The Ghost Cults

87:6.1When men be­lieved in ghosts only, re­li­gious rit­ual was more per­sonal, less or­ga­nized, but the rec­og­ni­tion of higher spir­its ne­ces­si­tated the em­ploy­ment of “higher spir­i­tual meth­ods” in deal­ing with them. This at­tempt to im­prove upon, and to elab­o­rate, the tech­nique of spirit pro­pi­ti­a­tion led di­rectly to the cre­ation of de­fenses against the spir­its. Man felt help­less in­deed be­fore the un­con­trol­lable forces op­er­at­ing in ter­res­trial life, and his feel­ing of in­fe­ri­or­ity drove him to at­tempt to find some com­pen­sat­ing ad­just­ment, some tech­nique for evening the odds in the one-sided strug­gle of man ver­sus the cos­mos.

87:6.2In the early days of the cult, man’s ef­forts to in­flu­ence ghost ac­tion were con­fined to pro­pi­ti­a­tion, at­tempts by bribery to buy off ill luck. As the evo­lu­tion of the ghost cult pro­gressed to the con­cept of good as well as bad spir­its, these cer­e­monies turned to­ward at­tempts of a more pos­i­tive na­ture, ef­forts to win good luck. Man’s re­li­gion no longer was com­pletely neg­a­tivis­tic, nor did he stop with the ef­fort to win good luck; he shortly be­gan to de­vise schemes whereby he could com­pel spirit co-op­er­a­tion. No longer does the re­li­gion­ist stand de­fense­less be­fore the un­ceas­ing de­mands of the spirit phan­tasms of his own de­vis­ing; the sav­age is be­gin­ning to in­vent weapons where­with he may co­erce spirit ac­tion and com­pel spirit as­sis­tance.

87:6.3Man’s first ef­forts at de­fense were di­rected against the ghosts. As the ages passed, the liv­ing be­gan to de­vise meth­ods of re­sist­ing the dead. Many tech­niques were de­vel­oped for fright­en­ing ghosts and driv­ing them away, among which may be cited the fol­low­ing:

87:6.41. Cut­ting off the head and ty­ing up the body in the grave.

87:6.52. Ston­ing the death house.

87:6.63. Cas­tra­tion or break­ing the legs of the corpse.

87:6.74. Bury­ing un­der stones, one ori­gin of the mod­ern tomb­stone.

87:6.85. Cre­ma­tion, a later-day in­ven­tion to pre­vent ghost trou­ble.

87:6.96. Cast­ing the body into the sea.

87:6.107. Ex­po­sure of the body to be eaten by wild an­i­mals.

87:6.11Ghosts were sup­posed to be dis­turbed and fright­ened by noise; shout­ing, bells, and drums drove them away from the liv­ing; and these an­cient meth­ods are still in vogue at “wakes” for the dead. Foul-smelling con­coc­tions were uti­lized to ban­ish un­wel­come spir­its. Hideous im­ages of the spir­its were con­structed so that they would flee in haste when they be­held them­selves. It was be­lieved that dogs could de­tect the ap­proach of ghosts, and that they gave warn­ing by howl­ing; that cocks would crow when they were near. The use of a cock as a weather vane is in per­pet­u­a­tion of this su­per­sti­tion.

87:6.12Wa­ter was re­garded as the best pro­tec­tion against ghosts. Holy wa­ter was su­pe­rior to all other forms, wa­ter in which the priests had washed their feet. Both fire and wa­ter were be­lieved to con­sti­tute im­pass­able bar­ri­ers to ghosts. The Ro­mans car­ried wa­ter three times around the corpse; in the twen­ti­eth cen­tury the body is sprin­kled with holy wa­ter, and hand wash­ing at the ceme­tery is still a Jew­ish rit­ual. Bap­tism was a fea­ture of the later wa­ter rit­ual; prim­i­tive bathing was a re­li­gious cer­e­mony. Only in re­cent times has bathing be­come a san­i­tary prac­tice.

87:6.13But man did not stop with ghost co­er­cion; through re­li­gious rit­ual and other prac­tices he was soon at­tempt­ing to com­pel spirit ac­tion. Ex­or­cism was the em­ploy­ment of one spirit to con­trol or ban­ish an­other, and these tac­tics were also uti­lized for fright­en­ing ghosts and spir­its. The dual-spiritism con­cept of good and bad forces of­fered man am­ple op­por­tu­nity to at­tempt to pit one agency against an­other, for, if a pow­er­ful man could van­quish a weaker one, then cer­tainly a strong spirit could dom­i­nate an in­fe­rior ghost. Prim­i­tive curs­ing was a co­er­cive prac­tice de­signed to over­awe mi­nor spir­its. Later this cus­tom ex­panded into the pro­nounc­ing of curses upon en­e­mies.

87:6.14It was long be­lieved that by re­vert­ing to the us­ages of the more an­cient mores the spir­its and demigods could be forced into de­sir­able ac­tion. Mod­ern man is guilty of the same pro­ce­dure. You ad­dress one an­other in com­mon, ev­ery­day lan­guage, but when you en­gage in prayer, you re­sort to the older style of an­other gen­er­a­tion, the so-called solemn style.

87:6.15This doc­trine also ex­plains many re­li­gious-rit­ual re­ver­sions of a sex na­ture, such as tem­ple pros­ti­tu­tion. These re­ver­sions to prim­i­tive cus­toms were con­sid­ered sure guards against many calami­ties. And with these sim­ple-minded peo­ples all such per­for­mances were en­tirely free from what mod­ern man would term promis­cu­ity.

87:6.16Next came the prac­tice of rit­ual vows, soon to be fol­lowed by re­li­gious pledges and sa­cred oaths. Most of these oaths were ac­com­pa­nied by self-tor­ture and self-mu­ti­la­tion; later on, by fast­ing and prayer. Self-de­nial was sub­se­quently looked upon as be­ing a sure co­er­cive; this was es­pe­cially true in the mat­ter of sex sup­pres­sion. And so prim­i­tive man early de­vel­oped a de­cided aus­ter­ity in his re­li­gious prac­tices, a be­lief in the ef­fi­cacy of self-tor­ture and self-de­nial as rit­u­als ca­pa­ble of co­erc­ing the un­will­ing spir­its to re­act fa­vor­ably to­ward all such suf­fer­ing and de­pri­va­tion.

87:6.17Mod­ern man no longer at­tempts openly to co­erce the spir­its, though he still evinces a dis­po­si­tion to bar­gain with De­ity. And he still swears, knocks on wood, crosses his fin­gers, and fol­lows ex­pec­to­ra­tion with some trite phrase; once it was a mag­i­cal for­mula.