Even without absorbing any part of a man's bodily substance it is sometimes thought possible to acquire his moral virtues through simple contact with his bones. Thus among the Toradjas of Central Celebes, when a youth is being circumcised he is made to sit on the skull of a slain foe in order to make him brave in war;477 and [pg 154] when Scanderbeg, Prince of Epirus, was dead, the Turks, who had often felt the force of his arm in battle, are said to have imagined that by wearing a piece of his bones near their heart they should be animated with a strength and valour like his.478 A peculiar form of communion with the dead is practised by the Gallas of Eastern Africa. They think that food from the house of a dead man, especially food that he liked, or that he cooked for himself, contains a portion of his life or soul. If at the funeral feast a man eats some of that food, he fancies that he has thereby absorbed some of the life or soul of the departed, a portion of his spirit, intelligence, or courage.479

Strange as it may seem to us, one motive which induces a savage warrior to eat the flesh or drink the blood of the foe whom he has slain appears to be a wish to form an indissoluble covenant of friendship and brotherhood with his victim. For it is a widespread belief among savages that by transfusing a little of their blood into each other's bodies two men become kinsmen and allies; the same blood now circulating in the veins of both, neither can injure the other without at the same time injuring himself; the two have therefore given each other the strongest bond, the best possible hostages, for their good behaviour.480 Acting on this theory, the primitive warrior seeks to convert his slain foe into the firmest of friends by imbibing the dead man's blood or swallowing his flesh. That at all events appears to be the idea at the root of the following customs. When an Arawak Indian of British Guiana has murdered another, he repairs on the third night to the grave of his victim, and pressing a pointed stick through the corpse he licks off and swallows any blood that he finds adhering to the stick. For he believes that if he did not taste his victim's blood, he would go mad and die; whereas by swallowing the blood he averts any ill consequences that might flow to him from the [pg 155] murder.481 The belief and practice of the Nandi are similar: “To the present day, when a person of another tribe has been slain by a Nandi, the blood must be carefully washed off the spear or sword into a cup made of grass, and drunk by the slayer. If this is not done it is thought that the man will become frenzied.”482 So among the tribes of the Lower Niger “it is customary and necessary for the executioner to lick the blood that is on the blade”; moreover, “the custom of licking the blood off the blade of a sword by which a man has been killed in war is common to all these tribes, and the explanation given me by the Ibo, which is generally accepted, is, that if this was not done, the act of killing would so affect the strikers as to cause them to run amok among their own people; because the sight and smell of blood render them absolutely senseless as well as regardless of all consequences. And this licking the blood is the only sure remedy, and the only way in which they can recover themselves.”483 Among the Shans executioners believe that they would soon fall ill and die if they did not taste the blood of their victims.484

The most probable explanation of these practices seems to be that a manslayer is thought to be driven mad by the ghost of his victim, who takes possession of his murderer's body and causes him to demean himself in a frantic manner; whereas, as soon as the slayer has tasted the blood of the slain, he becomes a blood-brother of his victim, whose ghost accordingly will do him no harm.485 This hypothesis is strongly confirmed by the reason alleged for [pg 156] a similar custom formerly observed by the Maoris. When a warrior had slain his foe in combat, he tasted his blood, believing that this preserved him from the avenging spirit of his victim; for they imagined that “the moment a slayer had tasted the blood of the slain, the dead man became a part of his being and placed him under the protection of the atua or guardian-spirit of the deceased.”486 In the light of these facts we can now explain the opinion, still widely held in Calabria, that if a murderer is to escape, he must suck his victim's blood from the reeking blade of the dagger with which he did the deed;487 and, further, we can see at least a glimmering of reason, however misapplied, in the confidence cherished by the Botocudos of Brazil, that if only they ate a morsel of the flesh of their enemies, the arrows of the fellow tribesmen of the slain would not be able to hit them.488 Indeed the evidence which I have just adduced suggests that the intention of forming a blood-covenant with the dead may have been a common motive for the cannibalism which has been so often practised by savage victors on the bodies of their victims.489 If that was so, it would to some extent mitigate the horror with which such a practice is naturally viewed by civilised observers; since it would reveal the cannibal feast, no longer in the lurid light of a brutal outburst of blind rage and hatred against the vanquished, but in the milder aspect of a solemn rite designed to wipe out the memory of past hostilities and to establish a permanent relation of friendship and good fellowship with the dead.

Another mode of entering into communion with the dead by means of their bodily relics is to grind their bones to powder or to burn them to ashes, and then to swallow the powder or the ashes mixed with food or drink. This method of absorbing the virtues or appropriating the souls [pg 157] of deceased kinsfolk has been practised by a number of Indian tribes of South America. Thus the Tarianas, Tucanos, and other tribes in the valley of the Amazon, about a month after the funeral, disinter the corpse, which is then much decomposed, and put it in a great pan or oven over the fire till all the volatile parts are driven off with a most horrible stench, leaving only a black carbonaceous paste. This paste is then pounded into a fine powder, and being mixed in several large vats of the native beer, the liquor is drunk by the assembled company until all is consumed. They believe that thus the virtues of the deceased are transmitted to the drinkers.490 Similarly among the Xomanas and Passes of the Rio Negro and Japura River in Brazil, it was customary to burn the bones of the dead and mingle the ashes in their drink; “for they fancied, that by this means they received into their own bodies the spirits of their deceased friends.”491 We may suppose that a similar motive underlies the custom wherever it has been observed by the Indians of South America, even when this particular motive is not expressly alleged by our authorities. For example, the Retoroños, Pechuyos, and Guarayos of eastern Bolivia “manifested their feeling for the dead by a remarkable custom: when the body had mouldered they dug up the bones, reduced them to powder, and mingling it with maize, composed a sort of cake, which they considered it the strongest mark of friendship to offer and partake. Some of the first missionaries were regaled with this family bread, before they knew what they were eating.”492 Again, in the province of Coro, in north-western Venezuela, when a chief died, they lamented him in the night, celebrating his actions; then they parched his body at the fire, and reducing it to powder drank it up in their liquor, deeming this act the highest honour they could pay him.493 The Tauaré Indians of the Rio Enivra burn their dead, keep their ashes in hollow reeds, and eat a portion of the ashes with every [pg 158] meal.494 So in antiquity Artemisia expressed her love and grief for her dead husband Mausolus by powdering his ashes and drinking them in water.495 It is said that Mwamba, a recent king or chief of the Wemba in Northern Rhodesia, having detected one of his wives in an intrigue with another man, caused the guilty pair to be burned alive, while he watched their tortures from a raised seat. “Shortly after this, however, he would seem to have been stricken with remorse and the dread of Nemesis. The presiding witch-doctor was therefore ordered to collect the ashes of the twain, and decoct therefrom a potion, which was administered to the king to avert the avenging furies of evil spirits of the murdered pair, which might otherwise have hounded him into a fit of madness.”496 By drinking the ashes of his victims the king sought to identify himself with them and so to protect himself against their angry ghosts, just as we have seen that manslayers seek to protect themselves against the ghosts of their victims by drinking their blood.497

Just as the savage thinks that he can swallow the moral and other virtues in the shape of food, so he fondly imagines that he can inoculate himself with them. Here in Europe we as yet inoculate only against disease; in Basutoland they have learned the art of inoculating not [pg 159] merely against disease but against moral evil and public calamity, against wild beasts and winter cold. For example, if an epidemic is raging, if public affairs go ill, or war threatens to break out, the chief, with paternal solicitude, seeks to guard his people against the evils that menace them by inoculating them with his own hand. Armed with a lancet, he makes a slight incision in the temples of each one, and rubs into the wound a pinch of magic powder which has been carefully compounded of the ashes of certain plants and animals. The plants and animals whose ashes compose this sovereign medicine are always symbolical; in other words, they are supposed to be imbued with the virtues which the chief desires to impart to his people. They consist, for example, of plants whose foliage withstands the rigours of winter; mimosas, whose thorns present an impenetrable barrier to all animals of the deer kind; the claws or a few hairs from the mane of a lion, the bravest of beasts; the tuft of hair round the root of the horns of a bull, which is the emblem of strength and fecundity; the skin of a serpent; the feathers of a kite or a hawk.498 So when the Barotsé wish to be swift of foot, to cripple the fleeing game, and to ensure an abundant catch, they scarify their arms and legs and rub into the wounds a powder made of the burnt bones of various beasts and birds.499 Among some tribes of South-Eastern Africa the same magic powder which is made from various parts of slain foes, and is eaten by boys at circumcision,500 is used to inoculate the fighting-men in time of war. The medicine-man makes an incision in the forehead of each warrior, and puts the powder into the cut, thus infusing strength and courage for the battle.501 Among some Caffre tribes the powdered charcoal with which the warriors are thus inoculated in various parts of their bodies is procured by burning the flesh of a live ox with a certain kind of [pg 160] wood or roots, to which magic virtue is attributed.502 The Basutos think that they can render themselves invulnerable by inoculation,503 and the Zulus imagine that they can protect themselves against snake-bite by similar means. But the saving virtue of the inoculation is not permanent; like vaccination, it has to be periodically renewed. Hence every year, about October, Zulu men, women, and children have a small piece of skin cut from the back of the left hand, and the poison of a snake, mixed with spittle, is rubbed into the wound. No snake will ever approach a man who has thus been inoculated; and what is even more curious, if the shadow of an inoculated man should touch the shadow of a man who has not been inoculated, the latter will fall down as if he had been shot, overcome by the poison transmitted through the shadow: so exceedingly virulent is the virus.504 Among the Jukos, a tribe of the Benue River in Northern Nigeria, before a hunter goes forth to hunt elephants, he makes four cuts in his left arm and rubs in “medicine”; this helps him to see the beast next day.505

Again, the Zulus know how to inoculate themselves not merely with moral virtue, but even with celestial power. For you must know that the Zulus have heaven-herds or sky-herds, who drive away clouds big with hail and lightning, just as herdsmen drive cattle before them. These heaven-herds are in sympathy with the heaven. For when the heaven is about to be darkened, and before the clouds appear or the thunder mutters, the heart of the heaven-herd feels it coming, for it is hot within him and he is excited by anger. When the sky begins to be overcast, he too grows dark like it; when it thunders, he frowns, that his face may be black as the scowl of the angry heaven. Now the way in which he thus becomes sympathetic with all the changing moods of the inconstant heaven is this: he eats the heaven and scarifies himself with it. And the way [pg 161] in which he eats the heaven and scarifies himself with it is as follows. When a bullock is struck by lightning, the wizard takes its flesh and puts it in a sherd and eats it while it is hot, mixed with medicine; and thus he eats the heaven by eating the flesh, which came from the beast, which was struck by the lightning, which came down from the heaven. And in like manner he scarifies himself with the heaven, for he makes cuts in his body and rubs in medicine mixed with the flesh of a bullock that was struck by lightning.506 In some Caffre tribes, when an animal or a man has been struck by lightning, the priest comes straightway and vaccinates every person in the kraal, apparently as a sort of insurance against lightning. He sets to work by tying a number of charms round the neck of every man and woman in the village, in order that they may have power to dig the dead man's grave; for in these tribes beasts and men alike that have been struck by lightning are always buried, and the flesh is never eaten. Next a sacrificial beast is killed and a fire kindled, in which certain magic woods or roots are burned to charcoal, and then ground to powder. The priest thereupon makes incisions in various parts of the bodies of each inmate of the kraal, and rubs a portion of the powdered charcoal into the cuts; the rest of the powder he mixes with sour milk, and gives to them all to drink. From the time the lightning strikes the kraal until this ceremony has been performed, the people are obliged to abstain entirely from the use of milk. Their heads are then shaved. Should a house have been struck by lightning it must be abandoned, with everything in it. Until all these rites have been performed, none of the people may leave the kraal or have any intercourse whatever with others; but when the ceremonies have been duly performed, the people are pronounced clean, and may again associate with their neighbours. However, for some months afterwards none of the livestock of the kraal and few other things belonging to it are allowed to pass into other hands, whether by way of sale or of gift.507 Hence it would appear that all persons in a [pg 162] village which has been struck by lightning are supposed to be infected with a dangerous virus, which they might communicate to their neighbours; and the vaccination is intended to disinfect them as well as to protect them against the recurrence of a like calamity. Young Carib warriors used to be inoculated for the purpose of making them brave and hardy. Some time before the ceremony the lad who was to be operated on caught a bird of prey of a particular sort and kept it in captivity till the day appointed. When the time was come and friends had assembled to witness the ceremony, the father of the boy seized the bird by its legs and crushed its head by beating it on the head of his son, who dared not wince under the rain of blows that nearly stunned him. Next the father bruised and pounded the bird's flesh, and steeped it in water together with a certain spice; after which he scored and slashed his son's body in all directions, washed his wounds with the decoction, and gave him the bird's heart to eat, in order, as it was said, that he might be the braver for it.508

It is not always deemed necessary either that the mystical substance should be swallowed by the communicant, or that he should receive it by the more painful process of scarification and inoculation. Sometimes it is thought enough merely to smear or anoint him with it. Among some of the Australian blacks it used to be a common practice to kill a man, cut out his caul-fat, and rub themselves with it, in the belief that all the qualities, both physical and mental, which had distinguished the original owner of the fat, were thus communicated by its means to the person who greased himself with it.509 The Kamilaroi tribe of New South Wales sometimes deposited their dead on the forks of trees, and lighting fires underneath caught the fat as it dropped; for they hoped with [pg 163] the droppings to acquire the strength and courage of the deceased.510 The Wollaroi, another tribe of New South Wales, used to place the dead on a stage, and the mourners sat under it and rubbed their bodies with the juices of putrefaction which exuded from the rotten body, believing that this made them strong. Others collected these juices in vessels, and the young men rubbed the stinking liquid into their persons in order to acquire the good qualities of the departed.511 Wherever a like custom has been practised, as it has been, for example, by some of the natives of New Guinea, Timor Laut, and Madagascar,512 we may conjecture that the motive has been similar. Again, the negroes of Southern Guinea regard the brain as the seat of wisdom, and think it a pity that, when a wise man dies, his brain and his wisdom should go to waste together. So they sever his head from his body and hang it up over a mass of chalk, which, as the head decays, receives the drippings of brain and wisdom. Any one who applies the precious dripping to his forehead is supposed to absorb thereby the intelligence of the dead.513 Among the Beku, a tribe of dwarfs attached to the Fans in West Africa, the great charm for success in hunting is procured by killing a man and afterwards, when the corpse has begun to moulder in the grave, detaching the head from the body. The brain, heart, eyes and hairs of the body are then removed and mixed, according to a secret formula, with special incantations. When the compound is dry, the hunter rubs himself [pg 164] with it “in order to acquire a dash of the higher power with which people are endowed in the other life, and in particular their invisibility.”514 Among the Digger Indians of California, when a man died, it was customary to burn the body to ashes, mix the ashes with a thick resinous gum extracted from a pine-tree, and then smear the gum on the head of the mourner, where it was allowed to remain till it gradually wore away.515 The motive for the custom is not mentioned, but it was probably, like the motive for the parallel custom of swallowing the ashes of the dead, a desire to participate in the powers and virtues of the departed. At a certain stage of the ceremonies by which, in the Andaman Islands, a boy is initiated into manhood, the chief takes the carcase of a boar and presses it heavily down on the shoulders, back, and limbs of the young man as he sits, silent and motionless, on the ground. This is done to make him brave and strong. Afterwards the animal is cut up, and its melted fat is poured over the novice, and rubbed into his body.516 The Arabs of Eastern Africa believe that an unguent of lion's fat inspires a man with boldness, and makes the wild beasts flee in terror before him.517 In the forests of North-western Brazil there lives a small falcon with a red beak which is so sharp-sighted that it can detect even a worm on the ground from a considerable height. When a Kobeua Indian has killed one of these birds, he pokes out its eyes and allows the fluid to drip into his own, believing that in this way they will be sharp-sighted like those of the falcon.518 Most of the Baperis, or Malekootoos, a Bechuana tribe of South Africa, revere or, as they say, sing the porcupine, which seems to be their totem, as the sun is the totem of some members of the tribe, and a species of ape the totem of others. Those of them who have the porcupine for their totem swear by the animal, and lament if any one injures it. [pg 165] When a porcupine has been killed, they religiously gather up its bristles, spit on them, and rub their eyebrows with them, saying, “They have slain our brother, our master, one of ourselves, him whom we sing.” They would fear to die if they ate of its flesh. Nevertheless they esteem it wholesome for an infant of the clan to rub into his joints certain portions of the paunch of the animal mixed with the sap of some plants to which they ascribe an occult virtue.519 So at the solemn ceremony which is observed by the Central Australian tribes for the purpose of multiplying kangaroos, men of the kangaroo totem not only eat a little kangaroo flesh as a sacrament, but also have their bodies anointed with kangaroo fat. Doubtless the intention alike of the eating and of the anointing is to impart to the man the qualities of his totem animal, and thus to enable him to perform the ceremonies for the multiplication of the breed.520

In ancient Mexico the priests of the god Tezcatlipoca, before they engaged in religious rites which tried the nerve, used to smear their bodies with a magic ointment, which had the effect of banishing all fear, so that they would confront wild beasts in their dens or slaughter people in sacrifice with the utmost indifference. The ointment which had this marvellous property was compounded of the ashes of venomous reptiles and insects, such as spiders, scorpions, centipedes, and vipers, which were brayed up in a mortar along with living specimens of the same creatures, tobacco, soot, and the ashes of black caterpillars. This precious substance was then set before the god in little pots, because they said it was his victuals; therefore they called it a divine food. And when the priests had besmeared themselves [pg 166] with it, they were ready to discharge the duties of their holy office by butchering their fellow men in the human shambles without one qualm of fear or one visiting of compassion. Moreover, an unction of this ointment was deemed a sovereign remedy for sickness and disease; hence they named it “the divine physic”; and sick people came from all quarters to the priests, as to their saviours, to have their ailing parts anointed with the divine physic and to be made whole.521

Sometimes the valuable qualities of an animal or of a person may be imparted to another by the more delicate and ethereal process of fumigation. This refined mode of cultivating the moral virtues is or used to be practised by the Caffres of South Africa. Thus in former times as soon as a baby was born, some dirt was scraped from the forearm and other parts of the father's body and mixed with special medicines. The mixture was then made to smoulder and the baby was fumigated or “washed” in the smoke. This ceremony was deemed of great importance, being the established way of communicating to the child a portion of the ancestral spirit (itongo) through the physical medium of the father's dirt, to which the spirit naturally adheres. But while the dirt was endowed with this spiritual potency, the moral character of the infant depended in a large measure on the nature of the medicines with which the dirt was compounded, and accordingly much thought and skill were devoted to their selection and preparation. Foremost among the ingredients was a meteorite, burnt to a cinder and ground to powder. The effect of this powder, well mixed with the dirt, and introduced into the orifices of the child's body by means of smoke, is to close the anterior fontanelle of the baby's skull, to strengthen the bones of that important part of his person, to communicate vigour to his mind and courage to his disposition, and in general to brace and harden his whole system with the strength and hardness of the [pg 167] meteorite. Other ingredients which have a most beneficial effect are the powdered whiskers of a leopard, the claws of a lion, and the skin of a salamander. The mode of administering the medicine is as follows. You set fire to the compound, and while it smoulders, you hold the infant, wrapt up in a blanket, over the burning mass so as to compel it to inhale the smoke. To make sure of producing the desired effect, some of the powdered medicine is mixed with the baby's food.522 In like manner by holding the smouldering feather of a vulture under a baby's nose you render the child valiant and brave like a vulture, and if you do the same with a peacock's feather, your offspring will be, like a peacock, impavid and never dismayed by thunder or other terrible noises.523

It is now easy to understand why a savage should desire to partake of the flesh of an animal or man whom he regards as divine. By eating the body of the god he shares in the god's attributes and powers. And when the god is a corn-god, the corn is his proper body; when he is a vine-god, the juice of the grape is his blood; and so by eating the bread and drinking the wine the worshipper partakes of the real body and blood of his god. Thus the drinking of wine in the rites of a vine-god like Dionysus is not an act of revelry, it is a solemn sacrament.524 Yet a time comes when reasonable men find it hard to understand how any one in his senses can suppose that by eating bread or drinking wine he consumes the body or blood of a deity. “When we call corn Ceres and wine Bacchus,” says Cicero, “we use a common figure of speech; but do you imagine that anybody is so insane as to believe that the thing he feeds upon is a god?”525 In writing thus the Roman philosopher little foresaw that in Rome itself, and in the countries which have derived their creed from her, the belief which he here stigmatises as insane was destined to persist for thousands of years, [pg 168] as a cardinal doctrine of religion, among peoples who pride themselves on their religious enlightenment by comparison with the blind superstitions of pagan antiquity. So little can even the greatest minds of one generation foresee the devious track which the religious faith of mankind will pursue in after ages.