Magic and Religion

It is clear that this explanation does not explain several of the cases wherein no anointing is used. We can only agree with Dr. Hocken that the performances deserve the study of physiologists and physicians. The explanation of Iamblichus, 'they walk on fire unharmed,' is that 'the god within them does not let fire harm them.' This implies that an exalted psychical condition of the performers secures their immunity. But in the cases where Europeans bore a part, and even in Dr. Hocken's examination of the natives, there was no sign of other than the normal mental condition. As fresh evidence comes in, it is perhaps not impossible that science will interest herself in the problem.

APPENDIX A

MR. TYLOR'S THEORY OF BORROWING

I feel so nervous about differing from Mr. Tylor as to the borrowing of the idea of a superior and creative being from the Jesuits by the Red Indians that I have reconsidered his essay.[489 - J.A.I. Feb. 1892.] He is arguing that 'the Great Spirit belongs not to the untutored but to the tutored minds of the savages.' I am not contending for the use of the words 'Great Spirit' as of native origin, and as employed to designate what I call a superior being. That the natives had an untaught belief in such a being is my opinion, not that they styled him 'Great Spirit.'

Mr. Tylor refers us to 'Relations des Jésuites,' 1611, p. 20, in the Quebec edition of 1858. Here (to translate the passage) I read: 'They believe in a god, so they say, but can only name him by the name of the sun, Niscaminou, and know no prayers, nor manner of adoring him.' When hungry they put on sacred robes, turn to the east, and say, 'Our Sun, or our God, give us to eat.' Here, then, are prayer, vestments, and turning to the east. The Jesuits, then, did not introduce these for the first time; nor did they introduce the conception of the superior being thus implored.

A similar relation of the sun to the being addressed in prayer exists now among the Blackfoot Indians of America. With them the word Natos is 'equivalent to holy or divine,' and is also the name of the sun. To Natos prayer and sacrifice are offered, and the cruel rites of the Natos-dance are performed. Tongues of cattle are served out to the virtuous: 'this rite partakes of the nature of a sacrament.' Youths sacrifice a finger, in recognition of prayers answered by Natos. 'Prayer is made to Natos only, and everything in Okán' (the ceremony) 'is sacred to him alone.'[490 - The Blackfoot Sun-dance, Rev. J. MacLean, Toronto. 1889.]

These are advanced, elaborate, and thoroughly native observances, of which the germ may be found in the religions described in the Jesuit 'Relations' of 1611.

Mr. Tylor says 'especially through missionary influence, since 1500, ideas of … retribution after death for deeds done in life have been implanted on native polytheism in various parts of the world.' But his Jesuit authority of 1611, in the passage cited by him, writes: 'They believe in the immortality of the soul, and in recompenses for good men and bad, confusedly, and in a general way, but they seek and care no further as to the manner of such things' (comment cela doibt estre). Mr. Tylor's authority does not, I confess, appear to me to support his opinion. The natives believed in future 'retribution.'

His other texts[491 - Rel. des Jésuites, 1633, p. 16; 1637, p. 49.] show us savages consulting each his Manitou, 'a powerful being' (quelque nature puissante), or diable. A Manitou is 'any superior being, good or bad:' the God of the Jesuits is le bon Manitou, Satan is le mauvais Manitou.

I am not arguing that these phrases are more than the pigeon-French of the savage flock, or that the ideas expressed did not later become implanted in their minds. But Mr. Tylor, in his essay of 1892, omits what he quotes in his 'Primitive Culture,' the Jesuit evidence of 1633 (p. 16) to 'one Atahocan who made everything. Speaking of God in a hut one day, they asked me, "What is God?" I replied, "The All Powerful One, who made heaven and earth." They then began to say to each other, "Atahocan, Atahocan, he is Atahocan."' 'They have no worship which they are used to pay to him whom they hold for their god.' (This is the religious condition of the Kaffirs described by Dos Santos in Pinkerton, xvi. 687.) Now it is Atahocan who interests me, as pre-missionary: no doubt he was not called le bon Manitou– but there he was! In 1634 Father Le Jeune consulted a very hostile sorcerer, who minimised Atahocan. 'They do not know,' said the sorcerer, 'who was the author of the world, perhaps Atahocan: it was uncertain. They only spoke of Atahocan as one speaks of something so remote as to be dubious. In fact the word Nitatahocan means in their language, "I tell a story, an old tale."'[492 - Rel. des Jésuites, 1634, p. 13.] The 'sorcerer,' a servant of familiar spirits, had no interest in Atahocan, though the tribesmen recognised in him the God and Creator of Father Le Jeune. There was but a waning tradition of a primal maker; interesting and important just because it was waning, and therefore could not be of fresh European introduction. The beings in receipt of sacrifice were Khichikouai, to whom they threw fat on the fire, with prayer.'[493 - Ibid. pp. 32, 33.] It appears to me that these affable familiar ghosts, practically serviceable, had cast the otiose Atahocan into the background. But he, like Andouagni, Kiehtan, and others, was certainly there before the Jesuits, and these beings are elsewhere cited by Mr. Tylor. The question is one of the existence of belief in such a being, not (for me at least) of the origin, which may well be post-European, of the words 'Kitchi Manitu, or Great Spirit.' If the Mandans believed, as Mr. Tylor does not deny in 'Omahank Numakchi, the Creator, whose name appears to mean Lord of Earth,' it is quite unimportant that 'there is no Mandan deity whose name answers to that of Great Spirit.'[494 - J. A. I. Feb. 1892, p. 287.]

I mentioned, in the first essay of this book, Mr. Max Müller's version of Bishop Salvado's account of Motagon, a dead creator in Western Australia. Mr. Tylor recognises him as Sir George Grey's Mettagong, 'an insignificant demon identified with the phosphoric fungus.' But did that demon 'die in decrepit old age long ago,' like Bishop Salvado's Motagon? There seems to be no hope of making anything clear out of Motagon. Mr. Oldfield, cited by Mr. Tylor for Australia, I have never quoted: his account cannot be uncontaminated. Yet the natives may have believed in an evil spirit before they adorned him with horns, as Mr. Oldfield states, which no indigenous beast possesses. 'Their doctrine of a horned devil' must be modern, though not necessarily their belief in a bad spirit. With Mr. Tylor's theory of Baiame as 'a missionary translation of the word for creator,' as early as 1850, I have already dealt in my second essay, showing that Baiame is a native pre-missionary word, whatever may be its etymology. Mrs. Langloh Parker renders it, not 'maker' (from baia, to cut, or fashion), but 'big man.'

APPENDIX B

THE MARTYRDOM OF DASIUS

It is difficult to ascertain the facts about this affair. There are first two brief narratives. One is printed in the 'Ménologie de Basile.'[495 - Urbino, 1727, vol. i. p. 198.] The other is in Cod. Ambrosianus, D 74, fol. 65r. M. Cumont thinks that both have a single source – namely, an abridgment of the 'Acts of St. Dasius,' published by himself from the Parisinus 1539, a MS. of the eleventh century. The two brief late narratives say that the Greeks in Dorostolum held a yearly feast of Cronos. Thirty days before the feast they chose a handsome young soldier, clad him in royal raiment, and allowed him thirty days of revelry, after which he was to sacrifice himself at the altar of Cronos. The lot fell on Dasius, who preferred to die as a martyr of Christ. Diocletian and Maximian, hearing of this, commanded him to be put to the sword. The second MS. names Bassus as the officer at whose tribunal Dasius was arraigned.

The long MS. first published by M. Cumont says that the man on whom the lot fell personated Cronos himself. On the thirtieth day of revelry he died by the sword as a victim to the 'unclean idols.' The author then adds that, in his own time, so-called Christians do devil-worship by dancing about in skin of beasts at the new year – which is not the date of the Saturnalia (December 17-23). Unlike these sinners, who thus give themselves to the devil, Dasius determined to refuse to be a sacrifice to heathen gods. He would never sacrifice himself to Cronos. He proclaimed himself a Christian, was thrown into a dark cell, and was brought before Bassus, 'the Legate,' next day.

Bassus asked what he was charged with, his name, and profession. Dasius gave his name, profession, and religion. Bassus (who appears to have been a mild kind of man) bade him revere the images of the Emperors, whose salt he ate (δορρουμένων ἡμῑν τὰ σιτηρέσια). Dasius, in a covenanting spirit, replied that he served no earthly monarch. Bassus again invited him to adore the images of the Emperor, 'which homage even barbarous nations pay.' Dasius defied the devil, and anticipated, in his confession, the still unformulated Nicene Creed. Bassus, keeping his temper to a marvel, said that every man must obey constituted authority. Dasius answered, 'Do to me whatever your filthy and impious Emperors command.' Bassus then offered him two hours for reflection, 'that you may consider in yourself how you may live among us with honour.' Dasius refused the respite in vulgar and insolent terms. Bassus then ordered him to be decapitated. He had a last chance, being offered incense to burn before the Imperial effigies, but he threw it on the ground, and was done to death.

Not a word about the mock-kingship passed between Dasius and Bassus, who merely asked him to perform the customary sacrifice, that he might 'live honourably in the regiment' (ὅπως δυνηθείης ζῆν ἡμῶν ἐν δόξῃ). How could Dasius live on if he was to be sacrificed 'at any rate'? Why did not Dasius tell Bassus the supposed facts of the case – that he objected to a month of unhallowed revelry, followed by self-sacrifice to Cronos? Bassus obviously knew nothing about all that. A soldier only has his orders; Dasius insulted the religion and the head of the State: he declined to retract, and Bassus had to administer the law. If Dasius did not like the law he need not have enlisted.

The two brief MSS. give us none of this conversation between Bassus and Dasius. That foul-tongued confessor, according to Mr. Frazer, 'refused to play the part of the heathen god and soil his last days by debauchery. The threats and arguments of his commanding officer, Bassus, failed to shake his constancy, and accordingly he was beheaded.'[496 - Golden Bough, iii. 141.] But Bassus, a perfect gentleman, never asked Dasius to soil his last days by debauchery, or to play the part of a heathen god. He merely offered to Dasius the usual test, just as Claverhouse might have offered the Abjuration Oath. The position of Dasius was exactly that of a dragoon of 1684 who 'refused the abjuration.'

In my opinion, Dasius probably was executed for his scruples, insolently expressed, if we believe his biographer; and, if we do not believe his biographer, the evidence ceases to exist. The biographer, knowing about the usual King of the Saturnalia in every Roman household, and wishing to check the survivals of pagan revelry at the new year, declared that the King of the Saturnalia was actually sacrificed to Saturn. But in his own account of the conversations between Dasius and his commanding officer not a word is said about the Saturnalia and the sacrifice of the mock-king. On the other hand, the commanding officer, or military judge, labours to save the life of Dasius, not being aware that it is in any way endangered – except by his recusancy. This hardly appears in Mr. Frazer's brief summary. But a glance at the original 'Acts of St. Dasius' shows the nature of the evidence.[497 - Analecta Bollandiana, xvi. pp. 5-16. The precise position of a 'Legatus' like Bassus is rather indistinct. If an officer, he need not have asked Dasius what his 'profession' was.]

If any part of it has an official basis, as M. Cumont supposes, that part must be the examination of Dasius by Bassus. Here occurs no hint of sacrificing Dasius as Saturn; Bassus expects him to throw incense on the flame, and to continue an honourable soldier of the Empire. He knows nothing about sacrificing Dasius. Thus, as historians regard evidence the statement about the yearly victim of Saturn, a statement made long after the event, and after the establishment of Christianity, is weak indeed. For it has no corroboration in the works of Latin or Greek historians or antiquaries. But anthropology is not history, and Mr. Frazer argues, 'the martyrologist's account of the Saturnalia agrees so closely with the accounts of similar rites elsewhere, which could not possibly have been known to him, that the substantial accuracy of his description may be regarded as established.'[498 - G. B. iii. 142.]

Now we have the Aztec case and the Sacæan case. But the Aztec victim is a captive, not a free soldier, whose life Bassus is most anxious to preserve. The Sacæan victim is not sacrificed, and is a condemned criminal. Now Mr. Frazer has said 'when a nation becomes civilised, if it does not drop human sacrifices altogether, it at least selects as victims only such wretches as would be put to death at any rate.'[499 - G. B. iii. 120.] But a valuable soldier, like Dasius, is not a wretch who would be put to death at any rate. Again, among the numerous cases of periods of licence, like the Sacæa, we know only one instance of sacrifice, and that of a criminal, in Ashanti. Our business is to prove that free Roman soldiers voluntarily sacrificed themselves at the Saturnalia. The Aztec sacrifice of a captive, the Persian execution of a criminal, with folklore rites of analogous description, scarcely make the Roman custom probable, while the direct evidence is only that of the martyrologist. His evidence merely asserts, as to the death of Dasius, that he perished for refusing the usual test. Again, as M. Parmentier argues, the sacrifice, if it existed, may have been of Oriental importation. In this condition of the evidence, especially as it allots thirty days to the Saturnalia, an otherwise unheard-of period, suspension of judgment seems prudent.

APPENDIX C

THE RIDE OF THE BEARDLESS ONE

Mr. Frazer's argument about the Ride of the Beardless One, and the possible traces of a similar burlesque performance preluding to or succeeding the Crucifixion, is not easy to follow. Perhaps, in the text, I may have misconceived my author's meaning. We know the ride of the beardless one in Persia through the work of Hyde, published at Oxford in 1700, and again in 1760. I condense Hyde's account as given by Mr. Frazer.[500 - G. B. iii. 181, 182.] The date of the festivity of the beardless one was 'the first day of the first month, which in the most ancient Persian calendar corresponds to March, so that the date of the ceremony agrees with that of the Babylonian New Year Festival of Zakmuk.' In Mr. Frazer's third volume, the Sacæa synchronise with Zakmuk, though in his second volume the Sacæa are of June-July. We shall suppose him, in the present passage, to adhere to the date of March for the Sacæa. The ride of the beardless one, if so, occurs at the Sacæan date. But Hyde found that some Persians regarded the ride of the beardless one as of recent institution; if they were right, it has no traceable connection with the ancient Sacæa. Nor was there any mock-king concerned in the ride of the beardless one; and there was no probable sacred harlot; still less were there two beardless ones, with two sacred harlots, as in Mr. Frazer's theory of the Sacæa. At all events Hyde says no more about the sacred harlots than Dio Chrysostom or any other ancient author records in the case of the Sacæa. Far from being attired as a king, the beardless buffoon was led about naked, on a horse, mule, or ass, fanning himself and complaining of heat, while people soused him in ice, snow, or cold water. Attended by the household of the king or governor, he extorted contributions. The goods seized between dawn and morning prayers fell to the governor or king; what the buffoon took between the first and second prayers he kept; and then he vanished. The populace might beat him later, if they caught him.

Now if this holiday farce existed, at the Sacæa and at Zakmuk, during the time of the exile, the Jews could not borrow the Sacæan custom of hanging a mock-king, for, on Mr. Frazer's theory (if I do not misunderstand it), the ride of the beardless one came in 'after the serious meaning of the custom' (the hanging of the mock-king) 'had been forgotten.' The ride of the beardless one is 'a degenerate copy of the original' – of the Sacæan whipping, hanging, and scourging a condemned criminal – which had fallen out of use, I presume. Lagarde is not of that opinion: he thinks that the author of the Book of Esther knew and combined the colours of the Persian Magophonia, the Sacæa, and the ride of the beardless. In fact, Dio Chrysostom does not tell us that the Sacæan mock-king rode, whether naked or in splendour, through the city; nor that he made a forced collection, which he was not allowed to live to enjoy. These things may have occurred, but no record proves them. Yet Mr. Frazer has, provisionally, to conjecture that the Sacæan victim had a ride of honour, and made a collection, and that our Lord enjoyed the same privileges. 'The description of His last triumphal ride into Jerusalem reads almost like an echo of that brilliant progress through the streets of Susa which Haman aspired to and Mordecai accomplished.' Our Lord does not appear to have been either naked, like the beardless one, or clad in splendour, like Mordecai, or crowned and robed, or attended by the men-at-arms of Pilate or Herod. He borrowed an ass, with her colt, and the multitude strewed branches and cried, 'Hosanna to the Son of David.' He then 'overthrew the tables of the money-changers, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the Temple: 'a raid,' as Mr. Frazer says. But it is not on record that He seized any property, and His motive has been regarded as an objection to commercial transactions in a sacred edifice.

It may seem a little arbitrary to connect these acts of Christ, not with what the Sacæan victim, to our knowledge, ever did, but with what was done by the beardless buffoon, his degenerate copy. We have first to guess that the Sacæan mock-king acted like him whom we have to guess to be his late 'degenerate copy;' and then to read into the Gospels an idea derived from accounts of the ancient or modern buffoon. Moreover, while Christ represents the mock-king of the Sacæa in 'the high tragedy of the ancient ceremony' – for He is put to death – his counterpart, Barabbas, has a conjectural ride which is mere 'farce,' like that of the beardless buffoon. Now Mr. Frazer says that, 'after the serious meaning of the Sacæan custom had been forgotten, and the substitute was allowed to escape with his fife, the high tragedy of the ancient ceremony would rapidly degenerate into farce.'[501 - G. B. iii. 183.]

The degeneration was rapid indeed: in the twinkling of an eye. Christ was not allowed to escape with his life: 'the high tragedy of the ancient ceremony' existed in his case. But instantly 'the high tragedy' was forgotten! Barabbas, Christ's counterpart, in Mr. Frazer's theory, 'may very well … have been going about the streets, rigged out in tawdry splendour, with a tinsel crown on his head, and a sham sceptre in his hand, preceded and followed by all the tag-rag and bobtail of the town, hooting, jeering, and breaking coarse jests at his expense, while some pretended to salute his mock majesty, and others belaboured the donkey on which he rode. It was in this fashion, probably, that in Persia the beardless and one-eyed man made his undignified progress through the town, to the delight of ragamuffins and the terror of shopkeepers whose goods he confiscated if they did not hasten to lay their peace-offerings at his feet.'[502 - G. B. iii. 192.]

All this as to Barabbas implies that the 'high tragedy' of the Sacæa was already lost in the 'farce' of the 'degenerate copy,' the ride of the beardless. If so, why did Christ lose his life? If He died solemnly as a recognised god (which Mr. Frazer seems to me to deny in iii. 120 and asserts in iii. 194-197), why is his no less sacred counterpart, Barabbas, also and simultaneously a counterpart of the beardless buffoon?

Either the whole affair was solemn and tragic, the Haman (Christ) and the Mordecai (Barabbas) being recognised as divine, or the whole affair was farce, and in neither Christ nor Barabbas was there any recognised divinity. Mr. Frazer makes the belief in the divinity of Christ depend on the contemporary recognition of the godhead of the Sacæan victim, whose male issue was also perhaps recognised as divine.[503 - G. B. iii. 186.] But he also assures us that the divinity of the Sacæan victim must have been 'forgotten.'[504 - G. B. iii. 120.] In the same way Christ, as victim, was recognised as divine, and so, necessarily, was his counterpart, Barabbas; 'whether in sober fact, or pious fiction, the Barabbas or Son of that Divine Father who generously gave his own Son to die for the world.'[505 - G. B. iii. 195.] Yet this Son of the Divine Father was so remote from sacred that, just three pages before his Sonhood is asserted, we have a picture of him riding about on a donkey among the jeers of the 'tag-rag and bobtail.'[506 - G. B. iii. 192.] It is difficult to accept both of the theories (not very self-consistent in my humble opinion), which Mr. Frazer seems able to hold simultaneously or alternately. If Barabbas rode a donkey amid the jeers of the ragamuffins, then Christ had no triumphal entry into Jerusalem. He, too, had merely a burlesque ride, if Barabbas had a burlesque ride, as Mr. Frazer thinks probable. By the essence of his theory, Christ and Barabbas were counterparts, both were divine, or neither was divine, in general opinion. If Barabbas was a personage in a low farce (as Mr. Frazer supposes), so was Christ, and no halo of divinity can accrue from taking part in a burlesque, which cannot also be a high tragedy, with divine actors. As if difficulties were never to cease, the beardless buffoon is a degenerate copy of the Sacæan victim. But while he was a proxy for the king, and also a representative of Humman, or Marduk, or Tammuz, or Gilgamesh, or Eabani, or a god not yet identified: in his popular form, as the beardless buffoon, 'his pretence of suffering from heat, and his final disappearance, suggest that, if he personified either of the seasons, it was the departing winter rather than the coming summer.'[507 - G. B. iii. 184.]

If so, was the buffoon of the popular ceremony the folklore original of the Sacæan mock-king, or was he a degenerate copy of that versatile victim with a new meaning popularly assigned to him? We are to 'recognise in him the familiar features of the mock or temporary king,'[508 - G. B. iii. 182.] though he has neither crown, sceptre, robes, nor aught to cover his nakedness. If he is not the popular original of the mock-king of the Sacæa, how does he, and how does his magic, put us 'in a position finally to unmask the leading personages in the Book of Esther'?[509 - G. B. iii. 184.] If he is a new popular interpretation of the Sacæan mock-king, a misconstrued survival, he cannot help to explain the Sacæa, or 'Esther,' especially if, as a player in a farce which was a mitigation of the Sacæa, he had not come into existence when 'Esther' was written. But, if the beardless buffoon represents the popular germ of the Sacæan victim, then that victim was originally neither the king's proxy, nor Tammuz, nor Marduk, nor Gilgamesh, nor Eabani, but perhaps 'the departing winter.' He can only serve the theory, in that capacity, if provided with a counterpart to represent the coming summer, while he and his counterpart both have female mates, of whom there is not a ghost of a trace in our authorities, whether in the instance of the Sacæa, the Ride of the Beardless, or the Crucifixion. Nobody says that there were two beardless buffoons, yet there is just as much evidence for them as for the conjectural two sacred characters, with two sacred harlots, at the Sacæa. We must avoid the multiplicatio entium præter necessitatem.

notes

1

Golden Bough, i. xvii, 1900.

2

Golden Bough, i. xxi., 1900.

3

G. B. i. 77.

4

Tylor, Prim. Cult. ii. 309, citing Thevet, Singularitez de la France Antarctique, Paris, 1558, ch. 77.

5

Journal of Anthropological Institute, Oct. – Dec. 1900 and N.S. II., Nos. 1, 2, p. 85.

6

Max Müller, Hibbert Lectures, p. 16.

7

Natives of Central Australia, London, 1899.

8

With a case of ignoring the evidence I deal in the following essay, Magic and Religion.

9

Op. cit. p. 284.

10