native mind. " If," he says, " the members of one totemic group set themselves to multiplying the animals or plants of the consecrated species, and seem to work for their companions of other totems, we must be careful not to regard this collaboration as the fundamental principle of Arunta or Loritja totemism. The blacks themselves have never told me that this was the object of their ceremonies. Of course, when I suggested and
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explained the idea to them, they understood it and acquiesced. But I should not be blamed for having some distrust of replies gained in this fashion." Strehlow also remarks that this way of interpreting the rite is contradicted by the fact that the totemic animals and plants are not all edible or useful; some are good for nothing ; some are even dangerous. So the ceremonies which concern them could not have any such end in view.1 " When some one asks the natives what the determining reason for these ceremonies is," concludes our author, " they are unanimous in replying: It is because our ancestors arranged things thus. This is why we do thus and not differently."2 But in saying that the rite is observed because it comes from the ancestors, it is admitted that its authority is confounded with the authority of tradition, which is a social affair of the first order. Men celebrate it to remain faithful to the past, to keep for the group its normal physiognomy, and not because of the physical effects which it may produce. Thus, the way in which the believers themselves explain them show the profound reasons upon which the rites proceed.
But there are cases when this aspect of the ceremonies is immediately apparent.
These may be observed the best among the Warramunga.3 Among this people, each clan is thought to be descended from a single ancestor who, after having been bom in some determined spot, passed his terrestrial existence in travelling over the country in every direction. It is he who, in the course of his voyages, gave to the land the form which it now has; it is he who made the mountains and plains, the water-holes and streams, etc. At the same time, he sowed upon his route living germs which were disengaged from his body and, after many successive reincarnations, became the actual members of the clan. Now the ceremony of the Warramunga which corresponds exactly to the Intichiuma of the Arunta, has the object of commemorating and representing the mythical history
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of this ancestor. There is no question of oblations or, except in one single case,1 of imitative practices. The rite consists solely in recollecting the past and, in a way, making it present by means of a veritable dramatic representation. This word is the more exact because in this ceremony, the officiant is in no way considered an incarnation of the ancestor, whom he represents ; he is an actor playing a role.
As an example, let us describe the Intichiuma of the Black Snake, as Spencer and Gillen observed it.2
An initial ceremony does not seem to refer to the past; at least the description of it which is given us gives no authorization for interpreting it in this sense. It consists in running and leaping on the part of two officiants,3 who are decorated with designs representing the black snake. When
1Of course these ceremonies are not followed by an alimentary communion. According to Strehlow, they have another name, at least when they concern non-edible plants: they are called, not mbatjalkatiuma, but knujilelama (Strehlow. Ill, p. 96).
2Strehlow, III, p. 8.
3The Warramunga are not the only ones among whom the Intichiuma takes the form of a dramatic representation. It is also found among the Tjingilli, the Umbaia. the Wulmala, the Walpari and even the Kaitish, though in certain of its features the ritual of these latter resembles that of the Arunta {Nor. Tr., p, 291, 309, 3ii, 317). If we take the Warramunga as a type, it is because they have been studied the best by Spencer and Gillen.
1This is the case with the Intichiuma of the black cockatoo (see above, p. 353).
2Nor. Tr., pp. 300 ff.
3One of these two actors does not belong to the Black Snake clan, but to that of the Crow. This is because the Crow
they finally fall exhausted on the ground, the assistants gently pass their hands over the emblematic designs with which the backs of the two actors are covered. They say that this act pleases the black snake. It is only afterwards that the series of commemorative ceremonies commences.
They put into action the mythical history of the ancestor Thalaualla, from the moment he emerged from the ground up to his definite return thither. They follow him through all his voyages. The myth says that in each of the localities where he sojourned, he celebrated totemic ceremonies ; they now repeat them in the same order in which they are supposed to have taken place originally. The movement which is acted the most frequently consists in twisting the entire body about rhythmically and violently ; this is because the ancestor did the same thing to make the germs of life which were in him come out. The actors have their bodies covered with down, which is detached and flies away during these movements ; this is a way of representing the flight of these mystic germs and their dispersion into space.
It will be remembered that among the Arunta, the scene of the ceremony is determined by the ritual: it is the spot where the sacred rocks, trees and water-holes are found, and the worshippers must go there to celebrate the cult. Among the Warramunga, on the contrary, the ceremonial ground is arbitrarily chosen according to convenience. It is a conventional scene. However, the original scene of the events whose reproduction constitutes the theme of the rite is itself represented by
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means of designs. Sumttimes these designs are made upon the very bodies of the actors. For example, a small circle coloured red, painted on the back and stomach, represents a water-hole.1 In other cases, the image is traced on the soil. Upon a ground previously soaked and covered witli red ochre, they draw curved lines, made up of a series of white points, which symbolize a stream or a mountain. This is a beginning of decoration.
In addition to the properly religious ceremonies which the ancestor is believed to have celebrated long ago, they also represent simple episodes of his career, either epic or comic. Thus, at a given moment, while three actors are on the scene, occupied in an important rite, another one hides behind a bunch of trees situated at some distance. A packet of down is attached about his neck which represents a wallaby. As soon as the principal ceremony is finished, an old man traces a line upon the ground which is directed towards the spot where the fourth actor is hidden. The others march behind him, with eyes lowered and fixed upon this line, as though following a trail. When they discover the man, they assume a stupefied air and one of them beats him with a club. This represents an incident in the life of the great black snake. One day, his son went hunting, caught a wallaby and ate it without giving his father any. The latter followed his tracks, surprised him and forced him to disgorge ; it is to this that the beating at the end of the representation alludes.2
We shall not relate here all the mythical events which are represented successively. The preceding examples are sufficient to show the character of these ceremonies : they are dramas, but of a particular variety ; they act, or at least they are believed to act, upon the course of nature. When the commemoration of Thalaualla is terminated, the Warramunga are convinced that black snakes cannot fail to increase and multiply. So these dramas are rites, and even rites which, by the nature of their efficacy, are comparable on every point to those which constitute the Intichiuma of the Arunta.
Therefore each is able to clarify the other. It is even more legitimate to compare them than if there were no break of continuity between them. Not only is the end pursued identical in each case, but the most characteristic part of the Warramunga ritual is found in germ in the other. In fact, the Intichiuma, as the Arunta generally perform it, contains within it a sort of implicit commemoration. The places where it is celebrated are necessarily those which the ancestor made
is supposed to be an " associate " of the Black Snake : in other words, it is a sub-totem.
1Nor. Tr; p. 302.
2Ibid., p. 305.
illustrious. The roads over which the worshippers pass in the course of their pious [374]
pilgrimages are those which the heroes of the Alcheringa traversed;
the places where they stop to proceed with the rites are those where their fathers sojourned themselves, where they vanished into the ground, etc. So everything brings their memory to the minds of the assistants. Moreover, to the manual rites they frequently add hymns relating the exploits of their ancestors.1 If, instead of being told, these stories are acted, and if, in this new form, they develop in such a way as to become an essential part of the ceremony, then we have the ceremony of the Warra-munga. But even more can be said, for on one side, the Arunta Intichiuma is already a sort of representation. The officiant is one with the ancestor from whom he is descended and whom he reincarnates.2 The gestures he makes are those which this ancestor made in the same circumstances. Speaking exactly, of course he does not play the part of the ancestral personage as an actor might do it; he Is this personage himself. But it is true, notwithstanding, that, in one sense, it is the hero who occupies the scene. In order to accentuate the representative character of the rite, it would be sufficient for the duality of the ancestor and the officiant to become more marked; this is just what happens among the Warramunga.3 Even among the Arunta, at least one Intichiuma is mentioned in which certain persons are charged with representing ancestors with whom they have no relationship of mythical descent, and in which there is consequently a proper dramatic representation : this is the Intichiuma of the Emu.4 It seems that in this case, also, contrarily to the general rule among this people, the theatre of the ceremony is artificially arranged.5
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It does not follow from the fact that, in spite of the differences separating them, these two varieties of ceremony thus have an air of kinship, as it were, that there is a definite relation of succession between them, and that one is a transformation of the other. It may very well be that the resemblances pointed out come from the fact that the two sprang from the same source, that is, from the same original ceremony, of which they are only divergent forms: we shall even see that this hypothesis is the most probable one. But even without taking sides on this question, what has already been said is enough to show that they are rites of the same nature. So we may be allowed to compare them, and to use the one to enable us to understand the other better.
Now the peculiar thing in the ceremonies of the Warramunga of which we have been speaking, is that not a gesture is made whose object is to aid or to provoke directly the increase of the totemic species.1 If we analyse the movements made, as well as the words spoken, we generally find nothing which betrays any intention of this sort. Everything is in representations whose only object can be to render the mythical past of the clan present to the mind. But the
1See Spencer and Gillen, Nat. Tr., p. 188 ; Strehlow, III, p. 5.
2Strehlow himself recognizes this: " The totemic ancestor and his descendant, who represents him (der Darsteller} are presented as one in these sacred hymns." (Ill, p. 6). As this incontestable fact contradicts the theory according to which ancestral souls do not reincarnate themselves, Strehlow adds, it is true, in a note, that " in the course of the ceremony there is no real incarnation of the ancestor in the person who represents him." If Strehlow wishes to say that the incarnation does not take place on the occasion of the ceremony, then nothing is more certain. But if he means that there is no incarnation at all, we do not understand how the officiant and the ancestor can be confounded.
3Perhaps this difference is partially due to the fact that among the Warramunga each clan is thought to be descended from one single ancestor about whom the legendary history of the clan centres. This is the ancestor whom the rite commemorates; now the officiant need not be descended from him. One might even ask if these mythical chiefs, who are sorts of demigods, are submitted to reincarnation.
4In this Intichiuma, three assistants represent ancestors " of a considerable antiquity " ; they play a real part (Nat. Tr., pp. 181-182). It is true that Spencer and Gillen add that these are ancestors posterior to the Alcheringa. Nevertheless, mythical personages are represented in the course of the rite.
5Sacred rocks and water-holes are not mentioned. The centre of the ceremony is the image of an emu drawn on the ground, which can be made anywhere.
1We do not mean to say that all the ceremonies of the Warramunga are of this type. The example of the white
cockatoo, of which we spoke above, proves that there are exceptions.
mythology of a group is the system of beliefs common to this group. The traditions whose memory it perpetuates express the way in which society represents man and the world ; it is a moral system and a cosmology as well as a history. So the rite serves and can serve only to sustain the vitality of these beliefs, to keep them from being effaced from memory and, in sum, to revivify the most essential elements of the collective consciousness. Through it, the group periodically renews the sentiment which it has of itself and of its unity ; at the same time, individuals are strengthened in their social natures. The glorious souvenirs which are made to live again before their eyes, and with which they feel that they have a kinship, give them a feeling of strength and confidence : a man is surer of his faith when he sees to how distant a past it goes back and what great things it has inspired. This is the characteristic of the ceremony which makes it instructive. Its tendency is to act entirely upon the mind and upon it alone. So if men believe nevertheless that it acts upon things and that it assures the prosperity of the species, this can be only as a reaction to the moral action which it exercises and which is obviously the only one which is real. Thus the hypothesis which we have proposed is verified by a significant experiment, and this
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verification is the more convincing because, aa we have shown, there is no difference in nature between the ritual system of the Warramunga and that of the Arunta. The one only makes more evident what we had already conjectured from the other.
II
But there are ceremonies in which this representative and idealistic character is still more accentuated.
In those of which we have been speaking, the dramatic representation did not exist for itself; it was only a means having a very material end in view", namely, the reproduction of the totemic species. But there are others which do not differ materially from the preceding ones, but from which, nevertheless, all preoccupations of this sort are absent. The past is here represented for the mere sake of representing it and fixing it more firmly in the mind, while no determined action over nature is expected of the rite. At least, the physical effects sometimes imputed to it are wholly secondary and have no relation with the liturgical importance attributed to it.
This is the case notably with the ceremonies which the Warramunga celebrate in honour of the snake Wollunqua.1
As we have already said, the Wollunqua is a totem of a very especial sort. It is not an animal or vegetable species, but a unique being : there is only one Wollunqua. Moreover, this being is purely mythical. The natives represent it as a colossal snake whose length is such that when it rises on its tail its head is lost in the clouds. It resides, they believe, in a water-hole called Thapauerlu, which is hidden in the bottom of a solitary valley. But if it differs in certain ways from the ordinary totems, it has all their distinctive characteristics nevertheless. It serves as the collective name and emblem of a whole group of individuals who regard it as their common ancestor, while the relations which they sustain with this mythical beast are identical with those which the members of other totems believe that they sustain with the founders of their respective clans. In the Alcheringa2 times, the Wollunqua traversed the country in every direction. In the different localities where it stopped, it scattered " spirit-children," the spiritual principles which
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still serve as the souls of the living of to-day. The Wollunqua is even considered as a sort of preeminent totem. The Warramunga are divided into two phratries, called Uluuru and Kingilli. Nearly all the totems of the former are snakes of different kinds. Now they are all believed to be
1Nor. Tr., pp. 226 в. On this same subject, cf. certain passages of Eyimann which evidently refer to the same mythical being (Die Eingeborcnen, etc., p. 185). Strehlow also mentions a mythical snake among the Arunta (Kulaia, water-snake) which may not differ greatly from the Wollunqua (Strehlow, I, p. 78 ; cf. II, p. 71, where the Kulaia is found in a list of totems).
2We use the Arunta words, in order not to complicate our terminology ; the Warramunga call this mythical period Wingara.
descended from the Wollunqua ;
they say that it was their grandfather.1 From this, we can catch a glimpse of how the myth of the Wollunqua probably arose. In order to explain the presence of so many similar totems in the same phratry, they imagined that all were derived from one and the same totem ; it was necessary to give it a gigantic form so that in its very appearance it might conform to the considerable role assigned to it in the history of the tribe.
Now the Wollunqua is the object of ceremonies not differing in nature from those which we have already studied : they are representations in which are portrayed the principal events of its fabulous life. They show it coming out of the ground and passing from one locality to another ; they represent different episodes in its voyages, etc. Spencer and Gillen assisted at fifteen ceremonies of this sort which took place between the 27th of July and the 23rd of August, all being linked together in a determined order, in such a way as to form a veritable cycle.2 In the details of tlic rites constituting it, this long celebration is therefore indistinct from the ordinary Intichiuma of the Warramunga, as is recognized by tlie authors who have described it to us.3 But, on the other hand, it is an Intichiuma which could not have the object of assuring the fecundity of an animal or vegetable species, for the Wollunqua is a species all by itself and does not reproduce. It exists, and the natives do not seem to feel that it has need of a cult to preserve it in its existence. These ceremonies not only seem to lack the efficacy of the classic Intichiuma, but it even seems as though they have no material efficacy of any sort. The Wollunqua is not a divinity set over a special order of natural phenomena, so they expect no definite service from him in exchange for the cult. Of course they say that if the ritual prescriptions are badly observed, the Wollunqua becomes angry, leaves his retreat and comes to punish his worshippers for their negligence ; and inversely, when everything passes regularly, they are led to
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believe that they will be fortunate and that some happy event will take place ; but it is quite evident that these possible sanctions are an after-thought to explain the rite. After the ceremony had been established, it seemed natural that it should serve for something, and that the omission of the prescribed observances should therefore expose one to grave dangers. But it was not established to forestall these mythical dangers or to assure particular advantages. The natives, moreover, have only the very haziest ideas of them. When the whole ceremony is completed, the old men announce that if the Wollun-qua is pleased, he will send rain. But it is not to have rain that they go through with the celebration.1 They celebrate it because their ancestors did, because they are
1It is not easy to express in words what is in reality rather a vague feeling amongst the natives, but after carefully watching the different series of ceremonies, we were impressed with the feeling that the Wollunqua represented to the native mind the idea of a dominant totem " (Nor. Tr.. p. 248).
2One of the most solemn of these ceremonies is the one which we liave had occasion to describe above (p. 217), in the course of which, an image of the W^ollunqua is designed on a sort of hillock which is then torn to pieces in the midst of a general effervescence.
3Nor. Tr., pp. 227, 248.
1 Here are the terms of Spencer and Gillen in the only passage in which they speak of a possible connection between the Wollunqua and rain. A few days after the rite about the hillock, " the old men say that they have heard Wollunqua speak, that he was satisfied with what had passed and that he was going to send rain. The reason for this prophecy was that they, as well as ourselves, had heard thunder rolling at a distance." To such a slight extent is the production of rain the immediate object of the ceremony that they did not attribute it to Wollunqua until several days later, and then after accidental circumstances. Another fact shows how vague the ideas of the natives are on this point. A few lines below, thunder is spoken of as a sign, not of the Wollunqua's satisfaction, but of its discontent. In spite of these prognostics, continue our authors, " the rain did not fall. But some days later, they heard the thunder rolling in the distance again. The old men said that the Wollunqua was grumbling because he was not contented" with the way in which the rite had been celebrated. Thus a single phenomenon, the noise of thunder, is sometimes interpreted as a sign of a favouring disposition, and sometimes as a mark of evil intentions.
However, there is one detail of the ritual which, if we accept the explanation of it proposed by Spencer and Gillen, is directly efficient. According to them, the destruction of the hillock was intended to frighten the Wollunqua and to prevent it, by magic constraint, from leaving its retreat. But this interpretation seems very doubtful to us. In fact, in the very case of which we were speaking, where it was announced that the Wollunqua was dissatisfied, this dissatisfaction