The Ghost Cults

87:2.1In re­li­gion the neg­a­tive pro­gram of ghost pla­ca­tion long pre­ceded the pos­i­tive pro­gram of spirit co­er­cion and sup­pli­ca­tion. The first acts of hu­man wor­ship were phe­nom­ena of de­fense, not rev­er­ence. Mod­ern man deems it wise to in­sure against fire; so the sav­age thought it the bet­ter part of wis­dom to pro­vide in­sur­ance against ghost bad luck. The ef­fort to se­cure this pro­tec­tion con­sti­tuted the tech­niques and rit­u­als of the ghost cult.

87:2.2It was once thought that the great de­sire of a ghost was to be quickly “laid” so that it might pro­ceed undis­turbed to dead­land. Any er­ror of com­mis­sion or omis­sion in the acts of the liv­ing in the rit­ual of lay­ing the ghost was sure to de­lay its prog­ress to ghost­land. This was be­lieved to be dis­pleas­ing to the ghost, and an an­gered ghost was sup­posed to be a source of calamity, mis­for­tune, and un­hap­pi­ness.

87:2.3The fu­neral ser­vice orig­i­nated in man’s ef­fort to in­duce the ghost soul to de­part for its fu­ture home, and the fu­neral ser­mon was orig­i­nally de­signed to in­struct the new ghost how to get there. It was the cus­tom to pro­vide food and clothes for the ghost’s jour­ney, these ar­ti­cles be­ing placed in or near the grave. The sav­age be­lieved that it re­quired from three days to a year to “lay the ghost”—to get it away from the vicin­ity of the grave. The Es­ki­mos still be­lieve that the soul stays with the body three days.

87:2.4Si­lence or mourn­ing was ob­served af­ter a death so that the ghost would not be at­tracted back home. Self-tor­ture—wounds—was a com­mon form of mourn­ing. Many ad­vanced teach­ers tried to stop this, but they failed. Fast­ing and other forms of self-de­nial were thought to be pleas­ing to the ghosts, who took plea­sure in the dis­com­fort of the liv­ing dur­ing the tran­si­tion pe­riod of lurk­ing about be­fore their ac­tual de­par­ture for dead­land.

87:2.5Long and fre­quent pe­ri­ods of mourn­ing in­ac­tiv­ity were one of the great ob­sta­cles to civ­i­liza­tion’s ad­vance­ment. Weeks and even months of each year were lit­er­ally wasted in this non­pro­duc­tive and use­less mourn­ing. The fact that pro­fes­sional mourn­ers were hired for fu­neral oc­ca­sions in­di­cates that mourn­ing was a rit­ual, not an ev­i­dence of sor­row. Mod­erns may mourn the dead out of re­spect and be­cause of be­reave­ment, but the an­cients did this be­cause of fear.

87:2.6The names of the dead were never spo­ken. In fact, they were of­ten ban­ished from the lan­guage. These names be­came taboo, and in this way the lan­guages were con­stantly im­pov­er­ished. This even­tu­ally pro­duced a mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of sym­bolic speech and fig­u­ra­tive ex­pres­sion, such as “the name or day one never men­tions.”

87:2.7The an­cients were so anx­ious to get rid of a ghost that they of­fered it ev­ery­thing which might have been de­sired dur­ing life. Ghosts wanted wives and ser­vants; a well-to-do sav­age ex­pected that at least one slave wife would be buried alive at his death. It later be­came the cus­tom for a widow to com­mit sui­cide on her hus­band’s grave. When a child died, the mother, aunt, or grand­mother was of­ten stran­gled in or­der that an adult ghost might ac­com­pany and care for the child ghost. And those who thus gave up their lives usu­ally did so will­ingly; in­deed, had they lived in vi­o­la­tion of cus­tom, their fear of ghost wrath would have de­nuded life of such few plea­sures as the prim­i­tives en­joyed.

87:2.8It was cus­tom­ary to dis­patch a large num­ber of sub­jects to ac­com­pany a dead chief; slaves were killed when their mas­ter died that they might serve him in ghost­land. The Borneans still pro­vide a courier com­pan­ion; a slave is speared to death to make the ghost jour­ney with his de­ceased mas­ter. Ghosts of mur­dered per­sons were be­lieved to be de­lighted to have the ghosts of their mur­der­ers as slaves; this no­tion mo­ti­vated men to head hunt­ing.

87:2.9Ghosts sup­pos­edly en­joyed the smell of food; food of­fer­ings at fu­neral feasts were once uni­ver­sal. The prim­i­tive method of say­ing grace was, be­fore eat­ing, to throw a bit of food into the fire for the pur­pose of ap­peas­ing the spir­its, while mum­bling a magic for­mula.

87:2.10The dead were sup­posed to use the ghosts of the tools and weapons that were theirs in life. To break an ar­ti­cle was to “kill it,” thus re­leas­ing its ghost to pass on for ser­vice in ghost­land. Prop­erty sac­ri­fices were also made by burn­ing or bury­ing. An­cient fu­neral wastes were enor­mous. Later races made pa­per mod­els and sub­sti­tuted draw­ings for real ob­jects and per­sons in these death sac­ri­fices. It was a great ad­vance in civ­i­liza­tion when the in­her­i­tance of kin re­placed the burn­ing and bury­ing of prop­erty. The Iro­quois In­di­ans made many re­forms in fu­neral waste. And this con­ser­va­tion of prop­erty en­abled them to be­come the most pow­er­ful of the north­ern red men. Mod­ern man is not sup­posed to fear ghosts, but cus­tom is strong, and much ter­res­trial wealth is still con­sumed on fu­neral rit­u­als and death cer­e­monies.