Ritual Appeasment of the Slain Enemy (from the series, "Folk Mores That Fester Deep in Our Guts")

Ritual Appeasement of the Slain Enemy

Upon bringing home a head from a head-hunting expedition, the Sea Dayaks of Sarawak treat it with great respect for several months, thrusting the tastiest morsels into its mouth and even providing it with cigars. They implore the head to hate its former co-tribesmen and to love its new hosts.

Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo

 

Is this behavior of the Sea Dayaks in earnest or in fun? Are they ridiculing the head of their slain enemy or honoring it? Probably they are doing a little of both, and in their own minds they most likely do not separate the ridicule from the honoring.

 

In Times of Great Stress Civilized Persons Revert to Pagan Ritual

“After an ambush my men brought back the body of a North Vietnamese soldier. I later found the dead man propped up against some C-ration boxes. He had on sunglasses, and a Playboy magazine lay open on his lap; a cigarette dangled jauntily from his mouth, and on his head was perched a large and perfectly formed piece of shit. I pretended to be outraged, but inside I was laughing—I believe now in part because of some subconscious appreciation of this obscene linkage of sex and excrement and death. And in part because of the exultant realization the he—whoever he had been—was dead, and I, special, unique me, was alive. He was my brother, but I knew him not. From the joy of being alive in death’s presence to the joy of causing death is, unfortunately, not that great a step.”

                                        Will Broyles, “Why Men Love War”

 

The officer Broyles has some good insights into what motivated his men to act as they did. But neither he nor they were aware that what they were doing was performing a ritual whose origins lay in their atavistic insides. Read about the importance in world folklore and mythology of pacification rites; you kill an animal, or a rival tribesman in battle, and you must ritually ask forgiveness. Read about the ritual importance of excrement, read about how sex and death go together in pagan rituals. Read about ritual mockery and laughter, in which the dead are both denigrated and exalted simultaneously, accompanied by ritual laughter that helps propel them safely into the next life. Yes, those soldiers may have been mocking the dead man and exulting in their feeling of being alive while he was dead. But, in a backhand way, by enacting this ancient ritual—unbeknownst to them—they were also honoring him and helping usher him into rebirth.

 [excerpted from the book by U.R. Bowie, Here We Be. Where Be We?]