Page:The land of fetish.pdf/64

 life will be identically the same with that which he will hold in the regions of the dead. A chief in life will be a chief after death, and a slave will be a slave.

In Dahomey the fetish men are divided into distinct sects, according to the deity for which they officiate—the priests of the snake-house, for instance, having nothing to do with those of Legba, and so on. The rancour, however, which is exhibited between the various sects of Christianity is here wanting. When a Dahoman wishes to devote himself to the service of the gods he is not permitted to choose any deity he pleases. He has to work himself up into a state of frenzy, during which an old priest places round him images of the different deities, and the one with which he first comes in contact is the one which he is destined to serve. These neophytes usually preserve some kind of method in their madness, and take care to touch the representative of that form of worship to which they are most inclined, though sometimes accidents do happen and a wrong one is touched. The fetish men speak a language peculiar to themselves, and unknown to the common people, which they learn in the fetish schools, and call "the holy fetish word." They have likewise many privileges,