Part 8

In Benin they take everything which seems extraordinary in nature for a god, and make offerings to him, and each is his own priest, in order to worship his gods in what manner pleases him best (54, xvi. 530).

=Or= the object =may have attracted attention by its behaviour=.

A visitor to a fetish hut took up a stone about as big as a hen’s egg, and its owner told its history. ‘He was once going out on important business, but crossing the threshold he trod on this stone and hurt himself. Ha, ha! thought he, art thou here? So he took the stone, and it helped him through his undertaking for days’ (71, ii. 158).

=Sometimes the object= to be chosen =is revealed= to a man =in a dream=, as among the natives of the Gold Coast, where a dead relation will return to direct a man to go to a certain spot and there select a certain stone, or piece of a tree, which he is to bring home with him, and guard and reverence as the habitation of a protecting deity (15, 90).

This connects the fetish with the guardian spirits of the North American Indians, which appear to young men in dreams, or visions, after prayer and fasting. The vision generally takes the form of some tangible object, often an animal, a portion of which is preserved by the man as his most precious possession, and if not, some concrete form is taken to represent the subject of the vision. A guardian spirit differs, however, from a fetish, in that it is a life-long possession, some men are not privileged to obtain one, and no man could possess more than one; while any man could obtain a fetish, and could discard one and adopt another if it proved to be unavailing.

2. It consists of a =symbolic charm with sympathetic properties=. ‘There is a relation between the selected substances and the object to be obtained: to give the possessor bravery or strength, some part of a leopard or an elephant; to give cunning, some part of a gazelle; to give wisdom, some part of a human brain; to give courage, some part of a heart; to give influence, some part of an eye,’ etc. etc. ‘These substances are supposed to lure some spirit (being in some way pleasing to it) which thenceforward is satisfied to reside in them and to aid the possessor in the accomplishment of some specific wish’ (53, 82).

For convenience of carriage these substances are put into snail-shells, nut-shells, or the small horns of gazelles, or of goats, and the whole then forms the fetish.

Bosman describes the way in which a fetish, consisting of a pipe filled with various substances, was generally made on the Guinea Coast in 1705.

‘They have a great wooden pipe filled with earth, oil, blood, bones of dead men and beasts, feathers, hair, and to be short, all sorts of excrementitious and filthy trash, which they do not endeavour to mould into any shape, but lay it in a confused heap in the pipe’ (54, xvi. 398).

‘Human eyeballs, particularly of white men, are a great charm. This, I fancy, is to secure the man “that lives in your eyes” for the service of the village’ (40, 305).

Sometimes there is a tangible connection between the object chosen for the fetish and the spirit occupying it. Thus among the Gold Coast natives the object which is entered by the subordinate spirit of Sasabonsum must be taken from the habitat of a Sasabonsum, from a place, that is, which is marked with red earth, where the red earth marks the blood of the victim of a Sasabonsum (15, 109).

3. It may consist of =a sign or token representing an ideal notion or being=, and here it is difficult to draw any distinction between fetishism and idolatry, ‘for a small line and a few streaks of colour may change a fetish into an idol’ (61, 77). Certainly the lower forms of idolatry present the aspect of fetishism, but the true fetish is not shaped to resemble the spirit it represents, and the true idol is only the symbol, not the vessel, vehicle, or instrument of deity. At the same time, an image may be worshipped as a fetish, and regarded as a material body provided for a spirit; or a fetish, being regarded merely as the symbol or representative of a spirit, seems to develop the earliest form of idolatry (71, ii. 169). The distinction lies in the attitude of mind in which the objects are worshipped, and no objective differentiation is possible, for the object will be a fetish for one worshipper and a pure symbol of a spirit to another.

Stone worship is often pure fetishism, the stone being regarded as the tangible sign or token of a spirit or power to which worship is addressed. But it advances beyond the limits of fetishism if a general spirit, or a god of a community, while worshipped in the form of a stone, is also believed to animate other objects. The animating force of a fetish must be individual, and cannot animate more than one object at a time. When the spirits of the suhman charms (15, 99) are considered to be individual spirits dependent upon Sasabonsum they are fetishes; if the spirit of Sasabonsum were supposed to animate all the suhman charms they could not properly be called fetishes.

4. A fetish is =credited with mysterious powers owing to its being the habitation, temporary or permanent, of a spiritual being=.

This sounds like a definition of the principle of animism, and so it may be, for fetishism is animism, seen, as it were, from the other end and seen in detail. Animism sees all things animated by spirits; fetishism sees a spirit incorporated in an individual object.

But there is this distinction, that the spirit which is believed to occupy the fetish is a different conception from the spirit of the animistic theory; it is not the soul or vital power belonging to the object, and inherent in it, from which the virtue is derived, but a spirit or power attracted to and incorporated in it, while separable from it. The spirit of the fetish is also distinct from a god, as it can animate one object only, while a god can manifest his power in various forms.

Thus in Bosman’s account of the Benin fetish quoted above, he talks of ‘the pipe where the idol is lodged,’ that is the material habitation into which the spirit has been lured by some means of attraction. Miss Kingsley, describing a fetish or juju, says ‘it is not a doll or toy, and has far more affinity to the image of a saint, inasmuch as it is not venerated for itself, or treasured because of its prettiness, but only because it is the residence, or the occasional haunt, of a spirit’ (40, 287).

The material objects which form the tutelary deities or Bohsŭm of the natives of the Gold Coast are not symbols of gods which usually reside elsewhere; each is the actual receptacle or ordinary abiding-place of an indwelling god. One may be a wooden figure, another a stone, a third a covered calabash or an earthen pot, containing a mixture of blood and earth (15, 80).

The best example of this class is provided by the suhman.

The man who wants a suhman takes some objects, it may be a rudely cut wooden image, or a stone, a root of a plant, or some red earth placed in a pan, and then he calls on a spirit of Sasabonsum (‘a genus of deities, every member of which possesses identical characteristics’) to enter the object prepared, promising it offerings and worship. If a spirit consents to take up its residence in the object a low hissing sound is heard, and the suhman is complete. It receives a small portion of the daily food of its owner, and is treated with reverence, and mainly used to bring evil on some one else (15, 100-101).

5. Sometimes the fetish is merely the =vehicle or means by which the spirit communicates= with his worshippers, and only acquires a temporary personality when thus inspired. This is the character of the New Zealand fetishes, wakapakoko, or images.

‘A small image was used about 18 inches long, resembling a peg, with a carved head. The priest first bandaged a fillet of red parrot feathers under the god’s chin, which was called his pahau or beard; when this was done it was taken possession of by the atua, whose spirit entered it; the priest then either held it in the hand and vibrated it in the air, whilst the powerful karakia (charm, prayer) was repeated, or he tied a piece of string, formed of the centre of a flax leaf, round the neck of the image and stuck it in the ground: he sat at a little distance from it, holding the string in his hand, and gave the god a jerk to arrest his attention’ (69, 182).

These Maori fetishes ‘were only thought to possess virtue or peculiar sanctity from the presence of the god they represent when dressed up, at other times they were regarded as bits of ordinary wood’ (69, 212). The use of the words ‘image’ and ‘god’ seem to place this ceremony on a higher plane than fetishism, but the ‘god’ is generally the spirit of an ancestor, and the ‘image’ is less a portrait of a worshipped deity than an expression of the Maori genius for wood-carving.

6. While the conception of the fetish as the vehicle of communication between spirit and worshipper raises fetishism to a higher plane in religious evolution, the conception of the fetish as an =instrument by which the spirit acts= lowers it to a stage which is not necessarily religious at all, to a stage where the fetish is often regarded merely in the light of a charm or an amulet.

This is the lowest and the commonest form of fetishism; it may practically be said to be universal.

Bosnian relates that the word Fetiche is chiefly used in a religious sense, or at least is derived from thence, but ‘all things made in honour of these false gods, never so mean, are called Fetiche.’

These material charms are so common that by the universality of their use, and the prominence given to them everywhere, in houses and on the person, they almost monopolise the religious thought of the Bantu negro, subordinating other acknowledged points of his theology, dominating his almost entire religious interest, and giving the departmental word ‘fetich’ such overwhelming regard that it has furnished the name distinctive of the native African religious system (53, 80). ‘The new-born infant has a health-knot tied about his neck, wrists, or loins, and down to the day of oldest age every one keeps on multiplying or renewing or altering these life talismans’ (53, 85).

It is interesting to find this form of fetish charm described by Bosman at the beginning of the eighteenth century.