Part 4 (2/2)
(1) Home University Library, p. 87.
We have already had to deal with instances of the ceremonial eating of the sacred he-Lamb or Ram, immolated in the Spring season of the year, and partaken of in a kind of communal feast--not without reference (at any rate in later times) to a supposed Lamb-G.o.d. Among the Ainos in the North of j.a.pan, as also among the Gilyaks in Eastern Siberia, the Bear is the great food-animal, and is wors.h.i.+pped as the supreme giver of health and strength. There also a similar ritual of sacrifice occurs. A perfect Bear is caught and caged. He is fed up and even pampered to the day of his death. ”Fish, brandy and other delicacies are offered to him.
Some of the people prostrate themselves before him; his coming into a house brings a blessing, and if he sniffs at the food that brings a blessing too.” Then he is led out and slain. A great feast takes place, the flesh is divided, cupfuls of the blood are drunk by the men; the tribe is united and strengthened, and the Bear-G.o.d blesses the ceremony--the ideal Bear that has given its life for the people. (1)
(1) See Art and Ritual, pp. 92-98; The Golden Bough, ii, 375 seq.; Themis, pp. 140, 141; etc.
That the eating of the flesh of an animal or a man conveys to you some of the qualities, the life-force, the mana, of that animal or man, is an idea which one often meets with among primitive folk. Hence the common tendency to eat enemy warriors slain in battle against your tribe. By doing so you absorb some of their valor and strength. Even the enemy scalps which an Apache Indian might hang from his belt were something magical to add to the Apache's power. As Gilbert Murray says, (1) ”you devoured the holy animal to get its mana, its swiftness, its strength, its great endurance, just as the savage now will eat his enemy's brain or heart or hands to get some particular quality residing there.”
Even--as he explains on the earlier page--mere CONTACT was often considered sufficient--”we have holy pillars whose holiness consists in the fact that they have been touched by the blood of a bull.” And in this connection we may note that nearly all the Christian Churches have a great belief in the virtue imparted by the mere 'laying on of hands.'
(1) Four Stages of Greek Religion, p. 36.
In quite a different connection--we read (1) that among the Spartans a warrior-boy would often beg for the love of the elder warrior whom he admired (i. e. the contact with his body) in order to obtain in that way a portion of the latter's courage and prowess. That through the mediation of the lips one's spirit may be united to the spirit of another person is an idea not unfamiliar to the modern mind; while the exchange of blood, clothes, locks of hair, etc., by lovers is a custom known all over the world. (2)
(1) Aelian VII, iii, 12: [gr autoi goun (oi paides) deontai twn erastwn] [gr eispnein autois]. See also E. Bethe on ”Die Dorische Knabenliebe” in the Rheinisches Museum, vol. 26, iii, 461.
(2) See Crawley's Mystic Rose, pp. 238, 242.
To suppose that by eating another you absorb his or her soul is somewhat naive certainly. Perhaps it IS more native, more primitive. Yet there may be SOME truth even in that idea. Certainly the food that one eats has a psychological effect, and the flesh-eaters among the human race have a different temperament as a rule from the fruit and vegetable eaters, while among the animals (though other causes may come in here) the Carnivora are decidedly more cruel and less gentle than the Herbivora.
To return to the rites of Dionysus, Gilbert Murray, speaking of Orphism--a great wave of religious reform which swept over Greece and South Italy in the sixth century B.C.--says: (1) ”A curious relic of primitive superst.i.tion and cruelty remained firmly imbedded in Orphism, a doctrine irrational and unintelligible, and for that very reason wrapped in the deepest and most sacred mystery: a belief in the SACRIFICE OF DIONYSUS HIMSELF, AND THE PURIFICATION OF MAN BY HIS BLOOD. It seems possible that the savage Thracians, in the fury of their wors.h.i.+p on the mountains, when they were possessed by the G.o.d and became 'wild beasts,' actually tore with their teeth and hands any hares, goats, fawns or the like that they came across.... The Orphic congregations of later times, in their most holy gatherings, solemnly partook of the blood of a bull, which was by a mystery the blood of Dionysus-Zagreus himself, the Bull of G.o.d, slain in sacrifice for the purification of man.” (2)
(1) See Notes to his translation of the Bacch[ae] of Euripides.
(2) For a description of this orgy see Theocritus, Idyll xxvi; also for explanations of it, Lang's Myth, Ritual and Religion, vol. ii, pp, 241-260, on Dionysus. The Encyclop[ae]dia Brit., article ”Orpheus,”
says:--”Orpheus, in the manner of his death, was considered to personate the G.o.d Dionysus, and was thus representative of the G.o.d torn to pieces every year--a ceremony enacted by the Bacchae in the earliest times with a human victim, and afterwards with a bull, to represent the bull-formed G.o.d. A distinct feature of this ritual was [gr wmof.a.gia] (eating the flesh of the victim raw), whereby the communicants imagined that they consumed and a.s.similated the G.o.d represented by the victim, and thus became filled with the divine ecstasy.” Compare also the Hindu doctrine of Praj[pati, the dismembered Lord of Creation.
Such instances of early communal feasts, which fulfilled the double part of confirming on the one hand the solidarity of the tribe, and on the other of bringing the tribe, by the shedding of the blood of a divine Victim into close relations.h.i.+p with the very source of its life, are plentiful to find. ”The sacramental rite,” says Professor Robertson-Smith, (1) ”is also an atoning rite, which brings the community again into harmony with its alienated G.o.d--atonement being simply an act of communion designed to wipe out all memory of previous estrangement.” With this subject I shall deal more specially in chapter vii below. Meanwhile as instances of early Eucharists we may mention the following cases, remembering always that as the blood is regarded as the Life, the drinking or partaking of, or sprinkling with, blood is always an acknowledgment of the common life; and that the juice of the grape being regarded as the blood of the Vine, wine in the later ceremonials quite easily and naturally takes the place of the blood in the early sacrifices.
(1) Religion of the Semites, p. 302.
Thus P. Andrada La Crozius, a French missionary, and one of the first Christians who went to Nepaul and Thibet, says in his History of India: ”Their Grand Lama celebrates a species of sacrifice with BREAD and WINE, in which, after taking a small quant.i.ty himself, he distributes the rest among the Lamas present at this ceremony.” (1) ”The old Egyptians celebrated the resurrection of Osiris by a sacrament, eating the sacred cake or wafer after it had been consecrated by the priest, and thereby becoming veritable flesh of his flesh.” (2) As is well known, the eating of bread or dough sacramentally (sometimes mixed with blood or seed) as an emblem of community of life with the divinity, is an extremely ancient practice or ritual. Dr. Frazer (3) says of the Aztecs, that ”twice a year, in May and December, an image of the great G.o.d Huitzilopochtli was made of dough, then broken in pieces and solemnly eaten by his wors.h.i.+pers.” And Lord Kingsborough in his Mexican Antiquities (vol. vi, p. 220) gives a record of a ”most Holy Supper”
in which these people ate the flesh of their G.o.d. It was a cake made of certain seeds, ”and having made it, they blessed it in their manner, and broke it into pieces, which the high priest put into certain very clean vessels, and took a thorn of maguey which resembles a very thick needle, with which he took up with the utmost reverence single morsels, which he put into the mouth of each individual in the manner of a communion.”
Acostas (4) confirms this and similar accounts. The Peruvians partook of a sacrament consisting of a pudding of coa.r.s.ely ground maize, of which a portion had been smeared on the idol. The priest sprinkled it with the blood of the victim before distributing it to the people. Priest and people then all took their shares in turn, ”with great care that no particle should be allowed to fall to the ground--this being looked upon as a great sin.” (5)
(1) See Doane's Bible Myths, p. 306.
(2) From The Great Law, of religious origins: by W. Williamson (1899), p. 177.
(3) The Golden Bough, vol. ii, p. 79.
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