This is a good concept for a thread.
Frazer was, unfortunately, largely an armchair scholar, and prone to the same problems that plagued most 19th c. anthropologists, namely the deeply held conviction that cultures other than their own were little more than the odd behavior patterns of a number of curiously humanlike animals. He assimilated a lot of evidence gathered by his colleagues in the field—most of whom held the same belief—and then catalogued them according to filters that took this belief as a given. It's hard to know what's useful and what's not.
I'm deeply suspicious of systems of practice that rest on the idea that all religions are essentially the same, or that a large number of deities from different cultures are somehow interchangeable. That said, the notion of a God/dess or S/Hero who faces death in some manner and overcomes it is a fairly common one, and it's interesting to look at some examples and think about why this might be so.
Not in all cases is the dying one a sacrifice, nor do they all "rise again" like the Christian god-hero. Sometimes they are coming close to death but surviving, or fighting/outwitting Death personified. To me it seems like the idea of one who faces people's most universal fear and defeats it in some way is a compelling one for almost every person in the world, whatever their background.
But sometimes it doesn't work:
Maui said to the goddess of the moon: "Let death be short. As the moon dies and returns with strength, so let men die and revive again."
But she replied: "Let death be very long, that man may sigh and sorrow. When man dies, let him go into darkness, become like earth, that those he leaves behind may weep and wail and mourn."
Maui did not lay aside his purpose, but according to the New Zealand story, "did not wish men to die but to live forever. Death appeared degrading and an insult to the dignity of man. Man ought to die like the moon, which dips in the life-giving waters of Kane and is renewed again, or like the sun, which daily sinks into the pit of night and with renewed strength rises in the morning."
Maui sought the home of Hine-nui-te-po-the guardian of life. He heard her order her attendants to watch for any one approaching and capture all who came walking upright as a man. He crept past the attendants on hands and feet, found the place of life, stole some of the food of the goddess and returned home. He showed the food to his brothers and persuaded them to go with him into the darkness of the night of death. On the way he changed them into the form of birds. In the evening they came to the house of the goddess on the island long before fished up from the seas.
Maui warned the birds to refrain from making any noise -while he made the supreme effort of his life. He was about to enter upon his struggle for immortality. He said to the birds: "If I go into the stomach of this woman, do not laugh until I have gone through her, and come out again at her month; then you can laugh at me."
His friends said: "You will be killed." Maui replied: "If you laugh at me when I have only entered her stomach I shall be killed, but if I have passed through her and come out of her mouth I shall escape and Hine-nui-te-po will die."
His friends called out to him: "Go then. The decision is with you."
Hine was sleeping soundly. The flashes of lightning had all ceased. The sunlight had almost passed away and the house lay in quiet gloom. Maui came near to the sleeping goddess. Her large, fish-like mouth was open wide. He put off his clothing and prepared to pass through the ordeal of going to the hidden source of life, to tear it out of the body of its guardian and carry it back with him, to mankind. He stood in all the glory of savage manhood. His body was splendidly marked by the tattoo-bones, and now well oiled shone and sparkled in the last rays of the setting sun.
He leaped through the mouth of the enchanted one and entered her stomach, weapon in band, to take out her heart, the vital principle which he knew had its home somewhere within her being. He found immortality on the other side of death. He turned to come back again into life when suddenly a little bird (the Pata-tai) laughed in a clear, shrill tone, and Great Hine, through whose mouth Maui was passing, awoke. Her sharp, obsidian teeth closed with a snap upon Maui, cutting his body in the center. Thus Maui entered the gates of death, but was unable to return, and death has ever since been victor over rebellious men. The natives have the saying:
"If Maui had not died, he could have restored to life all who had gone before him, and thus succeeded in destroying death."
So what are the effects of a religion based on triumph over death, vs. succumbing to death? |
