The Making of Religion

Publisher Marketing: Excerpt: ... spirits) are sacred. 'Yet their father i.e. the father of each actual family is far before all others when they worship the Amatongo.... They do not know the ancients who are dead, nor their laud-giving names, nor their names.'8 Thus, each new generation of Zulus must have a new first worshipful object-its own father's Itongo. This father, and his very name, are, in a generation or two, forgotten. The name of such a man, therefore, cannot survive as that of the God or Supreme Being from age to age; and, obviously, such a real dead man, while known at all, is much too well known to be taken for the creator and ruler of the world, despite some African flattering titles and superstitions about kings who control the weather. The Zulus, about as 'godless' a people as possible, have a mythical first ancestor, Unkulunkulu, but he is 'beyond the reach of rites, ' and is a centre of myths rather than of worship or of moral ideas.9 After other examples of ancestor-worship, Mr. Tylor branches off into a long discussion of the theory of 'possession' or inspiration,10 which does not assist the argument at the present point. Thence he passes to fetishism (already discussed by us), and the transitions from the fetish-(1) to the idol; (2) to the guardian angel ('subliminal self'); (3) to tree and river spirits, and local spirits which cause volcanoes; and (4) to polytheism. A fetish may inhabit a tree; trees being generalised, the fetish of one oak becomes the god of the forest. Or, again, fetishes rise into 'species gods;' the gods of all bees, owls, or rabbits are thus evolved. Next,11 'As chiefs and kings are among men, so are the great gods among the lesser spirits.... With little exception, wherever a savage or barbaric system of religion is thoroughly described, great gods make their appearance in the spiritual world as distinctly as chiefs in the human tribe.' Very good; but whence comes the great God among tribes which have neither chief nor king and... Contributor Bio:  Lang, Andrew Andrew Lang (March, 31, 1844 July 20, 1912) was a Scottish writer and literary critic who is best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales. Lang s academic interests extended beyond the literary and he was a noted contributor to the fields of anthropology, folklore, psychical research, history, and classic scholarship, as well as the inspiration for the University of St. Andrew s Andrew Lang Lectures. A prolific author, Lang published more than 100 works during his career, including twelve fairy books, in which he compiled folk and fairy tales from around the world. Lang s Lilac Fairy and Red Fairy books are credited with influencing J. R. R. Tolkien, who commented on the importance of fairy stories in the modern world in his 1939 Andrew Lang Lecture On Fairy-Stories.