Themis, a study of the social origins of Greek ... - Warburg Institute

m] The Thunderstorm and the Bull-Roarer 65
as thunder, that is, psychologically produces the same reactions, it (l
is thunder.
To us a thunderstorm is mainly a thing of terror, a thing to
be avoided, a thing ' not to go out in.' We get abundant and
superabundant rain without thunderstorms. But an occasional
drought broken up by thunderstorms helps us to realize what
thunder and the Bull-Roarer which makes thunder mean to the
Central Australian, where 'a thunderstorm causes the desert to
blossom as a rose truly as if by magic 1 .' The thuuder, as the
headman said, ' caused the rain to fall and everything to grow up
new.' Now we realize its virtue in the adolescence rite ; it gives
the boys 'more power,'*they not only grow up, but grow up new.
The Bull-Roarer is as it were the rite incarnate. The Bull-Roarer
is the vehicle not of a god or even of a spirit, but of unformulated
uncanny force, what Mr Lang 2 calls a ' Powerful Awful.'
The awful, the uncanny, the unknown, is within man rather
than without. In all excited states, whatever be the stimulant,
whether of sex or intoxication, or vehement motion as in dancing,
man is conscious of a potency beyond himself, yet within himself,
he feels himself possessed, not by a personal god—he is not yet
evdeos—but by an exalted power. The power within him he does
not, cannot, at first clearly distinguish from the power without,
and the fusion and confusion is naturally helped when the emotion
is felt collectively in the group. This fusion of internal will and
energy with external power 3 is of the very essence of the notion of
sanctity and is admirably seen in the Bull-Roarer. The initiated
boy when taught to twirl the Bull-Roarer feels himself actually
making the Thunder, his will and energy and action conspire
with its uncanny potency. There is no clear severance ; he is
conscious of control, he can alter the pace and thereby the
weird sounds, he is a Thunder-maker and we are landed straight
into Magic.
1 Mr B. R. Marett, op. cit. p. 406, and Howitt, The Native Tribes of South-East
Australia, 1904, p. 538.
2 See Preanimistic Religion, The Contemporary Review, 1909, p. 589. Mr Lang
denies a pre-Animistic stage of religion. The case for pre-Animism is well stated
by Mr E. Clodd in his Pre-Animistic Stages in Religion, a paper read before the
Third International Congress for the History of Religions at Oxford, 1908.
a It will be seen in chapter v., when we come to discuss totemism and sacrifice,
that primitive man's lack of power to draw intellectual distinctions lies at the back
of many religious phenomena.