Chapter III: Sympathetic Magic (2)

Magical images have often been employed for the amiable purpose of winning love. Thus to shoot an arrow into the heart of a clay image was an ancient Hindoo mode of securing a woman’s affection; only the bow-string must be of hemp, the shaft of the arrow must be of black _ala_ wood, its plume an owl’s feather, and its barb a thorn.[263] No doubt the wound inflicted on the heart of the clay image was supposed to make a corresponding impression on the woman’s heart. Among the Chippeway Indians there used to be few young men or women who had not little images of the persons whose love they wished to win. They pricked the hearts of the images and inserted magical powders in the punctures, while they addressed the effigies by the names of the persons whom they represented, bidding them requite their affection.[264] Ancient witches and wizards melted wax in the fire in order to make the hearts of their sweethearts to melt of love.[265] And as the wound of love may be inflicted by an image, so by an image it may be healed. How that can be done is told by Heine in a poem based on the experience of one of his own schoolfellows. It is called _The Pilgrimage to Kevlaar_, and describes how sick people offer waxen models of their ailing members to the Virgin Mary at Kevlaar in order that she may heal them of their infirmities. In the poem a lover, wasting away for love and sorrow at the death of his sweetheart, offers to the Virgin the waxen model of a heart with a prayer that she would heal his heart-ache.[266] Such customs, still commonly {p78} observed in some parts of Catholic Europe, are interesting because they shew how in later times magic comes to be incorporated with religion. The moulding of wax images of ailing members is in its origin purely magical: the prayer to the Virgin or to a saint is purely religious: the combination of the two is a crude, if pathetic, attempt to turn both magic and religion to account for the benefit of the sufferer.

[Sidenote: Magical images to maintain domestic harmony.]

The natives of New Caledonia make use of effigies to maintain or restore harmony between husband and wife. Two spindle-shaped bundles, one representing the man and the other the woman, are tied firmly together to symbolise and ensure the amity of the couple. They are made up of various plants, together with some threads from the woman’s girdle and a piece of the man’s apron; a bone needle forms the axis of each. The talisman is meant to render the union of the spouses indissoluble, and is carefully treasured by them both. If, nevertheless, a domestic jar should unfortunately take place, the husband repairs to the family burying-ground with the precious packet. There he lights a fire with a wood of a particular kind, fumigates the talisman, sprinkles it with water from a prescribed source, waves it round his head, and then stirring the needle in the bundle which represents himself he says, “I change the heart of this woman, that she may love me.” If the wife still remains obdurate, he ties a sugar-cane to the bundle, and presents it to her through a third person. If she eats of the sugar-cane, she feels her love for her husband revive. On her side she has the right to operate in like manner on the bundle which represents herself, always provided that she does not go to the burying-ground, which is strictly forbidden to women.[267]

[Sidenote: Homoeopathic magic in medicine.]

Another beneficent use of homoeopathic magic is to heal or prevent sickness. In ancient Greece, when a man died of dropsy, his children were made to sit with their feet in water until the body was burned. This was supposed to prevent the disease from attacking them.[268] Similarly, on {p79} the principle of water to water, among the natives of the hills near Rajamahall in India, the body of a person who has died of dropsy is thrown into a river; they think that if the corpse were buried, the disorder would return and carry off other people.[269]

[Sidenote: Homoeopathic treatment of jaundice

Homoeopathic treatment of St. Anthony’s fire.

Homoeopathic virtue of crossbills.]

The ancient Hindoos performed an elaborate ceremony, based on homoeopathetic magic, for the cure of jaundice. Its main drift was to banish the yellow colour to yellow creatures and yellow things, such as the sun, to which it properly belongs, and to procure for the patient a healthy red colour from a living, vigorous source, namely a red bull. With this intention, a priest recited the following spell: “Up to the sun shall go thy heart-ache and thy jaundice: in the colour of the red bull do we envelop thee! We envelop thee in red tints, unto long life. May this person go unscathed and be free of yellow colour! The cows whose divinity is Rohini, they who, moreover, are themselves red (_rohinih_)—in their every form and every strength we do envelop thee. Into the parrots, into the thrush, do we put thy jaundice, and, furthermore, into the yellow wagtail do we put thy jaundice.” While he uttered these words, the priest, in order to infuse the rosy hue of health into the sallow patient, gave him water to sip which was mixed with the hair of a red bull; he poured water over the animal’s back and made the sick man drink it; he seated him on the skin of a red bull and tied a piece of the skin to him. Then in order to improve his colour by thoroughly eradicating the yellow taint, he proceeded thus. He first daubed him from head to foot with a yellow porridge made of turmeric or curcuma (a yellow plant), set him on a bed, tied three yellow birds, to wit a parrot, a thrush, and a yellow wagtail, by means of a yellow string to the foot of the bed; then pouring water over the patient, he washed off the yellow porridge, and with it no doubt the jaundice, from him to the birds. After that, by way of giving a final bloom to his complexion, he took some hairs of a red bull, wrapt them in gold leaf, and glued them to the patient’s skin.[270] The {p80} ancients held that if a person suffering from jaundice looked sharply at a stone-curlew, and the bird looked steadily at him, he was cured of the disease. “Such is the nature,” says Plutarch, “and such the temperament of the creature that it draws out and receives the malady which issues, like a stream, through the eyesight.”[271] So well recognised among bird-fanciers was this valuable property of the stone-curlew that when they had one of these birds for sale they kept it carefully covered, lest a jaundiced person should look at it and be cured for nothing.[272] The virtue of the bird lay not in its colour but in its large golden eye, which, if it do not pass for a tuft of yellow lichen, is the first thing that strikes the searcher, as the bird cowers, to escape observation, on the sandy, flint-strewn surface of the ground which it loves to haunt, and with which its drab plumage blends so well that only a practised eye can easily detect it.[273] Thus the yellow eye of the bird drew out the yellow jaundice. Pliny tells of another, or perhaps the same, bird, to which the Greeks gave their name for jaundice, because if a jaundiced man saw it, the disease left him and slew the bird.[274] He mentions also a stone which was supposed to cure jaundice because its hue resembled that of a jaundiced skin.[275] In modern Greece jaundice goes by the name of the Golden Disease, and very naturally it can be healed by gold. To effect a perfect cure all that you have to do is this. Take a piece of gold (best of all an English sovereign, since English gold is the purest) and put it in a measure of wine. Expose the wine with the gold to the stars for three nights; then drink three glasses of it daily till it is used up. By that time the jaundice will be quite washed out of your system. The cure is, in the strictest sense of the word, a sovereign one.[276] {p81} A Wend cure for jaundice, like the modern Greek one, is to drink a glass of water in which a gold coin has been left overnight.[277] A remedy based on the principle of contraries is to look steadily at pitch or other black substances.[278] In South Russia a Jewish remedy for jaundice is to wear golden bracelets.[279] Here the great homoeopathic principle is clearly the same as in the preceding cases, though its application is different. In Germany yellow turnips, gold coins, gold rings, saffron, and other yellow things are still esteemed remedies for jaundice, just as a stick of red sealing-wax carried on the person cures the red eruption popularly known as St. Anthony’s fire, or the blood-stone with its blood-red spots allays bleeding.[280] Another popular remedy in Germany for the red St. Anthony’s fire and also for bleeding is supplied by the common crossbills. In this bird “after the first moult the difference between the sexes is shewn by the hens inclining to yellowish-green, while the cocks become diversified by orange-yellow and red, their plumage finally deepening into a rich crimson-red, varied in places by a flame-colour.”[281] The smallest reflection may convince us that these gorgeous hues must be endowed with very valuable medical properties. Accordingly in some parts of Bavaria, Saxony, and Bohemia people keep crossbills in cages in order that the red birds may draw the red St. Antony’s fire and the inflammation of fever to themselves and so relieve the human patient. Often in a peasant’s cottage you may see the red bird in its cage hanging beside a sick-bed and drawing to itself the hectic flush from the cheeks of the hot and restless patient, who lies tossing under the blankets. And the dried body of a crossbill has only to be placed on a wound to stop the bleeding at once. It is not the colour only of the feathers which produces this salutary effect; the peculiar {p82} shape of the bill, which gives the bird its English and German name, is a contributory cause. For the horny sheaths of the bill cross each other obliquely, and this formation undoubtedly enables the bird to draw diseases to itself more readily than a beak of the common shape could possibly do. Curious observers have even remarked that when the upper bill crosses the lower to the right, the bird will attract the diseases of men, whereas if the upper bill crosses the lower to the left, it will attract the diseases of women. But I cannot vouch for the accuracy of this particular observation. However that may be, certain it is that no fire will break out in a house where a crossbill is kept in a cage, neither will lightning strike the dwelling; and this immunity can only be ascribed to the protective colouring of the bird, the red hue of its plumage serving to ward off the red lightning and to nip a red conflagration in the bud. However, the poor bird seldom lives to old age; nor could this reasonably be expected of a creature which has to endure so much vicarious suffering. It generally falls a victim to one or other of the maladies of which it has relieved our ailing humanity. The causes which have given the crossbill its remarkable colour and the peculiar shape of its bill have escaped many naturalists, but they are familiar to children in Germany. The truth is that when Jesus Christ hung on the cross a flight of crossbills fluttered round him and tugged with their bills at the nails in his hands and feet to draw them out, till their feathers, which were grey before, were all bedabbled with blood, and their beaks, which had been straight, were twisted awry. So red have been their feathers and twisted their beaks from that day to this.[282] Another cure prescribed in Germany for St. Anthony’s fire is to rub the patient with ashes from a house that has been burned down;[283] for it is easy to see that as the fire died out in that house, so St. Anthony’s fire will die out in that man.

[Sidenote: The shrew-mouse and the shrew-ash.

Homoeopathic prescriptions to make the hair grow.]

A curious application of homoeopathic magic to the {p83} cure of disease is founded on the old English superstition that if a shrew-mouse runs over a beast, be it horse, cow, or sheep, the animal suffers cruelly and may lose the use of its limb. Against this accident the farmer used to keep a shrew-ash at hand as a remedy. A shrew-ash was prepared thus. A deep hole was bored in the tree, and a shrew-mouse was thrust in alive and plugged in, probably with some incantations which have been forgotten.[284] An ancient Indian cure for a scanty crop of hair was to pour a solution of certain plants over the head of the patient; this had to be done by a doctor who was dressed in black and had eaten black food, and the ceremony must be performed in the early morning, while the stars were fading in the sky, and before the black crows had risen cawing from their nests.[285] The exact virtue of these plants has escaped our knowledge, but we can hardly doubt that they were dark and hairy; while the black clothes of the doctor, his black food, and the swarthy hue of the crows unquestionably combined to produce a crop of black hair on the patient’s head. A more disagreeable means of attaining the same end is adopted by some of the tribes of Central Australia. To promote the growth of a boy’s hair a man with flowing locks bites the youth’s scalp as hard as he can, being urged thereto by his friends, who sit round watching him at his task, while the sufferer howls aloud with pain.[286] Clearly, on the principle of capillary attraction, if I may say so, he thus imparts of his own mature abundance to the scarcity of his youthful friend.

[Sidenote: Various homoeopathic remedies.]

One of the great merits of homoeopathic magic is that it enables the cure to be performed on the person of the doctor instead of on that of his victim, who is thus relieved of all trouble and inconvenience, while he sees his medical man writhe in anguish before him. For example, the peasants of {p84} Perche, in France, labour under the impression that a prolonged fit of vomiting is brought about by the patient’s stomach becoming unhooked, as they call it, and so falling down. Accordingly, a practitioner is called in to restore the organ to its proper place. After hearing the symptoms he at once throws himself into the most horrible contortions, for the purpose of unhooking his own stomach. Having succeeded in the effort, he next hooks it up again in another series of contortions and grimaces, while the patient experiences a corresponding relief. Fee five francs.[287] In like manner a Dyak medicine-man, who has been fetched in a case of illness, will lie down and pretend to be dead. He is accordingly treated like a corpse, is bound up in mats, taken out of the house, and deposited on the ground. After about an hour the other medicine-men loose the pretended dead man and bring him to life; and as he recovers, the sick person is supposed to recover too.[288] A cure for a tumour, based on the principle of homoeopathic magic, is prescribed by Marcellus of Bordeaux, court physician to Theodosius the First, in his curious work on medicine. It is as follows. Take a root of vervain, cut it across, and hang one end of it round the patient’s neck, and the other in the smoke of the fire. As the vervain dries up in the smoke, so the tumour will also dry up and disappear. If the patient should afterwards prove ungrateful to the good physician, the man of skill can avenge himself very easily by throwing the vervain into water; for as the root absorbs the moisture once more, the tumour will return.[289] The same sapient writer recommends you, if you are troubled with pimples, to watch for a falling star, and then instantly, while the star is still shooting from the sky, to wipe the pimples with a cloth or anything that comes to hand. Just as the star falls from the sky, so the pimples will fall from your body; only you must be very careful not to wipe them with your bare hand, or the pimples will be transferred to it.[290] {p85}

[Sidenote: Sympathetic magic to ensure the food supply.]

Further, homoeopathic and in general sympathetic magic plays a great part in the measures taken by the rude hunter or fisherman to secure an abundant supply of food. On the principle that like produces like, many things are done by him and his friends in deliberate imitation of the result which he seeks to attain; and, on the other hand, many things are scrupulously avoided because they bear some more or less fanciful resemblance to others which would really be disastrous.

[Sidenote: Systematic use of sympathetic magic in Central Australia.]

Nowhere is the theory of sympathetic magic more systematically carried into practice for the maintenance of the food supply than in the barren regions of Central Australia. Here the tribes are divided into a number of totem clans, each of which is charged with the duty of propagating and multiplying their totem for the good of the community by means of magical ceremonies and incantations. The great majority of the totems are edible animals and plants, and the general result supposed to be accomplished by these magical totemic ceremonies or _intichiuma_, as the Arunta call them, is that of supplying the tribe with food and other necessaries. Often the rites consist of an imitation of the effect which the people desire to produce; in other words, their magic is of the homoeopathic or imitative sort.

[Sidenote: _Intichiuma_, or magical ceremonies for the increase of the totemic animals and plants in Central Australia.

Witchetty grub ceremony.

Emu ceremony.

Hakea flower ceremony.

Kangaroo ceremony.

Grass seed ceremony.]

Thus among the Arunta the men of the witchetty grub totem perform a series of elaborate ceremonies for multiplying the grub which the other members of the tribe use as food. One of the ceremonies is a pantomime representing the fully-developed insect in the act of emerging from the chrysalis. A long narrow structure of branches is set up to imitate the chrysalis case of the grub. In this structure a number of men, who have the grub for their totem, sit and sing of the creature in its various stages. Then they shuffle out of it in a squatting posture, and as they do so they sing of the insect emerging from the chrysalis. This is supposed to multiply the numbers of the grubs.[291] Again, in order to multiply emus, which are an important article of food, the men of the emu totem in the Arunta tribe proceed as follows. They clear a small spot of level ground, and opening veins in their arms they let the {p86} blood stream out until the surface of the ground, for a space of about three square yards, is soaked with it. When the blood has dried and caked, it forms a hard and fairly impermeable surface, on which they paint the sacred design of the emu totem, especially the parts of the bird which they like best to eat, namely, the fat and the eggs. Round this painting the men sit and sing. Afterwards performers, wearing head-dresses to represent the long neck and small head of the emu, mimic the appearance of the bird as it stands aimlessly peering about in all directions.[292] Again, men of the hakea flower totem in the Arunta tribe perform a ceremony to make the hakea tree burst into blossom. The scene of the ceremony is a little hollow, by the side of which grows an ancient hakea tree. In the middle of the hollow is a small worn block of stone, supposed to represent a mass of hakea flowers. Before the ceremony begins, an old man of the totem carefully sweeps the ground clean, and then strokes the stone all over with his hands. After that the men sit round the stone and chant invitations to the tree to flower much and to the blossoms to be filled with honey. Finally, at the request of the old leader, one of the young men opens a vein in his arm and lets the blood flow freely over the stone, while the rest continue to sing. The flow of blood is supposed to represent the preparation of the favourite drink of the natives, which is made by steeping the hakea flower in water. As soon as the stone is covered with blood the ceremony is complete.[293] Again, the men of the kangaroo totem in the Arunta tribe perform ceremonies for the multiplication of kangaroos at a certain rocky ledge, which, in the opinion of the natives, is full of the spirits of kangaroos ready to go forth and inhabit kangaroo bodies. A little higher up on the hillside are two blocks of stone, which represent a male and female kangaroo respectively. At the ceremony these two blocks are rubbed with a stone by two men. Then the rocky ledge below is decorated with alternate vertical stripes of red and white, to indicate the red fur and white bones of the kangaroo. After that a number of young men sit on the ledge, open veins in {p87} their arms, and allow the blood to spurtle over the edge of the rock on which they are seated. This pouring out of the blood of the kangaroo men on the rock is thought to drive out the spirits of the kangaroos in all directions, and so to increase the number of the animals. While it is taking place, the other men sit below watching the performers and singing songs which refer to the expected increase of kangaroos.[294] In the Kaitish tribe, when the headman of the grass seed totem wishes to make the grass grow, he takes two sacred sticks or stones (_churinga_) of the well-known bull-roarer pattern, smears them with red-ochre, and decorates them with lines and dots of down to represent grass seed. Then he rubs the sticks or stones together so {p88} that the down flies off in all directions. The down is supposed to carry with it some virtue from the sacred stick or stone whereby the grass seed is made to grow. For days afterwards the headman walks about by himself in the bush singing the grass seed and carrying one of the sacred bull-roarers (_churinga_) with him. At night he hides the implement in the bush and returns to camp, where he may have no intercourse with his wife. For during all this time he is believed to be so full of magic power, derived from the bull-roarer, that if he had intercourse with her the grass seed would not grow properly and his body would swell up when he tasted of it. When the seed begins to grow, he still goes on singing to make it grow more, but when it is fully grown he brings back the sacred implement to his camp hidden in bark; and having gathered a store of the seed he leaves it with the men of the other half of the tribe, saying, “You eat the grass seed in plenty, it is very good and grows in my country.”[295]

[Sidenote: Manna ceremony.]

A somewhat similar ceremony is performed by men of the manna totem in the Arunta tribe for the increase of their totem. This manna is a product of the mulga tree (_Acacia aneura_), and resembles the better-known sugar-manna of gum trees. When the men of the totem wish to multiply the manna, they resort to a great boulder of grey rock, curiously streaked with black and white seams, which is thought to represent a mass of manna deposited there long ago by a man of the totem. The same significance is attributed to other smaller stones which rest on the top of the boulder. The headman of the totem begins the ceremony by digging up a sacred bull-roarer (_churinga_), which is buried in the earth at the foot of the boulder. It is supposed to represent a lump of manna and to have lain there ever since the remote _alcheringa_ or dream time, the farthest past of which these savages have any conception. Next the headman climbs to the top of the boulder and rubs it with the bull-roarer, and after that he takes the smaller stones and with them rubs the same spot on the boulder. Meantime the other men, sitting round about, chant loudly an invitation to the dust produced by {p89} the rubbing of the stones to go out and generate a plentiful supply of manna on the mulga-trees. Finally, with twigs of the mulga the leader sweeps away the dust which has gathered on the surface of the stone; his intention is to cause the dust to settle on the mulga-trees and so produce manna.[296]

[Sidenote: Euro ceremony.

Cockatoo ceremony.]

Again, in a rocky gorge of the Murchison Range there are numbers of little heaps of rounded, water-worn stones, carefully arranged on beds of leaves and hidden away under piles of rougher quartzite blocks. In the opinion of the Warramunga tribe, these rounded stones represent euros, that is, a species of kangaroo. According to their size they stand for young or old, male or female euros. Any old man of the euro totem who happens to pass the spot may take the stones out, smear them with red ochre and rub them well. This is supposed to cause the spirits of euros to pass out from the stones and to be born as animals, thus increasing the food supply.[297] Again, in the Warramunga tribe Messrs. Spencer and Gillen saw and heard a ceremony which was believed to multiply white cockatoos to a wonderful extent. From ten o’clock one evening until after sunrise next morning the headman of the white cockatoo totem held in his hand a rude effigy of the cockatoo and imitated the harsh cry of the bird, with exasperating monotony, all night long. When his voice failed him, his son took up the call and relieved the old man until such time as his father was rested enough to begin again.[298]

[Sidenote: Homoeopathic or imitative character of these rites.

Use of human blood in these ceremonies.]

In this last ceremony the homoeopathic or imitative character of the rite is particularly plain: the shape of the bird which is to be multiplied is mimicked by an effigy, its cry is imitated by the human voice. In others of the ceremonies just described the homoeopathic principle works by means of stones, which resemble in shape the edible animals or plants that the natives desire to increase. We shall see presently that the Melanesians similarly attribute fertilising virtues to stones of certain shapes.[299] Meantime it {p90} deserves to be noticed that in some of these Australian rites for the multiplication of the totemic animals the blood of the men of the totem plays an important part. Similarly in a ceremony performed by men of the Dieri tribe for the multiplication of carpet-snakes and iguanas the performers wound themselves and the blood that drips from their wounds is poured on a sandhill in which a mythical ancestor is believed to be buried and from which carpet-snakes and iguanas are confidently expected to swarm forth.[300] Again, when the headman of the fish totem in the Wonkgongaru tribe desires to make fish plentiful, he paints himself all over with red ochre, and, taking little pointed bones, goes into a pool. There he pierces his scrotum and the skin around the navel with the bones, and sits down in the water. The blood from the wounds, as it mingles with the water, is supposed to give rise to fish.[301] In all these cases clearly a fertilising virtue is ascribed to human blood. The ascription is interesting and may possibly go some way to explain the widely-spread custom of voluntary wounds and mutilations in religious or magical rites. It may therefore be worth while, even at the cost of a digression, to enquire a little more closely into the custom as it is practised by the rude savages of Australia.[302]

[Sidenote: Blood poured into graves.

Blood given to the sick and aged

Blood used by an avenging party.]

In the first place, then, the Dieri custom of pouring blood over the supposed remains of the ancestor in his sandhill closely resembles the custom observed by some of the Australian aborigines at the graves of their relatives. Thus among the tribes on the River Darling several men used to stand by the open grave and cut each other’s heads with a boomerang, and then hold their bleeding heads over the grave so that the blood dripped on the corpse at the bottom of it. If the deceased was highly esteemed, the bleeding was repeated after some earth had been thrown on the corpse.[303] Among {p91} the Arunta it is customary for the women kinsfolk to cut themselves at the grave so that blood flows upon it.[304] Again, at the Vasse River, in Western Australia, before the body was lowered into the grave, the natives used to gash their thighs, and at the flowing of the blood they all said, “I have brought blood,” and they stamped the foot forcibly on the ground, sprinkling the blood around them; then wiping the wounds with a wisp of leaves, they threw it, all bloody, on the dead man. After that they let the body down into the grave.[305] Further, it is a common practice with the Central Australians to give human blood to the sick and aged for the purpose of strengthening them; and in order that the blood may have this effect it need not always be drunk by the infirm person, it is enough to sprinkle it on his body. For example, a young man will often open a vein in his arm and let the blood trickle over the body of an older man in order to strengthen his aged friend; and sometimes the old man will drink a little of the blood.[306] So in illness the blood is sometimes applied outwardly as well as inwardly, the patient both drinking it and having it rubbed over his body; sometimes apparently he only drinks it. The blood is drawn from a man or woman who is related to the sufferer either by blood or marriage, and the notion always is to convey to the sick person some of the strength of the blood-giver.[307] In the Wiimbaio tribe, if a man had nearly killed his wife in a paroxysm of rage, the woman was laid out on the ground, and the husband’s arms being tightly bound above the elbows, the medicine-man opened the veins in them and allowed the blood to flow on the prostrate body of the victim till the man grew faint.[308] The intention of thus bleeding the man over the woman {p92} was apparently to restore her to life by means of the blood drawn from her assailant. Again, before an avenging party starts to take the life of a distant enemy, all the men stand up, open veins in their genital organs with sharp flints or pointed sticks, and allow the blood to spurtle over each other’s thighs. This ceremony is supposed to strengthen the men mutually, and also to knit them so closely together that treachery henceforth becomes impossible. Sometimes for the same purpose blood is drawn from the arm and drunk by the men of the avenging party, and if one of them refuses thus to pledge himself the others will force his mouth open and pour the blood into it. After that, even if he wishes to play the traitor and to give the doomed man warning, he cannot do so; he is bound by a physical necessity to side with the avengers whose blood he has swallowed.[309]

[Sidenote: Blood of circumcision and subincision; uses made of it.

Anodynes based on the principle of homoeopathic magic.]

Further, it is worth while to notice some uses made of human blood in connexion with the ceremonies of circumcision and subincision, which all lads of the Central Australian tribes have to undergo before they are recognised as full-grown men. For example, the blood drawn from them at these operations is caught in a hollow shield and taken to certain kinsmen or kinswomen, who drink it or have it smeared on their breasts and foreheads.[310] The motive of this practice is not mentioned, but on the analogy of the preceding customs we may conjecture that it is to strengthen the relatives who partake of the blood. This interpretation is confirmed by an analogous use in Queensland of the blood drawn from a woman at the operation which in the female sex corresponds to subincision in the male; for that blood, mixed with another ingredient, is kept and drunk as a medicine by any sick person who may be in the camp at the time.[311] Moreover, it is corroborated by a similar use of the foreskin which has been removed at circumcision; for among the southern Arunta this piece of skin is given to the younger brother of the circumcised lad and he swallows {p93} it, in the belief that it will make him grow strong and tall.[312] In the tribe at Fowler’s Bay, who practise both circumcision and subincision, the severed foreskin is swallowed by the operator,[313] perhaps in order to strengthen the lad sympathetically. In some tribes of North-West Australia it is the lad himself who swallows his own foreskin mixed with kangaroo flesh; while in other tribes of the same region the severed portion is taken by the relations and deposited under the bark of a large tree.[314] The possible significance of this latter treatment of the foreskin will appear presently. Among the Kolkodoons of Cloniny, in Northern Queensland, the foreskin is strung on twine made of human hair, and is then tied round the mother’s neck “to keep off the devil.”[315] In the Warramunga tribe the old men draw blood from their own subincised urethras in presence of the lads who a few days before have undergone the operation of subincision. The object of this custom, we are told, is to promote the healing of the young men’s wounds and to strengthen them generally.[316] It does not appear that the blood of the old men is drunk by or smeared upon the youths; seemingly it is supposed to benefit them sympathetically without direct contact. A similar action of blood at a distance may partly explain a very singular custom observed by the Arunta women at the moment when a lad is being subincised. The operation is performed at a distance from, but within hearing of, the women’s camp. When the boy is seized in order to be operated on, the men of the {p94} party raise a loud shout of “Pirr-rr.” At that sound the women immediately assemble in their camp, and the boy’s mother cuts gashes across the stomach and shoulders of the boy’s sisters, her own elder sisters, an old woman who furnished the boy with a sacred fire at circumcision, and all the women whose daughters he would be allowed to marry; and while she cuts she imitates the sound made by the men who are subincising her son. These cuts generally leave behind them a definite series of scars; they have a name of their own (_urpma_), and are often represented by definite lines on the bull-roarers.[317] What the exact meaning of this extraordinary ceremony may be, I cannot say; but perhaps one of its supposed effects may be to relieve the boy’s pain by transferring it to his women-kind. In like manner, when the Warramunga men are fighting each other with blazing torches, the women burn themselves with lighted twigs in the belief that by so doing they prevent the men from inflicting serious injuries on each other.[318] The theory further receives some support from certain practices formerly observed by the natives inhabiting the coast of New South Wales. Before lads had their noses bored, the medicine men threw themselves into contortions on the ground, and after pretending to suffer great pain were delivered of bones, which were to be used at the ceremony of nose-boring. The lads were told that the more the medicine men suffered, the less pain they themselves would feel.[319] Again, among the same natives, when a woman was in labour, a female friend would tie one end of a cord round the sufferer’s neck and rub her own gums with the other end till they bled,[320] probably in order to draw away the pain from the mother to herself. For a similar reason, perhaps, in Samoa, while blood was being drawn from a virgin bride, her friends, young and old, beat their heads with stones till they bled.[321]

[Sidenote: Fertilising virtue attributed to blood of circumcision and subincision.

Fertilising virtue attributed to foreskin.

Belief of the Central Australian tribes in the reincarnation of the dead.]

Lastly, in some tribes the blood shed at the circumcision {p95} and subincision of lads is collected in paper bark and buried in the bank of a pool where water-lilies grow; this is supposed to promote the growth of the lilies.[322] Needless to say, this rude attempt at horticulture is not prompted by a simple delight in contemplating these beautiful bright blue flowers which bloom in the Australian wilderness, decking the surface of pools by countless thousands. The savages feed on the stems and roots of the lilies; that is why they desire to cultivate them.[323] In this last practice a fertilising virtue is clearly attributed to the blood of circumcision and subincision. The Anula tribe, who among others observe the custom, obviously ascribe the same virtue to the severed foreskin, for they bury it also by the side of a pool.[324] The Warramunga entertain the same opinion of this part of the person, for they place the foreskin in a hole made by a witchetty grub in a tree, believing that it will cause a plentiful supply of these edible grubs.[325] Among the Unmatjera the custom is somewhat different, but taken in connexion with their traditions it is even more significant. The boy puts his severed foreskin on a shield, covers it up with a broad spear-thrower, and then carries it in the darkness of night, lest any woman should see what he is doing, to a hollow tree in which he deposits it. He tells no one where he has hidden it, except a man who stands to him in the relation of father’s sister’s son. Nowadays there is no special relation between the boy and the tree, but formerly the case seems to have been different. For according to {p96} tradition the early mythical ancestors of the tribe placed their foreskins in their _nanja_ trees, that is, in their local totem centres, the trees from which their spirits came forth at birth and to which they would return after death.[326] If, as seems highly probable, such a custom as that recorded by the tradition ever prevailed, its intention could hardly be any other than that of securing the future birth and reincarnation of the owner of the foreskin when he should have died and his spirit returned to its abode in the tree. For among all these Central tribes the belief is firmly rooted that the human soul undergoes an endless series of reincarnations, the living men and women of one generation being nothing but the spirits of their ancestors come to life again, and destined to be themselves reborn in the persons of their descendants. During the interval between two incarnations the souls live in their _nanja_ spots or local totem centres, which are always natural objects such as trees or rocks. Each totem clan has a number of such totem centres scattered over the country. There the souls of the dead men and women of the totem, but of no other, congregate during their disembodied state, and thence they issue and are born again in human form when a favourable opportunity presents itself.[327] It might well be thought that a man’s new birth would be facilitated if, in his lifetime, he could lay up a stock of vital energy for the use of his disembodied spirit after death. That he did, apparently, by detaching a portion of himself, namely the foreskin, and depositing it in his _nanja_ tree, or rock, or whatever it might be.

[Sidenote: Circumcision perhaps intended to ensure reincarnation.

Subincision possibly also designed to secure rebirth.]

Is it possible that in this belief and this practice we have the long lost key to the meaning of circumcision? In other words, can it be that circumcision was originally intended to ensure the rebirth at some future time of the circumcised man by disposing of the severed portion of his body in such a way as to provide him with a stock of energy on which his disembodied spirit could draw when the critical moment of reincarnation came round? The conjecture is confirmed by the observation that among the Akikuyu of {p97} British East Africa the ceremony of circumcision used to be regularly combined with a graphic pretence of rebirth enacted by the novice.[328] If this should prove to be indeed the clue to the meaning of circumcision, it would be natural to look for an explanation of subincision along the same lines. Now we have seen that the blood of subincision is used both to strengthen relatives and to make water-lilies grow. Hence we may conjecture that the strengthening and fertilising virtue of the blood was applied, like the foreskin at circumcision, to lay up a store of energy in the _nanja_ spot against the time when the man’s feeble ghost would need it. The intention of both ceremonies would thus be to ensure the future reincarnation of the individual by quickening the local totem centre, the home of his disembodied spirit, with a vital portion of himself. That portion, whether the foreskin or the blood, was in a manner seed sown to grow up and provide his immortal spirit with a new body when his old body should have mouldered in the dust.

[Sidenote: Knocking out of teeth in Australia perhaps practised for the same purpose.

Extraction of teeth associated with rain.]

Perhaps the same theory may serve to explain another initiatory rite practised by some of the Australian aborigines, namely, the knocking out of teeth. This is the principal ceremony of initiation amongst the tribes of eastern and south-eastern Australia; and it is often practised, though not as an initiatory rite, by the Central tribes, with whom the essential rites of initiation are circumcision and subincision.[329] On the hypothesis here suggested, we should expect to find the tooth regarded as a vital part of the man which was sacrificed to ensure another life for him after death. The durability of the teeth, compared to the corruptible nature of the greater part of the body, might be a sufficient reason with a savage philosopher for choosing this portion of the corporeal frame on which to pin his hope of immortality. The evidence at our disposal certainly does not suffice to establish this explanation of the rite; but there are some facts which seem to point in that direction. In the first {p98} place, the extracted tooth is supposed to remain in sympathetic connexion with the man from whom it has been removed; and if proper care is not taken of it, he may fall ill.[330] With some Victorian tribes the practice was for the mother of the lad to choose a young gum-tree and to insert her son’s teeth in the bark, at the fork of two of the topmost boughs. Ever afterwards the tree was held in a sense sacred. It was made known only to certain persons of the tribe, and the youth himself was never allowed to learn where his teeth had been deposited. When he died, the tree was killed by fire.[331] Thus in a fashion the tree might be said to be bound up with the life of the man whose teeth it contained, since when he died it was destroyed. Further, among some of the Central tribes the extracted tooth is thrown away as far as possible in the direction of the spot where the man’s mother is supposed to have had her camp in the far-off legendary time which is known as the _alcheringa_.[332] May not this be done to secure the rebirth of the man’s spirit in that place? In the Gnanji tribe the extracted tooth is buried by the man’s or woman’s mother beside a pool, for the purpose of stopping the rain and increasing the number of water-lilies that grow in the pool.[333] Thus the same fertilising virtue is ascribed to the tooth which is attributed to the foreskin severed at circumcision and to the blood drawn at subincision. Why the drawing of teeth should be supposed to stop rain, I cannot guess. Curiously enough, among the Central tribes generally, the extraction of teeth has a special association with rain and water. Thus among the Arunta it is practised chiefly by the members of the rain or water totem; and it is nearly if not quite obligatory on all the men and women of that totem, whereas it is merely optional with members of the other clans. Further, the ceremony is always performed among the {p99} Arunta immediately after the magical ceremony for the making of rain.[334] In the Warramunga tribe the knocking out of the teeth generally takes place towards the end of the wet season, when the water-holes are full, and the natives do not wish any more rain to fall. Moreover, it is always performed on the banks of a water-hole. The persons to be operated on enter the pool, fill their mouths with water, spit it out in all directions, and splash the water over themselves, taking care to wet thoroughly the crown of the head. Immediately afterwards the tooth is knocked out. The Chingilli also knock out teeth towards the close of the wet season, when they think they have had enough of rain. The extracted tooth is thrown into a water-hole, in the belief that it will drive rain and clouds away.[335] I merely note, without attempting to account for, this association between the extraction of teeth and the stopping of rain.

[Sidenote: Extraction of tooth used to determine a man’s country and totem.

Belief in reincarnation among the natives of the Pennefather River in Queensland.]

The natives of the Cape York Peninsula in Queensland use the extraction of the tooth to determine both a man’s totem and the country to which he belongs. While the tooth is being knocked out, they mention the various districts owned or frequented by the lad’s mother, her father, or other of her relatives. The one which happens to be mentioned at the moment when the tooth breaks away is the country to which the lad belongs in future, that is, the country where he will have the right to hunt and to gather roots and fruits. Further, the bloody spittle which he ejects after the extraction of the tooth is examined by the old men, who trace some likeness between it and a natural object, such as an animal, a plant, or a stone. Henceforth that object will be the young man’s _ari_ or totem.[336] Some light is thrown on this ceremony by a parallel custom which the natives of the Pennefather River in Queensland observe at the birth of a child. They believe that every person’s spirit undergoes a series of reincarnations, and that during the interval between two {p100} successive reincarnations the spirit stays in one or other of the haunts of Anjea, the being who causes conception in women by putting mud babies into their wombs. Hence, in order to determine where the new baby’s spirit resided since it was last in the flesh, they mention Anjea’s haunts one after the other while the grandmother is cutting the child’s navel-string; and the place which happens to be mentioned when the navel-string breaks is the spot where the spirit lodged since its last incarnation. That is the country to which the child belongs; there he will have the right of hunting when he grows up. Hence, according to the home from which its spirit came to dwell among men, a child may be known as a baby obtained from a tree, a rock, or a pool of fresh water. Anjea, with whom the souls of the dead live till their time comes to be born again, is never seen; but you may hear him laughing in the depths of the woods, among the rocks, down in the lagoons, and along the mangrove swamps.[337] Hence we may fairly infer that the country assigned to a man of the Cape York Peninsula at the extraction of his tooth is the one where his spirit tarried during the interval which elapsed since its last incarnation. His totem, which is determined at the same time, may possibly be the animal, plant, or other natural object in which his spirit resided since its last embodiment in human form, or perhaps rather in which a part of his spirit may be supposed to lodge outside of his body during life. The latter view is favoured by the belief of the tribe of the Pennefather River, whose practice at childbirth so closely resembles that of the Cape York natives at puberty; for the Pennefather people hold that during a man’s life a portion of his spirit lodges outside of his body in his afterbirth.[338] However that may be, it seems probable that among the Cape York natives the custom of knocking out the tooth is closely associated with a theory of {p101} reincarnation. Perhaps the same theory explains a privilege enjoyed by the Kamilaroi tribe of New South Wales. They claimed a superiority over the surrounding tribes, and enforced their claim by exacting from them the teeth knocked out at puberty. The exaction of this tribute might have passed for a mere assertion of suzerainty, were it not that the Kamilaroi knocked out their own teeth also.[339] Perhaps the extracted teeth were believed to secure to their present possessors a magical control over their former owners, not only during life but after death, so that armed with them the Kamilaroi could help or hinder the rebirth of their departed friends or enemies.[340]

[Sidenote: Australian initiatory rites meant to secure rebirth.

Certain funeral rites also intended to ensure reincarnation.

Australian funeral ceremonies intended to ensure the reincarnation of the dead.]