Book Review : The Voice Of The Spirits


Paperback. ISBN 9780857050793. MacLehose Press Publisher.

"They were not living beings. We thought they must be our ancestors, come back from the land of the dead. At that time we knew nothing of the outside world. We thought we were the only prople alive. We believed our ancestors had gone over there, turned white and come back as spirits. That was how we explained the White Man. Our dead had returned."

Conclusions:

●Sepik Region, Papua New Guinea ketika ini masih mengamalkan tradisi kanibalisma.

• They believe River Sepik have a high spirits.

● Those who are not yet found their home after death build spirit around the river.

● to be carefull because there is a lot of whirpools around there.

• Totem and Taboo is Freud's book about primal horde. It is became huge controversy in its time.

• 2 main taboo : incest (sumbang mahram) & perricide (pembunuh bapa).

• Masyarakat kanibal believe killed father untuk menjadikan ibu as induk then the sons akan melakukan sumbang mahram with the mother.

• Taboo included rules of the prohibition on fornication or zina and prohibition on murder.

• Totem is semangat binatang or animal spirit bagi menimbulkan kekuatan dalam diri.

• Culture is born under the guilt which is under the ageis of murder and incest. (Look back Habil and Qabil story)

• Papuan believe in magic. They spoke in 850 languages by 5.5 million people.


• seclusion ftom surrounded areas and some people still lives in highlands known as Sangumas which is not only human lives there but also pigs, rats and snakes.

• The Australia colonial government assumed the highlands were too wild and rugged to be inhabited.

• even after 75 year independent, villagers masih amalkan primitive culture. Still far away from road. Still have traditional diet of sweet potato, pigs and game which they hunt in the forest.

• At old time mereka mengamalkan tradisi headhunting. Fight each other from other villages.  War to the enemy head by Kaingara (ketua puak).

• skull of enemy and head akan disimpan for spirit.
• Each skull will remodelled and decorate and hung on the wall at Men's House (rumah bagi menghimpun barang2 berharga include skulls)



• Writer Margaret Mead pernah melalui kehidupan bersama masyarakat ini dan telah menulis dalam bukunya Growing Up In New Guinea in 1930.

• seems taboo in this people same as what Freud's wrote in his book, Totem and Taboo :-


Chapter 1: The Horror of Incest

p.53 [The start] Prehistoric man.. is known to us though.. monuments.. implements.. left behind.. legends, myths and fairy tales..But apart from this...There are men still living who.. stand very near to primitive man.. those whom we describe as savages....their mental life must have a peculiar interest.. if we are right in seeing in it a well-preserved picture of an early stage of our own developmentIf that supposition is correct, a comparison between the psychology of primitive peoples.. and.. neurotics.

p.54I shall select as the basis of this comparison the tribes which have been described byanthropologists as the most backward and miserable of savages, the aborigines ofAustralia..We should certainly not expect that the sexual life of these poor naked cannibals would be moral in our sense or that their sexual instincts would be subjected to any great degree of restriction. Yet we find that they set before themselves with the most scrupulous care and the most painful severity the aims of avoiding incestuous sexual relations. Indeed, their whole social organisation seems to serve that purpose or to have been brought into relation with its attainment.Among the Australians the place of all the religions and social institutions which they lack is taken by the system of totemism. Australian tribes fall into smaller divisions, or clans, each of which is named after its totem.What is a totem: It is as a rule an animal (whether edible and harmless or dangerous and feared) and more rarely a plant or a natural phenomenon (such as rain or water), which stands in a peculiar relation to the whole clan.In the first place, the totem is the common ancestor of the clan; at the same time it is their guardian spirit and helper, which sends them oracles and, if dangerous to others, recognises and spares its own children.

Links to this Totem and Taboo :
http://studymore.org.uk/xfre1913.htm










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