United States or Slovenia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
One woman believed she had heard Pundjel, the chief supernatural being, descend in a mighty rushing noise, that is, in the sound of the turndun, when boys were being 'made men, or initiated. On turnduns the Australian sorcerers can fly up to heaven. Turnduns carved with imitations of water- flowers are used by medicine-men in rain-making.
Again, traces of human sacrifice appear in the ritual of Israel, and it is only relatively late that the great prophets, justly declaring Jehovah to be indifferent to the blood of bulls and rams, try to bring back his service to that of the unpropitiated, unbought Dendid, or Ahone, or Pundjel. Here is degeneration, even in Israel.
We rebel against this kind of logic, and persist in studying the myth in itself and in comparison with analogous myths in every accessible language. Certainly, if divine and heroic names Artemis or Pundjel can be interpreted, so much is gained. But the myth may be older than the name. As Mr. Hogarth points out, Alexander has inherited in the remote East the myths of early legendary heroes.
The danger which we incur, it seems, is ignorance of the original sense of savage or barbaric divine or heroic names say, Maui, or Yehl, or Huitzilopochhtli, or Heitsi Eibib, or Pundjel. By Mr. Max Muller's system such names are old words, of meanings long ago generally lost by the speakers of each language, but analysable by 'true scholars' into their original significance.
To make a nation, several tribes must unite. Each has its god, and the nation is apt to receive them all, equally, into its Pantheon. Thus, if worshippers of Baiame, Pundjel, and Darumulun coalesced into a nation, we might find all three gods living together in a new polytheism.
Word Of The Day