[p.59]

THE NATURAL GENESIS

SECTION 2

NATURAL GENESIS AND TYPOLOGY OF PRIMITIVE CUSTOMS

(The symbolical and superstitious phases of customs once primitive can only be explained by means of the natural genesis.)

[p.67] The totemic type, whether as leopard, alligator, serpent, bull, dog, or others, stood for the general ancestor of the tem and ankh long before the individual fatherhood was known. Hence the style of 'grandfather,' or old one, conferred on the crocodile, and 'uncle' on the bear.

'They say, moreover, that all the animals of each species have an elder brother, who is as it were the principal and origin of all the individuals, and this elder brother is marvellously great and powerful. The elder brother of the beavers, they told me, is perhaps as large as our cabin.'[28] Here the big elder brother was the human archetype.

Totemic signs served for various purposes of social intercourse The Magar tribes of India are divided into totemic sections, and the law is that no two members of the same section may intermarry. These sections are the 'thums.'

With the Tsimsheen Indians of British Columbia who are temmed, divided into totems, and have their 'crests' of the whale, tortoise, frog, eagle, wolf, and other types, the relationship of the 'crest' is nearer and dearer than that of blood or any other tie which we may consider near; and it dominates that of the tribe. Members of the tribe may intermarry, but not the bearers of the same crest[29].

Those of the same totem are not allowed to marry under any circumstances; that is, a whale must not marry a whale, nor a frog unite with a frog[30]. So is it with the Tinneh Indians, and if a man should defy the law and marry a woman of the same totem he is laughed at and ridiculed as the man who has married his sister, even though she may not have the slightest connection by blood, and has come from a totally different tribe[31]. So is it still with the Somali of East Africa[32].

The Munnieporees and other tribes round Munniepore are each and all divided into four families, the Koomrul, Looang, Ankom, and Ningthaja. A member of any of these families may marry a member of any other, but the intermarriage of the members of the same family is strictly prohibited[33].

The totemic name still implied an original totemic relationship. And this continued dominant after men were known by the individual surname. The Ostiaks held it to be a crime to marry a woman of the same surname[34]; that likewise implied, as it had carried on, the totemic name still known with us by the heraldic type. In China marriage between those of the same surname is unlawful, and this rule includes all descendants of the male branch for ever[35].

The first formation of society recognizable is the division into two totems. [p.68] The Aborigines on the river Darling, New South Wales, are still divided into the two castes or totems of the earliest separation, which are rigidly preserved, and the children still follow the rank of the mother[36]. This is the oldest social formation on earth, the very bifurcation of the promiscuous herd.

Among the North American Indians the Chocta gentes were united in two phratries, and the first phratry was called the divided people. The second was the 'beloved people.'[37] These two brotherhoods were subdivided into eight totemic tribes, for breeding purposes. Here we meet by name with those who were distinguished as the 'divided ones.' Nor is this an uncommon type of name. The 'beloved,' apparently, indicates the sexual purpose of the earliest division.

A tradition of the Senecas affirms that the bear and the deer were the original two totems, of which the eight (gentes), bear, wolf, beaver, turtle, and deer, snipe, heron, and hawk, composing the two brotherhoods of the Seneca-Iroquois, were subdivisions.

The Kamilaroi were organised in two primary totems, which are subdivided into eight groups from the most archaic form of society hitherto known. These two, male and female, are—

All the Ippais of whatever gens are brothers to each other and are theoretically descended from one common female ancestor. The Kumbos, Murris, and Kubbis are the same respectively, for the same reason.

 If any Kubbi meets an Ippata he can treat her as his goleer or spouse. And so of the others according to the name.

'Ippai' begets 'Murri' and 'Murri' in turn begets 'Ippai;' in like manner 'Kapota' begets 'Mata,' and 'Mata' in turn begets 'Kapota,' so that the grandchildren of 'Ippai' and 'Kapota' are themselves 'Ippais' and 'Kapotas,' as well as collateral brothers and sisters, and as such are born husbands and wives[38].

The two totems are those of the iguana and the emu, both feminine symbols. 'Iguana-Mata' must marry 'Kumbo;' her [p.69] children are 'Kubbi' and 'Kapota,' and necessarily iguana in gens, because descent is in the female line.

In like manner, 'Emu-Buta' must marry 'Murri;' her children are 'Ippai' and 'Ippata,' and of the emu gens. 'Emu-Ippata' must marry 'Kubbi;' her children are 'Kumbo' and 'Buta,' and also of the emu gens.

By following out these descents it will be seen that in the female line Kapota is the mother of Mata, and Mata, in turn, the mother of Kapota. Ippata is the mother of Buta, and Buta the mother of Ippata; and thus return is for ever made to the dual feminine ancestry! The tem is maintained by keeping in its membership the children of all its female members, and each tem is made up theoretically of the descendants of the 'two women' of the most primitive sociology; the two sisters of mythology who were two forms of the mother, whose children were first divided and distinguished from those that lived in the state of primal promiscuity. This is shown by the two feminine types of the two totems, the emu (bird) and iguana (reptile). The bird is the type of the woman above, the mother heaven; the reptile of the woman below, the bringer-forth from the abyss, as the crocodile (Typhon) or dragon (Tiamat) of the waters. This elaborate-looking device is but the result of the uttermost simplicity, working within the narrowest limits.*

* The two primary divisions and the later eight are also extant on the Gold Coast.

The first division and the cause of it can be ascertained. The Kamilaroi eight tribes of the original two totems declare that they all descend from 'two women.' Now, the mother was the first individual recognised, and mythology says the next was the sister. The two sisters of our sociology were the two female ancestors of the Australians.

The earliest tie perceived was uterine; the next was that of the blood relationship; and the two sisters of one blood were the primary cause of dividing the offspring into the two first totemic castes. Hence the descent from the two women, whose signs of the iguana and emu distinguished the earliest separate groups. The two women were the mother and her sister, and the two castes were cousins, who at first might intermarry.

The totemic heroes of the Caribs, in the West Indian Islands, were seen by them in the figures of the constellations! The clan, gens, or tem being represented by the star-group, we see the later link of connection between the individual soul and the star. The star and soul are identical as Seb (Eg.); this identity is common with various races, and as the star and soul have the same name, this may account for the notion with which the Fijians are credited, that shooting-stars are souls of the departed. Each starry family was composed of individual stars.

[p.70] The Hottentots, in blessing or cursing, will say, 'May good or evil fortune fall on you from the star of my grandfather!'[39] This was a totemic type, however, before it signified a translated soul. The twelve signs of the zodiac are totemic with the Chinese. These are—

The twelve signs are likewise represented by or in connection with the Chinese horary of twelve hours.

Each of the animals is still recognised as a totem, and they are all believed to exert a great influence on the lives of persons, according to the hour and its special sign under which they were born.

Star-totems were in use among the ancient Peruvians. Acosta describes the people as venerating the celestial archetypes of certain animals and birds found on earth. It appeared to him that the people were drawing towards the dogmas of the Platonic ideas[40]. Speaking of these star-deities he says, the shepherds looked up to a certain constellation called the sheep, and the star called the tiger protected them from tigers. His theory is that they believed there was an archetype in heaven of every likeness found on the earth in the animal shape. This was the Platonisation of the starry hieroglyphics, the archetypes of which were found on earth, and the types that had been configurated in the heavens for totemic signs; these being reflected back again in the minds of men; and this platonisation of mythology is the ground-rootage of Plato's system of celestial archetypes carried out in the region of more abstract thought. It is but a step from the celestial to the spirit world. The origins, however, are visible and physical, although the earlier type is employed to convey a later significance. We have to take the prior step from the natural animal to the celestial, and also to read the thoughts and things of earth at times by means of the imagery stelled in the heavens.

The chief totemic signs of the North American Indians are to be found in the heavens, ranging from the Great Bear to the stone of the Oneidas (the stone or tser rock in Egyptian), but the Indians did not figure them there as constellations. These are the eternal witnesses above to the Kamite origin of mythological typology.

It has already been suggested that the first mapping out of localities was celestial before the chart was geographically applied, and that all common naming on earth came from one common naming of the heavens, commencing with the Great Bear and Dog. The mapping out of Egyptian localities, according to the [p.71] celestial nomes and scenery, is described in the Inscription of Khnum­hept, who is said to have 'established the landmark of the south, and sculptured the northern—like the heaven. He stretched the Great River on its back. He made the district in its two parts, setting up their landmarks like the heaven.'[41]

It is said that: 'Thebes is a Heaven upon earth. It is the august staircase of the beginning of time.'[42] Thebes is teb or apt, the birthplace, and the mother of birth, first personified in the abyss; next in the heaven of the Great Bear, and lastly as Apta in the solar zodiac.

The twelve signs of the zodiac were the twelve totems of the Hebrew tems. The system was full-blown under another type in the Kabbalistic Tree of the World, with its seventy two branches corresponding to the seventy two duo-decans of the zodiac.

The tree of seventy two branches, as the figure of the seventy two duo-decans, is of Egyptian origin.

They use the ape (aan), says Horapollo[43], 'to symbolize the world, because they hold that there are seventy two primitive countries of the world.' This world was in the heavens, where the station of the ape was at the equinox, the point of completion. The stars were totemic with the ancient Arab tribes. Jupiter was the star of the Jôdam and Lakhm tribes; Mercury of the Asad tribe; Sirius of the Kais tribe; Canopus of the Tay tribe. Others recognised constellations as totemic types. From these we come at last to the ruling planet and the individual's guiding star. These things did not begin with any vague general worship of the heavenly host. The God of Sabaoth is the deity of the Seven Stars, not of Argelander's map of millions, or the diamondiferous dark. Those stars were observed and honoured by which time could be reckoned, and position in space determined. The constellations were figured for use, the types were made totemic, and became fetishtic; but, the non-evolutionist who looks on fetishism as a primeval religion degraded to idolatry, might just as well look on the black race as a very discoloured or dirty kind of white. He has to be forced backward step by step with face set all the while the clean contrary way. Fetishism began with typology, and both mythology and religion were the outcome, not the origin.

A very comprehensive designation for the divinities of all kinds, says Gill[44], is the Mangaian 'te anau tuarangi,' the heavenly family. This 'celestial race includes rats, lizards, beetles, sharks, and several kinds of birds. The supposition was that the heavenly family had taken up their abode in these birds and fishes.' All such supposition is gratuitous and European. The Mangaian mind was still in the symbolic stage, and these animals were all types. The animals [p.72] are still named in heaven, and the stars are hieroglyphically grouped for us as for them. The writer explains that he takes these things 'apart from mythology and symbolism.' But they cannot be taken apart; they had no other origin, and have no other meaning. What they once signified in Africa was their meaning in Polynesia, however dim in the native memory.

The mound-builders of America, particularly in Wisconsin, shaped the outlines of their enclosures in the forms of animals, birds, and serpents, which appeared on the surface of the country as huge hieroglyphics raised in enormous relief one serpent figure has been traced a thousand feet in length; this was in Adams County, Ohio. These in all likelihood were delineated as the totems of the buried dead; each daim having its own mound, where the chief or the principal male and female were interred, with the common people around.

The Acagemans of California worship the god Touch, or Tacit, who appears at times in a variety of animal forms. He is said to send to every child that enters its seventh year some animal to be its protector or guardian. In order that the child might ascertain what animal shape the protecting spirit wore, the diviners took narcotic drinks, or the child fasted and watched in the Vanquech, a sacred enclosure, beside the image of the god, looking at the figure of some animal drawn on the ground by one of the mages, until mesmerised. Then the animal seen in vision was adopted as his type or fetish figure. This was branded on his arm, and it was intended to give him a surer touch on the bowstring.*

* At the congress of 'Americanists'[45] held at Madrid in September, 1881, a Mexican savant professed to have discovered the clay bust of a god Cay or Tsaa (unless these denote two different deities) amongst other antiquities which he had exhumed at Uxmal in Central America. Near the image of the Mexican deity was an altar upon which there is a hand of iron. Was this a form of the god Touch? Touch is an Egyptian divinity named Ka or Sa. With the prefix this is teka (Eg.) to touch, attach, join together. This Egyptian Ka (still later Sa) is the deity of emblematic types; the ka image being the spiritual likeness in the future life; the double of one's self in this. These types include the mummy image, the karast, the tie-type of reproduction, and many other forms of the amulet and protective charm, the ka, sa, tesa, or feitiço. Ka, Sa or Touch, was the god of fetish images in Egypt, as was the god Touch in America.

Totemic types were not adopted without reason. The earliest two of the Kamilaroi, the iguana and emu, show the two powers of the water and air; the first two elements, like the dragon and bird, the serpent and bird, or the feathered serpent elsewhere. These manifested powers superior to the human in relation to the two elements.

Gesture-language and names show that, as the man was first distinguished by his pubescent attributes, so there were totemic types derived from ankh, the ear; ankh, the eye; ankh, the nose ankh, the mouth, the hair, the beard, the tooth; and that these were represented by the animals, birds, etc., as the ear of the jackal, [p.73] or dog; the eye of the hawk; the nose of the vulture; the claw or nail of the lion; the horn of the rhinoceros, and tooth of the bear; because they offered types of superior powers. Such types are preserved in mythology. The hawk of Horus represents sight; the sow and hippopotamus, the mouth of the genetrix Rerit; the ear of the jackal, Sut-Anup; the nose of the kaf-ape, the god of breath; the tooth of Hu, the adult.

The Kamite typology can also be traced into the domain of primitive practices which are symbolical, to be read by the hieroglyphics. Some of these strange customs and consequent superstitions originated in zoological typology, and the acting of a primitive drama according to the animal or totemic characters. Specimens of them were extant to a late period in British plays and pastimes, and survive at present in the 'pantomime.'

In the Kanuri language of Bornu (Africa), the name of the hyena is bultu, and from this is formed the verb bultungin, which signifies 'I transform myself into a hyena.' There is a town named Kabultiloa, the inhabitants of which are said to possess this faculty of transformation[46]. These doubtless originated in the hyena totem, and the donning of the hyena skin in their religious masquerade. The hyena is one of the transformers or phoenixes (the benn) in the Ritual[47].

Horapollo[48] says when the Egyptians would symbolise one that is unsettled, and that does not remain in the same state, but is sometimes strong, and at other times weak, they depict an hyena, for this creature is at times male, and at times female. This belief is still held by the Arabs. It originates in the shedding and transforming phase being considered feminine.

It was the practice at certain ceremonies, as we know from various sources, for the totemic people to masquerade in character, and appear as the typical beasts of the totem, transformed into the earliest images of the gods or prototypes. Among the North American Indians, the Buffalos wore horns, and danced as buffalos[49].

The natives of Vancouver's Island had a religious ceremony in which the performers stripped themselves naked and plunged into the water, no matter how cold the night, and crawled out again, dragging their bodies along the sand like seals; then they went into the house and crawled around the fire, and at last they transformed and sprang up to join in the 'seal-dance.'[50] They represented the seals, as the Mangaians did the crabs in character when they danced the crab-dance[51].

This transformation, and the meaning of their names, may be considered to constitute two factors of the belief in the magical powers possessed by the Munda of India for changing their shape into wild beasts at will. In these customs the symbolism is acted, and becomes [p.74] a drama of typology, scattered fragments of which are now found in the form of inexplicable superstitions and beliefs.

In writing of the Guatematlecs, old Gage[52] delivered himself on this matter thus: 'Many are deluded by the devil to believe that their life dependeth upon the life of such and such a beast (which they take unto them as their familiar spirit), and think that when that beast dieth they must die; when he is chased their hearts pant; when he is faint they are faint; nay, it happeneth that by the devil's delusion they appear in the shape of that beast.'

Plutarch[53] refers to the idea 'that the gods, being afraid of Typhon, did, as it were, hide themselves in the bodies of ibises, dogs, and hawks,' and repudiates it as 'a foolery beyond belief.' This, however, is a matter of interpretation.

We know that such representations were part of the drama of the mysteries. Many descriptions might be quoted to show that in their religious ceremonies the actors performed their masquerade in the guise of animals.

Diodorus has it that the gods were at one time hard pressed by the giants, and compelled to conceal themselves for a while under the form of animals, which in consequence became sacred[54]. In this version the giants displace Typhon, the gigantic Apophis, or dragon of the dark, as the representatives of dissolution and chaos.

The gods taking the shape of animals to oppose the typhonian powers means the typification of the timekeepers and celestial intelligencers, as the hippopotamus, dog, ape, ibis, hawk, crocodile, lion, ram, and others by the aid of which the time-cycles were made out and order was established (or the world was formed); but for which, chaos, typhonian discord, dissolution, and destruction would have prevailed for ever. The lunar goddess assumed the form of the cat as a watcher by night. Horus escapes through the nets of Typhon as a fish, or soars heavenwards as a hawk. The sun-god is seen taking the shapes of animals that represent time (Seb), and thus comes between men and chaos, or timelessness. Ra passed through the signs, and this in the language of symbol was designated his transformation into the shape of the signs.

It is not more than three or four centuries since, in England, the zodiac was called the 'bestiary.' The sun then passed through the bestiary, as he did in Egypt. In the Pool of Persea he made his transformation into the cat; in the height of his power he transformed into the lion; at one equinox into the hawk, and at the other into the phoenix, the emblem of rising again from the Hades. In the Ritual the deceased who transforms into the various animals, fishes, or birds, emphatically states that he himself is the respective intermediate type which he adopts in the process of being assimilated to the highest. He flies as a hawk, crawls as a serpent, cackles as a goose[55].

[p.75] He says, 'I establish myself for ever in my transformations that I choose,'[56] just as we say the sun passes through the signs; only their metaphors identified and did not compare the person with the type.

Herodotus was told that the Neurian wizards amongst the Scythians, settled about the Black Sea, became, each of them, a wolf for a few days once a year[57]. The Texan tribe of the Tonkaways did the same when, clothed in wolf-skins, they celebrated the resurrection of the wolf from the Hades. The head of a wolf was worn in the mysteries of Isis, because the wolf (Anup) was her warder and guardian during her search after Osiris in the underworld. The wolf, jackal, or dog, was the guide of the sun and of the souls of the dead. The station of the wolf in the Egyptian planispherei is at the place of the vernal equinox, a point of commencement where we find the double holy house of Anup. The candidate as the Loveteau of French Masonry still enters as a young wolf: also the 'wolf' that was the guide of the Great Mother and of the sun is still made use of as the 'guide' (called the wolf) in tuning the piano!

The transformation into the wolf or other animal, was no doubt connected at times with abnormal trance-conditions which are now better, but by no means sufficiently understood. In the Shetland Isles, the transformers are known as the Finns. These are sometimes human beings, and at other times seals. By means of a 'skin' the men and women are able to turn themselves into seals, like the natives of Vancouver's Island, and if the sealskin be stolen from one of the seals when it has transformed into the human figure, it is compelled to retain that shape. It was exactly the case with the swan-maidens, who, when deprived of their skin of feathers, could not retransform until they had reclothed themselves in the stolen skin.

In the far north it was the seal that supplied the typical skin which was furnished by the lion, leopard, bear, wolf cat, hyena, or cow in other regions. The seal must have been a totemic sign of those who boasted of their descent from the Finn women. It is noticeable that ven is a Cornish name for woman. Also the Phynnodderee is a Manx spirit, said to have been an outlawed fairy, whose name signifies the 'hairy one;' and in the mysteries of puberty the initiate was transformed into the hairy one, and became a Finn, or Phynnodderee, so to speak, at that period of his life, as a member of the totemic tribe.

That the Finn represents the benn (Eg.), or transformer, may be seen by the stories of transformation. When one is caught in a net, or on the line of the fishers, it begins to change and swell and swell until its bulk threatens to sink the boat; or it will cut a chip off the vessel and turn that into a boat.

The hieroglyphics show various types of transformation under this name, such as benn, the snake; benn, the palm, or phoenix-tree; [p.76] benn, the ape; benn, the phoenix-bird; benn, the hyena. We also have several kindred types in the bunnan (Irish), a crane, heron, or bittern; the finenn (Gael), a buzzard; the faing (Irish), a raven; the feannog, a royston crow; the Shetland vanega, a mythical cat and in the fainche (Irish), for the fox, we have the phoenix, or fenekh, the fox-dog type of Sut.

The Danes are said to know the man, who is a werewolf or transformer, by his eyebrows meeting, and thus resembling a butterfly; a type of the soul. The beetle, however, is the better type, and we describe such a person as beetle-browed. The flying beetle is a chafer, Egyptian khepr, and both meet in the Welsh cyfaeliawg for beetle-browed. The beetle being a special emblem of the transformer (as the god Khepra), is thus extant as the same type in the beetle-brows, and cyfl is identical by name with Khepra.

The Mexicans assigned twenty symbols, some of them animals, to the different parts of the human body as types of the ruling powers. In the Ritual in which the body of the deceased is reconstructed, he is put together again and there is not a limb of him without a god[58]. Being attached to the person of the god or assimilated to him is literally being joined to him limb by limb or piecemeal. And these types represented the parts assumed bit by bit by the deceased, in order that he might effect his total transformation. Nineteen divinities constitute the types or ruling powers in place of the twenty Mexican. 'The hair is in the shape of that of Nu,' nu being the flowing, as water; and, in Mexican, water is the symbol of the hair. So in the Indian hieroglyphic signs rain was depicted by a dot or semicircle filled with water and placed on the head. The typology is all one.

In Egypt the various types had attained the status of divinities. Nu or nupe, the celestial water bears the jar or vase on her head as the lady of heaven; and in the Peruvian mythology the lady of heaven pours out the water of heaven from the cross-shaped vase.

The deceased was transformed into these types of gods, birds, animals, as a mode of preservation during the passage of the Hades, where dwelt the destroyer and obliterator of forms. His chances or means of getting through the thicket of opposing enemies were represented by these types. He clothed himself with them as superhuman powers. He could make his way through the earth as a tortoise; through the mire as an eel; through the water as a crocodile; see in the dark as a cat; soar through the air and the fire of the sun as a hawk. The early men had no other means of expressing their thought!

This typology explains its deposits as in the belief of the Pimos and Maricopas that in a future state the several parts of the body will be changed into separate animals; the head into an owl; the [p.77]  feet into a wolf, just as it is in the Mexican and Egyptian apportionment of the parts to the presiding types, or prototypes[59]. The Moquis identify the types they will be turned into with the original animals from which they came. Others recognize in the animals the representative figures of their gods, because the gods were these prototypes of power.

The New Zealanders apportion out the body in the same manner the evil deities or powers which inflict pains, ailments and diseases on mortals[60]. This shows the earlier stage of the idea, when the actual physical pains were the powers represented as a sort of ghosts or demons. It was simply a mode of expression.

The system of thought and manner of representation are one wherever found, and had their first origin in expressing ideas by means of external things; the animals, fishes, and birds being the ideographs in living forms; and the art of representing personifying, and imitating these, remained amongst the earliest races, even as it existed before the art of drawing figures had been discovered; and this form and mode of portrayal was continued by the Christians. It survived in the mysteries and has descended to us in the Christmas pantomime—the supreme feature of which is still the scene and act of transformation from the animal shapes into the human or divine.

In the primitive masquerade the performers clothed themselves as animals, so in various other practices they acted like them, and thus preserved the earliest natural customs in the later symbolical phase, which was continued after the link in the chain of descent had been lost.

The Maori custom of Hongi, and the Malay Chium, is a mode of saluting by rubbing or touching noses and smelling, breathing, and sniffing each other; a practice known also to the Fijians, Eskimos, Laps, Africans, Chinese, and other races. In Zulu Kaffir nuka-nuka is to discover by the sense of smell. In Maori the word Hongi means to smell, sniff, salute, by touching noses. We have now the means of reading this ideographic custom. The nose is an organ of the breath, which is the ankh (Eg.) or life. Ankh as a word is equivalent to 'live,' an expression which is used by some races when one sneezes, as a formula for sneezing.

The inner African 'nge' is a type-word of the whole world of language. Ma-hungoa in Basa; me nueg in Anan means 'I breathe.' Nga in Maori signifies to breathe; wakanga to make or take breath. Ang in the Yarra (Aust.) dialect denotes breathing. In Egyptian 'ankh' means life, living, and certain organs of life.

Ankh-uta-snab was the salutation to the Ra; it was their 'Long [p.78] live the King.' It means 'Health and long life to you!' More briefly, ankh is 'life,' of which breathing or sniffing was the sign, the Hongi.

The word nge, which is breath or life in Maori; ponga-ponga being the nostrils, is used by the Zulus to express a wish or desire, whilst huh in Barba (African), and nkowu in Pati, signify 'I love thee,' anka in Xhosa Kaffir denotes kissing. Breathing, smelling, and coupling were the earlier modes of demonstrating affection and desire.

The evocation expressed by wishing 'life' is enacted in the touch of noses. This is a most primitive gesture-sign that would serve several purposes before speech had been formulated. It goes back to an animal mode of saluting by smelling. The primitive man was led by the nose. The first appeal made by external nature is to the sense of smell. It has been demonstrated that if the olfactory nerves of a puppy are destroyed it will not learn to suck, and that the action of sucking is excited through the sense of smell.*

* The present writer, however, would rather not have known the fact than that the dog should have been vivisected to prove it[61].

'Think'st thou to breath me upon trust?' asks the woman in Heywood's play[62]. To breath or breathe was also synonymous with to smell under one word, connected with more than one organ, and here it signifies futuere.

The Maoris, Australians, Papuans, Eskimo, and others would seem to have gone out from the African birth-place before kissing was discovered and adopted as a natural language of affection, for some African races, the Somali, for example, do not kiss.

Doubtless, the custom of smelling and inhaling was the far older mode of manifesting desire. This kind of salutation had been continued from the animal condition into a recognized form of ceremonial. Such customs would survive as automatic actions when and where the symbolic meaning was forgotten; that is the final form of their continuity. But they were natural at first, and became typical by consensus in the secondary phase as current coin of intercourse.

In this secondary or symbolical stage to touch noses and breathe was tantamount to expressing a wish for long life or a declaration of love. Whilst by taking a prolonged sniff they were complimenting each other as if they had said, 'You are my life; you are the breath of life to me.' To breathe, sniff, or smell any one in salutation signifies symbolically 'I breathe new life from you,' or 'Your presence renews my 1ife'; 'You are as the breath of life to me.'

There is a comment on the in-breathing of life from one another by this mode of salutation in the 91st chapter of the Ritual, which is entitled, 'The Chapter of not Allowing a Person's Soul to be Sniffed out of Him in Hades.'[63]

The Chittagong Hill people have a form of invitation—'Smell me' [p.79]—answering to our 'Give me a kiss,' and they place the mouth and nose upon the cheek to inhale the breath strongly[64]. This is breathing rather than merely smelling, so that 'Breathe me' is really the true rendering.

Timkowski describes a Mongol father who from time to time kept smelling the head of his youngest son, a mark of paternal tenderness, he says, among the Mongols, instead of embracing[65]. This reminds us of Isaac smelling his son in salutation and saying, 'It is the smell of a field which the Lord hath blessed.'[66]

The custom was still kept up by the conservatives of Egypt for us to find it in the Book of Genesis. It cannot be directly shown from the monuments that taking a good hearty sniff of each other was an Egyptian mode of salutation. When they come into sight they had probably attained the custom or art of kissing, though the smelling of the lotus as a means of indicating and giving delight is universal. Also the name of the nostrils, sherau, is derived from sher, meaning to breathe with joy.

In the hieroglyphics, sen is breath and to breathe. It is associated with smell by means of the nose determinative (¦). The nose, senti, is the double breather. Sent is the English scent; sen is the French sentir, to scent. 'Sen-sen' has the signification of to fraternize, in brotherly (and sisterly) union, and it is an equivalent for 'breathe-breathe,' and for the transmigration of spirits as breaths. Also zen, to breathe, denotes the act of profoundest respect, compliment, and homage, which, in the ceremony of Senta, is paid by breathing the earth; bowing down and breathing the ground by inferior persons having taken the place of sniffing the person among equals; prostration on the earth adding profoundness to the homage of inferiors.

Mr. Spencer finds the origin of ceremonial obeisance in the intrinsically coercive character of militant rule, and he deduces politeness from the prostration of slavery and inferior station. Here, however, the genesis of the act of smelling from animal desire (the blood, etc.), the primal phase, and, next, out of compliment to person, is nearer to nature. It belongs to the language of lust, later affection, in the lowliest range of expression, at the meeting-point of man and the less specialised animals.

The custom was then applied to sniffing the ground as an obeisance of later law and ceremonial, after men had made their own masters and elevated their human (or inhuman) lion, panther, snake, thunderbolt, moon-god or sun-god to wield supreme power over them, as chief of the tribe or people. For example, when Jacob bowed himself to the ground seven times in presence of his brother, the number has a recognised significance to be sought for in the astronomical symbolism.

The Chinese at the present time make eight obeisances, increasing in humbleness, the eighth being the highest in number and the lowliest [p.80] in posture, due only to the emperor and to Heaven. This number answers to the Egyptian eight adorations to the eight great gods. The Chinese eight, being represented by heaven and the emperor, probably personate the genetrix of the seven stars and the son, whose name was Sevekh or Seven; also the seven primary and elementary powers, which were born of her. In Bhutan the form of obeisance rigidly observed demands that all who are permitted to approach the raja, must make nine prostrations in his presence.

The number nine sacred to the raja (Egyptian râ), belongs to the nine solar months of gestation, and the sun in the nine dry signs of the twelve. These numbers are figures quoted at their known value in the system of symbols, and they are not to be read apart from the rootage of ceremonial customs in mythology, where they have even a chronological sequence, as well as diversity of religious significance, and contain dates in their data.

In Fijian the salute by smelling and taking a good strong sniff is named regu. It is also applied to kissing, etc. In Maori, reka-reka is tickling and otherwise pleasantly provoking by means of contact. Roke in English is to scratch, also futuere. Lick is a form of the same root-meaning. Rak in Akkadian is to beget. These are all modes of knowing, and in Egyptian rekh is to know and denotes relationship. This knowledge, this relationship, was once limited to smelling, licking, and other animal modes of knowing.

Smelling and breathing were primitive means of knowing, and the language of the animal was continued, and is traceable in human language, as well as in human customs.

Our words new and news; Breton, nevas; Latin, novus; Greek, νέος; Gothic, ninjo; old Norse, nyr; Gaelic, nuadh; Sanskrit, nava; Arabic, nafs; are all related to nef (Eg.), for the breath, and to perception by means of smell. To nose is to smell. The Danish and Anglo-Saxon nys, to get news of a thing, is to get wind or scent of it. The Dutch neuselen, means to sniff after. The nose obtained the earliest news. In Egyptian, khnum is to smell, with the nose for determinative (¦). The same word means to choose and select with the nose. It is also the name for the nurse, tutor and educator; the nose being a primary teacher. Khnum is to ken by the nose, and the word modifies into num, to guide, direct, accompany, go together, in such an act as 'numming' with noses, and other forms of kenning or knowing each other.

The act of smelling passed into the domain of sacrifice, and survived in the mysteries where the branch and other emblems were smelled. The divinity of Israel threatens not to continue to be led by the nose in this way any longer. 'I will not smell the savour of your sweet odours,' 'I will not smell in your solemn assemblies,' i.e., on the day of feasting. This divinity, like the Kamite (Gold Coast) Ananse, [p.81] the spider-god, talks through his nose. It is the primitive god of the primitive man.*

* This mode of stating a scriptural fact may be considered offensive by those who never consider the offensiveness of the fact itself. I repudiate the Voltairian mode of treatment; but it was not unwarranted.

Charlevoix mentions a tribe of Indians on the Gulf of Mexico, who continued the custom of blowing or breathing into each other's ears[67] as a mode of salutation. This is but a variation of the same ceremony, having the same significance.

The ear, and ears, are named ankh in Egyptian, and in inner Africa—

 It is a worldwide name for the ear, as for the nose and mouth.

The custom, like the hongi, denotes breathing and actually communicating life in place of wishing it. Analogous to this was the practice of the Egyptians who placed a form of the ankh-sign in the ears of their dead. In the Ritual, the 13th chapter is 'said over the drop of an earring of the ankham flower placed on the left ear of the spirit.' That was the flower of life worn as an eardrop by the mummy. It was also an ancient custom in England to wear a rose in the ear.

When the ear, or ankh (Eg.) was eaten by the female Ariki as a sacrifice, the Maori identified the offering with the heavenly henga and cried,

'Lift up his offering,
To Henga a te Rangi;
His offering:
Eat, O invisible one, listen to me,
Let that food bring you down from the sky.'[68]

The food was a human ear, the type of hearing; and the sacrifice was a mode of prayer, with the ear for an ideographic determinative.**

** 'When the Egyptians would symbolize a man who hears with more than customary acuteness they portray a she-goat, for she respires (or hears) both through her nostrils and ears.'[69] Of course the sense of perception was one, the organs varied.

In like manner, motoi, in Maori, means to beg, to pray. And this [p.82] is also the name of an ear-ornament made of green stone, which, placed in the ear, like the ankham flower, becomes a visible prayer, a gesture-sign addressed to the unseen power as the hearer in the following illustration of the ankh-sign, the nose and ears have a remarkable meeting-point. If a cow during the night is heard to groan in her sleep, it is a custom with the Hottentots to catch her next morning, and a piece of skin just above her nose is cut so that it hangs down in the shape of an earring or eardrops. If this be neglected the owner will die[70]. Therefore the eardrop shape is a symbol of life or the ankh (Eg).

The name and tribe-sign of the Ankara Indians denote them to be the wearers of 'big earrings.'[71] The name of the Oregones or Orejones is derived from or-ejo, the ear, as the large-eared people, and the large-ear supplied a type-name to various American and European tribes from the lobe of the ear being perforated and artificially enlarged in accordance with a most ancient and worldwide custom the size of the hole being a sign of the hero who had bravely borne the pain and suffering.

The Incas had this type-name of the ear; and they only permitted the Aymaras to cultivate the large earlobe a long while after the conquest. The jackal, the fenekh and the ass were typhonian representatives of the hearer.

In John's gospel we read: 'And when he had said this he breathed on them, and saith unto them, receive ye the Holy Spirit'[72]. This was a survival of the breathing in the ear and the rubbing noses of an earlier time, and only in the primitive stage can the typology be fathomed. In this aspect the invitation 'Come smell me,' or breathe me, signified, give me life, inspire me. It was the language of the female animal converted into verbal speech. The general object of these salutations is to wish or to give life and health, and in the custom of the people of Carmana, mentioned by Athenaeus[73], they used to offer life itself—the blood being the life—by 'breathing' a vein and holding forth the red drops to drink. This was the exact equivalent of the Egyptian practice of offering the ankh, the emblem of life; the blood being an earlier reality. Ankh (Eg.) life, liquid of life, is the name of blood in the Garo anchi.

Hunga means medicine in the Omaha (Indian) language and in the African tongues.

To be well, or healthy, is—

Lastly, the healer and life-giver in many Kamite languages bears the type-name of life, living, to live, breathe, and of the organs of [p.83] breathing, the name being chiefly found in the duplicated form. The doctor is designated—

Another ceremonial custom known to be widespread is that of invoking a blessing when one sneezes. This is intimately related to the salutation by breathing and sniffing, and is founded on the same principle. Sneezing is a sign of life because connected with the breath. The first sign of life in the man made by Prometheus was a sneeze, which connects the sneeze with the breath of life. The sneeze is a vigorous expulsion of the breath.

Sneezing with the Zulus is a token that a sick person will be restored to health. The sneeze is typical of the good spirit being with him. If he cannot sneeze they judge the disease to be very bad indeed. The sneeze is a sign of health. 'He hath sneezed thrice, turn him out of the hospital,'[74] is an English proverb.

Sneezing is not only a vigorous form of breathing, but it is involuntary; hence inspired, or of an extraordinary origin. A hearty sneeze when ill and faint would imply a sudden accession of the breathing power, which was inwardly inspiring and outwardly expelling; the good spirit enters and the bad spirit departs, cast out by the sudden impulsion. The expulsion and repudiation implied in sneezing is yet glanced at in the saying that such a thing is 'not to be sneezed at.'

A sneeze, say the Zulus, gives a man power to remember that the spirit is with him. The Tongo (i tongo) is a spirit like the wong and others founded on the ankh type of life.

Sneezing, according to Horapollo, was held to be the antithesis of the spleen. He says the Egyptians depict a dog to denote smelling and sneezing, because the thoroughly splenetic are unable to smell, or sneeze, or laugh; that is, be open, blithe, and frank-hearted. The dog, he avers, of all animals, has a very small spleen, and what spleen he has is the cause of his madness or rabies[75]. This is supported by a statement in the Litany of Ra[76], 'his spleen is the God Fenti,' i.e., the god of the nostrils. This may serve to connect the sneeze with something to be got rid of, and breath as the means.

The foundation for such customs, beliefs, and sayings which are connected with sneezing was laid in the time when the spirit was the breath and the breath was the life. Hence the object of provoking the sneeze and invoking the good spirit.

It is common for people to take a pinch of snuff to cause a sneeze for the expulsion of headache, and in this connection the British [p.84] custom of placing on the dead a plate full of snuff is most remarkable. If a pinch of snuff were efficacious in expelling the bad spirit, stuffiness, or pain by means of a sneeze, then the plateful of snuff laid on the breathing-place—the bosom of the dead—was typically intended in relation to the breathing of the future life, and wishing well or well-wishing. This also was a mode of saying, 'Life to you,' with the type on a large scale. The sneezing away of obstruction and blowing the nose to expel the disease would lead to the primitive practice of 'blowing away disease,' which is still extant among the early races. To blow into the left hand is an Indian sign for medicine and healing[77].

The breath being the soul, a sneeze was a breathing sign of soul or the good spirit, the expeller of the bad and evil one, the opponent or adversary. The negroes of Old Calabar shake off evil influences with a sneeze. The sneeze, then, was a sign of life, soul, or spirit. Jacob prayed that the soul of man might not depart with a sneeze, i.e., die with the breath. When the Hindu sneezes the bystanders cry 'Live!'[78] The Jews say, מיח מבוט or 'good life.'[79] The Samoans exclaim 'Life to you!'[80] A blessing is still the rule in southern Europe.

When the Zulu sneezes he exclaims, 'I am now blessed!' the spirit, the good spirit, was with him, and that constituted the very nick of time for wishing and invoking. 'Tutuka!' is an exclamation used by the Xhosa Kaffirs. Tutu is the ancestral spirit, ka denotes an attempt. Tutuka may be rendered 'the ancestral spirit tries to speak,' as it was supposed to do in a sneeze. A tree also named tuti or tati is the sneeze-wood of the colonists.

It was a common belief that no idiot could sneeze, and that there was no surety like a sneeze for the newborn child's having a soul. British 'howdies,' or nurses, held the child to be under the fairy spell until it showed signs of spirit by sneezing. 'God sain the bairn,' said an old nurse when the little one sneezed at last; 'its no a warlock.' The ancestral soul had descended. This mingling and confounding of 'spirits'—that of the breath and the manes—is shown in the Maori rite of infant baptism. On the eighth day after birth the ceremony was performed at the side of a stream. A native priest sprinkled the child with a twig, or branch, when the little one was not immersed. The priest kept calling over the names of its ancestors until at last the child sneezed. That was its name thus chosen by the child itself, or the ancestral spirit manifesting through it[81].

With the Parsees the rule is that when a person sneezes 'one is to speak a Vatha-ahu-vairyo, and one Ashem-vohu; and also when one hears the sneezing of any person to speak in like manner is so considered [p.85] as an action of good.' It is asked: What causes sneezing? And the reply is 'hungry living.' The remedy for its existence is the Ahunaver and praise of righteousness; the Honover of the Avesta; i.e., the Egyptian un-nefer or the revealer of good[82].

The invocation made on sneezing is a part of the same ritual relating to the breath, as the Parsee rule for uttering one Ashem-vohu with every coming and going of the breath on lying down to sleep[83].

Sneezing is certainly a spontaneous act enough, but without some idea connected with the act and attached fast to it no such universal ceremonial custom as invocation at the time of sneezing could have become worldwide. The sneeze would not have been a type of the same idea without some pre-agreement and consensus.

'Do you not see that all the world is one?' said Hernando de Soto when he perceived the Floridians had the same custom of salutation on sneezing as the Spaniards[84].

Mr. Haliburton brings forward the universal habit of saying 'God bless you,' or making an invocation when one sneezes, as his strongest case for concluding that such primitive customs have been inherited from one common source, and that they owe their origin to an era anterior to the dispersion of the human race[85]. The typology is certainly one, and Egypt, the explicator, vouches for the Kamite origin.

Our word sneeze is identical with the Egyptian snesh, to open, discover, open of itself, which is connected with sen, the breath, as the opener, and senn, to make the foundation and passage by opening. Snes also signifies salutation, to invoke, wish, evoke, adore—Sanskrit, sans, to wish, desire, invoke—all that accompanies the ceremony of sternutation is expressed by the word snes, our English sneeze.

The doctrine, so to speak, of the sneeze was eminently inner African. The name of the sneeze is:—

'The Indian nations,' says Morgan, 'after treating, always exchanged belts, which were not only the ratification, but the memorandum of a compact. When agreements were covenanted by the Iroquois, belts of wampum were exchanged as determinatives of their intentions to keep troth.'[86] 'This belt preserves my words,' was a common remark of their chiefs in council, the belt being symbolic of the bond and covenant. The speaker then delivered a [p.86] belt to the other side in token of faith and honour in the execution of the treaty or promise. 'Here's my belt,' was the equivalent of 'Here's my hand on it,' or 'I give you my word of honour.'

The belt of wampum was a sign of the same significance as the Egyptian tat, a belt-buckle, an emblem of eternitizing in the region of Tattu. The buckle is based on the tongue, but the act of tatting with the human tongue preceded the tongue of the buckle, and was its antetype, with the same meaning of establishing the covenant of affection, mutual agreement, or ownership, giving and taking; the first form of which had been effected by licking with the tongue.

Covenants were made by tonguing in this way, before speech was formulated. Hence, when it was evolved, we find language called by the name of the member, the tongue, the tat.

The tongue as a tat is identical with language, and the use of the member as a sign of expression was earlier than words. Licking with the tongue is a part of the language of animals, and must have been of the primitive man. By licking each other the animals establish a covenant with their tongue, and this custom can be followed into the human phase, both of act and language.

When anything is presented to the Eskimo, they have the habit of licking it at once as a sign of ownership. In New Zealand, according to Dieffenbach, the natives had the same practice, only their licking was done by the givers of the present[87].

Licking it was tonguing it, anointing it, and consecrating the gift whether received or given; and the act, as explained by aid of Egyptian, is one of the customs belonging to the time of gesture-language. The one word 'tat' includes the gift, given, taken, and assumed.

In the symbolical stage licking was a mode of anointing. In provincial English a 'good licking' alternates with 'anointing,' as a nickname for a thrashing or beating. Also spittle was a form of unction made use of for anointing in baptism, and in exorcism. In Egyptian, tat, the name of the tongue and mouth, also signifies unction and a ceremony; and 'tatting,' by spitting, follows the custom of licking as a mode of establishing and covenanting. Bruisers have the habit of spitting in their hand before the fight begins in token of a covenant of good-fellowship.

'In the north of England,' says Brand, 'the boys have a custom amongst themselves of spitting their faith (or, as they call it, "their saul," i.e., soul) as a form of oath-taking.'[88]

The Newcastle colliers, in their combinations, are said to pledge themselves to keep faith by spitting on a stone, and there is a popular saying, applied to persons who hang together, 'They spit upon the same stone.'[89]

This mode of covenanting may have a bearing on the figures of the hand found in the Australian caves. These symbols are supposed [p.87] to have been imprinted on the walls by placing the human hand on the clean stone and spitting some colouring matter all around it, and so leaving the impress of a hand.* The hand and spitting were two signs of tatting or establishing a covenant to which the hand would remain a witness. The word tat, for hand and typing, abrades into tâ, and tâ in Maori is a name of the tattoo; to imprint and paint! Tete is to stand fixed in the ground; titi to stick or stamp in and make fast. Tutu, a messenger; also to summon and gather in a solemn assembly.

* 'The handprint on the wall is commonly used by the Jews to avert the evil eye; care is taken to put it in a conspicuous place outside the house before a marriage, birth, or other festival. In the ruins of El Band, near Petra, Professor Palmer and I found a cistern whose cornice was decorated with handprints alternately black and red. At the present day both Moslems, Christians, and Jews hang hands, rudely cut out of a thin plate, of silver or gold, round the necks of their children to preserve them from the evil eye.'[90]

Captain Cook says the natives of the Tongan Islands 'have a singular custom of putting everything you give them to their heads, by way of thanks as we conjectured.'[91]

Here the head was the 'tat,' and tat (Eg.) French tête, is the head.

The Ashanti had a war-custom of sending a head with the messenger-sword (this head was found to show considerable likeness to ancient Egyptian work, especially in the beard[92]), said to intimate 'I mean to cut off your head.' Head, messenger, and sword[93] are each named the tat in Egyptian.

The young Sioux Indian is obliged to take a head or scalp to win 'the feather' before a girl will marry him. So the young Somali of Africa, or the Dyak of Borneo must take a head in order that he may take a wife. 'It need not,' says Mr. J. G. Wood[94], 'be the head of an enemy;' it is a token, not merely a trophy, showing the typical nature of the head. This is an ancient symbolic institution, conflicting with later law, as both tribes award punishment for murder.

As late as the seventeenth century, a Russian petition began with the words 'So and so strikes his forehead,' and petitioners were termed the 'forehead strikers.'[95] The custom was Kamite, and Egyptian will explain it. The forehead, temples, ears and nose were struck by the petitioner. The meaning (which may vary) is then interpreted by a gesture sign. To strike the flag is to lower it; and 'I strike my head,' means I bow to you; I acknowledge you as my head! But the gesture was voluntary before it was made compulsory, and only when the custom becomes coercive do we reach the degradation of smelling the earth, or striking the ground with the forehead.

The personal member or feature had to stand in place of a personal pronoun in gesture language! In Egyptian, he who speaks to himself is he who speaks to his head[96].

[p.88] Lifting the hands to the forehead or temples is also a sign of obeisance. The oriental salute of an inferior includes the putting of his fingers to his forehead. The Sumatrans touch the forehead or temples. This gesture may be read by the Egyptian name of the temples of the forehead, teb, a word that means to pray, implore, seal, answer, be responsible for.

The Fijian teb or tobe is a kind of pigtail, and when tributaries approached their master, they were commanded by a messenger to cut off their tobes, and all of them docked their tails[97]. This was a sign of subjection, or token of ownership. The Egyptian 'tebnt' is likewise a sign of hair cut off, a lock of hair.

The Khonds have the custom of holding their two ears in their hands as the symbol of submission, or as it is here represented, the token of a covenant, a mode of swearing by the ankh, which denotes the two ears, the oath and covenant, in Egyptian. Such a custom would lead to cutting off the ears of the outlaw.

'No one,' says Mr. Spencer, 'can suppose that hand-shaking was ever deliberately fired upon as a salute.'[98] Such customs grew by degrees, and the type was passed on from one thing to the other as the special ideograph of the gesture-sign. The Egyptian 'tatting' had become handshaking. 'Two men joining their hands denote concord,' says Horapollo[99] The sign is found as the determinative of amity, covenant, alliance[100].

Dogs and apes will spontaneously offer the paw. Here at least we can shake hands with our predecessors. In offering the paw, or hand, they were tatting, making the present, and establishing an understanding of friendship by this mode of invitation; a stage in advance of smelling and licking. The custom of making presents is based as lowly as this in the desire to make friends—a desire evinced by the animals the more they enter into a mixed condition, and are drawn out of their primal isolation. Mixing together is for them a mode of civilisation.

The hieroglyphic 'tat,' as hand, denotes the offering presented, to give and take possession. The next phase is the clasp-sign of a covenant (ank, Eg.); in this the give-and-take are enacted. Then the clasp and shake of the hand become a symbolical custom in the covenant of good-fellowship. Deep down in the English nature there yet lingers the ancient sense of its almost superseded sacredness. It is a form of tat-ing with the hand as in the other cases with the tongue or head. 'By the haft,' is a common English oath, and 'loose in the haft,' means 'not quite honest.' In this the handle follows the hand as the type of a covenant.

The Egyptian ank, to clasp and squeeze, is found in the Maori [p.89] anga, for the cockle-shell, and the angarite, a bivalve mollusc. Rite denotes the likeness of the anga, or clasping shell. Anga­anga signifies agreement, and rite means agreed to, performed. Thus ank (Eg.), to pair, to clasp, make a covenant, as in clasping hands, is equivalent to the perfect two-oneness of the bivalve, which is here one of the ank-types by name. The shell of the bivalve, which closed to clasp and protect the life in the waters, would thus acquire its significance as a type of twinning together, a token therefore of agreement, of unity, in the belt of wampum of covenant, as the currency used for bartering; and possibly of reuniting, when shells (coffins are still called shells) were heaped above the bones of the dead. Oyster and mussel-shells were sacredly preserved by the Wenya among their treasures[101], together with the beads, which denote reproduction or resurrection.

The clasp of hands in shaking them was a final token of the ank-covenant.

We have to think our way back to the time and condition when the human body supplied the chief symbols of expression, and there were no manufactured forms, no loop or knot, or crux ansata; no tat-pillar, or belt, or buckle; no sword, or book, or mamit to swear by; almost nothing but the human organs, limbs, and gestures. These supplied the hieroglyphics in the language of gesture-signs; and the customs in which the typology was continued are the hieroglyphics where there are no others. In this language, to 'cross the palm for good luck,' is an ideograph of equivalent value to that of the tat (hand) and tat cross.

In the present researches the clue has been continually found in the most primitive phase of the thought, after long seeking for it vainly in the later stages. The idea of founding and establishing by opening was developed by the Egyptians into a doctrine of creation. Ptah was a form of the opener; that is one meaning of his name. He carries the tat image of founding and establishing. The 'opener' is a title of the rising sun. The title of un-nefer is that of the good opener. Sut opened the genetrix whom Horus sealed. This may be read either in the physiological or the astronomical phase. If we take it in the latter, Sut, as star-god, opened the year with the rising of Sothis, and on his rising was the Great Bear cycle founded. Now when this opening was first observed, the earth being considered as a flat surface endlessly extended, the star Sothis had to break its way up through the earth, according to appearances; and so the opener became the founder of a circle of time. The born child did the same; and in the passage quoted Sut represents the child; Horus is the pubescent male, the generator. The tooth which cut its way through the gums was a perfect type of that which opened. The testicle was another. The pubes another.

[p.90] We are now in a position to read the typology of certain primitive customs and ceremonial usages of the Stone and Bone Age, which have survived to the present time amongst the elder races of the world; such as semi-castration, or the knocking out of teeth at the period of puberty, or filing them to make the opening visible between.

'Gat-toothed I was, and that became me well' says the jolly wife of Bath, with her interpretation of the cut or opening[102]. Cut or indented teeth are still considered an ornament to the female in England, and that is a modified form of the African charm which the 'hussies'—denounced by Livingstone—produced by filing their teeth.

In the hieroglyphics, un, to open, be open and periodic, has the open-eyed hare for determinative (ù). This open condition thus denoted means 'it is lawful;' 'I am open to you,' or, 'unprohibited.' The filed teeth of the females and the tooth forced out of the male, thus represent the open condition of lawful intercourse.

The Vei people perform a rite called the sande. When the female becomes pubescent she undergoes a sort of circumcision, or rather a rite of being founded as the woman by opening, from which time she can be bought or hired (sande) as she too is sennt, or established, by being 'opened.' In the rites of puberty, the cutting and opening are at times performed by those who impersonate the gods or supernatural powers. This suggests the genesis of other customs like that of the Babylonians mentioned by Herodotus[103], who says that every native woman was compelled to sit in the temple of Venus (Belit) once in her life and have intercourse with some stranger. Many wore a crown of cord round their head, the topknot of puberty.

It was a custom in India for virgins to present themselves in the temples to be opened and made free to marry[104].

This rite of opening was totemic first and became religious afterwards. In this way certain corporate and temple rights were founded. The offerings made by or to the females were the property of the priesthood. Theirs was primarily the 'droit du seigneur' (the right and rite of pucelage and cuissage) to open the young virgins—a right that was claimed by the elders among the Australian blacks.

The priest represented Priapus, the generative power. His rights were farmed out in Babylon as in India, and the temple was thereby enriched.

'Thou shalt not bring the hire of a prostitute into the House of the Lord' is the command which proves the practice amongst the Hebrews[105].

This traffic in the rights of the priesthood introduced a mode of commutation and a principle of compensation, whether the price was claimed by the temple or the tribe. The right of the reverend [p.91] seigneur was waived on payment of a price; and this mode of commutation probably indicates the origin of compensation for the bride who was captured in marriage.

The time came when there was a revolt of youth against the rights of the elders, and a price was set upon virginity, to be paid by the lover.

When the Kaffir female has attained the marriageable age, which was primarily that of puberty, she is at liberty to woo her intended husband by sending him an 'um-lomo.' The lomo is symbolically her mouth. But the word signifies any opening, or the opening of anything. This means that she is open to him, or has undergone the opening rite[106].

Here, as everywhere else, the natural genesis only of the primitive custom can interpret it in the later symbolical or superstitious phase. The tooth established a foundation by opening the ground; therefore a tooth was knocked out at the time of puberty as the type or token of another foundation by opening the ground.

When the testicle descended, pubescence was founded by its opening of the ground. Hence, in the semi-castration of the Bushmen (in times past) as a rite of young-man-making, the opening was made by extraction of one testicle. In the fanatical and religious phase, when the male devotee was assimilated to the eternal child, the foundation was established and the consecration completed by total castration.

What has been termed fashions in deformity did not originate in the senselessness of the modern victims of the prison-house of pride. These customs were ideographic, and had their meanings and uses.

The Zulu 'hlanhla,' for the opening between the teeth, also means good luck, prosperity, and plenty of progeny. 'Tapu' (Maori), according to Shortland, signifies to be 'thoroughly-marked,'[107] and this, agrees with tebu (Eg.) to be sealed, to become responsible.

Gesture-signs were not the only human hieroglyphics; the body itself was the first book of pictographs. A picture is still called a cut, and the earliest pictures were cut in the live black flesh for uses belonging to the system of primitive signs. This was continued and modified in the customs of tattoo as the human skin grew somewhat lighter.

The incisions which are cut in the flesh from the shoulder to the hip of the pubescent males among the Australian aborigines are called manka. These are of such a secret significance that they must never be spoken of when women and children are present.

Manka relates to puberty and to clothing. The manaeka in Maori is a garment. Menkha (Eg.) denotes clothing. The first clothing was the toga virilis assumed at puberty, consisting mainly of hair and [p.92] slashes in the flesh. We find the impubescent are the naked, and the pubescent are the clothed. Tattoo was a form of clothing the human body with the marks of manhood, pictures (cuts) of puberty, and of heroic triumph over pain, that illustrated the bearing of the brave.

The Maori fashion of wearing the hair tied up in a knot at the forehead is called ngou-ngou, and the top-knot put on at puberty is named the ngoi. The earliest ankh-tie in Egypt was the knot-sign of feminine pubescence and of putting on clothes.

In inner Africa the gris-gris as a bracelet or necklace is a form of the ankh called—

In the Kaffir languages the ground-root of this ng or nek may be studied in the most primitive relationships. The skin beaten by women to make the music which circumcised lads keep time to in the dance of the pubescent, is a ngqongo, and the word which denotes the sexual gestures and contortions made in the dance that is performed when a girl attains puberty is ngqungqa. This is identical with the Maori ngangahu, a dance, and to distort the features, or make game of; and provoke, as was done by the women in the mysteries when the boy was made a free man.

The coca is a ring worn on the heads of the Zulu men to distinguish them from the impubescent boys, and the custom includes the rings worn in the ear, nose, or lip of the women.

With the Bongas, as soon as a woman is married, her lower lip is bored, and the orifice plugged to extend the circle. The plugs are gradually increased in size until the hole in the lip is five or six times its original proportions.

The plugs employed are cylindrical in form, and often not less than an inch thick; they are exactly like the pegs of bone and wood and straw worn by the Musgoo women. Other pegs and rings are worn in the lips, nose, and ears, but the plug in the lower lip is alone the sine quâ non for the married women[108]. It is here the same token then as the marriage ring in Europe. But the custom dates from a time before metal rings were made, and the circle had to be incised and formed in human flesh; when a bone, a stone, or other emblem filled the place of the later ring worn in the orifice. Not that the ring originated with marriage in the modern sense, but it was