Part 9

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 and least evolved of known humanity in their beliefs and institutions: they are, it is said, still in the stage of primitive absence of religion; magic alone is the object of their belief; magic alone they practise. Now none of the Australian tribes are, strictly speaking, in a primitive condition. The civilization of all of them has evolved to some extent. It has evolved, speaking in general terms, along similar lines; and these lines have been conditioned by the environment. It is admittedly significant that, in a land where so many archaic types of the lower animals have survived, we should find archaic types of human culture. Yet the most archaic types of Australian culture are far from being primitive. So far are they that the social organization is of the most complex character, the product of a succession of stages of development. The least archaic types exhibit the old social organization breaking down and new structures in course of formation. With the evolution of society an evolution of belief has also been going on. It has not been exactly concurrent. Culture rarely or never evolves equally in all directions. It is a mental process, partly conscious, partly unconscious. The collective mind of a given society, like the individual minds of which it is composed, is not exercised equally {98} on all subjects at the same time. Hence while, for example, we find among the Euahlayi tribe, in the north of New South Wales, an advanced theology and a more developed worship than have been recorded elsewhere in Australia, the social organization is still on the basis of female descent; and though the clansmen eat without scruple their hereditary totems, in other respects the totemic system seems to be in full force. In the same way the Arunta and their neighbours certainly preserve relics of a very archaic condition of thought and social organization. Though for certain purposes a son inherits from his mother’s husband, it is doubtful whether descent is counted through the father for social purposes; the physical relation between father and child, indeed, is but imperfectly recognized. On the other hand, they have developed a very elaborate theory of reincarnation, and their totemic system seems to be in course of transformation into a number of societies bearing in some respects remarkable resemblance to those of the tribes of British Columbia.[98.1] Magical practices (chiefly in connection with these societies or totemic groups) are more prominent than religious.

Yet a closer examination will lead us to the conclusion that something more than, on any definition of magic, we can call magical practices, something we must recognize as religion, albeit of a low type, is not wholly wanting to the natives of Central Australia. We may perhaps grant that Twanyirika, with whose name the women and {99} uninitiate children are kept in awe, is a bugbear “to frighten babes withal,” and nothing more. The Kaitish and the Loritja, adjacent tribes sharing the general culture of the Arunta, at all events believe in the real existence of a superior being, who invented the initiation rites and is pleased when men perform them now.[99.1] Indeed, if Herr Strehlow’s investigations are to be trusted, the Arunta themselves are not destitute of belief in such a being, though we learn little about him, and he has no influence on the destinies of mankind.[99.2] Among the Warramunga, a tribe a little further to the north, the Wollunqua, a gigantic mythical snake, is the object of important rites, and one of the totem-clans is called by its name. It dwells in a certain water-hole in a lonely valley of the Murchison Range, “and there is always the fear that it may take it into its head to come out of its hiding-place and do some damage.” Hence propitiation is necessary. This is effected by building a mound of sandy earth and delineating on it a representation of the animal. “They say that when he sees the mound with his representation drawn upon it, he is gratified, and wriggles about underneath with pleasure.” On the evening of the day succeeding that on which the ceremonies in connection with this mound were witnessed by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, “the old men who had made the mound said that they had heard the Wollunqua talking, and that he was pleased with what had been done and was sending rain; the explanation of which doubtless was that they, like ourselves, had heard thunder in the distance. No rain fell, but a few days later the distant rumble of thunder was again heard at night-time; and {100} this, the old men now said, was the Wollunqua growling because the remains of the mound had been left uncovered. They also told the younger men that a heavy bank of clouds which lay on the western horizon had been placed there as a warning by the Wollunqua, and at once cut down boughs and hid the ruins of the mound from view, after which the Wollunqua ceased from growling, and all went on peacefully until the end of the series” of ceremonies.[100.1] There are, of course, myths associated with the Wollunqua. The mound recalled one of them. During its building and the ceremonies about it chants were sung referring to the deeds of the Wollunqua, breaking out from time to time into refrains of words, now at least meaningless, and said to belong to the language of the mythical past. The name Wollunqua is avoided in common parlance. A circumlocution is employed instead, “because, so they told us, if they were to call it too often by its real name, they would lose their control over it and it would come out and eat them all up.”[100.2] How does this differ from the familiar taboo of sacred names? When the explorers were taken to visit the Wollunqua’s dwelling-place (should we be wrong to call it his shrine?), the two chief men of the totemic group went down to the water’s edge and addressed him in whispers with bowed heads, praying him to remain quiet and do them no harm, for they were mates of his and had brought up two great white men to see where he lived and to tell them about him. “We could plainly see that it was all very real to them, and that they implicitly believed that the Wollunqua was indeed alive beneath the water, watching them, though they could not see him.”[100.3] In all these rites (the details {101} of which were carried out with earnestness and frequently with excitement) it can hardly be denied that we have the elements of a true cult. The only one as to which any qualification could be admitted is “the savage attack,” described as being made on the mound when the ceremony relating to it was concluded. The result of it was that the figures delineated on the mound were destroyed, and all that remained was a rough heap of sandy earth. This is represented as an attempt to “coerce the mythic beast.” It is not quite certain that the interpretation is correct, for it does not rest on native statements, but is an inference of the explorers. The obliteration of sacred figures drawn on sand or earth for the purpose of a rite is not confined to the cult of the Wollunqua, nor even to Australia. It is equally found among the Pueblo tribes of North America and the Mongolian Buddhists of Central Asia.[101.1] Its object is to hide the sacred symbols from the eyes of the profane. But if the interpretation were correct (and it is not inconsistent with some of the expressions and traditions reported), it is no more than we might expect. If a savage deals with the mythic figures of his imagination as he deals with his fellowman, we must not be surprised that he should pass from cajolery to coercion, from prayer to defiance. Peoples on a much higher religious horizon (as we shall see hereafter) do not hesitate to threaten, and even to offer violence to, the objects of their worship, when they are unable to obtain otherwise what they want.

Nor are the rites of the Wollunqua alone among these tribes in bearing evidence of something more than magical ceremonies, namely, of rudimentary worship. {102} When at the close of the initiation rites among the Arunta someone with a bundle of _churinga_, sacred stones or sticks in the shape of a bull-roarer, comes up to the newly initiated youth, saying: “Here is Twanyirika, of whom you have heard so much; they are _churinga_ and will help to heal you quickly,”[102.1] neither the neophyte nor his friend regards them as mere toys. The statement that they will help to heal the neophyte’s wounds is enough to show this. We must not be misled by the apparent anticlimax to forget that they are, throughout this group of tribes, mysterious objects, marked with the emblem of the totem, and in the closest association with it; to the Arunta and Loritja they are the outward and visible sign, if not the embodiment, of the ancestral souls or invisible portions, and as such are regarded with veneration.[102.2] They are kept cunningly concealed from the eyes of the profane, hidden in stores which are sanctuaries, places of refuge from the pursuit of enemies, for men and even for wild animals. Herr Strehlow relates that when he was trying to find a native word to translate _church_, two baptized Blackfellows in all seriousness suggested to him the use of _arknanaua_, the name of these sacred storehouses in their tongue.[102.3] The very word _churinga_ means, as nearly as can be rendered in a European tongue, hidden away, secret, appropriated, sacred. It is used as an adjective to describe objects employed in the sacred ceremonies, and the secret name bestowed on a child at birth. In this connection it is {103} important to remember that the sacred ceremonies, and in fact everything sacred, are among these tribes secret also from the uninitiate. Though individuals may, at least among the Arunta and Loritja, have special property in their _churingas_, the latter are, as a whole, the collective property of the totemic clan; they are under the control of the ceremonial headman; their loss is the most serious evil that can befall a group; and even to lend them to another group, as is occasionally done for special purposes, is undertaken with the greatest solemnity and caution. When returned, they are received with every mark of veneration, with weeping and a low, mournful chant; and both parties must be strictly fasting.[103.1]

The _churinga_ are, moreover, endowed with power, with _mana_, which not merely heals wounds, but when they are brought ceremonially in contact with the body produces other physical, mental, and even moral effects. In the Kaitish tribe the performance of some ceremonies, in the course of which the _churinga_ are handled, renders a man so full of this _mana_, or, as they call it, _churinga_, using the very word, that he becomes for the time taboo.[103.2] In addition, the _churinga_ have virtue to make the yams and the grass-seed grow; they frighten the game, or enable a man to secure it, and so forth. They are handled in a manner which it is no exaggeration to call devout. They are polished with red ochre to “soften” them, a term that, as Messrs Spencer and Gillen remark, “very evidently points to the fact that the [_churinga_] is regarded as something much more than a piece of wood or stone. It is intimately associated with the ancestor, and has ‘feelings,’ just as human beings have, which can be soothed by rubbing in the same way in which those of living men can be.” We gather that a man will sing {104} to his _churinga_, that the subject of his song will be the mythical story of the ancestor (or the previous incarnation) to whom it belonged, and that as he sings and rubs it with his hand, “he gradually comes to feel that there is some special association between him and the sacred object--that a virtue of some kind passes from it to him, and also from him to it.” So from generation to generation it gathers more and more of what our authors describe as magical power--what would certainly be called in Melanesia _mana_--the mystic potentiality already discussed.[104.1]

Thus the _churinga_ have to the Blackfellow a more or less definitely personal aspect. It may be said that the songs chanted over them are after all merely magical spells. But the spell implies some more or less defined personality in the objects to which it is addressed. In these tribes rites are performed, called in the Arunta tongue _Intichiuma_, for the purpose of causing a manifestation of the power of the totem, of multiplying the totem-animal or plant, and generally of increasing the prosperity of the totem. In the course of these rites there is much singing. The members of the group invite the witchetty grubs to come from all directions and lay their eggs, or the hakea-trees to flower and their blossoms to fill with honey; they beg the rain to come and bring fish; they direct the kangaroos to go from one place to another; and so on. Even when the songs and the actions performed in the ceremonies recall the events of the mythical past, they are not necessarily more magical than the words of sacred dramas, which everywhere in the lower culture inseparably interweave what we generally speak of as magic and religion. The mighty ancestors (as elsewhere {105} the gods) whose deeds they chant are present in the rite. “The totem, the ancestor, and the descendant (that is to say, the performer) appear in these songs as one. Without keeping in view the indivisible unity of the totem, the mythic ancestor and the offspring (_ratapa_), many of the songs are quite incomprehensible.”[105.1] Thus where invitation or command is not issued directly to the object, the _mana_ of the ancestors seems to be evoked for the accomplishment of the end.

Again, so far from the Arunta medicine-men being practitioners of anything analogous to modern science, they are initiated by, and their power is derived from, the spirits. These spirits are believed to put the candidate to death, to carry him down into their abode, and there to take out his internal organs, replacing them with a new set, planting in his body a supply of magical crystals by which all his subsequent wonders will be performed, and then bringing him to life again. He remains, however, in a condition of insanity for some days. It is true that an imitation of this process can be performed by medicine-men of flesh and blood; but candidates thus initiated have a lower repute (save apparently among the Warramunga) than those initiated directly by the spirits. The crystals are in any case the home and symbol of the magician’s powers. They are in fact full of _mana_. If they be lost, the magician ceases to be a magician, and the crystals themselves return to the spirits. All over Australia, so far as we know, the same influence is attributed to them.[105.2] On the eastern side of the continent, where something like a tribal All-Father {106} is believed in, he is regarded, like Odin, as the mightiest of magicians, and the crystals are, as well as the bull-roarer, among his special attributes. Let me observe too in passing that it is not a little significant that, as in the witchcraft of Europe and Africa, portions of dead bodies are in great request in Australia for magical purposes. The “pointing bone,” to which I referred just now, is part of a dead man’s leg or arm. A portion of his personality inheres in it. Consequently, even before it is “sung,” it is endowed with his _mana_, which the singing only enhances and directs in its course.[106.1] For the same reason human fat and a dead man’s hair are important parts of the Australian native’s magical apparatus.

The initiation of the medicine-man or magician by spirits, often the spirits of the dead, is practically the universal belief in Australia. In this respect the Australian medicine-man is in line with many of his professional brethren elsewhere. In the island of Saghalien the Gilyak shamans are chosen vessels, to whom their tutelary gods reveal their high calling in vision or in trance. From the moment that this is done the gods install themselves as the new shaman’s assistants and perform his commands. Yet shamanhood is not regarded as a gift, but as a burden. To become a shaman, either a man must find favour with one of these assistant tutelary gods, or such a god must be bestowed upon him by his father or uncle. Conversion into a shaman forms a break in the life of the chosen, accompanied by many complicated psychical phenomena. The process in his own case was described by a shaman to a Russian anthropologist. For more than two months he was sick and lay without movement or consciousness. As soon {107} as he revived from one attack he fell under another. “I should have died,” he said, “if I had not become a shaman.” He began to dream at night that he sang shaman songs. Visions appeared to him, and he was told to make a drum and the proper apparatus of a shaman, and to sing. If he were a simple man, the vision told him, nothing would happen; “but if thou art a shaman, be a real shaman.” When he awoke he found that it was thought the spirits had killed him, and preparations for his funeral rites had been made. But he got a drum and began to sing. This produced a feeling which hovered between intoxication and death. Then for the first time he saw his tutelary gods, and received from them instruction in his business as a shaman.[107.1] Among the Koryak on the adjacent continent, “nobody can become a shaman of his own free will. The spirits enter into any person they may choose and force him to become their servant.” Such persons are “usually nervous young men, subject to hysterical fits, by means of which the spirits express their demand” that the patient shall become a shaman. Fasting, paroxysms, exhaustion succeed one another. Finally, the spirits appear to the patient in visible form, endow him with power, inspire and instruct him.[107.2] In other words, they fill him with their _mana_.

Here we have manifestly the wide-spread phenomena of Possession. In these tribes there are no professional priests. The magicians, though in a sense the intermediaries between men and the higher powers, are not charged with the duty of offering sacrifice and prayer. In South Africa, among the Bantu tribes, also, there are {108} no professional priests. Ancestor-worship is the religion; and the only worship paid is paid to the _manes_ of the dead. The proper person to offer sacrifices is the head of the family for the time being. But medicine-men or magicians form a regular profession, which is divided into a number of branches. For some of these branches initiation by the spirits of the dead is not necessary. For others it is indispensable. Frequently, however, the same man combines the practice of several branches of the art. All who practise openly are recognized as White Wizards, exercising their powers for the wellbeing of society, in defence of the established order. Yet these very men sometimes boast of being _baloyi_, a term by which evil wizards are generally known. They claim to be more powerful than ordinary wizards, able to discover and baffle their tricks, and to kill. Moreover, there are good _baloyi_, who use their power to bless. They are sometimes sent by ancestral spirits to increase the produce of the fields, and then they are said to have bewitched the fields to make them bring forth more fruit. Thus it is clear that a hard and fast line cannot be drawn between the social and the antisocial magicians, at least among some of the Bantu tribes. One of the chief branches of the profession is that of exorcist. Now no man can set up as an exorcist without having been himself possessed by the spirits and exorcised. This is indeed the regular method of initiation, for a man is not merely restored to ordinary life by exorcism; he is also aggregated to the society of magicians; he enters a new life; he becomes a neophyte among the practitioners, and must undergo further probation which may result in his becoming more than an exorcist--he may become clairvoyant or a diviner, a prophet or a worker of marvels; he may cure diseases or cause the rain to fall. Many practitioners {109} profess more than one of these accomplishments; the most distinguished profess several.[109.1]

How far the phenomena of possession are voluntary need not here be discussed. The Zulu or Xosa patient (if we may call him so) becomes sickly and abstinent; he distinguishes himself by dreams and visions, and begins to talk of his intercourse with spirits of the dead; he becomes “a house of dreams”; he is hysterical; he sings; he behaves as though he were out of his mind; he is possessed by an _Itongo_, an ancestral spirit. Then he is admitted to the society of the magicians and receives instruction from them. Finally, he is accounted a new creature, whose intercourse with spirits and share in their supernatural powers is recognized by everyone.[109.2]

Among the Ngombe in the Northern Congo basin, we are told, “the ghosts call [to the man] from the bowels of the earth. He goes into the grave, underground, and stays there four months. When the four months are finished he comes forth, rubs himself with camwood and dances, contorting his body.” This seems to be the neophyte’s only preparation for the office of _nganga_. After that, according to the same authority, “whenever a man is sick he is carried by others to the _nganga_. They accompany him to the man of ghosts. He looks at the body, then recites to the spirit. They lift up the man and go out. All the people dance, and he who is afflicted with sickness is brought to the doctor for medicine.”[109.3]

On the North American continent the medicine-man was not “possessed,” as among the Siberian tribes and the Bantu; but his mode of initiation was similar. The {110} Ojibway sorcerer after prolonged fasting was initiated by the supernatural powers.[110.1] Among many of the Californian tribes “a spirit, be it that of an animal, a place, the sun or other natural object, a deceased relative or an entirely unembodied spirit, visits the future medicine-man in his dreams, and the connection thus established between them is the source and basis of the latter’s power. This spirit becomes his guardian spirit or ‘personal.’ From it he receives the song or rite or knowledge of the charm, and the understanding which enable him to cause or remove disease, and to do and endure what other men cannot.”[110.2] The Skidi Pawnee is allured to the abode of the mysterious animal-powers, and there taught their knowledge and gifted with their powers; or he is visited by a supernatural being in dreams for the same purpose.[110.3]

Among the Sea Dyaks of Borneo “there are two descriptions of _manangs_ [shamans], the regular and the irregular. The regular are those who have been called to that vocation by dreams, and to whom the spirits have revealed themselves. The irregular are self-created and without a familiar spirit.” It is not enough for the _manang_ simply to say “that he feels himself called; he must prove to his friends that he is able to commune with the spirits; and in proof of this he will occasionally abstain from food and indulge in trances, from which he will awake with all the tokens of one possessed by a devil, foaming at the mouth and talking incoherently.”[110.4] One of the ways to “get magic” among the Malays is to meet the ghost of a murdered man. In order to do this a {111} ceremony must be performed at the grave on a Tuesday at full moon. The aspirant calls upon the deceased for help, and states his request. Ultimately an aged man appears, to whom the request is repeated; and it would seem that the suppliant gets what he wants.[111.1]