taboos

89:1.1Ob­ser­vance of a taboo was man’s ef­fort to dodge ill luck, to keep from of­fend­ing the spirit ghosts by the avoid­ance of some­thing. The taboos were at first non­re­li­gious, but they early ac­quired ghost or spirit sanc­tion, and when thus re­in­forced, they be­came law­mak­ers and in­sti­tu­tion builders. The taboo is the source of cer­e­mo­nial stan­dards and the an­ces­tor of prim­i­tive self-con­trol. It was the ear­li­est form of so­ci­etal reg­u­la­tion and for a long time the only one; it is still a ba­sic unit of the so­cial reg­u­la­tive struc­ture.

89:1.2The re­spect which these pro­hi­bi­tions com­manded in the mind of the sav­age ex­actly equaled his fear of the pow­ers who were sup­posed to en­force them. Taboos first arose be­cause of chance ex­pe­ri­ence with ill luck; later they were pro­posed by chiefs and shamans—fe­tish men who were thought to be di­rected by a spirit ghost, even by a god. The fear of spirit ret­ri­bu­tion is so great in the mind of a prim­i­tive that he some­times dies of fright when he has vi­o­lated a taboo, and this dra­matic episode enor­mously strength­ens the hold of the taboo on the minds of the sur­vivors.

89:1.3Among the ear­li­est pro­hi­bi­tions were re­stric­tions on the ap­pro­pri­a­tion of women and other prop­erty. As re­li­gion be­gan to play a larger part in the evo­lu­tion of the taboo, the ar­ti­cle rest­ing un­der ban was re­garded as un­clean, sub­se­quently as un­holy. The rec­ords of the He­brews are full of the men­tion of things clean and un­clean, holy and un­holy, but their be­liefs along these lines were far less cum­ber­some and ex­ten­sive than were those of many other peo­ples.

89:1.4The seven com­mand­ments of Dala­ma­tia and Eden, as well as the ten in­junc­tions of the He­brews, were def­i­nite taboos, all ex­pressed in the same neg­a­tive form as were the most an­cient pro­hi­bi­tions. But these newer codes were truly eman­ci­pat­ing in that they took the place of thou­sands of pre-ex­is­tent taboos. And more than this, these later com­mand­ments def­i­nitely prom­ised some­thing in re­turn for obe­di­ence.

89:1.5The early food taboos orig­i­nated in fet­ish­ism and to­tem­ism. The swine was sa­cred to the Phoeni­cians, the cow to the Hin­dus. The Egyp­tian taboo on pork has been per­pet­u­ated by the He­braic and Is­lamic faiths. A vari­ant of the food taboo was the be­lief that a preg­nant woman could think so much about a cer­tain food that the child, when born, would be the echo of that food. Such viands would be taboo to the child.

89:1.6Meth­ods of eat­ing soon be­came taboo, and so orig­i­nated an­cient and mod­ern ta­ble eti­quette. Caste sys­tems and so­cial lev­els are ves­ti­gial rem­nants of olden pro­hi­bi­tions. The taboos were highly ef­fec­tive in or­ga­niz­ing so­ci­ety, but they were ter­ri­bly bur­den­some; the neg­a­tive-ban sys­tem not only main­tained use­ful and con­struc­tive reg­u­la­tions but also ob­so­lete, out­worn, and use­less taboos.

89:1.7There would, how­ever, be no civ­i­lized so­ci­ety to sit in crit­i­cism upon prim­i­tive man ex­cept for these far-flung and mul­ti­far­i­ous taboos, and the taboo would never have en­dured but for the up­hold­ing sanc­tions of prim­i­tive re­li­gion. Many of the es­sen­tial fac­tors in man’s evo­lu­tion have been highly ex­pen­sive, have cost vast trea­sure in ef­fort, sac­ri­fice, and self-de­nial, but these achieve­ments of self-con­trol were the real rungs on which man climbed civ­i­liza­tion’s as­cend­ing lad­der.

90:3.84. Sin—pun­ish­ment for taboo vi­o­la­tion. In com­par­a­tively re­cent times it has been be­lieved that sick­ness is a pun­ish­ment for sin, per­sonal or racial. Among peo­ples travers­ing this level of evo­lu­tion the pre­vail­ing the­ory is that one can­not be af­flicted un­less one has vi­o­lated a taboo. To re­gard sick­ness and suf­fer­ing as “ar­rows of the Al­mighty within them” is typ­i­cal of such be­liefs. The Chi­nese and Mes­o­po­ta­mi­ans long re­garded dis­ease as the re­sult of the ac­tion of evil demons, al­though the Chaldeans also looked upon the stars as the cause of suf­fer­ing. This the­ory of dis­ease as a con­se­quence of di­vine wrath is still preva­lent among many re­put­edly civ­i­lized groups of Uran­tians.

70:11.5Self-in­ter­est es­tab­lished the taboo on killing, so­ci­ety sanc­ti­fied it as tra­di­tional mores, while re­li­gion con­se­crated the cus­tom as moral law, and thus did all three con­spire in ren­der­ing hu­man life more safe and sa­cred. So­ci­ety could not have held to­gether dur­ing early times had not rights had the sanc­tion of re­li­gion; su­per­sti­tion was the moral and so­cial po­lice force of the long evo­lu­tion­ary ages. The an­cients all claimed that their olden laws, the taboos, had been given to their an­ces­tors by the gods.

69:0.3Civ­i­lized man takes great pride in the char­ac­ter, sta­bil­ity, and con­ti­nu­ity of his es­tab­lished in­sti­tu­tions, but all hu­man in­sti­tu­tions are merely the ac­cu­mu­lated mores of the past as they have been con­served by taboos and dig­ni­fied by re­li­gion. Such lega­cies be­come tra­di­tions, and tra­di­tions ul­ti­mately meta­mor­phose into con­ven­tions.

69:9.13Pri­vate prop­erty was early marked by fam­ily in­signia, and this is the early ori­gin of fam­ily crests. Real es­tate could also be put un­der the watch­care of spir­its. The priests would “con­se­crate” a piece of land, and it would then rest un­der the pro­tec­tion of the magic taboos erected thereon. Own­ers thereof were said to have a “priest’s ti­tle.” The He­brews had great re­spect for these fam­ily land­marks: “Cursed be he who re­moves his neigh­bor’s land­mark.” These stone mark­ers bore the priest’s ini­tials. Even trees, when ini­tialed, be­came pri­vate prop­erty.

69:1.31. The in­sti­tu­tions of self-main­te­nance. These in­sti­tu­tions em­brace those prac­tices grow­ing out of food hunger and its as­so­ci­ated in­stincts of self-preser­va­tion. They in­clude in­dus­try, prop­erty, war for gain, and all the reg­u­la­tive ma­chin­ery of so­ci­ety. Sooner or later the fear in­stinct fos­ters the es­tab­lish­ment of these in­sti­tu­tions of sur­vival by means of taboo, con­ven­tion, and re­li­gious sanc­tion. But fear, ig­no­rance, and su­per­sti­tion have played a promi­nent part in the early ori­gin and sub­se­quent de­vel­op­ment of all hu­man in­sti­tu­tions.

70:11.2Law is al­ways at first neg­a­tive and pro­hibitive; in ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tions it be­comes in­creas­ingly pos­i­tive and di­rec­tive. Early so­ci­ety op­er­ated neg­a­tively, grant­ing the in­di­vid­ual the right to live by im­pos­ing upon all oth­ers the com­mand, “you shall not kill.” Ev­ery grant of rights or lib­erty to the in­di­vid­ual in­volves cur­tail­ment of the lib­er­ties of all oth­ers, and this is ef­fected by the taboo, prim­i­tive law. The whole idea of the taboo is in­her­ently neg­a­tive, for prim­i­tive so­ci­ety was wholly neg­a­tive in its or­ga­ni­za­tion, and the early ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice con­sisted in the en­force­ment of the taboos. But orig­i­nally these laws ap­plied only to fel­low tribes­men, as is il­lus­trated by the later-day He­brews, who had a dif­fer­ent code of ethics for deal­ing with the gen­tiles.

196:2.9Je­sus led men to feel at home in the world; he de­liv­ered them from the slav­ery of taboo and taught them that the world was not fun­da­men­tally evil. He did not long to es­cape from his earthly life; he mas­tered a tech­nique of ac­cept­ably do­ing the Fa­ther’s will while in the flesh. He at­tained an ide­al­is­tic re­li­gious life in the very midst of a re­al­is­tic world. Je­sus did not share Paul’s pes­simistic view of hu­mankind. The Mas­ter looked upon men as the sons of God and fore­saw a mag­nif­i­cent and eter­nal fu­ture for those who chose sur­vival. He was not a moral skep­tic; he viewed man pos­i­tively, not neg­a­tively. He saw most men as weak rather than wicked, more dis­traught than de­praved. But no mat­ter what their sta­tus, they were all God’s chil­dren and his breth­ren.

89:2.4The ha­bit­ual vi­o­la­tion of a taboo be­came a vice; prim­i­tive law made vice a crime; re­li­gion made it a sin. Among the early tribes the vi­o­la­tion of a taboo was a com­bined crime and sin. Com­mu­nity calamity was al­ways re­garded as pun­ish­ment for tribal sin. To those who be­lieved that pros­per­ity and righ­teous­ness went to­gether, the ap­par­ent pros­per­ity of the wicked oc­ca­sioned so much worry that it was nec­es­sary to in­vent hells for the pun­ish­ment of taboo vi­o­la­tors; the num­bers of these places of fu­ture pun­ish­ment have var­ied from one to five.

• twins

68:6.8The early races of­ten re­sorted to prac­tices de­signed to re­strict pop­u­la­tion; all prim­i­tive tribes killed de­formed and sickly chil­dren. Girl ba­bies were fre­quently killed be­fore the times of wife pur­chase. Chil­dren were some­times stran­gled at birth, but the fa­vorite method was ex­po­sure. The fa­ther of twins usu­ally in­sisted that one be killed since mul­ti­ple births were be­lieved to be caused ei­ther by magic or by in­fi­delity. As a rule, how­ever, twins of the same sex were spared. While these taboos on twins were once well-nigh uni­ver­sal, they were never a part of the An­don­ite mores; these peo­ples al­ways re­garded twins as omens of good luck.

82:2.1The story of the evo­lu­tion of mar­riage is sim­ply the his­tory of sex con­trol through the pres­sure of so­cial, re­li­gious, and civil re­stric­tions. Na­ture hardly rec­og­nizes in­di­vid­u­als; it takes no cog­nizance of so-called morals; it is only and ex­clu­sively in­ter­ested in the re­pro­duc­tion of the species. Na­ture com­pellingly in­sists on re­pro­duc­tion but in­dif­fer­ently leaves the con­se­quen­tial prob­lems to be solved by so­ci­ety, thus cre­at­ing an ever-pres­ent and ma­jor prob­lem for evo­lu­tion­ary man­kind. This so­cial con­flict con­sists in the un­end­ing war be­tween ba­sic in­stincts and evolv­ing ethics.

82:2.2Among the early races there was lit­tle or no reg­u­la­tion of the re­la­tions of the sexes. Be­cause of this sex li­cense, no pros­ti­tu­tion ex­isted. To­day, the Pyg­mies and other back­ward groups have no mar­riage in­sti­tu­tion; a study of these peo­ples re­veals the sim­ple mat­ing cus­toms fol­lowed by prim­i­tive races. But all an­cient peo­ples should al­ways be stud­ied and judged in the light of the moral stan­dards of the mores of their own times.

82:2.3Free love, how­ever, has never been in good stand­ing above the scale of rank sav­agery. The mo­ment so­ci­etal groups be­gan to form, mar­riage codes and mar­i­tal re­stric­tions be­gan to de­velop. Mat­ing has thus pro­gressed through a mul­ti­tude of tran­si­tions from a state of al­most com­plete sex li­cense to the twen­ti­eth-cen­tury stan­dards of rel­a­tively com­plete sex re­stric­tion.

82:2.4In the ear­li­est stages of tribal de­vel­op­ment the mores and re­stric­tive taboos were very crude, but they did keep the sexes apart—this fa­vored quiet, or­der, and in­dus­try—and the long evo­lu­tion of mar­riage and the home had be­gun. The sex cus­toms of dress, adorn­ment, and re­li­gious prac­tices had their ori­gin in these early taboos which de­fined the range of sex lib­er­ties and thus even­tu­ally cre­ated con­cepts of vice, crime, and sin. But it was long the prac­tice to sus­pend all sex reg­u­la­tions on high fes­ti­val days, es­pe­cially May Day.

82:2.5Women have al­ways been sub­ject to more re­stric­tive taboos than men. The early mores granted the same de­gree of sex lib­erty to un­mar­ried women as to men, but it has al­ways been re­quired of wives that they be faith­ful to their hus­bands. Prim­i­tive mar­riage did not much cur­tail man’s sex lib­er­ties, but it did ren­der fur­ther sex li­cense taboo to the wife. Mar­ried women have al­ways borne some mark which set them apart as a class by them­selves, such as hair­dress, cloth­ing, veil, seclu­sion, or­na­men­ta­tion, and rings.

• sex and marriage

82:5.2While the in­breed­ing of good stock some­times re­sulted in the up­build­ing of strong tribes, the spec­tac­u­lar cases of the bad re­sults of the in­breed­ing of hered­i­tary de­fec­tives more forcibly im­pressed the mind of man, with the re­sult that the ad­vanc­ing mores in­creas­ingly for­mu­lated taboos against all mar­riages among near rel­a­tives.

• eating pork

84:4.8The so-called mod­esty of women re­spect­ing their cloth­ing and the ex­po­sure of the per­son grew out of the deadly fear of be­ing ob­served at the time of a men­strual pe­riod. To be thus de­tected was a griev­ous sin, the vi­o­la­tion of a taboo. Un­der the mores of olden times, ev­ery woman, from ado­les­cence to the end of the child­bear­ing pe­riod, was sub­jected to com­plete fam­ily and so­cial quar­an­tine one full week each month. Ev­ery­thing she might touch, sit upon, or lie upon was “de­filed.” It was for long the cus­tom to bru­tally beat a girl af­ter each monthly pe­riod in an ef­fort to drive the evil spirit out of her body. But when a woman passed be­yond the child­bear­ing age, she was usu­ally treated more con­sid­er­ately, be­ing ac­corded more rights and priv­i­leges. In view of all this it was not strange that women were looked down upon. Even the Greeks held the men­stru­at­ing woman as one of the three great causes of de­file­ment, the other two be­ing pork and gar­lic.