| Sir James George Frazer (1854–1941). The Golden
Bough. 1922. |
§ 4. The Ritual
of Death and Resurrection |
| |
| THIS view of totemism throws light on a class of religious rites
of which no adequate explanation, so far as I am aware, has yet been
offered. Amongst many savage tribes, especially such as are known to
practice totemism, it is customary for lads at puberty to undergo
certain initiatory rites, of which one of the commonest is a
pretence of killing the lad and bringing him to life again. Such
rites become intelligible if we suppose that their substance
consists in extracting the youth’s soul in order to transfer it to
his totem. For the extraction of his soul would naturally be
supposed to kill the youth or at least to throw him into a
death-like trance, which the savage hardly distinguishes from death.
His recovery would then be attributed either to the gradual recovery
of his system from the violent shock which it had received, or, more
probably, to the infusion into him of fresh life drawn from the
totem. Thus the essence of these initiatory rites, so far as they
consist in a simulation of death and resurrection, would be an
exchange of life or souls between the man and his totem. The
primitive belief in the possibility of such an exchange of souls
comes clearly out in a story of a Basque hunter who affirmed that he
had been killed by a bear, but that the bear had, after killing him,
breathed its own soul into him, so that the bear’s body was now
dead, but he himself was a bear, being animated by the bear’s soul.
This revival of the dead hunter as a bear is exactly analogous to
what, on the theory here suggested, is supposed to take place in the
ceremony of killing a lad at puberty and bringing him to life again.
The lad dies as a man and comes to life again as an animal; the
animal’s soul is now in him, and his human soul is in the animal.
With good right, therefore, does he call himself a Bear or a Wolf,
etc., according to his totem; and with good right does he treat the
bears or the wolves, etc., as his brethren, since in these animals
are lodged the souls of himself and his kindred. |
1 |
| Examples of this supposed death and resurrection at
initiation are as follows. In the Wonghi or Wonghibon tribe of New
South Wales the youths on approaching manhood are initiated at a
secret ceremony, which none but initiated men may witness. Part of
the proceedings consists in knocking out a tooth and giving a new
name to the novice, indicative of the change from youth to manhood.
While the teeth are being knocked out an instrument known as a
bull-roarer, which consists of a flat piece of wood with serrated
edges tied to the end of a string, is swung round so as to produce a
loud humming noise. The uninitiated are not allowed to see this
instrument. Women are forbidden to witness the ceremonies under pain
of death. It is given out that the youths are each met in turn by a
mythical being, called Thuremlin (more commonly known as Daramulun)
who takes the youth to a distance, kills him, and in some instances
cuts him up, after which he restores him to life and knocks out a
tooth. Their belief in the power of Thuremlin is said to be
undoubted. |
2 |
| The Ualaroi of the Upper Darling River said that at
initiation the boy met a ghost, who killed him and brought him to
life again as a young man. Among the
natives on the Lower Lachlan and Murray Rivers it was Thrumalun
(Daramulun) who was thought to slay and resuscitate the novices. In
the Unmatjera tribe of Central Australia women and children believe
that a spirit called Twanyirika kills the youth and afterwards
brings him to life again during the period of initiation. The rites
of initiation in this tribe, as in the other Central tribes,
comprise the operations of circumcision and subincision; and as soon
as the second of these has been performed on him, the young man
receives from his father a sacred stick (churinga), with
which, he is told, his spirit was associated in the remotest past.
While he is out in the bush recovering from his wounds, he must
swing the bull-roarer, or a being who lives up in the sky will swoop
down and carry him off. In the Binbinga tribe, on the western coast
of the Gulf of Carpentaria, the women and children believe that the
noise of the bull-roarer at initiation is made by a spirit named
Katajalina, who lives in an ant-hill and comes out and eats up the
boy, afterwards restoring him to life. Similarly among their
neighbours the Anula the women imagine that the droning sound of the
bull-roarer is produced by a spirit called Gnabaia, who swallows the
lads at initiation and afterwards disgorges them in the form of
initiated men. |
3 |
| Among the tribes settled on the southern coast of
New South Wales, of which the Coast Murring tribe may be regarded as
typical, the drama of resurrection from the dead was exhibited in a
graphic form to the novices at initiation. The ceremony has been
described for us by an eye-witness. A man, disguised with stringy
bark fibre, lay down in a grave and was lightly covered up with
sticks and earth. In his hand he held a small bush, which appeared
to be growing in the soil, and other bushes were stuck in the ground
to heighten the effect. Then the novices were brought and placed
beside the grave. Next, a procession of men, disguised in stringy
bark fibre, drew near. They represented a party of medicine-men,
guided by two reverend seniors, who had come on pilgrimage to the
grave of a brother medicine-man, who lay buried there. When the
little procession, chanting an invocation to Daramulun, had defiled
from among the rocks and trees into the open, it drew up on the side
of the grave opposite to the novices, the two old men taking up a
position in the rear of the dancers. For some time the dance and
song went on till the tree that seemed to grow from the grave began
to quiver. “Look there!” cried the men to the novices, pointing to
the trembling leaves. As they looked, the tree quivered more and
more, then was violently agitated and fell to the ground, while amid
the excited dancing of the dancers and the chanting of the choir the
supposed dead man spurned from him the superincumbent mass of sticks
and leaves, and springing to his feet danced his magic dance in the
grave itself, and exhibited in his mouth the magic substances which
he was supposed to have received from Daramulun in person. |
4 |
| Some tribes of Northern New Guinea—the Yabim,
Bukaua, Kai, and Tami—like many Australian tribes, require every
male member of the tribe to be circumcised before he ranks as a
full-grown man; and the tribal initiation, of which circumcision is
the central feature, is conceived by them, as by some Australian
tribes, as a process of being swallowed and disgorged by a mythical
monster, whose voice is heard in the humming sound of the
bull-roarer. Indeed the New Guinea tribes not only impress this
belief on the minds of women and children, but enact it in a
dramatic form at the actual rites of initiation, at which no woman
or uninitiated person may be present. For this purpose a hut about a
hundred feet long is erected either in the village or in a lonely
part of the forest. It is modelled in the shape of the mythical
monster; at the end which represents his head it is high, and it
tapers away at the other end. A betel-palm, grubbed up with the
roots, stands for the backbone of the great being and its clustering
fibres for his hair; and to complete the resemblance the butt end of
the building is adorned by a native artist with a pair of goggle
eyes and a gaping mouth. When after a tearful parting from their
mothers and women folk, who believe or pretend to believe in the
monster that swallows their dear ones, the awe-struck novices are
brought face to face with this imposing structure, the huge creature
emits a sullen growl, which is in fact no other than the humming
note of bull-roarers swung by men concealed in the monster’s belly.
The actual process of deglutition is variously enacted. Among the
Tami it is represented by causing the candidates to defile past a
row of men who hold bull-roarers over their heads; among the Kai it
is more graphically set forth by making them pass under a scaffold
on which stands a man, who makes a gesture of swallowing and takes
in fact a gulp of water as each trembling novice passes beneath him.
But the present of a pig, opportunely offered for the redemption of
the youth, induces the monster to relent and disgorge his victim;
the man who represents the monster accepts the gift vicariously, a
gurgling sound is heard, and the water which had just been swallowed
descends in a jet on the novice. This signifies that the young man
has been released from the monster’s belly. However, he has now to
undergo the more painful and dangerous operation of circumcision. It
follows immediately, and the cut made by the knife of the operator
is explained to be a bite or scratch which the monster inflicted on
the novice in spewing him out of his capacious maw. While the
operation is proceeding, a prodigious noise is made by the swinging
of bull-roarers to represent the roar of the dreadful being who is
in the act of swallowing the young man. |
5 |
| When, as sometimes happens, a lad dies from the
effect of the operation, he is buried secretly in the forest, and
his sorrowing mother is told that the monster has a pig’s stomach as
well as a human stomach, and that unfortunately her son slipped into
the wrong stomach, from which it was impossible to extricate him.
After they have been circumcised the lads must remain for some
months in seclusion, shunning all contact
with women and even the sight of them. They live in the long hut
which represents the monster’s belly. When at last the lads, now
ranking as initiated men, are brought back with great pomp and
ceremony to the village, they are received with sobs and tears of
joy by the women, as if the grave had given up its dead. At first
the young men keep their eyes rigidly closed or even sealed with a
plaster of chalk, and they appear not to understand the words of
command which are given them by an elder. Gradually, however, they
come to themselves as if awakening from a stupor, and next day they
bathe and wash off the crust of white chalk with which their bodies
had been coated. |
6 |
| It is highly significant that all these tribes of
New Guinea apply the same word to the bull-roarer and to the
monster, who is supposed to swallow the novices at circumcision, and
whose fearful roar is represented by the hum of the harmless wooden
instruments. Further, it deserves to be noted that in three
languages out of the four the same word which is applied to the
bull-roarer and to the monster means also a ghost or spirit of the
dead, while in the fourth language (the Kai) it signifies
“grandfather.” From this it seems to follow that the being who
swallows and disgorges the novices at initiation is believed to be a
powerful ghost or ancestral spirit, and that the bull-roarer, which
bears his name, is his material representative. That would explain
the jealous secrecy with which the sacred implement is kept from the
sight of women. While they are not in use, the bull-roarers are
stowed away in the men’s club-houses, which no woman may enter;
indeed no woman or uninitiated person may set eyes on a bull-roarer
under pain of death. Similarly among the Tugeri or Kaya-Kaya, a
large Papuan tribe on the south coast of Dutch New Guinea, the name
of the bull-roarer, which they call sosom, is given to a
mythical giant, who is supposed to appear every year with the
south-east monsoon. When he comes, a festival is held in his honour
and bull-roarers are swung. Boys are presented to the giant, and he
kills them, but considerately brings them to life again. |
7 |
| In certain districts of Viti Levu, the largest of
the Fijian Islands, the drama of death and resurrection used to be
acted with much solemnity before the eyes of young men at
initiation. In a sacred enclosure they were shown a row of dead or
seemingly dead men lying on the ground, their bodies cut open and
covered with blood, their entrails protruding. But at a yell from
the high priest the counterfeit dead men started to their feet and
ran down to the river to cleanse themselves from the blood and guts
of pigs with which they were beslobbered. Soon they marched back to
the sacred enclosure as if come to life, clean, fresh, and
garlanded, swaying their bodies in time to the music of a solemn
hymn, and took their places in front of the novices. Such was the
drama of death and resurrection. |
8 |
| The people of Rook, an island between New Guinea and
New Britain, hold festivals at which one or two disguised men, their
heads covered with wooden masks, go dancing
through the village, followed by all the other men. They demand that
the circumcised boys who have not yet been swallowed by Marsaba (the
devil) shall be given up to them. The boys, trembling and shrieking,
are delivered to them, and must creep between the legs of the
disguised men. Then the procession moves through the village again,
and announces that Marsaba has eaten up the boys, and will not
disgorge them till he receives a present of pigs, taro, and so
forth. So all the villagers, according to their means, contribute
provisions, which are then consumed in the name of Marsaba. |
9 |
| In the west of Ceram boys at puberty are admitted to
the Kakian association. Modern writers have commonly regarded this
association as primarily a political league instituted to resist
foreign domination. In reality its objects are purely religious and
social, though it is possible that the priests may have occasionally
used their powerful influence for political ends. The society is in
fact merely one of those widely-diffused primitive institutions, of
which a chief object is the initiation of young men. In recent years
the true nature of the association has been duly recognised by the
distinguished Dutch ethnologist, J. G. F. Riedel. The Kakian house
is an oblong wooden shed, situated under the darkest trees in the
depth of the forest, and is built to admit so little light that it
is impossible to see what goes on in it. Every village has such a
house. Thither the boys who are to be initiated are conducted
blindfold, followed by their parents and relations. Each boy is led
by the hand of two men, who act as his sponsors or guardians,
looking after him during the period of initiation. When all are
assembled before the shed, the high priest calls aloud upon the
devils. Immediately a hideous uproar is heard to proceed from the
shed. It is made by men with bamboo trumpets, who have been secretly
introduced into the building by a back door, but the women and
children think it is made by the devils, and are much terrified.
Then the priests enter the shed, followed by the boys, one at a
time. As soon as each boy has disappeared within the precincts, a
dull chopping sound is heard, a fearful cry rings out, and a sword
or spear, dripping with blood, is thrust through the roof of the
shed. This is a token that the boy’s head has been cut off, and that
the devil has carried him away to the other world, there to
regenerate and transform him. So at sight of the bloody sword the
mothers weep and wail, crying that the devil has murdered their
children. In some places, it would seem, the boys are pushed through
an opening made in the shape of a crocodile’s jaws or a cassowary’s
beak, and it is then said that the devil has swallowed them. The
boys remain in the shed for five or nine days. Sitting in the dark,
they hear the blast of the bamboo trumpets, and from time to time
the sound of musket shots and the clash of swords. Every day they
bathe, and their faces and bodies are smeared with a yellow dye, to
give them the appearance of having been swallowed by the devil.
During his stay in the Kakian house each boy has one or two crosses
tattooed with thorns on his breast or arm.
When they are not sleeping, the lads must sit in a crouching posture
without moving a muscle. As they sit in a row cross-legged, with
their hands stretched out, the chief takes his trumpet, and placing
the mouth of it on the hands of each lad, speaks through it in
strange tones, imitating the voice of the spirits. He warns the
lads, under pain of death, to observe the rules of the Kakian
society, and never to reveal what has passed in the Kakian house.
The novices are also told by the priests to behave well to their
blood relations, and are taught the traditions and secrets of the
tribe. |
10 |
| Meantime the mothers and sisters of the lads have
gone home to weep and mourn. But in a day or two the men who acted
as guardians or sponsors to the novices return to the village with
the glad tidings that the devil, at the intercession of the priests,
has restored the lads to life. The men who bring this news come in a
fainting state and daubed with mud, like messengers freshly arrived
from the nether world. Before leaving the Kakian house, each lad
receives from the priest a stick adorned at both ends with a cock’s
or cassowary’s feathers. The sticks are supposed to have been given
to the lads by the devil at the time when he restored them to life,
and they serve as a token that the youths have been in the spirit
land. When they return to their homes they totter in their walk, and
enter the house backward, as if they had forgotten how to walk
properly; or they enter the house by the back door. If a plate of
food is given to them, they hold it upside down. They remain dumb,
indicating their wants by signs only. All this is to show that they
are still under the influence of the devil or the spirits. Their
sponsors have to teach them all the common acts of life, as if they
were newborn children. Further, upon leaving the Kakian house the
boys are strictly forbidden to eat of certain fruits until the next
celebration of the rites has taken place. And for twenty or thirty
days their hair may not be combed by their mothers or sisters. At
the end of that time the high priest takes them to a lonely place in
the forest, and cuts off a lock of hair from the crown of each of
their heads. After these initiatory rites the lads are deemed men,
and may marry; it would be a scandal if they married before. |
11 |
| In the region of the Lower Congo a simulation of
death and resurrection is, or rather used to be, practised by the
members of a guild or secret society called ndembo. “In the
practice of Ndembo the initiating doctors get some one to fall down
in a pretended fit, and in that state he is carried away to an
enclosed place outside the town. This is called ‘dying Ndembo.’
Others follow suit, generally boys and girls, but often young men
and women… . They are supposed to have died. But the parents and
friends supply food, and after a period varying, according to
custom, from three months to three years, it is arranged that the
doctor shall bring them to life again… . When the doctor’s fee has
been paid, and money (goods) saved for a feast, the Ndembo
people are brought to life. At first they pretend to know no one and
nothing; they do not even know how to
masticate food, and friends have to perform
that office for them. They want everything nice that any one
uninitiated may have, and beat them if it is not granted, or even
strangle and kill people. They do not get into trouble for this,
because it is thought that they do not know better. Sometimes they
carry on the pretence of talking gibberish, and behaving as if they
had returned from the spirit-world. After this they are known by
another name, peculiar to those who have ‘died Ndembo.’ … We hear of
the custom far along on the upper river, as well as in the cataract
region.” |
12 |
| Among some of the Indian tribes of North America
there exist certain religious associations which are only open to
candidates who have gone through a pretence of being killed and
brought to life again. In 1766 or 1767 Captain Jonathan Carver
witnessed the admission of a candidate to an association called “the
friendly society of the Spirit” (Wakon-Kitchewah) among the
Naudowessies, a Siouan or Dacotan tribe in the region of the great
lakes. The candidate knelt before the chief, who told him that “he
himself was now agitated by the same spirit which he should in a few
moments communicate to him; that it would strike him dead, but that
he would instantly be restored again to life; to this he added, that
the communication, however terrifying, was a necessary introduction
to the advantages enjoyed by the community into which he was on the
point of being admitted. As he spoke this, he appeared to be greatly
agitated; till at last his emotions became so violent, that his
countenance was distorted, and his whole frame convulsed. At this
juncture he threw something that appeared both in shape and colour
like a small bean, at the young man, which seemed to enter his
mouth, and he instantly fell as motionless as if he had been shot.”
For a time the man lay like dead, but under a shower of blows he
showed signs of consciousness, and finally, discharging from his
mouth the bean, or whatever it was that the chief had thrown at him,
he came to life. In other tribes, for example, the Ojebways,
Winnebagoes, and Dacotas or Sioux, the instrument by which the
candidate is apparently slain is the medicine-bag. The bag is made
of the skin of an animal (such as the otter, wild cat, serpent,
bear, raccoon, wolf, owl, weasel), of which it roughly preserves the
shape. Each member of the society has one of these bags, in which he
keeps the odds and ends that make up his “medicine” or charms. “They
believe that from the miscellaneous contents in the belly of the
skin bag or animal there issues a spirit or breath, which has the
power, not only to knock down and kill a man, but also to set him up
and restore him to life.” The mode of killing a man with one of
these medicine-bags is to thrust it at him; he falls like dead, but
a second thrust of the bag restores him to life. |
13 |
| A ceremony witnessed by the castaway John R. Jewitt
during his captivity among the Indians of Nootka Sound doubtless
belongs to this class of customs. The Indian king or chief
“discharged a pistol close to his son’s ear, who immediately fell
down as if killed, upon which all the women of the house set up a
most lamentable cry, tearing handfuls of
hair from their heads, and exclaiming that the prince was dead; at
the same time a great number of the inhabitants rushed into the
house armed with their daggers, muskets, etc., enquiring the cause
of their outcry. These were immediately followed by two others
dressed in wolf-skins, with masks over their faces representing the
head of that animal. The latter came in on their hands and feet in
the manner of a beast, and taking up the prince, carried him off
upon their backs, retiring in the same manner they entered.” In
another place Jewitt mentions that the young prince—a lad of about
eleven years of age—wore a mask in imitation of a wolf’s head. Now,
as the Indians of this part of America are divided into totem clans,
of which the Wolf clan is one of the principal, and as the members
of each clan are in the habit of wearing some portion of the totem
animal about their person, it is probable that the prince belonged
to the Wolf clan, and that the ceremony described by Jewitt
represented the killing of the lad in order that he might be born
anew as a wolf, much in the same way that the Basque hunter supposed
himself to have been killed and to have come to life again as a
bear. |
14 |
| This conjectural explanation of the ceremony has,
since it was first put forward, been to some extent confirmed by the
researches of Dr. Franz Boas among these Indians; though it would
seem that the community to which the chief’s son thus obtained
admission was not so much a totem clan as a secret society called
Tlokoala, whose members imitated wolves. Every new member of the
society must be initiated by the wolves. At night a pack of wolves,
personated by Indians dressed in wolf-skins and wearing wolf-masks,
make their appearance, seize the novice, and carry him into the
woods. When the wolves are heard outside the village, coming to
fetch away the novice, all the members of the society blacken their
faces and sing, “Among all the tribes is great excitement, because I
am Tlokoala.” Next day the wolves bring back the novice dead, and
the members of the society have to revive him. The wolves are
supposed to have put a magic stone into his body, which must be
removed before he can come to life. Till this is done the pretended
corpse is left lying outside the house. Two wizards go and remove
the stone, which appears to be quartz, and then the novice is
resuscitated. Among the Niska Indians of British Columbia, who are
divided into four principal clans with the raven, the wolf, the
eagle, and the bear for their respective totems, the novice at
initiation is always brought back by an artificial totem animal.
Thus when a man was about to be initiated into a secret society
called Olala, his friends drew their knives and pretended to kill
him. In reality they let him slip away, while they cut off the head
of a dummy which had been adroitly substituted for him. Then they
laid the decapitated dummy down and covered it over, and the women
began to mourn and wail. His relations gave a funeral banquet and
solemnly burnt the effigy. In short, they held a regular funeral.
For a whole year the novice remained absent and was seen by none but
members of the secret society. But at the end of that time he came back alive, carried by an artificial
animal which represented his totem. |
15 |
| In these ceremonies the essence of the rite appears
to be the killing of the novice in his character of a man and his
restoration to life in the form of the animal which is thenceforward
to be, if not his guardian spirit, at least linked to him in a
peculiarly intimate relation. It is to be remembered that the
Indians of Guatemala, whose life was bound up with an animal, were
supposed to have the power of appearing in the shape of the
particular creature with which they were thus sympathetically
united. Hence it seems not unreasonable to conjecture that in like
manner the Indians of British Columbia may imagine that their life
depends on the life of some one of that species of creature to which
they assimilate themselves by their costume. At least if that is not
an article of belief with the Columbian Indians of the present day,
it may very well have been so with their ancestors in the past, and
thus may have helped to mould the rites and ceremonies both of the
totem clans and of the secret societies. For though these two sorts
of communities differ in respect of the mode in which membership of
them is obtained—a man being born into his totem clan but admitted
into a secret society later in life—we can hardly doubt that they
are near akin and have their root in the same mode of thought. That
thought, if I am right, is the possibility of establishing a
sympathetic relation with an animal, a spirit, or other mighty
being, with whom a man deposits for safe-keeping his soul or some
part of it, and from whom he receives in return a gift of magical
powers. |
16 |
| Thus, on the theory here suggested, wherever
totemism is found, and wherever a pretence is made of killing and
bringing to life again the novice at initiation, there may exist or
have existed not only a belief in the possibility of permanently
depositing the soul in some external object—animal, plant, or what
not—but an actual intention of so doing. If the question is put, why
do men desire to deposit their life outside their bodies? the answer
can only be that, like the giant in the fairy tale, they think it
safer to do so than to carry it about with them, just as people
deposit their money with a banker rather than carry it on their
persons. We have seen that at critical periods the life or soul is
sometimes temporarily stowed away in a safe place till the danger is
past. But institutions like totemism are not resorted to merely on
special occasions of danger; they are systems into which every one,
or at least every male, is obliged to be initiated at a certain
period of life. Now the period of life at which initiation takes
place is regularly puberty; and this fact suggests that the special
danger which totemism and systems like it are intended to obviate is
supposed not to arise till sexual maturity has been attained, in
fact, that the danger apprehended is believed to attend the relation
of the sexes to each other. It would be easy to prove by a long
array of facts that the sexual relation is associated in the
primitive mind with many serious perils; but the exact nature of the
danger apprehended is still obscure. We may
hope that a more exact acquaintance with savage modes of thought
will in time disclose this central mystery of primitive society, and
will thereby furnish the clue, not only to totemism, but to the
origin of the marriage system. |
17 |
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