Part 6

Probably in all primitive faiths the word is regarded as a magical power in itself. In Egypt it was believed that by words the most powerful of the gods could be made obedient to the will of man. By them, as exorcisms or incantations everywhere, demons could be loosed or bound, and spirits summoned from the vasty deep. The stock in trade of the Indian medicine-man is principally his store of exorcisms, and among the Goras of North-Western India any one can become a priest who will learn the formulas which compel the demons.[93]

Our word “charm” comes from the Latin _carmen_, the sacred rhythmic formula, such as Virgil averred could by its occult power drag the moon from the sky.

“Carmina vel cælo possunt deducere lunam.”

There were such songs scarcely less potent among the Australian Blacks, which could summon the rain in dry seasons or cause it to cease in floods.[94]

No demon, however malevolent, can resist, in their belief, the power of the right word. The natives of New South Wales say that an evil spirit in the shape of a dwarf with monstrous head roams the woods at night and devours those whom he meets. But if the man utters the word “Boonbolong,” the dwarf passes on his way and does not harm him.[95]

When Jesus was in Capernaum, and at his command an unclean spirit had gone out of a man possessed, the multitude said one to the other,—τις εστι ουτος λογος, “What is this Word, by the authority and might of which this man casts out devils?” (Luke iv., 36.) They believed he used some cabalistic formula of exorcism which constrained the demons to obey his will.

Nowhere did the Word display its terrible effect more fearfully than in the curse or imprecation. In ancient Assyria, writes Professor Sayce, “The power of the _mamit_, or curse, was such that the gods themselves could not transgress it.”[96] Not only did it unloose the demons of destruction, but it constrained the gods against their will, changing them from protectors to enemies.[97]

Amid savage tribes, in undoubted and repeated instances, the curse kills as certainly as a knife. Among the western Indians of our country, when a medicine-man “gathers his medicine,” that is, rises to the full height of inspired volition, and utters a withering curse on his antagonist, commanding him to die, the latter knows all hope is lost. Sometimes he drops dead on the spot, or at best lingers through a few days of misery.[98] The Australians believe that the curse of a potent magician will kill at the distance of a hundred miles.[99]

Not only is the word thus mighty in the unseen world, but it is itself the very efflux and medium of the divine power itself.

Thus in the drama of creation recorded in the first chapter of Genesis we read: “And God said, ‘Light, be,’ and light was”; and in the corresponding myth of the Quiche Indians of Central America, the maker of the world calls forth, _Uleu!_ Earth! and at the word the solid land grew forth.[100]

Sir George Grey relates a story that in New Zealand there was a huge, carved wooden head, which could speak, and by the dreadful might of its words slew all who approached it. But when by superior magic its voice was reduced to a whisper, its power was gone and it was destroyed.[101]

It is to be noted that the magical influence of the word is _independent of its meaning_. It is distinctly _not_ the idea, image, or truth which it conveys to which is ascribed its efficacy. On the contrary, the most potent of all words are those which have no meaning at all or of which the sense has been lost.

This is constantly seen in the formulas of savage tribes. They preserve archaisms of language no longer understood by those who utter them, and in other instances they are obviously made up of syllables strung together without regard to intelligibility.

The same fact is abundantly shown in the cabalistic jargon of classical and mediæval diviners, and in the charms drawn from contemporary folk-lore. Indeed, the famous cabalist, Pico de Mirandola, asserts that a word without meaning has most influence over the demons.

Not only one or a few words may be thus unintelligible, but long communications may be in articulate sounds conveying no thought whatever. This is the “gift of tongues,” the power to speak in unknown languages.

It is common in savage life. Many of the important chants at the sacred ceremonies are mere iterations of meaningless syllables. The idea would seem to be that what men cannot understand, the gods do; or else, that it is the god expressing himself through human organs but in a speech unknown to human ears. Bishop Galloway says that the charm songs of the Zulus are often quite unintelligible to themselves[102]; and this is one of many examples.

Of all words, the most sacred is the Name. In primitive thought, the personal name of an individual is not merely an attribute, it is an integral part of his Self, his Ego. The Eskimos say that a man consists of three parts, his body, his soul, and his name, and of these the last mentioned alone achieves immortality. This seems very advanced. Most of our ambitious men appear to think more of rendering their names than their souls worthy of immortality. Very generally, the name was associated with the personal guardian spirit, derived from it or indicating it, and hence received a ceremonial sanctity.[103]

As being a part of oneself, injury or contumely heaped upon a name reacted upon the individual who bore it, and even life could be destroyed in this manner.

For this reason, throughout America the natives rarely disclosed their real appellations, but were designated by nicknames. In Australia some tribes were so cautious that the young men on entering adult life renounced the names by which they had been known and assumed no other; while a woman preserved indeed her appellation, but no one except her husband was entitled to pronounce it.[104] The Dyaks take the prudent precaution, after an attack of illness, to change their names; so that the demon who sent the sickness may not recognise them, and continue his malevolent pursuit.[105]

In Polynesia, where the name was not thus concealed, it could be applied, according to the ceremonial law, only to the person, although it was generally a common noun. Hence arose the curious custom called _tepi_. All words which formed part of the name of the chieftain, and all syllables of other words which had a similar sound were dropped from the language and others substituted for them during his lifetime. Thus, forty or fifty of the most common terms of the language would drop out of use at once, and as many more be materially changed in sound, to the great annoyance of missionaries and visitors.[106]

The Kamschatkans were so particular that they would not name the bear or wolf, for these animals understood the language of men, and would be offended at such familiarity![107]

Even if it does not hear, the power for good or evil which a being has, can, in primitive opinion, be communicated through its name. For that reason the priest known as the _flamen dialis_ among the Romans would not only avoid touching a dog or bear, but he would not pronounce their names, lest he should be contaminated! And to this day a Mohammedan, if he pronounces the word for “hog,” will spit, that his mouth may not be defiled by the name of the unclean beast.

Even more universal was the avoidance of the names of the dead. This prevailed throughout Africa, Australia, Tasmania, Polynesia, and America. The reason was, that the name was held to be a part of the spirit of the departed, and to pronounce it would disturb the rest of the grave, and probably indeed bring the perturbed spirit to the circle of auditors.[108]

If such was the case with the names of men and beasts, how sacred must be the names of the gods!

This is an extraordinary feature, common to the rudest superstitions of savage and the most developed faiths of civilised lands, and it has for its basis the conception of the name as a real attribute, a part of the Self.

“In all the religions of ancient Asia,” writes Lenormant, “the mysterious Name was considered a real and divine being, who had a personal existence and exclusive power over both nature and the world of spirits.”[109]

In the name dwelt the essential power of the deity. An Egyptian magical formula, placed in the mouth of a god, reads:

“I am the elect of millions of years. Were my name spoken on the bank of a river, it would be consumed; Were it uttered on earth, fire would burst from the ground.”[110]

The knowledge of this name by another enabled him to exert a power over the god himself. That by naming a demon, he can be forced to appear, was a cardinal principle of ancient magic. “The list of divine names possessed by the Roman pontiffs in their _indigitamenta_ was their most efficacious magical instrument, laying at their mercy all the forces of the spirit world.”[111]

For this reason, the gods of ancient Egypt sedulously concealed their names, and we cannot doubt that it was the fear of some such subjection of their deity through the malicious use of his name, which led the early Jews to conceal it so well that it is now lost. It was the same with the Semitic Arabians. Instead of the true divine name, they substituted Allah, the Mighty One, so that now the original is conjectural or unknown.

This extends to the rudest tribes. The African traveller Holub says that the actual name of the god of the Marutse and allied tribes along the Zambesi river is Njambe; but to avoid revealing this, they employ the term Molemo, “He above.” Among the south-eastern Australian tribes their leading deity is Turramulun (the One-legged), who lives in the sky. His name is never revealed to women, nor to youths before their initiation to manhood.[112]

The Choctaw Indians regarded the name of their highest divinity as self-existing, essential, and unspeakable. Therefore, when it was necessary to refer to him, they adopted a circumlocution, for, says their historian, “according to their fixed standard of speech, had they made any nearer approach to the beloved Name, it would have been reckoned a profanation.”[113]

How completely this notion has survived among ourselves is shown by the second clause of that prayer on which we have all been brought up, “Hallowed be Thy Name.” But how few who repeat it reflect that the name referred to, whatever it was, is now through long concealment totally lost!

Thus we see that the doctrine of “the ineffable Name” is the common property of savage and cultured faiths.

From the misuse of the name to compel the obedience of the god, or to injure his dignity and worth, came the idea of profanity, sternly forbidden by the early Jewish law,—“Take not the name of the Lord in vain”—and by many other faiths of a primitive aspect.

Quite consistently with this idea of real existence in names, the god who had many names had just as many powers or faculties. For that reason, the prominent gods of ancient Egypt, especially Isis, were called upon by so numerous epithets that the Greeks spoke of them as “myrionomous,” ten-thousand-named. In later Babylonian times all the names of the fifty great gods were ascribed to Êa, by which process they were themselves absorbed into his being. “When they lost their names, they lost their personality as well.”[114] To the Mohammedan the “One hundred names of God” repeated in the Koran express the multitude of His powers.

The same tendency is visible in the native religions of America. The Mexicans applied many names to the same divinity, and in the _Popol Vuh_, the sacred book of the Quiches, the chief deity is called by a variety of titles, some sounding strange to us, as “the opossum-hunter,” the “green snake,” the “calebash,” all of symbolic sense.[115]

In the South Seas, the name of a god, adopted by a chief, identified him in the opinion of the people with the god and secured for him the reverence and adoration ascribed to his divine namesake.[116]

This idea is that which in many early and later faiths led to what are called the “theophorous” or god-bearing names, where the individual is called by the proper name of a saint or god. They were especially frequent in early Semitic religions, and are customary among Catholics to-day.[117]

We find their origin in the custom, very general among the American Indians, for the person to take the name of the spirit who appears to him during the vigils and fasts which attend the ceremonies of initiation to manhood. By assuming the name of the divinity, the two natures or essences are believed to be united. This was precisely also the opinion of the early Christians, as we see in the expression of St. Ephrem, a Syrian saint of the fourth century: “Merciful was the Lord in that He clad on our Names. His Names make us great; our Names make Him small.”[118]

If we seek the explanation of this strange power attributed to words and names, often apart from their signification, we shall find it in their extreme activity as agents of mental suggestion. They are intense psychic stimulants, stirring the soul to its depths. The Word is by odds the most effective of all agencies to bring about altered and abnormal mental conditions either in the individual or in the mass. Through it, judiciously applied, the profoundest hypnotic trance, or the wildest, maniacal nervous seizures can be produced at will.[119]

The repetition of a word greatly heightens its suggestive influence and promotes the exclusion from the mind of all other concepts and associations than its own. In many languages, a word repeated is equivalent to the superlative degree, and in every tongue the repetition has a similar effect, as in the phrase: “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth.”

No words in this relation are more efficient than names. Consider what our own lives would be if we had to change our names every year, how it would seem to obliterate our personality, how it would dissipate all dreams of posthumous glory and renown. Our consciousness of Self would suffer diminution, and the keenest interest of our lives would be lost. Our name is really and truly a part of ourselves, and he who would rob us of it would leave us poor indeed. Why is every point of view carved with the names of obscure tourists, why does it give us pleasure to note our names among the hundreds at some grand function, but that we think it more desirable to live “as naked nominations, without desert or noble deeds,” as Sir Thomas Browne said, than to pass away and leave not that little which the Roman poet considered the least,—_nominis umbra_, “the shadow of a name.”

For the practical purposes of life the name confers or creates the personality. This fact exerted a profound influence in the earliest development of religion. The vague sense of spiritual power first became centred in the idea of an individual, of a personal god, when it received a name.

The primitive words of barbaric tongues used to signifying the divine have not the connotation of individuality. _Wakan_, _mahopa_, _manito_, _teotl_, _huaca_, _ku_, are such words from American languages, not one of which conveys the concept of personality. That concept was first gained when some single expression of spiritual power was differentiated and named.[120]

The essential religious element in the Word is its power to bring man into relation to the gods. This is possible in three directions,—we may address them; they may address us; or we may talk about them. These furnish the three forms of sacred expression in speech: 1. The word _to_ the gods,—Prayer; 2. The word _from_ the gods,—Revelation; and 3. The word _about_ the gods,—the Myth. We will consider each of these.

I. THE WORD TO THE GODS.—1. The Word to the gods is Prayer. It is a very prominent and nigh universal element in primitive religions. The injunction “Pray always” is nowhere else so nearly carried out. Captain Clark, an officer of our army with the widest experience of Indian life, writes: “It seems a startling assertion, but it is, I think, true, that there are no people who pray more than Indians. Both superstition and custom keep always in their minds the necessity for placating the anger of the invisible and omnipotent power, and for supplicating the active exercise of his faculties in their behalf.”[121]

In fact, Prayer may be said to be the life of the faith of savage tribes, and it is so recognised by themselves. According to the legends of the Maoris of New Zealand, when they first migrated to that island from Hawaii, they did not bring with them their ancestral gods, but took care to carry along the potent prayers which the gods cannot but hear and grant.[122]

Some writers have claimed that certain tribes have been found without any notion of an appeal to unseen agencies, and have quoted as instances the Yahgans of Tierra del Fuego, and the Mincopies of the Andaman Islands. But closer examination proves that the priests of the Yahgans call upon a mysterious being, Aiapakal,[123] and other invisible existences, and the Mincopies are acknowledged to have prayers at the present time.

The earliest hymns and prayers do not, as a rule, contain definite requests, but are general appeals to the god to be present, to partake of the feast which is spread, or to join the dance and to continue his good offices toward those who call upon him. Such are the hymns of the Rig Veda, and those of ancient Mexico, which I have collected and published.[124] They are like the _evocatio deorum_ of the Romans.

The three forms of “the Word to the gods,” or Prayer, are those of thanksgiving, by praise or laudation; of petition for assistance or protection; and of penitence or contrition for neglect of duty. All these are common in the most primitive faiths. In all of them you will find the deity appealed to as great, mighty, a lord, a king, terror-inspiring, loving his followers, and by hundreds of such epithets of amplification and flattery. He is addressed endearingly as father or grandfather; not at all implying a physical relationship, as some modern writers have erroneously stated; but with reference to the loving care he is supposed to extend to his worshippers.

As we might expect, most of the petitions in primitive prayers are for material benefits. The burden of most of them is well expressed by one in the Rig Veda: “O God, prosper us in getting and in keeping!” They ask for increase of goods, abundant food, success in war, and fine weather.

Yet among the rudest there are signs of an appreciation of something higher. A prayer of the Khonds, a Dravidian tribe of Northern India, reads: “O Lord, we know not what is good for us. Thou knowest what it is. For it we pray.”

It is strange to find among the Navahoes, a rude hunting tribe of our western territories, an intense longing for the beautiful. One of their prayers runs: “O Lord on high, whose youth is immortal, ruler above, I have made you the offering, preserve my body and members, preserve it in beauty, make all things beautiful, let all be completed in beauty.”[125]

At other times the prayer is for moral control, as in this of a Sioux Indian: “O my grandfather, the Earth, I ask that thou givest me a long life and strength of body. When I go to war, let me capture many horses and kill many enemies. But in peace, let not anger enter my heart.”[126]

Penitential prayers are uttered when one has broken the ceremonial law or _tabu_; and in general, when misfortune and defeat seem to indicate that the gods are irritated at some insult offered them, though the worshipper may not be clear what it is.

“O merciful Lord,” says an Aztec prayer, “let this chastisement with which thou hast visited us give us freedom from evil and follies.”[127]

In many prayers we find formulas preserved which are no longer understood; and very frequently the power of the prayer is believed to be increased by repeating it a number of times. The prayer choruses of nearly all savage tribes offer endless examples of this. The notion of increased force by repetition, a notion founded on the augmented suggestive power of the Word through its iteration, to which I have already referred, is so common that it was especially noted and condemned by Jesus as of no spiritual value.

This form of prayer, indeed, degenerated into a mere magical formula, as we see was the case with the apostolic benediction of the Christian church during the middle ages, which became a charm in use by necromancers and sorcerers.

In its sublimest essence, however, prayer has been recognised as something far beyond any form of suppliancy. It is, as an orthodox authority says, “the habitual state of a being who constantly lives in relation to God, and cultivates a constant exchange with Him.”[128] So understood, it is even more than inspiration; it is a communion of spiritual life, a dwelling in God. This is the precise mental condition of many of the mystics and devotees of primitive religions. They are with the god, the god with and in them.

II. THE WORD FROM THE GODS.—If the mere name of the god was thus mighty and thus venerated, how much more the words he himself uttered! The “Word of God,” as understood by the worshippers, is the kernel and core of every faith on earth. Every religion is, to its votaries, a revelation. None is so material, none so primitive, as to claim any other foundation than the expressed will of divinity. None is so devoid of ritual as to lack some means of ascertaining this will.

The word from the gods is clothed under two forms, the Law and the Prophets,—in other terms, Precept and Prediction. In every religion, from the most primitive to the highest, we find these two modes of divine utterance.

In the earliest phases of religion, the law is essentially prohibitory. It is in the form of the negative, “Thou shalt not——.” Ethnologists have adopted for this a word from Polynesian dialects, _tabu_, or _tapu_, akin to _tapa_, to name,[129] that which was solemnly named or announced being sacred, and hence forbidden to the _profanum vulgus_.

The _tabu_ extends its veto into every department of primitive life. It forbids the use of certain articles of food or raiment; it hallows the sacred areas; it lays restrictions on marriage, and thus originates what is known as the totemic bond; it denounces various actions, often the most trivial and innocent, and thus lays the foundation for the ceremonial law.

The penalty for the infraction of the _tabu_ includes all that flows from the anger of the gods, reaching to death itself. A few examples, from the very rudest religions, will serve to illustrate this.

The Kamschatkans in the beginning of the last century were very low in the scale of humanity and curiously pessimistic. They had a hero-god, Kutka, their mythic progenitor, of whom they told many strange and disgusting stories. They cursed him oftener than they blessed him, and refused to believe that anything good could come from the gods. But to escape the ill-will of these malevolent beings they practised various ceremonies and refrained from sundry actions calculated to displease those capricious spirits. Thus, one must not cook fish and flesh in the same pot, or he would be punished with sores; he must not step in the tracks of a bear, or he would be visited with a skin disease; he must not scrape the snow from his shoes with a knife, or there would be violent storms; and so on, through a long law of prohibitions.[130]