Pagan & Christian creeds : their origin and meaning / by Edward Carpenter.

  • Edward Carpenter
Date:
[1920]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Pagan & Christian creeds : their origin and meaning / by Edward Carpenter. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    I know not)—we can easily imagine a member of the Emu tribe, and disguised as an actual emu, having been cere¬ monially slaughtered as a firstfruits and promise of the expected and prayed-for emu-crop; just as the same certainly has happened in the case of men wearing beast- masks of Bulls or Rams or Bears being sacrificed in propi¬ tiation of Bull-gods, Ram-gods or Bear-gods or simply in pursuance of some kind of magic to favour the multipli¬ cation of these food-animals. In the light of totemistic ways of thinking we see plainly enough the relation of man to food-animals. You need or at least desire flesh food, yet you shrink from slaughtering ‘ your brother the ox ’ ; you desire his mana, yet you respect his tahii, for in you and him alike runs the common life-blood. On your own individual responsibility you would never kill him ; but for the common weal, on great occasions, and in a fashion conducted with scrupulous care, it is expedient that he die for his people, and that they feast upon his flesh.” ^ In her little book Ancient AH and Ritual ^ Jane Harrison describes the dedication of a holy Bull, as conducted in Greece at Elis, and at Magnesia and other cities. “ There at the annual fair year by year the stewards of the city bought a Bull ‘ the finest that could be got,’ and at the new moon of the month at the beginning of seed-time [? April] they dedicated it for the city’s welfare. . . . The Bull was led in procession at the head of which went the chief priest and priestess of the city. With them went a herald and the sacrificer, and two bands of youths and maidens. So holy was the Bull that nothing unlucky might come near him. The herald pronounced aloud a prayer for ‘ the safety of the city and the land, and the citizens, and the women and children, for peace and wealth, and for the bringing forth of grain and all other fruits, 1 Themis, p. 140. 2 Home University Library, p 87.
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