CHAPTER XVIII: INSPIRATION, DIVINATION, EXORCISM, AND SORCERY.

§ 128. If a man’s body may be entered by a “wicked soul of the dead” enemy, may it not be entered by a friendly soul? If the struggles of the epileptic, the ravings of the delirious, the self-injuries of the insane, are caused by an indwelling demon; then must not the transcendent power or marvellous skill occasionally displayed, be caused by an indwelling beneficent spirit? If, even while a man is conscious, the ghost of a foe may become joint occupant of his body and control its actions in spite of him, so producing hiccough, and sneezing, and yawning; may not joint occupancy be assumed by an ancestral ghost, which co-operates with him instead of opposing him: so giving extra strength, or knowledge, or cunning?

These questions the savage consistently answers in the affirmative. There result the ideas to be here glanced at.

§ 129. The fact that maniacs, during their paroxysms, are far stronger than men in their normal states, raises, as we before saw, the belief that these supernatural agents have superhuman energies.

That manifestations of unusual will and strength are thus accounted for, we find proofs among early traditions. Encouraging Diomede, Minerva says—“In thy breast have I set thy father’s courage undaunted, even as it was in knightly Tydeus:” words implying some kind of inspiration—some Edition: current; Page: [237] breathing-in of a soul that had been breathed-out of a father. More distinctly is this implied by certain legendary histories of the Egyptians. In the third Sallier papyrus, narrating a conquest, Ramses II invokes his “father Ammon,” and has the reply—“Ramses Miamon, I am with thee, I thy father Ra. . . . I am worth to thee 100,000 joined in one.” And when Ramses, deserted by his own army, proceeds single-handed to slay the army of his foes, they are represented as saying—“No mortal born is he whoso is among us.”

Here several points of significance are observable. The ancestral ghost was the possessing spirit, giving superhuman strength. Along with development of this ancestral ghost into a great divinity had gone increase of this strength from something a little above the human to something immeasurably above the human. The conception, common to all these ancient races—Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Greeks—was that gods, otherwise much like men, were distinguished by power transcending that of men; and this conception, subject to no restraint, readily expanded into the conception of omnipotence. A concomitant result was that any display of bodily energy exceeding that which was ordinary, raised in observers the suspicion, either that there was possession by a supernatural being, or that a supernatural being in disguise was before them.

§ 130. Similarly with extraordinary mental power. If an incarnate spirit, having either the primitive character of an ancestral ghost or some modified and developed character, can give superhuman strength of body, then it can give, too, superhuman intelligence and superhuman passion.

We are now so remote from this doctrine of inspiration, as to have difficulty in thinking of it as once accepted literally. Some existing races, as the Tahitians, do indeed show us, in its original form, the belief that the priest when inspired “ceased to act or speak as a voluntary agent, but Edition: current; Page: [238] moved and spoke as entirely under supernatural influence;” and so they make real to us the ancient belief that prophets were channels for divine utterances. But we less clearly recognize the truth that the inspiration of the poet was at first conceived in the same way. “Sing, O goddess, the destructive wrath of Achilles,” was not, like the invocations of the Muses in later times, a rhetorical form; but was an actual prayer for possession. The Homeric belief was, that “all great and glorious thoughts . . . come from a god.” Of course, this mode of interpreting ideas and feelings admits of unlimited extension; and hence the assumption of a supernatural cause, made on the smallest suggestion, becomes habitual. In the Iliad, Helen is represented as having an ordinary emotion excited in her by Iris; who “put into her heart, sweet longing for her former husband, and her city, and parents.” Nor does the interpretation extend itself only to exaltations, emotional or intellectual. In the Homeric view, “not the doers of an evil deed, but the gods who inspire the purpose of doing it, are the real criminals;” and even a common error of judgment the early Greek explains by saying—“a god deceived me that I did this thing.”

How this theory, beginning with that form still shown us by such savages as the Congoese, who ascribe the contortions of the priest to the inspiration of the fetish, and differentiating into inspirations of the divine and the diabolical kinds, has persisted and developed, it is needless to show in detail. It still lives in both sacred and secular thought; and between the earliest and latest views the unlikeness is far less than we suppose. When we read in Brinton that “among the Tahkalis the priest is accustomed to lay his hand on the head of the nearest relative of the deceased, and to blow into him the soul of the departed, which is supposed to come to life in his next child;” we are reminded that in the service for ordaining priests there are the words—“Receive the Holy Ghost for the office and work of a priest in the Church of God, now committed unto thee by the imposition of our Edition: current; Page: [239] hands.” Not only in the theory of Apostolic Succession do we see this modified form of the savage belief in inspiration, but we see it, with a difference, in the ideas of the most unsacerdotal of our sects, the Quakers. Being moved by the spirit, as they understand it, is being temporarily possessed or inspired. And then, in its secular application, the primitive notion has left a trace in the qualitative distinction, still asserted by some, between genius and talent.

§ 131. There is but a nominal difference between the facts just grouped under the head of inspiration, and the facts to be grouped under the head of divination. The diviner is simply the inspired man using his supernatural power for particular ends.

The ideas of the Amazulu, which have been so carefully ascertained, we may again take as typical. Mark, first, that bodily derangement, leading to mental perturbation, is the usual preliminary. Fasting is requisite. They say “the continually-stuffed body cannot see secret things.” Moreover, “a man who is about to be an inyanga . . . does not sleep, . . . his sleep is merely by snatches,” “he becomes a house of dreams.” Mark, next, that mental perturbation, rising to a certain point, is taken as proof of inspiration. Where the evidence is not strong, “some dispute and say, ‘No. The fellow is merely mad. There is no Itongo [ancestral ghost] in him.’ Others say, ‘O, there is an Itongo in him; he is already an inyanga.’ ” And then mark, further, that the alleged possession is proved by his success: doubters say—“We might allow that he is an inyanga if you had concealed things for him to find, and he had discovered what you had concealed.”

The conception here so clearly implied is traceable in all cases: the chief difference being in the supposed nature of the indwelling supernatural agent. Such mode of living as produces abnormal excitement, is everywhere a preparation for the diviner’s office. Everywhere, too, this excitement is Edition: current; Page: [240] ascribed to the possessing ghost, demon, or divinity; and the words uttered are his. Of the inspired Fijian priest, Williams says:—

And just the same constituents of the belief are shown by the Santals. Starving many days, the Santal priest brings on a state of half wildness. He then answers questions through the power of the possessing god. And in the case named by Sherwill, this god was “formerly a chief amongst them.”

The views of the semi-civilized and civilized need mention only to show their kinship. As represented by Homer, “the gods maintain an intercourse with men as part of the ordinary course of their providence, and this intercourse consists principally in revelations of the divine will, and specially of future events, made to men by oracular voices,” etc. Here we are shown likeness in nature, though some unlikeness in form, between the utterances of the Greek oracle and those of the Zulu Inyanga, to whom the ancestral ghost says—“You will not speak with the people; they will be told by us everything they come to inquire about.” Greater deviation in non-essentials has left unchanged the same essentials in the notions current throughout Christendom; beginning with the “inspired writers,” whose words were supposed to be those of an indwelling holy spirit, and ending with the Pope, who says his infallible judgments have a like origin.

§ 132. Inevitably there comes a further development of these ideas. When the ghost of an enemy has entered a man’s body, can it not be driven out? And if this cannot otherwise be done, can it not be done by supernatural aid? Edition: current; Page: [241] If some men are possessed to their hurt by spirits of evil, while others are possessed to their benefit by friendly spirits, as powerful or more powerful, is it not possible by the help of the good spirits to undo the mischief done by the bad ones—perhaps to conquer and expel them? This possibility is reasonably to be inferred. Hence exorcism.

The medicine-man is primarily an exorcist. What Rowlatt tells us of the Mishmis, that, in illness, a priest is sent for to drive away the evil spirit, is told us directly or by implication in hosts of instances. The original method is that of making the patient’s body so disagreeable a residence that the demon will not remain in it. In some cases very heroic modes of doing this are adopted; as by the Sumatrans, who, in insanity, try to expel the spirit by putting the insane person into a hut, which they set fire to, leaving him to escape as he best can. Probably various other extreme measures described, including the swallowing of horrible things, and the making intolerable smells, have the purpose of disgusting the intruder. Generally, also, the exorcist tries to alarm the mischievous tenants by shouts, and gesticulations, and fearful faces. Among the Californian tribes, the doctor “squats down opposite the patient and barks at him after the manner of an enraged cur, for hours together;” and a Koniaga-doctor has a female assistant who does the groaning and growling. Sometimes with other means is joined physical force. Among the Columbian Indians, the medicine-man “proceeds to force the evil spirit from the sick man by pressing both clenched fists with all his might in the pit of his stomach.” As a type of such processes may be taken that ascribed by Herrera to the Indians of Cumana:—

But in what we may consider the more-developed form of exorcism, one demon is employed to drive out another. The medicine-man or priest conquers the demon in the patient by the help of a demon with which he is himself possessed; or else he summons a friendly supernatural power to his aid.

Everyone knows that, in this last form, exorcism continues during civilization. In their earlier days the Hebrews employed some physical process, akin to the processes we find among savages; such as making a dreadful stench by burning the heart and liver of a fish. Through such exorcism, taught by the angel Raphael, the demon Asmodeus was driven out—fled to Egypt when he “had smelled” the smoke. But later, as in the exorcisms of Christ, the physical process was replaced by the compulsion of superior supernatural agency. In this form exorcism still exists in the Roman Catholic Church, which has specially-ordained exorcists; and it was daily practised in the Church of England in the time of Edward VI, when infants were exorcized before baptism, in the words—“I command thee, unclean spirit, in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, that thou come out, and depart from these infants.” Occasional exorcism continued till 1665, if not later: a clergyman named Ruddle, licensed to exorcize by the Bishop of Exeter, having then, according to his own account, succeeded in laying the ghost of a woman, by using the means appointed for dealing with demons—magic circle, “pentacle,” etc. Nor is this all. It has been an ecclesiastical usage, lasting down to Protestant times, to exorcize the water used in divine service: a practice implying the primitive notion that invisible demons swarm everywhere around.

In this, as in other cases, we may still trace the original nature of the supernatural agent. Malicious ghosts which Edition: current; Page: [243] annoy the living because their bodies have been ill-treated, differ but little from evil spirits which vex the living by possessing them. The instance given above, clearly implies that the laying of ghosts and the exorcism of demons, are but modifications of the same thing. The Amazulu show the two in undistinguishable forms. Concerning a woman persecuted by the ghost of her dead husband, we read:—

Of course, as civilization advances, the processes differentiate; so that while evil spirits are commanded or conjured, ghosts are pacified by fulfilling their requests. But since the meanings of ghost, spirit, demon, devil, angel, were at first the same, we may infer that what eventually became the casting out of a devil, was originally an expulsion of the malicious double of a dead man.

§ 133. A medicine-man who, helped by friendly ghosts, expels malicious ghosts, naturally asks himself whether he may not get ghostly aid for other purposes. Can he not by such aid revenge himself on enemies, or achieve ends not else possible? The belief that he can initiates sorcery.

A primitive form of this belief is shown us by the Kaffirs, who think dead bodies are restored to life by bad persons, and made hobgoblins to aid them in mischief. Here we have direct identification of the familiar demon with the deceased man. When we read that the Tahitians think sickness and death are produced by the incantations of priests, who induce the evil spirits to enter the sick; or when we read that most misfortunes are attributed by the Australians “to the power which hostile tribes possess over the spirits and demons which infest every corner of the land;” Edition: current; Page: [244] we recognize the same notion less specifically stated. In the fact that by Jewish writers “a necromancer is defined as one who fasts and lodges at night amongst tombs, in order that the evil spirit may come upon him;” we have a hint of a kindred belief in an early historic race. And we see the connexion between these original forms of the conception and those derived forms of it which have survived among the more civilized.

The operations of the sorcerer, having for their primary end the gaining of power over a living person, and having for their secondary end (which eventually becomes predominant) the gaining of power over the souls of dead persons, or supernatural agents otherwise conceived, are guided by a notion which it will be instructive to consider.

In § 52 it was shown why, originally, the special power or property of an object is supposed to be present in all its parts. This mode of thinking, we saw, prompted certain actions. Others such may here be instanced. The belief that the qualities of any individual are appropriated by eating him, is illustrated by the statement of Stanbridge, that when the Australians kill an infant, they feed a previously-born child with it; believing “that by its eating as much as possible of the roasted infant, it will possess the strength of both.” Elsewhere, dead relatives are consumed in pursuance of an allied belief. We read of the Cucamas that “as soon as a relation died, these people assembled and ate him roasted or boiled, according as he was thin or fat.” The Tariánas and Tucános, who drink the ashes of their relatives, “believe that thus the virtues of the deceased will be transmitted to the drinkers;” and an allied people, the Arawâks, think it “the highest mark of honour they could pay to the dead, to drink their powdered bones mixed in water.” Scarcely less significant is a custom of the whale-fishing Koniagas. “When a whaler dies, the body is cut into small pieces and distributed among his fellow-craftsmen, each of whom, after rubbing the point of his lance upon it, dries and Edition: current; Page: [245] preserves his piece as a sort of talisman. Or the body is placed in a distant cave, where, before setting out upon a chase, the whalers all congregate, take it out, carry it to a stream, immerse it, and then drink of the water.” The particular virtue possessed by an aggregate is supposed not only to inhere in all parts of it, but to extend to whatever is associated with it. Even its appearance is regarded as a property which cannot exist apart from its other properties. Hence the dislike often shown by savages to having their portraits taken. Along with this lively representation they think there must go some part of the life. A belief like that of the Chinooks who, if photographed, “fancied that their spirit thus passed into the keeping of others, who could torment it at pleasure,” or that of the Mapuchés, who hold that to have a man’s likeness is to have a fatal power over him, will be fully exemplified hereafter under another head. For the present, it must suffice to name this belief, as further showing the ways in which unanalytical conceptions of things work out. One more way must be added. Even with the name, there is this association. The idea betrayed by our own uncultured that some intrinsic connexion exists between word and thing (an idea which even the cultured among the Greeks did not get rid of) is betrayed still more distinctly by savages. From all parts of the world come illustrations of the desire to keep a name secret. Burton remarks it of North Americans, and Smith of some South Americans. The motive for this secrecy was clearly expressed by the Chinook who thought Kane’s desire to know his name proceeded from a wish to steal it. Indeed, as Bancroft puts it, “with them the name assumes a personality; it is the shadow or spirit, or other-self, of the flesh and blood person.” An allied interpretation is shown among the Land-Dyaks, who often change the names of their children, especially if they are sickly: “there being an idea that they will deceive the inimical spirits by following this practice.” And in another direction this belief works out Edition: current; Page: [246] in the widely-prevalent repugnance to naming the dead. That which Dove tells us of the Tasmanians, that they fear “pronouncing the name by which a deceased friend was known, as if his shade might thus be offended,” is told us, with or without the assigned motive, by travellers from many regions.

The facts thus grouped make sufficiently clear the genesis of the sorcerer’s beliefs and practices. Everywhere he begins by obtaining a part of his victim’s body, or something closely associated with his body, or else by making a representation of him; and then he does to this part, or this representation, something which he thinks is thereby done to his victim. The Patagonians hold that possession of a man’s hair or nails enables the magician to work evil on him; and this is the general conception. New Zealanders “all dread cutting their nails” for this reason. By the Amazulu, “sorcerers are supposed to destroy their victims by taking some portion of their bodies, as hair or nails; or something that has been worn next their person, as a piece of old garment, and adding to it certain medicines, which is then buried in some secret place.” Ancient Peruvian magicians did the like by acting on blood taken from them. Among the Tannese this fatal power over any one is exercised by operating on the remnants of his meals. Probably the idea is that these remnants continue to be connected with the portions he has eaten, and that have become part of him. They believe that—

Spells which originate in the belief that a representation is physically connected with the thing represented, might be exemplified from societies in all stages. Keating tells us of the Chippewas, that a sorcerer transfers a disease by making Edition: current; Page: [247] a “wooden image of his patient’s enemy,” piercing it to the heart, and introducing powders: a method identical with methods indicated in tales of European witchcraft.

Turning from this simpler form of magic to the form in which supernatural agents are employed, there comes the question—Does not the second grow out of the first? Reasons exist for thinking that it does. On remembering how small a difference the primitive man recognizes between the living and the dead, we may suspect that he thinks the two can be similarly acted upon. If possessing a portion of a living man gives power over him, will not possessing a portion of a dead man give power over him too? That by some peoples the deceased is supposed to have need of all his parts, has already been shown. We saw, in § 88, that the Mexicans put his bones where he could easily find them at the resurrection; and that a dead Peruvian’s hair and nails were preserved for him in one place. A like custom has a like assigned reason among the Inland Negroes in Ardrah. Is there not, then, the implication that one who obtains such relics thereby obtains a means of hurting, and therefore of coercing, the dead owner? Accept this implication, and the meaning of enchantments becomes clear. Habitually there is destructive usage; and habitually the things bruised, or burned, or boiled, are fragments of dead things, brute or human, but especially human. Speaking of the Ancient Peruvians, Arriaga says that by “a certain powder ground from the bones of the dead,” a sorcerer “stupifies all in the house.” During early times in Europe, it was thought dangerous “to leave corpses unguarded, lest they should be mangled by the witches, who took from them the most choice ingredients composing their charms.” Our own Parliament, so late even as 1604, enacted a death-penalty on any one who exhumed a corpse, or any part of it, to be used in “witchcrafte, sorcerie, charme, or inchantment.” Portions of the dead man having been the elements originally used, and such portions having repulsiveness as their most Edition: current; Page: [248] conspicuous trait, repulsive things in general naturally suggested themselves as things likely to strengthen the “hell-broth.” Especially if animal-souls, or the souls of metamorphosed human beings, were to be coerced, there might be looked for those strange mixtures of “eye of newt, and toe of frog,” etc., which the witch-cauldron contains.* That some such relationship exists between the arts of the necromancer and these ideas of the Edition: current; Page: [249] savage, we find further reason to suspect in the supposed potency of names. The primitive notion that a man’s name forms a part of him, and the derivative notion that calling the dead by their names affects them and may offend them, originate the necromancer’s notion of invocation. Everywhere, be it in the Hebrew legend of Samuel, whose ghost asks why he has been disquieted, or in an Icelandic saga, which describes ghosts severally summoned by name as answering to the summons, we get evidence that possession of the name is supposed to give over the dead an influence like that which it is supposed to give over the living. The power acquired by knowledge of the name is again implied by such stories as the “open Sesame” of the Arabian Nights; and the alleged effect of calling the name we see in the still-extant, though now jocose, saying—“Talk of the devil and he is sure to appear.”

Special interpretations aside, however, the general interpretation is sufficiently manifest. The primitive ghost-theory, implying but little difference between dead and living, fosters the notion that the dead can be acted on by arts like those which act on the living; and hence results that species of magic which, in its earlier form, is a summoning of the dead to get from them information, as the witch of Endor summons the spirit of Samuel, and in its later form is a raising of demons to help in mischief.

§ 134. Exorcism and sorcery pass insensibly into miracle. What difference exists refers less to the natures of the effects worked than to the characters of the agents working them. If the marvellous results are ascribed to a supernatural being at enmity with the observers, the art is sorcery; Edition: current; Page: [250] but if ascribed to a friendly supernatural being, the marvellous results are classed as miracles.

This is well shown in the contest between the Hebrew priests and the magicians of Egypt. From Pharaoh’s point of view, Aaron was an enchanter working by the help of a spirit antagonistic to himself; while his own priests worked by the help of his favouring gods. Contrariwise, from the point of view of the Israelites, the achievements of their own leaders were divine, and those of their antagonists diabolical. But both believed that supernatural agency was employed, and that the more powerful supernatural agent had to be yielded to.

Alleged ancient miracles of another order are paralleled in their meanings by alleged miracles now wrought every day in South Africa. By the Bechuanas, missionaries are taken for another sort of rain-makers; and among the Yorubas, “an old farmer, seeing a cloud, will say to a missionary, ‘please let it rain for us.’ ” Rain being thus, in these arid regions, as in the East, synonymous with blessing, we find contests between rain-doctors, or “heaven-herds,” like that between Elijah and the priests of Baal. There are similar trials of strength, and kindred penalties for failure. In Zululand, at a time when “the heaven was hot and dry,” a rain-doctor, “Umkqaekana, says—‘let the people look at the heaven at such a time; it will rain.’ . . . And when it rained, the people said—‘truly, he is a doctor.’ . . . After that year the heaven was hard, and it did not rain. The people persecuted him exceedingly. . . . It is said they poisoned him.” Habitually we find this same conception of the weather-doctor, as, in the words of Bishop Callaway, “a priest to whom is entrusted the power of prevailing mediation;” and habitually we find both his mediatory power and the power of the supernatural agent with whom he has influence, tested by the result. Thus, in the account of his captivity in Brazil, the old voyager, Hans Stade, saying, “God did a wonder through me,” narrates how, at the Edition: current; Page: [251] request of two savages, he stopped by prayer a coming storm, which threatened to hinder their fishing; and that “the savage, Parwaa, said—‘Now I see that thou hast spoken with thy God:’ ” heathen and Christian being thus perfectly at one in their interpretation.

The only difference of moment is the extent to which the supernatural agent who produces the miraculous effect at the instigation of the medicine-man, rain-maker, prophet, or priest, has diverged in ascribed nature from the primitive ancestral ghost.

§ 135. And now we approach another order of phenomena which has been evolving simultaneously with the orders described in this chapter and the one preceding it.

The primitive belief is that the ghosts of the dead, entering the bodies of the living, produce convulsive actions, insanity, disease, and death; and as this belief develops, these original supernatural agents conceived as causing such evils, differentiate into supernatural agents of various kinds and powers. Above, we have contemplated certain sequences of this theory of possession. Along with a belief in maleficent possession there goes a belief in beneficent possession; which is prayed for under the forms of supernatural strength, inspiration, or knowledge. Further, from the notion that if maleficent demons can enter they can be driven out, there results exorcism. And then there comes the idea that they may be otherwise controlled—may be called to aid: whence enchantments and miracles.

But if ghosts of the dead, or derived supernatural agents otherwise classed, can thus inflict evils on men when at enmity with them, or, when amicable, can give them help and protection, will it not be wise so to behave as to gain their good-will? This is evidently one of several policies that may be adopted. Supposed as these souls or spirits originally are, to be like living men in their perceptions and intelligence, they may be evaded and deceived. Or, as in Edition: current; Page: [252] the procedures above described, they may be driven away and defied. Or, contrariwise, there may be pursued the course of pacifying them if angry, and pleasing them if friendly.

This last course, which originates religious observances in general, we have now to consider. We shall find that the group of ideas and practices constituting a cult, has the same root with the groups of ideas and practices already described, and gradually diverges from them.