[140]. But the term "apotropaic" is generally used of expulsive ceremonies in which a whole community takes part. In the simplest forms of procedure the hostile spirits are driven out of the village by shouts and blows; crowds of men rush through the streets, searching houses, expelling spirits at every possible point of ingress, and finally forcing them outside the limits of the community. Examples of such a custom are found in the Pacific Islands, Australia, Japan, Indonesia, West Africa, Cambodia, India, North America (Eskimo), South America (Peru),[281] and there are survivals in modern Europe. In China this wholesale expulsion is still practiced in a very elaborate form.[282] Among the Ainu, it is said, on the occasion of any accident the "spirit of accidents" (a useful generalization) is driven away by the community.[283] In these cases the spirits are thought of as being in a sort corporeal, sensitive to blows, and also as afraid of noise. There is sometimes a combination of natural and supernatural conceptions: while the violent expulsive process is going on the household utensils are vigorously washed by the women; washing, known to cleanse from mere physical dirt, here also takes on, from its association with the men's ceremony of expulsion, a supernatural potency—it removes the injurious mana of the hostile spirits.
[141]. Less violent methods of riddance may be employed. Evil, being a physical thing, may be embodied in some object, nonhuman or human, which is then carried forth or sent away to some distant point, or destroyed. With this principle of transference may be compared the conception of solidarity of persons and things in a tribe or other community: what one unit does or suffers affects all—the presence of an accursed thing with one person brings a curse on his nation,[284] and conversely, the removal of the evil thing or person removes the curse, which may, under certain circumstances, be shifted to some other place or person.
[142]. The particular method of expulsion or transference is immaterial.[285] The troublesome evil may be carted or boated away according to local convenience, or it may depart in the person of an animal. Leprous taint is transferred to a bird, which, having been dipped in the blood of a sacred animal, is allowed to fly away carrying the taint off from the community.[286] Even moral evils (sin) may thus be got rid of. In the great Hebrew annual ceremony of atonement not only the ritual impurity of the sanctuary and the altar, but also the sin of the nation, is laid on a goat and sent away to the wilderness demon, Azazel.[287]
[143]. Examples of human apotropaic vehicles occur in the ancient civilized world. In the Athenian Thargelia the Pharmakos was supposed to bear in his person crimes and evils, and was driven forth from the city.[288] The same conception is found, perhaps, in the Roman Mamuralia and Lupercalia. In the first of these Mamertius is driven forth from the city and consigned to the keeping of hostile persons;[289] in the second, young men ran about the streets beating the women with strips of goatskin, the skin being that of a sacred animal—a proceeding that was regarded as purificatory, and seems to be naturally explicable as an expulsion of evil spirits or injurious mana.[290]
[144]. In another direction expulsion of evil, or protection against it, is effected by the blood of a sacrificed (and therefore sacred) animal. A well-known example of this sort of ceremony is the Hebrew pesah (the old lamb ceremony, later combined with the agricultural festival of unleavened bread, at the time of the first harvest, the two together then constituting the passover); here the doorposts and lintel of every house were sprinkled with the blood of a slain lamb by the master of the house,[291] and the hostile spirits hovering in the air were thus prevented from entering. The sacred blood seems to have been conceived of as carrying with it the power of the family god (who was also the clan god), which overbore that of the demons (in the earliest period, however, the efficacy was doubtless held to reside simply in the blood itself). The ceremony belonged to each family, but it belonged also to the clan since it was performed by every family, and ultimately it became a national usage.
[145]. Apotropaic ceremonies appear to have been performed originally at various times during the year as occasions arose; the increasing pressure of occupations,[292] the necessity of consulting people's convenience, and the demand for order and precision led here (as in other cases) to the massing of the observances. When so massed they begin to lose their original significance, to yield to the knowledge of natural law, to be reinterpreted from time to time, and finally to become mere social events or to be dropped altogether. Apotropaism has hardly survived at all in the higher religions.[293] In popular customs it appears in the reliance placed on horseshoes and other objects as means of keeping witches and similar demonic things out of houses.[294]
Ceremonies of Puberty and Initiation
[146]. Ceremonies in connection with the arrival of young persons, male and female, at the age of maturity appear to be universal, and they yield in importance to no other class of social procedures. The basis of most of these is civil; their object is to prepare young persons for entering on the active duties of what may be called citizenship. They involve a distinct idea of the importance of the clan, the necessity of maintaining its life unimpaired, and, to that end, preparing with the utmost care the younger portion of the community to take up the duties of the older. The boys are to be trained to be the hunters and rulers of the clan, the girls are to be fitted to become the wives and mothers of the next generation. But while the ceremonies in question have their foundation in the needs of civil life, they inevitably receive a religious coloring, since religion is intimately connected with all the details of early life.
[147]. Among the details of the initiation of boys, tests of endurance occupy a prominent place. In various ways the capacity of the lad to endure physical pain or to face apparent dangers is tested,[295] and in some cases one who fails to stand such tests is refused admission into the clan and forever after occupies an inferior and despised position. Such persons are sometimes treated as women; they are required to wear women's dress and to do menial work.[296]
[148]. The seclusion of girls on arriving at the age of puberty, with imposition of various taboos (of food, etc.), is a widespread custom. The mysterious change in the girl is supposed to be produced by some supernatural and dangerous Power, and she is therefore to be shielded from contact with all injurious things. The details of the procedure depend on local ideas, but the principle is the same everywhere. The object is the preparation of the girl for civic life, and the ceremony inevitably becomes connected with tribal cults of the supernatural Powers.[297]