The water with which a lover’s body (male or female) is washed, is used in making a philter to be mingled secretly in the drink of the loved one.
While, as I have already stated, it is true that anything portable may be used either as the receptacle in which the spirit is to be located or as the substance or “medicine” to be inserted in it, I wish to insist that in the philosophy of fetich there is always a reason in the selection of all these articles,—a reason which it is often difficult for a foreigner to discover,—an apparent fitness for the end in view.
Arnot[31] refers to this: “Africans believe largely in preventive measures, and their fetich charms are chiefly of that order. In passing through a country where leopards and lions abound, they carefully provide themselves with the claws, teeth, lips, and whiskers of those animals, and hang them around their necks, to secure themselves against being attacked. For the same purpose the point of an elephant trunk is generally worn by elephant hunters. The bones from the legs of tortoises are much valued as anklets, in order to give the wearers endurance, reminding one of the fable of the tortoise. The lower jaw-bone of the tortoise is worn by certain tribes as a preventive against toothache. The spine bones of serpents are strung together with a girdle as a cure for back-ache.”
A recent visitor to the Gabun country, in the “Journal of the African Society,” makes this criticism: “When a white man or woman wears some trinket strung about them, they call it an amulet or charm. They ascribe to it some virtue, and regard it as a sacred (?) thing; but when an African native wears one, white men call it ‘fetich,’ and the wearer a savage or heathen.” This defence of the Negro is gratifying, but the criticism of the white man is not quite just. There is this radical difference: to the African the “fetich” is his all, his entire hope for his physical salvation; he does not reckon on God at all. The civilized man or woman with a “mascot” is very foolish in his or her belief in luck, but their mascots never entirely take God’s place.
I met at Gabun about 1895 the same criticism from the mouth of a partly educated Sierra Leone Negro, who, though a professing Christian, evidently was wearing Christianity hypocritically. His well-educated Mpongwe wife was a member of my church. It was discovered that she had a certain fetich suspended in her bedroom. It was necessary to summon her before the church session; she explained that it was not hers, but her husband’s, and disclaimed belief in it. She was rebuked for allowing it in her room. The husband, hearing of the rebuke, wrote me an angry letter justifying his fetich. He said in substance:
“You white people don’t know anything about black man’s ‘fashions.’ You say you trust God for everything, but in your own country you put up an iron rod over your houses to protect yourselves from death by lightning; and you trust in it the while that you still believe in God; and you call it ‘electricity’ and civilization. And you say it’s all right. I call this thing of mine—this charm—‘medicine’; and I hung it over my wife’s bed to keep away death by the arts of those who hate her; and I trust in it while still believing in God. And you think me a heathen!” It was explained to him that in the use of the lightning-rod white men reverently recognized God in His own natural forces, but that his fetich dishonored God, ignored Him, and was a distinct recognition of a supposed power that was claimed to be able to act independently of God; that I trusted to the lightning-rod under God, while he trusted to his fetich outside of God.
For every human passion or desire of every part of our nature, for our thousand necessities or wishes, a fetich can be made, its operation being directed to the attainment of one specified wish, and limited in power only by the possible existence of some more powerful antagonizing spirit.
This, hung on the plantation fence or from the branches of plants in the garden, is either to prevent theft or to sicken the thief; hung over the doorway of the house, to bar the entrance of evil; hung from the bow of the canoe, to insure a successful voyage; worn on the arm in hunting, to assure an accurate aim; worn on any part of one’s person, to give success in loving, hating, planting, fishing, buying, and so forth, through the whole range of daily work and interests.
Some kinds, worn on a bracelet or necklace, are to ward off sickness. The new-born infant has a health-knot tied about its neck, wrist, or loins. Down to the day of oldest age, every one keeps on multiplying or renewing or altering these life talismans.
If of the charge at Balaklava it was said, “This is magnificent, but it is not war,” I may say of these heathen, “Such faith is magnificent, though it be folly.” The hunter going out, certain of success, returns empty-handed; the warrior bearing on his breast a fetich panoply, which he is confident will turn aside a bullet, comes back wounded; every one is some day foiled in his cherished plan. Do they lose their faith? No, not in the system,—their fetichism; but in the special material object of their faith—their fetich—they do. Going to the oganga whom they had paid for concocting that now disappointing amulet, they tell him of its failure. He readily replies: “Yes, I know. You have an enemy who possesses a fetich containing a spirit more powerful than yours, which made your bullet miss its mark, which caused your opponent’s spear to wound you. Yours is no longer of use; it’s dead. Come, pay me, and I will make you a charm containing a spirit still more powerful.”