Part 3 (1/2)
Journal Anthropological Institute, February, 1881
In Scotland, too, ”stones were called by the names of the limbs they resembled, as 'eye-stanes, head-stane'” A patient washed the affected part of his body, and rubbed it ith the stone corresponding In precisely the saht to resemble the human body, was supposed to be of wondrous medical efficacy, and was credited with human and super-human powers The method of cure, when the Philistines were ses of the same (1 Sam vi 5), and the same idea was found in the well-known superstition of sorcerers”a waxensupposed to affect the person represented
Gregor, Folk-lore of North-East Counties, p 40
See the paper on ”Moly and Mandragora,” in A Lang's Custom and Myth; 1884
Many curious customs and superstitions may be traced to this belief In old medical works one may still read that to eat of a lion's heart is a specific to ensure courage, while other organs and certain bulbous plants are a remedy for sterility The virtue of all the ancient aphrodisiacs resided in their shape This notion, which largely affected the early history of natures
Certain plants and other natural objects were believed to be so marked or stamped that they presented visibly the indications of the diseases, or diseased organs, for which they were specifics; these were their signatures Hence a large portion of the ancient art of ous to the syan diseased To this doctrine e soht, liver-wort, spleen-wort, etc The mandrake, from its supposed resemblance to the human form, was credited with marvellous powers, and anyone ill take the trouble to inquire into the folk-lore concerning plants and disease will find that much depends upon the appearance of the remedy
One of the most curious peculiarities of Christianity is its doctrine of a God crucified for sinners So strange, so repugnant to reason as such a doctrine is, it was quite consonant to the thoughts of those who held the belief in salvation by similars If Paul said, since by man came death by man came also the resurrection of the dead, the development of the doctrine necessitated that if it is God who damns it is also God who saves Any casual reader of Paul must have been struck by the antithesis which he constantly draws between the law and the Gospel, works and faith, the fall of h ”the second Adam”
The very phrase ”second Adam” implies this doctrine, which is summed up in the statement that ”Christ hath redee made a curse for us” (Gal iii 13)
God, in order to redeem man, had to take on sinful flesh and be himself the curse in order to be the cure Hence we read in the _Teaching of the Twelve Apostles_, chap xvi, that ”they who endure in their faith shall be saved by the very curse” Thus may we understand that which modern Christians find so difficult of explanation, viz, that the whole Christian world for the first thousand years from St Justin to St
Anselm believed that Christ paid the ransom for sinners to the Devil, their natural owner Christ in order to become the Savior had to becoh of course, being God, he could not stay there Hence his being likened to the brazen serpent, that remnant of early Jewish fetichiss xviii 4) John makes Jesus himself teach that ”as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness [as a cure for serpent bites] even so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have eternal life”
So Irenaeus says (bk iv, chap 2), ”men can be saved in no other way fro in him, who in the likeness of sinful flesh, is lifted up fros to himself and vivified the dead” That is, Christ was made sinful flesh to be the curse itself, just as the innocent brass appeared a serpent, because the form of the curse was necessary to the cure Paul dwells on the passage of the law ”Cursed is he that hangeth on a tree,” with the very object of showing that Christ, cursed under the laas a blessing under his glad tidings The Fathers were never tired of saying that man was lost by a tree (in Eden) and saved by a tree (on Calvary), that as the curse came in child-birth and thorns, so the world was saved by the birth of Christ and his crown of thorns Justin says, ”As the curse cain the salvation,” and this antithesis between Eve and Mary has been carried on by Catholic writers down to our own day
Notice too 1 Tim 15, where women are said to be saved by child birth, their curse
As the Christian doctrine of salvation through the blood of Christ has certainly no more foundation in fact than the efficacy of liver-wort in liver diseases, we suggest it may have no better foundation than the ancient superstition of salvation by similars
RELIGION AND MAGIC
”New Presbyter,” says Milton, ”is but old priest writ large” Old priest, it uise In early tiic were intimately associated; indeed, it ion being the belief in spirits, the earliest worshi+p is an attempt to influence or propitiate theical; the belief in spirits and infounded on dreams Medicine men and sorcerers were the first priests Herbert Spencer says (_Principles of Sociology_, sec 589): ”A satisfactory distinction between priests and medicine men is difficult to find Both are concerned with supernatural agents, which in their original for with these supernatural agents are so variously led, that at the outset no clear classification can be onians the saicians and doctors”; and a the North American Indians the functions of ”sorcerer, prophet, physician, exorciser, priest, and rain doctor” are united
Everywhere we find the priests are ined and dreaded power
They are supposed by their spells and incantations to have power over nature, or rather the spirits supposed to preside over it Hence they became the rulers of the people The e the nature of consecrated eles on the people, betrays his lineal descent froery
The Bible is full of icians, from Jahveh Elohim, who puts Adam into a sleep and then makes woman from his rib, to Jesus who casts out devils and cures blindness with clay and spittle, and whose followers perform similar works by the power of his naicians Pious Jacob cheats his uncle by a species of ic with peeled rods Joseph not only tells fortunes by interpreting drea cup (Gen xliv 5), doubtless siypt, in which, as described by Lane in his _Modern Egyptians_, a boy looks and pretends to see ies of the future in water
The fourth chapter of Exodus gives the initiation of Moses into the es the rod of Moses into a serpent and back again into a rod; suddenly makes his hand leprous, and as suddenly restores it Moses and Aaron show theicians to those at the court of Pharaoh, hen Aaron cast down his ic rod and it became a serpent, did in like h Aaron's rod sed up their rods (Exodus vii 11,12) Upon this passage the learned Methodist coe when the belief in witchcraft was al that such feats evidently required solery, observes: ”How icians had fae the appearance of the subjects on which they operated, or suddenly convey one thing away and substitute another in its place”
Aaron also used his rod to change _all_ the water into blood, a feat which the Egyptian icians also contrived to perform--we presume with the aid of spirits If you believe in spirits, there is no end to the supposition of what they ic rod of Moses is used to divide the water of the Red Sea, so that the children went through the round (Ex xiv 16), and to draater from a rock (Num xx 8) Aaron's rod blossoms miraculously to show the superiority of the tribe of Levi (Num xvii 8)
The Uriical articles used in divination (see Nu lots was another method of divination often referred to in the Bible Prov xvi 31, says ”The lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing thereof is with the Lord” It was because ”when Saul inquired of Jahveh, Jahveh answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets” (1 Sam xxviii 6), that he resorted to the witch of Endor The ephod and holy plate (Ex xxviii), and the phylacteries worn as frontlets between the eyes (Deut vi 8), were ical amulets
Modern Arabs wear scraps of the Koran in a similar way The holy oil (Ex xxx) and the water of jealousy (Nuical, as was also the brazen serpent, adored down to the days of Hezekiah The great Wizard's ark was also endoiththose who infringed its tabu; it was taken into battle His sanctuary was also called an oracle where the priest ”inquired of the Lord” (2 Saical, as we learn froes” The prophet Hosea, one of the very earliest of the Old Testament writers (about 740), announced as a misfortune that ”the children of Israel shall abide , and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an ie, and without an ephod, and without teraphih a believer in Elohim, calls the teraphim ”his Gods” (Genesis xxxi 29, 30), and so does Micah (Judges xviii 18-24) The latter chapter shows that the teraphim orshi+pped and served by the descendants of Moses down to the time of David (see Revised Version) David's wife Michal kept one in the house (1 Sam xix 13) It was evidently a fetish in human shape How comes it, then, one may ask, that divination and sorcery are denounced in Deuteronomy xviii? The answer is simple The Deutoronomic laas first found in the tis xxii 8-11), and there is abundant evidence it was not known before that tis xxiii 24, put away ”the familiar spirits, and the wizards and the teraphim and the idols,”
as Hezekiah (bc 726) had destroyed the brazen serpent Not only had Jezebel practised witchcraft (2 Kings ix 22), but Manasseh, the son of Hezekiah, ”dealt with a familiar spirit and izards” (2 Chron
xxxiii 6) These, it may be said, icked persons