ancestor worship

• based on belief the dead punished the disobedient

68:4.3Ghost fear drove prim­i­tive man to en­vi­sion the super­nat­u­ral and thus se­curely laid the foun­da­tions for those pow­er­ful so­cial in­flu­ences of ethics and re­li­gion which in turn pre­served in­vi­o­late the mores and cus­toms of so­ci­ety from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion. The one thing which early es­tab­lished and crys­tal­lized the mores was the be­lief that the dead were jeal­ous of the ways by which they had lived and died; there­fore would they visit dire pun­ish­ment upon those liv­ing mor­tals who dared to treat with care­less dis­dain the rules of liv­ing which they had hon­ored when in the flesh. All this is best il­lus­trated by the pres­ent rev­er­ence of the yel­low race for their an­ces­tors. Later de­vel­op­ing prim­i­tive re­li­gion greatly re­in­forced ghost fear in sta­bi­liz­ing the mores, but ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tion has in­creas­ingly lib­er­ated man­kind from the bond­age of fear and the slav­ery of su­per­sti­tion.

• ritual developed into pseudo seance; ghosts appeared

70:7.15Se­cret so­ci­eties con­tributed to the build­ing up of so­cial castes chiefly by the mys­te­ri­ous char­ac­ter of their ini­ti­a­tions. The mem­bers of these so­ci­eties first wore masks to frighten the cu­ri­ous away from their mourn­ing rites—an­ces­tor wor­ship. Later this rit­ual de­vel­oped into a pseudo seance at which ghosts were re­puted to have ap­peared. The an­cient so­ci­eties of the “new birth” used signs and em­ployed a spe­cial se­cret lan­guage; they also for­swore cer­tain foods and drinks. They acted as night po­lice and oth­er­wise func­tioned in a wide range of so­cial ac­tiv­i­ties.

• in China › caused stagnation in China

79:6.9The Chi­nese of 15,000 B.C. were ag­gres­sive mil­i­tarists; they had not been weak­ened by an over­rev­er­ence for the past, and num­ber­ing less than twelve mil­lion, they formed a com­pact body speak­ing a com­mon lan­guage. Dur­ing this age they built up a real na­tion, much more united and ho­mo­ge­neous than their po­lit­i­cal unions of his­toric times.

• in China
• in Europe after fall of Rome

79:8.3Con­scious­ness of past achieve­ments (some­what di­min­ished in the pres­ent), the con­ser­vatism of an over­whelm­ingly ag­ri­cul­tural peo­ple, and a well-de­vel­oped fam­ily life equaled the birth of an­ces­tor ven­er­a­tion, cul­mi­nat­ing in the cus­tom of so hon­or­ing the men of the past as to bor­der on wor­ship. A very sim­i­lar at­ti­tude pre­vailed among the white races in Eu­rope for some five hun­dred years fol­low­ing the dis­rup­tion of Greco-Ro­man civ­i­liza­tion.

• in China › caused stagnation in China

79:8.4The be­lief in, and wor­ship of, the “One Truth” as taught by Singlang­ton never en­tirely died out; but as time passed, the search for new and higher truth be­came over­shad­owed by a grow­ing ten­dency to ven­er­ate that which was al­ready es­tab­lished. Slowly the ge­nius of the yel­low race be­came di­verted from the pur­suit of the un­known to the preser­va­tion of the known. And this is the rea­son for the stag­na­tion of what had been the world’s most rapidly pro­gress­ing civ­i­liza­tion.

• in China › caused stagnation in China

79:8.7Soon de­vel­op­ments in writ­ing, to­gether with the es­tab­lish­ment of schools, con­tributed to the dis­sem­i­na­tion of knowl­edge on a pre­vi­ously un­equaled scale. But the cum­ber­some na­ture of the ideo­graphic writ­ing sys­tem placed a nu­mer­i­cal limit upon the learned classes de­spite the early ap­pear­ance of print­ing. And above all else, the pro­cess of so­cial stan­dard­iza­tion and re­li­gio-philo­sophic dogma­ti­za­tion con­tin­ued apace. The re­li­gious de­vel­op­ment of an­ces­tor ven­er­a­tion be­came fur­ther com­pli­cated by a flood of su­per­sti­tions in­volv­ing na­ture wor­ship, but lin­ger­ing ves­tiges of a real con­cept of God re­mained pre­served in the im­pe­rial wor­ship of Shang-ti.

• backward-looking

79:8.8The great weak­ness of an­ces­tor ven­er­a­tion is that it pro­motes a back­ward-look­ing phi­los­o­phy. How­ever wise it may be to glean wis­dom from the past, it is folly to re­gard the past as the ex­clu­sive source of truth. Truth is rel­a­tive and ex­pand­ing; it lives al­ways in the pres­ent, achiev­ing new ex­pres­sion in each gen­er­a­tion of men—even in each hu­man life.

• great strength is value placed upon the family

79:8.9The great strength in a ven­er­a­tion of an­ces­try is the value that such an at­ti­tude places upon the fam­ily. The amaz­ing sta­bil­ity and per­sis­tence of Chi­nese cul­ture is a con­se­quence of the paramount po­si­tion ac­corded the fam­ily, for civ­i­liza­tion is di­rectly de­pen­dent on the ef­fec­tive func­tion­ing of the fam­ily; and in China the fam­ily at­tained a so­cial im­por­tance, even a re­li­gious sig­nif­i­cance, ap­proached by few other peo­ples.

79:8.10The fil­ial de­vo­tion and fam­ily loy­alty ex­acted by the grow­ing cult of an­ces­tor wor­ship in­sured the build­ing up of su­pe­rior fam­ily re­la­tion­ships and of en­dur­ing fam­ily groups, all of which fa­cil­i­tated the fol­low­ing fac­tors in the preser­va­tion of civ­i­liza­tion:

• always fostered monogamy

83:6.3The Chaldean tribes rec­og­nized the right of a wife to im­pose a pre­mar­i­tal pledge upon her spouse not to take a sec­ond wife or con­cu­bine; both the Greeks and the Ro­mans fa­vored monog­a­mous mar­riage. An­ces­tor wor­ship has al­ways fos­tered mo­nog­amy, as has the Chris­tian er­ror of re­gard­ing mar­riage as a sacra­ment. Even the el­e­va­tion of the stan­dard of liv­ing has con­sis­tently mil­i­tated against plu­ral wives. By the time of Mi­chael’s ad­vent on Uran­tia prac­ti­cally all of the civ­i­lized world had at­tained the level of the­o­ret­i­cal mo­nog­amy. But this pas­sive mo­nog­amy did not mean that man­kind had be­come ha­bit­u­ated to the prac­tice of real pair mar­riage.

• failure to have sons viewed as supreme calamity

84:7.19An­ces­tor wor­shipers view the fail­ure to have sons as the su­preme calamity for all time and eter­nity. They de­sire above all else to have sons to of­fi­ci­ate in the post-mortem feasts, to of­fer the re­quired sac­ri­fices for the ghost’s prog­ress through spir­it­land.

• advancing ghost cult made inevitable

87:3.1The ad­vanc­ing ghost cult made an­ces­tor wor­ship in­ev­i­ta­ble since it be­came the con­nect­ing link be­tween com­mon ghosts and the higher spir­its, the evolv­ing gods. The early gods were sim­ply glo­ri­fied de­parted hu­mans.

87:3.2An­ces­tor wor­ship was orig­i­nally more of a fear than a wor­ship, but such be­liefs did def­i­nitely con­tribute to the fur­ther spread of ghost fear and wor­ship. Devo­tees of the early an­ces­tor-ghost cults even feared to yawn lest a ma­lig­nant ghost en­ter their bod­ies at such a time.

87:3.3The cus­tom of adopt­ing chil­dren was to make sure that some­one would pro­vide of­fer­ings af­ter death for the peace and prog­ress of the soul. The sav­age lived in fear of the ghosts of his fel­lows and spent his spare time plan­ning for the safe con­duct of his own ghost af­ter death.

87:3.4Most tribes in­sti­tuted an all-souls’ feast at least once a year. The Ro­mans had twelve ghost feasts and ac­com­pa­ny­ing cer­e­monies each year. Half the days of the year were ded­i­cated to some sort of cer­e­mony as­so­ci­ated with these an­cient cults. One Ro­man em­peror tried to re­form these prac­tices by re­duc­ing the num­ber of feast days to 135 a year.

87:3.5The ghost cult was in con­tin­u­ous evo­lu­tion. As ghosts were en­vi­sioned as pass­ing from the in­com­plete to the higher phase of ex­is­tence, so did the cult even­tu­ally pro­gress to the wor­ship of spir­its, and even gods. But re­gard­less of vary­ing be­liefs in more ad­vanced spir­its, all tribes and races once be­lieved in ghosts.

• regrettably persists in China, Japan, and India

92:6.20An­ces­tor wor­ship one­time con­sti­tuted a de­cided ad­vance in re­li­gious evo­lu­tion, but it is both amaz­ing and re­gret­table that this prim­i­tive con­cept per­sists in China, Japan, and In­dia amidst so much that is rel­a­tively more ad­vanced, such as Bud­dhism and Hin­duism. In the Oc­ci­dent, an­ces­tor wor­ship de­vel­oped into the ven­er­a­tion of na­tional gods and re­spect for racial heroes. In the twen­ti­eth cen­tury this hero-ven­er­at­ing na­tion­al­is­tic re­li­gion makes its ap­pear­ance in the var­i­ous rad­i­cal and na­tion­al­is­tic sec­u­larisms which char­ac­ter­ize many races and na­tions of the Oc­ci­dent. Much of this same at­ti­tude is also found in the great uni­ver­si­ties and the larger in­dus­trial com­mu­ni­ties of the En­glish-speak­ing peo­ples. Not very dif­fer­ent from these con­cepts is the idea that re­li­gion is but “a shared quest of the good life.” The “na­tional re­li­gions” are noth­ing more than a re­ver­sion to the early Ro­man em­peror wor­ship and to Shinto—wor­ship of the state in the im­pe­rial fam­ily.

• in China

94:5.7In China all of these be­liefs were later con­fused and com­pounded with the ever-grow­ing cult of an­ces­tor wor­ship. But never since the time of Singlang­ton have the Chi­nese fallen into help­less slav­ery to priestcraft. The yel­low race was the first to emerge from bar­baric bond­age into or­derly civ­i­liza­tion be­cause it was the first to achieve some mea­sure of free­dom from the ab­ject fear of the gods, not even fear­ing the ghosts of the dead as other races feared them. China met her de­feat be­cause she failed to pro­gress be­yond her early eman­ci­pa­tion from priests; she fell into an al­most equally calami­tous er­ror, the wor­ship of an­ces­tors.

• in China › Confucius established respect for ancestral conduct

94:6.9Con­fu­cius (Kung Fu-tze) was a younger con­tem­po­rary of Lao in sixth-cen­tury China. Con­fu­cius based his doc­trines upon the bet­ter moral tra­di­tions of the long his­tory of the yel­low race, and he was also some­what in­flu­enced by the lin­ger­ing tra­di­tions of the Salem mis­sion­ar­ies. His chief work con­sisted in the com­pi­la­tion of the wise say­ings of an­cient philoso­phers. He was a re­jected teacher dur­ing his life­time, but his writ­ings and teach­ings have ever since ex­erted a great in­flu­ence in China and Japan. Con­fu­cius set a new pace for the shamans in that he put moral­ity in the place of magic. But he built too well; he made a new fe­tish out of or­der and es­tab­lished a re­spect for an­ces­tral con­duct that is still ven­er­ated by the Chi­nese at the time of this writ­ing.

• Buddhism amalgamated with

94:11.1Bud­dhism en­tered China in the first mil­len­nium af­ter Christ, and it fit­ted well into the re­li­gious cus­toms of the yel­low race. In an­ces­tor wor­ship they had long prayed to the dead; now they could also pray for them. Bud­dhism soon amal­ga­mated with the lin­ger­ing rit­u­al­is­tic prac­tices of dis­in­te­grat­ing Tao­ism. This new syn­thetic re­li­gion with its tem­ples of wor­ship and def­i­nite re­li­gious cer­e­mo­nial soon be­came the gen­er­ally ac­cepted cult of the peo­ples of China, Ko­rea, and Japan.

• solar veneration became species of

95:2.7The Egyp­tians long be­lieved that the stars twin­kling in the night sky rep­re­sented the sur­vival of the souls of the wor­thy dead; other sur­vivors they thought were ab­sorbed into the sun. Dur­ing a cer­tain pe­riod, so­lar ven­er­a­tion be­came a species of an­ces­tor wor­ship. The slop­ing en­trance pas­sage of the great pyra­mid pointed di­rectly to­ward the Pole Star so that the soul of the king, when emerg­ing from the tomb, could go straight to the sta­tion­ary and es­tab­lished con­stel­la­tions of the fixed stars, the sup­posed abode of the kings.

• Jews tended to overhonor ancestors

140:8.14The fam­ily oc­cu­pied the very cen­ter of Je­sus’ phi­los­o­phy of life—here and here­after. He based his teach­ings about God on the fam­ily, while he sought to cor­rect the Jew­ish ten­dency to over­honor an­ces­tors. He ex­alted fam­ily life as the high­est hu­man duty but made it plain that fam­ily re­la­tion­ships must not in­ter­fere with re­li­gious obli­ga­tions. He called at­ten­tion to the fact that the fam­ily is a tem­po­ral in­sti­tu­tion; that it does not sur­vive death. Je­sus did not hes­i­tate to give up his fam­ily when the fam­ily ran counter to the Fa­ther’s will. He taught the new and larger broth­er­hood of man—the sons of God. In Je­sus’ time di­vorce prac­tices were lax in Pales­tine and through­out the Ro­man Em­pire. He re­peat­edly re­fused to lay down laws re­gard­ing mar­riage and di­vorce, but many of Je­sus’ early fol­low­ers had strong opin­ions on di­vorce and did not hes­i­tate to at­trib­ute them to him. All of the New Tes­ta­ment writ­ers held to these more strin­gent and ad­vanced ideas about di­vorce ex­cept John Mark.