Note 193.1 — The Evolution of Religion

Considering now in a more general survey the liturgies of the nations that have attained culture, we might begin with our own fathers. But so little that touches the inner life of their pre-Christian religion has been preserved, that probably not much material for our present purpose is to be discovered from the records. We know that they were given to the employment of the rune or the spell, the rival or the parent of prayer; and one of these, used by Odin to heal the sprained foot of Baldur’s foal, is perhaps the only surviving fragment of Indo-Germanic poetry.193.1 Odin sings, “Bone to bone, blood to blood, limb to limb, as though they were glued together”; in a later Norwegian, and also in a Scottish version, it is Christ who heals the foal with the same magic words, strengthened however by the formula, “Heal in the Holy Ghost’s name.” And this useful medicine-charm was not forgotten by the Aryan Indians, for we find the words in the Atharva-Veda, “Fit together, hair with hair, fit together, skin with skin: thy blood, thy bone shall grow.”193.2 Neither god nor ghost was needed to help out the force of such incantations. But probably some time before Christianity prayer had come to prevail over spell in the Teutonic North, for there are traces there of a certain antagonism growing between magic and religion, which led to the condemnation of certain forms of magic.194.1