Page 60 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol V

totemism 1837

Greek man with some
worry beads, a short
string of brightly col-
ored beads one keeps
in order to ward away
misfortune.

Especially significant here is
the notion that existing human
beings are consubstantial (of
the same substance) with
Dreamtime Beings. Some read-
ers will immediately see a par-
allel with the Roman Catholic
Mass, wherein, by consuming
the wine and wafer, present-
day followers are said to be
one with Jesus, who promises
eternal life. Further parallels
sites are deemed sacred because they contain the very exist. Jesus is supposed to have led a “sinless”—that is,
essences of these beings: Crevices in the ground may be asexual—life. By contrast, in myth Dreamtime Beings
said to be their metamorphosed footprints, rock forma- sometimes copulate with each other, but their important
tions their transformed feces, deposits of red clay their creative acts are asexual: the formation of the landscape
similarly transformed menstrual blood.The sites also con- and the beginning of an endless cycle of reincarnation.
tain the spirits of aspects of these beings, which await Moreover, in Roman Catholic theology Jesus is called the
reincarnation in the form of freshly conceived children, “Second Adam” (the “anti-Adam,” one might say), whose
which is, of course, to say that these spirits never die and “sinlessness” and subsequent violent death compensate
that new human beings are reincarnations of Dreamtime for the sexual indulgence of the First Adam. Similarly, in
Predecessors. The bodies of newborns may be creatures Aboriginal Australia, totemism and sex are not supposed
of sexual intercourse, but their spirits are eternal. Hence, to be mixed in discourse. Finally, the voluntary external-
at death these latter return to their landed sources, and ization or—better—giving of oneself by Dreamtime
the cycle is repeated.The expression subject-object trans- Beings has a fairly stark parallel to the central redemptive
formation has been coined to refer to the metamorphos- act of Christian theory. The conclusion is inescapable
ing of Dreamtime Beings into features of the landscape, that, far from being a kind of “kinship group,” as estab-
that is, to the objectification of primeval subjects. A bet- lished anthropology would have it,Aboriginal Australian
ter expression is subject-object-subject transformation clans are more penetratingly seen as “antikinship groups”
(SOST): It calls attention to the endlessly cyclical nature because theirs is the denial of death and the minimization
of the process, wherein what was in the beginning is and of sexual generation.
will always be—what one astute observer has called an
“Everywhen.” Totemism Elsewhere
This, then, is a new theory of totemism. It builds on exist-
Totemism, Death, and Sex ing theories only to depart radically from most of them
Aboriginal Australian clan totemism is thus what anthro- and raises the question,“Does this analysis apply outside
pologists call an “afterlife ideology,” and, as such, its dif- Australia and particularly to other clan systems?” Some
ferences with the animal symbolization of our two major facts indicate that it does. A review of clanship among
political parties are at least as profound as its similarities. Native North Americans observes that “there is often