel may be merely a mechanical device to
facilitate the operation of fire-making by increasing the friction;
it need not have any symbolical significance.

Further, the influence which these fires, whether periodic or
occasional, are supposed to exert on the weather and vegetation may
be cited in support of the view that they are sun-charms, since the
effects ascribed to them resemble those of sunshine. Thus, the
French belief that in a rainy June the lighting of the midsummer
bonfires will cause the rain to cease appears to assume that they
can disperse the dark clouds and make the sun to break out in
radiant glory, drying the wet earth and dripping trees. Similarly
the use of the need-fire by Swiss children on foggy days for the
purpose of clearing away the mist may very naturally be interpreted
as a sun-charm. In the Vosges Mountains the people believe that the
midsummer fires help to preserve the fruits of the earth and ensure
good crops. In Sweden the warmth or cold of the coming season is
inferred from the direction in which the flames of the May Day
bonfire are blown; if they blow to the south, it will be warm, if to
the north, cold. No doubt at present the direction of the flames is
regarded merely as an augury of the weather, not as a mode of
influencing it. But we may be pretty sure that this is one of the
cases in which magic has dwindled into divination. So in the Eifel
Mountains, when the smoke blows towards the corn-fields, this is an
omen that the harvest will be abundant. But the older view may have
been not merely that the smoke and flames prognosticated, but that
they actually produced an abundant harvest, the heat of the flames
acting like sunshine on the corn. Perhaps it was with this view that
people in the Isle of Man lit fires to windward of their fields in
order that the smoke might blow over them. So in South Africa, about
the month of April, the Matabeles light huge fires to the windward
of their gardens, "their idea being that the smoke, by passing over
the crops, will assist the ripening of them." Among the Zulus also
"medicine is burned on a fire placed to windward of the garden, the
fumigation which the plants in consequence receive being held to
improve the crop." Again, the idea of our European peasants that the
corn will grow well as far as the blaze of the bonfire is visible,
may be interpreted as a remnant of the belief in the quickening and
fertilising power of the bonfires. The same belief, it may be
argued, reappears in the notion that embers taken from the bonfires
and inserted in the fields will promote the growth of the crops, and
it may be thought to underlie the customs of sowing flax-seed in the
direction in which the flames blow, of mixing the ashes of the
bonfire with the seed-corn at sowing, of scattering the ashes by
themselves over the field to fertilise it, and of incorporating a
piece of the Yule log in the plough to make the seeds thrive. The
opinion that the flax or hemp will grow as high as the flames rise
or the people leap over them belongs clearly to the same class of
ideas. Again, at Konz, on the banks of the Moselle, if the blazing
wheel which was trundled down the hillside reached the river without
being extinguished, this was hailed as a proof that the vintage
would be abundant. So firmly was this belief held that the
successful performance of the ceremony entitled the villagers to
levy a tax upon the owners of the neighbouring vineyards. Here the
unextinguished wheel might be taken to represent an unclouded sun,
which in turn would portend an abundant vintage. So the waggon-load
of white wine which the villagers received from the vineyards round
about might pass for a payment for the sunshine which they had
procured for the grapes. Similarly in the Vale of Glamorgan a
blazing wheel used to be trundled down hill on Midsummer Day, and if
the fire were extinguished before the wheel reached the foot of the
hill, the people expected a bad harvest; whereas if the wheel kept
alight all the way down and continued to blaze for a long time, the
farmers looked forward to heavy crops that summer. Here, again, it
is natural to suppose that the rustic mind traced a direct connexion
between the fire of the wheel and the fire of the sun, on which the
crops are dependent.

But in popular belief the quickening and fertilising influence of
the bonfires is not limited to the vegetable world; it extends also
to animals. This plainly appears from the Irish custom of driving
barren cattle through the midsummer fires, from the French belief
that the Yule log steeped in water helps cows to calve, from the
French and Serbian notion that there will be as many chickens,
calves, lambs, and kids as there are sparks struck out of the Yule
log, from the French custom of putting the ashes of the bonfires in
the fowls' nests to make the hens lay eggs, and from the German
practice of mixing the ashes of the bonfires with the drink of
cattle in order to make the animals thrive. Further, there are clear
indications that even human fecundity is supposed to be promoted by
the genial heat of the fires. In Morocco the people think that
childless couples can obtain offspring by leaping over the midsummer
bonfire. It is an Irish belief that a girl who jumps thrice over the
midsummer bonfire will soon marry and become the mother of many
children; in Flanders women leap over the midsummer fires to ensure
an easy delivery; in various parts of France they think that if a
girl dances round nine fires she will be sure to marry within the
year, and in Bohemia they fancy that she will do so if she merely
sees nine of the bonfires. On the other hand, in Lechrain people say
that if a young man and woman, leaping over the midsummer fire
together, escape unsmirched, the young woman will not become a
mother within twelve months; the flames have not touched and
fertilised her. In parts of Switzerland and France the lighting of
the Yule log is accompanied by a prayer that the women may bear
children, the she-goats bring forth kids, and the ewes drop lambs.
The rule observed in some places that the bonfires should be kindled
by the person who was last married seems to belong to the same class
of ideas, whether it be that such a person is supposed to receive
from, or to impart to, the fire a generative and fertilising
influence. The common practice of lovers leaping over the fires hand
in hand may very well have originated in a notion that thereby their
marriage would be blessed with offspring; and the like motive would
explain the custom which obliges couples married within the year to
dance to the light of torches. And the scenes of profligacy which
appear to have marked the midsummer celebration among the
Esthonians, as they once marked the celebration of May Day among
ourselves, may have sprung, not from the mere licence of
holiday-makers, but from a crude notion that such orgies were
justified, if not required, by some mysterious bond which linked the
life of man to the courses of the heavens at this turning-point of
the year.

At the festivals which we are considering the custom of kindling
bonfires is commonly associated with a custom of carrying lighted
torches about the fields, the orchards, the pastures, the flocks and
the herds; and we can hardly doubt that the two customs are only two
different ways of attaining the same object, namely, the benefits
which are believed to flow from the fire, whether it be stationary
or portable. Accordingly if we accept the solar theory of the
bonfires, we seem bound to apply it also to the torches; we must
suppose that the practice of marching or running with blazing
torches about the country is simply a means of diffusing far and
wide the genial influence of the sunshine of which these flickering
flames are a feeble imitation. In favour of this view it may be said
that sometimes the torches are carried about the fields for the
express purpose of fertilising them, and with the same intention
live coals from the bonfires are sometimes placed in the fields to
prevent blight. On the eve of Twelfth Day in Normandy men, women,
and children run wildly through the fields and orchards with lighted
torches, which they wave about the branches and dash against the
trunks of the fruit-trees for the sake of burning the moss and
driving away the moles and field-mice. "They believe that the
ceremony fulfills the double object of exorcising the vermin whose
multiplication would be a real calamity, and of imparting fecundity
to the trees, the fields, and even the cattle"; and they imagine
that the more the ceremony is prolonged, the greater will be the
crop of fruit next autumn. In Bohemia they say that the corn will
grow as high as they fling the blazing besoms into the air. Nor are
such notions confined to Europe. In Corea, a few days before the New
Year festival, the eunuchs of the palace swing burning torches,
chanting invocations the while, and this is supposed to ensure
bountiful crops for the next season. The custom of trundling a
burning wheel over the fields, which used to be observed in Poitou
for the express purpose of fertilising them, may be thought to
embody the same idea in a still more graphic form; since in this way
the mock-sun itself, not merely its light and heat represented by
torches, is made actually to pass over the ground which is to
receive its quickening and kindly influence. Once more, the custom
of carrying lighted brands round cattle is plainly equivalent to
driving the animals through the bonfire; and if the bonfire is a
suncharm, the torches must be so also.



3. The Purificatory Theory of the Fire-festivals

THUS far we have considered what may be said for the theory that at
the European fire-festivals the fire is kindled as a charm to ensure
an abundant supply of sunshine for man and beast, for corn and
fruits. It remains to consider what may be said against this theory
and in favour of the view that in these rites fire is employed not
as a creative but as a cleansing agent, which purifies men, animals,
and plants by burning up and consuming the noxious elements, whether
material or spiritual, which menace all living things with disease
and death.

First, then, it is to be observed that the people who practise the
fire-customs appear never to allege the solar theory in explanation
of them, while on the contrary they do frequently and emphatically
put forward the purificatory theory. This is a strong argument in
favour of the purificatory and against the solar theory; for the
popular explanation of a popular custom is never to be rejected
except for grave cause. And in the present case there seems to be no
adequate reason for rejecting it. The conception of fire as a
destructive agent, which can be turned to account for the
consumption of evil things, is so simple and obvious that it could
hardly escape the minds even of the rude peasantry with whom these
festivals originated. On the other hand the conception of fire as an
emanation of the sun, or at all events as linked to it by a bond of
physical sympathy, is far less simple and obvious; and though the
use of fire as a charm to produce sunshine appears to be undeniable,
nevertheless in attempting to explain popular customs we should
never have recourse to a more recondite idea when a simpler one lies
to hand and is supported by the explicit testimony of the people
themselves. Now in the case of the fire-festivals the destructive
aspect of fire is one upon which the people dwell again and again;
and it is highly significant that the great evil against which the
fire is directed appears to be witchcraft. Again and again we are
told that the fires are intended to burn or repel the witches; and
the intention is sometimes graphically expressed by burning an
effigy of a witch in the fire. Hence, when we remember the great
hold which the dread of witchcraft has had on the popular European
mind in all ages, we may suspect that the primary intention of all
these fire-festivals was simply to destroy or at all events get rid
of the witches, who were regarded as the causes of nearly all the
misfortunes and calamities that befall men, their cattle, and their
crops.

This suspicion is confirmed when we examine the evils for which the
bonfires and torches were supposed to provide a remedy. Foremost,
perhaps, among these evils we may reckon the diseases of cattle; and
of all the ills that witches are believed to work there is probably
none which is so constantly insisted on as the harm they do to the
herds, particularly by stealing the milk from the cows. Now it is
significant that the need-fire, which may perhaps be regarded as the
parent of the periodic fire-festivals, is kindled above all as a
remedy for a murrain or other disease of cattle; and the
circumstance suggests, what on general grounds seems probable, that
the custom of kindling the need-fire goes back to a time when the
ancestors of the European peoples subsisted chiefly on the products
of their herds, and when agriculture as yet played a subordinate
part in their lives. Witches and wolves are the two great foes still
dreaded by the herdsman in many parts of Europe; and we need not
wonder that he should resort to fire as a powerful means of banning
them both. Among Slavonic peoples it appears that the foes whom the
need-fire is designed to combat are not so much living witches as
vampyres and other evil spirits, and the ceremony aims rather at
repelling these baleful beings than at actually consuming them in
the flames. But for our present purpose these distinctions are
immaterial. The important thing to observe is that among the Slavs
the need-fire, which is probably the original of all the ceremonial
fires now under consideration, is not a sun-charm, but clearly and
unmistakably nothing but a means of protecting man and beast against
the attacks of maleficent creatures, whom the peasant thinks to burn
or scare by the heat of the fire, just as he might burn or scare
wild animals.

Again, the bonfires are often supposed to protect the fields against
hail and the homestead against thunder and lightning. But both hail
and thunderstorms are frequently thought to be caused by witches;
hence the fire which bans the witches necessarily serves at the same
time as a talisman against hail, thunder, and lightning. Further,
brands taken from the bonfires are commonly kept in the houses to
guard them against conflagration; and though this may perhaps be
done on the principle of homoeopathic magic, one fire being thought
to act as a preventive of another, it is also possible that the
intention may be to keep witch-incendiaries at bay. Again, people
leap over the bonfires as a preventive of colic, and look at the
flames steadily in order to preserve their eyes in good health; and
both colic and sore eyes are in Germany, and probably elsewhere, set
down to the machinations of witches. Once more, to leap over the
midsummer fires or to circumambulate them is thought to prevent a
person from feeling pains in his back at reaping; and in Germany
such pains are called "witch-shots" and ascribed to witchcraft.

But if the bonfires and torches of the fire-festivals are to be
regarded primarily as weapons directed against witches and wizards,
it becomes probable that the same explanation applies not only to
the flaming discs which are hurled into the air, but also to the
burning wheels which are rolled down hill on these occasions; discs
and wheels, we may suppose, are alike intended to burn the witches
who hover invisible in the air or haunt unseen the fields, the
orchards, and the vineyards on the hillside. Certainly witches are
constantly thought to ride through the air on broomsticks or other
equally convenient vehicles; and if they do so, how can you get at
them so effectually as by hurling lighted missiles, whether discs,
torches, or besoms, after them as they flit past overhead in the
gloom? The South Slavonian peasant believes that witches ride in the
dark hail-clouds; so he shoots at the clouds to bring down the hags,
while he curses them, saying, "Curse, curse Herodias, thy mother is
a heathen, damned of God and fettered through the Redeemer's blood."
Also he brings out a pot of glowing charcoal on which he has thrown
holy oil, laurel leaves, and wormwood to make a smoke. The fumes are
supposed to ascend to the clouds and stupefy the witches, so that
they tumble down to earth. And in order that they may not fall soft,
but may hurt themselves very much, the yokel hastily brings out a
chair and tilts it bottom up so that the witch in falling may break
her legs on the legs of the chair. Worse than that, he cruelly lays
scythes, bill-hooks, and other formidable weapons edge upwards so as
to cut and mangle the poor wretches when they drop plump upon them
from the clouds.

On this view the fertility supposed to follow the application of
fire in the form of bonfires, torches, discs, rolling wheels, and so
forth, is not conceived as resulting directly from an increase of
solar heat which the fire has magically generated; it is merely an
indirect result obtained by freeing the reproductive powers of
plants and animals from the fatal obstruction of witchcraft. And
what is true of the reproduction of plants and animals may hold good
also of the fertility of the human sexes. The bonfires are supposed
to promote marriage and to procure offspring for childless couples.
This happy effect need not flow directly from any quickening or
fertilising energy in the fire; it may follow indirectly from the
power of the fire to remove those obstacles which the spells of
witches and wizards notoriously present to the union of man and
wife.

On the whole, then, the theory of the purificatory virtue of the
ceremonial fires appears more probable and more in accordance with
the evidence than the opposing theory of their connexion with the
sun.






questions, comments, suggestions/feedback, take-down requests, contribute, etc
contact me @ integralyogin@gmail.com or via the comments below
or join the integral discord server (chatrooms)
if the page you visited was empty, it may be noted and I will try to fill it out. cheers



--- OBJECT INSTANCES [0]


--- PRIMARY CLASS


chapter

--- SEE ALSO


--- SIMILAR TITLES [0]


1.63 - The Interpretation of the Fire-Festivals
select ::: Being, God, injunctions, media, place, powers, subjects,
favorite ::: cwsa, everyday, grade, mcw, memcards (table), project, project 0001, Savitri, the Temple of Sages, three js, whiteboard,
temp ::: consecration, experiments, knowledge, meditation, psychometrics, remember, responsibility, temp, the Bad, the God object, the Good, the most important, the Ring, the source of inspirations, the Stack, the Tarot, the Word, top priority, whiteboard,

--- DICTIONARIES (in Dictionaries, in Quotes, in Chapters)



--- QUOTES [0 / 0 - 0 / 0] (in Dictionaries, in Quotes, in Chapters)



KEYS (10k)


NEW FULL DB (2.4M)


*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***


--- IN CHAPTERS (in Dictionaries, in Quotes, in Chapters)



0

   1 Occultism






change font "color":
change "background-color":
change "font-family":
change "padding": 107460 site hits