[195]. The occasions for purification are numerous, including all contacts or possibilities of contact with dangerous (sacred) things, and thus often coinciding with taboo conceptions.[360] All acts connected with procreation and birth; contact with a corpse, or with a sacred person or thing, or with an object belonging to a sacred person; return from a journey (in the course of which the traveler may have been exposed to some injurious supernatural influence)[361]—such things as these call for cleansing. Inanimate objects also, especially such as are connected with religious worship (altars, vessels, and instruments), require purification; these are thought of originally as having souls, and as incurring defilement by the transmission of neighboring impurities. A moral conception may seem to be involved in the requirement of purification after the committal of a murder; certainly, in the more advanced stages of society, the feeling in this case is moral, but it is doubtful whether in earlier stages anything more is involved than the recognition of ritual defilement by contact with blood; homicide, as a social crime, is dealt with by the civil law, and is generally excluded from the benefits of acts of ritual atonement,[362] and so also all violations of tribal law.
[196]. The religious preparation for the performance of a sacred act usually concerns official persons (see below, under consecration, § 202), but sometimes involves the purification of others. The largest act of purification is that which includes a whole community or people;[363] the social mass is then regarded as a unit, and there is no reason, according to early thought, why such a mass should not, by a ceremony, be freed from all ritual disabilities, the idea of moral purification being, of course, absent or latent. Finally, ritual purification is sometimes a preliminary to pleasing and influencing the deity, who, as the most sacred and most dangerous object, must be approached with the greatest precautions.[364]
[197]. The various methods of purification may be included under a few heads, the principal of which are: the application of water (bathing, sprinkling); the application of sand, dung, bark, and similar things; exposure to fire; incantation and sacrifice; and fasting. In all these cases the virtue lies either in a sacred thing or act that has the quality of dissipating the mysterious defilement present, or in the removal or avoidance of the defiling thing; it is frequently required that the application of the cleansing substance be made by a sacred person, whose character adds potency to the act. The use of water for ceremonial purification has been, and is, practiced all over the world, alike by savages and by civilized peoples:[365] the newborn child, ritually impure by reason of the mystery of birth, is bathed or sprinkled; before the performance of a sacred act the officiator must bathe;[366] numerous ablutions are prescribed in the Old Testament; similar usages obtained among the Egyptians, the Hindus and the Persians, the Greeks and the Romans, the Chinese and the Japanese, the Mexicans and the Peruvians, and other peoples.
[198]. These usages have arisen doubtless from observation of the natural cleansing power of water and other things in conjunction with the belief in their sacred character. Adopted by the higher religions they have been more or less spiritualized by the infusion into them of ideas of penitence, forgiveness of sin, and regeneration—so in India, Persia, and Peru. Christian baptism seems to have come from Jewish proselyte baptism:[367] the proselyte was by immersion in water symbolically cleansed from sin and introduced into a new religious life, and such was the significance of the rite practiced by John, though his surname "the Baptizer" probably indicates that he gave it a broader and deeper meaning; he overstepped national bounds, receiving Jews as well as non-Jews.[368] Moslem ritual requires ablutions before the stated prayers and at certain other times; every mosque has its tank of water for the convenience of worshipers.
[199]. Where water cannot be had, usage in Islam and in some forms of Christianity permits the substitution of sand or dust—both thought to have cleansing power. Similar power is ascribed to urine and dung of domestic animals.[369] Such usages may originate in a belief in the physical cleansing efficacy of those substances (the Toda women employ dried buffalo's dung in household cleaning), or they may be supposed to derive their efficacy from the sacredness of the animals. The Todas also make much use of a certain bark for purification.[370] The origin of these customs is obscure; they go back to times and conditions for a knowledge of which data are lacking—possibly to the early conception of the sacredness of all natural objects.[371] It is less difficult to explain the belief in the purifying power of fire. Its splendor and utility caused it to be regarded as a god in India and Persia, and if it was also destructive, it often consumed hurtful things. It was sacred, and might, therefore, be a remover of impurity. Its employment for this purpose is, however, not frequent;[372] it is oftener used to consume corpses and other unclean things.
[200]. In the more developed religious rituals, sacrifice is a common accompaniment of purifying ceremonies, the object being to procure the forgiveness of the deity for the offense held to be involved in the impurity; the conception of sin in such cases is sometimes physical, sometimes moral, and the ceremony is always nearly allied to one of atonement. In the Hebrew ritual a human bodily impurity and the apparatus of the temple alike require a sin-offering.[373] In India the bath of purification stood in close relation with a sacrifice.[374] In Greece the two were associated in the cults of Apollo and Dionysos and in ordinary worship in general.[375] Thus, men and gods take part in the process of freeing the worshiper from the impure elements of life: the man obeys the law of the ritual, and the god receives him into association with the divine.
[201]. Ancient examples of the purification of a whole community are the Hebrew ceremony on the annual day of atonement[376] (which is called in the text a purification), and the Roman Lupercalia.[377] An elaborate festival of this sort was observed every year by the Creeks;[378] it lasted eight days, included various cathartic observances, and ended in a physical and moral reconstruction of the nation. Among the Todas a similar ceremony for the purification of a village exists.[379]
[202]. Ceremonies of consecration are similar to those of purification, only usually more formal and solemn. Entrance on a sacred function, which involves special direct contact with a deity, requires special preparation. Even before a simple act of prayer it was felt to be proper to cleanse one's person;[380] how much more important was bodily cleansing and other preparation for one who was chosen by the community to represent it in its relations with the supernatural Powers! The preparation for such an office is in earlier times ritual and external, and becomes gradually moralized. Magicians must submit to purificatory restrictions, and prove their fitness by various deeds.[381] Initiation into secret societies (whose members had a certain official character) was, and is, often elaborate.[382] Priests in Egypt, Babylonia and Assyria, Canaan, India, Greece and Rome, were subject to conditions of purity, always physical and sometimes moral, that secured a daily consecration.
[203]. Methods of initial consecration were, probably, of the general character of those prescribed in the Hebrew ritual law.[383] Authority is often conferred by a high official, whose consecrating act is then generally regarded as essential.[384] The priest becomes invested with a quasi-divine authority. The consecration of kings follows the same general lines as that of priests. In both cases the desire is to have some visible form of the deity whose relations with men may be felt to be direct.
[204]. No purificatory and consecrative usage has been more widespread than fasting.[385] It is found throughout religious history in the lowest tribes and in the most highly civilized peoples, has been practiced in a great variety of circumstances, and has been invested with a special sanctity and efficacy. It has been regarded as necessary before partaking of sacred food, before the performance of a sacred ceremony, after a death, in the presence of a great occurrence (as an eclipse or a thunderstorm, regarded as supernatural), as a part of the training of magicians, as a preparation for the search after a guardian spirit, as a part of ceremonies in honor of gods, as an act of abstinence in connection with a calamity (or in general as a self-denial proper to sinful man and pleasing to the deity as an act of humility), and, finally, as a retirement from fleshly conditions in preparation for spiritual exercises.