[113]. Sacred dances and processions are natural human expressions of emotions that have been adopted by religious sentiment, and are often supposed to have potency in themselves. They tend to disappear with the progress of general refinement and of ethical conceptions of life and of deity. They continue, however, far into the civilized period, in which we find dramatic representations (as the Eleusinian rites and the medieval Mystery Plays), processions of priests bearing or conducting sacred objects, processions of devotees with music, and pilgrimages to shrines. Such ceremonies, while they are regarded by educated persons simply as expressions of reverence and accompaniments of prayer, are still believed by many to have an innate or magic potency, insuring prosperity to the participants.
Decorative and Curative Ceremonies
[114]. Love of ornament is found among all savage peoples; the value they attach to beads and all colored things is well known to travelers and traders. It has been plausibly argued that the origin of clothing is to be found in the desire of each sex to make itself beautiful in the eyes of the other.[234] However that may be, the employment of leaves for headdresses and waistbands is general among lower tribes.[235]
[115]. Equally popular is the adornment of the body by colored marks made with red ocher, pipe-clay, turmeric, charcoal, and such like things as are furnished by nature. Elaborate designs, of straight and curved lines, are traced on the skin, and these are gradually differentiated and become marks of rank and function. The war paint of the American Indians is governed by fixed rules, the object being to make the warrior terrible to enemies.[236] Rings, quills, sticks, and stones, worn in holes made in ears, nose, lips, and cheeks, are all originally decorative; and so also prickings and gashes in the body, often in regular outlines.[237]
[116]. These latter, made according to tribal custom and law, become tribal marks (tattoo), and are then essential to one's standing in the community. This custom is general in Polynesia and in parts of North America.[238] The use of oil and other unguents early established itself as a custom of savage society. They were probably useful in a variety of ways. For the hair they made up for the absence of comb and brush; in combat they enabled the warrior to slip from the grasp of his enemy; they defended the naked body from rain, and from soiling and injury produced by contact with the earth and hard bodies; and in sickness they were regarded as curative.[239] Oil was abundantly used as an article of food.
[117]. All these materials of decoration are transferred to the service of religion. The headdress becomes a mask to represent an animal in a sacred ceremony,[240] or a priestly tiara. In such ceremonies (especially in those of initiation) the painting of the body plays an important part, the traceries varying according to the thing represented and the symbolism of the action.[241] It is often difficult to see the precise significance of the paintings, but in certain cases they are totemic marks, and represent whatever is sacred in totemic belief.[242]
[118]. It is possible to construe the development in two ways: the paintings may be regarded as originally totemic or other clan marks, and as afterwards employed as ornaments, or the order of movement may be taken to be in the reverse direction; but when we consider the primitive character of decoration, the second suggestion seems the more probable. The same remark applies to the practice of pricking, scarring, and tattooing.[243] For the body-markings blood is sometimes employed, perhaps in part on account of its decorative color, but also probably with a religious significance.[244]
[119]. Decoration has been and is largely employed in structures and dress connected with religious life. Posts and beams of houses, totem posts and masts of vessels are covered with figures in which artistic feeling is discernible;[245] and in late periods all the resources of art are devoted to the form and adornments of temples, altars, and images. The designs are taken from familiar objects, mostly from plants and animals. The ultimate motive is love of ornament, which, while it finds abundant expression in ordinary social life, has its greatest development in religion—a natural result of the fact that in a large part of human history religion has been the chief organizing factor of society.
[120]. The tendency has been to make the dress of ministers of religion ornate.[246] This tendency has arisen partly from love of ornament, and partly, doubtless, it is the transference of court customs to religious ceremonial.[247]
[121]. Symbolism has entered largely into religious decoration. In very early times figures of animals, plants, and human beings were used as records of current events, and were sometimes supposed to have magical power, the picture being identified with the thing represented. In a more advanced stage of culture the transition was easy to the conception of the figures as representing ideas, but the older conception is often found alongside of the later—a symbolical signification is attached to pictures of historical things. These then have a spiritual meaning for higher minds, while for the masses they may be of the nature of fetishes.[248] In both cases they may serve a good purpose in worship by fixing the mind on sacred things.