The Ghost Cults

87:5.1Prim­i­tive man viewed the spir­its and ghosts as hav­ing al­most un­lim­ited rights but no du­ties; the spir­its were thought to re­gard man as hav­ing man­i­fold du­ties but no rights. The spir­its were be­lieved to look down upon man as con­stantly fail­ing in the dis­charge of his spir­i­tual du­ties. It was the gen­eral be­lief of man­kind that ghosts levied a con­tin­u­ous trib­ute of ser­vice as the price of non­in­ter­fer­ence in hu­man af­fairs, and the least mis­chance was laid to ghost ac­tiv­i­ties. Early hu­mans were so afraid they might over­look some honor due the gods that, af­ter they had sac­ri­ficed to all known spir­its, they did an­other turn to the “un­known gods,” just to be thor­oughly safe.

87:5.2And now the sim­ple ghost cult is fol­lowed by the prac­tices of the more ad­vanced and rel­a­tively com­plex spirit-ghost cult, the ser­vice and wor­ship of the higher spir­its as they evolved in man’s prim­i­tive imag­i­na­tion. Re­li­gious cer­e­mo­nial must keep pace with spirit evo­lu­tion and prog­ress. The ex­panded cult was but the art of self-main­te­nance prac­ticed in re­la­tion to be­lief in super­nat­u­ral be­ings, self-ad­just­ment to spirit en­vi­ron­ment. In­dus­trial and mil­i­tary or­ga­ni­za­tions were ad­just­ments to nat­u­ral and so­cial en­vi­ron­ments. And as mar­riage arose to meet the de­mands of bi­sex­u­al­ity, so did re­li­gious or­ga­ni­za­tion evolve in re­sponse to the be­lief in higher spirit forces and spir­i­tual be­ings. Re­li­gion rep­re­sents man’s ad­just­ment to his il­lu­sions of the mys­tery of chance. Spirit fear and sub­se­quent wor­ship were adopted as in­sur­ance against mis­for­tune, as pros­per­ity poli­cies.

87:5.3The sav­age vi­su­al­izes the good spir­its as go­ing about their busi­ness, re­quir­ing lit­tle from hu­man be­ings. It is the bad ghosts and spir­its who must be kept in good hu­mor. Ac­cord­ingly, prim­i­tive peo­ples paid more at­ten­tion to their malev­o­lent ghosts than to their be­nign spir­its.

87:5.4Hu­man pros­per­ity was sup­posed to be es­pe­cially provoca­tive of the envy of evil spir­its, and their method of re­tal­i­a­tion was to strike back through a hu­man agency and by the tech­nique of the evil eye. That phase of the cult which had to do with spirit avoid­ance was much con­cerned with the machi­na­tions of the evil eye. The fear of it be­came al­most world-wide. Pretty women were veiled to pro­tect them from the evil eye; sub­se­quently many women who de­sired to be con­sid­ered beau­ti­ful adopted this prac­tice. Be­cause of this fear of bad spir­its, chil­dren were sel­dom al­lowed out af­ter dark, and the early prayers al­ways in­cluded the pe­ti­tion, “de­liver us from the evil eye.”

87:5.5The Ko­ran con­tains a whole chap­ter de­voted to the evil eye and magic spells, and the Jews fully be­lieved in them. The whole phal­lic cult grew up as a de­fense against the evil eye. The or­gans of re­pro­duc­tion were thought to be the only fe­tish which could ren­der it pow­er­less. The evil eye gave ori­gin to the first su­per­sti­tions re­spect­ing pre­na­tal mark­ing of chil­dren, ma­ter­nal im­pres­sions, and the cult was at one time well-nigh uni­ver­sal.

87:5.6Envy is a deep-seated hu­man trait; there­fore did prim­i­tive man as­cribe it to his early gods. And since man had once prac­ticed de­cep­tion upon the ghosts, he soon be­gan to de­ceive the spir­its. Said he, “If the spir­its are jeal­ous of our beauty and pros­per­ity, we will dis­fig­ure our­selves and speak lightly of our suc­cess.” Early hu­mil­ity was not, there­fore, de­base­ment of ego but rather an at­tempt to foil and de­ceive the en­vi­ous spir­its.

87:5.7The method adopted to pre­vent the spir­its from be­com­ing jeal­ous of hu­man pros­per­ity was to heap vi­tu­per­a­tion upon some lucky or much loved thing or per­son. The cus­tom of de­pre­ci­at­ing com­pli­men­tary re­marks re­gard­ing one­self or fam­ily had its ori­gin in this way, and it even­tu­ally evolved into civ­i­lized mod­esty, re­straint, and cour­tesy. In keep­ing with the same mo­tive, it be­came the fash­ion to look ugly. Beauty aroused the envy of spir­its; it be­to­kened sin­ful hu­man pride. The sav­age sought for an ugly name. This fea­ture of the cult was a great hand­i­cap to the ad­vance­ment of art, and it long kept the world somber and ugly.

87:5.8Un­der the spirit cult, life was at best a gam­ble, the re­sult of spirit con­trol. One’s fu­ture was not the re­sult of ef­fort, in­dus­try, or tal­ent ex­cept as they might be uti­lized to in­flu­ence the spir­its. The cer­e­monies of spirit pro­pi­ti­a­tion con­sti­tuted a heavy bur­den, ren­der­ing life te­dious and vir­tu­ally un­en­durable. From age to age and from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion, race af­ter race has sought to im­prove this super­ghost doc­trine, but no gen­er­a­tion has ever yet dared to wholly re­ject it.

87:5.9The in­ten­tion and will of the spir­its were stud­ied by means of omens, or­a­cles, and signs. And these spirit mes­sages were in­ter­preted by div­ina­tion, sooth­say­ing, magic, or­deals, and as­trol­ogy. The whole cult was a scheme de­signed to pla­cate, sat­isfy, and buy off the spir­its through this dis­guised bribery.

87:5.10And thus there grew up a new and ex­panded world phi­los­o­phy con­sist­ing in:

87:5.111. Duty—those things which must be done to keep the spir­its fa­vor­ably dis­posed, at least neu­tral.

87:5.122. Right—the cor­rect con­duct and cer­e­monies de­signed to win the spir­its ac­tively to one’s in­ter­ests.

87:5.133. Truth—the cor­rect un­der­stand­ing of, and at­ti­tude to­ward, spir­its, and hence to­ward life and death.

87:5.14It was not merely out of cu­rios­ity that the an­cients sought to know the fu­ture; they wanted to dodge ill luck. Div­ina­tion was sim­ply an at­tempt to avoid trou­ble. Dur­ing these times, dreams were re­garded as pro­phetic, while ev­ery­thing out of the or­di­nary was con­sid­ered an omen. And even to­day the civ­i­lized races are cursed with the be­lief in signs, to­kens, and other su­per­sti­tious rem­nants of the ad­vanc­ing ghost cult of old. Slow, very slow, is man to aban­don those meth­ods whereby he so grad­u­ally and painfully as­cended the evo­lu­tion­ary scale of life.