Primitive ​Mythology (The Masks of God 1.) 0 csillagozás

Among the Australian Aranda, according to the detailed account of Spencer and Gillen, the village where a death has occurred is burned to the ground, the person’s name is never mentioned, a number of painful and awkward ordeals are imposed on the widow and nearest relatives to ensure that the dead man shall regard himself as properly mourned, and finally, a dance and wild commotion of shouting, ground- beating, and mutual mayhem is enacted by the relatives on the grave itself, so that the deceased may know that he must not come back in such a way as to frighten people any more — though he may still watch over his friends if he likes, visit them gently in dreams, and guard them from evil.

126. oldal

When an old kinsman of the sib dies, a cry of joy immediately fills the air. A banquet is arranged, during which the men and women discuss the qualities of the deceased, tell stories of his life, and speak with sorrow of the ills of old age to which he was subject in his last years. Somewhere in the neighborhood — preferably in a shady grove — a hollow has been dug in the earth, covered with a stone. It now is opened and there within lie the bones of earlier times. These are pushed aside to make room for the new arrival. The corpse is carefully bedded in a particular posture, facing a certain way, and left to itself then for a certain season, with the grave again closed. But when time enough has passed for the flesh to have decayed, the old men of the sib open the chamber again, climb down, take up the skull, and carry it to the surface and into the farmstead, where it is cleaned, painted red and, after being hospitably served with grain and beer, placed in a special place along with the crania of other relatives. From now on no spring will pass when the dead will not participate in the offerings of the planting time; no fall when he will not partake of the offerings of thanks brought in a t harvest: and in fact, always before the planting commences and before the wealth of the harvest is enjoyed by the living. Moreover, the silent old fellow participates in everything that happens in the farmstead. If a leopard fells a woman, a farmboy is bitten by a snake, a plague strikes, or the blessing of rain is withheld, the relic is always brought into connection with the matter in some way. should there be a fire, it is the first thing saved; when the puberty rites of the youngsters are to commence, it is the first to enjoy the festival beer and porridge. If a young woman marries into the sib, the oldest member conducts her to the urn or shelf where the earthly remains of the past are preserved and bids her take from the head of an ancestor a few kernels of holy grain to eat. And this, indeed, is a highly significant custom; for when this young, new vessel of the spirit of the sib becomes pregnant, the old people of the community watch to see what similarities will exist between the newly growing and the faded life.

127. oldal

In a Chinese musical treatise of the second century b.c. we read:

If the note, Kung (C = the tonic), is disturbed, then there is disorganization, the Prince is arrogant.
If the second note, Shang (D), is disturbed, then there is deviation: the officials are corrupted.
If the Chiao (E) is disturbed, then there is anxiety: the people are unhappy.
If the Chi (G) is disturbed, then there is complaint: public services are too heavy.
If the Yu (A) is disturbed, then there is danger: resources are lacking.
If the five degrees are all disturbed, then there is danger: ranks encroach upon each other — this is what is called impudence — and, if such is the condition, the destruction of the kingdom may come in less than a day….
In periods of disorder, rites are altered and music is licentious. Then sad sounds are lacking in dignity, joyful sounds lack calm….When the spirit of opposition manifests itself, indecent music comes into being….when the spirit of conformity manifests itself, harmonious music appears….So that, under the effect of music, the five social duties are without admixture, the eyes and the ears are clear, the blood and the vital spirits are balanced, habits are reformed, customs are improved, the Empire is in complete peace.

453. oldal

The language still preserves this conception in the asobase-kotoba (literally play-language) or polite speech, the mode of address used in conversation with persons of higher rank. The convention is that the higher classes are merely playing at all they do. The polite form for “you arrive in Tokyo” is, literally ” you play arrival in Tokyo”; and for “I hear that your father is dead,” “I hear that your father has played dying.” In other words, the revered person is imagined as living in an elevated sphere where only pleasure of condescension moves to action.

27. oldal

The tunnel is not much broader than my shoulders, nor higher. I can hear the others before me groaning and see how very slowly their lamps push on. With our arms pressed close to our sides we wriggle forward on our stomachs, like snakes. The passage, in places, is hardly a foot high, so that you have to lay your face right on the earth. I felt as though I were creeping through a coffin. You cannot lift your head; you cannot breathe. And then, finally, the furrow becomes a slightly higher. One can at last rest on one’s forearms. But not for long; the way again grows narrow. And so, yard by yard, one struggles on: some forty-odd yards in all. Nobody talks. The lamps are inched along and we push after. I hear the others groaning, my own heat is pounding, and it is difficult to breathe. It is terrible to have the roof so close to one’s head. And it is very hard: I bump it, time and gain. Will this thing never end? Then, suddenly, we are through, and everybody breathes. It is like a redemption.
The hall in which we are now standing is gigantic. We let the light of the lamps run along the ceiling and walls: a majestic room — and there, finally, are are the pictures. From top to bottom a whole wall is covered with engravings. The surface had been worked with tools of stone, and there we see marshaled the beasts that lived at that time in southern France: the mammoth, rhinoceros, bison, wild horse, bear, wild ass, reindeer, wolverine, musk ox; also, the smaller animals appear: snowy owls, hares, and fish. And one sees darts everywhere, flying at the game. Several pictures of bears attract us in particular; for they have holes where the images were struck and blood is shown spouting from their mouths. Truly a picture of the hunt: the picture of the magic of the hunt!

307-308. oldal

The same idea spontaneously occurs to children when they reach the age of about five. “Do people turn back into babies when they get very old?” asked a little Swiss boy of that age. And another, when his uncle’s death was announced to him: “Will he grow up again?”
“And then I’ll die,” said another, “and you too, Mamma, and then we’ll come back again.”

342-343. oldal

“How can a man know what a woman’s life is?” said an Abyssinian woman quoted by Frobenius.

A woman’s life is quite different from a man’s. God has ordered it so. A man is the same from the time of his circumcision to the time of his withering. He is the same before he has sought out a woman for the first time, and afterwards. But the day when a women enjoys her first love cuts her in two. She becomes another woman on that day. The man is the same after his first love as he was before. The woman is from the day of her first love another. That continues so all through life. The man spends a might by a woman and goes away. His life and body are always the same. The woman conceives. As a mother she is another person that the woman without child. She carries the print of the night nine months long in her body. Something grows. Something grows into her life that never again departs from it. She is a mother. She is and remains a mother even though her child die, though all her children die. For at one time she carried the child under her heart. And it does not go out of her heart ever again. Not even when it is dead. And this the man does not know; he knows nothing. Only a woman can know that and speak of that. That is why we won’t be told what to do by our husbands.

351-352. oldal

The Hawaiians had several images of the afterlife. Many souls had no abiding place, but only wandered over the waste lands of the world and occasionally entered some living person. Others went into the bodies of sharks, eels, lizards, or owls, and might then become guardians or helpers of the living. But for those who were perfectly successful in the transit of the deceptive tree, there were abiding places according to rank (for the Hawaiians were meticulous about rank). And in these privileged realms sports were played, dangerous sports, as they had been in life, and there was food in abundance requiring no cultivation — fish and taro, yams, coconuts and bananas. The highest of these afterworlds was in a flaming crater at the top of the mountain of the volcano goddess Pele, where there was no pain, only sheer delight.

120. oldal