 Section 9 of Volume 1 of the Golden Bell by James Fraser Part 1, The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, Volume 1 This is the LibriVox recording. All the LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information on the volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recorded by Leon Harvey. Chapter 4, Magic and Religion Magic, like science, postulates the order and uniformity of nature, hence the attraction both of magic and of science, which open up a boundless visa to those who can penetrate to the secret springs of nature. The examples collected in the last chapter may suffice to illustrate the general principles of sympathetic magic in its two branches, to which we have given the names of homeopathic and contagious respectively. In some cases of magic, which have come before us, we are seeing that the operation of spirits is assumed and that an attempt is made to win their favour by prayer and sacrifice. But these cases are on the whole exceptional. They exhibit magic tinge, an annoyed with religion. Wherever sympathetic magic occurs in its pure unadultered form, it assumes that in nature, one event follows another necessarily and invariably without the intervention of any spiritual or personal agency. Thus its fundamental conception is identical with that of modern science, underlying the whole system is a faith implicit but real and firm in the order and uniformity of nature. The magician does not doubt that the same causes will always produce the same effects, that the performance of the proper ceremony accompanied by the appropriate spell will inevitably be attended by the desired results, unless indeed his incantations should chance to be thwarted and foiled by the more potent charms of another sorcerer. He supplicates no higher power, he sues the favour of no fickle and wayward being, he obeys himself before no awful deity. It is power, great as he believes it to be, is by no means arbitrary or unlimited. He can well did only so long as he strictly conforms to the rules of his art, or to what may be called the laws of nature as conceived by him. To neglect these rules, to break these laws in the smallest particular, is to incur failure, and may even expose the unskillful practitioner himself to the utmost peril. If he claims the sovereignty over nature, there is a constitutional sovereignty vigorously limited in scope and exercised in exact conformity with ancient usage. Thus the analogy between the magical and the scientific conceptions of the world is close. In both of them, the succession of events is perfectly regular and certain, being determined by immutable laws, the operation of which can be foreseen and calculated precisely. The elements of caprice, of chance, and of accident, are banished from the course of nature. Both of them open up a seemingly boundless vista of possibilities to him, who knows causes of things, and can touch the secret springs that set in motion the vast and intricate mechanism of the world. Hence the strong attraction which magic and science alike have exercised on the human mind, hence the powerful stimulus that both are given to the pursuit of knowledge. They lure the weary inquirer, the foot-sword seeker, on through the wilderness of disappointment, in the presence by their endless promise of the future. They take him up to the top of an exceeding high mountain, and show him, beyond the dark clouds and rolling mist at his feet, a vision of the celestial city, far off it may be, but radiant with unnervely splendor, bathed in the light of dreams. The fatal flaw of magic lies not in its general assumption of the uniformity of nature, but in its misapprehension of the particular laws which govern the sequence of natural events. The fatal flaw of magic lies not in its general assumption of a sequence of events determined by law, but in its total misconception of the nature of the particular laws which govern the sequence. If we analyze the various cases of sympathetic magic which have been passed in review in the preceding pages, and which may be taken as far as samples of the bulk, we shall find, as I have already indicated, that they are all mistaken applications of one or other of two great fundamental laws of thought. Namely, the association of ideas by similarity and the association of ideas by continuity in spatial time. A mistaken association of similar ideas produces homeopathic or imitative magic. A mistaken association of contiguous ideas produces contagious magic. The principles of association are exalted in cells, and indeed absolutely essential to the working of the human mind. Legitimately applied to their yield science. Illegitimately applied to their yield magic. The bastard's sister of science is therefore a truism, almost a tautology, to say that all magic is necessary false and barren. For were it ever to become true and fruitful, it would no longer be magic but science. From the earliest times man has been engaged in a search for general rules whereby to turn the order of natural phenomena to his own advantage. In a long search he is scraped together a great horde of such maxims, some are golden and some are new dross. The true or golden rules constitute the body of applied science which we call the arts, the false or magic. Relation of magic to religion. If magic is thus next of kin to science, we have still to inquire how it stands related to religion. By the view we take of that relation will necessarily be coloured by the idea which we have formed of the nature of religion itself. Hence a writer may reasonably be expected to define his conception of religion before he proceeds to investigate its relation to magic. There is probably no subject in the world about which opinions differ so much as a nature of religion and to frame a definition of it which would satisfy everyone must obviously be impossible. Religion defined is a perpetation or conciliation of superhuman powers which are believed to control nature of man. Thus religion compromises two elements, a theoretical and a practical or a faith and works and it does not exist without both. Both religious practice need not consist in ritual, it may consist in ethical conduct if that is believed to be well pleasing to the deity. All that a writer can do is first to say clearly what he means by religion and afterwards to employ the word consistently in that sense throughout his work. By religion then I understand a perpetation of or a conciliation of powers superior to man which are believed to direct to control the cause of nature and human life. Thus defined religion consists of two elements, a theoretical and a practical, namely a belief in powers higher than man and attempt to perpetate or please him. Of the two belief clearly comes first, since we must believe in the existence of a divine being before we can attempt to please him. But unless the belief leads to a corresponding practice, it is not a religion but merely a theology in a language of Saint James, faith if it has not works is dead being alone. In other words no man is religious who does not govern his conduct in some measure by the fear or love of God. On the other hand mere practice, divestible religious belief is also not religion, two men may behave in exactly the same way and in one of them may be religious and the other not. In one of them acts on the love or fear of God he is religious. If the other acts on the love or fear of man he is moral or immoral according to his behavior, comports or conflicts with the general good. Hence belief in practice or in a theoretical language, faith and works are equally essential to religion which cannot exist without both of them. But it is not necessarily that religious practice should always take the form of a ritual, that is it need not consist in the offering of sacrifice, the recitation of prayers or other outward ceremonies. It's aim is to please the deity and the deity is one who delights in charity and mercy and purity more than in the oblations of blood, the chanting of hymns and the fumes of incense. His worshipers will best please him, not by prostrating themselves before him, by interning his praises and by filling his temples with costly gifts but by being pure, merciful and charitable towards men. For in doing so they will imitate so far as human infirmity allows the perfections of the divine nature. It was this ethical sight of religion which the Hebrew prophets inspired with the noble ideal of God's goodness and holiness were never weary of inculcating. Thus Micah says, He hath showed thee, O man, what is good, and what does the Lord require of thee but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God. And at a later time much of the force by which Christianity conquered the world was drawn from the same high conception of God's moral nature and the duty laid on men of confirming themselves to it. Pure religion undefiled says some change before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction and to keep themselves unspotted from the world. By assuming the order of nature to be elastic or variable, religion is opposed in principle alike to magic and to science, both of which assume the order of nature to be rigid and invariable. But if religion evolves first, a belief in superhuman beings who rule the world and second and attempt to win their favour, it clearly assumes that the cause of nature is to some extent elastic or variable, and that we can persuade to influence the mighty beings who control it to deflect for our benefit the current of events on the channel in which they would otherwise flow. Now this implied elasticity or variability of nature is directly opposed to the principles of magic as well as of science, both of which assume that the processes of nature are rigid and invariable in their operation, and they can as it will be turned from their course by persuasion and entreaty as by threats and intimidation. The distinction between the two conflicting views of the universe turns on their answer to their crucial question, are the forces which govern the world conscious and personal or unconscious and impersonal. Religion, as a conciliation of the superhuman powers, assumes to form a member of the alternative. For all conciliation implies that the being conciliated is a conscious or personal agent, and that his conduct is in some measure uncertain, and that he can be prevailed upon to variate in his desired direction by a judicious appeal to his interests, his appetites, or his emotions. Conciliation is never employed towards things which are regarded as inanimate, nor towards persons whose behaviour in a particular circumstance is known to be determined with absolute certainty. Thus and so far as religion assumes the world to be directed by conscious agents who may be turned from their purpose by persuasion, it stands in fundamental antagonism to magic as well as to science, both of which take for granted that the course of nature is determined, not by passions or caprice of personal beings, but by the operation of immutable laws acting mechanically. In magic indeed, the assumption is only implicit, but in science it is explicit. His truth and magic often deals with spirits which are personal agents of the kind assumed by religion, but whatever it does, so in its proper form, it treats him exactly in the same fashion as it treats inanimate agents. That is, it constrains occurrences instead of conciliating or perpetating them as religion would do. Thus it assumes that all personal beings, whether human or divine, are in the last resort subject to those impersonal forces which control all things but which nevertheless can be turned to account by anyone who knows how to manipulate them by the appropriate ceremonies and spells. Claim of Egyptian and Indian magicians to control the gods. In ancient Egypt, for example, the magicians claimed the power of compelling even the highest gods to do their bidding and actually threatened them with destruction in case of disobedience. Sometimes without going quite so far as that, the wizard declared that he would scatter the bones of a serious or reveal his sacred legend if the god proved con to Maceus. Similarly, in India, at the present day, the great Hindu trinity itself of Brahma, Vishnu and Siva is subject to the sorcerers who by means of their spells circumcise such an insenity over the mightiest cities that these are bound so miserly to execute on earth below or in heaven above whatever commands their masters the magicians may please to issue. There is a saying elsewhere, current in India. The whole universe is subject to the gods, the gods are subject to the spells, mantras, the spells to the Brahmins and therefore the Brahmins are our gods. Hostility of Religion to Magic in History This radical conflict of principle between magic and religion sufficiently explains a relentless hostility with which in history the priest has often pursued the magician. The haughty self-sufficiency of the magician, his arrogant demeanour towards the high powers and his unabased claim to exercise his sway like theirs could not but revolt the priest to whom, with his awful sense of the divine majesty and his humble prostration in presence of it, such claims and such demeanour must have appeared an impious and blasphemous assertion of prerogatives that belong to God alone and sometimes we may suspect lower motives concurred to at the edge of the priest's hostility. He professed to be the proper medium, the true intercessor between God and man and no doubt his interests as well as his feelings were often injured by a rival practitioner who preached a surer, a smoother road to fortune than the rugged and slippery path of divine favour. This hostility comparatively late in an earlier time, magic operated and was partly confused with religion. Yet this antagonism, familiar as it is to us, seems to have made its appearance comparatively late in the history of religion. At an earlier stage, the functions of priest and sorcerer were often combined or to speak perhaps or correctly but not yet differentiated from each other. To serve his purpose, man wooed the goodwill of gods or spirits by prayer and sacrifice, but at the same time he had recourse to ceremonies and forms of words which he hoped would of themselves bring about the desired result without the help of God or devil. In short, he performed religious and magical rites simultaneously. He uttered prayers and incantations almost in the same breath, knowing or breaking little of the theoretical inconsistency of his behaviour so long as by hook or cook he contrived to get what he wanted. Confusion of magic and religion in Melanesia The instances of this fusion or confusion of magic with religion have already met us in the practices of Melanesians and of other peoples. So far as Melanesians are concerned, the general confusion cannot be better described than in the words of Dr. R. H. Godrington. That invisible power which is believed by the natives to cause all such effects has transcended their conception of the regular course of nature and to reside in spiritual beings whether in the spiritual part of living men or in the ghosts of the dead being imparted by them to their names and to various things that belong to them such as stone, snakes and dead objects of all sorts. That's generally known as manna. Without some understanding of this, it is impossible to understand the religious beliefs and practices of the Melanesians. And this again is the active force in all they do and believe to be done in magic, white or black. By means of this, men are able to control or direct the forces of nature to make rain or sunshine, wind or calm to cause simplest or remove it, to know what is far off in time and space interpreting good luck and prosperity or to last and curse. By whatever name it is called, it is the belief in the supernatural power and the efficiency of the various means by which spirits and ghosts can be induced to exercise it for the benefit of men. That is the foundation of the rites and practices which can be called religious. And it's from the same belief that everything which may be called magic and which but draws its origin. Wizards, doctors, whethermongers, prophets, diviners, dreamers, all alike everywhere on the islands work by this power. There are many of these who may be said to exercise the rite as a profession. They get their property and influence in this way. Every considerable village or settlement is sure to have someone who can control the weather and the waves, someone who knows how to treat sickness, someone who can work mischief with various charms. There may be one whose skill extends to all these branches, but generally one man knows how to do one thing and one another. This various knowledge is handled down from father to son, from uncle to sister son in the same way as is the knowledge of the rites and methods to sacrifice and prayer. And very often the same man who knows to sacrifice knows also the making of the weather and of charms for many purposes, besides. But as there is no order of priests, there is also no order of magicians or medicine men. Almost every man of consideration knows how to approach some ghost of spirit and has some secret of occult practices. Confusion of magic and religion in ancient India The same confusion of magic and religion has survived among peoples that have risen to higher levels of culture. It was rife in ancient India and ancient Egypt. It is by no man's extent among European peasantry at the present day. With regard to ancient India, we are told by an eminence and skirt scholar that the sacrificial ritual at the earliest period of which we have detailed information is pervaded with practices that breathe the spirit of the most primitive magic. Again the same writer observes that the ritual of the very sacrifices for which the magical prayers were composed is described in the other Vedic texts as saturated from beginning to end with magical practices which were to be carried out by the sacrificial priests. In particular, it tells us that the rites celebrated on special occasions, such as marriage, initiation, and the anointment of a king, are complete models of magic of every kind, and in every case, in the forms of magic employed bear the stamp of the highest antiquity. Speaking of the sacrifices prescribed in the Brahmāmas, Professor Silvian Levi says that sacrifice has all thus the characteristics of a magic operation. Independent of the divinities effected by its own energy and capable of producing evil as well as good, it is highly distinguished from the magic strictly so-called except by the regular and obligatory. It can be easily adapted to different objects but it exists necessity independently of circumstances. That is a sole fairly clear line of distinction which can be drawn between the two domains. The point of fact, they are so intimately interfused with each other that the same class of work-streets both matters. The Samavidhara Brahmāna is a real handbook of incantations and sorcery. The Abhuta Brahmāna which forms the section of the Satsvina Brahmāna has the same character. Similarly, Professor M. Bloomfield writes, Even witchcraft is part of the religion. It has penetrated and has become intimately blended with the holiest vetted rites. The broad current of popular origin and the superstition has infiltrated itself through numberless channels into the higher religion that is presented by the Brahmin priests. And it may be presumed that the priests were neither able to cleanse their own religious beliefs on the mass of folk belief with which it was surrounded, nor it is. It is at all likely that they have found it in their interest to do so. Again, in the introduction to its translation of the Kausika Sutra, Dr. W. Kaland observes, He who had been wanted to regard the ancient Hindus as a highly civilised people, feigned for their philosophical systems, their dramatic poetry, their epic lies, will be surprised when he makes the acquaintance of their magical ritual and will perceive that in his row he is known, the old Hindu people, from one side only. He will find that he here stumbles on the lowest strata of Vedic culture and will be astonished at the agreement between the magic ritual of the old Vedas and the shamanism of the so-called savage. If we drop the peculiar Hindu expressions and tentacle terms and imagine a shaman instead of a Brahmin, we could almost fancy that we have, for us, a magical book belonging to one of the tribes of North American Redskins. Some good authorities hold that the very name of Brahmin is derived from Brahmin, a magic spell, so that if they are right, the Brahmin would seem to have been a magician before he was a priest. Confusion of magic and religion in ancient Egypt Speaking of the importance of magic in the East, especially in Egypt, Professor Mespero remarks that Ancient magic was a very foundational religion. The faithful who desired to obtain some faith from a god had no chance of succeeding except by laying hands on the deity, and this arrest could only be affected by means of a certain number of rights, sacrifices, prayers and chants, which the god himself had revealed and which obliged him to do what was demanded of him. According to another distinguished Egyptologist, the belief that there are words and actions by which many can influence all the powers of nature and all living things from animals up to gods was inextricably interwoven with everything the Egyptians did, everything they left undone. Above all, the whole system of burial and of the worship of the dead is completely dominated by it. The wooden puppets which relieved dead men from toil, the figures of the maid servants who paid bread for him, the sacrificial formulas by the recitation of which food was recured for him, the sacrificial formulas by the recitation of which food was recured for him, what are these and all the similar practices but magic? And as men cannot help themselves without magic, so neither can the gods. The gods also were amulets to protect themselves and use magic spells to constrain each other. The whole doctrine of magic says Professor Wideman, formed in the Valley of the Nile, not a part of superstition but an essential constituent of religious faith, which to a great extent rested directly on magic and always remained most closely bound up with it. But though we can perceive the union of discrepant elements in the faith and practice of the ancient Egyptians, it would be rash to assume that they pay what themselves did so. The Egyptian religions, as the same scholar, was not one and homogeneous. It was compounded of the most heterogeneous elements, which seemed to the Egyptian to be all equally justified. It did not care whether a doctrine or a myth belonged to what. In modern scholastic phraseology, we should call faith or superstition. It was indifferent to him whether we should rank it as religion or magic as worship or sorcery. All such classifications were foreign to the Egyptian. To him, no one doctrine seemed more or less justified than another. In A, he went so fast to allow the most flagrant contradictions to stand passably side by side. Confusion of magic and religion in modern Europe Among the ignorant classes of modern Europe, the same confusion of ideas, the same mixture of religion and magic, co-ops up in various forms. Thus we are told that in France, the majority of the peasants still believe that the priests possess anti-resistible power over the elements by reciting certain prayers which he alone knows and is to write to water, yet for the utterance of which he must utter his demand of solution. He can, or on occasion of prison in danger, arrest or averse for a moment the action of the eternal laws of the physical world. The winds, the storms, the hail and the rain are at his command and obey his will. Mass of the Holy Spirit The fire is also subject to him and the flames of a conflagration are extinguished to his word. For example, French peasants used to be, perhaps are still persuaded that the priests could celebrate with certain special rites a mass of the Holy Spirit, a which the efficiency was so miraculous that it never met with any opposition from the Divine Will. God was forced to grant whatever was asked of him in this form, however rational and important it might be the petition. No idea of impurity or irrelevance attached to the rite in the minds of those who, in some of the great extremities of life, sought by this single means to take the kingdom of heaven by storm. The secular priests generally refused to say the mass of the Holy Spirit, but the monks, especially the Capuchin friars, had the reputation of yielding with less scruble to the entities of the anxious and distressed. In the constraint thus supposed by Catholic peasantry to be laid by the priests upon the deity, we seem to have an exact counterpart of the power which as we saw the ancient Egyptians ascribed to their magicians. Again, to take another example in many villages of province, the priest is still reputed to possess the faculty of averting storms. It is not every priest to enjoy this reputation, and in some villages, when a change of pastors takes place, the parishioners are able to learn whether the new incumbent has the power, Peldur, as they call it. At the first sign of a heavy storm, they put him in the proof of inviting him to exercise the threatening clouds, and if the result answers to their hopes, the new shepherd is assured of the sympathy and respect of his flock. In some parishes, where the reputation of the curate in this respect stood higher than that of his rectore, the relations between the two have been so strained in consequence that the bishop has had to translate the rectore to another benefit. Mass of Saint Sakaer. Again, Gascorn peasants believe that to revenge themselves on their enemies, bad men will sometimes induce a priest to say a mass called the Mass of Saint Sakaer. Very few priests know this mass, and three-fourths of those who do know it would not say it for love of money. None but wicked priests dare to perform the gruesome ceremony, and you may be quite sure that they will have a very heavy account to render for it at the last day. No curate or bishop, not even the archbishop of or can pardon him. That right belongs to the Pope of Rome alone. The Mass of Saint Sakaer may be said only in a ruined or deserted church, where owls moan and hoot, where bats flit in the gloaming, where gypsies lodge of knights, and where toads squat under the desecrated altar. Thither the bad priest comes by night with his light of love, and at the first stroke of eleven he begins to mumble the mass backwards. He ends just as the clocks and healing the midnight hour. His layman acts as cloak, the host he blesses in black, and has three points. He consecrates no wine, but instead he drinks the water of a well into which the body of an unbaptised infant has been flung. He makes a sign of the cross, but it is on the ground and with his left foot. And many other things he does, which no good Christian could look upon without being struck blind and deaf and dumb for the rest of his life. But the man for whom the Mass is said withers away little by little, nobody can say what does it matter with him, even the doctors can make nothing of it. They do not know that he is slowly dying with the mass of Saint Seker. The early confusion of magic with religion was probably preceded by a still earlier phase of thought when magic existed without religion. Yet though magic is thus found to fuse and amalgamate with religion in many ages and in many lands, there are some grounds for thinking that this fusion is not primitive, and that there was a time when man trusted to magic alone for the satisfaction of such once as transcended his embedded animal cravings. In the first place, a consideration of the fundamental notions of magic and religion may incline us to surmise that magic is older than religion in the history of humanity. We have seen that on the one hand magic is nothing but a mistaken application of the very simplest and most elementary processes of the mind, namely the association of ideas by virtue of resemblance or contiguity, and that on the other hand religion assumes the operation of conscious or personal agents superior to man behind the visible screen of nature. Obviously the conception of personal agents is more complex than a simple recognition of the similarity or contiguity of ideas and a theory which assumes that the course of nature is determined by conscious agents is more obtuse and reconnoit and requires for separate reaction a far higher degree of intelligence and reflection. Then the view that things succeeded each other simply by reason of their contiguity or resemblance. The very beasts associate the idea of things that are like each other or that have been found together in their existence and they could hardly survive for a day they cease to do so. But who attributes to the animals a belief that the phenomena of nature are worked by a multitude of invisible animals enormous and prodigiously strong animal behind the scenes. It is probably no injustice to the brutes to assume that the honor of devising a theory of this little sort must be reserved for human reason. Thus if magic be deduced immediately from elementary processes of reasoning and be in fact an error into which the mind falls almost spontaneously while religion rests in conceptions which the merely animal intelligence can hardly be supposed to have yet attained to, it becomes a probable that magic arose before religion in the evolution of our race and a man essay to bend nature to his wishes by the sheer force of spells and enchantments before he strove to coax and modify a coy, capricious or inescapable deity by the soft insinuation of prayer and sacrifice. Among the Australian aborigines magic is universal by religion almost unknown. The conclusion which we have thus reached deductively from a consideration of the fundamental ideas of religion and magic is confirmed inductively by the observation that among the aborigines of Australia the rudest savages as to whom we possess accurate information magic is universally practised. Whereas religion in a sense for perpetation or conciliation of the higher powers seems to be nearly unknown roughly speaking all men in Australia are magicians but not one is a priest. Everybody fancies he can influence his fellows or the course of nature by sympathetic magic but nobody dreams of propitating gods by prayer and sacrifice. Magic is probably older than religion and faith in it is still universal among the inert and superstitious. But if the most backward state of human society now known to us we find thus conspicuously present and religion conspicuously absent may we not reasonably conjecture that the civilised races of the world have also at some point of their history passed through a similar intellectual phase that they attempted to force the great powers of nature to do their pleasure before they thought of courting their favour by offering some prayer. In short that just as on the material side of human culture there has everywhere been an age of stone so on the intellectual side there has everywhere been an age of magic. There are reasons for answering this question in the affirmative when we survey the existing races of mankind from Greenland to Diara del Fugo or from Scotland to Singapore we observe that they are distinguished one from the other by a great variety of religions and these distinctions are not so to speak merely, contaminous with the bored distinction of race but descend into the minute subdivisions of states and Commonwealths nay, that they honeycomb the town, the village and even the family so that the sacrifice of society all over the world is correct and same. Septimined with rents and fissures and yawning crevices by the disintegrating influence of religious dissension yet when we have penetrated through these differences which affect mainly the intellect and thoughtful part of the community we shall find underlying them all the solid stratum of intellectual grande among the dull, the weak, the ignorant and the superstitious who constitute unfortunately the vast majority of mankind. One of the great achievements of the 19th century was to run shafts down into this low mental stratum in many parts of the world and thus to discover its substantial identity elsewhere it is beneath our feet, and not very far beneath him here in Europe by the present day and it crops up on the surface in the heart of the Australian wilderness and wherever the advent of a higher civilisation has not crushed it underground this universal faith, this truly Catholic creed is a belief in the efficiency of magic while religious systems differ not only in different countries but in the same country in different ages the system of sympathetic magic remains everywhere and at all times substantially alike in its principles and practice among the ignorant and superstitious classes of modern Europe it is very much what it was thousands of years ago in Egypt and India and what it now is among the lowest savages surviving in the remotest corners of the world if the test of truth lay in a show of hands or accounting of heads the system of magic might appeal with far more reason than a Catholic church to the proud motto quod semper quod ubik quod ab omnis as they show in a certain credential or its own infallibility latent superstition and danger to civilisation it is not our business here to consider what bearing the permanent existence of such a solid layer of savagery beneath the surface of society and unaffected by the superficial changes of religion and culture as upon the future of humanity the dispassionate observer whose studies have led him to plummet's deaths can hardly regard it otherwise than as a standing minister civilisation we seem to move on a thin crust which may at any moment be rent by the subterranean forces slumbering below from time to time a hollow murmur underground or a sudden spirit of flame into the air tells of what is going on beneath our feet now and then the blood world is startled by a paragraph in a newspaper which tells us how in Scotland an image has been found stuck full of pins for the purpose of killing an obnoxious lad or minister a woman has been slowly roasted to death as a witch in Ireland or how a girl has been murdered and chopped up in Russia to make those canals of human tallow by whose light thieves hope to pursue their midnight trade unseen but whether the influences that make for further progress or those that threaten to undo what has already been accomplished will ultimately prevail whether the impulsive energy of the minority or the dead weight of the majority of mankind will prove the strong of force to carry us into narrow heights or to sink us into lower depths are questions rather for the sage a moralist and a statesman who is equal vision and skin as a future than for the humble student of the present and the past here we are only concerned to ask how far the uniformity the universality and the permanence of belief and magic compared with the endless variety and the shifting character of religious creeds raises a presumption that the former represents a rude and earlier phase of the human ride through which all the races of mankind have passed or passing on their way to religion and science the change from magic to religion may have been brought about by the discovery of the inefficiency of magic if an age of religion has thus everywhere as I venture to surmise being preceded by an age of magic it is natural that we should inquire what causes of that humankind or other portion of them to abandon magic as a principle of faith and practice and to be take themselves to religion instead when we reflect upon the multitude the variety and the complexity of the facts to be explained and the scantiness of our information regarding them we shall be ready to acknowledge that a full and satisfactory solution of so profound a problem is highly to be hoped for and that the most we can do in the present state of our knowledge is to hazard a more or less plausible conjecture with all due difference then I would suggest that a tired recognition of the inherent falsehood and the barrenness of magic set the more thoughtful part of mankind to cast about for a truer theory of nature and a more fruitful method of turning her resources to account the shrewder intelligences must in a time have come to perceive that magical ceremonies and incantations do not really affect the results which they were designed to produce and which the majority of the simpler fellows still believe that they did actually produce this great discovery of the inefficiency of magic must have brought a radical though probably slow revolution in the minds of those who had the suggestion to make it the discovery amounted to this that men for the first time recognized their inability to manipulate at pleasure certain natural forces which either they had believed to be completely within that control it was a confession of human ignorance and weakness man saw that he had taken for causes what were no causes and that all his efforts to work by means of these imaginary causes had been vain his painful toil had been wasted his curious ingenuity had been squandered to no purpose he had been pulling at strings to which nothing was attached he had been marching as he thought straight to the goal well in reality he had only been treading in a narrow circle not that the effects which he had striven so hard to produce did not continue to manifest themselves they were still produced but not by him the rain still fell on the thirsty ground the sun still pursued his daily and the moon her nightly journey across the sky the silent position of the season still moved in light and shadow in clouds and sunshine across the earth men were still born to labor and sorrow and still atrebrushed sojourn here were gathered to their fathers in the long home thereafter all things indeed went on as before it all seemed different to him from his eyes the old scales had fallen for it could no longer cherish the pressing illusion that it was he who got to the earth and the heaven in their courses and that they would cease to perform their great revolutions where he to take his feeble hand from the wheel in the death of his enemies and his friends he no longer saw proof of the restless potency of his own war of hostile enchantments he now knew that friends and foes alike had succumbed to the force stronger than any that he could wield had an obedience to a destiny which he was powerless to control recognising their own inability to control nature men came to think that it was controlled by his supernatural beings thus cut adrift from his ancient mornings and left to toss on a troubled sea of doubt and uncertainty his old happy confidence in himself and his powers brutally shaken our primitive philosopher must have been sadly perplexed and agitated till he came to rest as in a quiet haven after a tempestuous voyage a new system of faith and practice which seemed to have a solution of his harassing doubts and a substitute however precarious for that sovereignty over nature which he had reluctantly abdicated yet the great world went on its way without the help of him or his fellows it must surely be because there were other beings like himself but far stronger who unseen themselves directed his course and brought about all the varied series of events which he had hithero believed to be dependent on his own magic it was they as he now believed and not he himself who made the stormy wind to blow the lightning to flash and the thunder to roll who had laid the foundations of the solid earth and set bounds to the restless sea that it might not pass who caused all the glorious lights of heaven to shine who gave the fowls of their air their mate and the wild beasts of the desert their prey who bade the fruitful land to bring forth an abundance the high hills to be clawed with forests the bubbling springs to rise under the rocks in the valleys and green pastures to grow by still waters who breathed into man's nostrils and made him live or turned him to destruction by famine and pestilence and war to those mighty beings whose handy work he traced in all the gorgeous and varied pageantry of nature man now addressed himself humbly confessing his dependence on their invisible power and besieging them of their mercy to furnish him with all good things to defend him from the perils and dangers by which our mortal life is compassed about on every hand and fire to bring his immortal spirit freed from the burden of the body to some happier world beyond the reach of pain and sorrow where he might rest with them and with the spirits of good men enjoy and felicity forever the change from magic to religion must have been gradual in this or some such way as this the deeper minds may be conceived to have made the great transition from magic to religion the change can hardly ever have been sudden probably preceded very slowly and required long ages for its more or less perfect accomplishment for the recognition of man's powerless to influence the course of nature on a grand scale must have been gradual he cannot have been shorn for the whole of his fancy dominion had a blow step by step he must have been driven back from his proud position foot by foot he must have yielded with a sigh the ground which he had once viewed as his own it would be the wind, now the rain now the sunshine, now the thunder that he confessed himself unable to wield at will and as province after province of nature thus fell from his grasp to what had once seen the kingdom threatened to shrink into a prison man must have been more and more profoundly impressed with his sense of his own helplessness and the might of the invisible beings by whom he believed himself to be surrounded thus religion bigging as a slight and partial acknowledgement of power superior to man tends with the growth of knowledge to deepen into the confession of man's entire and absolute dependence on the divine his old free bearing is exchanged for an attitude of lovious prostration before the mysterious powers of the unseen and his highest virtue is to submit his will to theirs in la sewer volatada in Nostra Pes but this deepening sense of religion this more perfect submission to the divine will in all things affects only those higher intelligences who have breathed to view enough to comprehend the vastness of the universe and the littleness of man small minds cannot grasp great ideas to their narrow comprehension their probe blind vision nothing seems really great and important about themselves such minds hardly rise into religion at all they are indeed drilled by their bettors into an outward conformity with his precepts and a verbal profession of its tenets but at heart they cling to their old magical superstitions which may be discount tenets and forbidden but cannot be eradicated by religion so long as they have their roots deep down in the mental framework and constitution of the great majority of mankind the belief that the gods are magicians may mark the transition from magic to religion a vestige of the transition from magic to religion may perhaps be discerned in the belief shared by many peoples that the gods themselves are adept in magic guarding their persons by talismans and working their will by spells and incantations thus the egyptian gods we are told called as little dispense with the help of magic as good men like men they wore amulets to protect themselves and use spells to overcome each other above all the rest isis was skilled in sorcery and famous for herring incantations in Babylonia the great god Ea was reputed to be the inventor of magic and his son Marduk the chief deity of Bamelon inherited the art from his father Marduk is described as the master of exorcism the magician of the gods another text declares that the incantation is the incantation of Marduk the exorcist is the image of Marduk in the legend of the creation it is related that when Marduk was preparing to fight the monster Tiamat he gave a proof of his magical powers to the assembled gods by causing a garment to disappear and reappear again at the word of his mouth and the other Babylonian deities had in like man recourse to magic especially to magical words or spells the word is above all the instrument of the gods as seemed to suit the high conception of their power better than mere muscular effort the hymn celebrated the irresistible might of their world it is by their word that they compelled both animate and inanimate beings to answer their purposes in short the employer almost exclusively the oral writes the magic and like men they made use of amulets and tazmans in the Vedic religion the gods are often represented as attaining their ends by magical means in particular the god Parasvati the creator of all prayers is regarded as the heavenly embodiment of the priesthood and so far as a priesthood he is invested with the power and charged with the task of influencing the course of things by prayers and spells in short he is the possessor of the magical power of the holy word so too in North mythology Odin is said to have owed his supremacy and his dominion over nature to his knowledge of the runes or magical names of all things in earth and heaven this mystical lore he acquired as follows the runic names of all things were scratched on the things themselves then scraped off and mixed in a magical potion which was compounded of honey and the blood of the slain Kvasir the wisest of beings a draught of this wonderful maid imparted to Odin not only the wisdom of Kvasir but also a knowledge of all things since he has swallowed their runic or mystical names along with the blood of the sage hence by the utterance of his spells he could heal sickness deaden the swords of his enemies loose himself from bonds stop the flight of an arrow in mid air stay the raging off the flames steal the winds and lull the sea and by graving and painting certain runes he could make the corpse of a hanged man come down from their gallows tree and talk with him it is easy to conceive how this ascription of magical powers to the gods may have originated when a savage sorcerer fails to effect his purpose he generally explains the want of success by saying that he has been fooled by the spells of some more potent magician never have began to be perceived that certain natural effects such as the making of rain or wind or sunshine were beyond the power of any human magician to accomplish the first thought would naturally be that they were wrought by the more powerful magic of some great invisible beings and these superhuman magicians might rarely develop into gods the type of Odin who possess in Maiduq in short any gods may at first have been merely defied sorcerers the fallacy of magic is not easy to detect because nature itself generally produces sooner or later the effects which the magician fatties he produces by his art the reader may well be tempted to ask how was it that intelligent man did not sooner detect the fallacy of magic how could they continue to cherish expectations that were invariably doomed to disappointment with what heart persist in playing venerable antics that led to nothing and mumbling solemn bolt of dash that remained without effect why cling to beliefs that were so flatly contradicted by experience how dare you repeat experiments that had failed so often the answer seems to be that the fallacy was far from easy to detect the failure by no means obvious since in many perhaps in most cases the desired event did actually follow at a longer short interval by performance of the right which was designed to bring it about and a mind of more than common acuteness was needed to perceive that even in these cases the right was not necessarily the cause of the effect a ceremony intended to make the wind blow or the rain fall or to work the death of an enemy will always be followed sooner or later but the occurrence is meant to bring to pass the primitive man may be excused for regarding the occurrence the direct result of the ceremony and the best possible proof of its efficiency similarly rights observed in the morning to help the sun to rise and in spring to wake the dreaming earth from her winter sleep will invariably appear to be crowned with success at least with the temperate zones for in these regions the sun lights his golden lamp in the east for every morning and year by year the venerable earth decks itself afresh with a rich metal of green hence the practical savage with these conservative instincts might well turn a deaf ear to the subtleties of the theoretical delta the philosophic radical that resumed a hint that sunrise and spring might not after all be direct consequences of the punctual performance of certain daily or yearly ceremonies and that the sun might perhaps continue to rise in trees to blossom though the ceremonies will occasionally intermittent or even discontinued all together these skeptical doubts would naturally be repelled by the other which's scorn and indignation the very reveries subvert to their faith and manifestly contradicted by experience can anything be planer you might say than that I light my two penny kennel on earth and the sun then kennels his great fire in heaven I should be glad to know whether when I've pulled to a migraine rogue and spring the trees to not afterwards do the same these are facts patent to everybody and on them I take my stand I am a plain practical man not one of you with theorists letters of heirs and choppers of logic theories and speculation and all that may be very well in their way and I have not the least objection to indulging in them provide of course you do not put them in practice but give pink leaf to stick to facts then I shall know where I am the fallacy of this reasoning is obvious to us because it happens to deal with facts about which we have long made up our minds but let an argument or precisely the same caliber be applied to matters which are still under debate and it may be questioned whether a British audience will not applaud it as sound understand the speaker who used it a safe man not brilliant or showy perhaps but thoroughly sensible and hard headed if such reasonings could pass muster among themselves need we wonder that they long escaped detection by the savage end of section 9 section 10 of the golden bow a study in magic religion third edition volume 1 part 1 the magic art and the evolution of kings volume 1 by James Fraser this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings in the public domain for more information or volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recorded by Leon Harvey chapter 5 the magical control of the weather 1 the public magician the patient reader may remember we were led to plunge into the 11th magic in which we have wandered for so many pages by consideration of two different types of man god this is the clue which has guided our devious steps through the maze and brought us out at last on a higher ground when resting a little by the way we can look back over the path we have already traversed and forward to the longer and steeper road we have still to climb two types of man god the religious and the magical as a result of the foregoing discussion the two types of human gods may conveniently be distinguished as the religious and the magical man god respectively in the former a being of an order different from the superior to man is supposed to become incarnate for a longer or shorter time in a human body manifesting his superhuman power and knowledge by miracles wrought and prophecies uttered through the medium of the fleshy tapernacle in which he has designed to make up his abode this may also probably be called the inspired or incarnate type of man god in that the human body is merely a frail earthly vessel filled with a divine and immortal spirit on the other hand a man god or the magical sword is nothing but a man who possesses in an unusually high degree powers which much of his fellows allocate to themselves on a smaller scale for in root society there is hardly a person who does not dabble in magic thus whereas a man god or the former or inspiratype derives his divinity from a deity who has stooped to hide his heavenly radiance upon a dull mask of earthly abode a man god of the latter type draws his extraordinary power from a certain physical sympathy with nature he is not merely the receptacle of divine spirit his whole being body and soul is so delicately attuned to the harmony of the world that a touch of his hand or a turn of his head may send a thrill vibrating through the universal framework of things and conversely his divine organism is acutely sensitive to such slight changes of an environment as would leave ordinary mortals wholly unaffected by the line between these two types of man god however sharply we may draw it in theory is certain to be traced with the precision in practice and in what follows I shall not insist on it public and private magic the public magician often a king we have seen that in practice the magic art may be employed for the benefit either of individuals or of the whole community and that according as it is directed to one or other of these two objects it may be called private or public magic further I pointed out that the public magician occupies a position of great influence from which if he is a prudent and able man he may advance step by step to the rank of a chief or king thus an examination of public magic conduces to an understanding of the early kingship since in savage and barbarous society many chiefs and kings appear to owe their own authority in great measure to the reputation as magicians the rise of a class of public professional magicians is a great step in social and intellectual progress among the objects of public utility which magic may be employed to secure the most essential is an adequate supply of food the examples cited in preceding pages prove that preveyors of food the hunter, the fisher, the farmer or resort to magical practices in the pursuit of their various callings but they do so as private individuals for the benefit of themselves and their families and as public functionaries acting in the interest of the whole people it is otherwise when the rites are performed not by the hunters, the fishers, the farmers themselves but by professional magicians on their behalf in primitive society where uniformity of occupation is the rule and the distribution of the community into various classes of workers has only begun every man is more or less his own magician he practices charms and incantations for his own good and injury of his enemies but a great step in advance has been taken when a special class of magicians has been instituted with in other words a number of men have been set apart for the express purpose of benefiting the whole community by their skill whether that skill be directed to the healing of diseases forecasting of the future the regulation of weather or any other object of general utility the importance of the means adopted by most of these practitioners to accomplish their ends or not to blind us to the immense importance of the institution itself here is a body of men relieved at least in the highest status savagery from the need of owning their loveliness by hard manual toil and a loud nay expected and a courage to prosecute researchers into the secret ways of nature it was at once their duty and their interest no more than their fellows to acquaint themselves with everything that could aid man in his eye to a struggle with nature everything that could mitigate his sufferings and prolong his life the properties of drugs and minerals that causes a rain and drought of thunder and lightning the changes of the seasons of the moon, the daily and yearly journeys of the sun the motions of the stars the mystery of life and the mystery of death all these things must have excited the wanderer of these early philosophers and stimulated them to find solutions of problems that would dabble us often thrust on their attention in the most practical form by the important demands of their clients who expected them not merely to understand but to regulate the great processes of nature for the good of man that their first shots fell very far wide at the mark could hardly be helped although the never-ending approach to trust consists in perpetually forming and testing hypothesis accepting those which at the time seem to fit the facts of retching the others the views of natural causation embraced by the savage magician no doubt appeared to us manifestly false and absurd in another day they were legitimate hypothesis though they have not stood the test of experience ridicule and blame are the just need not of those who devised these crude theories but of those who obstinately adhered to them after better had been propounded certainly no man ever had stronger incentives in the pursuit of truth than these savage sorcerers to maintain at least a show of knowledge was absolutely necessary and single mistake detected my cost in their life this no doubt led them to practicing posture for the purpose of considering their ignorance but it also supplied them with the most powerful motive for substituting a real first sham knowledge if you would appear to know anything by far the best way is actually to know it thus however justly we may reject the extravagant pretentions of magicians and condemn the deceptions which they have practiced on mankind the original institution of this class of men has take it all in all being productive of in a calculable good of humanity they were the direct predecessors not merely of our physicians and surgeons but of our investigators and discoverers in every branch of natural science they began the work which has since been carried to such clues and beneficent issues by their successors in after ages and at the beginning was poor and feeble this is to be imputed to the inevitable difficulties which beset the path of knowledge rather than to the natural incapacity or willful ford of the men themselves one of the chief tasks which the public magician has to perform is to control the weather and especially to ensure an adequate fall of rain order is a first essential of life and in most countries the supply of it depends upon showers without rain, vegetation withers animals amend language and die and the public magician sets himself to do for the good of the tribe one of the chief is to control the weather and especially to ensure an adequate fall of rain order is the first essential of life and in most countries the supply of it depends upon showers without rain, vegetation withers animals amend language and die hence in savage communities the rain maker is a very important personage and often a special class of magicians exist for the purpose of regulating the heavenly water supply the methods by which they attempt to discharge the duties of their operas so commonly, they're not always based on the principle of homeopathic remitative magic they wish to make rain, they are simulated by sprinkling water or mimicking clouds their objective is to stop rain and cause drought, they avoid water and resort to warmth and fire for the sake of drying up their two ambient moisture such attempts are by no means confined as a cultivator reader might imagine to the naked heavens of the sultry lands like central Australia and some parts of eastern and southern Africa where often for months together the pitiless sun beats down out of a blue and clearless sky on the patched and gaping earth they are or used to be common enough among outwardly civilized folk in the moisture climates of Europe I will now illustrate them by instances drawn from the practice of both the public and private magic examples of making rain by homeopathic magic or imitative magic thus for example in a village near Dorpat in Russia when rain was much wanted three men used to climb up the fir trees of an old sacred grove one of them drummed with a hammer and a kettle or a small cask to imitate thunder the second knocked two firebrands together and made the sparks fly to imitate lightning and the third it was called the rainmaker had a bunch of twigs with which he sprinkled water from a vessel on all sides to put an end to draught and bring down rain women and girls of the village of Plusca are want to go naked by night to the boundaries of the village and their poor water on the ground in Helmahera or Kilolo a large island to the west of New Guinea a wizard makes rain by dipping a branch of a particular kind of tree and water and then scattering the moisture from the dripping bow on the ground in Serum is enough to dedicate the bark of a certain tree to the spirits and lead to water a Javanese mode of making man needs to imitate the pattering sound of raindrops by brushing a coconut leaf of the sheath of a betel nut in a mortar a new Britain the rainmaker wraps some leaves of a red and green striped creeper in a banana leaf moistens the bundle with water and buries it in the ground then he imitates with his mouth a plashing of rain amongst the Omaha Indians of North America when the corn is withering for want to rain the members of the sacred buffalo society fill a large vessel with water and dance four times around it one of them drinks some of the water and spurts it in the air making a fine spray in imitation of a mist drizzling rain then he upsets the vessel spilling the water on the ground whereupon the dancers fall down and drink up the water getting mud all over their faces lastly they squirt the water into the air making a fine mist this saves the corn in springtime the dancers of North America used to club together to purchase favorable weather for their crops from the wizards if rain was needed the wizards fasted and danced with pipes full of water in their mouths the pipes were perforated like the nozzle of a watering can and through the holes the rainmaker blew the water towards that part of the sky where the clouds hung heaviest but if fine weather was wanted he mounted the brook of his hut over extended arms blowing with all his might he beckoned to the clouds to pass by in time of drought to damajures, Indians of Mexico will sometimes throw water towards the sky in order that God may replenish his supply and in the month of May they always burn the grass so that the whole country is in wrapped in smoke and travelling becomes very difficult they think that this is necessary to produce rain clouds of smoke being in their opinion and the equivalent to rain clouds among the swazis and alubis of southeastern Africa the rain doctor draws water from a river with various mystic ceremonies and carries it into the cultivated field here he throws it in jets from his vessel high into the air and the falling sprays bleed to draw down the clouds and make rain by sympathy he squirt water from the mouth his worst African bird of making rain and his practice also by the wajakas of Kilimanjaro rain by homeopathic or imitated magic among the wajama on the albut Nyanza lake the rainmaker pours water into a vessel in which he has first placed dark stone as large as the hand powder plants and the blood of a black goat are added to the water and with a bunch of magic herbs this also sprinkles the mixture towards the sky in this charm special efficiency is no doubt attributed to the dark stone and the black goat their colour being chosen from its resemblance as we shall see presently when the rains do not come in due season the people are central and gone inland compared to what is called the rain temple here they clear away the grass and the leader pours beer into a pot which is buried in the ground while he says Master Choata you have hardened your heart towards us what would you have us do we must perish indeed give your children the rains there is the beer we have given you then they all partake of the beer that is left over even the children be made to sip it next they take branches of trees and dance and sing for rain in the return to the village they find a vessel of water set in a doorway by an old woman so they did their branches in it and waved them aloft so as to scatter the drops after that the rain is sure to come driving up in heavy clouds in these practices we see a combination of religion with magic for while the scattering of the water drops by means of branches it's a purely magical ceremony the prayer for rain and the offering of beer are purely religious rites at Takatelt in Algeria when the drought is severe the people prepare a sacrificial banquet soda in the course of which they dance and fill in their mouths of water spirited into the air cycling the rain and abundance elsewhere in the course of these banquets it is customary for the same purpose to sprinkle water on children at Glimkan in time a drought water sprung from terraces and windows on small girls who pass singing during the summer months frequent droughts occur among the Japanese Alps to recure rain a party of hundreds armed of guns climbed at the top of Mount John Indrake one of the most imposing peaks in the range by kindling of bonfire discharging their guns and rolling great masses of rocks down the cliffs they represent the wished for storm and the rain is opposed always to flow within a few days to make rain a party of a nose will scatter water by means of sieves while others will take up orager fit it up with sails and oars as they were about and then push or draw it about the village and gardens in Laos the festival the new year takes place about the middle of April and last three days the people assemble in the pagodas which are decorated with flowers and illuminated the Buddhist monks perform the ceremonies and when they come to the prayers for the fertility of the worshipers pour water on the walls and the floor of the pagoda as a symbol of the rain which they hope Buddha will send down on rice fields in due time in the Mara tribe of northern Australia the rainmaker goes to a pool and sings over it his magic song then he takes some of the water in his hands brings it and spits it out in various directions after that he throws water all over himself scatters it about and returns quietly to the camp rain is opposed to follow use of human hair and rain charms among the Australian Aborigines in the Wach Jorbalak tribe of Victoria the rainmaker dipped a bunch of his own hair in water sucked out the water and squirted it westward or he twirled the ball round his head making a spray like rain other Australian tribes employ human hair as a rain charm in other ways in western Australia the natives pluck hair from their armpits and thighs and blow them in the direction for which they wish the rain to come but they wish to prevent rain they light a piece of sandalwood and bathe the ground with the burning brand when the rivers were low and water scarce in Victoria the wizard used to place human hair in the stream accompanying the act with chants and gesticulation but if he wished to make rain he dropped some human hair in the fire there was never burnt another time so fear of causing a great fall of rain the Arab historian Macrizi describes the method of stopping rain which is said to have been resorted by a tribe of nomads called al-qamar in Adramat they cut a branch from a certain tree in the desert set it on fire and then sprinkled with a burning brand of water after that the vehemence of the rain abated just the water vanished when it fell on the growing brand some of the eastern and gummies of Manipur are said to perform a somewhat similar ceremony for the opposite purpose in order namely to produce rain head of the village puts a burning brand on the grave of a man who has died of burns and quenches the brand with water while he prays that rain may fall either putting out of the fire with water which is an imitation of rain is reinforced by the influence of the dead man who having been burnt to death will naturally be anxious for the descent of rain to call his scorch body and assuage his pangs use of fire to stop rain other people besides the Arabs use fire as a means of stopping rain thus the sulka of new britain heat stones red hot in the fire put them out in the rain or they throw hot ashes in the air they think that the rain will soon cease to fall for it does not like to be burned by the hot stones or ashes the Telugu's send a little girl out naked into the rain with a burning piece of water in her hand which she has to shoo to the rain that is supposed to stop the downpour at port steam it's a new south wales the medicine men used to drive away rain by throwing fire sticks into the air while at the same time they puffed and shouted any man of the norther tribe in northern Australia can stop rain by simply warming a green stick in the fire and then striking it against the wind when a Thompson Indian of British Columbia wished to put an end to a spell of heavy rain he had a stick in the fire then described the sulka with it beginning at the east and following the sun's course he wished the east again towards which quarter he held the stick and dressed the rain as follows now then he must stop raining the people are miserable the mountains become clear the ceremony was repeated for all the other quarters of the sky various ways of making and stopping rain to bring on rain the anus of Japan washed their tobacco boxes and pipes in a stream and the torches of central sleeves dipped with rice spoons on the contrary during heavy rain the Indians of Guinea are careful not to wash the inside of their pots lest by so doing they should cause the rain to fall still more heavily and Billisport is believed that the grain dealer who has stored large quantities of grain and wishes to sell it dear resorts to nefarious means of preventing the rain from falling lest the abundance of rice which would follow a copious rainfall should cheapen his wares to do this he collects raindrops from his house in earthen vessel and buries a vessel under the grinding mill after that use your hear thunder rumbling in the distance like the humming sound of miller work but no rain will fall for the wicked dealer has shut it up and it cannot get out rain making in Queensland in the torrid climate of Queensland the ceremonies necessary for ringing showers from the cloudless heaven are naturally somewhat elaborate a prominent part of them is played by a rain stick of wood about 20 inches long to which three rain stones and hair cut from the beard have been fastened the rain stones are pieces of white quartz crystal three or four such sticks may be used in the ceremony about noon the men who are to take part in it repair to a lonely pool into which one of them dies and fixes a hollow log vertically in the mud then they all go into the water and forming a rough circle around the man in the middle who holds a rain stick aloft they begin stamping with their feet as well as they can and splash in the water with their hands from all sides on the rain stick the stamping which is accompanied by singing is sometimes a matter of difficulty since the water may be four feet deep or more when the singing is over the man in the middle dives out of sight and attaches the rain stick to the hollow log under water then coming to the surface he quickly climbs onto the bank and spits out on dry land the water which he imbibed in diving should more than one of these rain sticks have been prepared the ceremony is repeated with each in turn while the men are returning to camp they scratch the top of their heads and the inside of their shins from time to time with twigs if they were to scratch themselves with their fingers alone they believed that the whole effect of the ceremony would be spoiled on reaching the camp they paint their faces, arms and chests with broad bands of gypsum during the rest of the day the process of scratching accompanied by the song is repeated at intervals and thus the performance comes to a close no woman may set eyes on the rain stick or witness the ceremony of its submergence but the wife of the chief rain maker is privileged to take part in the subsequent flight of scratching herself with the twig when the rain does come the rain stick is taken out of the water it has done its work at Roxburgh in Queensland the ceremony is somewhat different a white quartz crystal which is to serve as the rain stone is obtained in the mountains of which the stem runs up straight for a long way without any branches against its trunk saplings from 15 to 20 feet long are then propped in a circle so as to form a sort of shed like a bell tent and in front of the shed an artificial pond is made in the ground the men who have collected within the shed now come forth and dancing and singing round the pond mimic the cries and antics of various aquatic birds and animals such as ducks and frogs meanwhile the women are stationed some 20 yards or so away when the men have done pretending to be ducks, frogs and so forth they march round the women in single file throwing the pulverized quartz crystals over them on their side the women hold up wooden troughs, shields pieces of bark and so on over their heads making believe that they are shielding themselves from a heavy shower of rain both these ceremonies are cases of mimetic magic the splashing of the water over the rain stick is as clearly an imitation of a shower as a throwing of the powder quartz crystal of the women rain making among the dirty of central australia the dirty of central australia act as somewhat similar pantomime for the same purpose in a dry season there are a lot as a hard one no fresh herbs or root-side to be had and as the parched earth yields no grass, the emu's reptiles and other creatures which generally furnish the natives with food grow so lean and wisened has to be fairly worth eating at such a time or severe drought the diary loudly lamenting the impoverished state of their country and their own half-starved condition call upon the spirits of their remote predecessors whom they called the monomores to grant them power to make a heavy rainfall for they believe that the clouds are bodies in which rain is generated by their own ceremonies or those of neighboring tribes who the inwards the monomores the way in which they said without drawing rain from the clouds is this a hole is dug about 12 feet long and 8 or 10 broad and over this hole a conical hut of logs and branches is made two wizards supposed to have received a special inspiration from the monomores are bled by an old and influential man with a sharp lint and a blood drawn from their arms below the oboe it's made to flow on the other men of the tribe who sit huddled together in the hut at the same time the two bleeding men throw handfuls of blood down about some of which adheres to the bloodstained bodies of their comrades while the rest floats in the air the blood is thought to represent the rain and the down the clouds during the ceremony two large stones are placed in the middle of the hut they stand for gathering clouds and presage rain then the wizards who were bled carry away the two stones for about 10 or 15 miles and place them as high as they can in the tallest tree the men gather gypsum pound it fine and throw it into a water hole this the monomores see and at once they cause clouds to appear in the sky lastly the men young and old surround the hut and stooping down buttered it with their heads like so many rams thus they force their way through a den reappear on the other side repeating the process till the hut is wrecked in doing this they are forbidden to use their hands or arms but when the heavy logs alone remain they are allowed to pull them out with their hands the piercing of the hut with their heads symbolizes the piercing of the clouds for the hut, for the rain obviously too they have to place it high up in the trees the two stones would stand for clouds it's a way of making the real clouds to melt up in the sky use of foreskins and rainmaking the diary also imagine that the foreskins taken from lands of circumcision have a great power of producing rain hence the great council of the tribe always keeps a small stock of foreskins ready for use they are carefully concealed being wrapped up in feathers with the fat of the wild dog and of the carpet snake a woman may not see such a parcel upon all in any account when the ceremony is over the foreskin is buried it's virtue of being exhausted use of human blood in rainmaking ceremonies after the rains have fallen some of the tribe always undergo a surgical operation which consists in cutting the skin of their chest and arms of a sharp flint the wound is then tapped with a flat stick to increase the flow of blood and red opera is rubbed into it raised skies are thus produced the reason alleged by the natives for this practice is that they are pleased with the rain and that there is a connection between the rain and the skies apparently the operation is not very painful for the patient laughs and jokes while it is going on indeed little children have been seen to crowd around the operator and patiently take their turn after they have been operated on they ran away expanding their little chests and singing for the rain to beat upon them however they were not so well pleased next day when they felt the wound stiffen sore the tribes of the current Monday nation on the river Darling universally believe that rain can be produced as follows a vein in the arm of one of the men is opened and the blood allowed to flow into a piece of hollow bark till it forms little pool powder gypsum and hair from the man's beard are then added to the blood and the hole is stirred into a thick paste afterwards the mixture is placed between two pieces of bark and put under water in a river of oil agoon pointed stakes being driven into the ground to keep it down when it has all dissolved away the natives think that a great cloud will come bringing rain from the time the sermon is performed until the rain falls men must abstain from intercourse if they're wise or the charm will be spoiled in this custom the body paste seems to be an imitation of the rain cloud in Java when rain is wanted two men will sometimes thrash each other with supple rods till the blood glows down their backs this streaming blood represents the rain and no doubt is supposed to make it fall on the ground sanctuary conflict says means of making rain people of ego a district of Eversinia used to engage in sanguine conflicts with each other village against village for a week to weather every january for the purpose of procuring rain a few years ago the emperor medallic obeyed the custom however the following year the rain was deficient and the popular out prize so great that the emperor yielded to it and allowed the murderous fights to be resumed but for two days a year only the winter who mentions the custom has a probability sacrifice offered to spirits who control the showers but perhaps as in the australian and japanese ceremonies it is an imitation of rain the prophets of Baal who sought to procure rain by cutting the souls of niestor the blood gushed out may have acted on the same principle rain making among the Catech the Catech tribal central australia believe that the rainbows are son of the rain and with filial regard he is always anxious to prevent his father from falling down hence if it appears in the sky at a time when the rain is wanted they sing or enchanted in order to send it away when the head man of the rain told to men this tribe desires to make rain he goes to the sacred storehouse of his local group there he paints the holy stones with red ochre and sings over them and as he sings he pours water from a vessel on them and on himself moreover he paints three rainbows in red ochre one on the ground one on his own body and one on the shield which he also decorates with zigzag lines of white clay to represent lightning this shield may only be seen by men of the same exugamers half of the tribe as himself if men of the other half of the tribe were to see it the charm would be spoiled hence after bringing the shield away from the sacred place he hides it in his own camp until the rain has fallen after which he destroys the rainbow drawings the intention seems to be to keep the rainbow in custody and prevent it from appearing in the sky until the clouds have burst and moisten the thirsty ground to ensure that event the rainmaker on his return to the sacred storehouse keeps a vessel of water by his side in camp and from time to time scatters white down about which is thought to hasten the rain meantime the men who accompanied him to the holy place go away and camp by themselves for neither they nor he may have any intercourse with the women the leader may not even speak to his wife who absents herself from the camp at the time of his return to it when later on she comes back he imitates the call of the plover a bird whose cry is always associated with the rainy season in these parts early next morning he returns to the sacred storehouse and covers the stones with bushes after another night passed in silence he and the other men and women go out in separate directions to search for food when they meet and return to camp they all meet with the cry of the plover then the leader's mouth is touched with some of the food that has been brought in and thus the ban of silence is removed if the rain follows they attribute it to the magical virtue of the ceremony if it does not they fall back on the standing excuse that someone else has kept off the rain by stronger magic rainmaking among the runtah among the runtah tribe of central australia a celebrated rainmaker resides in what is called by the natives the rain country cartuena guatcha a district about 50 miles to the east of ellis springs he is the head of a group of people who have water for their totem and when he is about to engage in a ceremony for the making of rain he summons other men of the water totem from neighboring groups to come and help him when all are assembled they march into camp painted with red and yellow ochre and pipe clay and wearing bunches of eagle hawk feathers crown and sides of the head as signal from the rainmaker they all sit down on a line and following the lines across their breasts chant certain words for a time then in another signal from the master of the ceremonies they jump up and march in a signal file to a spot some miles off where they camp for the night at break of day they scatter in all directions to look for game which is uncooked and eaten but of no account may any water be drunk or the ceremony would fail they adore themselves again in a different style broad bands of white birds down being glued by means of human blood to their stomach, legs, arms and forehead meanwhile a special hut of bows has been made by some older men, not far from the main camp its thawed stream with a thick layer of gum leaves to make it soft for a good deal of time has to be spent lying down here close to the entrance of the hut a shallow trench some 30 yards long is excavated in the ground at sunset the performers arrayed in all the finery of wiped down marched to the hut on reaching at the young men going first and life faced downwards at the inner end where they have to stay to the ceremonies none of them is allowed to quit it on any pretext meanwhile outside the hut the older men are busy decorating the rainmaker hair girdles covered with white down are placed all over his head while his cheeks and forehead are painted with pipeglee and two broad bands of white down pass across the face one over the eyebrows and the other over the nose the front of his body is adorned with a broad band of pipeglee fringed with white down and rings of white down and circle his arms thus decorated with patches of birds down adhering by means of human blood to his hair and a hole in his body the disguised man is said to be present at a spectacle which once seen can never be forgotten he now takes up a position close to the opening of the hut then the old men sing a song and when it is finished the young man comes out of the hut and stalks slowly twice up and down the shallow trench quivering his body and legs in the most extraordinary way every nerve and fiber seeming to tremble while he is thus engaged the young men who had been lying flat on their faces get up and join the old men in chanting a song with which the movements of the rainmaker seem to accord but as soon as he re-enters the hut the young men at once prostrate themselves again for they must always be lying down when he is in the hut the performance is repeated intervals during the night and the singing goes on with little intermission until just when the day is breaking the rainmaker executes a final quiver which lasts longer than any of the others and seems to exhaust his remaining strength completely then he declares a ceremony to be over and at once the young men jump to their feet and rush out of the hut screaming an imitation of the spur of winter plover the cries heard by the men and women who have been left at the main camp and they take it up with weird effect rainmaking by imitation of clouds and storm although we cannot perhaps divine the meaning of all the details of this curious ceremony the analogy of the Queensland and the deity ceremonies described above suggests that we have here a rude attempt to represent the gathering of rain clouds and the other accompaniments of a rising storm the hut of branches like a structure of logs among the deity and perhaps the conical shed in Queensland may possibly stand for the vault of heaven from which the rain clouds represented by the chief factor in his quaint costume of white down come forth to move in every shifting shapes across the sky just as he struts, hovering up and down the trench the other performers also adorned with birds down who burst from the tent with the cries of plovers probably imitate birds that are supposed to are a bringer or a company rain this interpretation is confirmed by other ceremonies in which the performers definitely assimilate themselves to the celestial or atmospheric phenomena which they seek to produce thus in Maborg a small island in the Torres Strait when a wizard desired to make rain he took some bushel plant and paid himself black and white all along same as clouds black behind white he go first he further put a large woman's petticoat to signify raining clouds on the other hand when he wished to stop the rain he put red paint on the crown of his head to represent the shining sun and he inserted a small bell of red paint in another part of his person by and by he expelled his ball like breaking a cloud so that sun he may shine he then took some bushes and leaves of the pandenas mix them together and place the compound in the sea afterwards he removed them from the water tried them and burnt them so that the smoke went up thereby to purifying as Dr. Haddon was informed the evaporation and dispersal of the clouds again it is said that even Malay woman puts upon her head an inverted earthenware pan and then setting it upon the ground fills it with water and washes the cat till the animal is nearly drowned every rain will certainly follow in this performance the inverted pan is intended as Mr. Skeet was told to symbolize the vault of heaven belief that twins can control the weather there is a widespread belief that twin children possess magical powers of nature especially the rain and the weather this curious superstition prevails among some of the Indian tribes of British Columbia has led them to impose certain singular restrictions or taboos on the parents of twins though the exact meaning of these restrictions is generally obscure superstitions as to twins among the Indians of British Columbia thus the Simshen Indians of British Columbia believe that twins control the weather therefore they pray to wind and rain calm down breath of twins further they think that the wishes of twins are always fulfilled hence twins are feared because they can harm the man they hate they can also call the salmon and the ola chen or kennel fish and so they are known by a name which means making plentiful in the opinion of the quick little Indians of British Columbia twins are transformed salmon hence they may not go near water lest they should be changed back again into the fish in their childhood they can summon any wind by motion of their hands and they can make fair or foul weather and also cure diseases by swinging larger wooden rattle their parents must have secluded in the woods for 16 months after the birth doing no work borrowing nobody's canoes, pedals or dishes and keeping their faces painted red all the time if the father were to catch salmon or the mother were to dig clams the salmon and the clams would disappear moreover the parents separate from each other and must pretend to be married to a log with which they lie down every night they are forbidden to touch each other and even their own hair a year after the birth they drive witches into the tree in the woods asking her to let them work again when 4 more months are passed the newt cut Indians of British Columbia also believe their twins are somehow related to salmon hence among them twins may not catch salmon and they may not eat or even handle the fresh fish they can make fair or foul weather and can cause rain to fall by painting their faces black and then washing them which may represent the rain dripping from the dark clouds conversely among the Angola of Central Africa there is a woman who stops rain by tying a strip of white calico around her black head probably in imitation of the skies clearing after a heavy storm the parents of twins among the nookkas must build a small hut in the woods on the bank of a river far from the village and where they must live for two years avoiding other people they may not eat or even touch fresh food particularly salmon superstitions as to twins among the Indians of British Columbia wooden images and massive birds and fish are placed around the hut and others representing fish are set near the river for the purpose of inviting all birds and fish to come and see the twins and be friendly to them moreover the father sings a special song facing the salmon and asking them to come and the fish do come in great numbers to see the twins therefore the birth of twins is believed to prognosticate a good year for salmon but though a nookta father of twins has thus to live in seclusion for two years of standing from fresh meat and attending none of the ordinary feasts he is by a singular exception invited to banquets which consist wholly of tried provisions and at them he is treated with great respect and seated among the chiefs of a mere commoner both the twins among the nooktas is said to be very rare but one occurred or joid lived with the tribe he reports that the father always appeared very thoughtful and gloomy and never associated with other people his dress was very plain and he wore around his head the red fillet of bark the symbol of mourning and devotion it was his daily practice to repair to the mountain with a chief's rattle in his hand to sing and pray as my queen for the fish to come into the waters when not thus employed he kept continuously at home except when sent for us to sing and perform his ceremonies over the sick then considered as a sacred character and one much in favour of the gods among the Thompson Indians of British Columbia twins are called grizzly bear children or hairy feet because they were thought to be under protection of the grizzly bear and to be endowed by him with special powers such as that of making fair or foul weather after the birth parents moved away from other people lived in a lodge made of fur bowels and barked till the children were about four years old during all his time great care was taken of the twins they might not come into contact with other people and were washed with fur to extinct in water while they were being washed the father described circles round them with fur bowels singing the song of grizzly bear superstitions as to twins in west Africa with these American beliefs we may compare an African one the negro is a port of norval on the bites of a penin hold that twins have for their companions certain spirits or genie like those which animate a kind of small ape which abounds in the forest of Kenya when the twins grow up they will not be allowed to eat the flesh of apes and meantime the mother carries offerings of bananas and other dainties to the apes in the forest precisely similar beliefs and customs which prevail in the hope of a German tokeland there the twins are called children of apes now that they know their parents made the flesh of the particular species of apes with which they are associated they have 100 kills one with these animals their parents must beat him with a stick but to return to America they just swap Indians of British Columbia although the Thompson Indians associate twins with the grizzly bear or they call them young grizzly bears according to them twins remain throughout life and death with supernatural powers they can make good or bad weather they produce rain by spilling water from a basket in the air they make fine weather by shaking a small flat piece of wood a chest with stick by a string they raise stones by strolling down on the ends of spruce branches superstitions as to twins among the Indians of Baru the Indians of Baru entertain similar notions as their special relation in which twins stand in the rain and the weather for they said that one of each pair of twins was a son of the lightning and they called the lightning the lord and created rain and prayed to him to send showers the parents of twins had to fast for many days after the birth abstain from salt and pepper they might not have intercourse with each other in some parts of Baru this period of fasting and abstinence lasted 6 months in other parts both the father and the mother had to lie down on one side with one leg drawn up and a beam placed in the hollow of the ham in this position they had to lie without moving for 5 days two of their heat and sweat of their bodies the beams began to sprout then they changed over to the other side and lay on it in like manner for 5 days fasting in the way described when the 10 days were up their relations went out to hunt and having killed and skinned a deer they made a robe of its hide under which they caused parents of the twins to pass with cords about their necks which afterwards wore for many days if the twins died young their bodies enclosed in pots were kept in their houses sacred things but if they lived and happened that a frost set in the priest sent them together with all the persons who had hair lips were being born feet foremost and rated them soundly for being the cause of the frost in that they had not fasted from salt and pepper wherefore they were ordered to fast for 10 more days in the usual manner and to abstain from their wives and to wash themselves and to acknowledge and to confess their sins after their normal conversion to Christianity the Peruvian Indians retained their belief that one of the twins is always the son of the lightning and healthy enough they regularly gave him the name of Saint James Santiago the Spanish Jesuit who reports the custom was that a lost to account for it they could not he thought have originated in the name of bone herds or the son of thunder which Christ applied to the two brothers James and John he suggested two explanations the Indians may have adopted the name because they had heard a phrase used by Spanish children when at thunders the horse of Santiago was running or it may have been because they saw that the Spanish infantry in battle before they fired their archibuses always cried out Santiago both Indians called the archibus that is lightning and they might easily imagine that the name which they heard shouted just before the flash and all the guns was that a Spanish could have thunder and lightning however they came by the name such frequent and superstitious use of it that the church forbade any Indian to bear the name of Santiago superstitions as to twins in Africa the same power of influencing the weather is attributed to twins by the Baronga a tribe of Bantu and Negroes who inhabit the shores of DeLonga Bay in southeastern Africa they bestowed the name of Tello that is the sky on a woman who has given birth to twins and the infants themselves are called the children of the sky now when the storms which generally burst in the months of September and October have been looked for in vain but a drought with this prospect of famine is threatening and all nature is scorched and burned up by a sun that has shone for six months on a cloud of the sky is panting for the beneficent showers of the South African Spring the women perform ceremonies to bring down the long for rain on the parts of earth stripping themselves of all their garments they assume in their stead girdles and headdresses of grass or petticoats made of the leaves of a particular sort of creeper thus a tired, uttering peculiar cries and singing rivaled songs they go about from well to well cleansing them of the modern impurities which have accumulated in them the well as it may be said are merely holes in the sand where there would turbid unwholesome water stagnates further the women must repair to the house of one of their goddesses who has given birth to twins and must trench her with water which they carry in little pictures having done so they go on their way shrieking out the loose songs and dancing in modest dances no man may see these leaf-clad women going their rounds if they meet a man they maul him and thrust him aside when they have cleansed the wells they must go and pour water on the graves of their ancestors in the sacred grove it often happens to that at the bidding of the wizard they go and pour water on the grave of twins but they think that the grave of a twin ought always to be moist which reason twins are regularly buried near a lake if all the efforts to procure rain prove abortive they will remember that such and such a twin was buried in a dry place on the side of a hill no wonder it says a wizard in such a case that the sky is fiery take up his body and dig him a grave on the shore of the lake his orders are at once obeyed but this is supposed to be the only means of bringing down the rain the Swiss missionary who reports this strange superstition has also suggested what appears to be his true explanation he points out that as the mother of twins is called by the baronga the sky they probably think that to pour water on her is equivalent to pouring water on the sky itself and if the water be poured on the sky it will of course drip through it as through the nozzle of a gigantic watering pot and fall on the earth beneath a slight extension of the same train of reasoning explains why the desired result is believed to be expedited by drenching the graves of twins who are the children of the sky among the zulus twins are supposed to be able to foretell the weather and people who want rain will go to a twin and say tell me do you feel ill today if he says he feels quite well they know it will not rain the one yam yes he a large tribe of central Africa to the south of the victorian yanzah also believed in the special association of twins with weather for amongst them where a twin is about to cross a river, stream or lake he must fill his mouth full of water and spurt it out of the surface of the river a lake adding i am a twin yana impasa and he must do the same as storm arises on a lake over which he is sailing we are here to admit the ceremony some harm might befall him or his companions in this tribe the birth of twins is comparatively common as attended by a number of ceremonies old women march about the village collecting gifts for the infants while they drum with a hoe on a piece of oxide and sing an obscene song in praise of the father further two little fetish huts are built for the twins before their mother's house and here people sacrifice to them in season and out of season especially when somebody is sick or about to go on a journey or to be the wars if one of both twins died two aloes have planted beside the little fetish hut lastly the hindus of the central province is india believe that a twin can save the crops from the ravages of hail and heavy rain if he will only paint his white buttock black and his left buttock some other color and thus are drawn go and stand in the direction of the wind the rain maker is similar as himself to rain many of the foregoing facts strongly support an interpretation which professor Oldenburg has given of the rules to be observed by a Brahman who would learn a particular hymn of the ancient indian collection known as the Samaveda the hymn bears the name of the Sakfari song was believed to embody the might of Indra's weapon the thunderbolt and hence on account of the dreadful and dangerous potency with which it was thus charged the bold student to his say who to master had to be isolated from his fellow men and to retire from the village into the forest here for a space of time which might not vary according to different doctors of the law from one to twelve years he had to observe certain rules of life among which were the following thrice a day he had to touch water he must wear black garments and eat black food when it rained he might not see the shoulder of a roof and say water is a Sakfari song when the lightning flashed he said that is like the Sakfari song when the thunder peeled he said the great one is making a great noise he might never cross a running stream without touching water he might never set foot on a ship unless his life were in danger even then he must be sure to touch water when he went on board from water so ran the saying flies a virtue of the Sakfari song when at last he had allowed to learn the song itself he had to dip his hands in a vessel of water in which plants of all sorts have been placed if a man walked in the way of all of these precepts the rain god it was said would send rain at the wish of that man it is clear as Professor Oldenburg well points out that all of these rules are intended to bring the Brahmin into union with water to make him, as it were, an ally of the water powers and to guide him against their hostility the black garments and the black food have the same significance no one will doubt that they refer to the rain clouds when he remembers that a black victim is sacrificed to procure rain he is black but such is the nature of rain in respect of another rain charm it is said plainly he puts on a black garment aged with black but such is the nature of rain we may therefore assume that here in the circle of ideas and ordinances of the Vedic schools there have been preserved magical practices of the most remote antiquity which were intended to prepare the rainmaker for his office and dedicate him to it on the contrary the maker of dry weather must himself be dry it is interesting to observe that where an opposite result is desired primitive lord to conjure the weather doctor to observe precisely the opposite rules of conduct in the tropical island of Java where the rich vegetation attests the abundance of the rainfall ceremonies for the making of rain are rare by ceremonies for the prevention of it are not uncommon when a man is about to give a great feast in the rainy season and has invited many people he goes to a weather doctor and I see him to prop up the clouds that may be lowering if the doctor consents to exert his professional powers he begins to regulate his behaviour by certain rules as soon as his customer has departed he must observe for fast am I neither drink nor bathe what little he eats must be eaten dry and in no case he may touch water and his servants, both male and female must neither wash clothes nor bathe so long as the vase lasts and they have all during its continuance to observe strict chastity the doctor seats himself on a new mat in his bedroom and before a small oil lamp he mirrors shortly before the vase takes place the following prayer or incantation grandfather and grandmother Sorokil the name seems to be taken random others are sometimes used the other is your country Akamat is your country put down your water cask close it properly that not a drop may fall out while the other says prayer the sorcerer looks upwards burning incense for a while so among the torches of central salives the rain doctor Sando his special business is to drive away rain takes care not to touch water before during or after the discharge of his professional duties he does not bathe nothing but palm wine and if he has to cross a stream he is careful not to step in the water having thus prepared himself for his task he has a small hut built for himself outside of the village in a rice field and in this hut he keeps up a little fire which on no account may be suffered to go out in the fire he burns various kinds of wood which as opposed to possess the property of driving off rain and he paths in the direction from which the rain threatens to come holding in his hand a packet of leaves by a similar cloud compelling virtue not from their chemical position but from their names which happens to signify something dry or volatile if clouds should appear in the sky while he is at work he takes lime in the hollow of his hand and blows it towards them the lime being so very dry is obviously well adapted to disperse the damp clouds should rain afterwards if he wanted he has only to pour water on his fire and immediately the rain will descend in sheets so in Santa Cruz and Reef Islands when the man who has power over rain wishes to prevent it from falling he will abstain from washing his face for a long time and will do no work this should sweat and his body be wet for their thinking that if his body be wet it will rain on the other hand when he desires to bring on rain he goes into the house where the spiritual ghost of the rain is believed to reside and there is prequels of water at the head of the ghost post in order that showers may fall to make wet weather you must be wet to make dry weather you must be dry the reader will observe how exactly the Javanese and Toraja observances which are intended to prevent rain form the antithesis of the Indian observances which aim at producing it the Indian sage is commanded to touch water thrice a day regularly as well on various special occasions the Javanese and Toraja wizards may not touch it at all the Indian lives out in the forest and even when it rains he may not take shelter the Javanese and Toraja sit in a house or hut the one signifies his sympathy with water by receiving the rain on his person and speaking of it respectively the others light a lamp or a fire and do their best to drive the rain away yet the principle on which all three act is the same each of them, by a sort of childish make-believe identifies himself with a phenomenon which he desires to produce it is the old fallacy that the effect resembles his cause he would make wet weather he must be wet he would make dry weather he must be dry he must be dry rainmaking in southeastern Europe by drenching with water a leaf-clad girl a boy who represents vegetation in southeastern Europe at the present day ceremonies are observed for the purpose of making rain which not only rest on the same general train of thought as proceeding but even in their details resemble the ceremonies practiced with the same intention by the Baronga of De Laugabe among the greets of Thessaly D'Aunia, when Adratus lasted a long time it is customary to send a procession of children round all the wells and springs of the neighborhood at the head of the procession walks a girl adored with flowers whom her companions drenched with water at every halting pace while they sing an invocation for which the following is part perperia or fresh bedowed freshened all the neighborhood by the woods on the highway as their ghost to God now pray oh my God, upon the plane sent thou us are still small rain at the fields made fruitful be and vines and blossoms wished may see that the grain be full and sound and wealthy grow the folks round rain making in Serbia in the time of drought the Serbian strip a girl to her skin and clothe her from head to foot in grass herbs and flowers even if hatch being hidden behind a veil or living green thus disguised she is called to a daughter and goes through the village with the trip of girls their stop before every house the Delorda keeps turning herself around and dancing while the other girls form a ring about her singing one of the Delorda songs and the housewife pours a pile of water over her one of the songs they sing runs thus we go through a village the clouds go in the sky we go faster, faster go the clouds they have overtaken us and wetter the corn and the vine rain making in Romania a similar customer has served in Greece and Romania in Romania the rain making is called Papporoda she is a gypsy girl who goes naked except for a short skirt of dwarf elder some bullies or of corn and vines thus scantily attired the girls go in procession from house to house seen for rain and entrenched by the paperwork buckets of water the ceremony regularly takes place all over Romania on the third Tuesday after Easter but it may be repeated any time of drought during the summer but the Romanians have another way of procuring rain they make a clay figure to represent drought carve it with a pole and place it in an open coffin girls crouch around the coffin and lament saying, drought scolai is dead lord give us rain and the coffin is carried by children in funeral possession with a burning wax cannibal fort while lamentations fill the air finally they throw the coffin and the candle into a stream or well rain making in Bulgaria when rain is watered in Bulgaria the people dress up a girl in branches of nut trees flowers and the green stuff of beans, potatoes and onions she carries a new scale of flowers in her hand and is called Dejul-Jul or Papparuga attended by a train of followers she goes from house to house as received by the good man with the kettle of water on which flowers are swimming with this water he drinks her well as summer sun the Papparuga flu the rain that the corn, the millet and the wheat may thrive rain making in Macedonia and Dolmedia sometimes the girl is dressed in flax to the grudel and Melanik Greek town of Macedonia pour off a boy parades the streets in times of drought decked with ferns and flowers and attended by other boys about the same age the women show her water and money on him from the windows he is called Dejul and as they march along the boys sing a song hail, hail, Dejul bring us both maize and wheat in Dolmedia also their custom is observed the performer is a young unmarried man who is dressed up, dances and has water poured over him he goes by the name of Papparuga who are young bachelors like himself and such customs to leave clad person appears to personify vegetation and the drenching of him or her with water is certainly an imitation of rain the words of the Serbian song however taking in connection with the constant movement which the chief actress and the performer seems expected to keep up points to some comparison of the girl or her companions to clouds moving through the sky this again reminds us of the old quivering movement kept up by the Australian rainmaker who in his disguise a white town may perhaps represent a cloud the king of rain in India at Bhulna in India when rain is needed the boys dress up one of their number in nothing but leaves and call him king of rain Baruch Raja then they go round to every house in the village where the household always wife sprinkles a rain king with water and gives a party food of various kinds when they are thus visited all the houses they strip the rain king of his sleepy robes and feast upon what they have gathered rainmaker in Armenia similar rain charms are practiced in Armenia except that there the representative of vegetation is an effigy or dull not a person the children dress up a broomstick as a girl and carry it from house to house before every house they sing a song of which the following is one version nirin nirin is come the wanderer's maiden is come a shirt of red stuff she has put on with a red girdle she has girdled bring water to pour on her head bring butter to smear on her hair let the blessed rain fall let the fields of your fathers grow green give our nirin her share and we will eat and drink and be merry the children are asked will you have it from the door or from the garret window if they choose the door the water is poured or nirin from the window if they choose the window is poured on her from the door each house has a seat presents butter, eggs, rice and so forth afterwards they take nirin to a river and throw her into the water sometimes a figure has a head of a pig or a goat and is covered with boughs and agon in Armenia when rain is wanted boys carry about an effigy which they call chi-chi-ma-ma or the drenched mother as they interpret the phrase as they go about they ask what does chi-chi-ma-ma want the answer is she wants wheat in her bins she wants bread on her bread hooks and she wants rain from God the people pour water on her from roofs and rich people make presents to the children at Orfa in Armenia the children in time of drought make a rain bride which they called chi-gill-in they say this means in August shovel bride while they carry it about they say what does chi-chi-gill-in want she wishes mercy from God she wants offerings of lambs and rams and the crowd responds here my God give rain give her flood the rain bride is then thrown into the water rain making in Palestine a moab a kerak in Palestine whenever there is a drought the Greek Christians dress up a winter wing fork in women's clothes they call it the bride of God the girls and women carry it from house to house singing dog-a-rell songs we are told that the bride of God is transferred with water or thrown into a stream but the charm would hardly be complete without this feature similarly when rain is much wanted the ebz-moy abitire a dummy in the poops in ornaments of a woman and call it the mother of the rain a woman carries in possession past the houses of the village or the tents of the camp singing a mother of the rain her immortal moist now sleeping seeds moist in the sleeping seeds of the sea who is ever generous she is gone the mother of the rain to bring the storm when she comes back the crops are as high as the walls she is gone the mother of the rain to bring the winds when she comes back the plantations have attained the height of the lenses she is gone the mother of the rain to bring the thunders when she comes back the crops are as high as camels and so on