136 BULLETIN 139, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



monials have attained some complexity, make use of this feature of 

 the fire cult, and below this grade of culture individual or family acts 

 of worship often show the employment of incense or fire offerings. 



While fire may be primary in regard to the origin of the idea of 

 incense, it became secondary as applied to advancing cults; that is, 

 offerings were not confined to the communal house or camp fire, but 

 were made on special hearths or in special apparatus. Nevertheless, 

 no incense was so offered that was not ignited from a sacred fire; 

 that is, one carefully prepared to insure purity, and secured from the 

 ancient wood drill, from lightning, lens, mirror, or other consecrated 

 or supernatural som'ce. New fii'e is kindled by the Lacandones of 

 Chiapas by wood friction for use in consecrating censers and igniting 

 copal biu'ned at that time. 



The new fire is thought by the Lacandones to be efficacious in heal- 

 ing sickness, the soot collection on palm leaves being the common 

 method, but a stone heated in the fire and used to w^arm water renders 

 the latter a panacea for fever. 



The phenomena which accompany combustion are so familiar that 

 the man of our times passes over the marvel of smoke, flame, and 

 ashes without analysis or comment. To the man of a certain stage 

 of advancement we may suppose that the wonder of the birth, life, 

 and death of fire was a vivid reality ; it is evident from a survey of 

 the widespread remnants of the fire cult that the steps of this mys- 

 terious physical manifestation impressed his mind, determined an 

 attitude (creed), and predicted a course of action (cult) in consonance 

 with the observed facts of fire action. 



The lore of smoke is extensive, embracing individual acts and col- 

 lective acts relating to fumigations both sacred and profane. The 

 ideas relative to the purification, healing, scaring of demons, remov- 

 ing of evil influences, etc., effected by smoke have been in the minds 

 of votaries of fire worship in diverse countries and periods, and it is 

 even probable that fumigations alluded to by Shakespeare in Much 

 Ado About Nothing, where a perfumer is ordered to smoke a musty 

 room, or when in The Taming of The Shrew the command is given 

 "And burn sweet wood to make the lodging sweet," there was also 

 involved some antique belief in dispelling bad influences which may 

 be classed as primitive sanitation. 



The use of smoke in worship, however, seems to have arisen from 

 the observation that this ghostly element of combustion dissolved in 

 the air, thus supplying a messenger to the unseen. It must not be 

 forgotten also that to unspoiled senses the odor of smoke would be 

 strikingly pungent and perhaps the most remarkable attribute of fire, 

 a potent and far-reaching means of calling the attention of super- 

 natural beings, propitiating or frightening them. The Homeric and 

 Jewish idea was that a sweet savor was pleasing to divinity, and 



