Fetish

“ While the conception of the fetish as the vehicle of communication between spirit and worshipper raises fetishism to a higher plane in religious evolution, the conception of the fetish as an instrument by which the spirit acts lowers it to a stage which is not necessarily religious at all, to a stage where the fetish is often regarded merely in the light of a charm or an amulet. ”

“ These fetish charms may be worshipped and regarded as anthropopathic, when they are true fetishes, or they may be merely ‘lucky’ with no religious regard or spiritual interpretation, or they may be anything between the two extremes.
7. Just as the human body and soul form one individual, so the material object and its occupying spirit or power form one individual, more vague perhaps, but still with many attributes distinctively human. It possesses personality and will, it has also many human characters. It possesses most of the human passions, anger, revenge, also generosity and gratitude ”

“ The fetish may consist of any object whatsoever, but the object chosen is generally either a wonderful ornament or curiosity, a symbolic charm with sympathetic properties, or a sign or token representing an ideal notion or being. It is credited with mysterious power, owing to its being, temporarily or permanently, the vessel or habitation, vehicle for communication, or instrument of some unseen power or spirit, which is conceived to possess personality and will, and ability to see, hear, understand, and act. ”

“ With hair and shoe fetishists, the fetish is more than a mere attraction; it is generally a powerful sexual stimulant. Such fetishists experience, while kissing or caressing their fetish, sexual gratification of the autoerotic or of the involuntary type.
Everybody a Fetishist. There are hundreds of varieties of fetishism, normal or abnormal. There is no person living who is not more or less subject to the compulsive attraction of some fetish. There is in every man or every woman something which catches the onlooker's eye first and retains his attention longest. ”

“ Definition.—The term fetish is commonly understood to mean the worship of or respect for material, inanimate objects, conceived as magically active from a virtue inherent in them, temporarily or permanently, which does not arise from the fact that a god or spirit is believed to reside in them or communicate virtue to them. ”

“ To revert to the concept of fetishism one may use the mountain-climbing symbolism of the love episode and say that almost anything on the ascent may be used as, and become habitual as, a fetish capable of causing the husband to leave his wife on the trail and hurry forward to the peak that has a thousand ecstatic views. ”

“ It may act by the will or force of its own power or spirit, or by force of a foreign power entering it or acting on it from without, and the material object and the power or spirit may be dissociated. It is worshipped, prayed to, sacrificed to, talked with, and petted or ill-treated with regard to its past or future behaviour. In its most characteristic form a fetish must be consecrated by a priest.
1. A fetish may be any object whatsoever, but there is always a reason for its choice. ”

“ A fetish, of whatever kind, is but a charm, and imports no more than is conveyed by that word. It is an appeal to the black art for protection and help, as they know nothing of a God who loves and cares for them, and with whom there can be any communication. ”

“ Then it happens that the affection may centre upon anyone possessing similar traits. In most psychological literature, this focussing of the emotion upon some particular characteristic is termed fetishism, and the stimulus which become capable of arousing the conditioned emotional response is called an erotic fetish. In extreme cases of fetishism, the sexual emotions can only be aroused in the presence of the particular fetish involved. ”

“ I need not remind you that at that early stage a fetish was not an idol, it may or may not have had a regular form; a stone, a root, an amulet may serve as a fetish. In this stage of development every individual came to believe that he had a certain protective charm. We can hardly believe he had a system of gods or that he recognized such. Later in its evolution fetishism became incorporated with other higher elements, especially symbolism, but in its archaic conception this was impossible. ”

“ Yet, remember it is a most important part of practical Fetish, for on it depends divination and heaps of such like matters, that are parts of both the witch doctor and the Fetish priest’s daily work.
One of the fundamental doctrines of Fetish is that the connection of a certain spirit with a certain mass of matter, a material object, is not permanent; the African will point out to you a lightning-stricken tree and tell you that its spirit has been killed; he will tell you when the cooking pot has gone to bits that it has lost its spirit ”

“ But there is this distinction, that the spirit which is believed to occupy the fetish is a different conception from the spirit of the animistic theory; it is not the soul or vital power belonging to the [78] object, and inherent in it, from which the virtue is derived, but a spirit or power attracted to and incorporated in it, while separable from it. The spirit of the fetish is also distinct from a god, as it can animate one object only, while a god can manifest his power in various forms. ”

“ The charms of this third group are to be regarded as fetishes so long as the recognition lasts that they are dependent for their virtue upon these extraneous beings; but when this belief is lost the charm becomes a mere talisman or amulet. The change from a fetish to a luck-object is constantly taking place owing to the despiritualising effect of increasing civilisation. ”

“ It is no wonder, perhaps, that the printed word has become a fetish, but fetishes of any kind are not in accordance with the spirit of the age, and their veneration should be discouraged. Reading in which the contact of minds is of secondary importance, or even cuts no figure at all, is meaningless and valueless. ”

“ And so the fetish cult eventually incorporated all of the primitive ideas of ghosts, souls, spirits, and demon possession.
1. BELIEF IN FETISHES Primitive man always wanted to make anything extraordinary into a fetish; chance therefore gave origin to many. A man is sick, something happens, and he gets well. ”

“ The distinction lies in the attitude of mind in which the objects are worshipped, and no objective differentiation is possible, for the object will be a fetish for one worshipper and a pure symbol of a spirit to another. ”

“ A still lower form of fetish, implying animism, is that in which the spirit of the fetish is its own life, and is related to it as the soul to the body. This latter fetish however is different from a mere amulet or charm; for the charm operates not by any intelligence within itself but by some sympathetic influence without. Such, for instance, is the horseshoe which the negro in our South hangs over his door for luck. ”

“ These neophytes usually preserve some kind of method in their madness, and take care to touch the representative of that form of worship to which they are most inclined, though sometimes accidents do happen and a wrong one is touched. The fetish men speak a language peculiar to themselves, and unknown to the common people, which they learn in the fetish schools, and call “the holy fetish word.” ”

“ When the fetish acts by force of its own proper spirit, it is something more than mere Animism (v. above, p. 77) . It does not become a fetish by applying the general belief in souls to a special object, but by a process which has been divided by Schultze into four stages (62, 215-223) :—
1. The value which an uncultured man attributes to any object is often exaggerated, especially if the object is in any way conspicuous, unusual, or mysterious. ”

“ To him all the world is spirit. Miss Kingsley says, "If you want, for example, to understand the position of man in nature according to fetish, there is, as far as I know, no clearer statement of it made than is made by Goethe in his superb 'Prometheus.'" [52] Fetish is a severely logical way of accounting for the world in terms of good and malignant spirits. ”

“ The greater the difference between the object in which such a demon takes up his abode and the familiar sorts of living beings, the more does its demoniacal activity become a pure product of the emotions, which control the imagination that ascribes life to the object. Thus, while the characteristics of the totem animal and, to a certain extent, even those of the totem plant, continue to be determined by their own nature, the fetish is solely the product of the mental activities of the fetish believer. ”

“ Certainly the lower forms of idolatry present the aspect of fetishism, but the true fetish is not shaped to resemble the spirit it represents, and the true idol is only the symbol, not the vessel, vehicle, or instrument of deity. At the same time, an image may be worshipped as a fetish, and regarded as a material body provided for a spirit ”

“ All cases of Fetishism, when examined, show that the worship is paid to an intangible power or spirit incorporated in some visible form, and that the fetish is merely the link between the worshipper and the object of his worship. Any definition therefore which takes no account of the spiritual force behind the material object is seen to be incomplete and superficial, as it ignores the essential conception of the worship. ”

“ Hence we must also regard as untenable that theory which, in contrast with the degeneration theory, represents fetishism as a primitive mythology or even as the starting-point of all mythology and religion. The fetish is not at all an independent cult-object characteristic of some primitive or more advanced stage of development. It [Pg 227] always represents a secondary phenomenon which, in its general significance as an incorporation of demoniacal powers of magic, may occur anywhere. ”

“ We have seen, above, the reason why fetishism becomes eventually distasteful to the common consciousness: the beings, superior to man, which are worshipped by the community, are worshipped as having the interests of the community in their charge, and as having the good of the community at heart; whereas a fetish is sought and found by the individual, to advance his private interests, even to the cost and loss of other individuals and of the community at large. ”

“ Thus other spiritual beings, roaming free about the world, find fetish-objects to act through, to embody themselves in, to present them visibly to their votaries. It is extremely difficult to draw a distinct line of separation between the two prevailing sets of ideas relating to spiritual action through what we call inanimate objects. ”

“ According to circumstances a fetish might be a mountain, a rock or a river, a plant or an animal. It might be those heavenly bodies which exercised much more influence over the life of primitive man than they do over us ”

“ The men, being more fleet of limb, reached the hiding-places first; then the women and larger children, the smaller children being left to their fate. To them the organ was of course a fetish, and full of talking spirits. ”

“ Into the objects has passed the magic power of these ancestors. By their agency, the plants and animals which man utilizes as food may be increased; through them, evils may be averted and, in particular, diseases may be cured. The universal characteristic of the fetish, however, over and above this special mode of origin, is the fact that it is supposed to harbour a soul-like, demoniacal being. In fact, most of the phenomena of so-called fetishism, and those which are still regarded as typical of it, are to be found outside of totemic cult. ”

“ The great fetish lives in the interior of the forest-land, where nobody sees him and nobody can see him. When he dies, the fetish priests carefully collect his bones in order to bring them to life again, and they nourish them, that he may be clothed anew in flesh and blood. ”

“ The sacrifices are to keep the spirits in good humour. The portion of the bundle put into the fetish is after a time played out, becomes stale, and loses its power of attracting the spirit to it, i.e. the fetish becomes ineffective, so the owner of it takes it to a medicine man to have it refreshed by renewing the charms from the bundle ”

“ Serpents, particularly the larger and more dangerous varieties, were especially regarded with reverence.
Although Payne classes all these gods together as totems, it is plain that those of the first class—the flowers, herbs, caves, and pieces of jasper—are merely fetishes. A fetish is an object in which the savage believes to be resident a spirit which, by its magic, will assist him in his undertakings. ”

“ Age itself, is at times a fetish. Gerontophilia is a neurosis, the victims of which are only attracted to very old men or women, safety, comfort and food [Pg 25] having been assured them probably by a grandfather or grandmother to whom they clung for neurotic reasons.
Many Fetishes are Purely Symbolical. Some women fall in love with a uniform because that type of garment symbolises to them physical strength, virility, courage, etc. ”

“ The spirit may leave the fetish, and then it will be of no more use. But the skill of a fetish-doctor may compel the spirit to remain. As long as it remains it is under the control of the possessor of the fetish and must do his bidding. If it should disobey he will punish it, usually by hanging it in the smoke. It is such a fetish, contained in a goat’s horn, that a man walking in the forest carries suspended from his neck to make him invisible to an enemy. ”

“ The ingredients of a fetish are usually objects associated with that which is desirable or that which is fearful—the strong, the swift, the gruesome, the repulsive, the mysterious and objects associated with death. The eagle’s talon is commonly used, the wing feathers of any bird, the claw of the leopard, the teeth of all animals and their blood, dried bits of their flesh and their offal. When Shakespeare describes the contents of the witches’ caldron and their invocation of trouble, one might think that he had been a missionary to the Fang. ”