Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 5, 2025
Spiritual means of education, however, are always more effective than physical, if designed and applied with sufficient wisdom. The bull-roarer, of which something has been already said, furnishes the ceremonies with a background of awe.
Captain Bourke also discovered that the Apaches, like the Greeks, Australians, Africans, Maoris, and many other, races, use the bull-roarer, turndun, or rhombos a piece of wood which, being whirled round, causes a strange windy roar in their mystic ceremonies. The wide use of the rhombos was known to Captain Bourke; that of the crystal was not. For the Iroquois, Mrs.
In the Binbinga tribe, on the western coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria, the women and children believe that the noise of the bull-roarer at initiation is made by a spirit named Katajalina, who lives in an ant-hill and comes out and eats up the boy, afterwards restoring him to life.
If we find the bull-roarer used in the mysteries of the most civilised of ancient peoples, the most probable explanation is, that the Greeks retained both the mysteries, the bull-roarer, the habit of bedaubing the initiate, the torturing of boys, the sacred obscenities, the antics with serpents, the dances, and the like, from the time when their ancestors were in the savage condition.
One can readily believe that the New Zealand bull-roarer may be whirled by any man who is repeating a Karakia, or 'charm to raise the wind': Loud wind, Lasting wind, Violent whistling wind, Dig up the calm reposing sky, Come, come.
And we only infer that the myth of Cronus was originally evolved by persons also in the savage intellectual condition. The survival we explain as, in a previous essay, we explained the survival of the bull-roarer by the conservatism of the religious instinct.
The men, on the other hand, erect and naked, with their hands on their foreheads, crossed the taboo-line at once. It was the summons to all who had been initiated at the mysteries the sacred bull-roarer was calling the assembly of the men of Boupari. For several minutes it buzzed and droned, that mystic implement, growing louder and louder, till it roared like thunder.
We do not learn, however, that women in Zuni are forbidden to look upon the bull-roarer. Finally, the South African evidence, which is supplied by letters from a correspondent of Mr. Tylor's, proves that in South Africa, too, the bull- roarer is employed to call the men to the celebration of secret functions.
The windy roaring noise made by the bull-roarer might readily be considered by savages, either as an invitation to a god who should present himself in storm, or as a proof of his being at hand. We have seen that this view was actually taken by an Australian woman.
If the traveller be a new comer, he is probably puzzled to the last degree. If he be an Englishman, country-bred, he says to himself, 'Why, that is the bull-roarer. If he knows the colony and the ways of the natives, he knows that the blacks are celebrating their tribal mysteries. The roaring noise is made to warn all women to keep out of the way.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking