 section 13 of the golden bell volume 1 part 1 the magic art of the evolution of kings volume 1 by James Fraser this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information on a volunteer please visit LibriVox.org chapter 6 magicians as kings part 1 social importance of magicians and their rise to the position of chiefs or kings the foregoing evidence may satisfy us that in many lands and many races magic has claimed to control the great forces of nature for the good of man if that has been so the practitioners of the art must necessarily be personages of importance and influence in any society which puts faith in their extravagant pretensions and it would be no matter for surprise if by virtue of the reputation which they enjoy of the all which they inspire some of them should attain to the highest position of authority in point of fact magicians appeared to have often developed into chiefs and kings but magic is not the only road by which men have traveled to a throne not the magic is the only or perhaps even the main road by which men have traveled to a throne the lust of power the desire to dominere over our fellows is among the commonest and the strongest of human passions and no doubt men of a masterful character have sought to satisfy it in many different ways have attained by many different means to the goal of their ambition the sword for example in a strong hand has unquestively done for many what the magicians want in a deft hand appears to have done for some complexity of the social phenomena and the danger of simplifying them unduly by our hypothesis he who investigates the history of institutions should constantly bear in mind the extreme complexity of the causes which have built up the fabric of human society and should be on his guard against a subtle danger incidental to all science the tendency to simplify unduly the infinite variety of the phenomena by fixing our attention on a few of them to the exclusion of the rest the propensity to excessive simplification is indeed natural to the mind of man since it is only by abstraction and generalization which necessarily imply the neglect of a multitude of particulars that he can stretch his puny faculties so as to embrace a minute portion of the illuminate vastness of the universe but if the propensity is natural and even inevitable it is nevertheless fraught with peril since it is apt to narrow and falsify our conception of any subject under investigation to correct it partially for to correct it wholly would require an infinite intelligence we must endeavor to broaden our views by taking account of a wide range of facts and possibilities and when we have done so to the utmost of our power we must still remember that from the very nature of things our ideas form measurably short of the reality this propensity to excessive simplification has done much to discredit the study of primitive mythology and religion in no branch of learning perhaps has this process to an attractive but fallacious simplicity brought more havoc than in the investigation of the early history of mankind in particular the excesses to which it has been carried have done much to discredit the study of primitive mythology and religion students of these subjects have been far too ready to pounce on any theory which adequately explains some of the facts and forth which to stretch it so as to cover them all and when the theory thus unduly strained has broken as was to be expected in their unskillful hands they eventually thrown it aside and discussed instead restricting it as they should have done from the outset to the particular class of facts to which it is really applicable so it fair to know youth with the solar myth theory which after being unreasonably exaggerated by its friends has long been quite as unreasonably rejected altogether by its adversaries and more recent times the theories of totemism magic and taboo to take only a few conspicuous examples have similarly suffered from the excessive seal of injuticious advocates this instability of judgment this tendency of anthropological opinion to swim to and fro from one extreme to another with every breath of new discovery is perhaps the principal reason why the whole study is still viewed as cans by men of sober and cautious tempo who naturally look with suspicion on idols that are set up and worshiped one day only to be knocked down and travelled underfoot the next to these cool observers Max Muller and the Rosie Dawn of the 19th century stand on the same dusty shelf with Jacob Bryant and Noah's Ark in the 18th and they expect with the sarcastic smile the time when the fashionable anthropological topics of the present day will in their turn be consigned to the same peaceful limbo of forgotten absurdities is not for the anthropologist himself to anticipate the verdict of posterity on his laborers still it is his humble hope that the facts which he has patiently amassed will be found sufficiently numerous and solid to bear the weight of some at least of the conclusions which he rests upon them so that these can never gain be likely tossed aside as a fantastic trains of a mere bookish student at the same time if he is wise he will be forward to acknowledge and proclaim that our hypothesis at best are but partial not universal solutions of the manifold problems which confront us and that in science as in daily life it is vain to look for one key to open all locks the practice of magic explains the rise of kings in some communities but not in all therefore to revert to our immediate subject in putting forward the practice of magic as an explanation of the rise of monarchy in some communities i'm far from thinking or suggesting that it can explain the rise of it in all or in other words that kings are universally the descendants or successors of magicians and if anyone should hear after her as is likely enough he renunciates such a theory or attributed to me my desire to enter my coveted against it in advance to enumerate and describe all the most in which men have pushed or fought or wormed their way by force or by thought by their own courage and wisdom or by their cowardice and folly of others to supreme power might furnish the theme of a political treatise such as i have no pre-tension to write for my present purpose it suffices if i can trace the magicians progress in some savage and barbarous tribes from the rank of a sorcerer to the dignity of a king the facts which i about to lay before the reader sent to exhibit various steps of this development from civil conjuring up to the conjuring compound with despotism social importance of magicians among the aborigines of central australia let us begin by looking at the lowest race of men as to whom we possess comparatively full and accurate information the aborigines of australia these savages are ruled neither by chiefs nor kings so far as the tribes can be said to have a political constitution it is a democracy or rather an oligarchy of old and influential men who may in council decide on all measures of importance for the practical exclusion of the younger men their deliberative assembly answers to the senator later times if we had to coin a word with such a government of elders we might call it a genontocracy the elders who were in aboriginal australia thus made and directed the affairs of their tribe appeared to be for the most part the hitman of their respective totem clans now in central australia where the desert nature of their country and the almost complete isolation from foreign influences have retarded progress and preserved the natives on the whole in most primitive state the headmen of the various totem clans are charged with the important task of performing magical ceremonies for the multiplication of the totems and as the grand majority of the totems are edible animal plants their followers of these men are commonly expected to provide the people with food by means of magic others have to make the rain to fall or to render other services to the community in short among the tribes of central australia the headmen are public magicians however the most important function is to take charge of the sacred storehouse usually a cleft in the rocks or a hole in the ground where are kept the holy stones and sticks charinga with which the souls of all the people both living and dead are apparently supposed to be in a manner bound up thus while the headmen have certainly to perform what we should call civil duties such as to inflict punishment for breaches of tribal custom their principal functions are sacred or magical social importance of magicians among the aborigines of southeastern australia again in the tribes of southeastern australia the headmen was often sometimes invariably a magician thus in the southern warried jewellery tribe the headmen was always a wizard or a medicine man there was one for each local division he called the people together for the initiation ceremonies or to discuss matters of public importance in the euclid mining tribe the medicine men are the headmen they're called mobong bay from mobong magic they decide disputes arrange marriages conduct the ceremonies of initiation and in certain circumstances settle the formalities to be observed in or deals of battle in fact they will authority in the tribe and give orders where others only make requests again in the uni tribe there was a headman for each local division and in order to be fitted for his office he had among other qualifications be a medicine man above all he must be able to perform magical feats at the initiation ceremonies the greatest headman of all was he who on these occasions could bring up the largest number of things out of his inside in fact the budding statesman king must be first and foremost a conjurer in the most literal sense of the world some 40 or 50 years ago the principal headman of the dowry tribe was a certain gelina piramirana who was known among the colonists as the french men on account of his polished manners he was not only a brave and skillful warrior but also a powerful medicine man greatly feared by the neighboring tribes who sent him presents even from a distance of a hundred miles he boasted of being the tree of life for he was ahead of a totem consisting of a particular sort of seed which forms at certain times the chief vegetable food with these tribes his people spoke of him as the planet self manura which yields the edible seed again an early writer on the tribes of southwest australia new king george's sound tells us that the individuals who possess most influence are the malagara docks or doctors a malagara dock is considered to possess the power of driving away wind or rain as well as bringing down lightning or disease upon any object of their or others hatred and they also attempt to heal the sick on the whole then is highly significant that in the most primitive society about which we are accurately informed is especially the magicians or medicine men who appear to have been in process of developing into chiefs social importance of magicians in new guinea when we pass from australia to new guinea we find that though the natives stand at a far higher level of culture than the australian abrushanese the constitution of society among them is still essentially democratic or oligarchic and chieftainship exists only in embryo thus sir william mcgregor tells us that in british new guinea no one has ever risen wise enough bold enough and strong enough to become the despot even of a single district the nearest approach to this has been the very distant one of some person becoming a renowned wizard but that has only resulted in living a certain amount of blackmail to the same effect that catholic missionary observes that in new guinea the nipul or sorcerers are everywhere they boast of their misdeeds everybody fears them everybody accuses them and after all nothing positive is known off their secret practices this cursed brood is as it were the soul of the palwan life nothing happens about the sorcerers intervention wars marriages diseases deaths expeditions fishing hunting always and everywhere the sorcerer one thing is certain for them that they do not regard it as an article of faith but as a fact patent and indisputable and that is the extraordinary power of the nipul he is a master of life and of death hence it is only natural that they should fear him and obey him and everything and give him all that he asked for the nipul is not a chief but he dominios over the chiefs and we may say that the true authority the only effective influence in new guinea is that of the nipul nothing can resist him we are told that in the terrope or montemoto tribe of british new guinea chiefs have not necessarily supernatural powers but that a sorcerer is looked upon as a chief some years ago for example one man of the tribe was a chief because he was supposed to rule the sea calming it or rousing it to fury at his pleasure another owed his power to his skill in making the rain to fall the sunshine and the plantations to bear fruit is believed that the chief for mowat in british new guinea can affect the growth of crops for good or ill and coax the turtle and dugon to come from all parts of the sea and allow themselves to be caught at pottle bay in british new guinea there are magicians taniwaga who are expected to manage certain debunkments of nature for the good of the community by means of charms burry which are known only to them one of these men for example works magic for rain another for taro another for wallaby and another for fish a magician who is believed to control an important department of nature may be the chief of his community thus the present chief of waddau is a sorcerer who can make rain and rays or calm winds he is greatly respected by all and receives many presents a chief of kolham on finch harbour in german new guinea enjoyed a great reputation as a magician he was supposed that he could make wind and storm rain and sunshine and visit his enemies with sickness and death supposed magical or supernatural powers of chiefs in milanesia turning now to the natives of the milanesian islands which stretched an immense quadrant of a circle round new guinea in australia on the east we are told by dr codrington that among these savages as a matter of fact the power of chiefs has hithipro rested upon the belief in their supernatural power derived from the spirits or ghosts with which they had intercourse as this belief has failed in the banks islands for example sometime ago the position of a chief has tended to become obscure and as this belief has now been generally undermined a new kind of chief must needs arise unless a time of anarchy is to begin according to a native milanesian account the origin of the power of chiefs lies entirely in the belief that they have communication with mighty ghosts tendello and wield that supernatural power mana whereby they can bring the influence of the ghost to bear if a chief imposed a fine it was paid because the people universally dreaded his ghostly power and firmly believed that he could inflict calamity and sickness upon such as resisted him as soon as any considerable number of his people began to disbelieve in his influence with the ghosts his power to levy finds was shaken in mellow one of the new hybrids the highest nobility consists of those persons who have sacrificed a thousand little pigs to the souls of their ancestors no one ever resists a man of that exalted rank because in him are supposed to dwell all the souls of the ancient chiefs and all the spirits who preside over the tribe in all the new hybrids the son does not inherit the chieftain ship but he inherits if his father can manage it what it gives him the chieftain ship namely his father's supernatural power his charms magical songs stones in apparatus and his knowledge of the way to approach spiritual beings a chief in the island of paramata informed a european that he had the power of making rain wind stormed thunder and lightning and dry weather he exhibited as his magical instrument a piece of bamboo with some partially colored rags attached to it in this bamboo he said work out the devils of rain and wind and when he commanded them to discharge their office or to lie still they were obliged to obey being his subjects and prisoners when he had given his orders to these captive devils the bamboo had to be fastened to the highest point of his house in the marshall bennett islands to the eastern new guinea there was a duty of each chief of the clan to charm the gardens of his clan so as to make them productive the charm consisted of turning up part of the soil of a long stick and muttering an appropriate spell each special crop such as yams bananas sugarcane and coconuts had a special kind of stick and its special spell magicians as chiefs in new britain with regard to government among the malinesians of new britain or the bismarck archipelago i may cite the evidence of an experienced missionary the reverend dr george brown who settled in the islands at a time when no other white man was living in the group and he recited among the savage islanders for some five or six years he says there was no government so called in new britain except that former jurisdiction or power represented by the secret societies and that exercised by chiefs who were supposed to possess exceptional powers of sorcery in which craft these powers were very real owing i think principally to two reasons one of which was that the men themselves thoroughly believed that they were the possessors of the powers which they claimed and the other was that the people themselves believed that the men really possessed them there was indeed the title of chief totaru claimed and also given to them by the people but this was not the result of any election or necessarily by inheritance it was simply that a certain man claimed to be the professor of these powers and succeeded in convincing the people that he really possessed them again dr brown tells us that in new britain a ruling chief was always opposed to exercise priestly functions that is he professed to be in constant communication with the temperans spirits and through their influence he was enabled to bring the rain or sunshine fair winds or foul ones sickness or health successful disaster and war and generally to procure any blessing or curse for which the applicant was willing to pay a sufficient price if he spells to not produce the desired effect he always had a plausible explanation ready which was generally accepted as a sufficient excuse i think much of the success which these men undoubtedly had was due to their keen observation of natural phenomena and to the effects of fear upon the people dr tuner on the power of magical disease makers in tana according to dr tuner the real gods at tana may be said to be the disease makers it is surprising how these men are dreaded now firm the belief is that they have in their hands the power of life and death there are rain makers and thunder makers and flyer mosquito makers and a host of other sacred men by the disease makers are the most dreaded it is believed that these men can create disease and death by burning what is called nahuk nahuk means rubbish but principally refuse of food everything of the kind they bury or throw into the sea this the disease maker should get hold of it these fellows are always about and consider it their special business to pick up and burn that would have certain formalities anything that the nahuk line which comes in their way if disease makers sees the skin of a banana for instance he picks it up wraps it in the leaf and wears it all day hanging around his neck the people stare as they see even go along and say to each other he has got something he will do for somebody by and by at night in the evening he scrapes some bark off a tree mixes it up with a banana skin rolls all up tightly in a leaf in the form of cigar and then puts the one end close enough to the fire to cause it to singe and smolder and burn away very gradually presently here's a shell blowing there he says to his friends there it is there's a man who's rubbish I'm now burning he is ill let us stop burning and see what they bring in the morning when a person is taken ill he believes that it is occasioned by someone burning his rubbish instead of thinking about medicine he calls someone to blow a shell a large conch or other shell which then perforated and blown can be heard two or three miles off the meaning of it is to implore the person who was supposed to be burning the sick man's rubbish and causing on the pain to stop burning and it is a promise as well that a present will be taken in the morning the greater the pain the more they blow the shell and when the pain abates they cease supposing that the disease maker has been kind enough to stop burning night after night the science is broken by the dismal two to twoing of these shells in the morning the friends that suffer repair to the disease maker with the presence of pigs, mats, hatchets, beads, whale's teeth or such like things thus the sorcerers attain to a position of immense power and influence and acquire wealth by purely malicited magic is not by the imaginary benefits which they confirm the community but by the imaginary evils which they inflict on individuals that they climb the steps of a throne or the ladder that leads up to heaven for according to Dr. Turner these rascals are on the railroad divinity a process which they employ to accomplish their ends is a simple application of the principles of contagious magic whatever has once been in contact with a person remains in a sympathetic connection with him always and harm done to it is therefore harm done to him side by side with the evil which this superstition produces on the one hand by inspiring men with baseless terrors and the other by leading them to neglect effectual remedies for real evils we must recognize the benefit which incidentally confers on society by causing people to clear away and destroy the refuse of their food and other rubbish which have suffered to accumulate about their dwellings might by polluting the atmosphere prove a real not an imaginary source of disease in practice cleanliness based on motives of superstition may be just as effective for the preservation of health as it were founded on the best to sustain principles of sanitary science evolution of chiefs of kings out of magicians especially out of rain mages in Africa still rising in the scale of culture we come to Africa where both the chiefmanship and the kingship are fully developed and here the evidence for the evolution of the chief out of the magician and especially out of the rainmaker is comparatively plentiful power of the magicians among the wamburgui, wajaptan and wagogo of east Africa thus among the wamburgui a band two people of east Africa the original form of government was a family republic but the enormous power of the sorcerers transmitted by inheritance soon raised them to the rank of petty laws of chiefs of three chiefs living in the country by 1894 two were much dreaded as magicians and the wealth of cattle they possessed came to them almost wholly in the shape of prisons bestowed for their services in that capacity their principal art was that of rainmaking the chiefs of wattaturu another people of east Africa are said to be nothing but sorcerers to substitute of any direct political influence again among the wagogo of german east Africa the main power of the chiefs we're told is derived from the art of rainmaking if a chief cannot make rain himself he must be cured from someone who can among the messai the supreme chief is always the powerful medicine man again in the powerful messai nation of the same region the medicine men are not uncommonly the chiefs and the supreme chiefs of the race is almost invariably a powerful medicine man these laymen as they are called a priest as well as doctors skilled in interpreting hominins and dreams inverting in luck and in making rain the head chief for medicine man who has been called the messai pope is expected not only to make rain but to repel and destroy the enemies of the messai in war by his magic art the following is captain mocha's account of the messai pope the most prominent clan of the whole messai people is the n-giddon because to it belong not only the family of the chief all or bony but also the family the magicians the designation chief is strictly speaking not quite correct since the chief all or bony does not govern directly and exercises no real administrative function he rules only indirectly firm belief of his subjects in his prophetic gifts and his supernatural power of sorcery gives him an influence on the destinies of the people despotism and cruelty such as we find among all negro rulers are alien to him he is not so much a ruler as a national saint or patriarch the people speak of his sacred person with shy awe and no man dares to appear before this mighty personage without being summoned the aim of his policy is to unite and strengthen the messai while he allows free play to the predatory instincts of the warriors and raids and other tribes he guides his own people from the scourge of civil war to which the ceaseless crawls of the various districts with each other would otherwise continually give occasion this influence of his is rendered possible by the belief that victory can only be achieved through the secret power of the war medicine which none but he can compound and that defeat wouldn't fail to be followed if he were to predict it neither he nor his newest relatives march with the army to war he supplies remedies generally in the shape of magical medicines for plagues and sicknesses and he appoints festivals of prayer in honor of the messai god naga ai he delivers these predictions by means of an oracular game like the telling of beads and just as samson's miraculous strengthman from him when his hair was shorn so it is believed that the head chief the messai would lose his supernatural powers if his chin was shaved according to one writer the messai pope has never more than one eye the father knocks out his son's eye in order to qualify him for the holy office among the mandai of british chiefs africa the principal medicine man is a supreme chief among the mandai of british chiefs africa the orkoryot or principal medicine man also precisely the same position as the messai or oiboni it is to say he is supreme chief of the whole race he is a diviner and foretells the future by casting stones and spectacan trails interpreting dreams and prophesying when he is drunk the nandai believe implicitly in his powers he tells them when to begin planning their crops in time of drought he procures rain for them either directly or by means of the rain makers he makes women a cattle fruitful and no war party can expect to be successful if he has not approved of the foray his office is a redditary and his person is usually regarded as absolutely sacred nobody may approach him with the weapons in his head or speaking his presence unless the great man dresses him and it is most important that nobody should touch his head else he is feared that his powers are divination and so forth would depart from him however one of these sacred pontiffs was clubbed to death being held responsible for several public calamities to wit famine sickness and to fate and war the souk and turkana to other peoples of british chiefs africa distinguished between their chiefs and their medicine men who wield great power but very often the medicine man is a chief by virtue of his skill in medicine or the occult arts rain makers as chief among the tribes of the upper Nile again among the tribes the upper Nile the medicine men are generally the chiefs there are authority rests above all upon their supposed power of making rain for the rain is the one thing which matters to the people in those districts as if it does not come down at the right time it means untold hardships for the community it is therefore small wonder that men more cunning than their fellows should aggregate to themselves the power of producing it or that having gained such reputation they should trade on the credulity of their simpler neighbors hence most of the chiefs of these tribes are rain makers and enjoy popularity and proportion to their powers to give rain to their people at the proper season rain making chiefs always build their villages on the slopes of a fairly high hill as they no doubt know how the hills attract the clouds and that they are therefore fairly safe in their weather forecasts each of these rain makers has a number of rain stones such as rock crystal eventurine and a metheus which he keeps in a pot when he wishes to produce rain he plunges the stones in water and taking in his hand appealed cane which is split at the top he beckons with it to the clouds to come or waves them away in the way they should go muttering in incantation in the wild or he pours water and the entrails of a sheep or goat into a hollow in the stone and sprinkles the water towards the sky though the chief acquires wealth by the exercise of his supposed magical powers he often perhaps generally comes to a violent end for in time of drought the angry people assemble and kill him believing that it is he who prevents the rain from falling yet the office is usually hereditary and passes from father to son among the tribes which cherished these beliefs and observed these customs are the latuca bari la lulba and la coya rain makers as chiefs among the latuca that's for example with regard to the latuca we are told that amongst the most important but also the most dangerous occupations of the greater chiefs is the procuring of rain for their country almost all the greater chiefs enjoy the reputation of being rain makers and the requisite knowledge usually passes by inheritance from father to son however there are also here and they're among the natives persons who without being chiefs busy themselves with rain making if there has been no rain in a district for a long time and the people wish to attract ever this sake of the sewing they apply it to their chief bringing him a present of sheep goats or the urgent cases cattle or a girl and if the presence seems to him sufficient he promises to finish rain but it appears to him too little he asks for more if some day's parts of that rain it gives the magician opportunity for claiming fresh presence on the ground that the smallness of the offered gifts enters the coming of the rain when the cupidity of the rain maker is satisfied he goes to work in the usual way pouring water over two flat stones one called the male and the other female they are covered to a depth of three inches the male stone is a common white quartz that female is brownish if still no rain falls he makes a smoky fire in the open with certain herbs and if the smoke melts straight up rain is near although an unsuccessful rain maker is often banished or killed his son always succeeds him in the dignity amongst the berry the procedure of the rain making chief to draw down the water from heaven is somewhat elaborate he has many rain stones consisting of rock crystals and pink and green granite these are deposited in the hollows are some 20 slabs of niece and across the hollows are laid numerous iron rods various shapes and sizes when rain is to be made these iron rods are set up in a perpendicular position and water is poured on the crystals and stones then the rain maker takes up the stones one by one and oils them praying to his dead father to send the rain praying to his dead father to send the rain one of the iron rods is provided with a hook and another is a two-headed spear with the hook the rain maker hooks and attracts the rain clouds with the two-headed spear he attracts and drives them away in this procedure the prayer to the dead ancestor is religious while the rest of the ceremony is magical thus as so often happens the savage seeks to compass his object by combining magic with religion the logical inconsistency does not trouble him provided he attains his end further the rain maker chief for the berry is supposed to be able to make women fruitful for this purpose he takes nine rod with a hollow bob at each end in which are small stones grasping the rod by the middle he shakes it over the would-be mother rettling the stones and muttering an incantation magical powers of chiefs among the bongo and denkers again among the bongo a tribe of the same region the influence of the chiefs is said to rest in great part on a belief in their magical powers for the belief is credited with the knowledge of certain roots which are the only means of communicating with the dangerous spirits of whose mischievous pranks the bongo stand in great fear in the denger denger nation to the northeast of the bongo men who are supposed to be in close communication with spirits platform and opponent is believed that they make rain conjure away all calamities foresee the future exercise evil spirits know all that goes on even at a distance at the wild beasts in their service i can call down every kind of disaster on their enemies one of these men became the richest and most esteemed chief for the kick tribe through his skill in ventriloquism he kept a cage from which the gurus of imaginary lions and the hells of imaginary hyenas were heard to proceed and he gave out that these beasts got his house and were ready at his bidding to rush forth on his enemies the dread which he infused into the tribe and his neighbors was incredible from all sides ox was sent to him his presence so that his herds were the most numerous in the country another of these conjurers in the twig tribe had a real tame lion and four real fat snakes which he kept in front of his door to the great or the natives who could only attribute the pacific demeanor of these ferocious animals to sorcery but it does not appear that the real lion inspired nearly so much terror as the imaginary one from which we may perhaps infer that among these people ventriloquism is a more solid basis of political power even in lion taming chiefs and kings as rain makers in central africa in central africa again the lindu tribe to the west of lake elbert firmly believe that certain people possess the power of making rain among them the rain maker either is a chief or almost invariably becomes one the banyoro also have a great respect for the dispensers of rain whom they loy with a profusion of gifts the great dispenser he who has absolutely uncontrollable power over the rain is the king but he can depute his power to other persons so that the benefit may be distributed and the heavenly water laid on over the various parts of the kingdom a catholic missionary observes that a superstition common to the different peoples of equatorial africa attributes to the petty kings of the country the exclusive power of making the rain to fall in extreme cases the power is ascribed to certain kings more privileged than the rest such as those of huwila, humby, faray, blabibi and others these kings profit by the superstition in order to draw to themselves many presence of cattle but the rain must fall after the sacrifice of an ox and if it tarries the king who has never had a loss for excuses to extradite himself from the scrape will ascribe the failure to the defects of the victim and will seize the pretext to claim more cattle among the bariaka a tribe at the kasi district in the congo free state magicians are exempt from justice and the chief is a principal magician and among the ban yosi another tribe the same district there is or was a few years ago a chief who passed for the greatest magician in the country medicine men is chiefs in western africa in western as well as in eastern and central africa we meet with the same union of chiefly with magical functions thus in the fan tribe the strict distinction between chief and medicine man does not exist the chief is also a medicine man and a smith to boot for the fans are stained the smith's crafts sacred and none but chiefs may meddle with it the chiefs of the arsidun district in the cameroons have as such very little influence over their subjects but if the chief happens to be also the fetish priest as he generally is among the aqois he has not only powerful influence in all fetish matters and most of the violent interests of the people are bound up with fetish worship but he also enjoys great authority in general a few years ago the head chief of vetein on the cross river in southern nigeria was an old man whom the people had compelled to take office in order that he should look after the fetishes or jujus and work magic for the benefit of the community in accordance with the old custom which is binding on the head chief he was never allowed to leave his compound that is to ensure in which his house stands he gave the following card of himself to an english official who paid him a visit i've been shut up 10 years but being an old man i don't miss my freedom i am the oldest man of the town and they keep me here to look after the jujus and conduct the right celebrated when women are about to give birth to children and other ceremonies of the same kind by the observance and performance of these ceremonies i bring game to the hunter cause the yam crop to be good bring fish to the fishermen and make rain to fall so they bring me meat yams fish etc to make rain i drink water and squirt it out and pray to our big deities if i were to go outside this compound i should fall down dead or returning to this hut my wives cut my hair and nails and take great care from the pairings chiefs as rain makers in southern africa as to the relation between the officers of chief and rain maker in south africa a well-informed writer observes in very old days the chief was the great rain maker of the tribe some chiefs allowed no one else to compete with them this successful rain maker should be chosen as chief there was also another reason the rain maker was sure to become a rich man if he gained a great reputation and it would manifestly never do for the chief to allow anyone to be too rich the rain maker exerts tremendous control over the people and so it would be most important to keep this function connected with royalty tradition always places the power of making rain as the fundamental glory of ancient chiefs and heroes and it seems probable that it may have been the origin of chieftainship the man who made the rain would naturally become the chief in the same way chucker the famous zulu despot used to declare that he was the only diviner in the country for revealed rivals his life would be insecure these south african rain megas move themselves with mud and sacrifice oxen is an essential part of the charm almost everything is thought to turn to the color of the beasts thus umbandine the old king on the swazis had huge herds of cattle of a peculiar color which was particularly well adapted for the production of rain hence debutations came to him from distant tribes praying and bribing him to make rain by the sacrifice of his cattle and he used to threaten to bind up the sky if they did not satisfy his demands the power which by these means he welded was enormous similarly mablan a chief of the bowender in the north eastern corner of the transvaal enjoyed a wide reputation and was revered beyond the limits of his own tribe because he was credited with the power of rain making a greater power in the eyes of natives than that of the asagai hence he was constantly impotuned by other chiefs to exercise his power and received valuable presence of girls oxen and red and green bees as inducements to turn on the heavenly water tap the power of rain makers among the matabels among the matabels of south africa the witch doctors are supposed to be on speaking terms with spirits and their influences described as tremendous in the time of king lube and gula some years ago their power was as great as if not greater than the kings similarly speaking of the south african tribes in general dr moffat says that the rainmaker is in the estimation of the people no mean person possessing an influence over the minds of the people superior even to that of the king who is likewise compelled to yield to the dictates of this artificial immatabella land the rainy season falls in november december january and february for several weeks before the rain sets in the clouds gather in heavy banks dark and lowering then the king is busy with his magicians compounding potions of wondrous strength to make the laboring clouds discharge their pent-up burden on the thirsty earth he may be seen gazing at every black cloud for his people flock from all parts to big rain from him their rainmaker for their parched fields and they thank and praise him when a heavy rain is fallen the king of the matabels is rainmaker a letter dated from by the way the 12th of november 1880 records that low ben gula king of the matabels arrived yesterday evening at his corral of the white rocks he brought with him the rain to his people for according to the ideas of the matabels he is a king you ought to make the rain and the good season in all senses of the word and a low ben gula had chosen well the day and in the hour where it was in the midst of a tremendous storm that the king made his solemn entrance into the capital he was now at the arrival of the king and of the rain gives rise every year to a little festival for the rain is the great benefit conferred by the king the pledge of future harvest and of plenty after eight months of desolating drought to bring down the needy showers the king of the matabels boils a magic hell broth in a cauldron which sends up volumes of stain to the blue sky but to make assurance doubly sure he has recourse to religion as well as to magic for he sacrifices 12 black oxen to the spirits of his fathers and pray to them no great spirits my father and grandfather i thank you for having granted last year to my people more weight than our enemies and my shunners easier also in gratitude for the 12 black oxen which i'm about to dedicate to you make us to be the best fed and the strongest people in the world as the king of the matabels acts not only as a magician but as a priest for he prays and sacrifices to the spirits of his forefathers end of section 13 section 14 of the golden bow part one the magic art in the evolution of kings volume one by james frazer this is a liberal vox recording all liberal vox recordings in the public domain for more information or volunteer please visit liberal vox.org recorded by leon harvey chapter six part two first in africa kings have probably often been developed out of magicians and especially out of rain makers the foregoing evidence renders it probable that in africa the kings often been developed out of the public magician and especially out of the rain maker the unbounded fear which the magician inspires and the wealth which he amasses in the exercise of his profession may both be supposed to have contributed to his promotion but of the career of a magician and especially of a rain maker offers great rewards to the unsuccessful practitioner of the art has been set with many pitfalls into which the unskilled or unlucky artist may fall the position of the public sorcerer is indeed a very precarious one or where the people firmly believe that he has it in his power to make the rain to fall the sun to shine and a fruit so you have to grow the naturally impute drought and death to his culpable negligence or willful obstancy and they punish him accordingly we have seen that in africa the chief who fails to procure rain is often exiled or killed examples such punishments could be multiplied kings in africa punish for drought and death thus in some parts of west africa when prayers and offerings present to the king and fell to procure rain his subjects bind him with ropes and taking by force to the grave of his forefathers that he may obtain from them the needed rain the vanguards in west africa ascribe to their king the power of causing rain or fine weather so long as the weather is fine they load in with presence of grain and cattle by a long drought of rain threatens to spoil the crops they insult and beat him to the weather changes when the harvest fails or the surf the coast is too heavy to allow or fishing the people of lango accuse the king of a bad heart and depose him on the grain cursed high priest of fetish king who bears the title of boyo is represented for the health of the community the fertility of the earth and the abundance of fish in the sea and rivers and the country suffers in any of these respects the boyo is deposed from his office in usukuma a great district on the southern bank of the victoria the rain and locus question is part and parcel of the sultan's government he too must know how to make rain and drive away the locus if he and his men are unable to accomplish this his whole existence is at stake in times of distress on a certain occasion when the rain so greatly desired by the people did not come the sultan was simply driven out in a tatua new nasa the people in fact hold that rulers must have power over nature and her phenomena again we are told of the natives of the nasa region generally that they are persuaded that rain only falls as a result of magic and the important duty of causing it to descend devolves on the chief of the tribe if rain does not come at the proper time everybody complains more than one petty king has been banished his country because of drought similarly among the anti-mores of madagascar the chiefs are held responsible for the operation of the laws of nature hence if the land is smitten with a blight or devastated by the clouds of locusts if the cows yield little milk or fatal epidemics rage among the people the chief is not only deposed but stripped of his property and banished because they say that under a good chief such things are not to happen so too if the anti morona we read that although the chiefs of this tribe are chosen by the people during their tenure of power they enjoy a respect which borders on adoration but if a crop of rice fails or any other calamity happens they're immediately deposed sometimes even killed and yet their successor is always chosen from the family among the latukas of the upper nile when the crops are withering in the fields and all the efforts of the chief to bring down rain have proved fruitless that people commonly attack him by night rob him of all he possesses and drive him away but often they kill him in other parts of the world kings have been punished for failing to regulate the course of nature in many other parts of the world kings have been expected to regulate the course of nature for the good of their people and have been punished for their fail to do so it appears that the scotians when food was scarce used to put their kings in bonds in ancient egypt the sacred kings were blamed for the failure of the crops but the sacred beasts were also held responsible for the course of nature when pestilence and other calamities had fallen on the land in consequence of a long and severe drought the priests took the animals by night and threatened them if they were able to not abate they slew the beasts on the coral island of nul or savage island in the south pacific they are formally reigned a line of kings but as the kings were also high priests and were supposed to make the food grow the people became angry them in times of scarcity and killed them till at last as one after another was killed no one would be king and the monarchy came to an end ancient chinese writers inform us that in korea the blame was slayed on the king whenever too much or too little rain fell and the crops did not ripen some said that he must be deposed others that he must be slain the chinese emperor himself is deemed responsible the drought is at all severe and many are the self-condemnatory addicts on the subject published in the pages of the venerable beckon gazette in extreme cases the emperor clad in humble vestments sacrifices to heaven and implores its protection so too the kings of tonkin used to take blame to themselves when the country was visited by such calamities as scanty harvests death food destructive hurricanes and cholera on these occasions the monarch would sometimes publicly confess his guilt and imposing himself on penance as a means to appeasing the wrath of heaven in former days it sometimes happened that when the country suffered from drought and durf the king of tonquin was obliged to change his name the hope that this would turn the weather to rain but if the drought continued even after the change of name the people would sometimes resort to stronger measures and transfer the title of king from the legitimate monarchy to his brother son or other new relation power of medicine men among the north american indians among the american indians the furthest advance towards civilized age was made under the monarchal and theocratic governments of Mexico and peru but we know too little of the early history of these countries to say whether the predecessors though deified kings were medicine men or not perhaps the traces such as succession may be detected in the oath which the Mexican kings took when they mounted the throne they swore that they would make the sun to shine clouds to give rain rivers to flow and the oath to bring forth fruits and abundance certainly in aboriginal america the source for all the medicine men surrounded by a halo of mystery and an atmosphere of awe was the personage of great influence and importance and he may well have developed new achievement king in many tribes though positive evidence of such a development appears to be lacking thus catlin tells us that in north america the medicine men are valued as dignitaries in the tribe and the greatest respect is paid to them by the whole community not only for their skill in their materia medica but more especially for their attack in magic and mysteries in which they all deal to a very great extent in all tribes our doctors are conjurers our magicians our soothsayers and i like to have said high priests in as much as they super intend to conduct all their religious ceremonies they looked upon by all his oracles of the nation in all councils of war and peace they have a seat with the chiefs are regularly consulted before any public steps taken and the greatest difference and respect is paid to their opinions among the little clerks of northwest america each band is headed by a chief and one more medicine men the latter however do not possess any secular power as chiefs but they acquire an authority of shamanism to which even the chiefs themselves subject the lewd chokes are very superstitious and place implicit faith in the pretendent incantations of their medicine men for whom they entertain great fear the power of the medicine men is very great and they use every means they can to increase it by working on the fears and credulity of the people their influence exceeds even that of the chiefs the power of the latter consists in the quantity of beads they possess their wealth and the means that affords them to work it all to those to whom they may be able to dispose or the power of medicine man consists in the harm they believe he is able to do by shamanism should they happen to displease him in any way is when sickness prevails and the conjure rules supreme is then that he fills his bead bags and creases his riches amongst the tenor indians of the same region the social standing of the medicine man is on the whole at desirable one but it has also its drawbacks and its dark side the medicine man is decidedly influential among his fellow savages he is consulted on this and to on account of the superior knowledge imparted to him by the spirits he is feared on account of his power to do evil is to cause the death of a person to ruin his undertakings to render him unsuccessful on the hunt by driving away the game from his path and cause a loss of his property of his strength of his health of his faculties etc the medicine man is rich because his services when summoned or even when accepted though uncalled for are generously remunerated he is respected on account of his continual intercourse with the supernatural world his words when said in a peculiar low tone with a momentary glow in the eyes which he seems able to control the will when other during his sleep real feigned are taken as oracles as very words of the spirit in short of these tribes who have no chiefs no religion no medical knowledge he is a nearest approach to a chief a priest and a physician similarly in california the shaman was and still is perhaps the most important individual among them i do in the absence of any definite system of government the word of a shaman is great weight as a class i regard with much or as a rule are a badge much more than the chief barrel of medicine man among north american indians as leader of the local branch of a secret society the most noted madhu shaman of each district was supposed to make rain when it was needed to ensure a good crop of edible acorns and a plentiful supply of salmon and a driveway able spirits disease and epidemics from the village further was his business to inflict disease and death in hostile villages which he did by burning certain roots and blowing the smoke towards the doomed village well he said over there over there not here to the other place do not come back this way we are good make those people sick kill them they are bad people among the your goods another tribe of californian indians the rain makers exercised great influence one of them by his insulating interests eloquence and jugglery spread his fame at a distance of 200 miles and it currently availed himself of two years of drought to levied contributions far and wide from the trembling indians who attributed to his magic before the rain in the same tribe the wizards threw large profits from the rattlesnake dance which they danced of his spring capping about rattlesnakes twined round their arms for after this exhibition many symptoms paid them for complete immunity from snake bites which wizards were believed able to grant for a year power of medicine men among the south american indians in south america also the magicians or medicine men seem to have been on the high road to tuften ship or kingship one of the earliest settlers on the coast of brazil the frenchman red reports that the indians hold these pagas or medicine men in such honor and reverence that they adore or rather idolize them you may see the common folk go to meet them prostrate themselves and pray to them saying grant that i be not ill that i do not die it i know my children or some such request any answers you shall not die you shall not be ill and such a like replies but sometimes if it happens that these pagas do not tell the truth our things turn out otherwise their neighbor addicted the people make no scruples killing them as unworthy of the title and dignity of pagas the indians of brazil say a modern writer who knew them well have no priests but only magicians who at the same time use medical help and exorcism in order to exert influence over the superstition and the dread of spirits felt by the rude multitude we may perfectly admire them with the shamans of the northeastern asianic peoples but like the shamans they are not mere magicians fetishmen soothsayers interpreters of dreams visionaries and castles out of devils their activity has also a political character in so far as they influence the decisions of the leaders and of the community in public business and exert a certain authority more than anybody else as judges charities and witnesses in private affairs among the lengua indians of the grand chuckle every clan has its kazik or chief but he possesses little authority in virtue of his office he has to make many presents so his seldom grows rich and is generally more shabbily clad than any of his subjects as a matter of fact magician is the man who has most power in his hands and is accustomed to receive presents instead of to give them his magician's duty to bring down his fortune and plagues on the enemies of his tribe and to guard his own people against hostile magic for these services he is bought paid and by them he acquires a position of great influence and authority among the innings of guana also the magician or mess men by a bayman is a personage of great importance by his magic art he alone is believed can counteract the machinations of the great host of evil spirits to which these savages attribute all the ills of life it is almost impossible we are told to revestimate the dreadful sense of the constant and unavoidable danger in which the Indian would live were not for his trust and protecting power of the magician every villager is one side spiritual guardian who is physician priest and magician in one his influence is immense no indian dare refuse him anything he takes a fancy to from a trifle of food up to a man's wife nc's cunning fellows live in oneness on the fat of the land and acquire a large harem their houses are commonly full of women who serve them in the capacity of beasts of burden as well as of wives plotting really long under the weight of the baggage or long journeys while their lord and master fantastically tricked out in feathers and paint strolls ahead burden only with his magic rattle and perhaps his bow and arrows power of medicine men among the pagan tribes of the malei peninsula among the world pagan tribes of the malei peninsula the connection between the officers of magician and chief is very close indeed the two officers are often united in the same person among these savages as among the malaise the accredited intermediary between gods and men is in all cases the medicine man or sorcerer in the semantrimes the office of chief medicine man appears to be generally combined with that of chief but amongst the sakai and chakun these officers are sometimes separated and although the chief is almost invariably a medicine man of some repute he is not necessarily the chief medicine man anymore than the chief medicine man is necessarily the minister of head of the tribe in both cases there is unfound supply of aspirants to the office though it may be taken for granted that although it has been equal a successful medicine man would have much the best prospect of being elected chief that in the vast majority of cases his priestly duties form an important part of a chief's work the medicine man is as might be expected duly credited with supernatural powers his task is to preside as chief medium at all the ceremonies to instruct the youth of the tribe to ward off as well as to heal all forms of sickness and trouble to foretell the future as affecting the results of any given act to avert when necessary the wrath of heaven and even when re-embodied after death in the shape of a wild beast to extend a benign production to his devoted descendants among the sakai and chakun he is provided with a distinctive form of dress and body painting and carries an emblematic wand or a staff by virtue of his office development of kings out of magicians among the malaise throughout the malaise region the raja or king is commonly regarded with superstitious veneration as a possessor of supernatural powers and there are grounds for thinking that he too like apparently so many african chiefs has been developed out of simple magician at the present day the malaise firmly believe that the king possesses a personal influence over the works of nature such as the growth of the crops and the bearing of fruit trees the same prolific virtue is supposed to reside though an illicit degree in his delegates and even in the persons of europeans who chance to have charge of districts thus in selangor one of the native states the malay penijila the successful failure of the rice crops is often attributed to a change of district officers the touratillas or southern sleeves hold that the prosperity of the rice depends on the behavior of their princes and that bad government by which they mean a government which does not confirm to any custom will result in a failure of the crops belief of the daix and the power of the raja to fertilize the rice the daix of sarawak believed that their famous english ruler raja brook was endowed with a certain magical virtue which he properly applied could render the rice crops abundant hence when he visited a tribe they used to bring him the seed which they intended to sow next year and he fertilized it by shaking over it the women's necklaces which had been previously dipped in a special mixture and when he entered a village the women would wash and bathe his feet first with water and then with the milk of a young coconut and lastly with water again and all this water which had touched his person they preserved for the purpose of distributing it on their farms believing that it ensured an abundant harvest tribes which were too far off for him to visit used to send him a small piece of white cloth and a little gold or silver and when these things have been impregnated by his generative virtue they buried them in their fields and confidently expected a heavy crop once they were in european remarked at the rice crops of the sanban tribe within the chief immediately replied they could not be otherwise since raja brook had never visited them and he begged that mr brook might be induced to visit his tribe and remove the sterility of their land links between malay rajas and magicians among the malay is the links which unite the king or raja with the magician happened to be unusually plain and conspicuous thus magician shares with the king the privilege of using cloth died yellow the royal color he has considerable political influence and he can compel people to address him in ceremonial language or which indeed the phraseology is even more copious in its application to a magician than to a king moreover and this is a fact of great significance the malay magician owns certain insignia which are said to be exactly an act of this to the regalia of the king they even bear the very same name kabasaran now the regalia of the malay king are not more jeweled baubles designed to impress the multitude with a pomp and splendor royalty they are regarded as wonder working talismans the possession of which carries with it the right to the throne if the king loses them he thereby forfeits the allegiance of his subjects it seems therefore to be a proper inference that in the malay region the regalia of the kings are only the conjuring apparatus of their predecessors the magicians at that in this part of the world accordingly the magician is a humble grub or chrysalis which in due time births and discloses their gorgeous butterfly the raja or king in saliv's the regalia a talismans or fetishes the possession of which carries with it the right to the throne nowhere apparently in the edin archipelago is as view of the regalia as the true front of wriggle dignity carried to such lengths as in southern saliv's here the royal authority is supposed to be in some mysterious fashion embodied in the regalia while the princes are all the power of exercise in all the respect they enjoy to their possession of these precious objects in short the regalia reign and the princes are merely their representatives hence whoever happens to possess the regalia regarded by the people as their lawful king for example if a deposed monarch contrives to keep the regalia his former subjects remain loyal to him in their hearts and look upon his successor as an usurper who is to be bathed only in so far as he can exact obedience by force and on the other hand in an insurrection the first aim of the rebels is to seize the regalia or if they can only make themselves masters of them the authority of the sovereign is gone in short the regalia are here fetishes which confer a title to the throne at control of fate of the kingdom houses are built for them to dwell in as if they were living creatures furniture weapons that even lands are assigned to them like the ark of god they are carried with the army to battle and on various occasions the people appropriate them as if they were gods like prayer and sacrifice and by smearing them with blood some of them serve as instruments of divination or are brought forth in times of public disaster for the purpose of staying the evil whatever it may be for example when plague is right among mental beasts or when there is a prospect of death the bullganese bring out the regalia smear them with buffalo's blood and carry them about for the most part these fetishes are heirlooms of which their origin is forgotten some of them are said to have fallen from heaven popular tradition traces the foundation of the oldest states to the discovery or acquisition of one of these miraculous objects and maybe a stone a piece of wood a fruit a weapon or whatnot of a peculiar shape or color often the original regalia have disappeared in course of time by their places taken by the various articles of property which were bestowed on them and to which the people have transferred their payers allegiance the oldest dynasties have the most regalia and the holiest regalia consists of relics of the bodies of former princes which are kept in golden castles wrapped in silk regalia as talismans in celebs at palapal the capital of luwu a kingdom on the coast of celebs two toy cannons with barrels like thin gas pipes are regalia their possession is supposed to render the town impregnable other regalia of this kingdom availed from vulgar eyes and bark cloth when a missionary request to see them the official applied that it was strictly forbidden to open the bundle were to do so with your own and swallow them up in bema the principal part of the regalia or public tazmin consists of a sacred brown house which no man may ride is always stable in the world palace when the animal passes the government fought on high days and holidays is saluted with the fire of five guns when it is led to the river to base the world spear is carried before it and any man who does not give way to the beast or crosses the road in front of it has to pay a fine but the horse is mortal and when it goes the way of all horse flesh another steed chosen from the same stud reigns in its place magical virtue of regalia in egypt and africa but if in the malay region the regalia are essentially wonder working talismans or fetishes which the kings appear to have derived from their predecessors the magicians we may conjecture that other parts of the world the emblems of royalty may at some time have been viewed in a similar light and have had a similar origin in ancient egypt the two royal crowns the white and the red were supposed to be endowed with magical virtues indeed to be themselves divinities embodiments of the sun god one text declares the white crown is the eye of horus the red crown is the eye of horus another text speaks of a crown as a great magician and applied to the image of a god the crown was supposed to confirm the deity in the possession of his soul and of his form among the yorubas of west africa at the present time the king's crown is sacred and is supposed to be the shrine of a spirit which has to be propertated when the king orni of aif visited lego some years ago he had to sacrifice five sheep to his crown between a baidan and eif a two days journey on foot among the ashantees the throne or chair of the king or chief is believed to be inhabited by a spirit to which is consecrated and to which human sacrifices were formally offered at present the victims are a sheep it is the birth of unification of power hence a king is not a king if a chief is not a chief until he has been solemnly installed on throne among the horse an ui tribe of the toka land in german west africa the king's proper throne is small and the king does not sit on it usually it is bound round with magical cords and wrapped up in a sheep's skin from time to time it is taken out of the wrappings washed in a stream and smeared all over with the blood of a sheep which has been sacrificed for the purpose the flesh of the sheep is boiled an abortion of it eaten by every man who is being present at the ceremony regalia venerated in cambodia scathea and ancient Greece in cambodia the regalia are regarded as a palladium on which the existence of the kingdom depends they are committed to brahmins for safekeeping in antiquity the scathean kings treasured as sacred a plough a yoke a battle accent and a cup all of gold which was said to have fallen from heaven the offer great sacrifice to these sacred things at an annual festival and if the man in charge of them fell asleep under the open sky he was believed that he would die within the year the scepter of king agamenon or what passed for such was worshipped as a god at chearonia a man acted as priest of the scepter for a year at a time and sacrifice were offered to it daily the golden lamb of my kinnae on the possession of which according to legend the two rivals atreus and theis distus based their claim to the throne may have been a royal talisman of this sort the belief that kings possessed magical or supernatural powers to control the course of nature for the good of their subjects seems to have been shared by the ancestors of all the aryan races from india to ireland the belief that kings possessed magical or supernatural powers by virtue of which they can fertilize the earth and confer other benefits on their subjects was seemed to have been shared by the ancestors of all the aryan races from india to ireland and it has left clear traces of itself in our own country down to modern times thus the ancient hindu or book called the laws of manu describes as follows the effects for good kings reign in that country where the king avoids taking the property of mortal sinners men are born in due time and are long lived and the crops of the hubs been men spring up each as it was sown and the children die not and no misshapen of spring is born in Homeric Greece kings and chiefs were spoken of as sacred divine their houses too were divine and their chariots sacred and it was thought that the reign of good king caused black earth to bring forth wheat and barley the trees to be loaded with fruit the fox to multiply and the sea to yield fish a Greek historian of a much later age tells us that in the reign of a very bad king of lydia the country suffered from drought for which he would seem to have held a king responsible there is a tradition that once when the land of the adornians in Thrace bore no fruit the god Dionysus intimated to the people that its fertility could be restored by putting their king by surges to death so they took him to Mount Pangeum and they were caused to be torn to pieces by horses when the crops failed the burgundians used to blame their kings and oppose them swedish and danish kings in the time of the swedish king demuled a mighty famine broke out which lasted several years and could be stayed by the blood neither of beasts nor of men therefore in a great popular assembly held up solar the chief decided their king demuled himself was a cause of the scarcity that must be sacrificed for good seasons so they slew him and smeared with his blood the altar of the gods again we are told the Swedes always attributed good or bad crops to their kings as the cause now in the reign of king Olaf there came dear times and famine and the people thought that the fault was the kings because he was sparing any sacrifices so mustering an army they marched against him surrounded his dwelling and burned him in it giving him to Odin as a sacrifice for good crops in the middle ages when Waldemar the first king of Denmark travelled in Germany mothers bought their infants and husband men their seed for him to lay his hands on thinking that children would both thrive the better for the royal touch and for like reason farmers asked him to throw the seed for them it was the belief of the ancient Irish that when their kings observed the customs of their ancestors the seasons were mild the crops plentiful the cattle fruitful the warriors are bound with fish and the fruit trees had to be propped up on account of the weight of their produce a canon attribute to st. Patrick enumerates among the blessings that attend the reign of a just king find weather calm seas crops abundant and trees leading with fruit on the other hand dearth dryness of cows plight of fruit and scarcity of corn where regards infallible proofs that the reigning king was bad for example in the reign of the usupra king carbury can cut eve was the state of island fruitless of corn for they used to be only one grain on the stalk fruitless of rivers milkless of cattle plenty less of fruit for these people won a corn on the stalk magical virtue attributed to the chiefs of the mclowds superstitions of the same sort seem to have lingered in the highland of scotland down to the 18th century when dr. johnson traveled in sky it was still held that the return of the lord to dung veden after any considerable absence produced a plentiful capture of herring the layered of dung vegan is chief of the clan of mclowds and his family still owns a banner which is called mclowds fairly banner on account of the supernatural powers attributed to it when it is unfurled victory and war attends it and it relieves its followers from imminent danger by the virtues it can exert only thrice and already it has been twice unfurled when the potato crop failed many of the common people desired that the magical banner should be displayed apparently in the belief that the mirror side of it would produce a fine crop of potatoes everyone with a child who sees it is taken with premature labor and every cow casts her calf a relic of this belief is the notion that english kings can heal scroffula by their touch perhaps the last relic of such superstitions which lingered about our english kings was a notion that could heal scroffula by their touch the disease was accordingly known as the king's evil queen elizabeth often exercises miraculous gift of healing on midsummer day 1633 charles the first killed a hundred patients at one sweep in the chapel royal at hollywood but it was under his son charles the second that the practice seems to have attained its highest vote his respect the merry monarch did not let the grass grow under his feet it was the 29th of may 1660 when he was brought home in trial from exile amid a shouting multitude and a forest of branched swords overrode stream with flowers and through his streets hung with tapestry while the fountains ran wine and all the bells of london rang for joy and it was on the 6th of july that it began to touch for the king's evil charles second touching for the king's evil scroffula the ceremony is thus described by evelyn who may have witnessed it his majesty being first to touch for your evil according to custom thus his matey sitting under his state in the banqueting house the surgeons cause the sick to be brought or led up to the throne where they kneeling yet king strokes their faces or cheeks with both hands at once at which instant a chaplain in his formality says he put his hands upon them and he healed them this he said to everyone in particular when they had been all touched they came up again in the same order and the other chaplain kneeling and having angel gold strung on white ribbon in his arm delivers him one by one to his matey he puts them about the necks of the touched as they pass whilst the first chaplain repeats that as you chewed light which came into your world then follows an epistle as at first of gospel from liturgy prayers for the sick with some alteration lastly you're blessing and then the low chamberlain and the comptroller of the household bring a basin or a towel for his majesty to wash baby's witness the same ceremony at the same place on the 13th of april in the following year and he's recorded his opinion that it was an ugly office and a symbol it is said that in the course of his reign charles a second touched near a hundred thousand persons for scruffula the press to get near him was sometimes terrific on one occasion six or seven of those who came to be healed were trampled to death while the hope of miraculous cure attracted the peers in sanguine the certainty of receiving angel gold attracted the needy and vassius and was not always easy for the royal surgeons to distinguish between the motives of the applicants this solemn mummery cost the state little less than ten thousand pounds a year the call had a william the third contentiously refused to let himself to the hocus-pocus and when his palace was besieged by the usual unsavory crowd he ordered them to be turned away with the doll on the only occasion when he was important into laying his hand on a patient he said to him god give you better hell for more sense however the practice was continued as might have been expected by the dull bigot james the second his dull daughter queen and his childhood dr johnson was touched for scruffula by the queen and he always retained a faint a solemn recollection of her as of a lady in diamonds of a long black hood to judge by the two faithful picture which his biographer is drawn of the doctor's appearance later life we may conclude that the touch of the queen's hand was not a perfect remedy for the disorder perhaps a stream of divine grace which had flowed so copiously in the veins of charles the second had been dried up by the interposition of the skeptical william other kings and chiefs have claimed to heal diseases by a touch the king of france also claimed to possess the same gift of healing by touch which they said to have derived from clavus or from st louis while our english claims inherited it from edward the confessor we may suspect that these estimates of the antiquity of the gift were far too modest and that the barbarous nace savage predecessors both of the sexon and of the middle vengen kings had with the same justice claimed the same power as many ages before down to the 19th century the west african tribe of the wellos in senegal ascribed to their royal family a like power of healing by touch mothers have been seen to bring their sick children to the queen who touched them somally with her foot on the back the stomach the head and the legs out which the women departed in peace convinced that their children had been made whole similarly the savage chiefs of tonga believed to heal scroffula in case of indurated liver by the touch of their feet and the cure was strictly homeopathic or disease was well as the cure was thought to be caused by contact with the royal person or with anything that belonged to it the fact royal postages in the vasservic and elsewhere have been supposed to live in a sort of atmosphere highly charged with what we may call spiritual electricity which if it blasts all who intrude into its charm circle as happily also the gift of making them whole again by touch we may conjecture that similar views prevail to nation times as to the predecessors of our english monarchs and that accordingly scroffula received its name of the king's evil from the belief that it was caused as well as cured by contact with the king in low angle policy is called the king's disease because the negroes imagined it to be heaven's punishment for treason mediated against the king on the whole king seemed to have been often evolved out of magicians but in course of time to have exchanged magical for religious functions in other words to have become priests instead of sorcerers on the whole then we seem to be justified in inferring that in many parts the world the king is the linear successor of the old magician or medicine man and once a special class of sorcerers has been segregated from the community and trusted by it with the discharge of duties on which the public safety and welfare i believe to depend these men greatly rise to wealth and power till their leaders blossom out into sacred kings but the great social revolution which thus begins with democracy and ends in despotism is attended by an intellectual revolution which affects both the conception and the functions of royalty for his time goes on the fallacy of magic becomes more and more apparent to the acute reminds and is slowly displaced by religion in other words the magician gives way to the priest who renouncing the attempt to control directly the process of nature for the good of man seeks to attain the same and indirectly by appealing to the gods and it do for him what he no longer fancies he can do for himself hence the king starting as a magician tends greatly to exchange the practice of magic for the priestly functions of prayer and sacrifice and while the distinction between the human and the divine is still imperfect the drawn is often imagined that men made themselves attain to godhead not merely after their death but in their lifetime through the temporary or permanent possession of their whole nature by a great and powerful spirit no class of the community is benefited so much as kings by this belief in the possible incarnation of a god in human form the doctrine of that incarnation and with the theory of the divinity of kings in the strict sense the world will form the subject by the following chapter end of section 14 section 15 on the golden bell about one the magic art in the evolution of kings volume one by james phraser this is a librivox recording or librivox recordings of the public domain for more information or volunteer please visit the provox.org recorded by Leon Harvey chapter seven incarnate human gods the conception of gods has been slowly evolved the instances which in the preceding chapters i've drawn from the beliefs and practices of rude peoples all over the world may suffice to prove that the savage fails to recognize those limitations to his power of a nature which seems obvious to us in a society where every man is supposed to be endowed more or less with powers which we should call supernatural it is plain that the distinction between gods and men is somewhat blurred or rather has scarcely emerged the conception of gods as superhuman beings endowed with powers to which man possesses nothing comparable in degree and hardly even in kind as blends slowly evolved in the course of history by primitive peoples the supernatural agents are not regarded as greatly if at all superior to man for they may be frightened and coerced by him into doing his will at this stage of thought the world is viewed as a great democracy all beings in it whether natural or supernatural are supposed to stand on a footing of tolerable equality but with the growth of his knowledge man learns to realize more clearly the vastness of nature and his own littleness and feebleness in presence of it the recognition of his helplessness does not however carry with it a corresponding belief in the importance of those supernatural beings with which his imagination pebbles his the universe on the contrary it enhances his conception of their power for the idea of the world as a system of impersonal forces acting in accordance with fixed and vulnerable laws has not yet fully dawned or darkened upon him the germ of the idea he certainly has and he acts upon it not only in magic art but in much of the business of daily life but the idea remains undeveloped and so far as he attempts to explain the world he lives in he peters it as the manifestation of conscious will and personal agency if then he feels himself to be so frail and slight how vast and powerful must he deem the beings who control the gigantic machinery of nature as religion grows magic declines into a black art thus as his old sense of equality with the gods slowly vanishes he resigns at the same time the hope of directing the course of nature by his own unnative resources that is by magic and looks more and more to the gods as a sole repositories of those supernatural powers which he once claimed to share with them with the advance of knowledge therefore prayer and sacrifice assume the leading place in religious ritual and magic which once ranked with them as a legitimate equal is gravely relegated to the background and sinks to the level of a black art is now regarded as an encroachment at once vain and impious on the domain of the gods and as such encounters the steady opposition of the priests whose reputation and influence rise or fall with those of their gods hence when at a late period the distinction between religion and superstition has emerged we find that sacrifice and prayer are the resources that pay us an enlightened portion of the community while magic is a refuge of the superstitious and ignorant but when still later the conception of the elemental forces as personal agents is giving way to the recognition of natural law then magic based as it implicitly is on the idea of a necessary and invariable sequence of cause and effect independent of personal will reappears from the obscurity and discredit into which it had fallen and by investigating the casual sequence in nature directly prepares the way for silence alchemy leads up to chemistry the conception of a man god or deity incarnate in human form belongs to an early stage of religious history the notion of a man god or of a human being endowed with divine or supernatural powers belongs essentially to that early period of religious history which gods and men are still viewed as beings of much the same order and before they are divided by the impossible gulf which to later thought opens up between them strange therefore as may seem to us so dear of a god incarnate in human form is nothing very struggling for an early man for an early man who sees in a man god or a god man only a higher degree of the same supernatural powers which he allocates in perfect good faith to himself nor does he draw any very sharp distance between a god and a powerful sorcerer his gods as we have seen are often merely invisible magicians who behind the veil of nature work the same sort of charms and incantations which the human magician works in a visible and bodily form among his fellows and as the gods are commonly believed to exhibit themselves in the likeness of men to their worshipers it is easy for the magician if he supposed miraculous powers to acquire the reputation of being an incarnate deity thus beginning as little more than a simple conjurer the medicine manual magician tends to blossom out into a full blown god and king and one only in speaking of him as a god we must be aware of importing into the savage conception of dirty those very abstract and complex ideas which we attach to the term our ideas on this profound subject are the fruit of a long intellectual and moral evolution and they are so far from being shared by the savage that he cannot even understand them when they are explained to him much of the controversy which has raged as to the religion of the lower races has sprung merely from mutual misunderstanding the savage does not understand the thoughts of the civilized man and few civilized men understand the thoughts of the savage when the savage uses his word for god he has in his mind a being of a certain sort when the civilized man uses his word for god he has in his mind a being of a very different sort and if as commonly happens the two men are equally unable to place themselves at the other's point of view nothing but confusion and mistakes can result from their discussions if we civilized men insist on limiting the name of god to that particular conception of the divine nature which we ourselves have formed then we must confess that the savage has no god at all but we showed here more closely to the facts of history if we allow most of the highest savages at least to possess a rudimentary notion of certain supernatural beings who may fittingly be called gods though not in the full sense in which we use the word that rudimentary notion represents in all probability the germ out of which the civilized peoples have gradually evolved their own high conceptions of deity and if we could trace the whole course of religious development we might find that the chain which links our idea of the godhead with that of the savage is one and unbroken examples of incarnate human deities with these explanations and cautions i will now adduce some examples of gods who have been believed by their worshipers to be incarnate in living human beings with the men or women the persons in whom a deity is thought to reveal himself up by no means always kings or descendants of kings i suppose the incarnation may take place even in men of the humblest rank in india for example one human god started in life as a cotton pleacher and another as a son of a carpenter i shall therefore not draw my examples exclusively from loyal personages as i wish to illustrate the general principle of the deification of living men in other words the incarnation of a deity in human form such incarnate gods are common in rude society the incarnation either temporary or permanent the incarnation may be temporary or permanent in the former case the incarnation commonly known as inspirational possession reveals itself in supernatural knowledge rather than in supernatural power in other words it's usual manifestations are divination and prophecy rather than miracles on the other hand when the incarnation is not merely temporary and the divine spirit has permanently taken up its boat in a human body the god man is usually expected to vindicate his character by working miracles only when we have to remember that by man at this stage of thought miracles not considered as preachers of natural law not conceiving the existence of natural law permanent man cannot conceive a breach of it a miracle is to him merely an unusually striking manifestation of a common power temporary incarnation of gods in him to form among the Polynesians the belief in temporary incarnation or inspiration is worldwide certain persons are supposed to be possessed from time to time by a spirit or deity while the possession lasts their own personality lies in a beacons the presence of the spirit is revealed by convulsive shiverings and shakens of the man's whole body by wild gestures and excited looks all of which are referred not to the man himself but the spirit which has emptied into him and in this abnormal state all his utterances are accepted as the voice of the god or spirit dwelling in him and speaking through him thus for example in the sandwich islands the king personally in the god uttered the responses of the oracle from his concealment in a frame of wicked work but in the southern islands of the pacific the god is frequently entered the priest who inflated as a werewolf the divinity cease to act to speak as a voluntary agent but moved and spoke as entirely under supernatural influence in this respect there was a striking resemblance between the root oracles of the Polynesians and those are the celebrated nations of ancient Greece as soon as the god was supposed to have entered the priest the latter became violently agitated and worked himself up to the highest pitch of apparent frenzy the muscles of them seemed convulsed the body swelled the countenance became terrific the feature distorted and the eyes wild and strained this state he often rolled on the earth foaming at the mouth as if laboring under the influence of the divinity by whom he was possessed in sure cries the violent often indistinct sounds revealed the will of the god the priests who were attending and versed in the mysteries received and reported to the people declarations which had been thus received when the priest had uttered the response to the oracle violent paroxysm gradually subsided and a competitive composer ensued the god did not however always leave him as soon as the communication had been made sometimes the name taura or priest continued for two or three days possessed by the spirit of deity a piece of a native cloth or burkily or kind worn around one arm was an indication of inspiration or of the indwelling of the god with the individual who wore it the acts of the man during this period were considered as those of the god and hence the great's intention was paid to his expressions and the whole of his deportment when Orohia had the inspiration of the spirit the priest was always considered as sacred as the god and was called during this period a tour god though at other times only demoted to our or priest temporary incarnation of gods in mongaya fiji barley and sleeves in mongaya an island on the south pacific the priests in whom the gods took up their bow from time to time were called the god boxes or for shortness gods before giving oracles as gods they drank an intoxicating liquor and the frenzy that's produced their wild whirling words were received as a voice the deity in fiji there is in every tribe a certain family who alone are liable to be thus temporarily inspired or possessed by a divine spirit their qualification is hereditary and any one of the ancestral gods may choose his vehicle from among them i have seen this possession and a horrible sight it is in one case after the fit was over for some time the man's muscles and nerves twitched and quivered in an extraordinary way it was naked except for his breech clout and on his naked breast little snakes seemed to be wriggling for a moment or two beneath his skin disappearing and then suddenly reappearing in other part of his chest when there may be which we may translate priest for want of a better word is seized by the possession the god within him calls out his own name in a stridulous tone it is i katsuo ever or some other name at the next possession some other ancestor may declare himself in bali there are certain persons called burmas who are predestined or fed up by nature to become the temporary abode of the invisible deities when the god is to be consulted the villagers go and compel some of these mediums to lend their services sometimes the medium leaves his consciousness at home and has any conduct with marks of honor to the temple ready to receive the godhead into his person temporary incarnation of gods in human form generally however sometime passes before he can be brought into the requisite frame of body and mind but the desired result may be hastened by making him inhale the smoke of incense or surrounding him with a band of seeing men or women the soul of the medium quits for a time his body which is thus placed at the disposal of the deity and up to the moment when his consciousness returns all his words and acts are regarded as proceeding not from himself but from the god so long as a possession lasts he is a diva keparagan that is a god has become a man and in that character he answers the question put to him during this time his body is believed to be immortal and hence invulnerable a dance with swords and pikes follows the consultation the oracle but these weapons could make no impression on the real body of the inspired medium impose so a district of central sleeves sickness is often supposed to be caused by an alien substance such as a piece of tobacco a stick or even a chopping knife which has been introduced unseen into the body of the sufferer by the magic art of an insidious foe to discover and eject this foreign matter is a task for a god who for this purpose enters into the body of a priestess speaks through her mouth and performs a necessary surgical operation with her hands an eyewitness of the ceremony has told how when the priestess sat beside the sick man with her head covered by a cloth she began to quiver and shake and sing in a stride and tone at which some one observed to the writer now her own spirit is leaving her body and a goddess taking his place on removing the cloth from her head she was no longer a woman but a heavenly spirit and gaze about her with an astonished air as yet to ask how she came from her own celestial region to this humble abode yet the divine spirit condescended to chew betel and to drink palm wine like any born mortal of earthly mold after she had pretended to extract the cause the disease by laying the cloth from her head on the patient's stomach and pinching it she veiled her face once more sobbed quivered and shook violently at which the people said the human spirit is returning into her deification of the sacrifices in brahman ritual a brahman householder who performs a regular half monthly sacrifice as is supposed thereby to become himself a deity for a time in the words of the sattrapathra brahmana he who is consecrated draws nigh to the gods and becomes one of the deities all formulas of the consecration are audgrabhama elevatory since he who is consecrated elevates himself adhrabh from this world to the world of the gods he elevates himself by means of these same formulas he who is consecrated indeed becomes both vishnu and a sacrifice but when he is consecrated he is vishnu and when he sacrifices he is a sacrifice after years completed the sacrifice he becomes man again divesting himself of his sacred character with the words now i am he who i really am which are thus explained in the sattrapathra brahmana in entering upon the vow he becomes as a word non-human and as it would not be becoming for him to say i enter from truth into untruth and as in fact he now again becomes man let him therefore divest himself of the vow with the text now i am he who i really am the new birth the means by which the sacrifice passes from untruth to truth from the human to the divine was a simulation of a new birth he was sprinkled with water as a symbol of seed he feigned to be an embryo and showed himself up in a special hut which resembled the womb under his robe he wore a belt and over the skin of a black antelope the belt stood for the navel string and the robe and the black antelope skin represented the inner and outer membranes the amnion and the choreon in which an embryo is wrapped he might not scratch himself with his nails or a stick because he was an embryo and where an embryo scratch with nails or a stick it would die if he moved about in the hut it was because the child moves about in the womb if he kept his fist double up it was because an unborn babe does the same bin bathing he put off the black antelope skin but retain his robe is because the child is born with the amnion and not the choreon by these practices he acquired in addition to his own natural immortal body a new body that was sacramental and immortal infested with superhuman powers encircled within a real fire thus by a new birth a regeneration of his kindle nature the man became a god at his natural birth the brahman said man is born but in part is by sacrifice that he is truly born into the world the funeral rites which ensured the final patch of remorse to heaven might be considered as a phrase of the new birth in truth they said man is born thrice at first he's born of his father and mother then when he sacrifices he is born again and lastly when he dies and is laid on the fire he's born again from it and that is his third birth that is why they say the man is born thrice temporary incarnation or inspiration produced by drinking blood but examples of such temporary inspiration are so common in every part of the world are now so familiar through books on ethnology that it is needless to multiply illustrations of the general principle it may be well however to refer to two particular modes of producing temporary inspiration because they are perhaps less known than some others and because we shall have occasion to refer to them later on one of these modes of producing inspiration is by sucking the fresh blood of a sacrificed victim in the temple of apollo dira diots at argos a land was sacrificed by night once a month a woman who had to observe a rule of chastity tasted the blood of the lamb and thus being inspired by the god she prophesied or divined had a giver in akia the priestess of earth drank the fresh blood of a ball before she descended into the cave to prophecy in southern india a devil dancer cuts and lacerates his flesh to the blood flows lashes him soft for the huge whip presses a burning torch to his breast drinks the blood which flows from his own wounds or drinks the blood of the sacrifice putting the throat of the decapitated goat to his mouth then as if he had acquired new life it begins to banish his staff of bells and to dance with a quick but wild unsteady step suddenly the f80s descends there is no mistaking that glare or those frantic leaps he snorts he stares he guides the demon is now taken bodily position of him and though he retains the power of utter incend of motion both are under the demon's control and his separate consciousness is in ambience the bystander's signal eyes the event by raising a long shout attendant with a peculiar vibratory noise which is caused by the motion of the hand and tongue or of the tongue alone the devil dancer is now worshipped as a present deity and every bystander consults him respecting his disease his wants welfare of his absent relatives the offerings to be made for the accomplishment of these wishes and in short respecting everything for which superhuman knowledge is supposed to be available similarly among the guru vikarans a class of bird catchers and beggars in southern india the goddess kali is believed to descend upon the priest and he gives oracular replies after sucking the blood which streams from the cut throat of a goat after first full of the alfours of minna hasa in northern salibs after a pig is being killed the priest rushes furiously at it thrusts his head into the carcass and drinks the blood then he is dragged away from it by force and set on a chair where upon it begins to prophesy how the rice crop will turn out that year a second time he runs at the carcass and drinks for the blood a second time he is forced into the chair and continues his predictions it is thought that there is a spirit in him which possesses the power of prophecy drinking blood as means of inspiration at retra a great religious capital of the western slavs the priest tasted the blood of the sacrificed oxen and sheep in order to better his prophecy the true test of the danyal or divine among some of the hindukush tribes is to suck the blood from the neck of a decapitated goat the takas on the border of kashmir have prophet suat as inspired mediums between the deity and his worshipers at the sacrifice the prophet inhales the smoke of the sacred seat in order to keep off evil spirits and sometimes he drinks warm blood as a spouts from the neck of the decapitated victim for the other's oracle the heathen of aran regarded blood as unclean but nevertheless drank it because they believed it to be the food of demons and though that by imbibing it they entered into communion with the demons who would thus visit them and lift the veil that hires the future from mortal vision temporary incarnation or inspiration produced by means of a sacred tree or plant the other mode of producing temporary inspiration to which i shall hear refer consists in the use of a sacred tree or plant thus the hindukush are fires kenneled with twigs of the sacred cedo and their dinyal or sable with a cloth over her head inhales the thick pungent smoke till she is see through the convulsions and falls senseless to the ground soon she rises and raises a shrill chant which is caught up and loudly repeated by her audience so apollo's prophetess ate the sacred thorough and was humiliated with it before she prophesied the buccanels ate ivy and their inspired fury was by some bleed we do to the exciting and intoxicating properties of the plant in Uganda the priest in order to be inspired by his god smokes a pipe tobacco fiercely till he works himself into a frenzy a loud excited tones in which he then talks are recognized as the voices of the god speaking through him in Madura an island of the north coast of Java each spirit has its regular medium who is often a woman and a man to prepare herself for the reception of the spirit she inhales the fumes of incense sitting with her head over a smoking sensor gradually she falls into a sort of trance accompanied by shrieks grimaces and violent spasms the spirit is now supposed to have entered into her and when she grows calmer her words are regarded as ocular being the utterances of the indwelling spirit while her own soul was temporarily absent inspired victims it is worth observing that many peoples expect the victim as well as a priest or prophet to give signs of inspiration by convulsive movements of the body and if the animal remains obstinately steady they esteem it unfit for sacrifice that's when the yuck cuts sacrifice to an evil spirit the beast must bellow and roll about which is considered a token that the evil spirit has entered into it Apollo's prophetess could give no oracles unless the sacrificial victim trembled in every limb when the wine was poured on its head but for ordinary greek sacrifices it was enough that the victim should shake its head to make it do so water was poured on it many other peoples tonkwanese hindus jawosh and so forth have adopted the same test of a suitable victim they pour water or wine on its head if the animal shakes its head is accepted for sacrifice if it does not it is rejected among the kafirs of the hindu kush the priest or his substitute pours water into the ear and all down the spine of the intended victim whether it be a sheep or a goat it is not enough that the animal should merely shake its head to get the water out of its ear it must shake its whole body as a wet dog shakes himself when it does so a kissing sound is made by all present and the victim is forthward slaughtered divine power acquired by temporary inspiration the person temporarily inspires believed to acquire not merely divine knowledge but also at least occasionally divine power in cambodia when nebidemic breaks out it happens of several villages unite and go with the band of music at their head to look through the man and the local god is opposed to have chosen for his temporary incarnation when found the man is conducted to the altar of the god where the mystery of incarnation takes place and the man becomes an object of veneration to his fellows who implore him to protect the village against the plague a certain image of Apollo which stood in a sacred cave at high lay near magnesium was thought to impart stupid human strength sacred med inspired by it leaf down precipices tore up huge trees by the roots and carry them on their backs along the narrow stafiles defeats performed by inspired dervishes belong to the same class human gods or men permanently possessed by deity thus far we have seen that the savage failing to discern the limits for his ability to control nature as scribes to himself and to all men certain powers which we should now call supernatural further we have seen that over and above this general supernaturalism some persons are supposed to be inspired for short periods by divine spirit and thus temporarily to enjoy the knowledge and power of the indwelling deity from beliefs like these it is an easy step to the conviction that certain men are permanently possessed by deity or in some other undefined way are endured with so high degree of supernatural power as to be ranked as gods and to receive the homeage of prayer and sacrifice sometimes these humans gods are restricted to purely supernatural or spiritual functions sometimes exercise supreme political power in addition in a latter case there are kings as well as gods and the government is a theocracy human gods in the Pacific thus the marquises or washington islands there was a class of men who were deified in their lifetime they were supposed to wield a supernatural power of the elements they could give abundant harvests or smite the ground of barrenness that could inflict disease or death humans sacrifice were offered to them to avert their wrath there were not many of them had the most one or two in each island they lived in mystic seclusion their powers were sometimes but not always hereditary a missionary has described one of these human gods for my personal observation the god was a very old man who lived in a large house within an enclosure and the house was a kind of altar on the beams the house and on the trees rounded were hung human skeletons head down no one entered the enclosure except the persons dedicated to the service of the god only on days when human victims were sacrificed might ordinary people penetrate into the precinct as human god received more sacrifices than all other gods often he would sit on a sort of scaffold in front of his house and call for two or three human victims at a time they were always brought for the terror he inspired was extreme he was invoked all over the island and offerings were sent to him from every side again of the south sea islands in general we are childhood each island had a man who represented all the personified the divinity such men were called gods and their substance was confounded with that of the deity the man god was sometimes the king himself often though he was a priest or subordinate chief tarot toa king of ratia was defied by a certain serenity performed as the chief temple as one of the divinities of his subjects therefore the king was worshiped consulted as an oracle and it sacrifices and prayers offered to him this is not an exceptional case the kings of the island regularly enjoyed divine honors being defied at the time of their ascension at his inauguration the king of tahiti received a small girdle of red and yellow feathers which totally raised him to the highest earthly station but identified him with their gods a new piece about 18 inches long was added to the belt at the inauguration of the king and three human victims were sacrificed in the process the king's houses were called the clouds of heaven the rainbow was the name of the canoe in which he voyaged his voice was spoken of as thunder and the glare of the torches in his dwelling as lightning and when the people saw them in the evening as a past near his house instead of saying the torches were burning in the palace they would remark that the lightning was flashing in the clouds of heaven when he moved from one district to another on the shoulders of his bearers he was said to be flying the natives of futuna an island in the south pacific and all content with day of fighting the evils that afflict them they place gods everywhere and even goes so far as to suppose that the greatest of all the spirits resides in the person of their prince as a living sanctuary from this belief springs a strange mode of regarding their king and behaving under his authority in their eyes the sovereign is not responsible for his acts they deem him inspired by the divine spirit whose tabernacle he is hence his will is sacred even his whims and raiders are revered and if it pleases him into play the tyrant his subjects emit from conscientious motives to the fixations he inflicts on them the gods of samoa generally appeared in animal form but sometimes they were permanently incarnate in men who gave oracles received offerings occasionally of human flesh healed the sick as a prayers and so on in regard to the old religion of the vegians and especially of the inhabitants of somo somo it is said that there appears to be no certain line of demarcation between departed spirits and gods nor between gods and living men for many of the priests and old chiefs are considered sacred persons not a few of them will also claim to themselves a right of divinity i am a god to a killer killer would say and he believed it too in the islands it is thought that every god can take position of a man and speak through him the position may be either temporary or permanent in that a case the chosen persons called a korong the god is free in his choice so the position of korong is not hereditary after the death of a korong the god is for some time unrepresented until he suddenly makes his appearance in a new avatar the person thus chosen gives signs of the divine presence by behaving in a strange way he capes runs about and performs a number of senseless acts a first people laugh at him but his sacred mission is in time recognized and he's invited to assume his proper position in the state generally this position is a distinguished one that confers on him a powerful influence over the whole community in some of the islands the god is political sovereign of the land and hence his new incarnation however humble his origin is raised on the same high rank and rules as god and king overall the other chiefs human god's an ancient egypt the ancient egyptians far from restricting their adoration to cats and dogs and such small deer very liberally extended it to men one of these human deities resided at the village of anibis and burnt sacrifices were offered to him on the altars after which says portafiri he would eat his dinner just as he were an ordinary mortal human god's an ancient Greece in classical antiquity the Sicilian philosopher emper dos glis gave himself out to be not merely a wizard but a god addressing his fellow citizens in verse he said oh friends in this great city there climbs yellow slope of agri gem totem citadel who make good works your scope who offer to the stranger a haven quiet and fair all hail among your honor to walk with lofty air with garlands blooming garlands you crown my noble brow a mortal man no longer a deathless godhead now wherever i go the people crowd round and worship pay and thousands follow seeking to learn the better way some grave prophetic visions some submit with anguish sore would feign hear words of comfort and suffer pain no more he asserted that he could teach his disciples how to make the wind to blow or to be still the rain to fall in the sun to shine how to banish sickness and old age and to raise a dead when Demetrius polyautosites restored the Athenian democracy in 307 bc the Athenians to create divine honors on him and his father and to Gornus over them being then alive under the title of the savior gods elders were set up to the saviors and a priest appointed to attend to their worship the people went forth to meet their deliverer with hymns and dances with garlands and incense and lavations they lined the streets and saying that he was the only true god for the other gods slept or dwelt far away or were not in the words of a contemporary poet which were chanted in public and sung in private of all the gods the greatest and the dearest to the city you come for Demetrius and Demetrius together time is brought she comes to hold the maiden's awful rites and he joys and fair and laughing as befits a god a glorious sight with all his friends about him he in their midst they like two stars and he is a sun sun up aside in the mighty aphrodite sun or ale the gods dwelt far away or have no ears or not or pay us no heed but thee we present see no god of water stone but god head true therefore to thee we pray human and goddesses among the ancient germans the ancient germans believed that there was something holy in women and accordingly consulted them as oracles their sacred women we are told looked on the eddying rivers and listened to the murmur or the roar of the water and from the sight and sound foretold what would come to pass but often the veneration of the men went further and they worshiped women as true and living goddesses for example in the reign of his pasion a certain felida of the tribe of the brocateri was commonly held to be a deity and that character reigned over her people her sway been acknowledged fire and wide she lived in a tower on the river lit as tributary of the rine when the people of cologne sent to make a treaty with her the ambassadors were not admitted to her presence the negotiations were conducted through a minister who had to do some mouthpiece of her divinity and report to her a regular utterances the example shows how easily among other rude forefathers the ideas of divinity and royalty coalesced it is said that among the gate down to the beginning of our area there was always a man who personified a god and was called god by the people he dwelt on a sacred mountain and acted as advisor to the king end of section 15