Indeterminability and Confusion as Apotropaic Elements in Italy and in Spain

SIR JAMES FRAZER, in his Folk-Lore in the Old Testament, devotes a chapter1 to The Sin of a Census, taking as his text the report, in II Samuel xxiv and in I Chronicles xxi, of David's numbering of his people. He instances many examples, drawn from pagan or Moslem or Christian folk in Africa, or America, or the Pacific, or Europe, of the evil consequences which are, or which have been, presumed to follow whether of living creatures or of inanimate things. In certain of his examples, where counting is essential because of a need to know at least approximately the quantities involved in an operation, there is introduced some element obviously intended for protection. So, in Algeria, a person who counts measures of grain should be in a state of ceremonial purity, while instead of numerals he employs expressions of religious import; and in Palestine Moslems engaged in a similar task make use of analogous pious phrases instead of certain numerals, and instead of five the words your hand,2 and instead of eleven the words there are ten. Although Frazer suggests (p. 559) that Perhaps such substitutes for the ordinary numbers are intended to deceive evil spirits who may be lying in wait to steal or harm the corn, and who are presumably too dull-witted to comprehend these eccentric modes of enumeration, I am inclined to think that their nature suggests rather that they are meant to render the vicinities so distasteful to such spirits while the counting is proceeding that they will remain at a distance and consequently will remain ignorant of its outcome. And, as a corollary, that when, at the numbering of the Children of Israel as recorded in Exodus xxx. 11-16, each person had to give half a shekel so that there be no plague among them, the money may well have been used to pay for ceremonies either propitiatory of demons or exorcising in character. It would seem very probable that often one of the determining factors in this, to us curious, aversion to enumeration is a fear of exciting the

Ancient history · Confusion · Psychoanalysis · Classical Antiquity Studies · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies · History · Psychology · Renaissance Literature and Culture

• If You have a Lot of Clutter it Messes up the Popup”

  Brenda Danet•TEXTILE•2004

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