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Updated: May 27, 2025
Frazer's remarks on individual totems in his book on totemism: "An Australian seems usually to get his individual totem by dreaming that he has been transformed into an animal of that species." "In America the individual totem is usually the first animal of which a youth dreams during the long and generally solitary fast which American Indians observe at puberty."
In all these cases the simple clan system is reduced to small proportions, and totemism loses its social significance. +539+. Religious conditions. The personal guardian spirit and the totem, when it assumes this character, sometimes receive worship they are treated as gods. But their rôle as divinities is of an inferior nature, and it does not last long.
In this connection we cannot help thinking of the sacred animals of the Egyptian nomes; and the question may be asked whether such animals must be taken to be in Greece also the signs of a primitive totemism? Of the tree-worship of Greece much has been written of late.
We may, however, distinguish between social conditions in connection with which some sort of totemism flourishes and those under which it is nonexistent or feeble; we may thus note unfavorable and, by contrast, favorable general accompaniments. These may be roughly described as economic, individualistic, political, and religious. +523+. Economic conditions.
They take their place as part of the general worship of the forces of nature, and follow all the variations of human culture. +421+. Totemism and taboo are both of them intimately connected with the history of early religion, but in different ways.
The prevalence of the belief in a Supreme Being must also tend to prevent the development of totemism. Plants It is not clear that any other plants are regarded as be-souled; but we mention here certain customs in connection with some of them that seem to point in that direction. The SILAT, a common jungle palm, figures most prominently in rites and beliefs of the Kayans.
'Cupid and Psyche' traces another Aryan myth among savage races, and attempts to show that the myth may have had its origin in a rule of barbarous etiquette. 'A Far-travelled Tale' examines a part of the Jason myth. 'Apollo and the Mouse' suggests hypothetically, as a possible explanation of the tie between the God and the Beast, that Apollo-worship superseded, but did not eradicate, Totemism.
But totemism is a fact, whether 'totem' originally meant a clan-mark or sign-board in America or not. And, like Mr. Sayce, Mr. Frazer, Mr. Rhys, Dr. Robertson Smith, I believe that totemism has left marks in civilised myth, ritual, and religion, and that these survivals, not a 'disease of language, explain certain odd elements in the old civilisations. A Weak Brother
Similarly, the orthodox Jew of our time still persists in salting the meat before cooking, a process which is intended to remove the blood, which is the portion of the Gods. The reason that the pious Jew abstains from pork leads to the consideration of Totemism as found in the Old Testament. Totemism is a kind of worship rendered to animals and vegetables considered as allied and related to man.
Max Muller had conceivably misapprehended Mr. Frazer's theory of the origin of totems. Then came into my mind the words of Professor Tiele, 'Beware of weak brethren' such as Herr Lippert seems, as far as this definition is concerned, to be. Nobody knows the origin of totemism. We find no race on its way to becoming totemistic, though we find several in the way of ceasing to be so.
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