The belief in temporary incarnation or inspiration is world-wide. Certain persons are supposed to be possessed from time to time by a spirit or deity; while the possession lasts, their own personality lies in abeyance, the presence of the spirit is revealed by convulsive shiverings and shakings of the man’s whole body, by wild gestures and excited looks, all of which are referred, not to the man himself, but to the spirit which has entered into him; and in this abnormal state all his utterances are accepted as the voice of the god or spirit dwelling in him and speaking through him. Thus, for example, in the Sandwich Islands, the king personating the god, uttered the responses of the oracle from his concealment in a frame of wicker-work. But in the southern islands of the Pacific the god “frequently entered the priest, who, inflated as it were with the divinity, ceased to act or speak as a voluntary agent, but moved and spoke as entirely under supernatural influence. In this respect there was a striking resemblance between the rude oracles of the Polynesians, and those of the celebrated nations of ancient Greece. As soon as the god was supposed to have entered the priest, the latter became violently agitated, and worked himself up to the highest pitch of apparent frenzy, the muscles of the limbs seemed convulsed, the body swelled, the countenance became terrific, the features distorted, and the eyes wild and strained. In this state he often rolled on the earth, foaming at the mouth, as if labouring under the influence of the divinity by whom he was possessed, and, in shrill cries, and violent and often indistinct sounds, revealed the will of the god. The priests, who were attending, and versed in the mysteries, received, and reported to the people, the declarations which had been thus received. When the priest had uttered the response of the oracle, the violent paroxysm gradually subsided, and comparative composure ensued. The god did not, however, always leave him as soon as the communication had been made. Sometimes the same taura, or priest, continued for two or three days possessed by the spirit or deity; a piece of a native cloth, of a peculiar kind, worn round one arm, was an indication {p378} of inspiration, or of the indwelling of the god with the individual who wore it. The acts of the man during this period were considered as those of the god, and hence the greatest attention was paid to his expressions, and the whole of his deportment. . . . When uruhia, (under the inspiration of the spirit,) the priest was always considered as sacred as the god, and was called, during this period, atua, god, though at other times only denominated taura or priest.”[1318]
Temporary incarnation of gods in Mangaia, Fiji, Bali, and Celebes.
Temporary incarnation of gods in human form.
In Mangaia, an island of the South Pacific, the priests in whom the gods took up their abode from time to time were called “god-boxes” or, for shortness, “gods.” Before giving oracles as gods, they drank an intoxicating liquor, and in the frenzy thus produced their wild whirling words were received as the voice of the deity.[1319] In Fiji there is in every tribe a certain family who alone are liable to be thus temporarily inspired or possessed by a divine spirit. “Their qualification is hereditary, and any one of the ancestral gods may choose his vehicle from among them. I have seen this possession, and a horrible sight it is. In one case, after the fit was over, for some time the man’s muscles and nerves twitched and quivered in an extraordinary way. He was naked except for his breech-clout, and on his naked breast little snakes seemed to be wriggling for a moment or two beneath his skin, disappearing and then suddenly reappearing in another part of his chest. When the mbete (which we may translate ‘priest’ for want of a better word) is seized by the possession, the god within him calls out his own name in a stridulous tone, ‘It is I! Katouivere!’ or some other name. At the next possession some other ancestor may declare himself.”[1320] In Bali there are certain persons called pĕrmas, who are predestined or fitted by nature to become the temporary abode of the invisible deities. When a god is to be consulted, the villagers go and compel some of these mediums to lend their services. Sometimes the medium leaves his consciousness at home, and is then conducted with marks of honour to the temple, ready to {p379} receive the godhead into his person. Generally, however, some time passes before he can be brought into the requisite frame of body and mind; but the desired result may be hastened by making him inhale the smoke of incense or surrounding him with a band of singing men or women. The soul of the medium quits for a time his body, which is thus placed at the disposal of the deity, and up to the moment when his consciousness returns all his words and acts are regarded as proceeding not from himself but from the god. So long as the possession lasts he is a dewa kapiragan, that is, a god who has become man, and in that character he answers the questions put to him. During this time his body is believed to be immaterial and hence invulnerable. A dance with swords and pikes follows the consultation of the oracle; but these weapons could make no impression on the ethereal body of the inspired medium.[1321] In Poso, a district of Central Celebes, sickness is often supposed to be caused by an alien substance, such as a piece of tobacco, a stick, or even a chopping-knife, which has been introduced unseen into the body of the sufferer by the magic art of an insidious foe. To discover and eject this foreign matter is a task for a god, who for this purpose enters into the body of a priestess, speaks through her mouth, and performs the necessary surgical operation with her hands. An eye-witness of the ceremony has told how, when the priestess sat beside the sick man, with her head covered by a cloth, she began to quiver and shake and to sing in a strident tone, at which some one observed to the writer, “Now her own spirit is leaving her body and a god is taking its place.” On removing the cloth from her head she was no longer a woman but a heavenly spirit, and gazed about her with an astonished air as if to ask how she came from her own celestial region to this humble abode. Yet the divine spirit condescended to chew betel and to drink palm-wine like any poor mortal of earthly mould. After she had pretended to extract the cause of the disease by laying the cloth from her head on the patient’s stomach and pinching it, she veiled her face once more, sobbed, {p380} quivered, and shook violently, at which the people said, “The human spirit is returning into her.”[1322]
Deification of the sacrificer in Brahman ritual.
The new birth.
A Brahman householder who performs the regular half-monthly sacrifices is supposed thereby to become himself a deity for a time. In the words of the Satapatha-Brâhmana, “He who is consecrated draws nigh to the gods and becomes one of the deities.”[1323] “All formulas of the consecration are audgrabhana (elevatory), since he who is consecrated elevates himself (ud-grabh) from this world to the world of the gods. He elevates himself by means of these same formulas.”[1324] “He who is consecrated indeed becomes both Vishnu and a sacrificer; for when he is consecrated, he is Vishnu, and when he sacrifices, he is the sacrificer.”[1325] After he has completed the sacrifice he becomes man again, divesting himself of his sacred character with the words, “Now I am he who I really am,” which are thus explained in the Satapatha-Brâhmana: “In entering upon the vow, he becomes, as it were, non-human; and as it would not be becoming for him to say, ‘I enter from truth into untruth’; and as, in fact, he now again becomes man, let him therefore divest himself (of the vow) with the text: ‘Now I am he who I really am.’”[1326] The means by which the sacrificer passed from untruth to truth, from the human to the divine, was a simulation of a new birth. He was sprinkled with water as a symbol of seed. He feigned to be an embryo, and shut himself up in a special hut, which represented the womb. Under his robe he wore a belt, and over it the skin of a black antelope; the belt stood for the navel-string, and the robe and the black antelope skin represented the inner and outer membranes (the amnion and the chorion) in which an embryo is wrapt. He might not scratch himself with his nails or a stick because he was an embryo, and were an embryo scratched with nails or a stick it would die. If he moved about in {p381} the hut, it was because the child moves about in the womb. If he kept his fists doubled up, it was because an unborn babe does the same. If in bathing he put off the black antelope skin but retained his robe, it was because the child is born with the amnion but not with the chorion. By these practices he acquired, in addition to his old natural and mortal body, a new body that was sacramental and immortal, invested with superhuman powers, encircled with an aureole of fire. Thus, by a new birth, a regeneration of his carnal nature, the man became a god. At his natural birth, the Brahmans said, man is born but in part; it is by sacrifice that he is truly born into the world. The funeral rites, which ensured the final passage from earth to heaven, might be considered as a phase of the new birth. “In truth,” they said, “man is born thrice. At first he is born of his father and mother; then when he sacrifices he is born again; and lastly, when he dies and is laid on the fire, he is born again from it, and that is his third birth. That is why they say that man is born thrice.”[1327]
Temporary incarnation or inspiration produced by drinking blood.
But examples of such temporary inspiration are so common in every part of the world and are now so familiar through books on ethnology that it is needless to multiply illustrations of the general principle.[1328] It may be well, however, to refer to two particular modes of producing temporary inspiration, because they are perhaps less known than some others, and because we shall have occasion to refer to them later on. One of these modes of producing inspiration is by sucking the fresh blood of a sacrificed victim. In the temple of Apollo Diradiotes at Argos, a lamb was sacrificed by night once a month; a woman, who had to observe a rule of chastity, tasted the blood of the lamb, and thus being inspired by the god she prophesied or divined.[1329] At Aegira in Achaia the priestess of Earth drank the fresh blood of a {p382} bull before she descended into the cave to prophesy.[1330] In southern India a devil-dancer “cuts and lacerates his flesh till the blood flows, lashes himself with a huge whip, presses a burning torch to his breast, drinks the blood which flows from his own wounds, or drinks the blood of the sacrifice, putting the throat of the decapitated goat to his mouth. Then, as if he had acquired new life, he begins to brandish his staff of bells, and to dance with a quick but wild unsteady step. Suddenly the afflatus descends. There is no mistaking that glare, or those frantic leaps. He snorts, he stares, he gyrates. The demon has now taken bodily possession of him; and, though he retains the power of utterance and of motion, both are under the demon’s control, and his separate consciousness is in abeyance. The bystanders signalize the event by raising a long shout, attended with a peculiar vibratory noise, which is caused by the motion of the hand and tongue, or of the tongue alone. The devil-dancer is now worshipped as a present deity, and every bystander consults him respecting his disease, his wants, the welfare of his absent relatives, the offerings to be made for the accomplishment of his wishes, and, in short, respecting everything for which superhuman knowledge is supposed to be available.”[1331] Similarly among the Kuruvikkarans, a class of bird-catchers and beggars in Southern India, the goddess Kali is believed to descend upon the priest, and he gives oracular replies after sucking the blood which streams from the cut throat of a goat.[1332] At a festival of the Alfoors of Minahassa, in northern Celebes, after a pig has been killed, the priest rushes furiously at it, thrusts his head into the carcase, and drinks of the blood. Then he is dragged away from it by force and set on a chair, whereupon he begins to prophesy how the rice-crop will turn out that year. A second time he runs at the carcase and drinks of the blood; a second time {p383} he is forced into the chair and continues his predictions. It is thought that there is a spirit in him which possesses the power of prophecy.[1333] At Rhetra, a great religious capital of the Western Slavs, the priest tasted the blood of the sacrificed oxen and sheep in order the better to prophesy.[1334] The true test of a Dainyal or diviner among some of the Hindoo Koosh tribes is to suck the blood from the neck of a decapitated goat.[1335] The Takhas on the border of Cashmeer have prophets who act as inspired mediums between the deity and his worshippers. At the sacrifices the prophet inhales the smoke of the sacred cedar in order to keep off evil spirits, and sometimes he drinks the warm blood as it spouts from the neck of the decapitated victim before he utters his oracle.[1336] The heathen of Harran regarded blood as unclean, but nevertheless drank it because they believed it to be the food of demons, and thought that by imbibing it they entered into communion with the demons, who would thus visit them and lift the veil that hides the future from mortal vision.[1337]
Temporary incarnation or inspiration produced by means of a sacred tree or plant.