Ancestor worship

“ I find that ancestor worship is generally indulged in; it is difficult at times to distinguish between an original spirit ancestor and a deity, but a Supreme Spirit or Deity is believed to exist and to rule over all creation. ”

“ If the theory is correct which asserts that all religion is derived from ancestor-worship, from the worship and conciliation of the immortal soul of a forbear, especially of a hero and leader, it will confirm this connection; for we are, as a matter of fact, dependent upon what has been before us, and which was most directly concentrated in the authority of the fathers over their descendants. ”

“ But whatever may have been the character of this earlier strain of ancestor worship in religious development, the beginning of a true ancestor cult is closely bound up with the universalization due to its having become the cult of the hearth and the family. As it is the human ancestor who displaces the animal ancestor in this cult, so the transition by which the family comes to be the central factor in social organization is an external indication of the dissolution of totemic culture and the dawning of a new era. ”

“ At the same time, ancestor worship, no less than its rival, fetishism, constitutes but one factor among others in the development of mythological thought as a whole. In certain localities, as in the civilizations of eastern Asia, it may become sufficiently prominent to be one of the principal elements of religious cult. But even in such cases, ancestor worship is never able entirely to suppress the remaining forms of cult; still less can it be regarded as having given rise to the other fundamental phases of religious development—these rest on essentially different motives. ”

“ Ancestor worship, or rather the deification of ancestors, was essentially a Maori cult. It was a form of necrolatry, or hero worship. A man would placate the spirit of his father, grandfather, or ancestor, and make offerings to the same, that such spirit might protect his life principle, warn him of approaching danger, and give force or effectiveness to his rites and charms of black or white magic. ”

“ All ghosts receive some attention for a certain time after death, but naturally special and sustained honours are reserved for the heads of families, [2] and for such as have been distinguished for various qualities during life. In this way ancestor worship becomes one of the most general forms of religious observances, and the gradual development of the great man or the deceased ancestor into a deity follows by easy stages. The principles of ancestor worship, to again cite the indispensible Tylor, are not difficult to understand:—
They plainly keep up the social relations of the living world. ”

“ Eventually the worship of some one ancestral spirit, or group of spirits, overshadows that of all the rest; and a supreme deity, or group of supreme deities, becomes evolved. But the differentiations of the ancestor-cult must be understood to proceed in a great variety of directions. Particular ancestors of families engaged in hereditary occupations may develop into tutelar deities presiding over those occupations—patron gods of crafts and guilds. ”

“ Among the lower cults ancestor-worship may be expected to take the highest place, for the reason that it tends to strengthen family unity and the solidarity of the clan, tribe, or nation; all such knitting together of men makes for the increase of honesty and kindliness. The data are lacking, however, for the determination of this point. It may be said in general that the attitude toward the dead becomes finer with advance in civilization ”

“ With a large body of mythologists nature worship is now accepted as the primitive religion; and with another body, equally as respectable, ancestor worship is primordial. But nature worship and ancestor worship are concomitant parts of the same religion, and belong to a status of culture highly advanced and characterized by the invention of conventional pictographs. ”

“ Consequently, ancestor worship, like the previously mentioned belief in the invisible spiritual world, underlies all other religious developments. No family is so obscure or poor that it does not submit to the ritual or discipline which is supposed to ensure the favor of the spirits belonging to the community. ”

“ The filial affection of son for father is deepened on the father's death into permanent religious reverence, and this reverential feeling finds its natural expression in a system of rites and ceremonies which, for the want of a better term, we call ancestor-worship. ”

“ Ancestor-worship, an ancient and widespread practice, displayed in its most characteristic form in modern China and ancient Rome, which apparently was based upon the belief that dead parents or ancestors, represented by images or 'ancestral tablets', could be revived by appropriate ceremonies, such as burning incense or offering libations, and give the benefit of their wisdom to their descendants who performed the vitalizing ritual and asked for their advice upon, or their sanction for, actions affecting the welfare of the family. ”

“ It will be remembered that ancestor-worship is not merely regarded as a method of showing love and reverence for the dead but is believed to induce the ancestral spirits to protect and watch over the family and to bestow on its members long life, many children and general prosperity. ”

“ When pride of birth and of position dominated the minds of aristocratic men they sought to trace their pedigree to the gods, and so they blindly claimed descent from these primal gods, who, in their anthropic aspect, were mere fictions of the mind, and so in time and in some lands this process resulted in what is usually called “ancestor worship.” ”

“ Now the initiatory development of this aboriginal instinct was very humble, and if we wish to know what our direct ancestors once were, we need only consult the record of anthropological research among such savages as the Fijians or Tonga Islanders. The shape assumed by religion amongst such people was most probably ancestor or ghost worship. The dead father or chieftain is still seen in the dreams of his children or people, and the mysteriousness of the new shape and presence he assumes excites the awe and reverence which is at the root of the religious habit. ”

“ A second type of deity is the ancestor; the actual human ancestor, as worshiped by the Chinese, the mystical animal ancestor of totemism, or any deity adopted as ancestor, as the Christian God is claimed as Father by his believers. The idea of kinship with the object of worship is very widespread, and its motive is clearly intelligible in the light of what has been said above. Kinship implies alliance, the existence of friendly support and the right to claim it. One's departed ancestors belong to that world beyond from which emanate the dread forces that one cannot control. ”

“ Whatever be their nature,—whether it be true or not that in all cases they are the worship of some mythical ancestor,—they are everywhere employed to attest the sacredness of the family-relation; and therefore they acquire prominent significance and importance, whenever the continuous existence of the Family is endangered by a change in the person of its chief. ”

“ In all patriarchal societies with a settled civilization, there is evolved, out of the worship of ancestors, a Religion of Filial Piety. Filial piety still remains the supreme virtue among civilized peoples possessing an ancestor-cult.... ”

“ The family sacred symbols that are worshiped in some places898 are really family gods 224 (whether or not they were originally totems) , developed, probably, under Brahmanic influence. The worship of a tutelary spirit has sometimes coalesced with that of an ancestor, but this is doubtless due to the collocation of two distinct cults; at a certain stage an ancestor is naturally regarded as friend and protector. The general potency termed "mana" is not to be connected particularly with any one cult; it represents a conception that probably underlies all ancient forms of worship. ”

“ The articles placed in the grave as gifts for the dead become sacrifices laid on the altar to appease malignant spirits; the mound or tomb becomes a temple, and awe passes by easy degrees into worship. The prevalence in one form or another of ancestor-worship has, as remarked already, led Mr. ”

“ The worship of ancestors is easily grafted upon this conception of the life beyond the grave. These ancestors may still succour, protect and inspire their descendants. I am assured at first hand that to this very day, and in spite of the efforts of the Catholic clergy, the worship of ancestors is still widely practised by the native population. ”

“ Our ancestors have surely perished.... Father, mother, ancestors, how could you calmly bear this?’ Nor does manes-worship stop short with direct family ties; it is naturally developed to produce, by deification of the heroic dead, a series of superior gods to whom worship is given by the public at large. ”

“ He who should understand the great sacrificial ceremonies, and the meaning of the ceremonies in the ancestral temple, would find it as easy to govern the empire as to look upon the palm of his hand."
Filial Piety.—Intimately connected with ancestral worship is the practice of filial piety; it is in fact on filial piety that ancestral worship is dependent for its existence. In early ages, sons sacrificed to the manes of their parents and ancestors generally, in order to afford some mysterious pleasure to the disembodied spirits. ”

“ It is probably due, in great part, to the religious cult which prescribed ancestral worship. People who, year after year, pray and burn incense before the mortuary tablets of their forefathers, cannot choose but become imbued with reverence for the works of the illustrious dead. ”

“ The bones of my ancestors are held in reverence and worship, even by men. They do not leave them exposed to the weather when they find them, but carry them three thousand miles and enshrine them in their temples of learning, and worship them. ”

“ Indeed, ancestral worship prevails in all climes and at all periods; in fact, with certain Oriental nations it is the only religion. But in what country is the link between the dead and the living so strong as it is in France—the rites at the same time so solemn and so intimate? ”

“ We are told that your religion was given to your forefathers, and has been handed down from father to son. We, also, have a religion which was given to our forefathers, and has been handed down to us, their children. We worship in that way. It teaches us to be thankful for all the favors we receive; to love each other, and be united. ”

“ When the sacrifice to ancestors was finished, the king feasted his uncles and younger brothers or cousins, that is, all the princes and nobles of the same surname with himself, in another apartment. The musicians who had discoursed with instrument and voice during the worship and entertainment of the ancestors, followed the convivial party 'to give their soothing aid at the second blessing.' The viands that had been provided, we have seen, in great abundance, were brought in from the temple, and set forth anew. ”

“ We find an adequate and perfectly natural explanation of some of these phases of worship that trouble us to-day, as we look back and note some of the steps in the religious development of the race. I shall not raise the question as to how or where or in what way the act of human worship began. I will simply say that one of the first manifestations of that which came to be religious worship which we are able to trace at the present time is to be found in the burial-mounds of the dead. Men reverenced the memory of the chief of the tribe who had passed into the invisible. ”

“ In the history of religion the veneration of the dead, as is remarked above, is more widely diffused and more effective than that of the living. We may distinguish between the cult of known historical persons after death (which is closely related to that of living men) , the deification of mythical ancestors, and the worship of ghosts. ”

“ Out of other ancestral cults, through various processes of mental association, may be evolved the worship of deities of strength, of health, of long life, of particular products, of particular localities. ”

“ Our ancestors, who held their food, their country, the light, and all that they possessed, from the bounty of the gods, consecrated to them a part of all their property, rather as a token of their gratitude, than from a conviction that the gods needed any thing. Therefore as soon as the harvest was got in, before they had tasted of the fruits, they appointed libations to be made to the gods. And as they held their fields and cities as gifts from their gods, they consecrated a certain part for temples and shrines, where they might worship them. ”

“ ANCESTRAL WORSHIP "Their respect for ancestors is very great, so much so that the species of idolatry which has by far the strongest hold upon their minds is ancestral worship. This is the stronghold by which Satan maintains his supremacy over the minds of the people, and this we may expect will be the last to give way to the power of the Gospel of Christ. One may hold up their gods to ridicule and they will laugh at his remarks, but they do not love to hear the worship of their ancestors spoken against. ”

“ The rites which seem so trivial to us are most serious matters to him. They are all connected with the great ancestors of the tribe, and he is firmly convinced that when he dies his spirit will rejoin theirs and live in communion with them until the time comes for him to be born again into the world. ”