Magic and Religion

he people could not trust the king to remain in full mental and bodily vigour for more than a year; hence at the end of a ye

ears to have been at the end of a single year's reign), he abdicated for a f

ed to redeem his own life by deputing his son to

a year. Later he appointed a son, or some other member of the royal family,

s royalty, followed by burning to death, how was the succession regulated? Even the primitive Arunta, naked savages in Central Australia, have a kind of magistrate, merely a convener, called the Alatunja, 'the head man of a local totemic group.' He is an hereditary official, inheriting in the male line.[50] Does any one believe that a poor black man would accept the Alatunjaship if he knew he was to be roasted, and so die, at the end of a year? Now the Babylonians (or rather the Persians) were infinitely more civilised than the Arunta. Their kings were hereditary kings. How, then, would Mr. Frazer's system work? The king is sacrificed; his eldest son succeeds; is sacrificed next ye

lot, which is indispensable.[52] So, after the young king is sacrificed, we are in a quandary. We must overlook primogeniture, and begin sacrificing the king's brothers; they will not last long; we fall back on the cousins. Soon we need a new dynasty. Now no government could be carried on in the circumstances imagined by Mr. Frazer. The country would not stand it. No individual king would ever accept the crown. H

e instances of king killing, not annual, which we have explained as, in most cases, a rude form of superannuation; in no case as certainly the deliverance of a recognised god incarnate in the king There are also instances in folklore of yearly mock executions of a king of the May, or the like, and a dubious case in Lower M?sia. These do not prove annual sacrifices of actual kings in the past, if they prove any sacrifice at all. In these circumstances, I vent

chief who puts on the cap of royalty one day is, by the rule, killed the next day.[53] So nobody puts on the cap. An

I repeat, not a single instance has been given of a king who is slain for magico-religious reasons, and who is also the incarnation of any god whatever. The slain kings in the instances produced were, as a rule, superannuated because they were old, or got rid of be

azer's theory of the origin of the belief in the

ng of a cadet branch of the royal family. He is not killed. In Siam a temporary king for three days conducted a quête, or jocular pillaging, like our Robin Hood in Scotland. This is an example of the Period of Licence when law is in abeyance, and the importance of this period we shall later prove. The mock-king also ploughed nine furrows, and stood later with his right foot on his left knee. He did the same thing on a later occasion, and omens were drawn from his steadiness; he was supposed, if firm, to conquer evil spirits, and had another quête. In Upper Egypt a king of unreason for three

on the wall), and, even if the lads were substitutes for their royal fathers, there is no presumption raised that the fathers were habitually kill

ds in a festival at Babylon called the Sac?a.[56] To this we return in due order. We

nown deity, incarnate in them, and to provide a better human vehicle. Of this rite no instances were given. Next, there is the hypothesis that the King of Babylon was annually sacrificed, and succeeded by a new king, who was sacrific

f Mr. Frazer's conclusions. For my part I may say that I was so hypnotised, after first reading through the long roll of Mr. Frazer's 'sad stories of the deaths of kings,' that I could only murmur 'But there is no historical evidence for the yearly Babylonian, or rather Persian, regicides.' Th

theory would have been stopped by considerations so obvious and obstacles so insuperable. But first he had the remote analogy of the Aztec war-prisoner who personated a god, and to a god was sacrificed. That example is of no real service: the man was a captive and could not help himself; he was not King of Anahuac. Moreover, he was sacrificed: he was not put to a death of special shame. Again, there was the Saturnian victim, if we believe the legend about to be narrated. But he too was sacrificed: he was not