Kingship and divinity

Previous articleNext article FreeKingship and divinity The unpublished Frazer Lecture, Oxford, 28 October 1982*Sir Edmund Ronald LeachSir Edmund Ronald Leach Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull TextEPUBMOBI Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreMr Vice Chancellor,I come to praise Caesar, not to bury him. When I accepted your invitation to deliver this Frazer Memorial Lecture, I had planned to offer a favourable reassessment of one of Frazer's most notorious "conjectures," but the peculiarities of Frazer's style make this very difficult.Frazer used his ethnographic evidence, which he culled from here there and everywhere, to illustrate propositions which he had arrived at in advance by a priori reasoning, but, to a degree which is often quite startling, whenever the evidence did not fit he simply altered the evidence! A single example which is relevant for my later presentation will show you what I mean. In volume nine of the twelve-volume third edition of The golden bough, Frazer cites evidence that as far back as the fifth century BC the Roman Saturnalia was celebrated around the time of the Winter Solstice in late December (Frazer 1911-15, vol. 9: 306). Furthermore, Frazer admits that there is no evidence that it had ever been held at any other date. However, according to Frazer's theory, Saturnalia ought to have been a Spring Festival held around the end of February. So he simply "conjectured" that at one time this had actually been the case and thereafter proceeds with his argument as if the evidence relating to the Winter Solstice Saturnalia really applied to a Spring Festival.The golden bough is full of rewritten ethnography of this kind. Even so, despite the adverse comments that I shall feel bound to make, my central purpose is to show that, at least in one notable instance, Frazer's guessing was closer to the mark than most people might reasonably suppose.Since time is short, I shall proceed directly to my principal theme. First we need some background. The golden bough ranges over a vast terrain, but for present purposes it will suffice if we accept the précis of the book's subject matter, which Frazer himself provided in 1905. This is what he then said: The divine king has been gradually evolved out of the old magician or medicine-man.... The title of the King of the Wood, bestowed on the priest of Nemi, along with his relation to the woodland goddess Diana, suggest that the two together personified the powers of vegetation in general and of the woods in particular, and that their union may, on the principles of homoeopathic magic, have been regarded as a means to ensure the reproduction of that plant life on which, in the last resort, both men and animals depend for their subsistence....People feared that if they allowed the man-god to die of sickness or old age, his divine spirit might share the weakness of its bodily tabernacle, or perhaps perish altogether, thereby entailing the most serious dangers on the whole body of his worshippers who looked to his as their stay and support. Whereas, by putting him to death while he was still yet in full vigour of body and mind, they hoped to catch his sacred spirit uncorrupted by decay and to transfer it in that state to his successor. Hence it has been customary in some countries, first, to require that kings should be of unblemished body and unimpaired mind, and second, to kill them as soon as they begin to break up through age and infirmity ... these principles led in other places to a practice of allowing the divine king or human god to live and reign only for a fixed period, after which he was inexorably put to death.... On the analogy of such customs I conjecture that the King of the Woods at Nemi formerly reigned for a fixed period only, probably for a year, and that he had to slay himself or be slain at a great festival when his term of office was up (Frazer 1905: 160, 291-92).Well, one guess is as good as another, so why not? It is perfectly possible. But analogy has seldom proved to be a profitable way of filling in gaps in ethnographic knowledge, and in this case even the analogies are problematic. Frazer writes as if we had firmly established records of scores of different regicidal customs of the sort he describes, but the fact is that the evidence is no more substantial than are stories about sightings of the Abominable Showman: "I once met a man who told me that when he was a boy he had seen ..." and so on. The actual eyewitness to the slaying of the Divine King is always off-stage. Myths of this general kind have certainly been very common and of world-wide distribution, but just how often the killings actually happened remains a moot point.Yet the stories are interesting even for the most sceptical. Why should we be asked to believe in the possibility of the killing of a god? What is the relationship between kingship and deity? What is the connection, if any, between the dying god-king of Christianity and the dying god-king of Nemi? It is this third question that will chiefly concern us this evening, but it may help you to follow my argument if i start by offering brief answers to the other two.The words "god" and "king" are habitually used in very loose fashion. If you were to lump together all the imaginary entities which the literature describes as "gods," you might perhaps detect a certain vague family resemblance, but that is all. So let me be more specific. For the purposes of our present discussion, "God" is a human construct which represents the non-human Other. God is what we are not but would like to be. in particular, man is mortal and impotent and constrained by the limitations of here and now; God is immortal and omnipotent and unconstrained by time and space. The manifest purpose of religious activity is to establish a bridge between the limited domain of here and now and the unlimited domain of the Other; thereby some of the potency of the Other will flow into the here and now for our benefit. This bridge between the here and now and the Other can be established in either of two ways: we may go there or it may come here.In the first case, a devotee may kill himself (or a part of himself, through self-mutilation or through the sacrifice of an animal with which he is identified) and thus achieve a kind of absorption of the self into the Other. The devotee is "made sacred" through the operations of the sacrifice. The passion with which certain of the early Christian saints (e.g., Ignatius), sought martyrdom so that they could become reunited with God exemplifies such behaviour. Ignatius reputedly achieved his ambition. Legend declares that he was eaten by wild beasts in the circus at Rome. In the same part of the world at the same period, as is well attested by a variety of authorities cited by Frazer, the Syrian Goddess Astarte (or Ishtar) was served by eunuch priests who were considered to be representatives of the goddess' lover Attis. Enlistment to the priesthood occurred annually at the spring festival at Hierapolis when devotees in a state of frenzy would castrate themselves in front of the altar of the goddess.Alternatively, instead of the devotee attempting to achieve unity with the Other, procedures may exist whereby the Other is brought into the here and now. One common example is that in which a deity speaks through the mouth of a spirit medium while the latter is in a condition of trance. In other cases, ritual procedures serve to mark off a sacred space, which is treated as a part of the Other temporarily located in the here and now. The metaphysical visitors who enter this sacred space infect the attendant congregation with their sanctity. But potency from the Other is dangerous stuff. You can easily have too much of it. The bridge to the Other side must be closed as well as opened. The gods may be invited to visit us for a season but then they must be driven away again. This implies that if the divine visitation takes the form of incarnation in a human being, the god-man must be killed, at least in symbol, so that the god can return to the Other to be brought back again in due course by further rituals. In a few relatively rare cases, performances of this latter kind are associated with an ideology of ritual cannibalism. The body of the god-man who has suffered sacrificial death is eaten by the congregation of the faithful who thus ingest into themselves directly the residue of the departed god's sacredness. The Christian Eucharist is a sacrament of this general type.As is quite logical, the ritual procedures by which gods are brought into the here and now and then sent away again are the prototypical markers of time in human societies of all kinds. The visitation of the gods is, in Van Gennep's (1909) terms, a rite de passage, a beginning of new time either for the initiate entering into a new stage of life or of office, or for society as a whole.Finally, there is the matter of sex and gender. Strictly speaking, sex is not an attribute of the Other. Immortal gods do not have to reproduce themselves. But sexual difference and sexual potency are the dominant concerns of mortal men, and when men invent their gods they create them, in this respect, in the image of man. The symbolic transformations which then occur seem to be remarkably uniform. The divine potency of the Other is seen as male sexual potency and female fecundity. Where human beings are divided into males and females, gods are divided into static aspects and active aspects, the active aspect being commonly regarded as the female consort of her relatively static male partner. If this conjunction of male and female deities is credited with progeny, then the child will usually be male. The characteristics of this "son of god" will largely recapitulate those of his divine father, but the Son will be more nearly human, a mediator who is relatively accessible and active in this world, as is his mother. Christianity follows this pattern but, in the case of Roman Catholicism, it is the Mother Goddess rather than the Son who is the mediator par excelence. But terror of sexuality has sometimes led to an insistence that God is a unity with no divisible aspects (which is the position adopted in Judaism and Islam) or to some alternative kind of non-sexual divisibility. The astonishing theology of the Christian Trinity is an example of this latter solution.Kings are not gods yet they partake of divinity. Kings are mortal, but the office of the kingship is immortal; a king's actual potency is circumscribed but, in theory, the power of the kingship is absolute. This latter power derives from God. But the divinity of kings, unlike the divinity of gods, is fragile and subject to pollution. It must be ritually renewed every time a new human individual assumes the office of king, and perhaps more frequently than that. The kingship must repeatedly be cleansed. All this is fully compatible with Frazer's line of argument. But Frazer believed that the ritual renewal was always directly concerned with the magical regeneration of vegetation and also that it regularly entailed the actual (rather than the symbolic) killing of human kings. Neither of these latter conventions can be justified on the basis of the actual evidence.I must give you just one more bit of general anthropological theory before we get back to Frazer's fairy tale of the King of the Wood at Nemi, which he used as his central model for the dying-god-king. In the language of contemporary anthropology, the assertion that a particular story (either oral or literary) is a myth need not imply that it is untrue. Stories are myths if they are used as characters of justifications or precedents for social action, whether secular or religious. Whether the precedent story in question was or was not true as factual history is entirely irrelevant. In the context of the ritual occasion the precedent is treated by the actors "as if" it were factual history. That is what matters. Myth is believed to be true by those who use it. In this sense, all the Christian gospel stories are myth for Christians. Although practising Christians are deeply committed to a belief that the key events recorded in the gospels "really happened," the fact is that the historicity of the stories (if any) is irrelevant for the religious implication of what the texts contain.For example, when, following the story of the miraculous feeding of the five thousand in the Wilderness, Jesus is made to say: "He that believeth on me hath everlasting life. I am that bread of life. Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven ... the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.... Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day" (John 6:47-54)*-this is a direct mythical justification for the proceedings of the Eucharist. The story presupposes the coexistence of another myth, namely the story of the Crucifixion, but the text has already transformed the body of the crucified god into the bread of the Eucharist-"the living bread that came down from heaven." It does not call for any "real" human sacrifice in the way that Frazer supposed.But now back to Frazer's model of the dying god. One feature of the story is easy to overlook. The hypothetical, once-upon-a-time ritual involves two priest-king-god figures, not one. King "A" reigns for a period; his powers decay along with the vegetation and at the end of the annual cycle he is sacrificially killed by, or at the behest of, King "B" who then reigns for a period in his stead only to die in turn the next time round. Some of Frazer's supposed examples appear to be descriptions of a genuine ritual sequence through which real King "B" succeeds to the office of real King "A." But other cases involve complex role reversal. King "B" is the "real" King while King "A" is a mock King-substitute. When the season for ritual renewal is at hand, the real King "B" temporarily withdraws from office; King "A" is briefly installed in his place, ritually slain, and then succeeded by the real King "B" who resumes his office. In still other cases, as in the one we are to discuss, Frazer appears to postulate a still more complicated sequence of Box and Cox involving two mock kings but only one sacrificial victim. I don't want to defend any of this, but you need to understand what Frazer was saying.In the second (1900) edition of The golden bough Frazer quite explicitly fitted Christianity into his general scheme by means of a provocative section about parallels between the Christian story of the Crucifixion, stories relating to the Jewish festival of purim, and supposedly much earlier materials relating to the Babylonian festival of the Sacaea. But Frazer's argument was vigorously attacked by Christian scholars and Frazer lost his nerve. In the twelve-volume third edition the offending passage is from the text and to a This had the that in the which is the only one which most people have all direct to the is In this the only in an in the Frazer which I formerly of the festival as a and the of the Jewish festival of his no that the in question was concerned with the of despite this it that Frazer really his So let us another at it. The of the argument which takes up of in the third edition of The golden bough (Frazer vol. 9: Frazer is too to defend himself from of the and this his for the Jesus has been with great vigour Frazer's but with In what I that all such are The story of the is a myth, a sacred tale which the of a I am concerned with the of that myth in the Jewish from which early Christianity I no to believe that there was ever any and of Christianity Jesus but even if such an individual did once exist that would not my section of The golden bough, to which the on of (Frazer vol. 9: would have if it had not been to an is in a which is made to not of the but also and of as well as a of a which appears to be irrelevant. to these the anthropological of the entirely but when applied with can still be made of it. will be much more both in time and up his story the Babylonian the Jewish and the through a complex of The between and the is in the In some of the late the of a in which the of the in the of was (or in Frazer that this must have been a from an earlier practice in which had been by a "real" victim. A of from the gospel story of the might be fitted to a ritual of this kind. Hence Frazer's that Jesus was crucified in the role of a mock king up between and the is but at first appears more was a into the Jewish ritual it is by In the it was an occasion of and A declares that a should he does not the difference between be and be in the of the from in in much the same way as the from in it would be quite in this the of the were treated as a in much the same as the of is treated as a This was not made by Frazer, it is very relevant for some of the that we shall be Jewish scholars seem to the of with some imply that it was of any great religious was celebrated just one before that is to at the full of the last of the Jewish ritual Frazer does not out his but he to imply that and in a Festival and that the reign of the mock king of for one The which first Frazer his is that the characters in the of all have the of is or Astarte her the of the is of Babylonian The is after the deity the of is who is by the of the goddess (Frazer vol. 9: the of this certainly to establish a between and But what about the that the Babylonian a rite of and later a mock king is one of Frazer's of to it over and over again as if it were an established But the only on the subject is in the latter part of the first century an on Babylonian but he that a of the was later adopted by the it is just that his story of genuine ethnography from contemporary is evidence about the Sacaea. around the beginning of our us that the of the festival was the goddess who was a of more of the The of is now fully established it was not to Frazer we shall this us with evidence that and the were directly as cited by Frazer, story was that the five of the Babylonian and the and the A to death was in the king's on the king's allowed to he to and himself, and to with the king's But at the end of the five he was of his and or (Frazer vol. any evidence at that in this sacrificial role the mock was the God as and lover of if you your it will be why Frazer a between and the gospel of the Frazer that both stories can be accepted as factual descriptions of did not the possibility that both stories might be from a common However, was an contemporary of the Christian this is an alternative that ought to be Frazer himself evidence that it seem rather those of you who are not let me mark up some of the In the first place, all the Jesus with kingship as if they to mock kingship rather than real of the of the Roman might be for a from they him with and a of and put it about his to King of the they him on the with a and did and him. when they had they the from and put his on and led him out to The other gospels further of and Jesus is he is a is the King of the as King to be directly with as sacrificial victim. In after the of the of the five we Jesus that they would come and him by to make him a king, he departed again into a himself The of this from which I have already which is, in a very sense, of the sacrament of the Eucharist. at the beginning of the next (John we these the in for he would not in the sought to kill him. the of was at to the of a king, the the and the of all seem to form a does not to this passage, for the to instead of it his But even Frazer we have a What could be by that would come to him by to make him a What sort of king would this are If you are to accept the of my earlier about the of divinity of kings and the use of sacrifice for ritual then the of a is not far from a sacrificial in the same gospel (John we have the passage which is now celebrated on the before In the gospel story the context is the of the of the in of and to and is the King of that cometh in the of the when he had a as it is of King on an if we the last which is a from this the of a mock king rather than a real passage in the of describes the in which is installed as the be brought which the king to and the that the king and the which is his ... and him on through the of the and before shall be to the man the king to This of with the of the and is later on the which he had for But the real not Frazer's to this of is and direct to the gospel to the his is that and are both mock kings. is King "A" and is is King "B" and in his they are two aspects of the same mythical two in the same annual cycle of does not explicitly the Christian he the of with the very which is to have occurred in a Festival at an in the which Frazer to as the of the if was on an a or a and in a sort of mock through the of the on his and by all the king's ... he the and (Frazer vol. 9: the of Frazer's far from argument is his of the role aspects of the with the gospel story of Jesus and the gospel story is that it was customary that, at the time of the Jewish the Roman should a Jewish When Jesus of he sought to Jesus the But the that Jesus be crucified and was a be But the means "son of the one early of the relevant text in him the was that the Jewish of a ritual in which a places with a with the latter up on a sacrificial this guess he it be asked why one of these kings should the title of or of the i can only that the title may perhaps be a of the time when the real king, the used to his life by his to reign for a time and to die in his (Frazer vol. 9: this is So do In any case, Frazer's the evidence in the does not die but It is true that the sacrifice of had at one time been the but, even so, Frazer's that the of was an in which the Jesus of history was the sacrificial role of in a of ritual the of and far out the again it is not The Roman practice of by was part of a pattern in which killings were killed one another in the were in by wild were only one from human sacrifice of a ritual kind. In later Christians and by the another form of ritual through human the other hand

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