50 I'ROCKEDItNGS 01' THE ANATOMICAL AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL 



evidently this group traces back to totemism, the stage in which an animal 

 was regarded as the ancestor of a family or tribal group, whose members 

 were called by its name ; marriage was forbidden between persons of the 

 same totem name. The flesh of the animal was taboo to all members of the 

 group except at solemn festivals when all tasted it to become imbued with 

 the ancestral virtues. Later it seems to have been held that the spirit of 

 the animal was reincarnated each generation in the head of the family or 

 group.* Totemism itself may have been founded on sympathetic magic. 

 Thus in the simplest form of sympathetic magic a man imitates what he 

 wishes to take place, he sprinkles water on a black stone, if he wishes to 

 have rain ; polishes a white or red stone, if he wishes the rain to cease and 

 the sun to shine ; shakes a branch of a tree, or makes the sound of rustling 

 if he wishes the wind to blow ; a tribe slays and buries a young man or 

 woman, and acts as if he or she were reborn in the spring, a reincarnation 

 of vigour, the whole being intended to imitate, and, therefore, to cause a 

 prosperous harvest, following on the " burial " of the seed.f So primitive 

 man would play at hunting before the real hunt began ; one of the men 

 would take the name and would imitate the cry, wear the feathers or the 

 skin of the animal, and if his imitation was successful, he would find himself 

 adopted as the regulation bear or bison or wolf of the tribal group ; the name 

 might cling to him and his family, and from the name would spring the idea 

 of ancestry and kinship. The sense of kinship with animals in general can 

 never have been remote from primitive man ; he was too near to them both 

 in his way of life and its conditions to feel exceptionally uppish towards them. 

 2. At Midsummer, on St. John's Eve the Beltane fires still flare from 

 many a hilltop in Scotland ; the Beltane bannocks are baked and lots drawn 

 for the Beltane " carlin ; " here also we have a permanent memory of the old 

 Celtic or pre-Celtic " worship " of the sun, and the sympathetic magic from 

 which the idea of a divinity in the sun may have been derived. The fire, 

 the burning wheel which was rolled down the hillside, and the sacrifice of 

 the one chosen by the lot of the cakes ; all were intended to make the sun 

 shine more vigorously, and provide an abundant store whether of game or 



*Seo Article on "Animals" in Hasting's Enrycio[>;udia of Religion and Philosophy. All the above 

 beliefs mid practices may not have been essential to "Totomism." 



Fruzer's "Golden Bough" for numerous example.-. 



