Balder the Beautiful, Volume I A Study in Magic and Religion: the Golden Bough, Part VII | Page 9

are "sidenotes", which appeared in the original book in
the margins of the paragraph following the "sidenote." Footnotes were
originally at the bottoms of the printed pages.]

CHAPTER I
BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH
§ 1. Not to touch the Earth
[The priest of Aricia and the Golden Bough]
We have travelled far since we turned our backs on Nemi and set forth
in quest of the secret of the Golden Bough. With the present volume we
enter on the last stage of our long journey. The reader who has had the
patience to follow the enquiry thus far may remember that at the outset
two questions were proposed for answer: Why had the priest of Aricia
to slay his predecessor? And why, before doing so, had he to pluck the
Golden Bough?[1] Of these two questions the first has now been
answered. The priest of Aricia, if I am right, was one of those sacred
kings or human divinities on whose life the welfare of the community
and even the course of nature in general are believed to be intimately
dependent. It does not appear that the subjects or worshippers of such a
spiritual potentate form to themselves any very clear notion of the exact
relationship in which they stand to him; probably their ideas on the
point are vague and fluctuating, and we should err if we attempted to
define the relationship with logical precision. All that the people know,
or rather imagine, is that somehow they themselves, their cattle, and
their crops are mysteriously bound up with their divine king, so that
according as he is well or ill the community is healthy or sickly, the
flocks and herds thrive or languish with disease, and the fields yield an
abundant or a scanty harvest. The worst evil which they can conceive

of is the natural death of their ruler, whether he succumb to sickness or
old age, for in the opinion of his followers such a death would entail
the most disastrous consequences on themselves and their possessions;
fatal epidemics would sweep away man and beast, the earth would
refuse her increase, nay the very frame of nature itself might be
dissolved. To guard against these catastrophes it is necessary to put the
king to death while he is still in the full bloom of his divine manhood,
in order that his sacred life, transmitted in unabated force to his
successor, may renew its youth, and thus by successive transmissions
through a perpetual line of vigorous incarnations may remain eternally
fresh and young, a pledge and security that men and animals shall in
like manner renew their youth by a perpetual succession of generations,
and that seedtime and harvest, and summer and winter, and rain and
sunshine shall never fail. That, if my conjecture is right, was why the
priest of Aricia, the King of the Wood at Nemi, had regularly to perish
by the sword of his successor.
[What was the Golden Bough?]
But we have still to ask, What was the Golden Bough? and why had
each candidate for the Arician priesthood to pluck it before he could
slay the priest? These questions I will now try to answer.
[Sacred kings and priests forbidden to touch the ground with their feet.]
It will be well to begin by noticing two of those rules or taboos by
which, as we have seen, the life of divine kings or priests is regulated.
The first of the rules to which I desire to call the reader's attention is
that the divine personage may not touch the ground with his foot. This
rule was observed by the supreme pontiff of the Zapotecs in Mexico; he
profaned his sanctity if he so much as touched the ground with his
foot.[2] Montezuma, emperor of Mexico, never set foot on the ground;
he was always carried on the shoulders of noblemen, and if he lighted
anywhere they laid rich tapestry for him to walk upon.[3] For the
Mikado of Japan to touch the ground with his foot was a shameful
degradation; indeed, in the sixteenth century, it was enough to deprive
him of his office. Outside his palace he was carried on men's shoulders;
within it he walked on exquisitely wrought mats.[4] The king and

queen of Tahiti might not touch the ground anywhere but within their
hereditary domains; for the ground on which they trod became sacred.
In travelling from place to place they were carried on the shoulders of
sacred men. They were always accompanied by several pairs of these
sanctified attendants; and when it became necessary to change their
bearers, the king and queen vaulted on to the shoulders of their new
bearers without letting their feet touch the ground.[5] It was an evil
omen if the king of Dosuma touched