In the primitive cult ceremonies of the Australians, lustration is effected almost exclusively by fire. In America also fire still plays an important rôle, particularly in the cult ceremonies of the Pueblo peoples. They kindle a great fire, about which they execute dances. In the initiation ceremonies of the Australians, the youths must approach very close to the fire or, at times, leap over it. In this way they are made proof against future attacks. Such fire-magic reaches down even into later civilizations. A survival of this sort is the St. John's fire still prevalent in many regions of Europe and, in view of its origin, still frequently called 'solstice fire' in southern Germany. On these occasions also, the young men and maidens leap over the fire and expose themselves to the danger of its flames, in the belief that whatever they may wish at the time will come to pass. Here again, as in the Australian initiation ceremonies, lustration by fire signifies a magic act having reference to the future.
Water is a far more common means of lustration than fire. It everywhere gained the ascendancy and at the same time very largely preserved its original significance. From early times on it combined the power of removing the impurities resulting from the violation of a taboo, or, more widely applied, of cleansing from guilt, with the power of protecting against impending impurity and guilt. Thus, even in the beginnings of taboo usages, the bath, or ablution, was a universal means of purification. The sprinkling with water, on the other hand, which has held its place even in Christian cult, is a means of purification directed primarily to the future. In the so-called Jordan festivals of the Greek Catholic Church, ordinary water is changed into Jordan water by the magic of the priest. The believer is confident that if he is sprinkled with this water he will commit no sin in the course of the following year.
Less common, on the whole, is the third form of lustration, that by magical transference. Israelitic legend affords a striking example of such lustration in the goat which, laden with the sins of Israel, is driven by Aaron into the wilderness. He takes the goat, lays both his hands on its head, and whispers the sins of Israel into its ear. The goat is then driven into the wilderness, where it is to bury the sins in a distant place. An analogous New Testament story, moreover, is related in St. Matthew's Gospel. We are here told that, in Galilee, a man who was possessed of many demons was freed from them by Jesus, who commanded them to pass into a herd of swine that happened to be near by. Since the demons had previously begged Jesus not to destroy them, they were banished into these animals. The swine, however, plunged into an adjacent sea, and thus the demons perished with them.
Totem, taboo, lustration, and counter-magic, accordingly, were originally closely related to one another, though each of them proved capable of initiating new tendencies and of undergoing a further independent development. The totem, for example, gave rise to numerous sorts of protective demons; the taboo was transferred to the most diverse objects, such as aroused feelings of fear and aversion; lustration led to the various counter agencies that freed men's minds from the ideas of contamination and guilt. These institutions, however, were themselves based upon certain more elementary ideas whose influence was far from being exhausted in them. On the one hand, totemic belief grew out of the belief in souls; on the other hand, totemic ideas were the precursors of further developments. The activity of totem ancestors was associated with certain inanimate objects, such as the Australian churingas, to which magical powers were held to have been transmitted. Inasmuch as the totem animal was also an ancestral animal, it formed the transition to the elevation of human ancestors into cult objects, first on a par with animal ancestors and later exalted above them. Thus, there are three sets of ideas which, in part, form the bases of totemism, and, in part, reach out beyond it, constituting integral factors of further developments of the most diverse character. These ideas may be briefly designated as animism, fetishism, and ancestor worship. Animism, as here used, refers to the various forms of the belief in souls. By fetishism, on the other hand, is universally meant the belief in the demoniacal power of inanimate objects. Ancestor worship, finally, is the worship in cult of family or tribal ancestors. The original totemism passes over into the higher ancestor worship, which, in turn, issues in hero cult, and finally in the cult of the gods.
[1] transcribers' note: "causal" is probably meant here.
[11. SOUL BELIEFS OF THE TOTEMIC AGE.]
Soul ideas, as we have already noted, constitute the basis of totem belief, and may thus be said to date back into the pretotemic age, even though it is obviously only within the totemic period that they attain to their more complete development. If we include the whole of the broad domain of soul belief under the term animism, the latter, in its many diverse forms, may be said to extend from the most primitive to the highest levels of culture. It is fitting, however, to enter upon a connected account of animism at this point, because the development of the main forms of soul belief and of their transformations takes place within the totemic age. Moreover, not only is totemism closely dependent from the very beginning upon soul conceptions, but the development of soul conceptions is to an equal degree affected by totemism.
Soul belief, thus, constitutes an imperishable factor in all mythology and religion. This accounts for the fact that there are some mythologists as well as certain psychologists of religion who actually trace all mythology and religion to animism, believing that soul ideas first gave rise to demon and ancestor cults, and then to the worship of the gods. This view is maintained by Edward Tylor, Herbert Spencer, Julius Lippert, and a number of others. Undeniable as it is that soul belief has exerted an important influence upon mythological and religious thought, it nevertheless represents but one factor among others. For this very reason, however, we must consider separately its own peculiar conditions, since it is thus alone that we can gain an understanding of its relation to the other factors of mythological thought. The fittest place for examining this general interconnection is just at this point, where we are in the very midst of totemic ideas, and where we encounter the transformations of soul ideas in a specially pronounced form. Everything goes to show that the most important change in the history of the development of soul belief falls within the totemic period. This change consists in the distinction between a soul that is bound to the body, and which, because of this permanent attachment, we will briefly call the corporeal soul, and a soul which may leave the body and continue its existence independently of it. Moreover, according to an idea particularly peculiar to the totemic age, this latter soul may become embodied in other living beings, especially in animals, but also in plants, and even in inanimate objects. We will call this soul psyche, the breath or shadow soul. It is a breath soul because it was the exhalation of the breath, perhaps, that first suggested these ideas; it is a shadow soul since it was the dream image, in particular, that gave to this soul the form of a shadowy, visible but intangible, counterpart of man. As a fleeting form, rapidly appearing and again disappearing, the shadow soul is a variety of breath soul. The two readily pass over into each other, and are therefore regarded as one and the same psyche.
There is ground for the conjecture that the distinction between these two main forms of the soul, the corporeal and the breath or shadow soul, is closely bound up with the changed culture of the totemic age. Primitive man flees from the corpse—indeed, even from those who are sick, if he sees that death is approaching. The corpse is left where it lies, and even the mortally ill are abandoned in their helpless condition. The living avoid the places where death has entered. All this changes in an age that has become familiar with struggle and death, and particularly with the sudden death which follows upon the use of weapons. This is exemplified even by the natives of Australia, who are armed with spear and shield. The warrior who falls before the deadly weapon, whose blood flows forth, and who expires in the midst of his fellow-combatants, arouses an entirely different impression from the man of the most primitive times who dies in solitude, and from whose presence the living flee. In addition to the original ideas of a soul that is harboured in the body, and that after death wanders about the neighbourhood as an invisible demon, we now have a further set of ideas. The soul is believed to leave the body in the form of the blood. But it may take an even more sudden departure, being sometimes supposed to leave in the last breath. In this case, it is held to be directly perceptible as a small cloud or a vapour, or as passing over into some animal that is swift of movement or possesses such characteristics as arouse an uncanny feeling. This idea of a breath soul readily leads to the belief that the psyche, after its separation from the body, appears in the dream image, again temporarily assuming, in shadowy form, the outlines of its original body.