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Varieties of Folklore Traditions Derived from
Prehistoric Religious Cults |
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Map 1. The
evolutionary tree of religiogenesis, folklore evolution and magic cults (from P. Bělíček:: The Synthetic Classification of Human Phenotypes and Varieties. Prague 2018, Table 8, Map p. 24) |
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Agrarian Folklore of Prehistoric
Herbivorous Plant-Gatherers and Vegetal Hoe-Cultivators (Negrids, Melanids,
Amazonids, Caucasoids) |
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Phytototemism: belief in totem ancestors in the
reincarnation of plants, flowers, shrubs and trees Polytheism: cults of many celestial and
subterranean deities Chthonism: cults of Mother Earth and the
underworld deities (from Greek χθών (khthṓn, “ground, soil”) Elementalism: belief in four primordial elements:
air, earth, water and fire Naturism: belief in natural elements of the
nature (from Latin natura “nature”)
Hylozoism: belief in the spiritual nature of
matter (from Greek hylos “matter”) |
Phytomorphism: belief in postmortal transformations
into plants, shrubs and trees Manism: cults of ancestral spirits of dead
fathers (Latin manes “spirit of the ancestors”) Bovinism: cults of bovine deities (bulls, cows,
calves) Passionalism: worshiping martyr gods of corn, death,
sacrifice and suffering Eleotheism: worshiping female goddesses of love
and mercy (from Greek έλεος, éleos “mercy”) Endophagism: the rite of endophagia, eating
the dead body of fathers and ancestors |
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Agrarian Folklore of Neolithic
Peasants and Farmers (Caucasoids, Elamitoids, Europids) |
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Polytheism: cults of many celestial and
subterranean deities Chthonism: cults of Mother Earth and the
underworld deities (from Greek χθών (khthṓn, “ground, soil”) Elementalism: belief in four primordial elements:
air, earth, water and fire Naturism: belief in natural elements of the
nature (from Latin natura “nature”)
Hylozoism: belief in the spiritual nature of
matter (from Greek hylos “matter”) |
Manism: cults of ancestral spirits of dead fathers (Latin manes “spirit of the ancestors”) Bovinism: cults of bovine deities (bulls, cows,
calves) Passionalism: worshiping martyr gods of corn, death,
sacrifice and suffering Eleotheism: worshiping female goddesses of love
and mercy (from Greek έλεος, éleos “mercy”) Filial piety: cults of Chinese Confucianism expressing sons’ worship of
dead fathers |
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Prehistoric Folklore of Ugroid Hunters
and Scythoid Pastoralists with Kurgan Burials (Ugrids, Scythoids, Dinarids,
Baskids) |
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Theriototemism: belief in totem ancestors in the
reincarnation of mammoths and big-game mammals Monotheism: the cult of one celestial sun-god (Mazda) and one lord of the underworld (Ahriman) Oculotheism: worshiping the sun-god as a celestial
eye (Latin oculus “eye”) for measuring
time, magic evil-eye charms,
unsighting slaves and the defeated Megalithism: using large blocks of stone for building
vaulting constructions and tombstone mounds Coercivism: challenging foreigners to fight and
bets so as to enslave them and their children Mummification rites: embalming and balsaming high
dignitaries so as to preserve them for eternity Unctioning the quick and the dead, the use of
unctions and oils for anointing and healing the body Ovotheism: legends of genesis from the World Egg
hatched by the World Duck on the World Tree
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Zoomorphism: belief in postmortal transformations into the megafauna of
big-game mammals Heliotheism: the supreme celestial god is identified with the sun Thesaurism: hoarding aneolithic and chalcolithic
treasures for producing weapons Transmigrationism: belief in the after-death
transmigration of souls into lions and feline animals Felinism: feline totemism, cats, sphinges and
other felines worshiped as tutelary spirits Leonism:
leonine totemism, the statues of sphinges and jaguars as guardians of
pyramids and hillforts Circular morphology applied to round tables, agoras as
training-grounds, rings of standing stones Globular morphology applied to amphorae, beehive huts, temples, mosques and tholoi
graves Nagualism: belief that a man can be slain by
killing his animal double-ganger or alter ego |
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Prehistoric Folklore of Uraloid
Hunters and Sarmatoid Herders
(Uralids, Sarmatids, Sumerids) |
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Theriototemism: belief in totem ancestors in the reincarnation of big-game
mammals Monotheism: the cult of one celestial sun-god (Mazda) and one lord of the underworld (Ahriman) Ovotheism: legends of genesis from the World Egg
hatched by the World Duck on the World Tree
Astrotheism: myths about the ascent of a dead king
to heavens as a star and the annuciation of the descent of a baby king born
in his stead Nagualism: belief that a man can be slain by
killing his animal double-ganger or alter ego Lupinism: belief in the wolfish ancestor of all
Uralids and Sarmatids (from
Latin lupus “wolf”) Excarnation: defleshing the dead
body by explosing it to gluttonous vultures in the desert Exposition: burials of the dead
body by exposing it to beasts of prey on a tree or a wooden scaffolding Vampyrism: the customs of bloodletting applied to
cattle or night sleepers so as to suck their blood Nagualism: belief that a man can be slain by
killing his animal double-ganger or alter ego |
Zoomorphism: belief in postmortal transformations
into big-game mammals Heliotheism: the supreme celestial god (Indra, Marduk) is identified with the sun Baptism: baptising newly-born kids by
sprinkling their forehead with sacred water
Transmigrationism: belief in the after-death
transmigration of souls into wolfish bodies Sky burials: the dead corpse is brought to a high
peak of a mountain for defleshing bones Volcano burials: the dead ancestors are exposed to
vultures on the top of volcanoes Dice divination: the bones of the dead are used for divination and for playing
dice Lycanthropy: belief in night raiders who turn into werewolves,
rape or kidnap women and suck their blood Annunciation:
Archangel Gabriel’s annunciation to the Holy Virgin about
her immaculate conception, the Holy Spirit appears in the
reincarnation of a feathered dove who kissed the immaculate Holy Virgin |
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Prehistoric Cults of Piscivorous
Fishermen and Neolithic Lake-Dwellers (Tungids,
Pelasgoids, Pontids, Ladogans) |
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Ichthyototemism: belief in totem ancestors in the
reincarnation of fish, dolphins, amphibians and reptiles Monotheism: the cult of one celestial Apollonic
sun-god and one satanic underworld god (Belzebub) Stelarism: erecting upright stelae, menhirs and
effigies in honour to prominent warriors (from Latin stela “upright pillar, stele or effigy”) Petrotheism: worshiping sacred stones embodying
heroes in stone alleys of menhirs (petra “rock” Cataclysmism: myths about the Great Deluge, a flood,
whose survivor Noah was the first human Tengrism: the cult of the Turkic and Mongolan
sky-god Tengri, Japanese Tenrikyo, Polynesian Maori Tangaroa
and Samoan Tagaloa; in India they equal to Tara and Telugu Thalli,
Telangana Totems: Pelasgoid totems were
the wolf (Apollo), bear (Diana), swan (Leto) and
dolphin (Delos) |
Ichthyomorphism: belief in postmortal transformations
into fish, dolphins, amphibians and reptiles
Purificationism: rites of purification in water, baths,
wells, spas, fountains or mikve Hydrotheism: baptising newly-born kids in water and
burials of the deceased in sea depths Ursinism: cults of the bear impersonated by the
Moon godess Diana/Artemis
(Latin ursus “bear”) Geminism: cults of twin children (Greek
Dioskuroi, Roman Gemini, Polish Lel and Polel) Anthism: Pelasgoid flower cult common in Crete,
among Polynesian seafarers and Uto-Aztecan poets (from
Greek άνθος,
anthos “flower”) Daphnephorism: the Pelasgic rite of the laurel bearers, daphnephoroi,
in honour of Apollo’s twin Diana Ochreous consecration: the dead bodies were consecrated by
hematite ochre paint |
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Prehistoric Folklore of Piscivorous
Fishermen and Neolithic Rock-Cut Cave-Dwellers (Turanids,
Hebroids, Graecoids, Etruscoids, Iberoids) |
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Ichthyototemism: belief in totem ancestors in the
reincarnation of fish, amphibians and reptiles Monotheism: the cult of one celestial Apollonic
sun-god and one satanic underworld god (Belzebub) Petrotheism: worshiping the sacred rock (Kaaba in Mecca)
as a supreme divinity (Latin petra “rock”) Petroglyphism: creating magic rock paintings in caves
or carvings on cliffs Cataclysmism: myths about the Great Deluge, a flood,
whose survivor Noah was the first human Tengrism: the cult of the Turkic and Mongolan
sky-god Tengri, Japanese Tenrikyo, Polynesian Maori Tangaroa
and Samoan Tagaloa; in India they equal to Tamil Tara and Telugu
Thalli or Telangana |
Ichthyomorphism: belief in postmortal transformations
into fish, amphibians and reptiles Purificationism: rites of purification in water, baths,
wells, spas, fountains or mikve Hydrotheism: baptising newly-born kids in water and
burials of the deceased in sea depths Transmigrationism: belief in the after-death
transmigration of souls into bodies of animals Hepatomancy: divination from animal livers and
drawing roentgen images with intestines Circumventism: the rites of circumventing sacred rocks and walking around
their foothills Phallic cults: applying phallomorphous pillars as
milestones |
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Oral Traditions of Prehistoric
Omnivorous Lappids and the Ancient Plebs of Craftsmen (Sanids, Lappids,
Alpinids, Pygmids, Sinids, Negritos) |
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Taoism (Daoism): Chinese belief in determinism and the lawful pursuit
of the Tao “the material way of life” Buddhism: the Burmese and Hindu version of
Chinese Taoism and its deterministic teaching Sophistics: the Greek dialectical philosophy of
plebeian preachers and lawyers Humoralism: the Greek Hippocratic philosophy of temperaments,
somatic saps and humours Cynicism: the Greek philosophy of plebeian
itinerant tramps Stoicism: the Greek philosophy of patient
suffering and pursuing the deterministic personal fate Peripatetism: the Greek philosophy of “walking“
itinerant evolutionists and systematic comparativists |
Protestantism: deterministic beliefs of plebeian
democratic leaders (Albigenses, Lutheranism) Nanotheism: belief in elfin tiny helpers assisting
in the household Tricksterism: myths and folktales about little but
smart and witty animal tricksters Cremationism: the burial rite of cremations raising
the soul to heavens Aviotheism: cult of swallows, who carry the souls
of dead fathers back to their homes (avis ‘bird’) Ventotheism: cults of four winds that carry remains
of the cremated dead to heavens (ventus ‘wind’) Janusism: sculpting two-faced or four-faced
figurines blowing the wind in four directions to heavens |
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The Origin of Oral Folklore Traditions from Prehistoric Religious
Cults The moderns understand religions as
official doctrines of contemporary churches, e.g. Catholicism, Protestantism,
Orthodox Church, Mohammedanism, Buddhism, Lamaism or Shintoism. Their theological creed is however a secondary conglutination of several
tribal cults administered by local ethnicities. Their genesis resembled the
rise of medieval monarchies, nations and national languages. These secondary
unities emerged as a result of unification reinforced by the monarch and his
ruling suite. The earliest princedoms emerged thanks to military campaigns
undertaken by ambitious retinues of warriors led by a strong tribal
chieftain. He managed to subdue a number of weaker tribes in his surrounding
and forced them to pay annual tributes in heads of cattle or precious metals.
The subjugated tribes preserved their tongues, dialects, customs, myths and
cults for a few centuries but had to obey cultural unification propagated by
the ruling dynasties. The united state, kingdom, church, nation and
language were secondary products of civilisation and ethnic cohabitation
within the framework of the earliest civilisations. They had no genetically
homogeneous character, because they consisted from several incompatible
ethnic and social castes. The only original compact ethnicities appeared only
in the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic, when every tribe and race consisted of
independent family clans roaming as hordes throughout forests in search for
food and sustenance. Their social evolution is now mirrored faithfully in the
folktales of prehistoric savages: a. Bilateral
totemism: the earliest tribes lived in forestal isolation
and solitude and classified themselves as animal species living together with
other animal species. They hunted game as other inimical beasts and protected
only members of their own affiliated
kin. Everyone’s tribal identity in the wood was determined by tattooing and
animal hides and fur-coats. Folktales described all marriages as love affairs
between two different animals. b. Unilateral
totemism: hunting clans kill their immediate neighbours
unless they recognise them as remote relatives belonging to the same tribe.
They begin to distinguish their own relatives, kinsmen and clansmen as humans
and keep distance from all foreigners
as monsters of animal nature. Their religious cults prescribe regulations
observed strictly as taboos, commandments or laws. They command them what is
edible as animal flesh and forbid them to eat their own animal totem’s flesh. They
cannot marry girls from their own horde but are obliged to marry foreign
females by kidnapping them from neighbouring tribes. Totemism is a magic cult
preserved as far as medieval times in the form of wearing beastly amulets,
necklaces, pendants, emblems and coats of arms. c. Animism: a higher magic
cult of the d. Supraterrestrial
cults: Neolithic tribes become sedentary populations and assume the
possession of their tribal area. Pastoralist highlanders are respected as a
higher caste of ogres in the heavens, while the peasants tilling their fields
in the lowlands are despised as a lower caste of monsters inhabiting the
underworld. e. Confederative
cults: the first mixed chieftaincies appear in the Bronze Age when the
pastoralist highlanders form a sort of
a multitribal confederation. They extort tithes in corn, flour and
vegetables from farmíng lowlanders and make them worship their rulers as
deities. f. Religions: the first
genuine religions arise in the first civilised princedoms uniting several
distinct ethnic clans and tribal groups. The ruling caste promotes its
chieftain to the highest deity and humiliates the ancestral forefathers of
lower castes as his sons and daughters. The ancient divinities Marduk and
Zeus seized the heavenly throne in the pantheon by subordinating all ethnic
and social factions as their remote nephews and servants. In fact, Apollo
represented the tribes of Pelasgians, Hermes stood for a Graecoid caste of
messengers and tradesmen and Ares was the chief warrior adored as a patron by
the Aryan land-owning aristocracy. g. Churches: ancient
religions merged into ecclesiastic churches and amphictyonias by closing
pacts of military brotherhood with city-states of similar tribal and
religions denomination. When they accomplished an integration into one
national state they gathered all heroes and mythic tribal legends into one
pot and mixed their hash into one undistinguishable potpourri. Such nations
had their powerful founders but also high priests who established a hierarchy
of deities in the pantheon. Confucius, Moses and Mohammed did not invent
national gods but acted as antiquarian collectors of legends who assembled
them into a hierarchy of supreme divinities worth adoration. Every world
religion has cultivated files of
monastic brotherhoods bringing dogmatic proofs of religious integrism
or integralism and brought them up as a united army of orthodox clergymen.
Yet the ultimate goal of scientific religionistics is not to support such
methodological mishmashing. It should not mingle all legends into one mixture
but isolate all original tribal subcomponents in order to explain origins and
restore the state of the earliest pure elements. When we
decompose modern religions into elementary particles, we see that the core of
Mahomeddanism was composed from the Hebrew legends about Abraham and his wife
Sarah, who founded the illustrious Sumerian
origin can be attributed also to the pioneers of
Christianism in a kiss of the Holy Spirit
in the reincarnation of a dove. Birdy supreme gods were known to Yazidists
worshiping the peacock angel, to Uralic people adoring the World Bird and to
Assyrians, who revered deities with feathered aureola. The pioneers of
Christianism was John the Baptist and the prophet
Isaiah, who propagated baptism by sprinkling water and advocated the cult of
the Holy Spirit. Other precursors of Christianism were the Essenes or Essenoi, who lived in the 2nd
two century before Christ. The Rise of Oral Folklore and Ethnic Folklore
Customs from Tribal Religious Cults
Linguistic
structures predetermined types of versification and prosodic patterns but had
little bearing on the thematic substance of poetry. Literary historians start
their compendia from the earliest literary records and omit chapters on
ancient pagan myths and oral traditions. Christianisation brought literacy
but at the expense of destroying monuments of heathen arts. The modern
academic hearsay assumes that prehistoric oral lore, ancient poetry and medieval religious literature are but heaps of
unusable junk and all that matters are feats of present-day fashionable
writing. Such prejudices do not allow anyone to get a deeper insight into the
systematics of literary forms. Studying modern literary production without
historical poetics and its evolutionary graphs of oral genres does not
promote scientific cognition. It is as ineffective as studying contemporary
fauna and flora without elemental outlines of zoogenesis and phytogenesis. Natural sciences constituted their foundations once they were able to
sketch the first approximate drafts of the evolutionary phylogenesis of
species. In the nearest future the same goal awaits humanities and social
sciences. All their considerations get drowned in psychological vagueness
unless they reconstruct basic patterns of prehistoric religions, myths, rites
and festivals. This makes it clear why we go into archaeological, ethnical
and cultural taxonomy in greater detail than any literary expert would
expect. The integral understanding of history presupposes devising the
following subtheories: * primatogenesis – a polygenic elucidation of the evolution
of several closely related and interbreedable genetic strains of primates
that were together elevated to higher stages of civilisation in central areas
and later isolated as independent species and genera; they underwent a
process of paragenesis involving prograde evolution in areas
of environmental deforestation (abandoning rainforest isolation) and retrograde
devolution in regions of environmental reforestation, i.e. renewing cohabitation with
retarded communities in peripheral forest solitude, * anthropogenesis: a similar
model of evolution and devolution for populations of prehistoric humankind, a
parallel process of hominisation for ethnovarieties of robust plant-gatherers
and (pre)agriculralists, slim agile hunters and (pre)pastoralists, nomadic
melancholic piscivores and fishermen and clever hairy short-sized omnivores,
standlopers and (pre)artisans, * archeogenesis: the family-tree of bifurcation chaining
Paleolithic archeological cultures and classifying them into stocks of the
Acheulean Macrolithic, Mousterian Lanceolithic, Levalloisian Leptolithic and Natufian, Tsitolian and Maglemosian Microlithic,
* ethnogenesis: the diversification of racial
verieties into ethnic families by means of long-range migrations of
Paleolithic archaeological cultures, * religiogenesis: the historical evolution and typological classification of tribal forms of superstitions, magic, faiths and religions from the Stone Age to their fusion into the canonised doctrines of medieval churches, * glottogenesis: the origin and prehistoric
development of languages, * poetogenesis: the genealogy of poetic kinds and
genres from prehistoric oral lore to modern literary production, * prosodogenesis: the ethnic evolution of prosodic and musical systems. |
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The best guide to understanding oral
tradition and literary genres is concealed in forms of prehistoric magic.
Actions carried out during a magic ritual usually copy operations common to everyday
forage. Sanctity is nothing but a desirably idealised copy of the profane and
quotidianity. The earliest hunters professed totemistic theoriomorphism, they worshipped an animal
ancestor, identified with its species by wearing its hides and strove to
chase different species of animal game. They considered themselves as one of
animal genera in the wood and hunted their favourite game as a pantry for
food, trophies and brides. In a totemistic tale an Amazonian Indian chases urubu
vultures, kills them, brings one of them home and to his surprise he
discovers that it is a beautiful girl, his future wife.1 Hunters practiced polygynous exogamy, taboo commandments told
them to marry foreign brides. Their society lawfully produced lots of
totemistic legends about kidnapped animal brides. The chief leitmotif always
centred on husbands’ and in-law’s offences mocking the bride’s fur dress sewn
from her totem animal hides. When she gave birth to a child and wrapped it in
furs of her clan’s totem animal, her fellow-wives accused her of delivering
an animal cub.2 Also death and the
after-world were associated with zootheism. Most hunters’ societies shared a
belief in transmigrations of souls, in their postmortal reincarnations and
metamorphoses into animals. They exposed their dead father’s corpse lying in
the desert so that his flesh might be devoured by a strong predator and his
spirit could find a new embodiment in this beast of prey. On the other hand, axe-tool
cultures professed totemistic phytomorphism (Greek fyton
‘plant’), they ate vegetal food, deified flowers and trees, worshipped them
as their ancestors’ reincarnation and underwent metamorphoses into their
blossoms or twigs. The folktales of Melanesian hoe-cultivators and Australian
aborigines bore a close resemblance to Ovid’s relation about social life on
Table 9. Types of ethnic cults and rituals After hunters’ transition to pastoralism
their myths underwent anthropo-morphisation, their deities ascended to
heavens and their dead departed to the night sky as stars. The Maoris and
Tibetans carried the dead corpse uphill in order to expose it to vultures in
craters of volcanoes and resembled Nazarenes in astrotheism1 (star cult), in worshipping stars as
divine messengers. As the old dying dalai lama’s soul ascended to the sky and
reincarnated as a star in heavens, a nova star turned up and signalled that
his dauphin successor had descended to the earth as a newborn baby. Nomadic fishermen’s oral tradition
resembled heroic stories and plots typical of the brotherly tribes of Altaic
hunters and herdsmen. They passed through the same stages of totemism and
animism and differed only by adoring various kinds of fish, reptiles, frogs
and other waterside amphibians. One half of their kinsmen continued to
inhabit caves and rock overhangs and even after moving to log cabins they
buried their fathers in rock-cut caves. They professed a kind of petrotheism
(rock cult) illustrated by worshipping the cube stone Kaaba in Neolithic novelties afflicted also
plant-gatherers who learned the art of hoe- cultivation and mystified sowing
grains of cereals as an offering to Mother Earth. Thracian cults dedicated to
Dionysus required human sacrifices illustrated by the tragic death of the
king Pentheus. He betrayed himself when eavesdropping the Extract from Pavel Bělíček: Systematic Poetics II.
Literary Ethnology and Sociology. Prague 2017, pp. 37-39 |
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