This video concludes BOOK 01: THE KING OF THE WOOD (12 Chapters) of The Golden Bough study. I will take a short break and cover other material and we will return to do BOOK 02: KILLING THE GOD
The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion By: Sir James G. Frazer Study Course Lecture 01.12 Book 01. Chapter 12. Taboos
Lectures by: A. W. Finnegan
with my own additional discussion and commentary to add a new perspective, with emphasis on statism, religion, and Natural Law
The chapter is a study on the taboos as strict observances or rules that cultures of the past lived by, many of which had to do with protection or security against sorcery or death, many of which had superstitious undertones and based in fear. This fear-based lifestyle centered around sorcery and the influence of demonic spirits or those of the dead and the restless dead, it studies the different taboos at every end of the globe from ancient to more modern times, establishing customs and taboos around the world, the similarities between them, the differences between them, the symbolism and superstitions therein.
Notes:
*Blue text is my added commentary, not part of book
Primitive conceptions of the soul helped to mould early kingships.
It is said that the safeguarding of the peoples and the king himself paved the way for the adherence to very strict customs, and this conclusion is made more likely by the fact that the king and the common people had at least a few of the same observances.
Evenly distributing the taboos would have been a way to keep a cohesive system going, and many of the taboos and lifestyles appeared to have often the undertone of fear and superstition, though one could say all of these things had some basis in truth, at least in part.
Tabooed acts: Taboos on intercourse with strangers.
The idea of conversing with strangers is done very cautiously, if at all, by an established people under Old World systems, and indigenous tribal villages. While they feared death, they perhaps feared nothing more than black magic and sorcery, and this was also followed with fear of foreign peoples bringing demonic spirits or hexes with them.
Especially feared was the spirits of disease and famine, and rightfully so, smallpox had oftentimes obliterated entire villagers and even whole countries or lands. The Europeans settling or living in close proximity to the indigenous people who were already established there oftentimes met horrifying fates against smallpox, and the discussion back in these times, especially when Frazer's book was published (1890) the people spoke of disease epidemics as transmissible, diseases that would be spread from person to person and they went to great lengths to shield themselves from these horrifying fates.
When they had to travel to other foreign or new lands, they too would tread very cautiously as to not disturb or anger the spirits that dwell their, and also cautious in their dealings with others from the new regions or coming to theirs from outside, as they could not be sure what kinds of evil spirits would come along with them.
Perhaps there was a lot of validity to this, in regards to disease, as those from outside regions will be tolerized to pathogens from their home regions and through generations it integrates into their genes, and what could seem harmless microbes or viruses in one group could be deadly to others, and this is the genetic makeup of the immune system known as the human leukocyte antigen (HLA). Obviously diseases like viruses could be transmitted through contact and possibly the airborne route, but nonetheless there was certainly grounds for fearing the coming settlers in regards to disease because all too often entire societies were wiped out by smallpox after contracting it from the Europeans. Russian Siberian regions called the smallpox spirit Ospa, she was said to be a vicious woman spirit and wicked and vile, and that even the strongest shaman could not defeat her wrath.
Also, I take the systems of sorcery and ceremonial magic to have certain degree of validity in that they were systems of influence through the ocean of the subconscious mind and ocean of the dead.
Tabooed acts: Taboos on eating and drinking.
As noted in the last chapter about the perils of the soul and the caution in which was taken to make sure the soul does not exit the body, a particularly important time in this concept was when they would eat or drink.
The common people also took such observances and rules seriously, that when anyone should eat or drink they did so according to strict customs, lest their soul escape through their mouth, or be extracted by the magic from an enemy present. Some of the methods they employed were to close up the entire house or hut before eating or drinking, and there were further customs like keeping the mouth closed and remaining free of conversation. A woman could not see the man eat or drink, nor the man see the woman eat or drink.
As the common people observed what those today would consider strict rules, the sacred kings would take these to far more perilous extremes, which were already established beforehand. No one could ever see the king eat or drink or it was thought he would immediately die. Anyone who were to accidentally see the king eat or drink would have to be put to death immediately. If a dog entered the room, it was put to death on the spot. There was one occasion by the king of the Zafimanelo of Madagascar, the king's own son who was 12 years old, accidentally saw the king drink, and Immediately thereafter the king had the boy finely appareled and feasted, and after which he commanded the boy to be cut in quarters, and carried about the city with a proclamation that the boy had seen the king drink.
Typically when the king desires to have a drink he rings a bell which alarms the people and they immediately fall to the ground and cover their faces so they do not accidentally see the king drink.
The same regulations are held for the king when he eats, no one may witness it under the penalty of death. He has a special hut setup for him designated for eating, and no one beside the king may enter.
As we eat and drink the matter integrates into the gut and it is said that the dead may dwell here, so there was probably some emphasis on these connections.
Tabooed acts: Taboos on leaving food over.
Just as the act of eating is regarded as a particularly vulnerable act by both commoners and king alike, a similar taboo is observed about leaving food leftover or not properly disposing of the non-edible portions leftover when the edible portions have been eaten, such as meat on bones. There was high fears of a sorcerer or black magician doing harm to someone through acquiring food or items leftover from a meal in which black magic or harm could be worked upon them. The poisoning of food that hasn't been eaten is treated with the same that one would if the food they were consuming was poisoned. Through sympathetic magic the leftover portions have the same link that the portions eaten have and using this the sorcerer can work black magic on them. however, through the same sympathetic effect, a sorcerer or black magician would be careful not to use any leftover food that was taken from a meal they shared together, because it is said that through their sharing of a meal the same effects would also link them and thus any ill-effect he could work on the other through that leftover food, would also affect him, and so it is said that this is where the custom of sharing a meal together originated.
He notes the term 'disease-maker' for sorcerers that went about looking for leftover pieces of bone or hide or vegetable peels or whatever else he could secure to work ill upon the other.
However, he says there is no covenant formed that is stronger between people or things than the transfusing of blood between parties into each other's veins. he says that this transfusion nits them together for life.
There may be some kind of link between the bacteria or microbial matter that exists in the food leftover and the food eaten by the person. Are these connections strengthened through the microbial realm and thus one step away from the elemental and etheric realm?
Tabooed persons: Chiefs and kings tabooed.
While kings and chiefs are guarded against and whisked away to keep them safe from the many perceived perils in their established culture and paradigm, they could also cause great harm to common people if the taboos observed were broken. The meals eaten by a king are eaten in a clay bowl or dishes that can be broken immediately following. No one is allowed to eat from the kings dishes or of his meals or they would die. Frazer then gives several perplexing but definite examples where this did actually occur and death followed.
A slave in New Guinea ate from a chiefs plate who had left briefly and when after the slave consumed the dish his face was stricken with horror after being told that the plate of food which he just ate belonged to the chief and not long after this the slave died.
Other examples like this are attested to by the Maori peoples, where a Moari woman having eaten some fruit from a tabooed place, and thus the spirit of the chief had been profaned and she will die, she was dead by the next day. A tinder-box from a chief used to light his pipe was found by several persons unaware it was the chiefs and they lit their pipes with it, and after learning it was the chief's tinderbox, they all died of fright.
the same effect was observed for garments and any personal items belonging to chiefs, kings, or from tabooed places were also said to kill.
It is said that it is spiritual powers that are responsible for these things, and in any given society where it seems to be universally accepted and unquestioned, held to be consistent with examples, it seems to have at least a good portion of truth.
The chiefs were the highest in authority next to the king in many societies, so it follows that due to the sheer importance and holiness that they ascribed to the king, the chiefs would also have to be guarded, as if they were to be corrupted or manipulated in any way, they could then manipulate the king somehow and risk destroying the entire society. It is not entirely surprising to see that people actually died when breaking the taboo, often from the terror they experienced when realizing the taboo had been broken. The amount of fear they were already in may have been a constant stress on the body already, and the sudden realization of the breaking of taboos perhaps could have been such to cause death, or somewhat like a placebo effect.
Tabooed persons: Women tabooed at menstruation and childbirth.
Similar restrictive and cautions are held for woman who are menstruating that they cannot come into contact with anything a man touches or uses while in that cycle. If this is broken even accidentally, punishments come forth, as was the case in one example Frazer lists about an Australian aborigine woman who laid down on her husbands blanket when she was in menstruation and he immediately killed her and died of terror himself within a fortnight.
Similar customs about pregnant women and their childbirth, it is said they are very dangerous and the men or others who come into contact with anything she uses or touches exposes them to serious dangers like illness and disease. She is secluded away in the act of giving birth in a secluded hut and room and no one may touch the clothe or anything she does for extended periods of time, and if a stillbirth or miscarriage occurs she is seen as extremely more dangerous to them and secluded away for far longer before she is allowed to return. It seems that the danger was understood to be disease, according to the descriptions given by Frazer.
It is held that she poisons or infects anything she comes into contact with, but if she touches the ends of spears or weapons it is considered purified like that of a poison dart and used to injure.
One wonders if maybe in menstruation or pregnancy the woman is more susceptible to or reactivates disease that the stress of it can bring on.
Tabooed persons: Warriors tabooed.
Warriors also had similar taboos held to them as the pregnant women, and they had to live according to very clearly defined rules that were not always easy, and usually had to do with war-like energies, and they had to be kept in seclusion for some time before and after the acts of war, and they had to be handled and conduct themselves in very specific ways.
it was thought that they had the war-like, death energies active during this time so the rule would follow that anyone who conversed with them like they were any other commoner would bring them misfortune by similar war-like, death energies and it would cause serious harm.
Oftentimes the Native Americans had to go through purification rituals and also went to great length after conquering their enemies to conduct these rituals to scare away the spirits of those they killed.
It may be well-warranted if the concept of an untimely death described to me by my friend from Mauritus Islands, stating that those who do not die natural deaths, dying unexpected deaths in accident, violence, and so on, tend to be restless and problematic spirits and can cause harm through the pain they are experiencing, the difficulty in the death process in the spirit world.
Tabooed persons: Hunters tabooed.
Like the warriors going to war against other human beings, the hunter had many strict observances and rituals in preparation for the hunt, and also respected the soul of the animals he killed, or worked with for reasons that sustain them like food does. Strict chastity was observed, which is interesting to note considering the parallels to the male consort of the Goddess Diana, who was Goddess of the Hunt, and Hippolytus who only loved the Goddess and spurned the love of regular women, they also called him the chaste and fair, and this was the undertone or nature of the Native American traditions when preparing for a hunt, but also universally this was so, and similar between different peoples, from the Americas to India to Africa and beyond.
They associated the energy of the killing with the death energy and destructive to life, like going to war, but of a different kind. It was probably taken as a sympathetic connection between the energy used to kill and that which filled the aura for some time after it was done, and that they had to find some way to make peace with themselves or the animal, and purification rituals might follow.
The meaning of taboo.
Frazer goes on to define the terms in which the taboos are made:
To seclude these persons from the rest of the world so that the dreaded spiritual danger shall neither reach them nor spread from them, is the object of the taboos which they have to observe. These taboos act, so to say, as electrical insulators to preserve the spiritual force with which these persons are charged from suffering or inflicting harm by contact with the outer world.
It seems to keep them under the spell of their own system, not to say all of it was bad or without merit, but that it may have hindered when used to control and not allow for the true spiritual initiation into one's inherent nature and Natural Law principles.
Kings may not be touched.
One commonality between the different regions of the world and their taboos, one that is more or less universal is that the king may not be touched, no one may brush up against or touch him in any way, and the offence was usually always punishable by death.
Especially so was the custom that no iron especially could touch or come into contact with the king. Likewise priest kings or priests in other areas could not be shaven with an iron razor and iron was usually kept away from all persons considered sacred and held in high regard.
That would only seem to fit the false idea that this one person was god of everything else, so they had to also play the part, and given their intense fear of sorcery, it might run that anyone who touches him could be able to a) poison him, or b) take some part of his clothing, body, hair, and so on, and thus sorcery could be worked against the king who they treated as the Creator, God himself.
Tabooed things: Iron tabooed.
Also as a general rule iron was forbidden in many areas and facets of life in a given society. Superstitious rejection of iron was thought to date back to very early times when iron was considered a novelty. Ploughshares made of iron were said to bring forth bad harvests and ruined the abundance and health of it.
Sharp weapons and knives also kept away from houses or areas after a recently departed is buried, up to a certain time the soul is said to roam around the house or area and they say sharp weapons or knives might injure it so they abstain from using any sharp instruments or weapons in that vicinity for a defined period of time.
In regards to eating this also held true for many when someone had recently passed away, they refused to eat with sharp utensils to prevent them from possibly injuring the departed soul. Food was also left to the dead and they try to help it leave with offerings of food or after they feel it has been given its food and has eaten and drank their offerings.
My thoughts regarding the taboo on iron is in the occult properties of iron. Iron is ruled under the planetary sign of Mars, a symbol of war and battle, fighting and attacking, an active masculine principle but especially in relation to matters of war. Iron was the metal of Mars, and so it probably went that any iron that touched the king formed a sympathetic association with him and the energies of war, as in, war could come to him, he would have to endure a war, or he will have to be faced with wars or battles of all kinds, whether spiritual, physical, culturally, and so on.
It would make sense that they would keep iron far away from the king and priests and any divine royal or sacred person to keep the energies of way away, as fiercely as they would keep demons and black magic and death or disease from waging their calamities against him, which he would have to fight off or battle, and especially as it relates to the sorcerer, an attack of black magic or sorcery would be akin to an act of war, spiritual war, and thus the powers of war associated and attributed to iron would be kept away from the king and the abundance or centers of civilization lest they be brought to do some kind of battle which they would do anything to avoid.
Tabooed things: Blood tabooed.
Blood as a subject of taboos comes as no surprise since the life-force is said to reside in the blood, and since the blood is tied up so intricately with the soul and its link to the body, and the perils of the soul and afterlife and of death is what most taboos were created to protect against. So the spilling of blood is done so very selectively and some customs would not put a king to death by spilling his blood on the ground or earth, because it is thought that it would pollute the earth with its bad energy and the accursed soul of the executed would remain their and continue to haunt or hex the place where it was spilled, or that its spirit would remain their and never leave. Sometimes blood spilling in killing of others is avoided altogether and other routes of killing are sought which do not spill the blood.
When Kublai Kahn took his uncle Nayan and put him to death he rolled him up in a carpet and tosed him around to and fro until he was killed by the blows.
Many refused to drink or eat the blood of any animal since its spirit was said to reside in its blood.
The Gauls on the other hand, used to drink their enemies' blood and paint themselves with it. Some Irish would even drink the blood of that of their own friends, if they were put to death, an example was the execution of a notable traitor at Limerick, called Murrough O'Brien, whose foster-mother took up his head while still quartered and sucked up all the blood that ran out saying that the earth was not worthy to drink it and therewith covered her face and breast and tore her hair, crying out and shrieking most terribly.
With respect to kings and queens these customs are done with strict observance even long after the common people are not bound by the same taboo.
The taboo on blood, or perhaps to say on spilling blood, would make sense given the rest of their system, especially since they put so much emphasis on the spirit world and sorcery. The reverse seemed to also hold true, however, in some areas, and there was a time and in some countries where it was seen as honorable to die a bloody, violent death, so it stands to reason that the spilling of blood in executions of some kings or persons that were dishonorable to the society would also be tabooed if they were not to be honored.
Tabooed things: the head tabooed.
The head of a person was tabooed from touch or harm, as the head was held as sacred and to be treated accordingly. Many peoples believed the head to be the place where their guardian spirit, and many peoples held the head to be treated with respect and not touched. Some will not enter a place where anything hangs above their heads. Some will not wear anything on their heads. Some do not want any building over one story because they do not want anyone walking over their head on the next floor.
Since the head was the machine of the heart and to experience the temporal five senses, they probably treated the head as the most sacred of the body, like a tabernacle. The head also being the highest point of the body, that too probably through sympathy held a connection for them to the skies and the highest self. Perhaps too it was the gateway to other worlds through the pineal gland.
Tabooed things: Hair tabooed.
As the head was held sacred and to be treated accordingly, so too the hair was also treated in this same respect, as it after all came from the head. The cutting of hair was sometimes treated with great offence, because on the one hand, cutting the hair required sharp utensils and they did not want to injure the head, and secondly, the hair itself was said to form a sympathetic magic connection to them. They worry of black magic and sorcery.
They could not escape the cutting of hair but there were very strict measures in order to do so, and the person who's hair was cut was tabooed for a certain length of time and kept away from the people, along with the person who cuts the hair. Sometimes it was done using an obsidian knife. Disposing the hair was also a difficult matter, because they saw the hair as a link to the person and if the hair were to fall in the hands of an enemy they could work black magic on the person.
It is said that a man could be hexed by means of the clippings of hair, pairing with the nails, or any other severed portion of the physical body.
It is a form of sympathetic magic in the realm of contagious magic.
The sorcerer took some of the hair, spit, or bodily refuse from the man he wished to injure and wrapped it in a leaf, placing it in a bag of woven threads or fibers, knotted in an intricate way. The whole was then buried, with certain rites, and the victim wasted away of sickness in 20 days. His life could be saved if the item was found and dug up, and as soon as this was done the power ceased.
An Australian aborigine who wants to get rid of his wife, cuts off a lock of hair in her sleep, ties it to his spear thrower, and goes to a neighboring tribe to give to a friend. His friend sticks the spear head in a camp fire every night and when it falls down it is a sign that the wife is dead.
Not only was hair thought to serve as a sympathetic link to the person from whom it was taken but also the nail clippings are much similar.
The clippings are thought to also be a way to rejoin the soul to the body after death, and sorcerers and those of indigenous tribes and clans would often take their nail clippings or hair and hide it in special places that were sacred or secret, hidden from anyone's knowing the whereabouts or that there were even any clippings hidden.. It was thought that when the soul leaves the body, it was a way to resurrect oneself in the afterlife, and gave them a place that could be remembered and they would be able to go to the clippings to link themselves to the body through this special place.
The Incas of Peru took extreme care to preserve the nail clippings and hairs that were cut from the body. When asked it was explained,
"Know that all persons who are born must return to life and the souls must rise out of their tombs with all that belonged to their bodies. We, therefore, in order that we may not have to search for our hair and nails at a timed when there will be much hurry and confusion, place them in one place, that they may be brought together more conveniently , and, wherever it is possible, we are also careful to spit in one place."
Tabooed things: Knots and rings tabooed.
Knots were also the subject of many taboos around the world. The belief held that tying knots would trip up and bind, and was often especially relevant to pregnancy and childbirth, when the time came to deliver the child, they say that knots adorned by the woman or in her immediate vicinity, would hinder childbirth, would make the child stuck in a knot in the womb, and so it was also held that she should not sit with her legs crossed, and the man should not sit near her with his legs crossed, also sitting with clasped hands was seen as unlucky in the presence of a woman about to deliver a child, that it would form a sympathetic effect on the child and could hinder delivery. It was thought to case a malignant spell on the woman.
It was also a similar tradition to unlock all the doors and windows for a house in which a mother was giving childbirth. Locks were seen in a way very similar to knots.
Similarly, those attended a wedding should not wear knots near the bride and bridegroom. It is thought to also trip them up, and the bride and bridegroom were best not to wear knots during the ceremony.
Knots were thought to have the power to hex and bind, to cause sickness, disease, and all kinds of misfortune, sometimes a sorcerer in Africa would curse his victims by tying grass in knots where the victim was known to walk, and trip the soul and life of a person.
In the Koran, tying of knots in a cord and spitting on them, and hiding them had the power to hex, and it was said that the prophet Mohammad was severely sickened by this method, and that the cord was then thrown in a well, and had not the Archangel Gabriel not revealed the location of it he would have continued to decline. When fetched from the well, Mohammad recited certain prayers over it and with each knot untied he felt more relief.
The opposite was also held true, that knots could also heal, solidify something desired, such as romance. Knots had dual uses, and could be also used to avert death and disease, bad luck. nets worn over the heads of brides were said to effectively protect the bride from black magic.
As the case for knots, the same was said to hold for rings, and rings could be helpful or detrimental since they hold the binding quality. Therefore, it could be used for harming or helping depending on the ring and what it is used for, the customs observed, etc. Some customs held to remove all rings from a deceased person because it was thought to bind their soul and keep it confined in the physical body as it decays.
The Ancient Greeks and Romans also held the taboo on rings, and especially entering the sanctuaries. It was held to be a spiritual fetter at death, obviously because its association with binding or holding tight on the finger. Also, if the ring were metal it would have the quality of earth and grounding so the spirit may be thought to be bound by the ring.
Similarly, wearing of rings thought to also protect and bind ghosts, demons, and unwanted energies or spirits. So, in life, it could be seen that to wear rings helps keep the soul in the body during the lifetime, while used as an amulet to keep demons, ghosts, or witches out of it and bind them.
Tabooed words: Personal names tabooed.
In many of the societies among the old world systems the name also held a certain power and vulnerability. This was held to the point where many were given two names, the true name, and the public name, and the true name was never spoken to anyone, and generally only the elders and most sacred and responsible members of the society could speak it.
The true name was kept in secret, while the public name was given casually since no harm could be done in anyone knowing it since it was not their true name. Often the true name would not be spoken even if alone and no strangers, and only employed in sacred, designated places because it was also held that demons and spirits or sorcerers could work harm through its acquisition by the non-physical spirit world.
Other times, when one name was in use, the person would never speak his/her own name, and if a stranger asks, it was custom to only let another person tell them and utter their name, but the person who's name it was would generally not speak it themself.
Other times, it was less strict, where they would have someone else tell the name, but if another person was not around and they had no way around it, they would speak their own name to the stranger.
Sometimes when asked their name, a person would use their child's or nephew's name, address it as "father of [so-and-so]" "uncle of [so-and-so]"
Other times, a name was taboo only during certain times or under certain occasions or activities, for example, when some cultures would hunt, it was said that taboos on names could be in effect. They would be called a nickname or addressed as birds, and often when fishing the names were especially taboo, because they thought that spirits were often present in the waters, and this may have been the case in the woods, since demons were often said to lurk in trees or woodlands, and the name could cease to be a taboo outside of these assigned times or activities.
Tabooed words: Names of relations tabooed.
The speaking of names was also applied to the names of immediate family and relatives. This of course applied, like all other taboos listed, scattered throughout the world with some variation on approach.
In some instances it was so extreme and taken so seriously, that even words that sounded like theirs, even syllables that resembled parts of their name, were forbidden, and this was made more restrictive in society since many people were named after common things, animals, and so on.
In some areas it was punishable by death to speak the name of relatives or family members, such as the indigenous of New Britain.
It would have been thought that the name could be spoken in close circles like family and friends, but this was even more taboo for some societies. The explanation went that all so often it is close friends or husband or wife or extended family who are most likely to be traitors and work evil against them so their name would not be uttered even in the closest circles.
The name of relations tabooed held the ability to work sorcery if any outsider or traitor were to know or hear their names. Since they put so much emphasis on the spirit realm they probably understood that it was all around them always so they probably acted as though they could be heard at all times.
Tabooed words: Names of the dead tabooed.
The custom of abstaining from uttering the names of the dead was observed in antiquity in Albania and the Caucusus, and was fully in use among indigenous peoples around the world, as of 1890. The Australian Aborigines would not speak of the dead and often referred to them as 'the lost one' or 'the poor fellow that is no more' and if they absolutely had to they would speak the name in a very low, quiet whisper to avoid stirring the attention of the deceased one.
Especially so was the rule in effect when the deceased had just died and throughout the mourning process it was not custom to speak the name of the recently deceased to again avoid disturbing their newly departed soul.
The main reason for the taboo of speaking the names of the dead had for its reasoning the fear of disturbing the dead and of ghosts. Some went so far as to change their name after another became deceased if their name even sounded like the dead person's name, and it was usually done at or before the first ceremony of mourning, so that the name did not attract the attention of the ghost from the person in death.
This could be a permanent name change, while other times it was temporary, depending on the culture. The taboo on speaking the names of the dead pervaded every corner of the earth. It was also carried to such an extreme that even the names that sounded like theirs were changed, or that even the immediate family changed their names in the fear that those in themselves would be enough for the dead to be disturbed by the memory of their family's names.
Sometimes names were changed if they were involved in the incident or circumstances in which a person is killed or dies suddenly, such as in an accident, and the explanation for all survivors or those around it change their names with the idea that death carries off a list of the survivors and plans to come back for them one by one.
It was also observed that some will alter their appearance or shave their heads to escape being recognized by either the ghost of the deceased or by death itself.
Sometimes when people are named after animals and common things, they actually do away with the word for these common things and replace it with another because of the association. This has made the languages in societies or indigenous cultures ever-changing and constantly being renewed out of fear and this allows for the problematic consequence of history being erased, becoming vague if not impossible to keep record for, as words from original Hebrew to their English translations have made scholars to debate the tenets of biblical passage or meaning, so that controversy arises between what was originally written and meant versus how it is now interpreted and translated, and the same applies in the case with such rapidly changing language, as the case for many of these indigenous societies.
Frazer writes:
That a superstition which suppresses the names of the dead must cut at the very root of historical tradition has been remarked by other workers in this field. "The Klamath people," observes Mr. A. S. Gatschet, "possess no historic traditions going further back in time than a century, for the simple reason that there was a strict law prohibiting the mention of the person or acts of a deceased individual by using his name. This law was rigidly observed among the Californians no less than among the Oregonians, and on its transgression the death penalty could be inflicted. This is certainly enough to suppress all historical knowledge within a people. How can history be written without names?"
Some cases where the taboo on dead names relax, it is long after the grieving and mourning process. It was also practised in some areas that the name could be given to a new person, and thus they thought it to resurrect the person in a new body, as they all believe in returning to life after death, or being resurrected.
Among the Lapps, when a woman was with child and near the time of her delivery, a deceased ancestor or relation used to appear to her in a dream and inform her what dead person was to be born again in her infant, and whose name the child was therefore to bear. If the woman had no such dream, it fell to the father or the relatives to determine the name by divination or by consulting a wizard.
Among the Yorubas, soon after a child has been born, a priest of Ifa, the god of divination, appears on the scene to ascertain what ancestral soul has been reborn in the infant. As soon as this has been decided, the parents are told that the child must conform in all respects to the manner of life of the ancestor who now animates him or her, and if, as often happens, they profess ignorance, the priest supplies the necessary information. The child usually receives the name of the ancestor who has been born again in him.
It is said that the word gives life, so the sympathetic association between speaking the dead that were no more probably held to have resurrecting powers to the spirit located in the vast ocean of the spirit world or subconscious mind.
Tabooed words: Names of kings and other sacred persons tabooed.
Names of kings were often kept secret to protect them. Always this was done for fear of hexing and working evil on a person through their name.
Sometimes after a king dies, a council of chiefs gather round the corpse of the king and decide on a name to use for him from that point forward.
When a king comes to the throne in Tahiti, any words in the language that resemble his name in sound must be changed for others. In former times, if any man were so rash as to disregard this custom and to use the forbidden words, not only he but all his relations were immediately put to death. But the changes thus introduced were only temporary; on the death of the king the new words fell into disuse, and the original ones were revived.
Perhaps they made the association between the subconscious mind and that which is uttered by the individual being open to the world of spirits. It may be too that if a spirit world exists, the violent ends to which many of the kings were said to go, may have produced violent energies in the ocean of spirits or subconscious which connects everyone.
General conclusion. Human gods, on whom the welfare of the community is believed to depend, are obliged to observe many rules to ensure many rules to ensure their own safety and that of their people.
Many of these strict rules are imposed on their peoples as a pledge and promise of their sacred nature and duty, and the fear inspired by these strict observances or taboos attests to how serious the people saw death, and it was thought the only way to a long life free of misfortune, calamity, and evil, one had to follow the strict observances. The protection of the people, was a security to the people.
It seems to hold true that unfortunately a lot of the 'human gods' served merely as instruments or puppets to which the system could wield superstition and falsehoods which kept the people in line through fear.
A study of these rules affords us an insight into the Philosophy of the savage.
We today may think of these customs as irrational and illogical, false or without merit, but to many societies it was like the glue that kept their system functional and cohesive, however different from our own.
Today, the new religion or system of fear-based control is science. The whole thing, however is controlled and manipulated by taking tenets that are true and mixing them with falsehoods or schemes they can profit off of, or keep control over others which certainly its heading in that direction with the attempts and push for mandatory vaccination.
Our debt to our savage forefathers.
We are like heirs to a fortune which has been handed down for so many ages that the memory of those who built it up is lost, and its possessors for the time being regard it as having been an original and unalterable possession of their race since the beginning of the world. But reflection and enquiry should satisfy us that to our predecessors we are indebted for much of what we thought most our own, and that their errors were not wilful extravagances or the ravings of insanity, but simply hypotheses, justifiable as such at the time when they were propounded, but which a fuller experience has proved to be inadequate. It is only by the successive testing of hypotheses and rejection of the false that truth is at last elicited. After all, what we call truth is only the hypothesis which is found to work best. Therefore in reviewing the opinions and practices of ruder ages and races we shall do well to look with leniency upon their errors as inevitable slips made in the search for truth, and to give them the benefit of that indulgence which we ourselves may one day stand in need of: cum excusatione itaque veteres audiendi sunt.
[cum excusatione itaque veteres audiendi sunt translated as "And so the ancients listened."]
One should also add that today we have problems of our own, however different, that show we are not all that much better in how we approach everything and the average person's worldview or understanding of the world, of history, is very distorted and the truth very obscure.
Notes:
*Blue text is my added commentary, not part of book
Primitive conceptions of the soul helped to mould early kingships.
It is said that the safeguarding of the peoples and the king himself paved the way for the adherence to very strict customs, and this conclusion is made more likely by the fact that the king and the common people had at least a few of the same observances.
Evenly distributing the taboos would have been a way to keep a cohesive system going, and many of the taboos and lifestyles appeared to have often the undertone of fear and superstition, though one could say all of these things had some basis in truth, at least in part.
Tabooed acts: Taboos on intercourse with strangers.
The idea of conversing with strangers is done very cautiously, if at all, by an established people under Old World systems, and indigenous tribal villages. While they feared death, they perhaps feared nothing more than black magic and sorcery, and this was also followed with fear of foreign peoples bringing demonic spirits or hexes with them.
Especially feared was the spirits of disease and famine, and rightfully so, smallpox had oftentimes obliterated entire villagers and even whole countries or lands. The Europeans settling or living in close proximity to the indigenous people who were already established there oftentimes met horrifying fates against smallpox, and the discussion back in these times, especially when Frazer's book was published (1890) the people spoke of disease epidemics as transmissible, diseases that would be spread from person to person and they went to great lengths to shield themselves from these horrifying fates.
When they had to travel to other foreign or new lands, they too would tread very cautiously as to not disturb or anger the spirits that dwell their, and also cautious in their dealings with others from the new regions or coming to theirs from outside, as they could not be sure what kinds of evil spirits would come along with them.
Perhaps there was a lot of validity to this, in regards to disease, as those from outside regions will be tolerized to pathogens from their home regions and through generations it integrates into their genes, and what could seem harmless microbes or viruses in one group could be deadly to others, and this is the genetic makeup of the immune system known as the human leukocyte antigen (HLA). Obviously diseases like viruses could be transmitted through contact and possibly the airborne route, but nonetheless there was certainly grounds for fearing the coming settlers in regards to disease because all too often entire societies were wiped out by smallpox after contracting it from the Europeans. Russian Siberian regions called the smallpox spirit Ospa, she was said to be a vicious woman spirit and wicked and vile, and that even the strongest shaman could not defeat her wrath.
Also, I take the systems of sorcery and ceremonial magic to have certain degree of validity in that they were systems of influence through the ocean of the subconscious mind and ocean of the dead.
Tabooed acts: Taboos on eating and drinking.
As noted in the last chapter about the perils of the soul and the caution in which was taken to make sure the soul does not exit the body, a particularly important time in this concept was when they would eat or drink.
The common people also took such observances and rules seriously, that when anyone should eat or drink they did so according to strict customs, lest their soul escape through their mouth, or be extracted by the magic from an enemy present. Some of the methods they employed were to close up the entire house or hut before eating or drinking, and there were further customs like keeping the mouth closed and remaining free of conversation. A woman could not see the man eat or drink, nor the man see the woman eat or drink.
As the common people observed what those today would consider strict rules, the sacred kings would take these to far more perilous extremes, which were already established beforehand. No one could ever see the king eat or drink or it was thought he would immediately die. Anyone who were to accidentally see the king eat or drink would have to be put to death immediately. If a dog entered the room, it was put to death on the spot. There was one occasion by the king of the Zafimanelo of Madagascar, the king's own son who was 12 years old, accidentally saw the king drink, and Immediately thereafter the king had the boy finely appareled and feasted, and after which he commanded the boy to be cut in quarters, and carried about the city with a proclamation that the boy had seen the king drink.
Typically when the king desires to have a drink he rings a bell which alarms the people and they immediately fall to the ground and cover their faces so they do not accidentally see the king drink.
The same regulations are held for the king when he eats, no one may witness it under the penalty of death. He has a special hut setup for him designated for eating, and no one beside the king may enter.
As we eat and drink the matter integrates into the gut and it is said that the dead may dwell here, so there was probably some emphasis on these connections.
Tabooed acts: Taboos on leaving food over.
Just as the act of eating is regarded as a particularly vulnerable act by both commoners and king alike, a similar taboo is observed about leaving food leftover or not properly disposing of the non-edible portions leftover when the edible portions have been eaten, such as meat on bones. There was high fears of a sorcerer or black magician doing harm to someone through acquiring food or items leftover from a meal in which black magic or harm could be worked upon them. The poisoning of food that hasn't been eaten is treated with the same that one would if the food they were consuming was poisoned. Through sympathetic magic the leftover portions have the same link that the portions eaten have and using this the sorcerer can work black magic on them. however, through the same sympathetic effect, a sorcerer or black magician would be careful not to use any leftover food that was taken from a meal they shared together, because it is said that through their sharing of a meal the same effects would also link them and thus any ill-effect he could work on the other through that leftover food, would also affect him, and so it is said that this is where the custom of sharing a meal together originated.
He notes the term 'disease-maker' for sorcerers that went about looking for leftover pieces of bone or hide or vegetable peels or whatever else he could secure to work ill upon the other.
However, he says there is no covenant formed that is stronger between people or things than the transfusing of blood between parties into each other's veins. he says that this transfusion nits them together for life.
There may be some kind of link between the bacteria or microbial matter that exists in the food leftover and the food eaten by the person. Are these connections strengthened through the microbial realm and thus one step away from the elemental and etheric realm?
Tabooed persons: Chiefs and kings tabooed.
While kings and chiefs are guarded against and whisked away to keep them safe from the many perceived perils in their established culture and paradigm, they could also cause great harm to common people if the taboos observed were broken. The meals eaten by a king are eaten in a clay bowl or dishes that can be broken immediately following. No one is allowed to eat from the kings dishes or of his meals or they would die. Frazer then gives several perplexing but definite examples where this did actually occur and death followed.
A slave in New Guinea ate from a chiefs plate who had left briefly and when after the slave consumed the dish his face was stricken with horror after being told that the plate of food which he just ate belonged to the chief and not long after this the slave died.
Other examples like this are attested to by the Maori peoples, where a Moari woman having eaten some fruit from a tabooed place, and thus the spirit of the chief had been profaned and she will die, she was dead by the next day. A tinder-box from a chief used to light his pipe was found by several persons unaware it was the chiefs and they lit their pipes with it, and after learning it was the chief's tinderbox, they all died of fright.
the same effect was observed for garments and any personal items belonging to chiefs, kings, or from tabooed places were also said to kill.
It is said that it is spiritual powers that are responsible for these things, and in any given society where it seems to be universally accepted and unquestioned, held to be consistent with examples, it seems to have at least a good portion of truth.
The chiefs were the highest in authority next to the king in many societies, so it follows that due to the sheer importance and holiness that they ascribed to the king, the chiefs would also have to be guarded, as if they were to be corrupted or manipulated in any way, they could then manipulate the king somehow and risk destroying the entire society. It is not entirely surprising to see that people actually died when breaking the taboo, often from the terror they experienced when realizing the taboo had been broken. The amount of fear they were already in may have been a constant stress on the body already, and the sudden realization of the breaking of taboos perhaps could have been such to cause death, or somewhat like a placebo effect.
Tabooed persons: Women tabooed at menstruation and childbirth.
Similar restrictive and cautions are held for woman who are menstruating that they cannot come into contact with anything a man touches or uses while in that cycle. If this is broken even accidentally, punishments come forth, as was the case in one example Frazer lists about an Australian aborigine woman who laid down on her husbands blanket when she was in menstruation and he immediately killed her and died of terror himself within a fortnight.
Similar customs about pregnant women and their childbirth, it is said they are very dangerous and the men or others who come into contact with anything she uses or touches exposes them to serious dangers like illness and disease. She is secluded away in the act of giving birth in a secluded hut and room and no one may touch the clothe or anything she does for extended periods of time, and if a stillbirth or miscarriage occurs she is seen as extremely more dangerous to them and secluded away for far longer before she is allowed to return. It seems that the danger was understood to be disease, according to the descriptions given by Frazer.
It is held that she poisons or infects anything she comes into contact with, but if she touches the ends of spears or weapons it is considered purified like that of a poison dart and used to injure.
One wonders if maybe in menstruation or pregnancy the woman is more susceptible to or reactivates disease that the stress of it can bring on.
Tabooed persons: Warriors tabooed.
Warriors also had similar taboos held to them as the pregnant women, and they had to live according to very clearly defined rules that were not always easy, and usually had to do with war-like energies, and they had to be kept in seclusion for some time before and after the acts of war, and they had to be handled and conduct themselves in very specific ways.
it was thought that they had the war-like, death energies active during this time so the rule would follow that anyone who conversed with them like they were any other commoner would bring them misfortune by similar war-like, death energies and it would cause serious harm.
Oftentimes the Native Americans had to go through purification rituals and also went to great length after conquering their enemies to conduct these rituals to scare away the spirits of those they killed.
It may be well-warranted if the concept of an untimely death described to me by my friend from Mauritus Islands, stating that those who do not die natural deaths, dying unexpected deaths in accident, violence, and so on, tend to be restless and problematic spirits and can cause harm through the pain they are experiencing, the difficulty in the death process in the spirit world.
Tabooed persons: Hunters tabooed.
Like the warriors going to war against other human beings, the hunter had many strict observances and rituals in preparation for the hunt, and also respected the soul of the animals he killed, or worked with for reasons that sustain them like food does. Strict chastity was observed, which is interesting to note considering the parallels to the male consort of the Goddess Diana, who was Goddess of the Hunt, and Hippolytus who only loved the Goddess and spurned the love of regular women, they also called him the chaste and fair, and this was the undertone or nature of the Native American traditions when preparing for a hunt, but also universally this was so, and similar between different peoples, from the Americas to India to Africa and beyond.
They associated the energy of the killing with the death energy and destructive to life, like going to war, but of a different kind. It was probably taken as a sympathetic connection between the energy used to kill and that which filled the aura for some time after it was done, and that they had to find some way to make peace with themselves or the animal, and purification rituals might follow.
The meaning of taboo.
Frazer goes on to define the terms in which the taboos are made:
To seclude these persons from the rest of the world so that the dreaded spiritual danger shall neither reach them nor spread from them, is the object of the taboos which they have to observe. These taboos act, so to say, as electrical insulators to preserve the spiritual force with which these persons are charged from suffering or inflicting harm by contact with the outer world.
It seems to keep them under the spell of their own system, not to say all of it was bad or without merit, but that it may have hindered when used to control and not allow for the true spiritual initiation into one's inherent nature and Natural Law principles.
Kings may not be touched.
One commonality between the different regions of the world and their taboos, one that is more or less universal is that the king may not be touched, no one may brush up against or touch him in any way, and the offence was usually always punishable by death.
Especially so was the custom that no iron especially could touch or come into contact with the king. Likewise priest kings or priests in other areas could not be shaven with an iron razor and iron was usually kept away from all persons considered sacred and held in high regard.
That would only seem to fit the false idea that this one person was god of everything else, so they had to also play the part, and given their intense fear of sorcery, it might run that anyone who touches him could be able to a) poison him, or b) take some part of his clothing, body, hair, and so on, and thus sorcery could be worked against the king who they treated as the Creator, God himself.
Tabooed things: Iron tabooed.
Also as a general rule iron was forbidden in many areas and facets of life in a given society. Superstitious rejection of iron was thought to date back to very early times when iron was considered a novelty. Ploughshares made of iron were said to bring forth bad harvests and ruined the abundance and health of it.
Sharp weapons and knives also kept away from houses or areas after a recently departed is buried, up to a certain time the soul is said to roam around the house or area and they say sharp weapons or knives might injure it so they abstain from using any sharp instruments or weapons in that vicinity for a defined period of time.
In regards to eating this also held true for many when someone had recently passed away, they refused to eat with sharp utensils to prevent them from possibly injuring the departed soul. Food was also left to the dead and they try to help it leave with offerings of food or after they feel it has been given its food and has eaten and drank their offerings.
My thoughts regarding the taboo on iron is in the occult properties of iron. Iron is ruled under the planetary sign of Mars, a symbol of war and battle, fighting and attacking, an active masculine principle but especially in relation to matters of war. Iron was the metal of Mars, and so it probably went that any iron that touched the king formed a sympathetic association with him and the energies of war, as in, war could come to him, he would have to endure a war, or he will have to be faced with wars or battles of all kinds, whether spiritual, physical, culturally, and so on.
It would make sense that they would keep iron far away from the king and priests and any divine royal or sacred person to keep the energies of way away, as fiercely as they would keep demons and black magic and death or disease from waging their calamities against him, which he would have to fight off or battle, and especially as it relates to the sorcerer, an attack of black magic or sorcery would be akin to an act of war, spiritual war, and thus the powers of war associated and attributed to iron would be kept away from the king and the abundance or centers of civilization lest they be brought to do some kind of battle which they would do anything to avoid.
Tabooed things: Blood tabooed.
Blood as a subject of taboos comes as no surprise since the life-force is said to reside in the blood, and since the blood is tied up so intricately with the soul and its link to the body, and the perils of the soul and afterlife and of death is what most taboos were created to protect against. So the spilling of blood is done so very selectively and some customs would not put a king to death by spilling his blood on the ground or earth, because it is thought that it would pollute the earth with its bad energy and the accursed soul of the executed would remain their and continue to haunt or hex the place where it was spilled, or that its spirit would remain their and never leave. Sometimes blood spilling in killing of others is avoided altogether and other routes of killing are sought which do not spill the blood.
When Kublai Kahn took his uncle Nayan and put him to death he rolled him up in a carpet and tosed him around to and fro until he was killed by the blows.
Many refused to drink or eat the blood of any animal since its spirit was said to reside in its blood.
The Gauls on the other hand, used to drink their enemies' blood and paint themselves with it. Some Irish would even drink the blood of that of their own friends, if they were put to death, an example was the execution of a notable traitor at Limerick, called Murrough O'Brien, whose foster-mother took up his head while still quartered and sucked up all the blood that ran out saying that the earth was not worthy to drink it and therewith covered her face and breast and tore her hair, crying out and shrieking most terribly.
With respect to kings and queens these customs are done with strict observance even long after the common people are not bound by the same taboo.
The taboo on blood, or perhaps to say on spilling blood, would make sense given the rest of their system, especially since they put so much emphasis on the spirit world and sorcery. The reverse seemed to also hold true, however, in some areas, and there was a time and in some countries where it was seen as honorable to die a bloody, violent death, so it stands to reason that the spilling of blood in executions of some kings or persons that were dishonorable to the society would also be tabooed if they were not to be honored.
Tabooed things: the head tabooed.
The head of a person was tabooed from touch or harm, as the head was held as sacred and to be treated accordingly. Many peoples believed the head to be the place where their guardian spirit, and many peoples held the head to be treated with respect and not touched. Some will not enter a place where anything hangs above their heads. Some will not wear anything on their heads. Some do not want any building over one story because they do not want anyone walking over their head on the next floor.
Since the head was the machine of the heart and to experience the temporal five senses, they probably treated the head as the most sacred of the body, like a tabernacle. The head also being the highest point of the body, that too probably through sympathy held a connection for them to the skies and the highest self. Perhaps too it was the gateway to other worlds through the pineal gland.
Tabooed things: Hair tabooed.
As the head was held sacred and to be treated accordingly, so too the hair was also treated in this same respect, as it after all came from the head. The cutting of hair was sometimes treated with great offence, because on the one hand, cutting the hair required sharp utensils and they did not want to injure the head, and secondly, the hair itself was said to form a sympathetic magic connection to them. They worry of black magic and sorcery.
They could not escape the cutting of hair but there were very strict measures in order to do so, and the person who's hair was cut was tabooed for a certain length of time and kept away from the people, along with the person who cuts the hair. Sometimes it was done using an obsidian knife. Disposing the hair was also a difficult matter, because they saw the hair as a link to the person and if the hair were to fall in the hands of an enemy they could work black magic on the person.
It is said that a man could be hexed by means of the clippings of hair, pairing with the nails, or any other severed portion of the physical body.
It is a form of sympathetic magic in the realm of contagious magic.
The sorcerer took some of the hair, spit, or bodily refuse from the man he wished to injure and wrapped it in a leaf, placing it in a bag of woven threads or fibers, knotted in an intricate way. The whole was then buried, with certain rites, and the victim wasted away of sickness in 20 days. His life could be saved if the item was found and dug up, and as soon as this was done the power ceased.
An Australian aborigine who wants to get rid of his wife, cuts off a lock of hair in her sleep, ties it to his spear thrower, and goes to a neighboring tribe to give to a friend. His friend sticks the spear head in a camp fire every night and when it falls down it is a sign that the wife is dead.
Not only was hair thought to serve as a sympathetic link to the person from whom it was taken but also the nail clippings are much similar.
The clippings are thought to also be a way to rejoin the soul to the body after death, and sorcerers and those of indigenous tribes and clans would often take their nail clippings or hair and hide it in special places that were sacred or secret, hidden from anyone's knowing the whereabouts or that there were even any clippings hidden.. It was thought that when the soul leaves the body, it was a way to resurrect oneself in the afterlife, and gave them a place that could be remembered and they would be able to go to the clippings to link themselves to the body through this special place.
The Incas of Peru took extreme care to preserve the nail clippings and hairs that were cut from the body. When asked it was explained,
"Know that all persons who are born must return to life and the souls must rise out of their tombs with all that belonged to their bodies. We, therefore, in order that we may not have to search for our hair and nails at a timed when there will be much hurry and confusion, place them in one place, that they may be brought together more conveniently , and, wherever it is possible, we are also careful to spit in one place."
Tabooed things: Knots and rings tabooed.
Knots were also the subject of many taboos around the world. The belief held that tying knots would trip up and bind, and was often especially relevant to pregnancy and childbirth, when the time came to deliver the child, they say that knots adorned by the woman or in her immediate vicinity, would hinder childbirth, would make the child stuck in a knot in the womb, and so it was also held that she should not sit with her legs crossed, and the man should not sit near her with his legs crossed, also sitting with clasped hands was seen as unlucky in the presence of a woman about to deliver a child, that it would form a sympathetic effect on the child and could hinder delivery. It was thought to case a malignant spell on the woman.
It was also a similar tradition to unlock all the doors and windows for a house in which a mother was giving childbirth. Locks were seen in a way very similar to knots.
Similarly, those attended a wedding should not wear knots near the bride and bridegroom. It is thought to also trip them up, and the bride and bridegroom were best not to wear knots during the ceremony.
Knots were thought to have the power to hex and bind, to cause sickness, disease, and all kinds of misfortune, sometimes a sorcerer in Africa would curse his victims by tying grass in knots where the victim was known to walk, and trip the soul and life of a person.
In the Koran, tying of knots in a cord and spitting on them, and hiding them had the power to hex, and it was said that the prophet Mohammad was severely sickened by this method, and that the cord was then thrown in a well, and had not the Archangel Gabriel not revealed the location of it he would have continued to decline. When fetched from the well, Mohammad recited certain prayers over it and with each knot untied he felt more relief.
The opposite was also held true, that knots could also heal, solidify something desired, such as romance. Knots had dual uses, and could be also used to avert death and disease, bad luck. nets worn over the heads of brides were said to effectively protect the bride from black magic.
As the case for knots, the same was said to hold for rings, and rings could be helpful or detrimental since they hold the binding quality. Therefore, it could be used for harming or helping depending on the ring and what it is used for, the customs observed, etc. Some customs held to remove all rings from a deceased person because it was thought to bind their soul and keep it confined in the physical body as it decays.
The Ancient Greeks and Romans also held the taboo on rings, and especially entering the sanctuaries. It was held to be a spiritual fetter at death, obviously because its association with binding or holding tight on the finger. Also, if the ring were metal it would have the quality of earth and grounding so the spirit may be thought to be bound by the ring.
Similarly, wearing of rings thought to also protect and bind ghosts, demons, and unwanted energies or spirits. So, in life, it could be seen that to wear rings helps keep the soul in the body during the lifetime, while used as an amulet to keep demons, ghosts, or witches out of it and bind them.
Tabooed words: Personal names tabooed.
In many of the societies among the old world systems the name also held a certain power and vulnerability. This was held to the point where many were given two names, the true name, and the public name, and the true name was never spoken to anyone, and generally only the elders and most sacred and responsible members of the society could speak it.
The true name was kept in secret, while the public name was given casually since no harm could be done in anyone knowing it since it was not their true name. Often the true name would not be spoken even if alone and no strangers, and only employed in sacred, designated places because it was also held that demons and spirits or sorcerers could work harm through its acquisition by the non-physical spirit world.
Other times, when one name was in use, the person would never speak his/her own name, and if a stranger asks, it was custom to only let another person tell them and utter their name, but the person who's name it was would generally not speak it themself.
Other times, it was less strict, where they would have someone else tell the name, but if another person was not around and they had no way around it, they would speak their own name to the stranger.
Sometimes when asked their name, a person would use their child's or nephew's name, address it as "father of [so-and-so]" "uncle of [so-and-so]"
Other times, a name was taboo only during certain times or under certain occasions or activities, for example, when some cultures would hunt, it was said that taboos on names could be in effect. They would be called a nickname or addressed as birds, and often when fishing the names were especially taboo, because they thought that spirits were often present in the waters, and this may have been the case in the woods, since demons were often said to lurk in trees or woodlands, and the name could cease to be a taboo outside of these assigned times or activities.
Tabooed words: Names of relations tabooed.
The speaking of names was also applied to the names of immediate family and relatives. This of course applied, like all other taboos listed, scattered throughout the world with some variation on approach.
In some instances it was so extreme and taken so seriously, that even words that sounded like theirs, even syllables that resembled parts of their name, were forbidden, and this was made more restrictive in society since many people were named after common things, animals, and so on.
In some areas it was punishable by death to speak the name of relatives or family members, such as the indigenous of New Britain.
It would have been thought that the name could be spoken in close circles like family and friends, but this was even more taboo for some societies. The explanation went that all so often it is close friends or husband or wife or extended family who are most likely to be traitors and work evil against them so their name would not be uttered even in the closest circles.
The name of relations tabooed held the ability to work sorcery if any outsider or traitor were to know or hear their names. Since they put so much emphasis on the spirit realm they probably understood that it was all around them always so they probably acted as though they could be heard at all times.
Tabooed words: Names of the dead tabooed.
The custom of abstaining from uttering the names of the dead was observed in antiquity in Albania and the Caucusus, and was fully in use among indigenous peoples around the world, as of 1890. The Australian Aborigines would not speak of the dead and often referred to them as 'the lost one' or 'the poor fellow that is no more' and if they absolutely had to they would speak the name in a very low, quiet whisper to avoid stirring the attention of the deceased one.
Especially so was the rule in effect when the deceased had just died and throughout the mourning process it was not custom to speak the name of the recently deceased to again avoid disturbing their newly departed soul.
The main reason for the taboo of speaking the names of the dead had for its reasoning the fear of disturbing the dead and of ghosts. Some went so far as to change their name after another became deceased if their name even sounded like the dead person's name, and it was usually done at or before the first ceremony of mourning, so that the name did not attract the attention of the ghost from the person in death.
This could be a permanent name change, while other times it was temporary, depending on the culture. The taboo on speaking the names of the dead pervaded every corner of the earth. It was also carried to such an extreme that even the names that sounded like theirs were changed, or that even the immediate family changed their names in the fear that those in themselves would be enough for the dead to be disturbed by the memory of their family's names.
Sometimes names were changed if they were involved in the incident or circumstances in which a person is killed or dies suddenly, such as in an accident, and the explanation for all survivors or those around it change their names with the idea that death carries off a list of the survivors and plans to come back for them one by one.
It was also observed that some will alter their appearance or shave their heads to escape being recognized by either the ghost of the deceased or by death itself.
Sometimes when people are named after animals and common things, they actually do away with the word for these common things and replace it with another because of the association. This has made the languages in societies or indigenous cultures ever-changing and constantly being renewed out of fear and this allows for the problematic consequence of history being erased, becoming vague if not impossible to keep record for, as words from original Hebrew to their English translations have made scholars to debate the tenets of biblical passage or meaning, so that controversy arises between what was originally written and meant versus how it is now interpreted and translated, and the same applies in the case with such rapidly changing language, as the case for many of these indigenous societies.
Frazer writes:
That a superstition which suppresses the names of the dead must cut at the very root of historical tradition has been remarked by other workers in this field. "The Klamath people," observes Mr. A. S. Gatschet, "possess no historic traditions going further back in time than a century, for the simple reason that there was a strict law prohibiting the mention of the person or acts of a deceased individual by using his name. This law was rigidly observed among the Californians no less than among the Oregonians, and on its transgression the death penalty could be inflicted. This is certainly enough to suppress all historical knowledge within a people. How can history be written without names?"
Some cases where the taboo on dead names relax, it is long after the grieving and mourning process. It was also practised in some areas that the name could be given to a new person, and thus they thought it to resurrect the person in a new body, as they all believe in returning to life after death, or being resurrected.
Among the Lapps, when a woman was with child and near the time of her delivery, a deceased ancestor or relation used to appear to her in a dream and inform her what dead person was to be born again in her infant, and whose name the child was therefore to bear. If the woman had no such dream, it fell to the father or the relatives to determine the name by divination or by consulting a wizard.
Among the Yorubas, soon after a child has been born, a priest of Ifa, the god of divination, appears on the scene to ascertain what ancestral soul has been reborn in the infant. As soon as this has been decided, the parents are told that the child must conform in all respects to the manner of life of the ancestor who now animates him or her, and if, as often happens, they profess ignorance, the priest supplies the necessary information. The child usually receives the name of the ancestor who has been born again in him.
It is said that the word gives life, so the sympathetic association between speaking the dead that were no more probably held to have resurrecting powers to the spirit located in the vast ocean of the spirit world or subconscious mind.
Tabooed words: Names of kings and other sacred persons tabooed.
Names of kings were often kept secret to protect them. Always this was done for fear of hexing and working evil on a person through their name.
Sometimes after a king dies, a council of chiefs gather round the corpse of the king and decide on a name to use for him from that point forward.
When a king comes to the throne in Tahiti, any words in the language that resemble his name in sound must be changed for others. In former times, if any man were so rash as to disregard this custom and to use the forbidden words, not only he but all his relations were immediately put to death. But the changes thus introduced were only temporary; on the death of the king the new words fell into disuse, and the original ones were revived.
Perhaps they made the association between the subconscious mind and that which is uttered by the individual being open to the world of spirits. It may be too that if a spirit world exists, the violent ends to which many of the kings were said to go, may have produced violent energies in the ocean of spirits or subconscious which connects everyone.
General conclusion. Human gods, on whom the welfare of the community is believed to depend, are obliged to observe many rules to ensure many rules to ensure their own safety and that of their people.
Many of these strict rules are imposed on their peoples as a pledge and promise of their sacred nature and duty, and the fear inspired by these strict observances or taboos attests to how serious the people saw death, and it was thought the only way to a long life free of misfortune, calamity, and evil, one had to follow the strict observances. The protection of the people, was a security to the people.
It seems to hold true that unfortunately a lot of the 'human gods' served merely as instruments or puppets to which the system could wield superstition and falsehoods which kept the people in line through fear.
A study of these rules affords us an insight into the Philosophy of the savage.
We today may think of these customs as irrational and illogical, false or without merit, but to many societies it was like the glue that kept their system functional and cohesive, however different from our own.
Today, the new religion or system of fear-based control is science. The whole thing, however is controlled and manipulated by taking tenets that are true and mixing them with falsehoods or schemes they can profit off of, or keep control over others which certainly its heading in that direction with the attempts and push for mandatory vaccination.
Our debt to our savage forefathers.
We are like heirs to a fortune which has been handed down for so many ages that the memory of those who built it up is lost, and its possessors for the time being regard it as having been an original and unalterable possession of their race since the beginning of the world. But reflection and enquiry should satisfy us that to our predecessors we are indebted for much of what we thought most our own, and that their errors were not wilful extravagances or the ravings of insanity, but simply hypotheses, justifiable as such at the time when they were propounded, but which a fuller experience has proved to be inadequate. It is only by the successive testing of hypotheses and rejection of the false that truth is at last elicited. After all, what we call truth is only the hypothesis which is found to work best. Therefore in reviewing the opinions and practices of ruder ages and races we shall do well to look with leniency upon their errors as inevitable slips made in the search for truth, and to give them the benefit of that indulgence which we ourselves may one day stand in need of: cum excusatione itaque veteres audiendi sunt.
[cum excusatione itaque veteres audiendi sunt translated as "And so the ancients listened."]
One should also add that today we have problems of our own, however different, that show we are not all that much better in how we approach everything and the average person's worldview or understanding of the world, of history, is very distorted and the truth very obscure.