Chapter 59 Public scapegoats: Sending away demons with light boats and people on a regular basis

Intermediary exorcisms using scapegoats or other material tools tend to be performed on a regular basis, and for the same reasons, as direct exorcisms of invisible demons.The people of the islands of Leti, Moa, and Lacol in the Indies send every year (usually in March) all their diseases into the sea.They make a clipper, about six feet long, with sails, oars, rudder, and other equipment, and each family puts in the boat some rice, fruit, a poultry, two eggs, insects from the field, and so on.Then they let it float into the sea, and said, "Take all the diseases out of here, and take them to another island, and another place, and spread them in the east where the sun rises." The people of Biaggar send a small boat to sea every year, carrying the sins and misfortunes of the people.Any sailor on board who encounters this ominous boat at sea suffers from all the disasters in it.The Dusun people of the Tualan region of British North Borneo observe a similar custom every year.This ceremony is the most important one of the year.Its purpose is to solemnly dispel all the evil spirits that have accumulated inside and outside the home during the past twelve full months, and bring good luck to the whole village for the coming year.The work of expelling and expelling demons is mainly performed by women.They put on their most beautiful clothes and walked through the village in procession.One of them carried a little suckling pig in a basket on his back; the rest had sticks in their hands, with which they struck the piglet from time to time;Women dance and sing in front of each house, knocking castanets or cymbals and ringing small brass bells.After each family in the village had finished performing, the team lined up and walked towards the river. At this time, all the monsters had been driven out of the houses by the performers, and they followed them to the water's edge.There a raft was ready and moored on the shore.On the raft lay many offerings, food, cloth, cooking pots, and swords; on the raft were filled the boards with idols of men, women, animals, and birds, all made of siju palm leaves.At this time, the monsters began to board the raft, and when they were all on board, they pushed the raft away, carried the monsters, and went with the tide.If the raft runs aground near the village, push it away quickly, lest unseen passengers seize the opportunity to go ashore and return to the village.The cry of the little pig lured the demons from their hiding place, and the last torment of the little pig was death, it was slaughtered, and its carcass was thrown away.

Every year at the beginning of the dry season the inhabitants of Car Nicobar take a model boat and walk through all the villages.Chase the goblin out of the hut, catch up with the boat, and launch it into the water so it can go with the wind.A missionary saw this ceremony in Car Nicobar in July 1897, and described it as follows: For three days in a row, people were busy preparing two very large floats, shaped like canoes, loaded with sails, and carrying There are some leaves containing useful things for exorcising evil spirits.The young man was busy preparing the boat, and the wizard and the elder sat in the house and sang in turn; but now and then they came out, and walked about the beach with sticks, to keep the devil from entering the village.The ceremony on the fourth day has a name, which means "release the boat to drive away evil spirits".At dusk the people of the village gather, and the women carry baskets of ashes and many bunches of leaves to ward off evil spirits.Then distribute these leaves to everyone.Regardless of age.When all was in place, a party of able-bodied men, escorted by a wizard, carried a float into the sea from the right side of the village cemetery, and let it float on the water.As soon as they came back from the beach, another group of people carried another floating vehicle from the left side of the village cemetery to the beach, and also floated it in the sea.When all these ghost boats had been launched, the women threw ashes on the shore; and the people shouted, "Ghost, run away, run away, and never come back!" and that night all the people dined with great joy, for the ghost had departed in the direction of Jowala.The other villages of Nicobar also perform annual exorcisms; however, the time and place of the ritual are different.

Many indigenous tribes in China hold a grand festival every March to celebrate the complete exorcism of all evils of the past twelve months.The method is as follows: bury a large pottery vat filled with gunpowder, stones, and small pieces of iron in the ground, and at the same time bury a wire to connect it with the large vat, strike a match to light the wire, and the inside of the vat The gunpowder exploded immediately.Here, the stones and iron pieces represent the diseases and disasters of the past year, and after being exploded and split, it means that the diseases and disasters have been expelled.The whole festival is full of revelry and drunkenness.At Odd Calabar on the coast of Guinea, there was and is a mass exorcism every two years of all demons.Ghosts exorcised from their haunts, including all ghosts of those who have died since the last exorcism.According to a narrative, the exorcism time is in November, about three weeks or one month before the exorcism, some rough idols are made of wicker or wood, resembling people or animals, such as crocodiles, leopards, elephants, bulls, Birds, etc., are tied up with cloth strips, decorated with some cheap ornaments, and placed at the door of each house.About three o'clock in the morning on the day of the ceremony, all the inhabitants went out into the streets, with a loud, deafening, and violent outcry, and in this way drove all hidden ghosts into the idols, in order to drive them away from the idols. The idols were driven from the dwellings of men.So crowds of people go by in the streets, knocking on doors, firing guns, beating drums, blowing horns, ringing bells, beating pots and pans, shouting as loud as they can, making all sorts of noise to wake up the ghosts.The uproar went on until just before dawn, then gradually subsided, and ceased altogether at sunrise.By this time the families had been completely wiped out, and all the frightened spirits had been squeezed into the idol, or into the dancing ornaments of the idol.The garbage from the house or the ashes from the next day's fire are also placed in the idol made of willow.Then, hasten to seize the ghost-bearing idols, and carry them down the river in a rowdy procession, and throw them into the water with the sound of drums, until the low tide will carry them into the sea.In this way, all the ghosts and ghosts were removed from the town, and it was quiet for another two years.

It is not that Europe does not have this kind of thing that exorcises the ghosts of prop-shaped objects year by year.On the evening of Easter Sunday, the Gypsies in southern Europe put a coat-box-like container on two crossed sticks like a cradle. They put some leaves and grass in the box and a dried dead snake or A dead lizard, which every one present had to touch with his finger, was then wrapped in red and white wool in the box, and carried from tent to tent by the oldest, and finally thrown into the running water, and before it was thrown, all Everyone spit into it, and the wizard has to say a spell to it.They think that by performing this ceremony, they will get rid of all diseases that would otherwise plague them throughout the year; Will be haunted by diseases that others have escaped.

The scapegoat, sometimes an animal, is used for mass exorcism of evil accumulated throughout the year.For example, the Garo people in Assam, in addition to holding sacrifices for personal illnesses, there are also some ceremonies that all people in the society or the whole village have to participate in every year. People will not be harmed by the forest, will not get sick, and will not invite disasters.Chief among these ceremonies is the Asongtata festival.The method of this ceremony is: immediately outside each large village, a lot of stones are randomly inserted in the ground conspicuously.These stones are called Assun, and the offerings for the Assunta Tower Festival are placed on these stones.Sacrifice a goat first, and then sacrifice a "Langur" (1angur or Entellus, monkey) or a bamboo rat a month later.The selected animals are tied around their necks with ropes and led by two people, one on each side, to each house in the village.They should take turns leading them into each house.At this time, the assembled villagers knocked on the wall from outside the house, frightening the goblin who might be living in the house and running away.In this way, after the whole village has been visited, the monkey or mouse is led outside the village, killed with a swing of a knife, its internal organs are taken out, and then it is nailed to a bamboo pole standing on the ground.Around it, insert long and sharp bamboo pieces to form a kind of fence.These originally commemorated such fortifications around the villages in the past to ward off human enemies, but now they have become symbols of warding off disease and wild beasts in the forest.The monkey used for sacrifice was hunted a few days ago. If you can’t catch it, you can use a yellow monkey instead of a monkey. A kind of monkey, so it is transliterated as "monkey". ].In this example, the monkey or mouse crucified is the public scapegoat, who suffers and dies on behalf of the people, and relieves people of all diseases and disasters in the coming year.

Another example is that the Bodhiya people in the Zhuha area in the west of the Himalayas capture a dog one day every year, get it drunk with wine or marijuana, feed it with sweet meat, lead it for a walk around the village, and then give it to the dog. it let go.Then the people chased it and beat it to death with sticks and stones, thinking that after they did so, there would be no sickness or misfortune in the village for a year.In some parts of Bredaban it used to be the custom on New Year's Day to lead a dog to the door, give him a little bread, and drive him out, saying, "Go away, dog! If anyone dies or dies in this house before the end of the year, Dead animals, you shall bear it all!" On the day of Yom Kippur, July 10, the Jewish high priest put both hands on the head of a live goat, and confessed to it the faults of the children of Israel, thus putting After the sins of man are passed on to the animal, it is thrown into the wilderness.

A regular scapegoat for a person's sins can also be a single person, and in the city of Onisha on the Niger River, two living people used to be sacrificed every year in order to remove local sins.These two sacrifices were bought by everyone.Twenty-eight engukas, or a little over two pounds, were due from every man who had committed such serious crimes as arson, theft, adultery, witchcraft, etc. in the past year.The money collected was taken to the interior of the country to buy two sick men to sacrifice, "to bear all these terrible crimes--one for the land and the other for the water".They were put to death by a man hired from a nearby town. Rev. JC Taylor saw one such sacrifice on February 27, 1858.The victim was a woman, about twenty years old.She was dragged on her face on her face from the palace to the river, a distance of two miles, while the crowd following her cried, "Wicked! Wicked!" with the intention of "removing the sin there. dragged her body in a merciless manner, as if all their evil burdens had thus been carried."Such customs are said to still be practiced secretly among many tribes in the Niger Delta, despite the precautions of the British Government.Among the Yoruba blacks in West Africa, "the sacrifices may be freedmen or slaves, rich or poor, and no matter who they are, once chosen, It's called Oruwo. Throughout the confinement, he was always well-fed, well-fed, and given what he asked for. When it came time to kill him as a sacrifice, he was usually paraded through the streets of the town where the chief lived. The reason why the chief He was chosen as a human sacrifice for the benefit of his government and every family and individual under his government, and that he would take away the sins, disasters and death of all people without exception. Dust and lime were sprinkled on his head, and his face was covered with lime, so that people could not see his true face. People ran out of their homes and put their hands on him, thinking that by doing so, they could wash away their sins. , misfortune, and death bequeathed to him".After the procession, he was taken to a cella to be beheaded.His last words or dying groans were the signals that told the crowd gathered outside to cheer.It was believed that the sacrifice had been accepted and that the wrath of the gods had been abated.

There used to be a custom in Thailand that one day every year a very lewd woman was picked out and carried through all the streets on a sliding pole to the music of drums and oboes.People insulted her, and threw dirty things at her; carried her all over the city, and threw her on a dunghill, or on a thorn bush outside the castle, and she was not allowed to enter the city wall again.They thought that by doing this the woman sucked all the evil spirits in the air and all the goblins into her.The Batak people of Sumatra offer a red horse or a buffalo as a public sacrifice to cleanse the land and obtain the blessing of the gods.It is said that in the past, a living person was tied to a stake for tying cattle, and after the cattle were killed, the person was driven away; no one could receive him, talk to him, or give him food.No doubt he was thought to take away the sins and misfortunes of the people.