Monday, August 31, 2009

Quotes: Primitive Beliefs (11)

Primitive belief 492 "They [North American Indians] thought that a certain Old Woman Who Never Dies made the crops grow and that, living somewhere in the south, she sent migratory waterfowl in spring as her tokens and representatives; each sort of bird represented a special kind of crop cultivated by the Indians: The wild goose stood for the maize, the wild swan for the gourds, and the wild duck for the beans." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.


Primitive belief 496 "Of these two conceptions, that of the corn-spirit as immanent in the corn is doubtless the older, since the view of nature as animated by in-dwelling spirits appears to have generally preceded the view of it as controlled by external deities…animism precedes deism." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.


Primitive belief 502 "…every Lithuanian reaper makes haste to finish his task; for the Old Rye-woman lives in the last stalks, and whoever cuts the last stalks kills the Old Rye-woman, and by killing her he brings trouble on himself." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.


Primitive belief 511 "The corn-spirit is supposed to lurk as long as he can in the corn, retreating before the reapers, the binders, and the threshers at their work…when he is forcibly expelled from the refuge in the last corn cut or the last sheaf bound or the last grain threshed, he necessarily assumes some other form than that of the cornstalks which had hitherto been his garment or body…form…the expelled corn-spirit [can] assume…naturally…that of the person who stands nearest to the corn from which…the corn-spirit has just been expelled." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.


Primitive belief 523 "The fondness of goats for straying in woods and nibbling the bark of trees, to which indeed they are most destructive, is an obvious and perhaps sufficient reason why wood-spirits should so often be supposed to take the form of goats." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.

Friday, August 28, 2009

Quotes: Primitive Beliefs (10)

Primitive belief 426 " Persephone…the goddess who spends three or…six months every year with the dead underground and the remainder of the year with the living above ground; in whose absence the barley seed is hidden in the earth and the fields lie bare and fallow; on whose return in spring to the upper world the corn shoots up from the clods and the earth is heavy with leaves and blossoms…." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.


Primitive belief 433 " Above all, the thought of the seed buried in the earth in order to spring up to new and higher life readily suggested a comparison with human destiny, and strengthened the hope that for man too the grave may be but the beginning of a better and happier existence in some brighter world unknown." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.


Primitive belief 471 "In Germany the corn is very commonly personified under the name of the Corn-mother…in spring when the corn waves in the wind, the peasants say, 'There comes the Corn-mother' or 'The Corn-mother is running over the field,' or 'the Corn-mother is going through the corn.' " Frazer, The New Golden Bough.


Primitive belief 471 "Or they call her the Old Corn-woman, and say that she sits in the corn and strangles the children who tread it down." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.


Primitive belief 483 …the desired objects are attained, not by propitiating the favor of divine beings through sacrifice, prayer, and praise, but by ceremonies which are believed to influence the course of nature directly through a physical sympathy or resemblance between the rite and the effect which it is the intention of the rite to produce. Frazer, The New Golden Bough.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Quotes: Primitive Beliefs (9)

Primitive belief 389 "…as Osiris died and rose again from the dead, so all men hoped to arise like him from dead to life eternal." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.


Primitive belief 395 "Yet if the old Egyptian farmer felt a secret joy at reaping and garnering the grain, it was essential that he should conceal the natural emotion under an air of profound dejection…was he not severing the body of the corn-god with his sickle and trampling it to pieces under the hoofs of his cattle on the threshing floor…an ancient custom of the Egyptian corn-reapers to beat their breasts and lament over the first sheaf cut." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.


Primitive belief 398 "For it is a widespread belief that the souls of the dead revisit their old homes on one night of the year; and on that solemn occasion people prepare for the reception of the ghosts by laying out food for them to eat, and lighting lamps to guide them on their dark road from and to the grave." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.


Primitive belief 410 "The ivy was sacred to him [Osiris] and was called his plant because it is always green." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.


Primitive belief 411 "In laying their dead in the grave they committed them to his [Osiris’s] keeping who could raise them from the dust to life eternal, even as he caused the seed to spring from the ground." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Quotes: Primitive Beliefs (8)

Primitive belief 299 "…we may safely infer that a custom of allowing a king to kill his son, as a substitute or vicarious substitute for himself, would be in no way exceptional or surprising." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.


Primitive belief 337 "The attitude of the primitive towards immortality and after-life has been admirably summarized by Ernst Cassirer, An Essay on Man (New York 1953), 111, in the dictum: If anything is…in need of proof, it is not the fact of immortality, but the fact of death." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.


Primitive belief 349 "…the death of Adonis is not the natural decay of vegetation in general under the summer heat or the winter cold; it is the violent destruction of the corn by man, who cuts it down in the field, stamps it to pieces on the threshing-floor, and grinds it to powder in the mill." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.


Primitive belief 350 " And just as the husbandman must propitiate the spirit of the corn which he consumes, so also the herdsman must appease the spirit of the grass and leaves which his cattle munch." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.


Primitive belief 389 389 " In the resurrection of Osiris the Egyptians saw the pledge of a life everlasting for themselves beyond the grave…believed that every man would live eternal in the other world if only his surviving friends did for his body what the gods had done for the body of Osiris." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Quotes: Primitive Practices (7)

Primitive belief 203 " …explain the widespread custom of covering up mirrors or turning them to the wall when a death has taken place in the house…feared that the soul, projected out of the person in the shape of his reflection in the mirror, may be carried off by the ghost of the departed, which is commonly supposed to linger about the house until the burial." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.


Primitive belief 204 "As with shadows and reflections, so with portraits; they are often believed to contain the soul of the person portrayed." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.


Primitive belief 204 "…when Dr. Catat and some companions had photographed the royal family in the Bara country…they found themselves accused of taking the souls of the natives for the purpose of selling them…." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.


Primitive belief 204 "…it is a German superstition that if you have your portrait painted, you will soon die." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.


Primitive belief 216 "In such cases one motive for the inconvenient restrictions laid on the victors in their hour of triumph is probably a dread of the angry ghosts of the slain." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.

Monday, August 24, 2009

Quotes: Primitive Beliefs (6)

Shadows, Mirrors, Alligators and Pools


Primitive belief 202 " …its [the shadow’s] diminution should be regarded with solicitude and apprehension as betokening a corresponding decrease n the vital energy of its owner." Frazer, The New Golden Bough. As the shadow shrinks, so does the energy of its owner.


Primitive belief 202 "In Lower Austria on the evening of St. Sylvester’s day—the last day of the year—the company seated round the table mark whose shadow is not cast on the wall, and believe that the seemingly shadowless person will die next year." Frazer, The New Golden Bough. Watch out if you don't have a shadow.


Primitive belief 203 "When the…of New Guinea first saw their likeness in a looking-glass they thought they were seeing their souls." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.


Primitive belief 203 "The…say that a crocodile has the power of killing a man by dragging his reflection under water." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.


Primitive belief 203 "…a pool into which if any one looks he dies; the malignant spirit takes hold upon his life by means of his reflection in the water." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.

Friday, August 21, 2009

Quotes: Primitive Beliefs (5)

Primitive belief 196 "It is a common rule with primitive people not to waken a sleeper, because his soul is away and might not have time to get back; if it is absolutely necessary to rouse a sleeper, it must be done very gradually, to allow the soul time to return." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.


Primitive belief 197 "And when a man becomes crazed or mad, they take him to the place where he is supposed to have lost his soul and invite the truant spirit to return to his body." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.


Primitive belief 198 "…deemed imprudent to go near a grave at night, lest the ghosts should catch and keep the soul of the passer-by." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.


Primitive belief 201 "The Indian tribes of…believe that man has four souls, of which the shadow is one.... " Frazer, The New Golden Bough.


Primitive belief 202 "The awe and dread with which the primitive often contemplates his mother-in-law are among the most familiar facts of anthropology." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Quotes: Primitive Beliefs (4)

Primitive belief 127 "…illicit love tends to mar that fertility and to blight the crops" Frazer, The New Golden Bough.


Primitive belief 127 "…believed that breaches of sexual morality disturb the course of nature, particularly by blighting the fruits of the earth." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.


Primitive belief 184 "In the Biblical story of Cain and Abel, blood shed in homicide renders the soil barren." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.


Primitive belief 184 "In the (North Canaanite) Poem of Aqhat…the murder of that youth is revealed to his father and sister by the sudden infertility of the soil." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.


Primitive belief 196 "Now the absence of the soul in sleep has its dangers, for if from any cause the soul should be permanently detained away from the body, the person thus deprived of the vital principle must die." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Quotes: Primitive Beliefs (3)

Primitive belief 105 " …the Kings of Fire and Water are not allowed to die a natural death for that would lower their reputation; accordingly when one of them is seriously ill the elders hold a consultation and if they think he cannot recover they stab him to death." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.


Primitive belief 109 "It is said that in the Upper Palatinate…old woodmen still secretly ask a fine, sound tree to forgive them before they cut it down." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.


Primitive belief 110 "The…tribes of South Australia regard as very sacred certain trees which are supposed to be their fathers transformed…. " Frazer, The New Golden Bough.


Primitive belief 111 "In Korea the souls of people who die of the plague or by the roadside, and of women who expire in childbed, invariably take up their abode in trees." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.


Primitive belief 112 "The…tribes of Central Australia believe that certain trees are the abode of disembodied human spirits waiting to be born again." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.


Comment: A friend of mine believes that when we die we are transformed into a grain of sand. And that is the afterlife. RayS.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Quotes: Primitive Beliefs (2).

Primitive belief 81 "At an eclipse of the sun the Ojibways used to imagine that it was being extinguished...shot fire-tipped arrows in the air, hoping to rekindle his expiring light." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.


Primitive belief 93 "In Homeric Greece it was thought that the reign of a good king caused the earth to bring forth wheat and barley, the trees to be loaded with fruit, the flocks to multiply, and the sea to yield fish...when the crops failed, the Burgundians used to blame their kings and depose them; and, in the time of the Swedish king Domalde, when a mighty famine broke out, the chiefs decided that the king himself was the cause of the scarcity, wherefore they slew him and smeared with his blood the altars of the gods." Frazer, The New Golden Bough. Now that's accountability.


Primitive belief 96 "Certain persons are supposed to be possessed from time to time by a spirit or deity: while the possession lasts, their own personality lies in abeyance, the presence of the spirit is revealed by convulsive shiverings and shakings of the man’s whole body, by wild gestures and excited looks, all of which are referred, not to the man himself, but to the spirit which has entered into him; and in this abnormal state all his utterances are accepted as the voice of the indwelling god or spirit." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.


Primitive belief 98 "In Uganda the priest, in order to be inspired by his god, smokes a pipe of tobacco fiercely till he works himself into a frenzy; the loud excited tones in which he then talks are recognized as the voice of the god speaking through him." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.


Primitive belief 105 "He is supposed to conjure down rain and to drive away locusts; but if he disappoints the people's expectation and a great drought arises in the land the Alfai is stoned to death, and his nearest relations are obliged to cast the first stone at him." Frazer, The New Golden Bough. Shades of Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery."

Monday, August 17, 2009

Quotes: Primitive Belief (1)

Primitive belief xxi "The 'soul' of all human beings, it is believed, can quit the body temporarily in moments of sleep, sickness, or stress; grow enfeebled through old age; or be deliberately extracted by malevolent magicians ...all human beings are subjected, among primitive peoples, to a...system of taboos, by which such calamity is supposedly prevented." Synopsis. Frazer, The New Golden Bough. You say "God Bless You" when someone sneezes to protect against that person's losing the soul through the sneeze.


Primitive belief 49 "Just as the savage eats many animals or plants in order to absorb desirable qualities with which he believes them to be endowed, so he avoids eating many others lest he acquire undesirable qualities which he attributes to them." Frazer, The New Golden Bough. Supposedly, cannibals eat people for the same reason.


Primitive belief 50 "...even in England there may be found traces of this primitive belief that the good luck of fishermen at sea can be directly influenced by the conduct of their wives at home." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.


Primitive belief 67 "The sympathetic connection supposed to exist between a man and the weapon which has wounded him is probably founded on the notion that the blood on the weapon continues to feel with the blood in his body." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.


Primitive belief 71 "There is a widespread belief that twin children possess magical powers over nature, especially over rain and weather." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.

Friday, August 14, 2009

Quotes: Pride.

Pride 73 "Wrongs are often forgiven, but contempt never is; our pride remembers it forever." Lord Chesterfield. 1748. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.


Pride 201 "What is the sign of a proud man? ….never praises any one." The Zohar. 13th century. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.


Pride 367 "Too much humility is pride." German. Dictionary of Foreign Terms


Pride 377 "But an Englishman cannot be proud of being simple and direct, and still remain simple and direct...the matter of these...virtues, to know them is to kill them." G. K. Chesterton, “On Sandals and Simplicity.” 1905. Gross, ed. Essays.Once you realize you are good at something, you probably will not be that good again.

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Quotes: Prejudice

Prejudice 51 "The Russians [on the prairie] had such bad luck that people were afraid of them and liked to put them out of mind". Cather, My Ántonia


Prejudice 200 "All foreigners were ignorant people who couldn’t speak English." Cather, My Ántonia


Prejudice 83 "…a gang of woolly-whiskered book-lice that think they know more than Almighty God…." Lewis, Babbitt.


Prejudice 253 Clarence: "I tell you these strikers are nothing in God’s world but a lot of bomb-throwing socialists and thugs, and the only way to handle ‘em is with a club!"

Babbitt: "O, rats, Clarence, they look just about like you and me, and I certainly didn’t notice any bombs." Lewis, Babbitt.

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Quote: Prediction.

Prediction 370 Winston Churchill: "It may well be that an even worse war is drawing near...a war of the East against the West...a war of liberal civilization against the Mongol hordes." Winston Churchill. “The Dream.” 1947. Gross, ed. Essays.Today is August 12, 2009. Churchill made this prediction in 1947, well before 9/11. He also predicted and proclaimed the Cold War. RayS.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Quotes: Preaching.

Preaching 196 "Be not too hasty to trust or admire the teachers of virtue; they discourse like angels but they live like men." Sam. Johnson. 1759. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.


Preaching 208 "…men more frequently require to be reminded than informed." Sam. Johnson. 1750-2. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.


Preaching 49 "He preacheth best who liveth best." Spanish. Dictionary of Foreign Terms

Monday, August 10, 2009

Quotes: Prayer

Prayer 12 "I love to pray at sunrise—before the world becomes polluted with vanity and hatred." The Koretser Rabbi, 18th century. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.


Prayer 222 "Pray: to ask the laws of the universe be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy." Ambrose Bierce. Portable Curmudgeon. Bierce was a cynic.


Prayer 85 "Grandfather’s prayers were often very interesting...had the gift of simple and moving expression; because he talked so little, his words had a peculiar force; they were not worn dull from constant use; his prayers reflected what he was thinking about at the time, and it was chiefly through them that we got to know his feelings and his views about things." Cather, My Ántonia

Friday, August 7, 2009

Quotes: Praise

Praise 202 "It is not failure of others to appreciate your abilities that should trouble you, but rather your failure to appreciate theirs." Confucius. 5th century BC. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms. OUCH!


Praise 202 "There is probably an element of malice in our readiness to overestimate people—we are, as it were, laying up for ourselves the pleasure of later cutting them down to size." Eric Hoffer. 1969. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms. Another view of the "Wheel of Fortune." What goes up will come down.


Praise 202 "Praise undeserved is satire in disguise." Broadhurst. Early 18th century. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms. The deeper meaning is that you're worthless.


Praise 203 "A man seldom gives praise gratis." Anon. Early 18th century. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms. Expects something in return.

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Quotes: Prairie (3)

Prairie 29 "The prairie...the width and bigness of it, which had expanded her spirit an hour ago, began to frighten her...spread out so, it went on so uncontrollably; she could never know it." Sinclair Lewis, Main Street. The terror of the vast prairie. Incomprehensible.


Prairie 29 "Shadows from immense cumulus clouds were forever sliding across low mounds." Sinclair Lewis, Main Street.


Prairie 37 "She realized the vastness and the emptiness of the land." Sinclair Lewis, Main Street.


Prairie 38 " She wanted to run, fleeing from the encroaching prairie, demanding the security of a great city...oozing out from every drab wall, she felt a forbidding spirit which she could never conquer." Sinclair Lewis: Main Street.The negative spirit of the small town that overwhelms the newcomer.

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Quotes: Prairie (2)

Impressions of the prairie:


Prairie 40 "All those fall afternoons were the same, but I never got used to them; as far as we could see, the miles of copper-red grass were drenched in sunlight that was stronger and fiercer than at any other time of the day...blond cornfields were red gold, the haystacks turned rosy and threw long shadows...whole prairie was like the bush that burned with fire and was not consumed." Cather, My Ántonia


Prairie 37 "This formless prairie had no heart that beat, no waves that sang, no soul that could be touched…or cared….." Rölvaag, Giants in the Earth.


Prairie 37 "The infinitude surrounding her on every hand might not have been so oppressive, might even have brought her a measure of peace, if it had not been for the deep silence, which lay heavier here than in a church…no warbling of birds rose on the air, no buzzing of insects sounded; even the wind had died away; the waving blades of grass that trembled to the faintest breath now stood erect and quiet, as if listening, in the great hush of the evening." Rölvaag, Giants in the Earth.


Prairie 193 "Before the snow came, Beret thought it delightful to have such [white] walls [inside]; but after there was nothing but whiteness outside—pure whiteness as far as the eye could see and the thought could reach…her eyes were blinded wherever she looked, either outdoors or indoors; the black-brown earthen floor was the only object on which she could rest them comfortably; and so she always looked down now, as she sat in the house." Rölvaag, Giants in the Earth.


Prairie 363 "Even the bravest would find it hard to face and conquer the strangeness of it all [the prairie], the hopeless chill, the overwhelming might of this great solitude." Rölvaag, Giants in the Earth.

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Quotes: Prairie (1)

Prairie i Introduction: "We were talking about what it is like to spend one’s childhood in little towns like these, buried in wheat and corn, under stimulating extremes of climate: burning summers when the world lies green and billowy beneath a brilliant sky, when one is fairly stifled in vegetation, in the color and smell of strong weeds and heavy harvests; blustery winters with little snow, when the whole country is stripped bare and gray as sheet iron." Cather, My Ántonia


Prairie 7 "I had never before looked up at the sky when there was not a familiar mountain ridge against it." Cather, My Ántonia


Prairie 8 "Between the earth and that sky I felt erased, blotted out." Cather, My Ántonia


Prairie 16 "The light air about me told me that the world ended here: only the ground and the sun and sky were left, and if one went a little further there would only be sun and sky, and I would float off into them, like the tawny hawks which sailed over our heads making slow shadows on the grass." Cather, My Ántonia


Prairie 29 "Trees were so rare in that country, and they had to make such a hard fight to grow, that we used to feel anxious about them, and visit them as if they were persons...must have been the scarcity of detail in that tawny landscape that made detail so precious." Cather, My Ántonia

Monday, August 3, 2009

Quotes: Power (2)

Power 390 Lord Acton: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Lytton Strachey. “Creighton.” 1925. Gross, ed. Essays. Today, almost a cliche, but truer than ever.


Power 526 Madeleine’s experience [in Henry Adams’s Democracy] of the men who wield power, or try to wield it, is the substance of her sad education: "Presidents of the United States, she learns, are likely to be foolish, vulgar, bedeviled men, who, with their impossible wives, lead the most hideous lives of public ceremony." Lionel Trilling. “Adams at Ease.” 1952. Gross, ed. Essays.


Power 637 "Yet what, finally, was the effect of absolute power on twelve representative men [the twelve Caesars]?…Suetonius makes it quite plain: disastrous." Gore Vidal. “Robert Graves and the Twelve Caesars.” 1959. Gross, ed. Essays.


Power 659 "Power brings problems." V.S. Naipaul. “Columbus and Crusoe.” 1967. Gross, ed. Essays. Well, at least it keeps those in power busy.


Power 61 " 'Oh-well-gee-of course--' sighed Craff, as he went out, crabwise." Lewis, Babbitt. "Crabwise": a graphic description of the subordinate.


Power 440 "In the night, at that moment, he felt such power that it was beyond joy; he was calm and sober."


Power 3 "...for the rude mind with difficulty associates the ideas of power and benignity." George Eliot, Silas Marner. To the rude mind, power means punishment.