Compare (Sir) John Rhys, Celtic Heathendom (London and Edinburgh, 1888), pp. 44 sqq., 232. Branches of the sacred olive at Olympia, which were to form the victors' crowns, had to be cut with a golden sickle by a boy whose parents were both alive. See the Scholiast on Pindar, Olymp. iii. 60, p. 102, ed. Aug. Boeck (Leipsic, 1819). In Assyrian ritual it was laid down that, before felling a sacred tamarisk to make magical images out of the wood, the magician should pray to the sun-god Shamash and touch the tree with a golden axe. See C. Fossey, La Magie Assyrienne (Paris, 1902), pp. 132 sq. Some of the ancients thought that the root of the marsh-mallow, which was used in medicine, should be dug up with gold and then preserved from contact with the ground (Pliny, Nat. Hist. xx. 29). At the great horse-sacrifice in ancient India it was prescribed by ritual that the horse should be slain by a golden knife, because “gold is light” and “by means of the golden light the sacrificer also goes to the heavenly world.” See The Satapatha-Brâhmana, translated by Julius Eggeling, Part v. (Oxford, 1900) p. 303 (Sacred Books of the East, vol. xliv.). It has been a rule of superstition both in ancient and modern times that certain plants, to which medical or magical virtues were attributed, should not be cut with iron. See the fragment of Sophocles's Root-cutters, quoted by Macrobius, Saturn. v. 19. 9 sq.; Virgil, Aen. iv. 513 sq.; Ovid, Metamorph. vii. 227; Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxiv. 68, 103, 176; and above, p. 65 (as to purple loosestrife in Russia). On the objection to the use of iron in such cases compare F. Liebrecht, Des Gervasius von Tilbury Otia Imperialia (Hanover, 1856), pp. 102 sq.; Taboo and the Perils of the Soul, pp. 225 sqq.
F. Speckmann, Die Hermannsburger Mission in Africa (Hermannsburg, 1876) p. 167. Compare David Leslie, Among the Zulus and Amatongas, Second Edition (Edinburgh, 1875) pp. 47 sq.; “The Kaffirs believe that after death their spirits turn into a snake, which they call Ehlose, and that every living man has two of these familiar spirits—a good and a bad. When everything they undertake goes wrong with them, such as hunting, cattle-breeding, etc., they say they know that it is their enemies who are annoying them, and that they are only to be appeased by sacrificing an animal; but when everything prospers, they ascribe it to their good Ehlose being in the ascendant”; id., op. cit. p. 148: “When in battle two men are fighting, their snakes (Mahloze) are poetically said to be twisting and biting each other overhead. One ‘softens’ and goes down, and the man, whose attendant it is, goes down with it. Everything is ascribed to Ehlose. If he fails in anything, his Ehlose is bad; if successful, it is good.... It is this thing which is the inducing cause of everything. In fact, nothing in Zulu is admitted to arise from natural causes; everything is ascribed to witchcraft or the Ehlose.”
It is not all serpents that are amadhlozi (plural of idhlozi), that is, are the transformed spirits of the dead. Serpents which are dead men may easily be distinguished from common snakes, for they frequent huts; they do not eat mice, and they are not afraid of people. If a man in his life had a scar, his serpent after his death will also have a scar; if he had only one eye, his serpent will have only one eye; if he was lame, his serpent will be lame too. That is how you can recognise So-and-So in his serpent form. Chiefs do not turn into the same kind of snakes as ordinary people. For common folk become harmless snakes with green and white bellies and very small heads; but kings become boa-constrictors or the large and deadly black mamba. See Rev. Henry Callaway, M.D., The Religions System of the Amazulu, Part ii. (Capetown, London, etc., 1869) pp. 134 sq., 140, 196-202, 205, 208-211, 231. “The Ehlose of Chaka and other dead kings is the Boa-constrictor, or the large and deadly black Mamba, whichever the doctors decide. That of dead Queens is the tree Iguana” (David Leslie, op. cit. p. 213). Compare Rev. Joseph Shooter, The Kafirs of Natal and the Zulu Country (London, 1857), pp. 161 sq.; W. R. Gordon, “Words about Spirits,” (South African) Folk-lore Journal, ii. (Cape Town, 1880) pp. 101-103; W. Grant, “Magato and his Tribe,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxv. (1905) p. 270. A word which is sometimes confounded with idhlozi is itongo (plural amatongo); but the natives themselves when closely questioned distinguish between the two. See Dudley Kidd, Savage Childhood, a Study of Kafir Children (London, 1906), pp. 14 sq., 281-286. The notion that the spirits of the dead appear in the form of serpents is widespread in Africa. See Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Second Edition, pp. 73 sqq. Dr. F. B. Jevons has suggested that the Roman genius, the guardian-spirit which accompanied a man from birth to death (Censorinus, De die natali, 3) and was commonly represented in the form of a snake, may have been an external soul. See F. B. Jevons, Plutarch's Romane Questions (London, 1892) pp. xlvii. sq.; id., Introduction to the History of Religion (London, 1896), pp. 186 sq.; L. Preller, Römische Mythologie3 (Berlin, 1881-1883), ii. 195 sqq.; G. Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Römer2 (Munich, 1912), pp. 176 sq.
Virgil, Aen. vi. 137 sq.:—
“Latet arbore opaca
Aureus et foliis et lento vimine ramus.”
Virgil, Aen. vi. 205 sqq.:—
“Quale solet silvis brumali frigore viscum
Fronde virere nova, quod non sua seminat arbos,
Et croceo fetu teretis circumdare truncos:
Talis erat species auri frondentis opaca
Ilice, sic leni crepitabat bractea vento.”