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Chapter 18. The Perils of the Soul.
1. The Soul as a Mannikin
The foregoing examples have taught us that the office of a sacred king or
priest is often hedged in by a series of burdensome restrictions or taboos, of
which a principal purpose appears to be to preserve the life of the divine man
for the good of his people. But if the object of the taboos is to save his
life, the question arises, How is their observance supposed to effect this
end? To understand this we must know the nature of the danger which threatens
the king's life, and which it is the intention of these curious restrictions
to guard against. We must, therefore, ask: What does early man understand by
death? To what causes does he attribute it? And how does he think it may be
guarded against?
As the savage commonly explains the processes of inanimate nature by
supposing that they are produced by living beings working in or behind the
phenomena, so he explains the phenomena of life itself. If an animal lives and
moves, it can only be, he thinks, because there is a little animal inside
which moves it: if a man lives and moves, it can only be because he has a
little man or animal inside who moves him. The animal inside the animal, the
man inside the man, is the soul. And as the activity of an animal or man is
explained by the presence of the soul, so the repose of sleep or death is
explained by its absence; sleep or trance being the temporary, death being the
permanent absence of the soul. Hence if death be the permanent absence of the
soul, the way to guard against it is either to prevent the soul from leaving
the body, or, if it does depart, to ensure that it shall return. The
precautions adopted by savages to secure one or other of these ends take the
form of certain prohibitions or taboos, which are nothing but rules intended
to ensure either the continued presence or the return of the soul. In short,
they are life-preservers or life-guards. These general statements will now be
illustrated by examples.
Addressing some Australian blacks, a European missionary said, I am not
one, as you think, but two. Upon this they laughed. You may laugh as much as
you like, continued the missionary, I tell you that I am two in one; this
great body that you see is one; within that there is another little one which
is not visible. The great body dies, and is buried, but the little body flies
away when the great one dies. To this some of the blacks replied, Yes, yes.
We also are two, we also have a little body within the breast. On being asked
where the little body went after death, some said it went behind the bush,
others said it went into the sea, and some said they did not know. The Hurons
thought that the soul had a head and body, arms and legs; in short, that it
was a complete little model of the man himself. The Esquimaux believe that
the soul exhibits the same shape as the body it belongs to, but is of a more
subtle and ethereal nature. According to the Nootkas the soul has the shape
of a tiny man; its seat is the crown of the head. So long as it stands erect,
its owner is hale and hearty; but when from any cause it loses its upright
position, he loses his senses. Among the Indian tribes of the Lower Fraser
River, man is held to have four souls, of which the principal one has the form
of a mannikin, while the other three are shadows of it. The Malays conceive
the human soul as a little man, mostly invisible and of the bigness of a
thumb, who corresponds exactly in shape, proportion, and even in complexion to
the man in whose body he resides. This mannikin is of a thin, unsubstantial
nature, though not so impalpable but that it may cause displacement on
entering a physical object, and it can flit quickly from place to place; it is
temporarily absent from the body in sleep, trance, and disease, and
permanently absent after death.
So exact is the resemblance of the mannikin to the man, in other words, of
the soul to the body, that, as there are fat bodies and thin bodies, so there
are fat souls and thin souls; as there are heavy bodies and light bodies, long
bodies and short bodies, so there are heavy souls and light souls, long souls
and short souls. The people of Nias think that every man, before he is born,
is asked how long or how heavy a soul he would like, and a soul of the desired
weight or length is measured out to him. The heaviest soul ever given out
weighs about ten grammes. The length of a man's life is proportioned to the
length of his soul; children who die young had short souls. The Fijian
conception of the soul as a tiny human being comes clearly out in the customs
observed at the death of a chief among the Nakelo tribe. When a chief dies,
certain men, who are the hereditary undertakers, call him, as he lies, oiled
and ornamented, on fine mats, saying, Rise, sir, the chief, and let us be
going. The day has come over the land. Then they conduct him to the river
side, where the ghostly ferryman comes to ferry Nakelo ghosts across the
stream. As they thus attend the chief on his last journey, they hold their
great fans close to the ground to shelter him, because, as one of them
explained to a missionary, His soul is only a little child. People in the
Punjaub who tattoo themselves believe that at death the soul, the little
entire man or woman inside the mortal frame, will go to heaven blazoned with
the same tattoo patterns which adorned the body in life. Sometimes, however,
as we shall see, the human soul is conceived not in human but in animal form.
2. Absence and Recall of the Soul.
The soul is commonly supposed to escape by the natural openings of the body,
especially the mouth and nostrils. Hence in Celebes they sometimes fasten
fish-hooks to a sick man's nose, navel, and feet, so that if his soul should
try to escape it may be hooked and held fast. A Turik on the Baram River, in
Borneo, refused to part with some hook-like stones, because they, as it were,
hooked his soul to his body, and so prevented the spiritual portion of him
from becoming detached from the material. When a Sea Dyak sorcerer or
medicine-man is initiated, his fingers are supposed to be furnished with
fish-hooks, with which he will thereafter clutch the human soul in the act of
flying away, and restore it to the body of the sufferer. But hooks, it is
plain, may be used to catch the souls of enemies as well as of friends. Acting
on this principle head-hunters in Borneo hang wooden hooks beside the skulls
of their slain enemies in the belief that this helps them on their forays to
hook in fresh heads. One of the implements of a Haida medicine-man is a hollow
bone, in which he bottles up departing souls, and so restores them to their
owners. When any one yawns in their presence the Hindoos always snap their
thumbs, believing that this will hinder the soul from issuing through the open
mouth. The Marquesans used to hold the mouth and nose of a dying man, in order
to keep him in life by preventing his soul from escaping; the same custom is
reported of the New Caledonians; and with the like intention the Bagobos of
the Philippine Islands put rings of brass wire on the wrists or ankles of
their sick. On the other hand, the Itonamas of South America seal up the eyes,
nose, and mouth of a dying person, in case his ghost should get out and carry
off others; and for a similar reason the people of Nias, who fear the spirits
of the recently deceased and identify them with the breath, seek to confine
the vagrant soul in its earthly tabernacle by bunging up the nose or tying up
the jaws of the corpse. Before leaving a corpse the Wakelbura of Australia
used to place hot coals in its ears in order to keep the ghost in the body,
until they had got such a good start that he could not overtake them. In
Southern Celebes, to hinder the escape of a woman's soul in childbed, the
nurse ties a band as tightly as possible round the body of the expectant
mother. The Minangkabauers of Sumatra observe a similar custom; a skein of
thread or a string is sometimes fastened round the wrist or loins of a woman
in childbed, so that when her soul seeks to depart in her hour of travail it
may find the egress barred. And lest the soul of a babe should escape and be
lost as soon as it is born, the Alfoors of Celebes, when a birth is about to
take place, are careful to close every opening in the house, even the keyhole;
and they stop up every chink and cranny in the walls. Also they tie up the
mouths of all animals inside and outside the house, for fear one of them might
swallow the child's soul. For a similar reason all persons present in the
house, even the mother herself, are obliged to keep their mouths shut the
whole time the birth is taking place. When the question was put, Why they did
not hold their noses also, lest the child's soul should get into one of them?
the answer was that breath being exhaled as well as inhaled through the
nostrils, the soul would be expelled before it could have time to settle down.
Popular expressions in the language of civilised peoples, such as to have
one's heart in one's mouth, or the soul on the lips or in the nose, show how
natural is the idea that the life or soul may escape by the mouth or nostrils.
Often the soul is conceived as a bird ready to take flight. This
conception has probably left traces in most languages, and it lingers as a
metaphor in poetry. The Malays carry out the conception of the bird-soul in a
number of odd ways. If the soul is a bird on the wing, it may be attracted by
rice, and so either prevented from flying away or lured back again from its
perilous flight. Thus in Java when a child is placed on the ground for the
first time (a moment which uncultured people seem to regard as especially
dangerous), it is put in a hen-coop and the mother makes a clucking sound, as
if she were calling hens. And in Sintang, a district of Borneo, when a person,
whether man, woman, or child, has fallen out of a house or off a tree, and has
been brought home, his wife or other kinswoman goes as speedily as possible to
the spot where the accident happened, and there strews rice, which has been
coloured yellow, while she utters the words, Cluck! cluck! soul! So-and-so is
in his house again. Cluck! cluck! soul! Then she gathers up the rice in a
basket, carries it to the sufferer, and drops the grains from her hand on his
head, saying again, Cluck! cluck! soul! Here the intention clearly is to
decoy back the loitering bird-soul and replace it in the head of its owner.
The soul of a sleeper is supposed to wander away from his body and
actually to visit the places, to see the persons, and to perform the acts of
which he dreams. For example, when an Indian of Brazil or Guiana wakes up from
a sound sleep, he is firmly convinced that his soul has really been away
hunting, fishing, felling trees, or whatever else he has dreamed of doing,
while all the time his body has been lying motionless in his hammock. A whole
Bororo village has been thrown into a panic and nearly deserted because
somebody had dreamed that he saw enemies stealthily approaching it. A Macusi
Indian in weak health, who dreamed that his employer had made him haul the
canoe up a series of difficult cataracts, bitterly reproached his master next
morning for his want of consideration in thus making a poor invalid go out and
toil during the night. The Indians of the Gran Chaco are often heard to relate
the most incredible stories as things which they have themselves seen and
heard; hence strangers who do not know them intimately say in their haste that
these Indians are liars. In point of fact the Indians are firmly convinced of
the truth of what they relate; for these wonderful adventures are simply their
dreams, which they do not distinguish from waking realities.
Now the absence of the soul in sleep has its dangers, for if from any
cause the soul should be permanently detained away from the body, the person
thus deprived of the vital principle must die. There is a German belief that
the soul escapes from a sleeper's mouth in the form of a white mouse or a
little bird, and that to prevent the return of the bird or animal would be
fatal to the sleeper. Hence in Transylvania they say that you should not let a
child sleep with its mouth open, or its soul will slip out in the shape of a
mouse, and the child will never wake. Many causes may detain the sleeper's
soul. Thus, his soul may meet the soul of another sleeper and the two souls
may fight; if a Guinea negro wakens with sore bones in the morning, he thinks
that his soul has been thrashed by another soul in sleep. Or it may meet the
soul of a person just deceased and be carried off by it; hence in the Aru
Islands the inmates of a house will not sleep the night after a death has
taken place in it, because the soul of the deceased is supposed to be still in
the house and they fear to meet it in a dream. Again, the soul of the sleeper
may be prevented by an accident or by physical force from returning to his
body. When a Dyak dreams of falling into the water, he supposes that this
accident has really befallen his spirit, and he sends for a wizard, who fishes
for the spirit with a hand-net in a basin of water till he catches it and
restores it to its owner. The Santals tell how a man fell asleep, and growing
very thirsty, his soul, in the form of a lizard, left his body and entered a
pitcher of water to drink. Just then the owner of the pitcher happened to
cover it; so the soul could not return to the body and the man died. While his
friends were preparing to burn the body some one uncovered the pitcher to get
water. The lizard thus escaped and returned to the body, which immediately
revived; so the man rose up and asked his friends why they were weeping. They
told him they thought he was dead and were about to burn his body. He said he
had been down a well to get water, but had found it hard to get out and had
just returned. So they saw it all.
It is a common rule with primitive people not to waken a sleeper, because
his soul is away and might not have time to get back; so if the man wakened
without his soul, he would fall sick. If it is absolutely necessary to rouse a
sleeper, it must be done very gradually, to allow the soul time to return. A
Fijian in Matuku, suddenly wakened from a nap by somebody treading on his
foot, has been heard bawling after his soul and imploring it to return. He had
just been dreaming that he was far away in Tonga, and great was his alarm on
suddenly wakening to find his body in Matuku. Death stared him in the face
unless his soul could be induced to speed at once across the sea and reanimate
its deserted tenement. The man would probably have died of fright if a
missionary had not been at hand to allay his terror.
Still more dangerous is it in the opinion of primitive man to move a
sleeper or alter his appearance, for if this were done the soul on its return
might not be able to find or recognise its body, and so the person would die.
The Minangkabauers deem it highly improper to blacken or dirty the face of a
sleeper, lest the absent soul should shrink from re-entering a body thus
disfigured. Patani Malays fancy that if a person's face be painted while he
sleeps, the soul which has gone out of him will not recognise him, and he will
sleep on till his face is washed. In Bombay it is thought equivalent to murder
to change the aspect of a sleeper, as by painting his face in fantastic
colours or giving moustaches to a sleeping woman. For when the soul returns it
will not know its own body, and the person will die.
But in order that a man's soul should quit his body, it is not necessary
that he should be asleep. It may quit him in his waking hours, and then
sickness, insanity, or death will be the result. Thus a man of the Wurunjeri
tribe in Australia lay at his last gasp because his spirit had departed from
him. A medicine-man went in pursuit and caught the spirit by the middle just
as it was about to plunge into the sunset glow, which is the light cast by the
souls of the dead as they pass in and out of the under-world, where the sun
goes to rest. Having captured the vagrant spirit, the doctor brought it back
under his opossum rug, laid himself down on the dying man, and put the soul
back into him, so that after a time he revived. The Karens of Burma are
perpetually anxious about their souls, lest these should go roving from their
bodies, leaving the owners to die. When a man has reason to fear that his soul
is about to take this fatal step, a ceremony is performed to retain or recall
it, in which the whole family must take part. A meal is prepared consisting of
a cock and hen, a special kind of rice, and a bunch of bananas. Then the head
of the family takes the bowl which is used to skim rice, and knocking with it
thrice on the top of the houseladder says: Prrrroo! Come back, soul, do not
tarry outside! If it rains, you will be wet. If the sun shines, you will be
hot. The gnats will sting you, the leeches will bite you, the tigers will
devour you, the thunder will crush you. Prrrroo! Come back, soul! Here it
will be well with you. You shall want for nothing. Come and eat under shelter
from the wind and the storm. After that the family partakes of the meal, and
the ceremony ends with everybody tying their right wrist with a string which
has been charmed by a sorcerer. Similarly the Lolos of South-western China
believe that the soul leaves the body in chronic illness. In that case they
read a sort of elaborate litany, calling on the soul by name and beseeching it
to return from the hills, the vales, the rivers, the forests, the fields, or
from wherever it may be straying. At the same time cups of water, wine, and
rice are set at the door for the refreshment of the weary wandering spirit.
When the ceremony is over, they tie a red cord round the arm of the sick man
to tether the soul, and this cord is worn by him until it decays and drops
off.
Some of the Congo tribes believe that when a man is ill, his soul has left
his body and is wandering at large. The aid of the sorcerer is then called in
to capture the vagrant spirit and restore it to the invalid. Generally the
physician declares that he has successfully chased the soul into the branch of
a tree. The whole town thereupon turns out and accompanies the doctor to the
tree, where the strongest men are deputed to break off the branch in which the
soul of the sick man is supposed to be lodged. This they do and carry the
branch back to the town, insinuating by their gestures that the burden is
heavy and hard to bear. When the branch has been brought to the sick man's
hut, he is placed in an upright position by its side, and the sorcerer
performs the enchantments by which the soul is believed to be restored to its
owner.
Pining, sickness, great fright, and death are ascribed by the Bataks of
Sumatra to the absence of the soul from the body. At first they try to beckon
the wanderer back, and to lure him, like a fowl, by strewing rice. Then the
following form of words is commonly repeated: Come back, O soul, whether thou
art lingering in the wood, or on the hills, or in the dale. See, I call thee
with a toemba bras, with an egg of the fowl Rajah moelija, with the eleven
healing leaves. Detain it not, let it come straight here, detain it not,
neither in the wood, nor on the hill, nor in the dale. That may not be. O come
straight home! Once when a popular traveller was leaving a Kayan village, the
mothers, fearing that their children's souls might follow him on his journey,
brought him the boards on which they carry their infants and begged him to
pray that the souls of the little ones would return to the familiar boards and
not go away with him into the far country. To each board was fastened a looped
string for the purpose of tethering the vagrant spirits, and through the loop
each baby was made to pass a chubby finger to make sure that its tiny soul
would not wander away.
In an Indian story a king conveys his soul into the dead body of a
Brahman, and a hunchback conveys his soul into the deserted body of the king.
The hunchback is now king and the king is a Brahman. However, the hunchback is
induced to show his skill by transferring his soul to the dead body of a
parrot, and the king seizes the opportunity to regain possession of his own
body. A tale of the same type, with variations of detail, reappears among the
Malays. A king has incautiously transferred his soul to an ape, upon which the
vizier adroitly inserts his own soul into the king's body and so takes
possession of the queen and the kingdom, while the true king languishes at
court in the outward semblance of an ape. But one day the false king, who
played for high stakes, was watching a combat of rams, and it happened that
the animal on which he had laid his money fell down dead. All efforts to
restore animation proved unavailing till the false king, with the instinct of
a true sportsman, transferred his own soul to the body of the deceased ram,
and thus renewed the fray. The real king in the body of the ape saw his
chance, and with great presence of mind darted back into his own body, which
the vizier had rashly vacated. So he came to his own again, and the usurper in
the ram's body met with the fate he richly deserved. Similarly the Greeks told
how the soul of Hermotimus of Clazomenae used to quit his body and roam far
and wide, bringing back intelligence of what he had seen on his rambles to his
friends at home; until one day, when his spirit was abroad, his enemies
contrived to seize his deserted body and committed it to the flames.
The departure of the soul is not always voluntary. It may be extracted
from the body against its will by ghosts, demons, or sorcerers. Hence, when a
funeral is passing the house, the Karens tie their children with a special
kind of string to a particular part of the house, lest the souls of the
children should leave their bodies and go into the corpse which is passing.
The children are kept tied in this way until the corpse is out of sight. And
after the corpse has been laid in the grave, but before the earth has been
shovelled in, the mourners and friends range themselves round the grave, each
with a bamboo split lengthwise in one hand and a little stick in the other;
each man thrusts his bamboo into the grave, and drawing the stick along the
groove of the bamboo points out to his soul that in this way it may easily
climb up out of the tomb. While the earth is being shovelled in, the bamboos
are kept out of the way, lest the souls should be in them, and so should be
inadvertently buried with the earth as it is being thrown into the grave; and
when the people leave the spot they carry away the bamboos, begging their
souls to come with them. Further, on returning from the grave each Karen
provides himself with three little hooks made of branches of trees, and
calling his spirit to follow him, at short intervals, as he returns, he makes
a motion as if hooking it, and then thrusts the hook into the ground. This is
done to prevent the soul of the living from staying behind with the soul of
the dead. When the Karo-Bataks have buried somebody and are filling in the
grave, a sorceress runs about beating the air with a stick. This she does in
order to drive away the souls of the survivors, for if one of these souls
happened to slip into the grave and to be covered up with earth, its owner
would die.
In Uea, one of the Loyalty Islands, the souls of the dead seem to have
been credited with the power of stealing the souls of the living. For when a
man was sick the soul-doctor would go with a large troop of men and women to
the graveyard. Here the men played on flutes and the women whistled softly to
lure the soul home. After this had gone on for some time they formed in
procession and moved homewards, the flutes playing and the women whistling all
the way, while they led back the wandering soul and drove it gently along with
open palms. On entering the patient's dwelling they commanded the soul in a
loud voice to enter his body.
Often the abduction of a man's soul is set down to demons. Thus fits and
convulsions are generally ascribed by the Chinese to the agency of certain
mischievous spirits who love to draw men's souls out of their bodies. At Amoy
the spirits who serve babies and children in this way rejoice in the
high-sounding titles of celestial agencies bestriding galloping horses and
literary graduates residing halfway up in the sky. When an infant is
writhing in convulsions, the frightened mother hastens to the roof of the
house, and, waving about a bamboo pole to which one of the child's garments is
attached, cries out several times My child So-and-so, come back, return
home! Meantime, another inmate of the house bangs away at a gong in the hope
of attracting the attention of the strayed soul, which is supposed to
recognise the familiar garment and to slip into it. The garment containing the
soul is then placed on or beside the child, and if the child does not die
recovery is sure to follow, sooner or later. Similarly some Indians catch a
man's lost soul in his boots and restore it to his body by putting his feet
into them.
In the Moluccas when a man is unwell it is thought that some devil has
carried away his soul to the tree, mountain, or hill where he (the devil)
resides. A sorcerer having pointed out the devil's abode, the friends of the
patient carry thither cooked rice, fruit, fish, raw eggs, a hen, a chicken, a
silken robe, gold, armlets, and so forth. Having set out the food in order
they pray, saying: We come to offer to you, O devil, this offering of food,
clothes, gold, and so on; take it and release the soul of the patient for whom
we pray. Let it return to his body, and he who now is sick shall be made
whole. Then they eat a little and let the hen loose as a ransom for the soul
of the patient; also they put down the raw eggs; but the silken robe, the
gold, and the armlets they take home with them. As soon as they are come to
the house they place a flat bowl containing the offerings which have been
brought back at the sick man's head, and say to him: Now is your soul
released, and you shall fare well and live to grey hairs on the earth.
Demons are especially feared by persons who have just entered a new house.
Hence at a house-warming among the Alfoors of Minahassa in Celebes the priest
performs a ceremony for the purpose of restoring their souls to the inmates.
He hangs up a bag at the place of sacrifice and then goes through a list of
the gods. There are so many of them that this takes him the whole night
through without stopping. In the morning he offers the gods an egg and some
rice. By this time the souls of the household are supposed to be gathered in
the bag. So the priest takes the bag, and holding it on the head of the master
of the house, says, Here you have your soul; go (soul) to-morrow away again.
He then does the same, saying the same words, to the housewife and all the
other members of the family. Amongst the same Alfoors one way of recovering a
sick man's soul is to let down a bowl by a belt out of a window and fish for
the soul till it is caught in the bowl and hauled up. And among the same
people, when a priest is bringing back a sick man's soul which he has caught
in a cloth, he is preceded by a girl holding the large leaf of a certain palm
over his head as an umbrella to keep him and the soul from getting wet, in
case it should rain; and he is followed by a man brandishing a sword to deter
other souls from any attempt at rescuing the captured spirit.
Sometimes the lost soul is brought back in a visible shape. The Salish or
Flathead Indians of Oregon believe that a man's soul may be separated for a
time from his body without causing death and without the man being aware of
his loss. It is necessary, however, that the lost soul should be soon found
and restored to its owner or he will die. The name of the man who has lost his
soul is revealed in a dream to the medicine-man, who hastens to inform the
sufferer of his loss. Generally a number of men have sustained a like loss at
the same time; all their names are revealed to the medicine-man, and all
employ him to recover their souls. The whole night long these soulless men go
about the village from lodge to lodge, dancing and singing. Towards daybreak
they go into a separate lodge, which is closed up so as to be totally dark. A
small hole is then made in the roof, through which the medicine-man, with a
bunch of feathers, brushes in the souls, in the shape of bits of bone and the
like, which he receives on a piece of matting. A fire is next kindled, by the
light of which the medicine-man sorts out the souls. First he puts aside the
souls of dead people, of which there are usually several; for if he were to
give the soul of a dead person to a living man, the man would die instantly.
Next he picks out the souls of all the persons present, and making them all to
sit down before him, he takes the soul of each, in the shape of a splinter of
bone, wood, or shell, and placing it on the owner's head, pats it with many
prayers and contortions till it descends into the heart and so resumes its
proper place.
Again, souls may be extracted from their bodies or detained on their
wanderings not only by ghosts and demons but also by men, especially by
sorcerers. In Fiji, if a criminal refused to confess, the chief sent for a
scarf with which to catch away the soul of the rogue. At the sight or even
at the mention of the scarf the culprit generally made a clean breast. For if
he did not, the scarf would be waved over his head till his soul was caught in
it, when it would be carefully folded up and nailed to the end of a chief's
canoe; and for want of his soul the criminal would pine and die. The sorcerers
of Danger Island used to set snares for souls. The snares were made of stout
cinet, about fifteen to thirty feet long, with loops on either side of
different sizes, to suit the different sizes of souls; for fat souls there
were large loops, for thin souls there were small ones. When a man was sick
against whom the sorcerers had a grudge, they set up these soul-snares near
his house and watched for the flight of his soul. If in the shape of a bird or
an insect it was caught in the snare, the man would infallibly die. In some
parts of West Africa, indeed, wizards are continually setting traps to catch
souls that wander from their bodies in sleep; and when they have caught one,
they tie it up over the fire, and as it shrivels in the heat the owner
sickens. This is done, not out of any grudge towards the sufferer, but purely
as a matter of business. The wizard does not care whose soul he has captured,
and will readily restore it to its owner, if only he is paid for doing so.
Some sorcerers keep regular asylums for strayed souls, and anybody who has
lost or mislaid his own soul can always have another one from the asylum on
payment of the usual fee. No blame whatever attaches to men who keep these
private asylums or set traps for passing souls; it is their profession, and in
the exercise of it they are actuated by no harsh or unkindly feelings. But
there are also wretches who from pure spite or for the sake of lucre set and
bait traps with the deliberate purpose of catching the soul of a particular
man; and in the bottom of the pot, hidden by the bait, are knives and sharp
hooks which tear and rend the poor soul, either killing it outright or mauling
it so as to impair the health of its owner when it succeeds in escaping and
returning to him. Miss Kingsley knew a Kruman who became very anxious about
his soul, because for several nights he had smelt in his dreams the savoury
smell of smoked crawfish seasoned with red pepper. Clearly some ill-wisher had
set a trap baited with this dainty for his dream-soul, intending to do him
grievous bodily, or rather spiritual, harm; and for the next few nights great
pains were taken to keep his soul from straying abroad in his sleep. In the
sweltering heat of the tropical night he lay sweating and snorting under a
blanket, his nose and mouth tied up with a handkerchief to prevent the escape
of his precious soul. In Hawaii there were sorcerers who caught souls of
living people, shut them up in calabashes, and gave them to people to eat. By
squeezing a captured soul in their hands they discovered the place where
people had been secretly buried.
Nowhere perhaps is the art of abducting human souls more carefully
cultivated or carried to higher perfection than in the Malay Peninsula. Here
the methods by which the wizard works his will are various, and so too are his
motives. Sometimes he desires to destroy an enemy, sometimes to win the love
of a cold or bashful beauty. Thus, to take an instance of the latter sort of
charm, the following are the directions given for securing the soul of one
whom you wish to render distraught. When the moon, just risen, looks red above
the eastern horizon, go out, and standing in the moonlight, with the big toe
of your right foot on the big toe of your left, make a speaking-trumpet of
your right hand and recite through it the following words:
OM. I loose my shaft, I loose it and the moon clouds over,
I loose it, and the sun is extinguished.
I loose it, and the stars burn dim.
But it is not the sun, moon, and stars that I shoot at,
It is the stalk of the heart of that child of the congregation,
So-and-so.
Cluck! cluck! soul of So-and-so, come and walk with me,
Come and sit with me,
Come and sleep and share my pillow.
Cluck! cluck! soul.
Repeat this thrice and after every repetition blow through your hollow fist.
Or you may catch the soul in your turban, thus. Go out on the night of the
full moon and the two succeeding nights; sit down on an ant-hill facing the
moon, burn incense, and recite the following incantation:
I bring you a betel leaf to chew,
Dab the lime on to it, Prince Ferocious,
For Somebody, Prince Distraction's daughter, to chew.
Somebody at sunrise be distraught for love of me
Somebody at sunset be distraught for love of me.
As you remember your parents, remember me;
As you remember your house and houseladder, remember me;
When thunder rumbles, remember me;
When wind whistles, remember me;
When the heavens rain, remember me;
When cocks crow, remember me;
When the dial-bird tells its tales, remember me;
When you look up at the sun, remember me;
When you look up at the moon, remember me,
For in that self-same moon I am there.
Cluck! cluck! soul of Somebody come hither to me.
I do not mean to let you have my soul,
Let your soul come hither to mine.
Now wave the end of your turban towards the moon seven times each night.
Go home and put it under your pillow, and if you want to wear it in the
daytime, burn incense and say,
It is not a turban that I carry in my girdle,
but the soul of Somebody.
The Indians of the Nass River, in British Columbia, are impressed with a
belief that a physician may swallow his patient's soul by mistake. A doctor
who is believed to have done so is made by the other members of the faculty to
stand over the patient, while one of them thrusts his fingers down the
doctor's throat, another kneads him in the stomach with his knuckles, and a
third slaps him on the back. If the soul is not in him after all, and if the
same process has been repeated upon all the medical men without success, it is
concluded that the soul must be in the head-doctor's box. A party of doctors,
therefore, waits upon him at his house and requests him to produce his box.
When he has done so and arranged its contents on a new mat, they take the
votary of Aesculapius and hold him up by the heels with his head in a hole in
the floor. In this position they wash his head, and any water remaining from
the ablution is taken and poured upon the sick man's head. No doubt the lost
soul is in the water.
3. The Soul as a Shadow and a Reflection
But the spiritual dangers I have enumerated are not the only ones which
beset the savage. Often he regards his shadow or reflection as his soul, or at
all events as a vital part of himself, and as such it is necessarily a source
of danger to him. For if it is trampled upon, struck, or stabbed, he will feel
the injury as if it were done to his person; and if it is detached from him
entirely (as he believes that it may be) he will die. In the island of Wetar
there are magicians who can make a man ill by stabbing his shadow with a pike
or hacking it with a sword. After Sankara had destroyed the Buddhists in
India, it is said that he journeyed to Nepaul, where he had some difference of
opinion with the Grand Lama. To prove his supernatural powers, he soared into
the air. But as he mounted up the Grand Lama, perceiving his shadow swaying
and wavering on the ground, struck his knife into it and down fell Sankara and
broke his neck.
In the Banks Islands there are some stones of a remarkably long shape
which go by the name of eating ghosts, because certain powerful and
dangerous ghosts are believed to lodge in them. If a man's shadow falls on one
of these stones, the ghost will draw his soul out from him, so that he will
die. Such stones, therefore, are set in a house to guard it; and a messenger
sent to a house by the absent owner will call out the name of the sender, lest
the watchful ghost in the stone should fancy that he came with evil intent and
should do him a mischief. At a funeral in China, when the lid is about to be
placed on the coffin, most of the bystanders, with the exception of the
nearest kin, retire a few steps or even retreat to another room, for a
person's health is believed to be endangered by allowing his shadow to be
enclosed in a coffin. And when the coffin is about to be lowered into the
grave most of the spectators recoil to a little distance lest their shadows
should fall into the grave and harm should thus be done to their persons. The
geomancer and his assistants stand on the side of the grave which is turned
away from the sun; and the grave-diggers and coffin-bearers attach their
shadows firmly to their persons by tying a strip of cloth tightly round their
waists. Nor is it human beings alone who are thus liable to be injured by
means of their shadows. Animals are to some extent in the same predicament. A
small snail, which frequents the neighbourhood of the limestone hills in
Perak, is believed to suck the blood of cattle through their shadows; hence
the beasts grow lean and sometimes die from loss of blood. The ancients
supposed that in Arabia, if a hyaena trod on a man's shadow, it deprived him
of the power of speech and motion; and that if a dog, standing on a roof in
the moonlight, cast a shadow on the ground and a hyaena trod on it, the dog
would fall down as if dragged with a rope. Clearly in these cases the shadow,
if not equivalent to the soul, is at least regarded as a living part of the
man or the animal, so that injury done to the shadow is felt by the person or
animal as if it were done to his body.
Conversely, if the shadow is a vital part of a man or an animal, it may
under certain circumstances be as hazardous to be touched by it as it would be
to come into contact with the person or animal. Hence the savage makes it a
rule to shun the shadow of certain persons whom for various reasons he regards
as sources of dangerous influence. Amongst the dangerous classes he commonly
ranks mourners and women in general, but especially his mother-in-law. The
Shuswap Indians think that the shadow of a mourner falling upon a person would
make him sick. Amongst the Kurnai of Victoria novices at initiation were
cautioned not to let a woman's shadow fall across them, as this would make
them thin, lazy, and stupid. An Australian native is said to have once nearly
died of fright because the shadow of his mother-in-law fell on his legs as he
lay asleep under a tree. The awe and dread with which the untutored savage
contemplates his mother-in-law are amongst the most familiar facts of
anthropology. In the Yuin tribes of New South Wales the rule which forbade a
man to hold any communication with his wife's mother was very strict. He might
not look at her or even in her direction. It was a ground of divorce if his
shadow happened to fall on his mother-in-law: in that case he had to leave his
wife, and she returned to her parents. In New Britain the native imagination
fails to conceive the extent and nature of the calamities which would result
from a man's accidentally speaking to his wife's mother; suicide of one or
both would probably be the only course open to them. The most solemn form of
oath a New Briton can take is, Sir, if I am not telling the truth, I hope I
may shake hands with my mother-in-law.
Where the shadow is regarded as so intimately bound up with the life of
the man that its loss entails debility or death, it is natural to expect that
its diminution should be regarded with solicitude and apprehension, as
betokening a corresponding decrease in the vital energy of its owner. In
Amboyna and Uliase, two islands near the equator, where necessarily there is
little or no shadow cast at noon, the people make it a rule not to go out of
the house at mid-day, because they fancy that by doing so a man may lose the
shadow of his soul. The Mangaians tell of a mighty warrior, Tukaitawa, whose
strength waxed and waned with the length of his shadow. In the morning, when
his shadow fell longest, his strength was greatest; but as the shadow
shortened towards noon his strength ebbed with it, till exactly at noon it
reached its lowest point; then, as the shadow stretched out in the afternoon,
his strength returned. A certain hero discovered the secret of Tukaitawa's
strength and slew him at noon. The savage Besisis of the Malay Peninsula fear
to bury their dead at noon, because they fancy that the shortness of their
shadows at that hour would sympathetically shorten their own lives.
Nowhere, perhaps, does the equivalence of the shadow to the life or soul
come out more clearly than in some customs practised to this day in
South-eastern Europe. In modern Greece, when the foundation of a new building
is being laid, it is the custom to kill a cock, a ram, or a lamb, and to let
its blood flow on the foundation-stone, under which the animal is afterwards
buried. The object of the sacrifice is to give strength and stability to the
building. But sometimes, instead of killing an animal, the builder entices a
man to the foundation-stone, secretly measures his body, or a part of it, or
his shadow, and buries the measure under the foundation-stone; or he lays the
foundation-stone upon the man's shadow. It is believed that the man will die
within the year. The Roumanians of Transylvania think that he whose shadow is
thus immured will die within forty days; so persons passing by a building
which is in course of erection may hear a warning cry, Beware lest they take
thy shadow! Not long ago there were still shadow-traders whose business it
was to provide architects with the shadows necessary for securing their walls.
In these cases the measure of the shadow is looked on as equivalent to the
shadow itself, and to bury it is to bury the life or soul of the man, who,
deprived of it, must die. Thus the custom is a substitute for the old practice
of immuring a living person in the walls, or crushing him under the
foundation-stone of a new building, in order to give strength and durability
to the structure, or more definitely in order that the angry ghost may haunt
the place and guard it against the intrusion of enemies.
As some peoples believe a man's soul to be in his shadow, so other (or the
same) peoples believe it to be in his reflection in water or a mirror. Thus
the Andamanese do not regard their shadows but their reflections (in any
mirror) as their souls. When the Motumotu of New Guinea first saw their
likenesses in a looking-glass, they thought that their reflections were their
souls. In New Caledonia the old men are of opinion that a person's reflection
in water or a mirror is his soul; but the younger men, taught by the Catholic
priests, maintain that it is a reflection and nothing more, just like the
reflection of palm-trees in the water. The reflection-soul, being external to
the man, is exposed to much the same dangers as the shadow-soul. The Zulus
will not look into a dark pool because they think there is a beast in it which
will take away their reflections, so that they die. The Basutos say that
crocodiles have the power of thus killing a man by dragging his reflection
under water. When one of them dies suddenly and from no apparent cause, his
relatives will allege that a crocodile must have taken his shadow some time
when he crossed a stream. In Saddle Island, Melanesia, there is a pool into
which if any one looks he dies; the malignant spirit takes hold upon his life
by means of his reflection on the water.
We can now understand why it was a maxim both in ancient India and ancient
Greece not to look at one's reflection in water, and why the Greeks regarded
it as an omen of death if a man dreamed of seeing himself so reflected. They
feared that the water-spirits would drag the person's reflection or soul under
water, leaving him soulless to perish. This was probably the origin of the
classical story of the beautiful Narcissus, who languished and died through
seeing his reflection in the water.
Further, we can now explain the widespread custom of covering up mirrors
or turning them to the wall after a death has taken place in the house. It is
feared that the soul, projected out of the person in the shape of his
reflection in the mirror, may be carried off by the ghost of the departed,
which is commonly supposed to linger about the house till the burial. The
custom is thus exactly parallel to the Aru custom of not sleeping in a house
after a death for fear that the soul, projected out of the body in a dream,
may meet the ghost and be carried off by it. The reason why sick people should
not see themselves in a mirror, and why the mirror in a sick-room is therefore
covered up, is also plain; in time of sickness, when the soul might take
flight so easily, it is particularly dangerous to project it out of the body
by means of the reflection in a mirror. The rule is therefore precisely
parallel to the rule observed by some peoples of not allowing sick people to
sleep; for in sleep the soul is projected out of the body, and there is always
a risk that it may not return.
As with shadows and reflections, so with portraits; they are often
believed to contain the soul of the person portrayed. People who hold this
belief are naturally loth to have their likenesses taken; for if the portrait
is the soul, or at least a vital part of the person portrayed, whoever
possesses the portrait will be able to exercise a fatal influence over the
original of it. Thus the Esquimaux of Bering Strait believe that persons
dealing in witchcraft have the power of stealing a person's shade, so that
without it he will pine away and die. Once at a village on the lower Yukon
River an explorer had set up his camera to get a picture of the people as they
were moving about among their houses. While he was focusing the instrument,
the headman of the village came up and insisted on peeping under the cloth.
Being allowed to do so, he gazed intently for a minute at the moving figures
on the ground glass, then suddenly withdrew his head and bawled at the top of
his voice to the people, He has all of your shades in this box. A panic
ensued among the group, and in an instant they disappeared helterskelter into
their houses. The Tepehuanes of Mexico stood in mortal terror of the camera,
and five days' persuasion was necessary to induce them to pose for it. When at
last they consented, they looked like criminals about to be executed. They
believed that by photographing people the artist could carry off their souls
and devour them at his leisure moments. They said that, when the pictures
reached his country, they would die or some other evil would befall them. When
Dr. Catat and some companions were exploring the Bara country on the west
coast of Madagascar, the people suddenly became hostile. The day before the
travellers, not without difficulty, had photographed the royal family, and now
found themselves accused of taking the souls of the natives for the purpose of
selling them when they returned to France. Denial was vain; in compliance with
the custom of the country they were obliged to catch the souls, which were
then put into a basket and ordered by Dr. Catat to return to their respective
owners.
Some villagers in Sikhim betrayed a lively horror and hid away whenever
the lens of a camera, or the evil eye of the box as they called it, was
turned on them. They thought it took away their souls with their pictures, and
so put it in the power of the owner of the pictures to cast spells on them,
and they alleged that a photograph of the scenery blighted the landscape.
Until the reign of the late King of Siam no Siamese coins were ever stamped
with the image of the king, for at that time there was a strong prejudice
against the making of portraits in any medium. Europeans who travel into the
jungle have, even at the present time, only to point a camera at a crowd to
procure its instant dispersion. When a copy of the face of a person is made
and taken away from him, a portion of his life goes with the picture. Unless
the sovereign had been blessed with the years of a Methusaleh he could
scarcely have permitted his life to be distributed in small pieces together
with the coins of the realm.
Beliefs of the same sort still linger in various parts of Europe. Not very
many years ago some old women in the Greek island of Carpathus were very angry
at having their likenesses drawn, thinking that in consequence they would pine
and die. There are persons in the West of Scotland who refuse to have their
likenesses taken lest it prove unlucky; and give as instances the cases of
several of their friends who never had a day's health after being
photographed.
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