Note 26 — PART I CHAPTER I ΒELIEFS ABOUT THE SOUL AND CULT OF SOULS IN THE HOMERIC POEMS

And even ἀνὰ πρόθυρον τετραμμένος, Τ 212, i.e. with feet turned towards the door. The reason for this custom—which existed elsewhere, too, and still exists—is hardly to be sought only in the ritus naturae, as Plin. 7, 46, thinks. This has generally little to do with the customs observed on the solemn occasions of life. The meaning of the practice is much more naively revealed in a statement about the manners of the Pehuenchen Indians in South America given by Pöpig, Reise in Chile, Peru, etc., i, 393. There they carry the dead man feet foremost out of the door “because if the corpse of the dead man were carried out otherwise his wandering ghost might come back into the house”. The Greek custom, though in Homeric times long faded to a mere symbol, must be supposed to have depended originally upon similar fears of the return of the “soul”. (Similar precautions arising from the same belief were customary at funerals elsewhere: Oldenberg, Rel. d. Veda, 573–4 [489 F.T.]. Robinsohn, Psychol. d. Naturv., 45 f.) Belief in the incomplete departure of the soul from this world has dictated these customs, too.