Great Spirit is worshipped, perhaps, in all stages of Fetichism. The Fetiche and the Manitou, visible types, are not the Great Spirit. But even in the worship of many Gods, or of one alone, traces of the ruder form still linger. The Fetiche of the individual is preserved in the Amulet, worn as a charm; in the figure of an animal painted on the dress, the armour, or the flesh of the worshipper. The Family Fetiche survives in the household Gods; the Penates of the Romans; the Teraphim of Laban; the Idol of Micah. The Fetiche of the Tribe still lives in the Lares of the Roman; in the patron God of each Grecian people; in some animal treated with great respect, or idealized in art, as the Bull Apis, the brazen Serpent, Horses consecrated to the Sun in Solomon's Temple;[1] in an image of Deity, like the old wooden statues of Minerva, always religiously kept, or the magnificent figures of the Gods in marble, ivory, or gold, the productions of maturest art; in some chosen symbol, the Palladium, the Ancilia, the Ark of the Covenant. The Fetiche of the Nation, almost inseparably connected with the former, is still remembered in the mystical Cherubim and Most Holy Place among the Jews; in the Olympian Jove of Greece, and the Capitoline Jupiter of Rome; in the image of “the Great Goddess Diana, which fell down from Jupiter.” It appears also in reverence for particular places formerly deemed the local and exclusive residence of the Fetiche,—such as the Caaba at Mecca; Hebron, Moriah, and Bethel in Judea; Delphi in Greece, and the great gathering places of the North-men in Europe, spots deemed holy by the superstitious even now, and therefore made the site of Christian Churches.[2]
Other and more general vestiges of Fetichism remain in the popular superstitions; in the belief of signs, omens,
- ↑ Vatke, Biblische Theologie, Berlin, 1835, Vol. I., attempts to trace out the connection of Fetichism with the Jewish ritual.
- ↑ See Mone, ubi supra, Vol. I. p. 23, et seq., p. 43, et seq., p. 113, et seq., p. 249, et seq., and elsewhere. Wilkinson, ubi sup. Vol. I., Ch. xii.; Vol. II. Ch. ii. and xiv. His theory, however, differs widely from the above. Whatever was extraordinary was deemed eminently divine. Thus with the Hebrews a great cedar was the cedar of God. Other nations had their Dê-wa-dâ-ru, God Timber, &c. See Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, p. 41, et seq. Lucan, Pharsal., Lib. III. 399, et seq. Mithridates, at the siege of Patara, dared not cut down the sacred trees. Appian, De Bello Mith. Ch. XXVII. Opp. ed. Schweighauser, I. p. 679, 680.
