It is interesting to find this form of fetish charm described by Bosman at the beginning of the eighteenth century.
‘The child is no sooner born than the priest (here called Fetichee or Confoe) is sent for, who binds a parcel of ropes and coral and other trash about the head, body, arms, and legs of the infant; after which he exorcises, according to their accustomed manner, by which they believe it is armed against all sickness and ill accidents, and doubtless this is as effectual as if done by the Pope himself’ ([54, xvi. 388]).
Father Merolla, a still earlier traveller, mentions these charms from the Congo district (1682).
‘The fourth abuse is that whilst their children are young these people bind them about with certain superstitious cords made by the wizards, who likewise teach them to utter a kind of spell while they are binding them. They also at the same time hang about them bones and teeth of divers animals, being preservatives, as they say, against the power of any disease. Likewise there are some mothers so foolish that they will hang Agnus Deis, medals, and relicks to the aforesaid cords’ ([54, xvi. 237]). ‘To remedy these disorders, we have thought proper to issue forth the following ordinances: That all mothers should make the cords they bound their infants with of palm leaves that had been consecrated on Palm Sunday; moreover guard them well with other such relicks as we are accustomed to make use of at the time of baptism’ ([54, xvi. 239]).
These fetish charms may be worshipped and regarded as anthropopathic, when they are true fetishes, or they may be merely ‘lucky’ with no religious regard or spiritual interpretation, or they may be anything between the two extremes.
7. Just as the human body and soul form one individual, so the material object and its occupying spirit or power form one individual, more vague perhaps, but still with many attributes distinctively human. It possesses personality and will, it has also many human characters. It possesses most of the human passions, anger, revenge, also generosity and gratitude; it is within reach of influence and may be benevolent, hence to be deprecated and placated, and its aid enlisted ([53, 62]).
The objects used as fetishes by the Ainu, sticks, skulls of animals, claws, paws, mistletoe, stones, etc., are all looked upon as animate, with a distinct life of their own, with power to protect their worshippers in time of danger, heal them when sick, and bless them with general prosperity ([4, 375-6]).
In this characteristic, in the possession of personality and will, in its material and spiritual duality, a fetish differs from a charm or an amulet as from an idol; it is always ‘anthropopathic’ ([61, 61]).
8. The fetish may act by will or force of its own proper spirit, or by force of a foreign spirit, entering or acting on it from without.
‘Beyond the regularly recognised habitats of the spirits, that may be called natural to them, any other location may be acquired by them temporarily, for longer or shorter periods’ ([53, 62]).