Section 3. The Soul as a Shadow and a Reflection.
BUT the spiritual dangers I have enumerated are not the only ones which
beset the savage. Often he regards his shadow or reflection as his soul, or
at all events as a vital part of himself, and as such it is necessarily a
source of danger to him. For if it is trampled upon, struck, or stabbed, he
will feel the injury as if it were done to his person; and if it is detached from
him entirely (as he believes that it may be) he will die. In the island of Wetar
there are magicians who can make a man ill by stabbing his shadow with a
pike or hacking it with a sword. After Sankara had destroyed the Buddhists
in India, it is said that he journeyed to Nepaul, where he had some
difference of opinion with the Grand Lama. To prove his supernatural
powers, he soared into the air. But as he mounted up the Grand Lama,
perceiving his shadow swaying and wavering on the ground, struck his
knife into it and down fell Sankara and broke his neck. 1
In the Banks Islands there are some stones of a remarkably long shape
which go by the name of "eating ghosts," because certain powerful and
dangerous ghosts are believed to lodge in them. If a man's shadow falls on
one of these stones, the ghost will draw his soul out from him, so that he
will die. Such stones, therefore, are set in a house to guard it; and a
messenger sent to a house by the absent owner will call out the name of
the sender, lest the watchful ghost in the stone should fancy that he came
with evil intent and should do him a mischief. At a funeral in China, when
the lid is about to be placed on the coffin, most of the bystanders, with the
exception of the nearest kin, retire a few steps or even retreat to another
room, for a person's health is believed to be endangered by allowing his
shadow to be enclosed in a coffin. And when the coffin is about to be
lowered into the grave most of the spectators recoil to a little distance lest
their shadows should fall into the grave and harm should thus be done to
their persons. The geomancer and his assistants stand on the side of the
grave which is turned away from the sun; and the grave-diggers and
coffin-bearers attach their shadows firmly to their persons by tying a strip
of cloth tightly round their waists. Nor is it human beings alone who are thus
liable to be injured by means of their shadows. Animals are to some extent
in the same predicament. A small snail, which frequents the neighbourhood
of the limestone hills in Perak, is believed to suck the blood of cattle
through their shadows; hence the beasts grow lean and sometimes die from
loss of blood. The ancients supposed that in Arabia, if a hyaena trod on a
man's shadow, it deprived him of the power of speech and motion; and that
if a dog, standing on a roof in the moonlight, cast a shadow on the ground
and a hyaena trod on it, the dog would fall down as if dragged with a rope.
Clearly in these cases the shadow, if not equivalent to the soul, is at least
regarded as a living part of the man or the animal, so that injury done to the
shadow is felt by the person or animal as if it were done to his body. 2
Conversely, if the shadow is a vital part of a man or an animal, it may
under certain circumstances be as hazardous to be touched by it as it
would be to come into contact with the person or animal. Hence the savage
makes it a rule to shun the shadow of certain persons whom for various
reasons he regards as sources of dangerous influence. Amongst the
dangerous classes he commonly ranks mourners and women in general,
but especially his mother-in-law. The Shuswap Indians think that the
shadow of a mourner falling upon a person would make him sick. Amongst
the Kurnai of Victoria novices at initiation were cautioned not to let a
woman's shadow fall across them, as this would make them thin, lazy, and
stupid. An Australian native is said to have once nearly died of fright
because the shadow of his mother-in-law fell on his legs as he lay asleep
under a tree. The awe and dread with which the untutored savage
contemplates his mother-in-law are amongst the most familiar facts of
anthropology. In the Yuin tribes of New South Wales the rule which forbade
a man to hold any communication with his wife's mother was very strict. He
might not look at her or even in her direction. It was a ground of divorce if
his shadow happened to fall on his mother-in-law: in that case he had to
leave his wife, and she returned to her parents. In New Britain the native
imagination fails to conceive the extent and nature of the calamities which
would result from a man's accidentally speaking to his wife's mother;
suicide of one or both would probably be the only course open to them.
The most solemn form of oath a New Briton can take is, "Sir, if I am not
telling the truth, I hope I may shake hands with my mother-in-law." 3
Where the shadow is regarded as so intimately bound up with the life of
the man that its loss entails debility or death, it is natural to expect that its
diminution should be regarded with solicitude and apprehension, as
betokening a corresponding decrease in the vital energy of its owner. In
Amboyna and Uliase, two islands near the equator, where necessarily
there is little or no shadow cast at noon, the people make it a rule not to go
out of the house at mid-day, because they fancy that by doing so a man
may lose the shadow of his soul. The Mangaians tell of a mighty warrior,
Tukaitawa, whose strength waxed and waned with the length of his shadow.
In the morning, when his shadow fell longest, his strength was greatest; but
as the shadow shortened towards noon his strength ebbed with it, till
exactly at noon it reached its lowest point; then, as the shadow stretched
out in the afternoon, his strength returned. A certain hero discovered the
secret of Tukaitawa's strength and slew him at noon. The savage Besisis of
the Malay Peninsula fear to bury their dead at noon, because they fancy
that the shortness of their shadows at that hour would sympathetically
shorten their own lives. 4
Nowhere, perhaps, does the equivalence of the shadow to the life or soul
come out more clearly than in some customs practised to this day in
South-eastern Europe. In modern Greece, when the foundation of a new
building is being laid, it is the custom to kill a cock, a ram, or a lamb, and
to let its blood flow on the foundation-stone, under which the animal is
afterwards buried. The object of the sacrifice is to give strength and stability
to the building. But sometimes, instead of killing an animal, the builder
entices a man to the foundation-stone, secretly measures his body, or a
part of it, or his shadow, and buries the measure under the
foundation-stone; or he lays the foundation-stone upon the man's shadow.
It is believed that the man will die within the year. The Roumanians of
Transylvania think that he whose shadow is thus immured will die within
forty days; so persons passing by a building which is in course of erection
may hear a warning cry, "Beware lest they take thy shadow!" Not long ago
there were still shadow-traders whose business it was to provide architects
with the shadows necessary for securing their walls. In these cases the
measure of the shadow is looked on as equivalent to the shadow itself, and
to bury it is to bury the life or soul of the man, who, deprived of it, must die.
Thus the custom is a substitute for the old practice of immuring a living
person in the walls, or crushing him under the foundation-stone of a new
building, in order to give strength and durability to the structure, or more
definitely in order that the angry ghost may haunt the place and guard it
against the intrusion of enemies. 5
As some peoples believe a man's soul to be in his shadow, so other (or
the same) peoples believe it to be in his reflection in water or a mirror. Thus
"the Andamanese do not regard their shadows but their reflections (in any
mirror) as their souls." When the Motumotu of New Guinea first saw their
likenesses in a looking-glass, they thought that their reflections were their
souls. In New Caledonia the old men are of opinion that a person's
reflection in water or a mirror is his soul; but the younger men, taught by the
Catholic priests, maintain that it is a reflection and nothing more, just like
the reflection of palm-trees in the water. The reflection-soul, being external
to the man, is exposed to much the same dangers as the shadow-soul. The
Zulus will not look into a dark pool because they think there is a beast in it
which will take away their reflections, so that they die. The Basutos say that
crocodiles have the power of thus killing a man by dragging his reflection
under water. When one of them dies suddenly and from no apparent cause,
his relatives will allege that a crocodile must have taken his shadow some
time when he crossed a stream. In Saddle Island, Melanesia, there is a
pool "into which if any one looks he dies; the malignant spirit takes hold
upon his life by means of his reflection on the water." 6
We can now understand why it was a maxim both in ancient India and
ancient Greece not to look at one's reflection in water, and why the Greeks
regarded it as an omen of death if a man dreamed of seeing himself so
reflected. They feared that the water-spirits would drag the person's
reflection or soul under water, leaving him soulless to perish. This was
probably the origin of the classical story of the beautiful Narcissus, who
languished and died through seeing his reflection in the water. 7
Further, we can now explain the widespread custom of covering up
mirrors or turning them to the wall after a death has taken place in the
house. It is feared that the soul, projected out of the person in the shape of
his reflection in the mirror, may be carried off by the ghost of the departed,
which is commonly supposed to linger about the house till the burial. The
custom is thus exactly parallel to the Aru custom of not sleeping in a house
after a death for fear that the soul, projected out of the body in a dream,
may meet the ghost and be carried off by it. The reason why sick people
should not see themselves in a mirror, and why the mirror in a sick-room is
therefore covered up, is also plain; in time of sickness, when the soul might
take flight so easily, it is particularly dangerous to project it out of the body
by means of the reflection in a mirror. The rule is therefore precisely parallel
to the rule observed by some peoples of not allowing sick people to sleep;
for in sleep the soul is projected out of the body, and there is always a risk
that it may not return. 8
As with shadows and reflections, so with portraits; they are often believed
to contain the soul of the person portrayed. People who hold this belief are
naturally loth to have their likenesses taken; for if the portrait is the soul, or
at least a vital part of the person portrayed, whoever possesses the portrait
will be able to exercise a fatal influence over the original of it. Thus the
Esquimaux of Bering Strait believe that persons dealing in witchcraft have
the power of stealing a person's shade, so that without it he will pine away
and die. Once at a village on the lower Yukon River an explorer had set up
his camera to get a picture of the people as they were moving about among
their houses. While he was focusing the instrument, the headman of the
village came up and insisted on peeping under the cloth. Being allowed to
do so, he gazed intently for a minute at the moving figures on the ground
glass, then suddenly withdrew his head and bawled at the top of his voice
to the people, "He has all of your shades in this box." A panic ensued
among the group, and in an instant they disappeared helterskelter into their
houses. The Tepehuanes of Mexico stood in mortal terror of the camera,
and five days' persuasion was necessary to induce them to pose for it.
When at last they consented, they looked like criminals about to be
executed. They believed that by photographing people the artist could
carry off their souls and devour them at his leisure moments. They said that,
when the pictures reached his country, they would die or some other evil
would befall them. When Dr. Catat and some companions were exploring
the Bara country on the west coast of Madagascar, the people suddenly
became hostile. The day before the travellers, not without difficulty, had
photographed the royal family, and now found themselves accused of
taking the souls of the natives for the purpose of selling them when they
returned to France. Denial was vain; in compliance with the custom of the
country they were obliged to catch the souls, which were then put into a
basket and ordered by Dr. Catat to return to their respective owners. 9
Some villagers in Sikhim betrayed a lively horror and hid away whenever
the lens of a camera, or "the evil eye of the box" as they called it, was
turned on them. They thought it took away their souls with their pictures,
and so put it in the power of the owner of the pictures to cast spells on
them, and they alleged that a photograph of the scenery blighted the
landscape. Until the reign of the late King of Siam no Siamese coins were
ever stamped with the image of the king, "for at that time there was a strong
prejudice against the making of portraits in any medium. Europeans who
travel into the jungle have, even at the present time, only to point a camera
at a crowd to procure its instant dispersion. When a copy of the face of a
person is made and taken away from him, a portion of his life goes with the
picture. Unless the sovereign had been blessed with the years of a
Methusaleh he could scarcely have permitted his life to be distributed in
small pieces together with the coins of the realm." 10
Beliefs of the same sort still linger in various parts of Europe. Not very
many years ago some old women in the Greek island of Carpathus were
very angry at having their likenesses drawn, thinking that in consequence
they would pine and die. There are persons in the West of Scotland "who
refuse to have their likenesses taken lest it prove unlucky; and give as
instances the cases of several of their friends who never had a day's
health after being photographed." 11