Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis III 1922 1.djvu/130

 I

122 REPORTS

in caves, they hid these Churinga stones in similar fashion in the Ertnatulunga caves. However, if these assumptions are correct, various conclusions of psychological importance may be drawn from them. According to them the Alcheringa-ancestors are the dead, the Nanja-stones memorial heaps erected by the hand of men above the grave. However, the legend tells us nothing about the part played by men in the death or the erection of memorial monuments to the Alcheringa-ancestors; probably it has been suppressed for some reason or other. The so-called 'tales of pun- ishment' seem to contain the solution of the riddle. For, in the tale ten variations report that the hero found death by drowning or being turned to stone because he ridiculed the animals, six versions report his deatli because he had committed incest. To ridicule something signifies as much as to disregard it, to take no notice of it; the subjects of ridicule in this instance, however, are not so much the animals as the penalties connected with them, that is the totemistic taboos. In this respect both infringements of the law are revealed as being identical, for the breaking of the totemistic command is, in fact, incest. Many traditions also show the methods of this transformation into stone; the hero was stoned by the crowd as a punishment for the incest committed by him. The throwing of stones in religious rites is a remnant of the primal battles of mankind, the flying stone being the right weapon in the hands of the crowd to overpower the stronger individual whom one feared to approach close by. The stone permitted the attack on the inviolable person of the father, in as much as the taboo was not broken by direct touch but only by the throwing of the projectile. The Alcheringa-ancestor and the hero of the tales of punishment is the father of the primal horde, who is stoned by his insurgent sons, and on whose corpse the stone heap which is to prevent him from returning to life is piled up. Now Freud has shown the existence of the unconscious feelings of remorse in the funeral rites of primitive men; the dead man becomes the evil spirit because he wants to revenge himself on the living for their evil wishes concerning him. Then the living look for the magician who has been guilty of his death and on whom they intend to push their own guilt. Every death is the result of a murder because the first death which left an ineradicable impression on the memory of the horde was in reality the violent death of the first father. The funeral rites of primitive man