Semitic magic : its origins and development

NOT PROPHYLACTIC ATONEMENT. 235
a very common religious fraud. The deity is deceived by
the bloodstained appearance of the child, and at the same
time he feeds on the carcase of the victim.
There seems to be little difficulty in eliminating the
first theory of prophylactic atonement. Every firstborn
of man or beast is held to belong to the gods. Nay,
more, the firstborn of sacred totem beasts are divine
property for sacrifice. Now it is extremely improbable
that a savage who owns large possessions in herds and
wives will sacrifice not only a lamb or a kid from every
fertile female in his flocks, but even his own firstborn to
save himself from harm. This would, in the case of a
rich man, entail an unlimited destruction of property to
obtain a very problematic result. Still more is it unlikely
that he will be allowed to kill the firstborn of the totem
merely to preserve his individual life. Totems may be
killed and eaten at solemn tribal meetings, but not by
unlicensed units. Moreover, prophylactic atonement of this
kind approaches the nature of the * atonement ' for tabu or
sin-ofiering, such as has been described in the preceding
chapter. The spirit causing the mischief changes its human
abode for the animal into which it is driven after leaving
the man's body. But this, as we have seen, makes the
animal really * unclean,' tabu, and uneatable, because it is
filled with the spirit. So, if we return to our argument of
the rich savage, such a slaughter of scores or hundreds of
firstborn represents a corresponding waste, which is absurd.
The second possibility, that of possession by reason of
paternity, is unlikely. Although it be granted that the
rights of tribal god or gods are recognized among the
harim, and that totemism and animal-shaped gods give
colour to a belief in intermixture between gods and beasts