Tribes and individuals assume the names of totem animals.Ĩ. Where totemism still exists, these are totem animals.ħ. At specified solemn occasions, like religious ceremonies, the skins of certain animals are donned. If the animal is sacrificed by ritual, it is solemnly mourned.Ħ. If pressure of necessity compels the killing of an animal usually spared, it is done with excuses to the animal and the attempt is made to mitigate the violation of the taboo, namely the killing, through various tricks and evasions.ĥ. The prohibition as to eating sometimes refers only to a certain part of the animal.Ĥ. An animal that dies accidentally is mourned and buried with the same honors as a member of the tribe.ģ. Certain animals must not be killed or eaten, but men bring up individual animals of these species and take care of them. Reinach, who in the year 1900 sketched the following Code du totémism in twelve articles, like a catechism of the totemic religion: ġ. For reasons that will be evident later I here give preference to an outline by S. It is necessary for the purposes of this chapter to go more deeply into the nature of totemism. Wundt (1912), as the latest utterance on this question: “Taking all this together it becomes highly probable that a totemic culture was at one time the preliminary stage of every later evolution as well as a transition stage between the state of primitive man and the age of gods and heroes.” I quote a passage from the “Elements of the Psychology of Races” by W. Science has since then fully recognized this significance of totemism.

We know that in 1869 the Scotchman MacLennan attracted general interest to the phenomena of totemism, which until then had been considered merely as curiosities, by his conjecture that a large number of customs and usages in various old as well as modern societies were to be taken as remnants of a totemic epoch. We heard that totemism is a system which takes the place of religion among certain primitive races in Australia, America, and Africa, and furnishes the basis of social organization. The first chapter of this book made us acquainted with the conception of totemism.

Totemism freud