spittle

• among primitives › saliva exchange was seal of friendship

66:5.22These guard­i­ans of health also sought to in­tro­duce hand­shak­ing in sub­sti­tu­tion for saliva ex­change or blood drink­ing as a seal of per­sonal friend­ship and as a to­ken of group loy­alty. But when out from un­der the com­pelling pres­sure of the teach­ings of their su­pe­rior lead­ers, these prim­i­tive peo­ples were not slow in re­vert­ing to their for­mer health-de­stroy­ing and dis­ease-breed­ing prac­tices of ig­no­rance and su­per­sti­tion.

• among primitives › ancients would not spit into fire

69:6.4Though An­don, the dis­cov­erer of fire, avoided treat­ing it as an ob­ject of wor­ship, many of his de­scen­dants re­garded the flame as a fe­tish or as a spirit. They failed to reap the san­i­tary ben­e­fits of fire be­cause they would not burn refuse. Prim­i­tive man feared fire and al­ways sought to keep it in good hu­mor, hence the sprin­kling of in­cense. Un­der no cir­cum­stances would the an­cients spit in a fire, nor would they ever pass be­tween any­one and a burn­ing fire. Even the iron pyrites and flints used in strik­ing fire were held sa­cred by early man­kind.

• among primitives › saliva exchange was seal of friendship

70:3.7The cer­e­mony of adop­tion con­sisted in drink­ing each other’s blood. In some groups saliva was ex­changed in the place of blood drink­ing, this be­ing the an­cient ori­gin of the prac­tice of so­cial kiss­ing. And all cer­e­monies of as­so­ci­a­tion, whether mar­riage or adop­tion, were al­ways ter­mi­nated by feast­ing.

• among primitives › followed by magical formula

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.

• among primitives › became potent fetish

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.

• among primitives › always covered from fear of magic

88:5.1Since any­thing con­nected with the body could be­come a fe­tish, the ear­li­est magic had to do with hair and nails. Se­crecy at­ten­dant upon body elim­i­na­tion grew up out of fear that an en­emy might get pos­ses­sion of some­thing de­rived from the body and em­ploy it in detri­men­tal magic; all exc­reta of the body were there­fore care­fully buried. Pub­lic spit­ting was re­frained from be­cause of the fear that saliva would be used in dele­te­ri­ous magic; spit­tle was al­ways cov­ered. Even food rem­nants, cloth­ing, and or­na­ments could be­come in­stru­ments of magic. The sav­age never left any rem­nants of his meal on the ta­ble. And all this was done through fear that one’s en­e­mies might use these things in mag­i­cal rites, not from any ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the hy­gienic value of such prac­tices.

• belief in efficacy of s. as healing agent

95:2.6The su­per­sti­tions of these times are well il­lus­trated by the gen­eral be­lief in the ef­fi­cacy of spit­tle as a heal­ing agent, an idea which had its ori­gin in Egypt and spread there­from to Ara­bia and Mes­o­po­ta­mia. In the leg­endary bat­tle of Ho­rus with Set the young god lost his eye, but af­ter Set was van­quished, this eye was re­stored by the wise god Thoth, who spat upon the wound and healed it.

• Jesus mixed s. with clay; put on Josiah

164:3.8When Je­sus had spo­ken, he said to Na­than­iel and Thomas: “Let us cre­ate the sight of this blind man on this Sab­bath day that the scribes and Phar­isees may have the full oc­ca­sion which they seek for ac­cus­ing the Son of Man.” Then, stoop­ing over, he spat on the ground and mixed the clay with the spit­tle, and speak­ing of all this so that the blind man could hear, he went up to Josiah and put the clay over his sight­less eyes, say­ing: “Go, my son, wash away this clay in the pool of Siloam, and im­me­di­ately you shall re­ceive your sight.” And when Josiah had so washed in the pool of Siloam, he re­turned to his friends and fam­ily, see­ing.

• belief in efficacy of s. as healing agent

164:3.11This is one of the strangest of all the Mas­ter’s mir­a­cles. This man did not ask for heal­ing. He did not know that the Je­sus who had di­rected him to wash at Siloam, and who had prom­ised him vi­sion, was the prophet of Gal­i­lee who had preached in Je­ru­sa­lem dur­ing the feast of taber­na­cles. This man had lit­tle faith that he would re­ceive his sight, but the peo­ple of that day had great faith in the ef­fi­cacy of the spit­tle of a great or holy man; and from Je­sus’ con­ver­sa­tion with Na­than­iel and Thomas, Josiah had con­cluded that his would-be bene­fac­tor was a great man, a learned teacher or a holy prophet; ac­cord­ingly he did as Je­sus di­rected him.

• belief in efficacy of s. as healing agent

164:3.142. As the blind man had not asked for heal­ing, and since the faith he had was slight, these ma­te­rial acts were sug­gested for the pur­pose of en­cour­ag­ing him. He did be­lieve in the su­per­sti­tion of the ef­fi­cacy of spit­tle, and he knew the pool of Siloam was a semisa­cred place. But he would hardly have gone there had it not been nec­es­sary to wash away the clay of his anoint­ing. There was just enough cer­e­mony about the trans­ac­tion to in­duce him to act.

• Jesus was spat upon

184:4.1The Jew­ish law re­quired that, in the mat­ter of pass­ing the death sen­tence, there should be two ses­sions of the court. This sec­ond ses­sion was to be held on the day fol­low­ing the first, and the in­ter­ven­ing time was to be spent in fast­ing and mourn­ing by the mem­bers of the court. But these men could not await the next day for the con­fir­ma­tion of their de­ci­sion that Je­sus must die. They waited only one hour. In the mean­time Je­sus was left in the au­di­ence cham­ber in the cus­tody of the tem­ple guards, who, with the ser­vants of the high priest, amused them­selves by heap­ing ev­ery sort of in­dig­nity upon the Son of Man. They mocked him, spit upon him, and cru­elly buf­feted him. They would strike him in the face with a rod and then say, “Proph­esy to us, you the De­liv­erer, who it was that struck you.” And thus they went on for one full hour, re­vil­ing and mis­treat­ing this un­re­sist­ing man of Gal­i­lee.

• Jesus was spat upon

185:6.2Pi­late would make one last ap­peal to their pity. Be­ing afraid to defy the clamor of this mis­led mob who cried for the blood of Je­sus, he or­dered the Jew­ish guards and the Ro­man sol­diers to take Je­sus and scourge him. This was in it­self an un­just and il­le­gal pro­ce­dure since the Ro­man law pro­vided that only those con­demned to die by cru­ci­fix­ion should be thus sub­jected to scourg­ing. The guards took Je­sus into the open court­yard of the prae­to­rium for this or­deal. Though his en­e­mies did not wit­ness this scourg­ing, Pi­late did, and be­fore they had fin­ished this wicked abuse, he di­rected the scourg­ers to de­sist and in­di­cated that Je­sus should be brought to him. Be­fore the scourg­ers laid their knot­ted whips upon Je­sus as he was bound to the whip­ping post, they again put upon him the pur­ple robe, and plait­ing a crown of thorns, they placed it upon his brow. And when they had put a reed in his hand as a mock scepter, they knelt be­fore him and mocked him, say­ing, “Hail, king of the Jews!” And they spit upon him and struck him in the face with their hands. And one of them, be­fore they re­turned him to Pi­late, took the reed from his hand and struck him upon the head.