The ghost cult evolved as an offset to the hazards of bad luck; its primitive religious observances were the outgrowth of anxiety about bad luck and of the inordinate fear of the dead. [1]
Many early peoples associated ghosts with the sea; hence virgins were greatly restricted in their bathing practices; young women were far more afraid of bathing in the sea at high tide than of having sex relations. [2]
Man inherited a natural environment, acquired a social environment, and imagined a ghost environment. The state is man’s reaction to his natural environment, the home to his social environment, the church to his illusory ghost environment. [3] The most primitive idea of the human soul, the ghost, was derived from the breath-dream idea-system. [4] Moses persistently sought to uproot the remnants of the ghost cult among his people, even prescribing the death penalty for its practitioners. [5]
The dread of the ghosts of the dead brought to light a new and amazing form of fear, an appalling and powerful terror, which contributed to whipping the loose social orders of early ages into the more thoroughly disciplined and better controlled primitive groups of ancient times. [6] Primitive desires produced the original society, but ghost fear held it together and imparted an extrahuman aspect to its existence. [7]
Ghost fear drove primitive man to envision the supernatural and thus securely laid the foundations for those powerful social influences of ethics and religion which in turn preserved inviolate the mores and customs of society from generation to generation. Ghost fear was the fountainhead of all world religion; and for ages many tribes clung to the old belief in one class of ghosts. [8]
Prepared the minds of men, through superstitious fear of the unreal and the supernatural, for the later discovery of “the fear of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom. ”. [9] Produced dread of being alone. [10] The savage lived in fear of the ghosts of his fellows and spent his spare time planning for the safe conduct of his own ghost after death. [11] It was a senseless superstition. [12]
It was very early believed that ghosts administered justice through the medicine men and priests; this constituted these orders the first crime detectors and officers of the law. [13]
It was once thought that the great desire of a ghost was to be quickly “laid” so that it might proceed undisturbed to deadland. Any error was believed to be displeasing to the ghost, and an angered ghost was supposed to be a source of calamity, misfortune, and unhappiness. [14]
The earliest hypothesis advanced in explanation of disease and death was that spirits caused disease by enticing the soul out of the body; if it failed to return, death ensued. [15] Though the savage credited ghosts with supernatural powers, he hardly conceived of them as having supernatural intelligence. [16]
Primitive man viewed the spirits and ghosts as having almost unlimited rights but no duties; the spirits were thought to regard man as having manifold duties but no rights. [17] Ghosts wanted wives and servants; a well-to-do savage expected that at least one slave wife would be buried alive at his death. [18]
And this belief in the existence of disembodied spirits or ghosts seemed to explain the occurrence of the unusual, the extraordinary, the infrequent, and the inexplicable. [19]
Ghosts were supposed to be disturbed and frightened by noise; shouting, bells, and drums drove them away from the living; and these ancient methods are still in vogue at “wakes” for the dead. [20]
Still later the imagination of man envisioned the concept of both good and bad supernatural agencies; some ghosts never evolved to the level of good spirits. When the doctrine of good and bad spirits finally matured, it became the most widespread and persistent of all religious beliefs. Man’s early philosophy was able to reconcile spirit constancy with the vicissitudes of temporal fortune only by postulating two kinds of spirits, one good and the other bad. [21]
It was the general belief of mankind that ghosts levied a continuous tribute of service as the price of noninterference in human affairs, and the least mischance was laid to ghost activities. [22] It was a supposed preference of ghosts to indwell some object which had belonged to them when alive in the flesh. [23]
The one thing which early established and crystallized the mores was the belief that the dead were jealous of the ways by which they had lived and died; therefore would they visit dire punishment upon those living mortals who dared to treat with careless disdain the rules of living which they had honored when in the flesh. [24]
Fasting and other forms of self-denial were thought to be pleasing to the ghosts, who took pleasure in the discomfort of the living during the transition period of lurking about before their actual departure for deadland. [25]
In religion the negative program of ghost placation long preceded the positive program of spirit coercion and supplication. [26]
None of early religions had much to do with the recognition of Deity or with reverence for the superhuman; their rites were mostly negative, designed to avoid, expel, or coerce ghosts. [27] Eventually the savage conceived of himself as a double—body and breath. The breath minus the body equaled a spirit, a ghost. [28] Shamans howled away ghosts responsible for disease. [29] All primitive tribes, except those little above animals, have developed some concept of the soul. [30]
Jesus further explained to his apostles that the spirits of departed human beings do not come back to the world of their origin to communicate with their living fellows. [31]
Man’s first efforts at defense were directed against the ghosts. As the ages passed, the living began to devise methods of resisting the dead. Many techniques were developed for frightening ghosts and driving them away. [32]
From age to age and from generation to generation, race after race has sought to improve this superghost doctrine, but no generation has ever yet dared to wholly reject it. [33] Superstition of ghosts in the dream still persists today. [34]
The ghost gods, who are of supposed human origin, should be distinguished from the nature gods, for nature worship did evolve a pantheon—nature spirits elevated to the position of gods. [35]
See also: UB 87.