Fetishes, Charms, and Magic

88:1.1Prim­i­tive man al­ways wanted to make any­thing ex­traor­di­nary into a fe­tish; chance there­fore gave ori­gin to many. A man is sick, some­thing hap­pens, and he gets well. The same thing is true of the rep­u­ta­tion of many medicines and the chance meth­ods of treat­ing dis­ease. Ob­jects con­nected with dreams were likely to be con­verted into fe­tishes. Vol­ca­noes, but not moun­tains, be­came fe­tishes; comets, but not stars. Early man re­garded shoot­ing stars and me­te­ors as in­di­cat­ing the ar­rival on earth of spe­cial vis­it­ing spir­its.

88:1.2The first fe­tishes were pe­cu­liarly marked peb­bles, and “sa­cred stones” have ever since been sought by man; a string of beads was once a col­lec­tion of sa­cred stones, a bat­tery of charms. Many tribes had fe­tish stones, but few have sur­vived as have the Kaaba and the Stone of Scone. Fire and wa­ter were also among the early fe­tishes, and fire wor­ship, to­gether with be­lief in holy wa­ter, still sur­vives.

88:1.3Tree fe­tishes were a later de­vel­op­ment, but among some tribes the per­sis­tence of na­ture wor­ship led to be­lief in charms in­dwelt by some sort of na­ture spirit. When plants and fruits be­came fe­tishes, they were taboo as food. The ap­ple was among the first to fall into this cat­e­gory; it was never eaten by the Lev­an­tine peo­ples.

88:1.4If an an­i­mal ate hu­man flesh, it be­came a fe­tish. In this way the dog came to be the sa­cred an­i­mal of the Parsees. If the fe­tish is an an­i­mal and the ghost is per­ma­nently res­i­dent therein, then fet­ish­ism may im­pinge on rein­car­na­tion. In many ways the sav­ages en­vied the an­i­mals; they did not feel su­pe­rior to them and were of­ten named af­ter their fa­vorite beasts.

88:1.5When an­i­mals be­came fe­tishes, there en­sued the taboos on eat­ing the flesh of the fe­tish an­i­mal. Apes and mon­keys, be­cause of re­sem­blance to man, early be­came fe­tish an­i­mals; later, snakes, birds, and swine were also sim­i­larly re­garded. At one time the cow was a fe­tish, the milk be­ing taboo while the exc­reta were highly es­teemed. The ser­pent was revered in Pales­tine, es­pe­cially by the Phoeni­cians, who, along with the Jews, con­sid­ered it to be the mouth­piece of evil spir­its. Even many mod­erns be­lieve in the charm pow­ers of rep­tiles. From Ara­bia on through In­dia to the snake dance of the Mo­qui tribe of red men the ser­pent has been revered.

88:1.6Cer­tain days of the week were fe­tishes. For ages Fri­day has been re­garded as an un­lucky day and the num­ber thir­teen as an evil nu­meral. The lucky num­bers three and seven came from later rev­e­la­tions; four was the lucky num­ber of prim­i­tive man and was de­rived from the early rec­og­ni­tion of the four points of the com­pass. It was held un­lucky to count cat­tle or other pos­ses­sions; the an­cients al­ways op­posed the tak­ing of a cen­sus, “num­ber­ing the peo­ple.”

88:1.7Prim­i­tive man did not make an un­due fe­tish out of sex; the re­pro­duc­tive func­tion re­ceived only a lim­ited amount of at­ten­tion. The sav­age was nat­u­ral minded, not ob­scene or pruri­ent.

88:1.8Saliva was a po­tent fe­tish; dev­ils could be driven out by spit­ting on a per­son. For an el­der or su­pe­rior to spit on one was the high­est com­pli­ment. Parts of the hu­man body were looked upon as po­ten­tial fe­tishes, par­tic­u­larly the hair and nails. The long-grow­ing fin­ger­nails of the chiefs were highly prized, and the trim­mings thereof were a pow­er­ful fe­tish. Be­lief in skull fe­tishes ac­counts for much of later-day head-hunt­ing. The um­bil­i­cal cord was a highly prized fe­tish; even to­day it is so re­garded in Africa. Man­kind’s first toy was a pre­served um­bil­i­cal cord. Set with pearls, as was of­ten done, it was man’s first neck­lace.

88:1.9Hunch­backed and crip­pled chil­dren were re­garded as fe­tishes; lu­natics were be­lieved to be moon-struck. Prim­i­tive man could not dis­tin­guish be­tween ge­nius and in­san­ity; id­iots were ei­ther beaten to death or revered as fe­tish per­son­al­i­ties. Hys­te­ria in­creas­ingly con­firmed the pop­u­lar be­lief in witch­craft; epilep­tics of­ten were priests and med­i­cine men. Drunk­en­ness was looked upon as a form of spirit pos­ses­sion; when a sav­age went on a spree, he put a leaf in his hair for the pur­pose of dis­avow­ing re­spon­si­bil­ity for his acts. Poi­sons and in­tox­i­cants be­came fe­tishes; they were deemed to be pos­sessed.

88:1.10Many peo­ple looked upon ge­niuses as fe­tish per­son­al­i­ties pos­sessed by a wise spirit. And these tal­ented hu­mans soon learned to re­sort to fraud and trick­ery for the ad­vance­ment of their self­ish in­ter­ests. A fe­tish man was thought to be more than hu­man; he was di­vine, even in­fal­li­ble. Thus did chiefs, kings, priests, proph­ets, and church rulers even­tu­ally wield great power and ex­er­cise un­bounded au­thor­ity.