Chapter 68 soul attached to an inanimate object

The idea of ​​the soul residing outside the body in folklore In the folk tales of many peoples there is the idea that the soul can reside for a longer or shorter period of time in some safe place outside the body, at least in the hair.This kind of thinking is not fabricated to exaggerate the plot of the story, but the real connotation of primitive people's beliefs, and a corresponding set of customs has been produced from it.We have seen that in those folk tales, the hero often removes his soul from his body when he prepares for battle, so that his body will not be injured or die in battle.For the same purpose, savages, in the face of every danger, real or imagined, remove their souls first.For example, the Minahasa people of Celebes, if a family wants to move into a new house, a priest will be asked to collect the souls of that family in a bag, and return them to the person one by one after they move.It does this because moving into a new home is fraught with supernatural dangers.In the south of Celebes, when a woman gives birth, the person who sends for the doctor or midwife always brings some iron tool, such as a machete, to the doctor.The doctor kept the ironware in his home until the mother was full moon and then returned it to the original owner. At this time, the original owner would reward him with a sum of money as a reward.That machete, or something of that sort, is attached to the soul of the mother in labor.It is said that it is much safer to take the soul out of the body at this critical moment than to store it in one's own body.Therefore, the doctor must take special care to store it well. If this iron vessel is lost, people think that the soul of the mother must be lost along with it.

Also, in various folk tales we see a man who sometimes has his soul or power tied up in his hair, and dies or becomes weak when his hair is cut off.Amboira [an island in the Motanga Islands, southwest of Seram Island, belongs to the territory of Indonesia. ] of the natives think that their vitality lies in their hair, such as shaving off the hair, the strength will disappear.A criminal who vehemently denied his crimes while being sentenced in the Dutch court of the island confessed as soon as it was time to shave his head.There was a man who was being tried for murder and endured all the torture without flinching. When he saw that the executioner brought a pair of scissors, he asked what he was using them for, and when he heard that his hair was going to be cut off, he begged not to Lost his hair, he would rather confess.Later, the Dutch colonial authorities cut off the prisoner's hair whenever the prisoner refused to confess under torture.

In Europe, people often think that the evil power of witches and witches lies in their hair, and if their hair is not cut off, they cannot subdue these gangsters.In France, therefore, it was customary to shave off all the hair of a person accused of witchcraft and submit him to torture.M. Milaeus was in Toulouse [a city in the south of France on the Garonne. ] Having seen this kind of torture, those who were tortured refused to confess. They did not confess until they were completely stripped of their clothes and shaved off their body hair.A woman was suspected, tortured, tortured, and tortured for her apparent belief in witchcraft, but she refused to confess, until she was finally shaved completely to force her confession.The famous Inquisitor Spirenger shaved the hair of the witch suspects to his satisfaction.But his colleague Cumenas did a more thorough job than him. He shaved 47 women naked, and then threw them into the fire and burned them to death.He enjoyed great authority because of this severe interrogation, because Satan once comforted many of his servants while preaching from the pulpit of North Berwick Church, assuring them, "As long as their hair is on their heads, there will be no hair on their heads." Falling off", nothing can hurt them.Similarly, in the Bastar district of India "if a man is convicted of witchcraft, the mob beats him, shaves his head (because it is believed to constitute his power to injure), knocks out his front teeth ( It is said that this was to prevent him from reciting witchcraft spells)...Women who were guilty of witchcraft were subjected to the same ordeal; After lighting, their hair is tied to a tree in a public place."The Bir of India imposed various forms of punishment on a woman convicted of witchcraft, such as "hanging her feet upside down from a tree, putting pepper in her eyes, and finally taking A lock of hair was cut from her head and buried in the earth, to sever her last link with her original evil power".The Aztecs of Mexico, before executing witches and witches who committed evil deeds, took a similar practice, that is, they captured them and cut off the hair coiled on the top of their heads, so as to remove all witchcraft from them, so that they could be put to death To die, to put an end to his rotting remnants.