- Or, Failing That, His Or Her Most Intimate Belonging,
Something That Has Got His Smell In - A Piece Of His Old Waist-Cloth
For Example.
This ability to obtain power over people by means of their blood,
hair, nails, etc., is universally diffused; you
Will find it down in
Devon, and away in far Cathay, and the Chinese, I am told, have in
some parts of their empire little ovens to burn their nail- and
hair-clippings in. The fear of these latter belongings falling into
the hands of evilly-disposed persons is ever present to the West
Africans. The Igalwa and other tribes will allow no one but a
trusted friend to do their hair, and bits of nails and hair are
carefully burnt or thrown away into a river; and blood, even that
from a small cut or a fit of nose-bleeding, is most carefully
covered up and stamped out if it has fallen on the earth. The
underlying idea regarding blood is of course the old one that the
blood is the life.
The life in Africa means a spirit, hence the liberated blood is the
liberated spirit, and liberated spirits are always whipping into
people who do not want them.
Charms are made for every occupation and desire in life - loving,
hating, buying, selling, fishing, planting, travelling, hunting,
etc., and although they are usually in the form of things filled
with a mixture in which the spirit nestles, yet there are other
kinds; for example, a great love charm is made of the water the
lover has washed in, and this, mingled with the drink of the loved
one, is held to soften the hardest heart.
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