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Isis was entitled lady and mistress of Buto, as Hathor was at Denderah, and as Nit was at Sais. The animal-gods shared omnipotence with those in human form. Each of the feudal divinities appropriated two companions and formed a trinity; or, as it is generally called, a triad. Often the local deity was content with one wife and one son, but often he was united to two goddesses.
When Pausanias traveled through Greece he found everywhere local cults which bore evidence of primitiveness, and obviously pertained to the clan gods of the various regions. In many cases these had been identified with old animal-gods or had been interwoven into the general later scheme and had been merged with the great gods of the developed pantheon.
In Ute theism, the ancient To-gó-äv, the first rattlesnake is the grandfather, and all the animal-gods are assigned to their relationships. Grandfather To-gó-äv, the wise, was the chief of the council, but Cĭn-aú-äv, the ancient wolf, was the chief of the clan.
Another source of myth is to be found in the sacrifice of animal-gods who are supposed to possess a secret strength. Such animal-gods are not anthropomorphized in early times. They are simply regarded as seats of vital power or mana. We must bear in mind the fact that savage man would not have been shocked by Darwinism as Bishop Wilberforce was.
All of these gods have invisible duplicates spirits and they have often visited the earth. All of the wonderful things seen in nature are done by the animal-gods. That elder life was a magic life; but the descendants of the gods are degenerate.
Animal clan-names and tribe-names, belief in kinship with animals and plants and in descent from them, exogamy, transformations, refusal to eat certain animals except ceremonially, apologies for killing them, omens derived from them, worship of animal-gods, incarnations of gods in animals, animals sacred to gods, tribal marks derived from animals all these are found in such diverse social combinations that it is impossible to infer merely from the occurrence of this or that custom the existence of the peculiar form of social organization to which the name 'totemism' proper is given above.
Totems, in their developed form, are revered, but rarely if ever worshiped. The term 'animal-gods' may mean either living animals regarded as divine, or animals believed to be the forms assumed by gods; in the latter case they may be taken to be real gods of an inferior type.
The heavenly bodies were created and their ways appointed, and when the powers and phenomena of nature are personified the personages are beasts, and all human institutions also were established by the ancient animal-gods. The ancient animals of any philosophy of this stage are found to constitute a clan or gens a body of relatives, or consanguinei with grandfathers, fathers, sons, and brothers.
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