Chapter 70 soul attached to animal

In real life, as in folklore stories, some people not only sympathetically connect their own lives with inanimate objects and plants.It is said that the same connection exists between humans and animals, that the sick share the same good and bad, and that if the animals die, so do the humans.The custom is closer to the legend, because the transfer of the soul from the human body to the animal body in both is carried out by wizards and witches using special magic powers.For example, the Yakuts in Siberia believe that every sorcerer or warlock attaches his soul, or one of several souls, to an animal, and keeps this animal carefully hidden from the world.A well-known wizard said: "No one can find my out-of-body soul. I hide it in the rocky mountains far away in Ezgansk." At that time, the souls of these wizards placed outside the body turned into animal images and appeared in people's residences.They roamed about, and no one could see them except the wizard.The mighty souls gallop by clamorously, while the weak come and go quietly.They sometimes fight with each other. If the soul outside the body of a wizard is defeated, the wizard himself will be ill or die.The most cowardly wizard, whose soul takes the shape of a dog, which makes his human body restless, always scratching his mind and tearing his body apart.The most powerful wizards have their souls transformed into stallions, horned deer, black bears, eagles or wild boars.In addition, the Samoyeds in the Turukinsk region believe that every wizard has a familiar ghost in the form of a wild boar, which is tied with a magic belt and led around.When the boar died, the wizard himself also died.Some stories tell of battles among wizards who first sent their elves out to fight before fighting each other themselves.The Malays believe that "the soul of a person can enter another person or an animal, or more precisely, a mystical relationship can be formed between the two, that is, the fate of one is completely dependent on the fate of the other."

The Melanesians of the island of Mota in the New Hebrides embody the concept of the soul existing outside the body in their daily lives.In the Mota language, the word "tamauiu" means "something, animate or inanimate, with which one thinks one has an intimate relationship...not every Mota Has its own 'Tamanuel'; just some people imagine themselves in this relationship with lizards, snakes, maybe a certain rock. Sometimes the thing has to be found by looking for it by drinking the infusion of some kind of leaves , put together a heap of soaked leaves, and any living thing newly found on or in that heap is the 'Tamanu' of the person who drank the infusion. Only observation of 'Tamanu' , do not feed or worship it; the local natives believe that it will come if called, and the person who has such a relationship with it has the same life as the life of this thing (if it is a living thing, it will have its life; if it is inanimate) if the living thing dies, or if the inanimate thing is damaged or lost, the person dies. Therefore, if someone is sick, check Is 'Tamanuel' safe and sound?"

The theory of taking the soul out of the body and storing it in an animal seems to be very popular in West Africa, especially in Nigeria.The people there believed that the wizard took the lead in linking his life to that of a particular beast by performing a blood-dipping ceremony of brotherhood, drawing a little blood from the animal's ear and a little from his own arm. , Inject your own blood into the body of the beast, inject the blood of the beast into yourself.Thus the alliance of blood between this pair of humans and beasts was established, and the death of one party would lead to the death of its ally.Such an alliance is said to greatly increase the wizard's power, serving his own interests in a variety of ways.First, like the witch in a fairy tale who takes his life out of his body and hides it in some safe place, so he can pretend to be invulnerable to death.In particular, the beast with which he drank blood has become his flesh-and-blood brother, who can obey all his commands, and he can order it to kill and wound his enemies.From this point of view, it is conceivable that the animals with which he chooses to enter into such a relationship are never tame wild animals or domestic animals, but always ferocious beasts such as leopards, black pythons, crocodiles, hippopotamuses, wild boars, or vultures.Of all these beasts the hippopotamus is most often preferred, the black python next, and the vulture the least.Witches, like wizards, have such blood-sucked beasts for their service, but the beasts they choose are different.They never chose black panthers, but they often chose venomous boa constrictors, sometimes vipers with antennae, black pythons, or green pythons that roosted on banana trees, or vultures, owls, and other nocturnal birds.The beasts chosen by wizards and witches are always individual beasts or birds, never the whole species.Once a single animal of this blood alliance dies, this blood alliance relationship will naturally end, because when the beast dies, the person also dies.

The natives of the Cross River Basin in Cameroon have similar beliefs.Groups of people, usually from the same village, choose various animals as their close friendship and life-and-death relationship.These animals include hippos, elephants, leopards, crocodiles, orangutans, fish, pythons, etc., all of which are either very powerful or very easy to hide underwater or in the jungle.It is said that the indispensable condition when choosing this type of animal is that the animal must have the ability to hide itself.Because choosing this kind of animal as a friend or helper is to rely on it to harm the enemy quietly. For example, if you choose a hippopotamus, the hippopotamus can suddenly jump out of the water and capsize the enemy's boat.Because of the interrelationship between humans and animals, if a beast dies, its human will also die; if its human dies, the animal will die immediately.Therefore, shooting and hunting must not be tolerated for this kind of relative beasts, lest people who are connected with these beasts be killed.However, this does not prevent the people in the village who have elephants as their allies from hunting elephants, because he only chooses a certain animal (such as elephants) and does not respect all species of elephants. Allied elephants are brothers and brothers, and all other elephants are just ordinary elephants, nothing more.This realization is said to be mutual.Suppose a hunter has an elephant as his ally, and as soon as he encounters this ally (we may call it that), the noble animal raises its front paws in front of him, as if to say, "Don't shoot." The hunter inhumanely shot and wounded the elephant, which was connected with his life, and fell ill himself.

The Baron people in Cameroon imagine that each person has several souls, one in himself and one in some animal, such as an elephant, a wild boar, a leopard, and so on.If a person comes home feeling ill and says, "I'm going to die," he dies, and it is asserted that the soul of the person in the boar or leopard has been killed, and that the death of the soul outside the body has caused it. The death of the soul within him.The Igbo people, an important tribe in the Niger Delta, also believe that the soul of a living person can exist outside the body.They thought that while a man was alive his soul could leave his body for a time and live in the body of an animal.One person wanted to obtain this ability, so he obtained a potion from the witch doctor and mixed it with his own blood.Since then, his soul has left his body and entered an animal.If the animal was killed and the soul of the man happened to live in it, the man died with it; if the animal was wounded, the man was immediately covered with boils.This belief has given rise to the behavior of many thieves: cunning rogues sometimes secretly put witchcraft into the food of the enemy, so that the enemy's soul will transfer to an animal after eating, and then try to kill the animal and thus die. Killed this enemy.

Calaba at the mouth of the Niger River [In southern Nigeria, it is the exit of the Niger River. This section of the river is called the Calaba River, and its city is also named Calaba. ] blacks believe that a person has four souls, one of which always leaves his body and lives in the forest in the form of a beast.This out-of-body soul, or forest soul (as Miss Kingsley called it) could be almost any animal, such as a leopard , fish, turtles, but never domestic animals, nor any plants.If there is no superhuman vision, people cannot see their own forest souls.Only the soothsayer can tell people what kind of animal the spirit of his forest is, and he will take care not to kill any such animal, nor allow others to kill it.The forest spirits of father and son are often animals of the same kind. For example, the in vitro soul of the father is a leopard, and the in vitro souls of all his children are also in the form of a leopard.On the other hand, children also often rely on the mother's external soul form as their own external soul form.For example, the form of the mother's external soul is a turtle, and the external souls of her children are also in the form of a turtle.The life of a man is closely bound up with the life of an animal which he considers to be his body or the spirit of the forest, and the casualties of the animal must necessarily lead to the casualties of the man.Conversely, when a person dies, there is no resting place for the soul in the forest, and as a result, he becomes crazy, or rushes into the fire, or rushes into the crowd, and ends his life by being hit on the head.

There is a sacred lake near Eckert in North Calabas, and the fish in the lake are carefully kept, because people think that their souls reside in those fish; if you kill a fish, a person dies immediately.Not many years ago, there was a huge old crocodile in Calaba River. People say that there was a chief who lived in Duke City, and his soul lived in the body of the old crocodile.The vice-consuls, who were fond of hunting, often went to hunt the crocodile, and once one of the officers managed to hit it, and the chief was immediately bedridden with a wounded leg.He declared that he had been bitten by a dog, but the soothsayer, skilled in witchcraft, shook his head in disbelief for the flimsy pretense.Furthermore, among some tribes on the banks of the Niger River between Lokoja and the Niger Delta, there is a belief "that man may have an alterego [Latin: second self.] in some animal form.] , is a crocodile or a hippopotamus. It is said that human life is closely related to the life of this animal. If one is affected by anything, the other will immediately react; if one dies, the other will also die. Not long ago, an Englishman was in the local A hippopotamus was shot and killed near a native village, and a friend of a woman in the village happened to die that night, so the Englishman was asked to pay for his life, and finally got five pounds as a pension for the dead. For the Potek people, whenever a woman gives birth, her relatives and friends gather in the hut and draw all kinds of animals on the ground. After each one is drawn, it is wiped off. This continues until the baby is born. Animals lying on the ground and not wiped off are considered the newborn baby's "tona" or "second self." "When the child grows up, give him an animal that represents him, and let him take care of it. Just like people's belief, the health and life of the child are closely related to the life and health of this animal. die at the same time." Or to be more precise, if the animal dies, the human will die soon.In Guatemala and Honduras Indians, Nagual or Naul [the native language of the Indians in both places means the second self. ] can be non-biological or biological (generally animals), it shares the fate of each individual, and the fate of a person depends on the prosperity and decline of its "Nagur".According to an old writer, many Indians in Guatemala "had been deluded by demons into believing that their life depended on such-and-such beasts (taking them as their souls), and that if the beast died they died; If the animal is chased, their heart beats violently; if the beast faints, they faint; what is more, they are also influenced by heresies, and they disguise themselves in the shape of the beast (usually they like to dress up as a stag or a doe, the stag lion or tiger, dog or eagle), and was shot and wounded in the form of a beast".The Indians listened to the letter Gu and thought that once their "Nagur" died, he himself would die as well.There is a legend that clearly states that in the first many battles with the Spaniards on the Quetzaltenango Plateau, the Nagur of the Indian chiefs fought in the image of a huge poisonous snake.Nagul of the Supreme Chief is particularly striking, a giant bird with brilliant blue feathers.The Spanish general Pedro returned and Alvarado killed the giant bird with his sword, and the Indian chief fell to the ground and died.

Many tribes of southeastern Australia have separate animal genera for their sexes for both sexes, as do the Indians of Central America.The difference is that the Indians clearly know which animal their lives are connected with, while the Australians only know that their lives are connected with a certain animal in a certain genus, but they don’t know which one .The result, of course, is that all men refrain from killing and protect all animals of one species with which their lives are connected; all women also refrain from killing and protect all animals of another genus with which their lives are connected; Nor can it be said which man or woman will be the result of the death of any animal of the two related species, as, for example, when the green bird dies, the Indian chief dies, and when the parrot dies in fairy tales, Pinchkin dies. die like that.The Wachobaruk clan of south-eastern Australia "believes that 'the life of a bat is a man's life, and the life of a nightingale is a woman's life', and that either of these two creatures is killed, so does the life of a man or a woman. It ended, and in this case the men and women of the clan feared that they might be victims, which caused great fights within the clan. It is said that in these fights, the men and women were divided, and it was not clear which One side won because sometimes the women beat the men with yam sticks, and more often the women were stabbed and killed by the men with spears."The Watyobaliks say that the bat is a man's "brother" and the nightingale is his "wife".The animal species associated with the lives of men and women in each clan are different. For example, the Wateryobalike people regard bats as animals related to the lives of men, while in the Murray River [in southeastern Australia, composed of Victoria, Australia and The Alps in New South Wales flow into the Indian Ocean. ] The Gombol Creek people in the lower reaches regard bats as animals connected with women's lives. The local natives refuse to kill bats on the grounds that "if a bat is killed, their Lubra (women) will have One will die with it."The belief itself, and the fights it gave rise to, in South-East Australia (and perhaps more) is well known, whatever animal is considered to be closely connected to the lives of men and women.It was a strange belief, and so it resulted in all kinds of fights.For example, some tribes in Victoria believe that the life of bats belongs to men. In order to protect bats from harm, men even beat their wives half to death; The cries at night are terrifying, but they are protected by women. If a man kills a nightingale, all the women are outraged by it, just like killing one of their children, they all beat the man with long sticks.

Australian men and women cherish and protect bats and nightingales respectively (both creatures which generally seem to be associated with the lives of men and women), not entirely from selfish considerations, each man considers not only his own life, but his own. The life of father, brother, son, etc. is also associated with each individual bat, so that to protect all bats is to protect himself and his male relatives.In the same way, every woman thinks that her mother, sister, daughter, etc., and her own life are connected with the life of each individual nightingale, and to love the nightingale is to love herself and all her female relatives.Since the life of man is supposed to be contained in certain animals, it is evident that these men and these animals are hardly to be distinguished or distinguished from each other.If brother John's life is in a bat, then, on the one hand, the bat is as much my brother as John is; on the other hand, in a sense, John is a bat, because his life is in the bat.Likewise, if Mary's sister lives in a nightingale, then the nightingale is my sister, and Mary is also a nightingale.This is a very natural conclusion, not impossible for Australian natives to draw.A bat is a man's synonymous animal, so it is called a certain man's brother; a nightingale is a certain woman's synonymous animal, it is called a certain woman's sister.In turn, men call women nightingales and women call men bats.In other tribes men and women are bound together by other animals for life, and this is probably the case.For example in the Kurnai [Indigenous Victorian, Australia] tribe, emus are all "brothers" to men, and all men are emus; all wonderful songbirds are "sisters" to women, and women are all wonderful songbird.

When a savage calls an animal by his name, calls it a brother, and refuses to kill it, the animal is said to be the barbarian's totem.Among the tribes of southeastern Australia (we've already touched on bats and nightingales), emus and melodious songbirds are totems of both sexes.But it is still very rare that a certain animal is designated as a male or female totem, and it has not been found so far anywhere except Australia.The most common way is not to determine a certain animal as a totem for men or women, but to determine a totem for a certain clan and pass it on from generation to generation according to father or mother.An individual's relationship to his clan totem is no different from his or her relationship to his or her same-sex totem; he does not kill it, calls it brother, and calls himself by its name.If the relations are similar, then what applies to one relation should also apply to the other.Therefore, a certain clan worships animals or plants (the clan can also use plants as totems) and takes the name of the animal or plant as its own name. The life of one of the animals or plants is so closely linked that his or her death is the result of killing that animal or mutilating that plant.For such an explanation of the relationship between totems, I followed George Chouzhuo, a British military officer from 1812 to 1898, who has done a lot of research on Australia. ] agree on the definition of a totem or "Cawbon" in Western Australia.He said: There is a mysterious relationship between a family and the family "Kawban". Therefore, members of this family will never kill any animal of the Kauban species to which they belong, even if they find it sleeping soundly, they will not kill it. .Sometimes he killed one of these animals out of desperation, always giving it a chance to escape.The reason for this was the belief of the family that some of these animals were their closest friends, and that it would be a great crime to kill them, and every one took great care to avoid them.In the same way, if a native calls a certain plant "kauban", it may not be collected under certain circumstances, especially at a particular time of the year.It can be seen here that although everyone does not kill and collect certain species of animals and plants, these animals and plants are not equally precious to everyone.Far from it.Of all the animals and plants, only one was particularly dear and valuable to him.Since he didn't know which one was the closest and most precious, in order to avoid accidental injury, he had no choice but to spare all of them.Moreover, such an interpretation of the clan totem is consistent with the effect of postulating the killing of a member of the totem's species.One day one of these Negroes killed a crow.Three or four days later, a potwa (or crow) named Larry (a member of the crow clan) also died.He had been ill for several days, and his death was hastened by the death of his wenwang (i.e. totem).Killing a crow causes the death of a member of the crow clan, just as killing a bat causes the death of a bat-man, and killing a nightingale causes the death of a nightingale woman, as does the gender totem.Similarly, kill a nagual, and a Mesoamerican Indian dies; kill a forest spirit, and a Calabasian dies; kill a Tamanyu, and there is one on the Banks Islands. The natives also died, and the killing of the animals that the giants or wizards in fairy tales hid their lives with would mean death to hell.

It seems that perhaps the story of "The Absent Giant" can provide the key to understanding the relationship between man and his totem.According to the theory in this story, the totem is actually a container for people to store their lives, just like how Penchkin put his life on the parrot and Bidasari hid her life on the goldfish.If a savage has a totem of his sex and a totem of his gens, his life must be bound up with that of two different animals, the death of either of which would cause his own death. .There is nothing against this view.For to the savage, if there are better and more places to store one's soul than within one's own body, why not?Since life can be stored outside the body, why not put part of life in one animal and another part in another animal?The divisibility of life, or, to put it another way, the multiplicity of souls, a concept supported by many well-known facts, has been accepted by philosophers such as Plato and primitive When a hypothesis becomes a theological dogma, its unity and indivisibility are insisted on as essential elements.Primitive man, free from dogma, interprets the phenomena of life at will according to how many souls he considers necessary to assume.For example, the Caribs imagined that there was a soul in the head, a soul in the heart, and a soul wherever the pulse of the artery was felt.Some Hazelda Indians explain the phenomenon of gradual death in which the limbs die first but the human body is not yet dead. They explain that human beings have four souls. They do not leave the human body one by one at the same time. All four souls must leave the human body. This person eventually dies.The Dayaks of Borneo and the Malays of Peninsular Malay believe that each person has seven souls.The Arfu people of Poso on the island of Celebes believe that man has only three souls.The natives of Laos imagine that the human body has 30 souls living in the hands, feet, mouth, eyes, etc. respectively.Hence, on that primitive view, it is entirely possible that the savage has a soul in his sex totem and in a clan totem.However, according to my research, only one person with a gender totem has been found in Australia.Therefore, generally speaking, primitive people who worshiped totems did not need to store more than one totem outside the body at a time. If the totem is rightly understood as the reservoir in which a man deposits his soul, or one of his many souls, we should be able to find clans of totems who expressly state that each person in their clan has at least one soul permanently deposited outside his body, If the soul in this body is destroyed, the person also dies.The Batak people of Sumatra are one such clan.They are further divided into patrilineal descendants and several exogamous clans (margas), each of which prohibits eating the flesh and blood of a particular animal, for example, one clan does not eat tiger meat, another clan does not eat monkey meat, or crocodiles, or crocodiles. Eat dogs, cats, pigeons, buffaloes, grasshoppers, etc.The people of each clan explain why they do not eat a certain animal, either because they are descended from that animal, or because their souls will be reincarnated as that animal after death, or because they themselves or their ancestors have received the favor of that animal. Reciprocate.Sometimes the clan also uses the name of the animal as the name of the clan.Therefore, the Bataks have various totems.Moreover, every Batak believes that he has seven souls, or at least three souls, one of whom is always stored outside his body forever, so that when the soul outside the body dies, the person dies at the same time, no matter how far away. died.The authors who mention this belief do not speak of Batak totems.Based on examples from Australia, Central America, and Africa, we can deduce that this so-called external soul (whose death causes the death of the person) is stored in animal or plant totems. The Bataks do not necessarily affirm that their souls reside in their totems, but offer other reasons why their clans venerate certain sacred animals or plants.This contradicts our above inference.For if a savage really believes that his life is bound up with something external to him, he will never (at least) let anyone know what that external thing is.Primitive people are extremely cautious about all things related to their life secrets and beliefs, and will not divulge them easily.Europeans have lived among primitive people for many years and have not been able to discover the totality of primitive people's beliefs, and often only see a glimpse of the beliefs shown in some individual cases.Primitives, in particular, are always extremely afraid of witchcraft.The most insignificant discarded things on primitive people, such as cut hair and nails, spittle, leftover food, and even their own real names, may be used by witches to kill themselves in the imagination of primitive people. Always carefully hide these items or destroy them.If primitive man treats these peripheral and frontier things of life in such a secretive way, how cautious and secretive should he be in dealing with the privacy of his inner life, how strictly kept secret!When the princess in the fairy tale asks the giant where he hides his soul, the giant always lies or evades the answer, and always has to be coaxed to reveal it.Giants are as timid and secretive as primitive men in their vigilant silence.Due to the needs of the development of the story, the giant finally revealed his secret, but the primitive man is not bound by this obligation, and no temptation can make him reveal to the stranger the place where his soul resides, so that he can make himself Tend to destruction.Therefore, the central mystery of primitive man's life has been kept unknown for so long, so that today we have to piece together, restore and discover this mystery from scattered documents or clues, and from some remaining signs in fairy tales. The main secret, no wonder.