The Golden Bough (Third Edition, Vol. 7 of 12) - Mirrors

32 The Golden Bough (Third Edition, Vol. 7 of 12)Latermisinterpretationsof the custom ofkilling a god inanimal form.[023]indiscriminating rage.” 95The custom of killing a god in animal form, which we shallexamine more in detail further on, belongs to a very early stageof human culture, and is apt in later times to be misunderstood.The advance of thought tends to strip the old animal and plantgods of their bestial and vegetable husk, and to leave theirhuman attributes (which are always the kernel of the conception)as the final and sole residuum. In other words, animal andplant gods tend to become purely anthropomorphic. When theyhave become wholly or nearly so, the animals and plants whichwere at first the deities themselves, still retain a vague andill-understood connexion with the anthropomorphic gods whohave been developed out of them. The origin of the relationshipbetween the deity and the animal or plant having been forgotten,various stories are invented to explain it. These explanations mayfollow one of two lines according as they are based on the habitualor on the exceptional treatment of the sacred animal or plant.The sacred animal was habitually spared, and only exceptionallyslain; and accordingly the myth might be devised to explaineither why it was spared or why it was killed. Devised for theformer purpose, the myth would tell of some service rendered tothe deity by the animal; devised for the latter purpose, the mythwould tell of some injury inflicted by the animal on the god.The reason given for sacrificing goats to Dionysus exemplifies amyth of the latter sort. They were sacrificed to him, it was said,because they injured the vine. 96 Now the goat, as we have seen,95 A. Leared, Morocco and the Moors (London, 1876), pp. 267-269. CompareBudgett Meakin, The Moors (London, 1902), pp. 331 sq. The same order offanatics also exists and holds similar orgies in Algeria, especially at the town ofTlemcen. See E. Doutté, Les Aïssâoua à Tlemcen (Châlons-sur-Marne, 1900),p. 13.96 Varro, Rerum rusticarum, i. 2. 19; Virgil, Georg. ii. 376-381, withthe comments of Servius on the passage and on Aen. iii. 118; Ovid, Fasti,i. 353 sqq.; id., Metamorph. xv. 114 sq.; Cornutus, Theologiae GraecaeCompendium, 30.