We have further noticed that, in the case of human sacrifice, the victim is occasionally regarded as a messenger between the worshippers and their god even though the primary object of the rite be a different one.[84] The same is sometimes true of other offerings as well.[85] The Iroquois sacrifice of the white dog[86] was, according to Mr. Morgan, intended “to send up the spirit of the dog as a messenger to the Great Spirit, to announce their continued fidelity to his service, and, also, to convey to him their united thanks for the blessings of the year”; and in their thanksgiving addresses they were in the habit of throwing leaves of tobacco into the fire from time to time that their words might ascend to the dwelling of the Great Spirit in the smoke of their offerings.[87] The Huichols of Mexico often use the arrows which they sacrifice to their gods as carriers of special prayers.[88]
[84] Supra, [i. 465 sq.]
[85] Cf. Hubert and Mauss, ‘Essai sur la nature et la fonction du sacrifice,’ in L’année sociologique, ii. 106, n. 1.
[86] See supra, [i. 53], [64].
[87] Morgan, League of the Iroquois, p. 216 sqq.
[88] Lumholtz, Unknown Mexico, ii. 205.
Not only are sacrifices used as bearers of prayers, but they are also frequently offered for the purpose of transferring curses. In Morocco every síyid[89] of any importance is constantly visited by persons who desire to invoke the saint to whom it is dedicated with a view to being cured of some illness, or being blessed with children, or getting a suitable husband or wife, or receiving help against an enemy, or deriving some other benefit from the saint. To secure his assistance the visitor makes ʿâr upon him; and the Moorish ʿâr, of which I have spoken above,[90] implies the transference of a conditional curse, whether it be made upon an ordinary man or a saint, living or dead. The ʿâr put upon a saint may consist in throwing stones upon a cairn connected with his sanctuary, or making a pile of stones to him, or tying a piece of cloth at the síyid, or knotting the leaves of some palmetto or the stalks of white broom growing in its vicinity, or offering an animal sacrifice to the saint.[91] This making of ʿâr is accompanied by a promise to reward the saint if he grants the request; but the sacrifice offered in fulfilment of such a promise (l-wâʿda) is totally distinct from that offered as ʿâr. It is a genuine gift, whereas the ʿâr-sacrifice is a means of constraining the saint. When an animal is killed as ʿâr the usual phrase bismillâh, “In the name of God,” is not used, and the animal may not be eaten, except by poor people.[92] On the other hand, the animal which is sacrificed as wâʿda is always killed “in the name of God,” and is offered for the very purpose of being eaten by the saint’s earthly representatives. Nothing can better show than the Moorish distinction between l-ʿâr and l-wâʿda how futile it would be to try to explain every kind of sacrifice by one and the same principle. The distinction between them is fundamental: the former is a threat, the latter is a promised reward.[93] But at the same time it is not improbable that the idea of transferring curses to a supernatural being by means of a sacrifice was originally suggested by the previous existence of sacrifice as a religious act, combined with the ascription of mysterious propensities to blood, and especially to sacrificial blood, which, according to primitive ideas, made it a most efficient conductor of curses.
[89] For the meaning of this word see supra, [ii. 584].
[90] Supra, [i. 586 sq.]; [ii. 584 sq.]
[91] Westermarck, ‘L-ʿâr, or the Transference of Conditional Curses in Morocco,’ in Anthropological Essays presented to E. B. Tylor, p. 368 sqq. Idem, The Moorish Conception of Holiness (Baraka), p. 90 sqq.