Ritual and belief

Among the various intellectual activities of the last fifty years none has awakened a more widespread interest than that of the study of the evolution of human civilization. The...

Many European casuists justify one who is questioned concerning matters he desires to keep secret, and who meets the inquisitive person with a falsehood. It cannot therefore be...

The use of the word “devil,” universal in and around Melanesia when speaking in pigeon English of the native mysteries and the objects of the native cult or fear, illustrates on...

The first thing to be noticed is the fluidity of the savage concept of personality. It is not confined within the bounds of one stable and relatively unchangeable body. You may...

Like the Algonkian _manitou_, the Siouan _wakonda_ is thus seen to hover between the Personal and the Impersonal, whereas the Iroquoian _orenda_ clings about persons and things....

It may be so. It may be another illustration of the fluidity of the concept of personality. But what we have already learned of _mana_ may lead us to place another interpretatio...

In a powerful criticism of this theory Messrs Hubert and Mauss, two French anthropologists, have pointed {71} out that Professor Frazer has omitted one essential item. The effec...

The second observation is that the definition ignores the whole of life not occupied by crises. When the Californian Hupa awakes in the morning and sees the dawn, it cannot be s...

It may be well to illustrate the foregoing speculation from the customs and superstitions of the Arunta of Central Australia. The Arunta have been represented to be the lowest a...

In Europe the dominant religion has proscribed witchcraft with terrors spiritual and physical, which have emphasized its separation and intensified its spiritual aspect. The jud...

Professor Durkheim’s theory of religion is exhibited in detail only in one type. He speaks of “the aptitude of society to erect itself into a god or to create gods”;[124.1] but...

Cases like these display the religion of the community applied to the private advantage of the individual. More interesting is the authority which Mr Hodson attributes to the _k...

Another illustration of adaptability is seen in the rites at wells or rocks common all over Europe. What may have been the original cause of the sacredness of a well or a rock,...

But he appears in other forms. A favourite is that of a horse, sometimes described as with hoofs reversed. At Bohuus in West Gothland he was caught by means of a cunningly contr...

In these cases, though the supernatural being may be out of reach, that does not hinder men and women from pitting their _orenda_ against his; and as soon as the storm {180} or...

Among the Chinese the dead of both sexes have always been held capable of sexual intercourse with the living. A favourite topic of Chinese tales is that of a belated wanderer en...

Indeed, communities boasting themselves of the culture and progress of the twentieth century have not entirely discarded the terrors born of some such belief. I do not refer to...

The Kikuyu, Anyanja and Kamtchadal customs are evidently the same. The penalty for non-observance, though not expressed in our account of the Kikuyu custom, is, it will hardly b...

For this reason many of the aborigines of British Guiana lay their trinkets aside and go entirely naked; and among the Jiraras or Ayricas the wife, brothers and sisters of the d...

A different case is that of a Myoro woman cited by Dr Frazer from Captain Speke’s _Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile_. Her child had died. She smeared herself w...

Many customs, sometimes born of widely differing motives, converge in a similarity of expression. Hence it is impossible in the present state of our knowledge dogmatically to as...

That such a rite should be found annexed to the temple and worship of a luxurious goddess causes no surprise; on the contrary, it is what might have been anticipated. Every read...

The properties of the stone of Tara were oracular; and the stone itself was one of a large class of stones endowed in popular opinion with divining powers, and actually resorted...

The story of Pope Innocent belongs to the cycle of the Outcast Child, a well-known group of folk-tales, of which {307} the examples most familiar to us are the story of King Lea...

No argument is needed to show that the form of tradition is affected, even where the substance remains, by external changes. Customs referred to in a legend may become obsolete...

Hose, Charles, D.Sc., and William M‘Dougall, M.B., F.R.S., _The Pagan Tribes of Borneo: A Description of their Physical, Moral and Intellectual Condition, with some Discussion o...

[51.3] Codrington, 124-5. Father Joseph Meier denies that the Melanesian population of the Gazelle Peninsula of New Britain possesses the concept of _mana_ in the sense of a uni...

[186.2] Wiedemann, _op. cit._, 178. Bérenger-Feraud, _Superst._, i. 451 _sqq._, gives a long list of examples of punishments inflicted on the obdurate divinity. See also Frazer,...

[301.3] _N. Ind. N. and Q._, iv. 66. Similarly in a story from Mirzapur, the first man met in the forest is made king. _Ibid._, ii. 81. In another story from Mirzapur a trained...