Myth and ritual in primitive culture. Myth and primitive culture

The question of priority in the relationship between myth and ritual is similar to the problem of the chicken and the egg relationship, about which it is difficult to say who precedes whom. The close connection and proximity of rituals and myths in primitive culture is undeniable, but even in the most archaic societies there are numerous myths that are not genetically reducible to rituals, and vice versa, during ritual celebrations myths are widely staged.

For example, among Central Australian tribes, during initiation rites (initiation, promotion to adults, full members of the tribe), myths about the wanderings of totemic ancestors are dramatized in front of newcomers, and these myths have their own sacred core, irreducible to ritual - these are the sacred wandering routes themselves. Ritual pantomime, in accordance with the specifics of theatrical and dance art, is aimed primarily at imitation of the habits of the totem animal, and the accompanying singing has a majestic character in relation to the totem.

The North Australian tribes have both myths and rituals that strictly correspond to each other, as well as rituals that are not related to myths, and myths that are not correlated with rituals and do not originate from them, which does not prevent myths and rituals from having a basically similar structure.

A myth is not an action overgrown with words, and not a simple reflection of a ritual. However, we can assume that myth and ritual in primitive and ancient cultures, in principle, constitute a certain unity (worldview, functional, structural), that rituals reproduce the mythical events of the sacred (sacred) past, that in the system of primitive culture, myth and ritual constitute two of its aspects – verbal and effective, “theoretical” and “practical”. A similar understanding of the internal unity of myth and ritual, their living connection and common practical function was affirmed by Bronislaw Malinowski.

The reality of the myth, as the researcher explains, goes back to the events of prehistoric mythical time (past), but remains a psychological reality for the aborigine thanks to the reproduction of myths in rituals and magical meaning the latter.

There are many definitions of ritual. In many anthropological works in Russian, both domestic and translated, the term “rite” is used as a synonym for the word “ritual”. Both terms have multiple meanings.

From an external point of view, ritual can be given the following definition: a standardized set of actions with symbolic content, performed in situations prescribed by tradition. The words and actions that make up the ritual are very precisely defined and vary very little, if at all, from one instance of the ritual to the next. Tradition also determines who can perform the ritual. Sacred objects are often used in rituals; it is assumed that at the end of the ritual, its participants should experience a general emotional uplift. In the case of a magical ritual, its participants believe that the ritual itself is capable of causing certain results - changes external environment. Religious rituals typically symbolize fundamental beliefs and are performed to demonstrate piety and reverence. Rituals also serve to enhance group unity. During times of crisis, rituals can relieve feelings of anxiety and distress.

Another definition: ritual is symbolic behavior repeated at certain periods of time, expressing in a stylized explicit form certain values or problems of a group (or individual). In this understanding of the term, even small and short-lived social groups (or individuals) can develop rituals that are not part of the general cultural tradition, but are specific to a given group.

An attempt to analyze the diverse social functions rituals as a single systemically organized whole belongs to Emile Durkheim. Exploring the beliefs and rituals of the natives of Australia, Durkheim came to the conclusion that the task of rituals is to divide the world into the sacred, the sacred and the ordinary, profane (and the connection of these two worlds in certain periods).

That is Australian aborigines distinguish between two lives, two worlds, and this dualism finds its expression in a religious cult - in rituals and rites.

This is how Pitirim Sorokin interprets this thought of Durkheim. The life of the Australian tribes is usually divided into two periods. During the first period, the clans are scattered throughout the territory they inhabit, cut off and isolated from each other, their life flows calmly, without much passion, sometimes even boring, in labor and worries - they are busy fishing, hunting, providing everything necessary for life. The second period, which usually occurs after the end of the rainy season, differs sharply from the first. At this time, scattered clans gather together, ordinary life is replaced by a holiday - “korobbori”. There is no longer any need to work - sufficient supplies of food have been prepared in advance. The very fact of uniting previously scattered clans disrupts the routine flow of life, everyone experiences a feverish revival; the pace and rhythm of life accelerates. There is a build-up of a kind of psychic energy, as in a crowd at a stadium before the start of a match, or in auditorium before a concert, or in a rally crowd. The natives, who live normally and measuredly throughout the year, become easily excitable during this period, and any, even the simplest stimuli, cause a violent reaction, as if the accumulated energy is just waiting for a reason to pour out.

Tension grows and grows, and finally, a general “detente” occurs: the natives fall into sacred ecstasy, while prohibitions, in particular sexual ones, disappear, and jewelry, new tattoos, masks transform the triumphant not only externally, but also internally, forcing everyone consider yourself at this moment a new, different creature, not the one who has been doing boring work all long and hard year. It follows that in the mind there must have arisen a belief in the existence of two worlds: the ordinary world and the sacred world (where a person is, as it were, reborn and experiences extraordinary experiences.

This explains the division of rituals into two main categories: negative and positive. The first represent a system of prohibitions designed to sharply divide the world of the sacred and the world of the vulgar. For example, a non-sacred being cannot touch the sacred: a non-sacred being cannot not only pick up a churinga, but even see it. Churinga is a sacred object - a stone or piece of wood on which the sign of a totem is carved and which therefore has supernatural qualities. In some tribes, each man has his own churinga, in which his life consists. Until the time comes, they are stored in special caves; a special ritual is performed for young people, during which they see their churingas for the first time; Usually one should not eat the meat of a totem animal. Both spatial and temporal mixing of these two worlds is prohibited. The result of the ban on spatial mixing is obvious: it is the creation of special sacred places– caves – for performing some rituals and storing shrines. The prohibition of temporary mixing comes down to the prohibition of certain “vulgar” daily activities during periods specifically religious life(on religious holidays). During some rituals it is forbidden to eat, during others any work is prohibited.

Positive rituals are performed with the opposite purpose - not to separate the two worlds, but to bring the believer closer to the world of the sacred. Rituals of this type include the ritual joint eating of the body of a totem animal, sacrifices pursuing the same goal, certain actions performed in order to win the favor of the deity and ensure the desired state of affairs, either by playing out the desired situation and imitating its participants, or by reproducing the past. In addition, Durkheim identifies a special type of rituals - redemptive, which are committed for the purpose of atonement or mitigation of the consequences of a sacrilegious act.

Durkheim's classification of rituals does not include all the variety of types of rituals. Rituals are classified according to different criteria. It is important to divide rituals into magical And religious. IN of magic (witchcraft) there is no belief in personalized supernatural powers, that is, in God. Magic rituals pursue immediate, immediate goals and, what is very important, they are the work of individuals, and the entire society (clan, tribe) is usually interested in the results of religious rituals and therefore, as a rule, the entire society (or key groups, or symbolic public figures) participate in their implementation.

Rituals can also be classified by their functions. First of all, it should be highlighted crisis rituals performed by an individual or group during critical periods of life or as a response to an acute and completely urgent problem. An example is the rain dance, usually performed during a period of long drought, when loss of crops threatens the tribe with complete extinction. This complex ritual is performed with the participation of almost the entire tribe under the guidance of high priests, shamans or priests. It is detailed and clearly designed, coming from ancient times. Let us note that in general ritual and improvisation are mutually exclusive.

Calendar rituals are performed regularly as predictable, recurring natural phenomena occur, such as the change of seasons, changing phases of the moon, ripening of crops, etc. All rural cultures have great amount such rituals, often complex, rich in elements of eroticism, with their own special gods, heroes, and mythical characters. As society develops and industrializes, they partially secularize and partially die out. Calendar rituals are often seen as a type of rite of passage.

We have named only the most common types of rituals. In general, depending on the criteria used and the level of analysis, a literally infinite number of types of rituals can be distinguished. For example, rituals can be classified according to the participation of men or women in purely men's, clean women's And mixed rituals. Only men have the right to participate in purely male rituals, but some of them appear as women and even symbolically imitate physiological functions, inherent in women; in purely female rituals, on the contrary, individual women imitate the physiological functions of men. But this does not at all mean accepting the role of a woman or, conversely, a man. This means being a woman or, accordingly, a man during a period of ritual time, excluded from the normal alternation of times.

In addition, rituals can be classified in terms of mass, that is, by the number of participants, according to the degree of structure, by alternating elements of amorphous and structured, according to group characteristics, within which and in the name of which they are performed. Last moment very important, because rituals are stratified, and stratified in two ways - in relation to both the earthly and mythological hierarchy. Some rituals can only be performed by chiefs, or only by elders, or only by hunters, and the performance of the corresponding rituals by representatives of other groups entails innumerable serious consequences both for the perpetrators and for the defiled groups and even for the defiled rituals themselves. Gods (and other mythical beings) are jealous of the performance of rituals. Thus, the use of a ritual object intended to serve in honor of one mythical creature, in a ritual intended for another, can lead to completely unpredictable consequences. For example, to a change in the places and importance of the gods, in short, to a revolution in the universe, which, of course, will affect people (in the form of revenge of the offended god).

Title: Myth and ritual in primitive culture.

The publication represents selected pages famous work one of the most prominent ethnographers and historians of the 19th century. E. B. Tylor " Primitive culture"(1871). The book contains a huge factual material according to the primitive beliefs of the peoples of the world and introduces the reader to the origins of religion, to the most ancient ideas and rituals of mankind, the remnants of which (“living evidence”, “monuments of the past”, as the author aptly defines) can be found in modern culture.

For a wide range of readers.

When a custom, habit, or opinion is sufficiently widespread, it is like a stream which, once it has established its channel, continues its course for centuries. We are dealing here with the sustainability of culture. Nevertheless, it is quite remarkable that the changes and revolutions in human history allow so many small streams to continue flowing for so long. In the Tatar steppes 600 years ago it was considered a crime to step on the threshold and touch the ropes when entering a tent. This view seems to have survived to this day. 18 centuries before our time, Ovid mentions the popular prejudice of the Romans against marriages in May, which he explains, not without reason, by the fact that the funeral rites of Lemuralia occurred in this month: Virgins and widows equally avoid marriages at this time. In May, marriage threatens with an early death. This is what the people know to express in the proverb: Just take an evil wife for yourself in May.

CONTENTSChapter I. CULTURAL SURVIVALS 4Sphinx. 9Athenian king Aegeus questioning the oracle. 10Human sacrifices. 14Chapter II MYTHOLOGY.. 15Atlas with the globe on shoulders. 17Prometheus sculpts the first man from clay.. 17African sorcerer. 26Werewolf 27Hermes kills the hundred-eyed Argus. 29Tezcatlipoca is one of the main deities of the Indians of Central America. 31The Egyptian sky goddess Nut absorbs and gives birth to the sun. 32Hindu sun god Surya. 37Chapter III. ANIMISM 41Siberian shaman. 48Penelope sees her sister in a dream. 49Transfer of the soul of the deceased to the world of the dead (fragment of the painting of the ancient Greek lekythos. V century BC) 69Domovina - a grave frame in which the Slavs placed funeral food. Russia, XIX century 71When visiting family graves, the Chinese decorate them with flowers and eat cold snacks. 72Odysseus, who descended into the underworld, talks with the shadow of the soothsayer Tiresias. 75The Judgment of Osiris in the Underworld. 79The spirit hunts the emu in the underworld. Australia. 86Punishment of sinners in hell. Antique book illustration, China. 88Chinese paper sacrificial money intended for the souls of ancestors. 91Desperation. 99Ancient Russian amulets-pendants. 104Salamander is the spirit of fire. 116Water spirits.. 118Gnomes - spirits earth's bowels. 121Sacred oak in the Prussian sanctuary of Romov. 122Apis is the sacred bull of the ancient Egyptians. 124Cat is a sacred animal of Bast of the ancient Egyptians. 125Hanuman, the king of the monkeys, builds a bridge between Ceylon and India. 125The symbol of eternity is a snake biting its tail. 126Asclepius - ancient greek god healing with a snake. 127Trimurti is the trinity of the supreme gods of Hinduism: Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. 129The Hindu god Indra is the lord of lightning. 133Wotan - the thunder god of the ancient Germans. 134Agni is the Hindu god of fire. 138Mithras trampling the bull. 142Selene - goddess of the moon of the ancient Greeks. 143Chapter IV. RITES AND CEREMONY 144Human sacrifices among the Mayans. 149Conclusion. 165NOTES 168Chapter 1. 169Chapter 2. 169Chapter 3. 171Chapter 4. 175INDEX OF ETHNONYMS.. 176INDEX OF NAMES.. 181CONTENTS. 187

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Myth and ritual in primitive culture.

Rites of Passage by M. Eliade

It has long been noted that rites of passage play a significant role in the life of a religious person. Of course, the most striking example of a rite of passage is initiation upon reaching puberty, the transition from one age category to another (from childhood or adolescence to adulthood). But rites of passage can also include those performed at birth, marriage, and death. We can say that in each of these cases we are talking about a certain initiation, since in all cases there is a radical change in the ontological state or social status. A newborn child has only a physical essence; he is not yet recognized by his family and accepted into society. The status of “living” is given to him by rituals performed immediately after childbirth; It is only through these rituals that he is included in the community of the living.

Marriage is also one of the cases of transition from one socio-religious group to another. The young husband leaves the ranks of bachelors and from that moment falls into the category of “heads of the family.” Every marriage is fraught with some tension and danger; it is capable of causing a crisis, so it is accomplished through a rite of passage. The Greeks called marriage the word telos - sanctification, and the marriage ritual resembled mysteries.

As for death, here we observe much more complex rituals, because we are not talking about some “natural phenomenon” (life or soul leaving the body), but about a simultaneous change in both the ontological state and social position: the dying person must go through a series of tests on which his afterlife fate depends, but besides this, he must be accepted by the community of the dead and recognized as one of them. For some peoples, only ritual burial is evidence of death: someone who was not buried as required by custom is not considered dead. Among other peoples, the death of someone is recognized as valid only after funeral ceremonies have been performed or after the soul of the deceased has been ritually introduced into a new home, into another world, and has been accepted there by the community of the dead.

To a non-religious person, birth, marriage, death are merely events affecting the life of a particular individual and his family; less often, when we are talking about political or government figures, they become facts of public significance. From the point of view of non-religious perception of existence, all these “transitions” have lost their ritual character; they no longer mean anything other than the concrete act of birth, death, officially recognized marriage. Let us add, however, that the militant atheistic experience of a lifetime is quite rare in its pure form, even in the most secularized societies. It is possible that such an absolutely non-religious experience will become more widespread in the more or less distant future; but today it is still rare. In a secular society, we are primarily faced with the complete desanctification of the acts of death, marriage, birth, but, as we will soon show, there remain vague memories and nostalgia of the dethroned religious behavior.

As for the actual rituals of initiation - initiation, it is necessary first of all to draw a line between initiations on the occasion of reaching maturity (age-related initiations) and ceremonies of entry into any secret union: the most significant difference is that all adolescents must undergo age-related initiations, in Meanwhile secret societies accessible only to a certain circle of adults.

It seems that initiations on the occasion of maturity were introduced in more ancient times than initiations into secret unions: they became more widespread and are observed at the most archaic levels of cultural development, for example among the Australians and the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego. We do not intend to describe here the initiation ceremonies in all their completeness and complexity. The only thing that interests us is that, starting from oldest stages development of culture, initiation plays a fundamental role in the religious formation of a person, especially if it consists of changing the ontological state of the neophyte (convert). This fact seems to us very important for understanding a religious person: it shows us that the man of primitive societies did not consider himself “complete” while he was at the natural level of existence “given” to him: in order to become a man in the full sense of the word, he had to die in this first (natural) life and be reborn in another life of a higher level, religious and civilized.

In other words, primitive man places his ideal of humanity on the plane of the superhuman. In his understanding: 1) one becomes fully human only when one transcends and, in a sense, overthrows the “natural” human state, because initiation ultimately comes down to the paradoxical (supernatural experience of death, resurrection and rebirth) 2) initiation rites, which involve all sorts of trials, symbolic death and resurrection, were introduced by gods, founding heroes of civilizations or mythical Ancestors; consequently, these rites are of superhuman origin and, by performing them, the neophyte imitates superhuman divine actions. It should be remembered that a religious person does not want to be what he is on a natural level, he strives to become what the ideal revealed to him by myths sees. Primitive man strives to achieve a certain religious human ideal, and already in this desire the germs of all ethics that were subsequently developed in developed societies are contained. Of course, in modern non-religious societies, initiation as a religious act no longer exists. But, as we will see below, the patterns of initiation are still alive, although greatly secularized in our modern world.

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Culture of the ancient world

Taylor E.B.
Myth and ritual in primitive culture

Taylor E.B. Myth and ritual in primitive culture. - M., 2001.

Questions and tasks for the text:

Find in the text Tylor's definition of religion.

What is the essence of animism, according to Tylor.

How did you introduce yourself? primitive peoples soul, what was it associated with?

What is the relationship between the soul and illness, fainting, sleep, loss of consciousness, death?

...The first thing that seems necessary in the systematic study of the religion of primitive societies is the definition of religion itself. If in this definition by religion we mean beliefs in a supreme deity or retribution after death, the worship of idols, customs of sacrifice, or any other more or less widespread teachings or rituals, then, of course, it will be necessary to exclude many tribes from the category of religious. But such a narrow definition has the disadvantage that it identifies religion with particular manifestations of beliefs rather than with the deeper thought that underlies them. It would be most expedient to simply take the belief in spiritual beings as the definition of the minimum religion.

If we apply this yardstick to the description of the religious views of primitive societies, the following results will be obtained. It cannot be positively asserted that every living tribe recognizes the existence of spiritual beings, because the primitive state of a significant number of them in this respect is obscure and, due to rapid changes or extinction of the tribes, it may remain completely unknown. It would be even less reasonable to believe that every tribe mentioned in history or known to us from ancient monuments certainly possessed the minimum religion we have accepted. But, of course, it would be most unreasonable to recognize such a rudimentary belief as natural or instinctive among all human tribes at all times. Indeed, there are no facts to justify the opinion that a man, known to be capable of such a high mental development, could not have risen from an irreligious state that preceded the religious level to which he has now arrived. It would be advisable, however, to take observation as the basis for our research, rather than a speculative conclusion. Here, as far as I can judge from the enormous mass of facts, we must admit that belief in spiritual beings is found in all primitive societies that have been more closely known. Information about the absence of such a belief refers either to ancient tribes or to more or less incompletely described modern peoples.

The precise significance of this state of affairs for the study of the question of the origin of religion may be briefly expressed as follows. If it were clearly demonstrated that irreligious savages exist or existed, these latter could at least testify to the condition of man which preceded the achievement of the religious phase of culture. The use of such an argument, however, is undesirable, since information about tribes that do not know religion is based, as we have seen, on facts that are often misunderstood or always lacking evidence. The arguments for the natural and gradual development of religious ideas in the human race do not lose their force if we reject an ally who is as yet too weak to serve as a reliable support. Tribes without religion may not exist in our days, but this fact in the question of the gradual development of religion means no more than the impossibility of finding an English village at the present time in which there would not be scissors, books or matches, in relation to to the fact that there was a time when such things were not known in the country.

I intend to trace the doctrine of spiritual beings deeply inherent in man, here called animism and which is the embodiment of the essence of spiritualistic philosophy as opposed to materialistic. Animism is not a new technical term, although it is now used very rarely. Due to its special relationship to the doctrine of the soul, it will be extremely convenient for clarifying the view adopted here on the process of development of religious ideas in the human race.

Animism characterizes tribes at very low stages of human development; it is not lost in the future, but is deeply modified during the transition to a high stage of development of modern culture. Where individuals or whole schools have opposite views, the latter can usually be explained not by the low level of civilization, but by later changes in the course of intellectual development, as deviations from the faith of our ancestors or as a denial of it. Such later deviations, however, do not at all interfere with the study of the basic religious state of mankind. Animism is, in fact, the basis of philosophy among both savages and civilized peoples. And although at first glance it seems to be a dry and poor definition of the minimum of religion, we will find it quite sufficient in practice, because where there are roots, branches usually develop.

It is usually believed that the theory of animism breaks down into two main dogmas, which form parts of one integral teaching. The first of these concerns the soul of individual beings, which is capable of continuing to exist after death or destruction of the body. The other is the rest of the spirits up to the powerful gods. The animist accepts that spiritual beings control phenomena material world and a person’s life or influence them here and beyond the grave. Since, further, animists think that spirits communicate with people and that the actions of the latter give them pleasure or displeasure, sooner or later belief in their existence must naturally and, one might even say, inevitably lead to actual reverence for them or a desire to propitiate them. Thus, animism in its full development includes beliefs in governing deities and subordinate spirits, in the soul and in a future life, beliefs that translate in practice into actual worship.

A very important element of religion, precisely that moral element which now constitutes the most vital part of it, is very weakly expressed in the religion of primitive tribes. This does not mean they have no moral sense or moral ideal- they have both, although not in the form of certain teachings, but in the form of that traditional consciousness, which we call public opinion and which determines good and evil for us. The fact is that the combination of moral and animistic philosophy, so close and powerful in the highest culture, apparently barely begins at its lowest stage. I will hardly touch upon the purely moral character of religion. I intend to explore animism on the globe, to what extent it constitutes an ancient and new philosophy, which in theory is expressed in the form of faith, and in practice in the form of veneration. In attempting to process material for a study that has hitherto remained strangely neglected, I set myself the task of presenting with all possible clarity the animism of primitive societies and tracing in general terms its development to the highest stages of civilization.

Here I would like to establish once and for all the two main principles that guide me in this study. First, religious doctrines and practices are here considered as parts of religious systems created by the human mind independently of supernatural assistance or revelation, in other words, as further stages in the development of natural religion. Secondly, we will examine the connection between similar concepts and rituals in the religions of savages and civilized peoples. In a more detailed consideration of the teachings and rites of primitive societies, I will have to dwell, for special reasons, on the similar teachings and rites of the peoples of high culture, but it is not my task to develop in detail the related questions about the relations between the various teachings and beliefs of Christianity. Such questions are too far from the direct subject of an essay on primitive culture, and therefore I will mention them only in general terms, or limit myself to only light hints, or, finally, state them without any comments. Educated readers have sufficient knowledge to understand them general meaning in theology, and special discussion should be left to philosophers and theologians by profession.

The first question with which the development of our problem begins is the doctrine of the human and other souls. Its analysis will occupy the rest of this chapter. The nature of the doctrine of the soul in primitive societies can be clarified by examining its development. Apparently, thinking people at a low level of culture were most interested in two groups of biological questions. They tried to understand, firstly, what is the difference between a living and a dead body, what is the cause of wakefulness, sleep, ecstasy, illness and death? They wondered, secondly, what are the human images that appear in dreams and visions? Observing these two groups of phenomena, the ancient savage philosophers probably first of all made the obvious conclusion that every person has a life and a ghost. Both seem to be in close connection with the body: life gives it the opportunity to feel, think and act, and the ghost constitutes its image, or second “I”. Both are thus separable from the body: life can leave it and leave it insensible or dead, and the ghost appears to people outside its corporeal shell.

It was not difficult for the savage philosophers to take the second step. We see this from how extremely difficult it was civilized people destroy this idea. The point was simply to connect life and ghost. If both are inherent in the body, why shouldn’t they be inherent in each other, why shouldn’t they be manifestations of the same soul? Therefore, they can be considered as related to each other. As a result, a well-known concept appears, which can be called a ghostly soul, spirit-soul. Concept of personal soul, or spirit, in primitive societies can be defined as follows. The soul is a subtle, immaterial human image, by its nature something like vapor, air or shadow. She is the cause of life and thought in the being that she animates. She independently and completely controls the personal consciousness and will of her bodily owner in the past and in the present. She is able to leave the body and move quickly from place to place. Mostly intangible and invisible, it also reveals physical strength and appears to people sleeping and waking, mainly as a phantasm, like a ghost, separated from the body, but similar to it. She is able to enter the bodies of other people, animals and even things, take possession of them and influence them.

Although this definition may not be universally applicable, it at least seems to be quite broad in scope and can therefore be taken as a rule that changes due to greater or lesser differences between separate nations. Since these world-wide views are far from being arbitrary or conventional products of consciousness, it is only in in rare cases you can look at their monotony various societies as proof of any connection between them in terms of place of origin. They represent a doctrine that most closely corresponds to the direct evidence of human feelings and appears to primitive philosophy to be completely rational. And in fact, primitive animism explains the facts so satisfactorily from a certain point of view that it has not lost its significance even at the highest stages of cultural development. Although classical and medieval philosophy changed him in many ways, modern philosophy treated him even more mercilessly, he retained so many traces of his original character that even in the psychology of the modern civilized world the heritage of primitive times clearly shines through. From the huge mass of facts collected from observation of life, the most diverse and most distant from each other human societies, you can select typical details that allow you to trace the ancient doctrine of the soul, the relationship of the individual elements of this doctrine to the whole and the processes of discarding, modifying or preserving these elements during further development culture.

To understand common ideas about human soul, or spirit, it will be useful to pay attention to the words that are used to express them. The spirit or ghost that appears to a sleeper or spirit-seer has the appearance of a shadow, and thus the last word came into use to express the soul. Thus, among the Tasmanians6 the same word means spirit and shadow. The Algonquian Indians call the soul “otahchuk,” which means “his shadow.” In the K'iche language, the word "natub" means both "shadow" and "soul." The Arawak word "ueha" means "shadow", "soul" and "image". The Abipons use the word loacal for shadow, soul, response and image. The Zulus not only use the word "tunzi" as "shadow", "spirit" and "soul", but they think that at death a person's shadow leaves his body in a certain way to become a household spirit. The Basotho not only call the soul that remains after death "seriti," or shadow, but they think that when a man walks along the bank of a river, a crocodile can grab his shadow in the water and thus pull him into the water. In Old Calabar7 there is the same identification of the spirit with the “ukpon” or “shadow”, the loss of which is disastrous for a person. Thus, among primitive societies there are found not only types of those well-known ancient expressions skia, or umbra, but also traces of the main idea of stories about people who have lost their shadow, and now still widespread among the peoples of Europe and known to modern readers from Chamisso's story "Peter Schlemihl" .

The concept of soul or spirit also includes attributes of other life manifestations. Thus, the Caribs, connecting the pulsation of the heart with spiritual beings and recognizing that the human soul, destined for a future heavenly life, lives in the heart, quite logically use the same word to designate “soul, life and heart.” The Tongans believed that the soul was distributed throughout the body, but was mainly located in the heart. In one case, the natives told a European that a person buried several months ago was still alive. “One of them, trying to make the meaning of his words clear to me, took my hand and, squeezing it, said: “This will die, but the life that is in you will never die,” and pointed with the other hand to my heart.” Basotho say about a dead person that “his heart is gone,” and about a person recovering from an illness that “his heart has returned.” This corresponds to the common view in the Old World of the heart as the main engine of life, thought and passion.

The connection between soul and blood, recognized by the Karen and Papuans, is clearly expressed in Jewish and Arab philosophy. For educated contemporaries, the belief of the Guiana Indians of the Macusi tribe will seem very strange that although the body dies, “a person in our eyes does not die, but wanders around.” However, the connection between human life and the pupil of the eye is known to the European common people, who, not without reason, see a sign of witchcraft or approaching death in the disappearance of the pupillary image in the clouded eye of the patient.

The act of breathing, so characteristic of higher animals during life, the cessation of which coincides with the cessation of this latter, has many times, and very naturally, been identified with life or soul itself. Laura Bridgman showed in her instructive way the analogy between the results of the limited senses of the organs and the limited mental development of civilization when one day, as if taking something out of her mouth, she said: “I dreamed that God took my breath into heaven.”

Western Australians use the same word "waug" as "breath, spirit and soul", and in California's Netel language "piuts" means "life, breath, soul". Some Greenlanders recognize two souls in a person, namely his shadow and his breath. The Malays say that the soul of a dying person comes out through his nostrils, and the Javanese use the same word "nahua" to mean "breath, life and soul."

How the concepts of life, heart, breath and ghost merge into one concept of the soul or spirit, and at the same time how vague and dark such concepts are. Among primitive societies, it is clear from the responses of the natives of Nicaragua to questions about their religion in 1528: “When people die, something like a man comes out of their mouth. This creature goes to a place where there are men and women. It looks like a person, but does not die, and the body remains on the ground.” Question: “Do those who go there retain the same body, the same face, the same members as here on earth?” Answer: “No, only the heart goes there.” Question: “But when a person’s heart is cut out during a captive sacrifice, what happens then?” Answer: “It is not the heart itself that goes away, but what in the body gives people life, and this leaves the body when a person dies.” Other answers point out that “it is not the heart that rises up, but what makes people live, i.e. breath coming out of the mouth."

The concept of the soul as breath can be traced in Semitic and Aryan etymology and thus brought to the main sources of world philosophy. Among the Jews, the word "nefesh", breath, is used to designate "the life, soul, mind of the animal", while "ruach" and "neshamah" represent the transition from "breath" to "spirit". These expressions correspond to the Arabic “nefe” and “ruh”. The same is found in the Sanskrit words atman and prana, the Greek psyche and pneuma, and the Latin animus, anima, and spiritus. Likewise, the Slavic “spirit” translated the concept of “breath” into the concept of “soul, or spirit.” In the Gypsy dialect, the same word “duk” is found with the meaning “breath, soul, life.” Whether they brought this word from India as part of their inheritance from the Aryan language or adopted it during their wanderings through the Slavic lands is unknown. The German "geist" and the English "gost" probably have the same original meaning of "breath."

If anyone wanted to consider such expressions as simple metaphors, they would have to be convinced of the power existing connection between the concepts of breath and soul on the basis of facts of the most indisputable evidence. Among the Seminoles of Florida, when a woman died in childbirth, the child was held in front of her face so that he could receive her flying soul and thus gain strength and wisdom for the life ahead of him. These Indians would have fully understood why, at the deathbed of an ancient Roman, the closest relative leaned over the dying man to breathe his last breath. A similar idea has been preserved to this day among Tyrolean peasants, who still believe that the soul kind person comes out of the mouth upon death in the form of a white cloud.

We will see later that people, in their complex and confusing concepts of the soul, connected with each other a whole mass of life manifestations and thoughts, incomparably more complex than those listed. But, on the other hand, wanting to avoid such confusion, they sometimes tried to define and classify their concepts in a more precise way: this is how the idea developed that a person contains many spirits and souls, or images that differ in their purpose and functions. Already among wild tribes such classifications are fully developed. Thus, the natives of the Fiji islands distinguish between a person’s “dark soul,” or shadow, which goes to Hades, and his “light soul,” or reflection in the water and mirror, which remains where he dies. The Malgashi say that "saina" or mind disappears during life, "aina" or life turns into air, but "matoatoa" or spirit floats over the grave. IN North America Dualism of the soul is a very definite belief among the Algonquins. One soul goes out and dreams, while the other remains. At death, one of the two remains with the body, and the survivors bring food to it as a gift, while the other soul flies off to the land of the dead.

There are also examples of the plurality of souls. The Dakota tribe says that a person has four souls: one remains in the body, the other in his village, the third flies into the air and the fourth into the land of spirits. Karens distinguish between "la", "kela", which can be defined as personal life spirits, and "thah", representing the responsible moral soul. The quadrupling of the soul among the Kondas is as follows: the first soul passes into a blissful state and returns to Bura, the great deity; the second remains among the Kond tribe on earth and is reborn from generation to generation, so that at the birth of each child the priest asks which member of the tribe returned to earth; the third soul goes on an otherworldly journey, leaving the body in a lifeless state, and this soul can turn into a tiger for a while and, as punishment, experience various sufferings after death; the fourth soul dies along with the disintegration of the body. Such classifications are reminiscent of the classification of civilized peoples, for example the threefold division of the soul into shadow, mana and spirit:

The four components of man: matzah, flesh, spirit, shadow;

These four are for four places,

The flesh will be hidden by the earth, the shadow will hover around the grave mound,

Orc (hell) will accept manon, the spirit will ascend to the stars.

Without intending to consider in detail this division of the soul into its components, I will not dwell on the distinctions that the ancient Egyptians apparently made in the ritual of death between the human "ba", "akh", "ka", "knaba", translated Birch as “soul, mind, existence, shadow.” I will also not analyze the rabbinical division of the soul into bodily, spiritual and heavenly, or the differences between the emanative and genetic soul of Hindu philosophy, or the distinction between the “life, image and spirit of the ancestors” between the three souls of the Chinese, or, finally, the differences between, on the one hand, “nus”, “psyche”, “pneuma” and “anima” and “animus” - on the other. I will not dwell on the famous, ancient and medieval theories about the vegetative, sensual and rational soul. ...Such speculations go back to a primitive state and ... in them there is much that, in its scientific significance, is not inferior to ideas that are highly respected and more high culture. It would be difficult to deal with such a classification on a solid logical basis. Expressions corresponding to the concepts of “life”, “mind”, “soul”, “spirit”, etc., do not actually represent separate entities, like the various forms and functions of one individual. Thus the confusion which appears here in our concepts and language, representing something typical of the thought and language of the whole human race, does not arise only from the vagueness of terms, but has its origin in the ancient theory of the essential unity underlying them. This ambiguity of language will, however, be of no importance, as we shall see, for the present study, since the details given therein concerning the operation and nature of spirits, souls and ghosts themselves determine the precise sense in which these words are used.

The ancient animistic theory of life, viewing its manifestations as the action of the soul, explains many of the physical and mental states the theory of the flight away of the whole soul or some of its constituent spirits. This theory occupies a very significant and strong place in the biology of wild peoples. South Australians say of a person who is in an insensible or unconscious state that he is a "villamarraba", i.e. "He's without a soul." We hear among the Algonquian Indians in North America that illness occurs because the “shadow” of the patient is separated from his body and that the convalescent should not expose himself to danger until this shadow is firmly established in him. In all cases where we say that a person was sick and recovered, they say that “he died and came back.” Another belief among the same Australians explains the state of people lying in lethargy: “Their souls went to the banks of the river of death, but were not accepted there and returned to revive the body again.”

The natives of Fiji say that if anyone dies or faints, his soul can return when called. Sometimes you can see a funny scene there, when a tall man lies stretched out and screams loudly in order to return his soul. According to the concepts of the blacks of northern Guinea, insanity occurs because the sick are prematurely abandoned by their soul, and its absence during sleep is only temporary. That's why in different countries the return of lost souls is a common practice of sorcerers and priests. The Salish Indians of the Oregon River view the spirit as something distinct from the life principle and capable of leaving the body at a short time apart from the patient's consciousness. To avoid disastrous consequences, the spirit must, however, return as soon as possible. Therefore, the healer solemnly returns it over the patient's head.

Turanian or Tatar peoples Northern Asia strictly adheres to the theory of the departure of the soul during illness, and among the Buddhist tribes, lamas perform the ritual of returning the soul with great solemnity. When a person's rational soul is stolen by some demon, he is left with only an animal soul, his senses and memory weaken, and he begins to wither away. Then the lama undertakes to cure him and, with special rituals, conjures the evil demon. If the spell did not lead to the goal, this means that the soul of the patient does not want or cannot return back. The sick person is paraded in his best attire; adorned with all his jewels. Friends and relatives walk around his house three times, affectionately calling the soul by name, while the lama reads in his book descriptions of the hellish torments and dangers that threaten the soul, which voluntarily leaves the body. At the end, the entire meeting declares with one voice that the departed soul has returned and the sick person will recover.

The Karens in Burma run around the patient, wanting to catch his wandering soul, “his butterfly,” as they say, like the ancient Greeks and Slavs, and finally, as it were, they throw it on his head. The Karen belief in “la” constitutes a complete and well-defined vitalistic system. This is "la", i.e. the soul, spirit or genius, can be separated from the body to which it belongs. As a result, the Karen tries very hard to keep him with him, calling him, offering him food, etc. The soul comes out and goes to wander mainly while a person is sleeping. If it lingers somewhere longer than a certain time, the person will get sick, and if it leaves forever, the owner will die. When the vi, or medicine man, is called upon to bring back the departed shadow, or life, of the Karen, and cannot bring it back from the region of death, he sometimes catches the shadow of a living person and transfers it to the dead man, whereby the real possessor of it, whose soul has passed away during sleep, must get sick and die. When a Karen begins to get sick, sad and weak due to the fact that his soul has flown away, his friends perform a special ritual over the patient’s clothes using boiled chicken with rice and prayers to conjure the spirit to return to the patient again. This ritual is connected, perhaps ethnologically - although it is difficult to say when and how it spread - with a ritual that has survived to this day in China. When a Chinese man lies dying and it is assumed that his soul has already left the body, a relative hangs the clothes of the sick person on a long bamboo cane, to which a white rooster is sometimes tied, and the priest at this time conjures the departed soul to enter the clothes in order to return them to the sick person. If after some time the bamboo begins to slowly turn in the hands of the person holding it, then this means that the soul has entered the clothing. Belief in such a temporary departure of the soul is reflected all over the world in the rituals of sorcerers, priests and even modern spirit seers. According to the latter, the soul goes on long journeys. They seem to believe that the soul can be released temporarily from the prison of the body. The famous clairvoyant Jerome Cardan says to himself that he has the ability to renounce his feelings at any time and go into ecstasy. When he enters this state, he feels as if something in the region of the heart is being separated from him and his soul is leaving. This sensation begins in the brain and goes down the spine. At the same time, he realizes that he is outside himself. For the initiation of an Australian native physician, it is considered necessary that he remain for at least two or three days in the spirit realm. The Kond priest, before his initiation, remains from one to fourteen days in a sleepy state due to the fact that one of his souls flies off to the highest deity. In Greenland angekoks, the soul leaves the body, visiting household demons. The Turin shaman lies in lethargy as his soul wanders, seeking the wisdom hidden in the land of spirits.

Literature cultural peoples contains similar instructions. From legends ancient Scandinavia A very typical legend is that of the chief Ingimund, who locked three Finns in a hut for three nights so that they could visit Iceland and give him details of the country where he wanted to settle. Their bodies became numb, they sent their souls on their way and, waking up after three days, presented him with a description of what they had seen. A typical classic case is found in the story of Hermotimus, whose prophetic soul went from time to time to visit distant regions, until finally his wife burned his lifeless body on a funeral pyre and his poor soul, returning, no longer found refuge. Legendary visits to the spirit world belong to the same category. A typical example of spiritualism is mentioned by Jung-Stilling. Cases came to his attention when a patient, who wanted to see absent friends, plunged into lethargy, during which he appeared to the objects of his affection, located far from him.

An example of the same beliefs among our people is the well-known belief that fasters who are awake on Midsummer night see the ghosts of those who are destined to die within the next year approaching the church doors together with the priest and knocking on it. These ghosts are souls that have emerged from the bodies of their owners. The priest's sleep at this time is usually very restless, because his soul is outside the body. If at the same time one of those awake fell asleep and could not be awakened, others saw how his soul was knocking at the church doors. Modern Europe not far from these ancient beliefs, since such concepts do not seem particularly strange in our days. Traces of similar beliefs are preserved in the language in such expressions as, for example, “to be beside yourself,” “to be in ecstasy,” and the one who says that his soul is striving to meet a friend gives, perhaps, a deeper meaning to this phrase than the meaning of a simple metaphor.

Myth is the first form of human exploration of the world, the first historical form of worldview. Peace for primitive man was a living being. A person encounters the existence of the surrounding world and holistically experiences this interaction: emotions and creative imagination are involved in it to the same extent as intellectual abilities. Each event acquires individuality and requires its own description and thus explanation. Such unity is possible only in the form of a unique story, which should figuratively reproduce the experienced event and reveal its causality. This is exactly the “story” that is meant when the word “myth” is used. In other words, when telling myths, ancient people used methods of description and interpretation that were fundamentally different from those we are accustomed to. The role of abstract analysis was played by metaphorical identification.

Imagery in myth is inseparable from thought, since it represents the form in which the impression and, accordingly, the event are naturally realized. Myth becomes a way of understanding the world in primitive culture, the way in which it forms its understanding of the true essence of being, i.e. myth acts as a kind of philosophy or metaphysics of ancient man.

Totemism and magic. Mythology was, as it were, a philosophy of the history of primitive society. But in the spiritual, conceptual and cognitive spheres of life of this society, two other layers of its culture played an equally important role: totemism and magic.

In the first stages of their development, people felt much better (than we do now) their unity with nature, and therefore willingly identified themselves with its specific manifestations. In culture, this identification took the form of totemism, i.e. the belief that each group of people is closely connected with some animal or plant (totem) and is in a family relationship with them. The prerequisite for totemism was a myth that asserted the possibility of “conversion,” i.e. transformation of man into animal, a myth based on one of the most ancient beliefs that there is no fundamental difference between man and animal. Totemism has retained its position in modern culture (heraldry, everyday symbols, prohibitions on eating the meat of certain animals - cows in India, dogs and horses - among the Aryan peoples.

The idea of totemistic kinship appeared earlier than the awareness of the usual physiological kinship, and was presented to people ancient eras much more significant. Totemism involves the belief in totemistic ancestors from which specific groups of people descend. The life and adventures of these ancestors are the content of numerous myths; complex rites and ceremonies are associated with belief in them. Special origin allowed separate group realize their difference from other groups, i.e. realize your individuality. With the emergence of totemism, a boundary was drawn between “us” and “strangers”. This is how a key element of social self-identification was formed, which largely determined the path of development of human culture, and indeed the entire history of society.

Primitive culture is often defined as magical, as based on magical actions and magical thinking. To a certain extent this is true. Of course, in our time, the number of fans of “white” (healing) and harmful (“black”) magic is innumerable. Astrological forecasts, fortune telling, rain making rituals, witchcraft and the like have become profitable occupations for many. But in modern culture, elements of magic, with all their influence, are under the powerful pressure of the rational world, which determines the worldview of our civilization. It is not without reason that many modern types of magic try to imitate scientific activity.

In primitive culture, such censors as logic and cause-and-effect conditionality almost did not interfere with magical and fantastic ways of self-expression. Hence the amazing brightness and diversity of this culture. Reality and fantasy are equally real for primitive man, and the priest’s spell sometimes killed him more surely than primitive weapon. Magical forms of thought, fortune telling, signs, complex rituals were not only a cultural component, they predetermined the very way of life of that time.

Both in the purely spiritual and in the practical sphere, one can point to many examples of how the expedient, the reasonable (in our understanding) is intertwined with what we tend to consider magical or witchcraft acts. The techniques of healing magic are closely related to traditional medicine; magic forms its methodological and theoretical basis. Malicious magic, damage, love magic were effective means fashionable and now methods of manipulating consciousness by influencing the psychosomatic structures of a person. The same is the nature of the action of military, hunting and other types of magic.

The special role of magical ideas in archaic culture is associated with one of its qualitative features - boundless syncretism, i.e. absolute undifferentiation, fusion, organic unity of elements, both realistic and fantastic. Syncretism makes it almost impossible to distinguish between the subjective and the objective, the observed and the imaginary, the conjectural in primitive culture, since all this is not reflected in it, but, on the contrary, is unambiguously experienced and perceived.

It is impossible to distinguish between the spheres of the “supernatural” and “natural” in archaic culture, to separate “magical” ideas from practical ones on purely cognitive grounds. Such a division would affect not the cognitive, but the emotional sphere of the psyche of primitive man, since it presupposes a functional separation of “mind” and “heart”, i.e. intellect and emotions, easily accessible to us, but completely impossible for primitive man. The supernatural for a primitive society is not something that violates the natural laws of nature, for this last concept does not yet exist in archaic culture. “The supernatural” is something that disrupts the routine of everyday life, interferes with the usual sequence of events, it is something unexpected, unusual, sometimes extremely attractive and seductive, but, most importantly, always dangerous, which can threaten life, deprive people of well-being and peace. In such circumstances, a powerful arsenal of magical actions was put into action: spells, witchcraft, turning to the spirits of ancestors and gods for help, making sacrifices, even human ones.

In magical thinking, synthesis does not require preliminary analysis. The existing information blocks that make up magical knowledge are indecomposable and insensitive to contradictions, and are little permeable to negative experience.

Magical activity involved the use not only of magical techniques, but also of certain things, which, like the external circumstances of magical procedures, also acquire a magical meaning. Therefore, awareness of the need for certain external conditions for the success of a spell took the form of faith in “signs”, which very often reliably reflected real patterns. Later, along with belief in omens, the belief arose that objects with a magical meaning could not only influence the outcome of a person’s individual actions, but also determine his fate.

Series: "Popular Historical Library"

The publication represents selected pages from the famous work of one of the most prominent ethnographers and historians of the 19th century. E. Tylor `Primitive Culture` (1871). The book contains enormous factual material on the primitive beliefs of the peoples of the world and introduces the reader to the origins of religion, to the most ancient ideas and rituals of humanity, the remnants of which ("living evidence", "monuments of the past", according to the author's apt definition) can be found in modern culture. For a wide range of readers.

Publisher: "Rusich" (2000)

Format: 84x108/32, 624 pages.

Biography

He has published a number of books and more than 250 articles in different languages of the world. He was elected a member of the Royal Scientific Society. In 1883 keeper ethnographic museum Oxford University, and became a professor of the first department of anthropology in England at.