Chapter 52 Transfer the calamity: transfer the calamity to an inanimate object

We have explored the practice of killing gods among peoples at various stages of social development as hunting, herding, and farming; I shall also attempt to explain the motives which led people to adopt this curious custom.There is one more aspect of this custom that requires attention.The accumulated misfortunes and sins of entire peoples are sometimes piled together on the dying god; it is believed that he can take away all misfortunes and sins forever, leaving people innocent and happy.To transfer one's guilt and pain to another, to let another bear it for oneself, is a familiar idea in the mind of a savage.This notion arises from the very obvious confusion of physical and mental, material and immaterial phenomena.As we can transfer a bundle of wood, or a stone, or whatever, from our own back to another's, so the savage finds it equally possible to transfer his pains and sorrows to another, and let them take their place. Suffer yourself.So he acted according to this concept, and finally came up with countless unfriendly schemes, and pushed the trouble he didn't want to bear to others.In short, peoples with lower levels of social and intellectual development generally understand and apply the principle of substitute suffering.Now I will give examples to prove that this theory and practice of the savages is naked, straightforward, and not covered by subtle speculation and cunning theory.

The means by which the cunning and selfish savage extricates himself from imposing upon his neighbor are varied; and here are but a few typical examples, out of innumerable examples.First of all, we need to know that if someone wants to get rid of the disaster, it does not have to be transferred to a person; it can also be transferred to an animal or a thing, but such a thing is often just a tool to pass the disaster to the person who first touches it.People on some islands in the East Indies believe that there is a cure for epilepsy. They use leaves of a certain tree to hit the patient in the face, and then throw away the leaves. They think that this transfers the disease to the leaves, and they are thrown away with the leaves. Lose.Some black Australians treat a toothache by putting a hot spear-thrower on their face, and throwing away the spear-thrower, the toothache goes away as well, becoming a black stone called Karriitch.There are such stones in many old mounds and old sand dunes.People collected these stones carefully and threw them at the enemy to make them suffer from dental disease.The Bahima, a herding people in Uganda, often suffer from a kind of deep abscess. "The way they treat this disease is to transfer the disease to others, get some spiritual grass from the wizard, rub the abscess with the grass, and bury the grass Where people often walk, whoever steps on the buried grass first will get this disease, and the original patient will be healed."

Sometimes, when you encounter a disease, you transfer the disease to the idol. This is the initial means of transferring the disease to others.As among the Bagandas, the sorcerer sometimes makes an idol of a sick man out of clay; the relatives of the sick man then rub the idol on the body of the sick man, and either bury the idol in the middle of the road, or hide it in the grass beside the road.The disease was contracted by the first person to step on or pass by an idol.Sometimes idols are made of banana blossoms, tied into a human form, and used in the same way as clay figurines.But the use of idols for such injurious purposes is a great crime; and whoever is caught burying an idol in a highway must be punished with death.

In the western part of the island of Timor, when a man or woman is tired from a long journey, they fan themselves with a leafy branch and throw it where their predecessors had thrown it.So their fatigue is passed on to the leaves, which are thrown away.Some people use stones instead of leaves.Likewise, on the Babur Islands, weary men beat themselves with stones, thinking that they had thus transferred their weariness to the stones, which they then threw in the places marked out for them.There are similar beliefs and practices in many remote areas of the world, so there are many piles of stones or branches and leaves, which travelers can often see on the roadside, and the local natives throw their own stones wherever they pass. blocks, branches or leaves.As the natives of Solomon Island or Bank Island used to throw twigs, stones, or leaves on such a pile at the beginning of a steep descent or a difficult path, and say, "There goes all my weariness." It's gone." This practice is not a religious ceremony, since the objects thrown on the heap are not offerings to the gods, and the words spoken while throwing them are not prayers.It is nothing but a magical ritual to relieve fatigue, which the simple-minded savage thinks he can transfer to a twig, leaf, or stone, and relieve himself of it.