The man who wants a suhman takes some objects, it may be a rudely cut wooden image, or a stone, a root of a plant, or some red earth placed in a pan, and then he calls on a spirit of Sasabonsum (‘a genus of deities, every member of which possesses identical characteristics’) to enter the object prepared, promising it offerings and worship. If a spirit consents to take up its residence in the object a low hissing sound is heard, and the suhman is complete. It receives a small portion of the daily food of its owner, and is treated with reverence, and mainly used to bring evil on some one else ([15, 100-101]).
5. Sometimes the fetish is merely the vehicle or means by which the spirit communicates with his worshippers, and only acquires a temporary personality when thus inspired. This is the character of the New Zealand fetishes, wakapakoko, or images.
‘A small image was used about 18 inches long, resembling a peg, with a carved head. The priest first bandaged a fillet of red parrot feathers under the god’s chin, which was called his pahau or beard; when this was done it was taken possession of by the atua, whose spirit entered it; the priest then either held it in the hand and vibrated it in the air, whilst the powerful karakia (charm, prayer) was repeated, or he tied a piece of string, formed of the centre of a flax leaf, round the neck of the image and stuck it in the ground: he sat at a little distance from it, holding the string in his hand, and gave the god a jerk to arrest his attention’ ([69, 182]).
These Maori fetishes ‘were only thought to possess virtue or peculiar sanctity from the presence of the god they represent when dressed up, at other times they were regarded as bits of ordinary wood’ ([69, 212]). The use of the words ‘image’ and ‘god’ seem to place this ceremony on a higher plane than fetishism, but the ‘god’ is generally the spirit of an ancestor, and the ‘image’ is less a portrait of a worshipped deity than an expression of the Maori genius for wood-carving.
6. While the conception of the fetish as the vehicle of communication between spirit and worshipper raises fetishism to a higher plane in religious evolution, the conception of the fetish as an instrument by which the spirit acts lowers it to a stage which is not necessarily religious at all, to a stage where the fetish is often regarded merely in the light of a charm or an amulet.
This is the lowest and the commonest form of fetishism; it may practically be said to be universal.
Bosnian relates that the word Fetiche is chiefly used in a religious sense, or at least is derived from thence, but ‘all things made in honour of these false gods, never so mean, are called Fetiche.’
These material charms are so common that by the universality of their use, and the prominence given to them everywhere, in houses and on the person, they almost monopolise the religious thought of the Bantu negro, subordinating other acknowledged points of his theology, dominating his almost entire religious interest, and giving the departmental word ‘fetich’ such overwhelming regard that it has furnished the name distinctive of the native African religious system ([53, 80]). ‘The new-born infant has a health-knot tied about his neck, wrists, or loins, and down to the day of oldest age every one keeps on multiplying or renewing or altering these life talismans’ ([53, 85]).