Religion and Lust. James Weir

ghost with scant ceremony; it was only after many years that an element of worship entered into their treatment of the ghosts of their dead ancestors. They believed, at first, that the double dwelt forever in the tomb along with the dead body; afterward, they evolved the idea that the double of the dead man journeyed to the “Islands of the Blessed,” where it was judged by Osiris according to its merits.6 We have no reason for believing that the ancient Hebrews at the time of the Exodus had any knowledge of, or belief in, the existence of the soul or double, yet, that they did believe in the supernatural can not be questioned.7 When Cook touched at Tierra del Fuego, he found a people in whom there existed mental habitudes but little above those to be found in the anthropoid apes. They had no knowledge whatever of the soul or double and but a dim concept of the powers of nature; they had not yet advanced far enough in psychical development to evolve any consistent form of natural theogony. They had only a shadowy concept of evil beings, powers of the air that inhabited the dense brakes of the forest, whom it would be dangerous to molest. Father Junipero Serra declares that when he first established the Mission Dolores, the Ahwashtees, Ohlones, Romanos, Altahmos, Tuolomos, and other Californian tribes had no word in their language for god, ghost, or devil.8 The Inca Yupangui informed Balboa that there were many tribes in the interior which had no idea of ghost or soul.9 Another writer says, that the Chirihuanas did not worship anything either in heaven or on earth, and that they had no belief whatever in a future state.10 Modern travelers have, however, found distinct evidences of phallic worship in certain observances and customs of this tribe.11

      Certain autochthons of India, when first discovered, were exceedingly immature in religious beliefs; they had neither god nor devil; they wandered through the woods subsisting on berries and fruits, and such small animals as their undeveloped and feeble sagacity allowed them to capture and slay. They did not even provide themselves with shelter, but, in pristine nakedness, roamed the forests of the Ghauts, animals but slightly above the anthropoid apes in point of intelligence. “In Central California we find,” says Bancroft, “whole tribes subsisting on roots, herbs, and insects; having no boats, no clothing, no laws, no God.”12

      In the northwestern corner of the American continent there dwells a primitive race, which, for the sake of unification, I will style the Aleutians. When these people were first discovered they were in that state of social economics which they had reached after thousands of years of psychical and social evolution; a primitive people, such as our own ancestors were in the very beginning of civilization. The word civilization is used advisedly; civilization is comparative, and its degrees begin with the inception of man himself.

      In their theogony, the Aleutians had arrived at an idea of the double or soul, thus showing that their religion had progressed several steps toward abstraction, that triumph of civilized religiosity; yet there remained enough veneration of natural objects to show that the origin of the religious feeling began, with them, in nature-propitiation. The bladder of the bear, which viscus, in the estimation of the Aleutians, is the seat of life, is at once suspended above the entrance of the kachim or communal dwelling and worshiped by the hunter who has slain the beast from which it was taken. Moreover, when the bear falls beneath the weapons of an Aleutian, the man begs pardon of the beast and prays the latter to forgive him and to do him no harm. “A hunter who has struck a mortal blow generally remains within his hut for one or several days, according to the importance of the slain animal.”13 The first herring that is caught is showered with compliments and blessings; pompous titles are lavished upon it, and it is handled with the greatest respect and reverence; it is the herring-god!14

      Sidné, chief god of the Aleutian theogony, on final analysis, is found to be the Earth, mother of all things. The angakouts, or priests, of this people individualize and deify, however, all the phenomena of nature; there are cloud-gods, sea-gods, river-gods, fire-gods, rain-gods, storm-gods, etc., etc., etc. Everywhere, throughout all nature, the Inoit, or Aleutian system of theology, penetrates, stripped, it is true, of much of its original materialism, yet retaining enough to show its undoubted origin in the sensual percepts, recepts, and concepts of its primal founders.

      As I have observed above, the religion of these people has gained a certain degree of abstraction, and this abstraction is further shown by the presence of certain phallic rites and ceremonies in their religious observances; but of this, more anon.15

      In most of the tribes of Equatorial Africa, nature-worship has been superseded by ghost-worship, devil-worship, or witch-worship, or, rather, by ghost, devil, or witch propitiation; yet, in the sanctity of the fetich, which is everywhere present, we see a relic of nature-worship. Moreover, many of these tribes deify natural phenomena, such as the sun, the moon, the stars, thunder, lightning, etc., etc., etc., showing that here, too, in all probability, religious feeling had its origin in nature propitiation.

      Abstraction also enters, to a certain extent, into the religious beliefs of most of these negroes, in whom primal materialism has given place to the unbridled superstition of crude spiritism. The curious habit these people have of scraping a little bone dust from the skull of a dead ancestor and then eating it with their food, thus, as they think, transmitting from the dead to the living the qualities of the former, is close kin to, and, in my opinion, is probably derived from, a worship of the generative principle. When we take into consideration the fact that circumcision, extensio clitoridis, and other phallic rites are exceedingly common and prevalent among these negroes, this opinion has strong evidence in its support.16

      The Wa-kamba may have some idea of immortality, though observers have never been able to determine this definitely. “The dead bodies of chiefs are not thrown to the hyenas, as with the Masai, but are carefully buried instead… The bodies of less important members of the tribe are simply thrown to the hyenas.”17

      In this people, religious ideas are exceedingly primitive and indefinite. They seem to propitiate nature, however, when they wish rain, for they offer up to the rain-spirit votive offerings of bananas, grain, and beer, which they place beneath the trees. This seems to be their only religious rite according to Gregory, who, in all probability is in error. For, in the next sentence, he informs us that these negroes practice circumcision. He thinks that they perform this operation for sanitary reasons, “as the natives have continually to ford streams and wade through swamps abounding in the larvæ of Bilharzia haematuria, the rite no doubt lessens the danger of incurring hæmaturia.”18 This is bestowing upon ignorant and savage negroes a psychical acuteness which far transcends that of the laity of civilized races! What do the Wa-kamba know of sanitation, hæmaturia, and the larva of Bilharzia!19 Circumcision among these people always occurs at puberty, and is, unquestionably, a phallic rite. Parenthetically, it may be stated here that a few of the primitive peoples still in existence appear to have grasped the idea of the life-giving principle, and to have established worship of the functio generationis without having experienced certain preliminary psychical stages necessary for its evolution from nature-worship. I believe, however, that this is apparent and not real; nature-worship, very probably, at one time existed among all these people.

      The Kikuyu have a very elaborate system of theogony, in which all of the phenomena of nature with which they are acquainted are deified. A goat is invariably sacrificed to the sun when they set out on a journey, and its blood is carried along and sprinkled on the paths and bridges in order to appease the spirits of the forest and the river.

      Stuhlmann places this tribe among the Bantu; from the evidence of other observers, however, they seem to be Nilotic Hamites, and belong properly to the Masai.20 This would account for the similarity of method in circumcision, which, among both Kikuyu and Masai, is

6

Maspero (Sayce): The Dawn of Civilization, p. 183 et seq.

7

That the patriarchs had their household gods, we have every reason for believing; these household gods were, however, tutelary divinities, such as were kept in the house of every Chaldean, and were not the images of ancestors. Rachel, the wife of Jacob, stole the household gods of Laban, her father, who is called a Syrian. Abraham himself was a Chaldean. Gen. 11:31; also Gen. 31:19-20.

8

Bancroft: The Native Races of the Pacific States of North America, vol. i, p. 400.

9

Balboa: History of Peru.

10

Garcilasso: The Royal Commentaries of the Incas.

11

Browlow: Travels, p. 136.

12

Bancroft: The Native Races of the Pacific States of North America, vol. i, p. 400.

13

Reclus: Primitive Folk, p. 18.

14

Dall: Alaska and its Resources, p. 96.

15

In a letter to me, a naval officer of high rank states that, beyond question of doubt, the Aleutian priests keep male concubines whom they use in their religious observances. He, also, gives other evidences of phallic worship among these people.

16

Negroes of Benin and Sierra Leone (Bosman, loc. cit., p. 526), Mandingoes (Waitz, vol. ii, p. 3), Bechuanas (Holub, loc. cit., p. 398); quoted also by Westermarck, Human Marriage, p. 206.

17

Gregory: The Great Rift Valley, p. 351.

18

Gregory: The Great Rift Valley, p. 351.

19

Inasmuch as the hæmaturia occasioned by the larvæ of Bilharzia has its origin in the parenchyma of the kidney, and, since we have no reason for believing that this race has any idea of histology or pathology, it is manifest folly to ascribe circumcision as a prophylactic measure against this parasite. Bilharzia is now considered a true parasite by Wolfe.

20

Stuhlmann: Mit Emin Pasha, p. 848.