Note 115.4 — PSYCHE’S TASK

The legend of Orestes reflects the Greek horror of a manslayer. No doubt the root of all such observances was a fear of the dangerous ghost which haunts the murderer and against which the whole community as well as the homicide himself must be on its guard. The Greek practice in these respects is clearly mirrored in the legend of Orestes; for it is said that the people of Troezen would not receive him in their houses until he had been purified of his guilt,115.4 that is, until he had been rid of his mother’s ghost. The Akikuyu of British East Africa think that if a man who has killed another comes and sleeps at a village and eats with a family in their hut, the persons with whom he has eaten contract a dangerous pollution which might prove fatal to them were it not removed in time by a medicine-man. The very skin on which the homicide slept has absorbed the taint and might infect any one else who slept on it. So a medicine-man is sent for to purify the hut and its occupants.115.5 Manslayers purged of the stain of human blood by being smeared with the blood of pigs. The Greek mode of purifying a homicide was to kill a sucking pig and wash the hands of the guilty man in its blood: until this ceremony had been performed the manslayer was not allowed to speak.116.1 Among the hill-tribes near Rajamahal in Bengal, if two men quarrel and blood be shed, the one who cut the other is fined a hog or a fowl, “the blood of which is sprinkled over the wounded person, to purify him, and to prevent his being possessed by a devil.”116.2 In this case the blood-sprinkling is avowedly intended to prevent the man from being haunted by a spirit; only it is not the aggressor but his victim who is supposed to be in danger and therefore to stand in need of purification. We have seen that among these and other savage tribes pig’s blood is sprinkled on persons and things as a mode of purifying them from the pollution of sexual crimes.116.3 Among the Cameroon negroes in West Africa accidental homicide can be expiated by the blood of an animal. The relations of the slayer and of the slain assemble. An animal is killed, and every person present is smeared with its blood on his face and breast. They think that the guilt of manslaughter is thus atoned for, and that no punishment will overtake the homicide.116.4 In Car Nicobar a man possessed by devils is cleansed of them by being rubbed all over with pig’s blood and beaten with leaves. The devils are supposed to be thus swept off like flies from the man’s body to the leaves, which are then folded up and tied tightly with a special kind of string. A professional exorciser administers the beating, and at every stroke with the leaves he falls down with his face on the floor and calls out in a squeaky voice, “Here is a devil.” This ceremony is performed by night; and before daybreak all the packets of leaves containing the devils are thrown into the sea.117.1 The Greeks similarly used laurel leaves as well as pig’s blood in purificatory ceremonies.117.2 In all such cases we may assume that the purification was originally conceived as physical rather than as moral, as a sort of detergent which washed, swept, or scraped the ghostly or demoniacal pollution from the person of the ghost-haunted or demon-possessed man. The motive for employing blood in these rites of cleansing is not clear. Perhaps the purgative virtue ascribed to it may have been based on the notion that the offended spirit accepts the blood as a substitute for the blood of the man or woman.117.3 However, it is doubtful whether this explanation could cover all the cases in which blood is sprinkled as a mode of purification. Certainly it is odd, as the sage Heraclitus long ago remarked, that blood-stains should be thought to be removed by blood-stains, as if a man who had been bespattered with mud should think to cleanse himself by bespattering himself with more mud.117.4 But the ways of man are wonderful and sometimes past finding out.