The Origins of Worship

85:1.1The first ob­ject to be wor­shiped by evolv­ing man was a stone. To­day the Ka­teri peo­ple of south­ern In­dia still wor­ship a stone, as do nu­mer­ous tribes in north­ern In­dia. Ja­cob slept on a stone be­cause he ven­er­ated it; he even anointed it. Rachel con­cealed a num­ber of sa­cred stones in her tent.

85:1.2Stones first im­pressed early man as be­ing out of the or­di­nary be­cause of the man­ner in which they would so sud­denly ap­pear on the sur­face of a cul­ti­vated field or pas­ture. Men failed to take into ac­count ei­ther ero­sion or the re­sults of the over­turn­ing of soil. Stones also greatly im­pressed early peo­ples be­cause of their fre­quent re­sem­blance to an­i­mals. The at­ten­tion of civ­i­lized man is ar­rested by nu­mer­ous stone for­ma­tions in the moun­tains which so much re­sem­ble the faces of an­i­mals and even men. But the most pro­found in­flu­ence was ex­erted by me­te­oric stones which prim­i­tive hu­mans be­held hurtling through the at­mo­sphere in flam­ing grandeur. The shoot­ing star was awe­some to early man, and he eas­ily be­lieved that such blaz­ing streaks marked the pas­sage of a spirit on its way to earth. No won­der men were led to wor­ship such phe­nom­ena, es­pe­cially when they sub­se­quently dis­cov­ered the me­te­ors. And this led to greater rev­er­ence for all other stones. In Ben­gal many wor­ship a me­teor which fell to earth in A.D. 1880.

85:1.3All an­cient clans and tribes had their sa­cred stones, and most mod­ern peo­ples man­i­fest a de­gree of ven­er­a­tion for cer­tain types of stones—their jew­els. A group of five stones was rev­er­enced in In­dia; in Greece it was a clus­ter of thirty; among the red men it was usu­ally a cir­cle of stones. The Ro­mans al­ways threw a stone into the air when in­vok­ing Jupiter. In In­dia even to this day a stone can be used as a wit­ness. In some re­gions a stone may be em­ployed as a tal­is­man of the law, and by its pres­tige an of­fender can be haled into court. But sim­ple mor­tals do not al­ways iden­tify De­ity with an ob­ject of rev­er­ent cer­e­mony. Such fe­tishes are many times mere sym­bols of the real ob­ject of wor­ship.

85:1.4The an­cients had a pe­cu­liar re­gard for holes in stones. Such porous rocks were sup­posed to be un­usu­ally ef­fi­ca­cious in cur­ing dis­eases. Ears were not per­fo­rated to carry stones, but the stones were put in to keep the ear holes open. Even in mod­ern times su­per­sti­tious per­sons make holes in coins. In Africa the na­tives make much ado over their fe­tish stones. In fact, among all back­ward tribes and peo­ples stones are still held in su­per­sti­tious ven­er­a­tion. Stone wor­ship is even now wide­spread over the world. The tomb­stone is a sur­viv­ing sym­bol of im­ages and idols which were carved in stone in con­nec­tion with be­liefs in ghosts and the spir­its of de­parted fel­low be­ings.

85:1.5Hill wor­ship fol­lowed stone wor­ship, and the first hills to be ven­er­ated were large stone for­ma­tions. It pres­ently be­came the cus­tom to be­lieve that the gods in­hab­ited the moun­tains, so that high el­e­va­tions of land were wor­shiped for this ad­di­tional rea­son. As time passed, cer­tain moun­tains were as­so­ci­ated with cer­tain gods and there­fore be­came holy. The ig­no­rant and su­per­sti­tious abo­rig­ines be­lieved that caves led to the un­der­world, with its evil spir­its and demons, in con­trast with the moun­tains, which were iden­ti­fied with the later evolv­ing con­cepts of good spir­its and de­i­ties.