Northcote Whitridge Thomas

“ The river speeding on its course to the sea, the sun and moon, if not the stars also, on their never-ceasing daily round, the lightning, fire, the wind, the sea, all are in motion and therefore animate ”

“ Education has brought with it a sense of the great gulf between man and animals; but in the lower stages of culture this distinction is not adequately recognized, if indeed it is recognized at all. The savage attributes to animals the same ideas, the same mental processes as himself, and at the same time vastly greater power and cunning. The dead animal is credited with a knowledge of how its remains are treated and sometimes with a power of taking vengeance on the fortunate hunter. Powers of reasoning are not denied to animals nor even speech ”

“ But all is not finished with the passage of the soul to the land of the dead; the soul may return to avenge its death by helping to discover the murderer, or to wreak vengeance for itself; there is a widespread belief that those who die a violent death become malignant spirits and endanger the lives of those who come near the haunted spot; the woman who dies in child-birth becomes a pontianak, and threatens the life of human beings; and man resorts to magical or religious means of repelling his spiritual dangers. ”

“ We may assume that man attributed a soul to the beasts of the field almost as soon as he claimed one for himself. It is therefore not surprising to find that many peoples on the lower planes of culture respect and even worship animals (see Totem; Animal Worship) ; though we need not attribute an animistic origin to all the developments, it is clear that the widespread respect paid to animals as the abode of dead ancestors, and much of the cult of dangerous animals, is traceable to this principle. ”

“ In many parts of the world it is held that the human body is the seat of more than one soul; in the island of Nias four are distinguished, the shadow and the intelligence, which die with the body, a tutelary spirit, termed begoe, and a second which is carried on the head. ”

“ Leopard.—The cult of the leopard is widely found in West Africa. Among the Ewe a man who kills one is liable to be put to death; no leopard skin may be exposed to view, but a stuffed leopard is worshipped. On the Gold Coast a leopard hunter who has killed his victim is carried round the town behind the body of the leopard; he may not speak, must besmear himself so as to look like a leopard and imitate its movements. In Loango a prince’s cap is put upon the head of a dead leopard, and dances are held in its honour. ”

“ In Europe the corn spirit sometimes immanent in the crop, sometimes a presiding deity whose life does not depend on that of the growing corn, is conceived in some districts in the form of an ox, hare or cock, in others as an old man or woman; in the East Indies and America the rice or maize mother is a corresponding figure; in classical Europe and the East we have in Ceres and Demeter, Adonis and Dionysus, and other deities, vegetation gods whose origin we can readily trace back to the rustic corn spirit. Forest trees, no less than cereals, have their indwelling spirits ”

“ They may, it is true, be associated with ghost gods, but in Australia it cannot even be asserted that the gods are spirits at all, much less that they are the spirits of dead men; they are simply magnified magicians, super-men who have never died; we have no ground, therefore, for regarding the cult of the dead as the origin of religion in this area; this conclusion is the more probable, as ancestor-worship and the cult of the dead generally cannot be said to exist in Australia. ”

“ Sickness is often explained as due to the absence of the soul; and means are sometimes taken to lure back the wandering soul; when a Chinese is at the point of death and his soul is supposed to have already left his body, the patient’s coat is held up on a long bamboo while a priest endeavours to bring the departed spirit back into the coat by means of incantations. ”

“ There are two broad divisions: (1) all animals of a given species are sacred, perhaps owing to the impossibility of distinguishing the sacred few from the profane crowd; (2) one or a fixed number of a species are sacred. It is probable that the first of these forms is the primary one and the second in most cases a development from it due to (i.) the influence of other individual cults, (ii.) anthropomorphic tendencies, (iii.) the influence of chieftainship, hereditary and otherwise, (iv.) annual sacrifice of the sacred animal and mystical ideas connected therewith, (v.) ”

“ Where the soul is regarded as no more than a finer sort of matter, it will obviously be far from easy to decide whether the gods are spiritual or material. Even, therefore, if we can say that at the present day the gods are entirely spiritual, it is clearly possible to maintain that they have been spiritualized pari passu with the increasing importance of the animistic view of nature and of the greater prominence of eschatological beliefs. The animistic origin of religion is therefore not proven.
Animism and Mythology.—But little need be said on the relation of animism and mythology (q.v.) ”

“ While a large part of mythology has an animistic basis, it is possible to believe, e.g. in a sky world, peopled by corporeal beings, as well as by spirits of the dead; the latter may even be entirely absent; the mythology of the Australians relates largely to corporeal, non-spiritual beings; stories of transformation, deluge and doom myths, or myths of the origin of death, have not necessarily any animistic basis. ”

“ With the rise of species, deities and the cult of individual animals, the path towards anthropomorphization and polytheism is opened and the respect paid to animals tends to lose its strict animistic character.
Plant Souls.—Just as human souls are assigned to animals, so primitive man often credits trees and plants with souls in both human or animal form. All over the world agricultural peoples practise elaborate ceremonies explicable, as Mannhardt has shown, on animistic principles. ”

“ Monkey.—In India the monkey-god, Hanuman, is a prominent figure; in orthodox villages monkeys are safe from harm. Monkeys are said to be worshipped in Togo. At Porto Novo, in French West Africa, twins have tutelary spirits in the shape of small monkeys.
Serpent.—The cult of the serpent is found in many parts of the Old World; it is also not unknown in America; in Australia, on the other hand, though many species of serpent are found, there does not appear to be any species of cult unless we include the Warramunga cult of the mythical Wollunqua totem animal, whom they seek to placate by rites. ”

“ But it is difficult in practice to distinguish the two phases of thought and no clear account of animatism can yet be given, largely on the ground that no people has yet been discovered which has not already developed to a greater or less extent an animistic philosophy. On theoretical grounds it is probable that animatism preceded animism; but savage thought is no more consistent than that of civilized man ”

“ The tribes of Peru are said to have adored great snakes in the pre-Inca days; and in Chile the Araucanians made a serpent figure in their deluge myth.
Over a large part of India there are carved representations of cobras (Nāgas) or stones as substitutes; to these human food and flowers are offered and lights are burned before the shrines. Among the Dravidians a cobra which is accidentally killed is burned like a human being; no one would kill one intentionally; the serpent-god’s image is carried in an annual procession by a celibate priestess. ”

“ The pastoral type falls into two sub-types, in which the species (a) is spared and (b) sometimes receives special honour at intervals in the person of an individual. (See Cattle, Buffalo, below.)
(ii.) In hunting cults the species is habitually killed, but (a) occasionally honoured in the person of a single individual, or (b) each slaughtered animal receives divine honours. (See Bear, below.)
(iii.) The cult of dangerous animals is due (a) to the fear that the soul of the slain beast may take vengeance on the hunter, (b) to a desire to placate the rest of the species. (See Leopard, below.) ”

“ Just as a process of syncretism has given rise to cults of animal gods, tree spirits tend to become detached from the trees, which are thenceforward only their abodes; and here again animism has begun to pass into polytheism. ”

“ The more general view that polytheistic and other gods are the elemental and other spirits of the later stages of animistic creeds, is equally inapplicable to Australia, where the belief seems to be neither animistic nor even animatistic in character. But we are hardly justified in arguing from the case of Australia to a general conclusion as to the origin of religious ideas in all other parts of the world. It is perhaps safest to say that the science of religions has no data on which to go, in formulating conclusions as to the original form of the objects of religious emotion ”

“ Similar ideas are found among the Euahlayi of S.E. Australia, the Dakotas and many other tribes. Just as in Europe the ghost of a dead person is held to haunt the churchyard or the place of death, although more orthodox ideas may be held and enunciated by the same person as to the nature of a future life, so the savage, more consistently, assigns different abodes to the multiple souls with which he credits man. ”

“ Dr Frazer has thus defined the character of the animistic pantheon, “they are restricted in their operations to definite departments of nature; their names are general, not proper; their attributes are generic rather than individual; in other words, there is an indefinite number of spirits of each class, and the individuals of a class are much alike; they have no definitely marked individuality; no accepted traditions are current as to their origin, life and character.” ”

“ Seeing the phantasmic figures of friends at the moment when they were, whether at the point of death or in good health, many miles distant, must have led the savage irresistibly to the dualistic theory. ”

“ Spirits in General.—Side by side with the doctrine of separable souls with which we have so far been concerned, exists the belief in a great host of unattached spirits; these are not immanent souls which have become detached from their abodes, but have every appearance of independent spirits. Thus, animism is in some directions little developed, so far as we can see, among the Australian aborigines; but from those who know them best we learn that they believe in innumerable spirits and bush bogies, which wander, especially at night, and can be held at bay by means of fire ”

“ Bear.—The bear enjoys a large measure of respect from all savage races that come in contact with it, which shows itself in apologies and in festivals in its honour. The most important developments of the cult are in East Asia among the Siberian tribes; among the Ainu of Sakhalin Animal Cults.a young bear is caught at the end of winter and fed for some nine months; then after receiving honours it is killed, and the people, who previously show marks of grief at its approaching fate, dance merrily and feast on its body. ”

“ The term may, however, be conveniently used to describe the early stage of religion in which man endeavours to set up relations between himself and the unseen powers, conceived as spirits, but differing in many particulars from the gods of polytheism. As an example of this stage in one of its aspects may be taken the European belief in the corn spirit, which is, however, the object of magical rather than religious rites ”

“ Elephant.—In Siam it is believed that a white elephant may contain the soul of a dead person, perhaps a Buddha; when one is taken the capturer is rewarded and the animal brought to the king to be kept ever afterwards ”

“ Development of Animism.—If the phenomena of dreams were, as suggested above, of great importance for the development of animism, the belief, which must originally have been a doctrine of human psychology, cannot have failed to expand speedily into a general philosophy of nature. Not only human beings but animals and objects are seen in dreams ”

“ Primitive ideas on the subject of the soul, and at the same time the origin of them, are best illustrated by an analysis of the terms applied to it. Readers of Dante know the idea that the dead have no shadows ”

“ Less widespread was the cult of the Mnevis, also consecrated to Osiris. Similar observances are found in our own day on the Upper Nile; the Nuba and Nuer worship the bull; the Angoni of Central Africa and the Sakalava of Madagascar keep sacred bulls. In India respect for the cow is widespread, but is of post-Vedic origin; there is little actual worship, but the products of the cow are important in magic.
Crow.—The crow is the chief deity of the Thlinkit Indians of N.W. America ”

“ In a minor degree revival of memory during sleep and similar phenomena of the sub-conscious life may have contributed to the same result. Dreams are sometimes explained by savages as journeys performed by the sleeper, sometimes as visits paid by other persons, by animals or objects to him ”

“ The use of animals in magic may sometimes give rise to a kind of respect for them, but this is of a negative nature. See, however, articles by Preuss in Globus, vol. lxvii., in which he maintains that animals of magical influence are elevated into divinities. ”

“ Cattle.—Cattle are respected by many pastoral peoples; they live on milk or game, and the killing of an ox is a sacrificial function. Conspicuous among Egyptian animal cults was that of the bull, Apis. ”