The Golden Bough - The Original Classic Edition. Frazer Sir

To this day some of the Indian tribes of Central

       America practise continence for the purpose of thereby promoting the growth of the crops. Thus we are told that before sowing the

       maize the Kekchi Indians sleep apart from their wives, and eat no flesh for five days, while among the Lanquineros and Cajaboneros

       the period of abstinence from these carnal pleasures extends to thirteen days. So amongst some of the Germans of Transylvania it

       is a rule that no man may sleep with his wife during the whole of the time that he is engaged in sowing his fields. The same rule is

       observed at Kalotaszeg in Hungary; the people think that if the custom were not observed the corn would be mildewed. Similarly a

       Central Australian headman of the Kaitish tribe strictly abstains from marital relations with his wife all the time that he is performing

       magical ceremonies to make the grass grow; for he believes that a breach of this rule would prevent the grass seed from sprouting

       properly. In some of the Melanesian islands, when the yam vines are being trained, the men sleep near the gardens and never ap-

       proach their wives; should they enter the garden after breaking this rule of continence the fruits of the garden would be spoilt.

       If we ask why it is that similar beliefs should logically lead, among different peoples, to such opposite modes of conduct as strict

       chastity and more or less open debauchery, the reason, as it presents itself to the primitive mind, is perhaps not very far to seek.

       If rude man identifies himself, in a manner, with nature; if he fails to distinguish the impulses and processes in himself from the

       methods which nature adopts to ensure the reproduction of plants and animals, he may leap to one of two conclusions. Either he

       may infer that by yielding to his appetites he will thereby assist in the multiplication of plants and animals; or he may imagine that

       the vigour which he refuses to expend in reproducing his own kind, will form as it were a store of energy whereby other creatures,

       whether vegetable or animal, will somehow benefit in propagating their species. Thus from the same crude philosophy, the same

       primitive notions of nature and life, the savage may derive by different channels a rule either of profligacy or of asceticism.

       To readers bred in religion which is saturated with the ascetic idealism of the East, the explanation which I have given of the rule of

       continence observed under certain circumstances by rude or savage peoples may seem far-fetched and improbable. They may think

       that moral purity, which is so intimately associated in their minds with the observance of such a rule, furnishes a sufficient explana-

       tion of it; they may hold with Milton that chastity in itself is a noble virtue, and that the restraint which it imposes on one of the

       strongest impulses of our animal nature marks out those who can submit to it as men raised above the common herd, and therefore

       worthy to receive the seal of the divine approbation. However natural this mode of thought may seem to us, it is utterly foreign and

       indeed incomprehensible to the savage. If he resists on occasion the sexual instinct, it is from no high idealism, no ethereal aspira-

       tion after moral purity, but for the sake of some ulterior yet perfectly definite and concrete object, to gain which he is prepared to

       sacrifice the immediate gratification of his senses. That this is or may be so, the examples I have cited are amply sufficient to prove.

       They show that where the instinct of self-preservation, which manifests itself chiefly in the search for food, conflicts or appears to

       conflict with the instinct which conduces to the propagation of the species, the former instinct, as the primary and more funda-

       mental, is capable of overmastering the latter. In short, the savage is willing to restrain his sexual propensity for the sake of food.

       Another object for the sake of which he consents to exercise the same self-restraint is victory in war. Not only the warrior in the

       field but his friends at home will often bridle their sensual appetites from a belief that by so doing they will the more easily overcome

       their enemies. The fallacy of such a belief, like the belief that the chastity of the sower conduces to the growth of the seed, is plain

       enough to us; yet perhaps the self-restraint which these and the like beliefs, vain and false as they are, have imposed on mankind, has

       not been without its utility in bracing and strengthening the breed. For strength of character in the race as in the individual consists

       mainly in the power of sacrificing the present to the future, of disregarding the immediate temptations of ephemeral pleasure for

       more distant and lasting sources of satisfaction. The more the power is exercised the higher and stronger becomes the character; till

       the height of heroism is reached in men who renounce the pleasures of life and even life itself for the sake of keeping or winning

       for others, perhaps in distant ages, the blessings of freedom and truth.

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       XII. The Sacred Marriage

       1. Diana as a Goddess of Fertility

       WE have seen that according to a widespread belief, which is not without a foundation in fact, plants reproduce their kinds through

       the sexual union of male and female elements, and that on the principle of homoeopathic or imitative magic this reproduction

       is supposed to be stimulated by the real or mock marriage of men and women, who masquerade for the time being as spirits of

       vegetation. Such magical dramas have played a great part in the popular festivals of Europe, and based as they are on a very crude

       conception of natural law, it is clear that they must have been handed down from a remote antiquity. We shall hardly, therefore, err in

       assuming that they date from a time when the forefathers of the civilised nations of Europe were still barbarians, herding their cattle

       and cultivating patches of corn in the clearings of the vast forests, which then covered the greater part of the continent, from the

       Mediterranean to the Arctic Ocean. But if these old spells and enchantments for the growth of leaves and blossoms, of grass and

       flowers and fruit, have lingered down to our own time in the shape of pastoral plays and popular merrymakings, is it not reasonable

       to suppose that they survived in less attenuated forms some two thousand years ago among the civilised peoples of antiquity? Or,

       to put it otherwise, is it not likely that in certain festivals of the ancients we may be able to detect the equivalents of our May Day,

       Whitsuntide, and Midsummer celebrations, with this difference, that in those days the ceremonies had not yet dwindled into mere

       shows and pageants, but were still religious or magical rites, in which the actors consciously supported the high parts of gods and

       goddesses? Now in the first chapter of this book we found reason to believe that the priest who bore the title of King of the Wood

       at Nemi had for his mate the goddess of the grove, Diana herself. May not he and she, as King and Queen of the Wood, have been

       serious counterparts of the merry mummers who play the King and Queen of May, the Whitsuntide Bridegroom and Bride in mod-

       ern Europe? and may not their union have been yearly celebrated in a theogamy or divine marriage? Such dramatic weddings of gods

       and goddesses, as we shall see presently, were carried out as solemn religious rites in many parts of the ancient world; hence there is