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Religious Evolution and
the Axial Age

Scientific Studies of Religion: Inquiry and Explanation
Series editors: Donald Wiebe, Luther H. Martin and William W. McCorkle
Scientific Studies of Religion: Inquiry and Explanation publishes cutting-edge
research in the new and growing field of scientific studies in religion. Its aim
is to publish empirical, experimental, historical, and ethnographic research on
religious thought, behavior, and institutional structures.
The series works with a broad notion of “scientific” that will include innovative
work on understanding religion(s), both past and present. With an emphasis
on the cognitive science of religion, the series includes complementary
approaches to the study of religion, such as psychology and computer
modeling of religious data. Titles seek to provide explanatory accounts for the
religious behaviors under review, both past and present.
The Attraction of Religion, edited by D. Jason Slone and James A. Van Slyke
Contemporary Evolutionary Theories of Culture
and the Study of Religion, Radek Kundt
Death Anxiety and Religious Belief, Jonathan Jong and Jamin Halberstadt
New Patterns for Comparative Religion, William E. Paden
Religion Explained?, edited by Luther H. Martin and Donald Wiebe
Religion in Science Fiction, Steven Hrotic
The Roman Mithras Cult, Olympia Panagiotidou with Roger Beck
The Mind of Mithraists, Luther H. Martin

Religious Evolution and
the Axial Age
From Shamans to Priests to Prophets
Stephen K. Sanderson
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
LONDON • OXFORD • NEW YORK • NEW DELHI • SYDNEY

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Names: Sanderson, Stephen K., author.
Title: Religious evolution and the axial age: from shamans to priests to
prophets / Stephen K. Sanderson.
Description: 1 [edition]. | New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. | Series:
Scientific studies of religion: inquiry and explanation | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017036763 | ISBN 9781350047426 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781350047433 (epdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Religion–History. | Religion–Philosophy. |
Evolution–Religious aspects.
Classification: LCC BL430 .S26 2018 | DDC 200.9–dc23 LC record available at
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For my grandchildren, Olivia, Noah, and the newly arrived Amelia,
for all the pleasure they have brought into my life in my golden years

vi

Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments x
List of Figures and Tables xiii
Prologue 1
1 What Religion Is 7
Defining religion 7
Spirits and gods 12
Religious rituals 18
Religious specialists 22
2 The Evolutionary Forms of the Religious Life 25
Types of religion 25
The way of the shaman 28
Communal rites and practices 34
Pagan religions of the ancient world 36
Conclusions 48
3 The Religions of the Axial Age 51
The great transformation 51
Zoroastrianism 56
Judaism 61
Christianity 70
Confucianism and Daoism 82
Hinduism 86
Buddhism 91
Between East and West 96
Excursus: monotheism among the Greeks? 98
What was new in the Axial Age? 100
Conclusion 109

Contentsviii
4 Explaining Religion 111
Religion as the worship of society 111
Religion as the opium of the people 115
Religion as a source of scarce or nonexistent rewards 118
Religion as a source of ontological security 121
Religion as how the brain works 126
5 Religion as an Evolutionary Adaptation 141
Evolutionary adaptationists 141
Deconstructing adaptationism 146
Evidence of adaptation: religion in the ancestral environment 149
Evidence of adaptation: religion and health 152
Evidence of adaptation: religion and reproductive success 153
Evidence of adaptation: children’s natural theism 155
Evidence of adaptation: biological roots of religious ritual 156
Evidence of adaptation: religion’s widespread importance 160
Conclusions 161
6 The Sociocultural Evolution of Religion, 1: The Overall Pattern 163
Darwinian cultural evolution and its problems 164
Historical theories of sociocultural evolution 169
Necessary causes of religious evolution 177
Conclusions 190
7 The Sociocultural Evolution of Religion, 2: The Axial Age 191
Earlier theories 192
Recent theories 201
A new interpretation: urbanization, war, and disrupted attachments 206
Toward an empirical test 215
Theoretical reprise 218
8 Religion Past, Present, and Future 221
Do religions progress? 221
Why atheism? 226
The future of religion 230
Coda: is God a delusion? 232

Contents ix
Appendix A: Codes for Stage of Religious Evolution in the Standard
Cross-Cultural Sample 237
Appendix B: Ancient Cities and Estimated City Sizes 243
Notes 249
Bibliography 266
Index 289

Preface and Acknowledgments
This is not a book of advocacy, but a work of science. I seek to understand
religion from an objective point of view rather than to promote or criticize
it. My overriding goal is to find answers to two fundamental questions: Why
are people religious wherever we find them (with a few recent exceptions in
advanced industrial societies), and how and why has religion changed over
long-term historical time? I write the book for scholars and scholars-to-be in
comparative religion, the history of religions, the anthropology and sociology
of religion, and the new cognitive and evolutionary psychology of religion. The
book might also be of interest to a general audience, although such readers will
have to work around the technical statistical analyses in a few chapters. (The
analyses are not really that complicated as statistical analyses go, and there are
not that many of them.)
I wrote both my MA thesis and PhD dissertation on religious topics in the
early 1970s, but since that time I have engaged in scholarly work on religion
only in the past dozen years. In the intervening time I wrote extensively on
long-term social evolution and then turned my attention to Darwinian topics
associated with evolutionary psychology and related approaches. Until twelve
years ago my only scholarly knowledge of religion was by way of the sociology
and anthropology of religion. I had never paid any attention at all to work in
religious studies, and I still regard myself as an interloper in that field. But I
wanted to write this book in order to bring together my knowledge of social
evolution and of Darwinian approaches to social behavior. I decided it was
time to write about the religious dimension of long-term social evolution to
accompany my earlier writings on social evolution’s technological, economic,
and political dimensions.
To write this book I had to start almost from scratch to gain even a descriptive
knowledge of religion. So I dug into the literature, and I have found the
process extremely rewarding. Not only have I learned many very interesting
things, especially about the world religions, but I can honestly say that I have
probably learned more in preparing this book than in preparing any previous
book of mine.

Preface and Acknowledgments xi
I acknowledge my former graduate student Wesley Roberts for his
collaboration in writing the section of Chapter 6 devoted to identifying some of
the necessary causes of religious evolution. This work began as his MA thesis in
sociology. I am grateful to Candace Alcorta for reading the entire manuscript
in first draft and offering a number of useful suggestions for revision. I am also
grateful to Radek Kundt for his suggestion to include a more detailed discussion
of theories of sociocultural evolution, which I believe has improved the book
immeasurably. However, I am not sure that the expanded discussion will be
exactly what he expected. In order to gain a fuller understanding of pagan
religions, Benson Saler recommended that I consult Yehezkel Kaufmann’s book
The Religion of Israel: From Its Beginnings to the Babylonian Exile, and this
proved to be a very useful recommendation indeed. I was very pleased when
Richard Sosis showed enthusiasm for some of the ideas in this book when I
first presented them at a conference on religious evolution in Hawaii in 2007.
When I had a hundred pages written my epistolary colleague Randall Collins
read them and offered an insightful critique. When I gave a talk on by-product
and adaptationist theories of religion at the University of California at Riverside
in 2006, my colleague Jonathan Turner hated it and thought that I had gone off
the deep end. However, when he read the same hundred pages that Collins read,
he softened somewhat and conceded that some of the ideas were interesting.
But mostly this book won’t convince him of much; he also has his own new
book on the same subject which is written along almost entirely different lines.
My former graduate student Kristopher Proctor suggested that I summarize my
theoretical argument for the Axial Age transition as a flow diagram and gave
me a preliminary version of it. Colin Adreon finalized that diagram and the
two others. I am very pleased that Luther Martin and Donald Wiebe wanted
this book for their series on scientific explanations of religion, which looks like
a very good series to be in. I know it will help me reach a large part of my
intended audience.
Some of the ideas contained in this book were presented as talks at the
University of California at Riverside (2006, 2007); the University of California
at Santa Barbara (2011); the University of Helsinki (2007); the conference
The Evolution of Religion (Makaha, Hawaii, 2007); and annual meetings
of the American Sociological Association (Philadelphia 2005, Boston 2008),
the European Sociological Association (Glasgow, Scotland 2007), the Human
Behavior and Evolution Society (Williamsburg, VA 2007, Kyoto, Japan 2008), and
the International Society for Human Ethology (Bologna, Italy 2008). Portions

Preface and Acknowledgmentsxii
of Chapter 6 are based on Stephen K. Sanderson and Wesley W. Roberts, “The
evolutionary forms of the religious life: A cross-cultural, quantitative study.”
American Anthropologist, 110, 454–66, 2008. Portions of Chapter 5 draw on
material in Stephen K. Sanderson, “Adaptation, evolution, and religion.” Religion,
38, 141–56, 2008.

List of Figures and Tables
Figure 1.1 Characteristics of spirits and gods 13
Figure 7.1 The causal chain in the evolution of the world religions 214
Figure 8.1 Four evolutionary stages of religious abstractification 223
Table 2.1 Bellah’s typology of religious evolution 29
Table 2.2 Predominant features of pagan religions 41
Table 2.3 Principal gods and goddesses in ancient Rome 47
Table 3.1 Predominant features of the world salvation religions 105
Table 5.1 Similarities between religious rituals and obsessive-
compulsive disorder 157
Table 6.1 Correlations among the independent and dependent variables 181
Table 6.2 Ordered logistic regression of stage of religious evolution on
seven independent variables 181
Table 6.3 Stage of religious evolution and subsistence economy 183
Table 6.4 Stage of religious evolution and writing and records 184
Table 6.5 Stage of religious evolution and societal size 185
Table 7.1 Empires and pagan versus world transcendent religions 196
Table 7.2 Correlations between the number of world transcendent
religions per century and empire and city size per century 216
Table 7.3 Regression of pagan/world transcendent transition
on urbanization and empire size, Near East 217
Table 7.4 Regression of pagan/world transcendent transition
on urbanization and empire size, China 217
Table 7.5 Regression of pagan/world transcendent transition
on urbanization and empire size, World 218
Table B1 Twenty largest world cities, 650 BCE 243
Table B2 Fifty-one largest world cities, 430 BCE 244
Table B3 Fifty-five largest world cities, 200 BCE 245
Table B4 Seventy-five largest world cities, 100 CE 246
Table B5 Total size of world cities 100,000 or larger, 700 BCE–100 CE 247
Table B6 Chandler’s and Modelski’s city size totals, 650 BCE–100 CE 247

xiv

Prologue
The past two decades have witnessed an explosion of work on religion from a
cognitive psychological and evolutionary perspective. The leading scholars have
come from a variety of disciplines, mostly comparative religion, anthropology,
cognitive science, and evolutionary psychology. Some have worked in at least two
of these fields at the same time, and clearly the work is highly interdisciplinary.
International conferences have been organized in which leading scholars have
met to discuss their work. Hundreds of papers have been published, dozens of
scholarly books
1
and popular books have also appeared,
2
and new journals have
been founded.
3
Work is ongoing and vigorous, and there has been a great deal
of productive debate.
Most of this work is about religion in general—about why humans everywhere
have it. Much less attention has been devoted to the questions of why there are
so many different types of religion and how and why religion has evolved over
historical time. In the present book I apply some of the new theoretical ideas to
suggest answers to these questions. My focus is on long-term religious evolution,
with a special emphasis on the great religious transformation known as the
Axial Age, the period between about 600 BCE and 1 CE when the major world
religions were beginning to emerge. These religions had several new features
of considerable importance, but two were especially critical: transcendence and
salvation. A new kind of god was born, one that was outside the universe and
who brought it into existence—a transcendent god. Transcendent gods were
not all the same. In the Near East there was just one of these gods—One True
God—who was considered omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent. This
was the case in Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity. In Hinduism things
were somewhat more complicated. People claimed to worship different gods,
but most often they thought these gods were more or less the same god with
different names. India also gave birth to Buddhism, which was officially godless,
but everyday Buddhists nonetheless began to worship the Buddha as a kind of
god. In China, Daoism was officially based on a kind of “divine essence,” as was
true as well of elite Hinduism and Buddhism, but ordinary Daoists constructed

2Religious Evolution and the Axial Age
a personal god. Confucianism was not exactly a religion, but people eventually
started praying to Confucius just as Buddhists started worshiping the Buddha.
What did the new gods do that was so special? The answer is, they were salvation
gods. People worshiped them and appealed to them for salvation from the
misery and suffering that had arisen on earth as a result of a series of dramatic
social, economic, and political changes.
Before these religions were born, ancient states and civilizations had religions
that have been called archaic, pagan, or state religions. There were usually
pantheons of highly anthropomorphic gods who oversaw specialized spheres of
nature and human life, such as agriculture, war, love, or fertility. Large temples
and statues were built to worship the gods, primarily by political and economic
elites. These kinds of religions emerged at least 5,000 years ago, although there
were earlier versions in some places. Prior to this time, in small-scale societies
whose members made a living by hunting and gathering or some sort of simple
agriculture, people sometimes imagined certain kinds of gods, but these were
not on the same scale as the pagan gods. Some acted in the world, but most did
not. After creating the world they often withdrew and took no interest in human
affairs, in which case people didn’t bother to worship them. More important in
these kinds of societies were various types of lesser spirits, such as the spirits
of people’s dead ancestors. Ancestral spirits were mostly conceived in positive
terms, but one had to pay them proper respect so they would not be offended.
Offended ancestral spirits could do harm. There were also purely evil spirits,
such as ghosts, demons, or witches, which people had to be particularly careful
about.
The religions of pagan antiquity and the Axial Age had formal
practitioners—priests—who usually monopolized religious doctrines and
interpreted them for lay audiences. But the earliest religions were focused on
religious specialists known as shamans, who performed rituals in which they
sought to heal people who suffered from various illnesses (often thought to be
the result of the actions of evil spirits or of giving offense to spirits that were
normally relatively benign). Shamans also played an important role in finding
game animals and making sure they were plentiful. This type of religion was
once found throughout most of the world and may have existed as long as
30,000 years ago.
And so over the past ten or eleven millennia we observe a kind of overall
evolutionary sequence running from the spirit- and shaman-dominated
religions of small-scale societies to the archaic or pagan religions of the ancient

3Prologue
civilizations and then to the salvation religions of the Axial Age. In order to
understand this sequence, especially the last phase of it, I draw on ideas from
the new cognitive and evolutionary psychological theories, in combination
with a theory of long-term sociocultural evolution. The reigning theory in the
cognitive psychological realm is that the brain is primed for religion, but only as
a side effect or by-product of other cognitive features of the brain. One of these
features is agency detection: people are hard-wired to see agents—other people,
animals—acting everywhere. But some events have no obvious agency in that
there is no directly observable intentional agent. A person becomes sick, for
example, but it is not clear why. Or a village is suddenly flooded and devastated,
but why? In these cases people project their intuitions about human agency onto
supernatural agents—invisible beings or forces whose actions must be inferred
from their effects. The brain is religious—religion is natural—but only in an
indirect way.
But not everyone agrees that religion is just a by-product of other brain
activity. The alternative to the by-product theory is the view that religious beliefs
and rituals evolved because they promoted Darwinian fitness: survival and
reproductive success. The brain has something like a “religion module” that is
more than simply a module for detecting agency. In this view, which is the one
adopted in this book, religion is an evolutionary adaptation. Those who hold
this adaptationist perspective may agree that religious cognitions originated
as by-products of cognitions for agency detection, but they contend that at
some point in the brain’s evolution religious cognitions became detached from
cognitions for agency detection to have significance in their own right—to stand
on their own.
And yet religion is not simply a product of how the brain evolved, otherwise
all religions would look essentially the same, and obviously they don’t. Here is
where we must see religion as a product of sociocultural as well as biological
evolution. As the socioecological context of human life has changed, new human
needs, including new religious needs, have arisen. New types of religious belief
and ritual evolved as a means of meeting these new needs. Religion is therefore
most properly called a biosocial phenomenon, or one in which human religious
predispositions interact with a wide range of socioecological conditions to
generate the many diverse features of religion that we observe throughout the
world and in the long span of human history.
The first three chapters of the book are largely descriptive. Chapter 1 is a
breezy overview of the nature of religion and seeks to avoid the endless and

4Religious Evolution and the Axial Age
often arcane debates over how to define religion or whether it can be defined at
all. Numerous illustrations of a variety of beliefs, ritual practices, and religious
specialists are given. Chapter 2 begins the discussion of religious evolution
by examining two well-known conceptual typologies, those formulated by
the anthropologist Anthony Wallace and the sociologist Robert Bellah. After
discussing the religions of small-scale band and tribal societies, the chapter
concludes with an analysis of the pagan religions of the ancient world, focusing
in particular on the religions of the Aztecs of ancient Mesoamerica and those of
ancient Hawaii, Mesopotamia, and Rome. Chapter 3 continues the descriptive
analysis of religious evolution by way of a lengthy and detailed discussion of the
Axial Age religions of the ancient Near East, South Asia, and East Asia.
Chapters 4 through 7 constitute the theoretical part of the book. Chapters 4
and 5 ask the questions: Why is there religion? Why, wherever we look in human
societies and throughout history, do we find people expressing religious beliefs
that they enact in religious rituals? In Chapter 4 I take up and critique several of
the most important theories of religion that the social sciences have produced. I
start with the classical theories of Durkheim and Marx. Rejecting these theories,
I then turn to the rational choice or exchange approach to religion developed by
Rodney Stark and his colleagues and students. This is one of the most influential
and important theoretical approaches in the contemporary sociology of religion.
For the rational choice theorists, religion is primarily about obtaining rewards,
especially otherworldly rewards, that are difficult or impossible to obtain by
ordinary means. People engage in exchange relations with supernatural agents in
order to obtain these rewards. Next I discuss the ontological security argument
presented by such thinkers as Malinowski, Norris and Inglehart, Kirkpatrick,
and Giddens. They contend that religion’s main importance is as a means of
coping with existential anxiety—a source of comfort and security in an insecure
and uncertain world. I round out the chapter by beginning the discussion of
the new cognitive and evolutionary psychological theories. One of these, as
noted previously, conceptualizes religion as a by-product of other features of
the brain, in particular cognitive modules for agency detection. Chapter 5 then
turns to the main alternative to the by-product approach, the evolutionary
adaptationist theories of, inter alia, Richard Sosis and Candace Alcorta, Joseph
Bulbulia, Michael Winkelman, and James McClenon. This type of theory, which
converges in some important ways with the ontological security and rational
choice theories, is the one favored in this book and several lines of evidence are
offered in support of it.

5Prologue
Chapter 6 begins the theoretical discussion of the sociocultural side of religious
evolution by critically analyzing two different types of theories of sociocultural
evolution. It then demonstrates, in a preliminary way, the usefulness of one of
these theories by way of reporting the results of an empirical analysis of a wide
range of nonindustrial societies devoted to identifying some of the sociohistorical
conditions that have been prerequisites or necessary causes of religious evolution
over the long term. Chapter 7 then connects the ontological security and
evolutionary adaptationist lines of thinking discussed in Chapters 4 and 5 with
the theory of sociocultural evolution used in Chapter 6 to explain the greatest
of all religious transformations, the emergence of the religions of the Axial Age.
The basic argument is that the Axial Age was a time of dramatic economic and
political changes that disturbed people’s lives in such a way as to lead to the
disruption of social attachments and thus high levels of existential anxiety and
ontological insecurity. The new Axial Age religions, with their transcendent gods
and doctrines of salvation and release from misery and suffering, arose to restore
people’s sense of security. As such, they were biosocial adaptations to people’s
radically changed circumstances.
Chapter 8 concludes the book by asking three central questions: If religions
evolve, do they also progress? If religion is an evolutionary adaptation, why are
there atheists? What is the future of religion? The chapter also provides a forceful
critique of the so-called New Atheists, who see religion as an irrational and evil
institution that society would be much better without and should attempt to
eradicate.

6

1
What Religion Is
Defining religion
All societies have religion, but what is it? Most social scientists have taken
religion to be something associated with the realm of the supernatural. Lyle
Steadman and Craig Palmer (2008: 5–6) summarize nearly a dozen definitions,
the core elements of which refer to “the relationship between humans and the
supernatural world”; “belief in spiritual beings”; “entities inaccessible to normal
observation”; “unobservable beings”; “beings and forces beyond the material
world”; “communication with powers that cannot be seen”; “supernatural agents”;
“causal powers of nonobservable entities and agencies”; “a realm of the ineffable
and unknowable separate from ordinary perceptual experience”; “a super-
empirical, transcendent reality”; “belief and ritual concerned with supernatural
beings, powers, and forces”; and “a unique experience of confrontation with
power not of this world.”
But some social scientists think that definitions emphasizing the supernatural
are too narrow, if not downright wrong. The early French sociologist Emile
Durkheim (1965) thought that belief in supernatural beings could not be the
defining criterion of religion because it was not universal. He accepted the
standard view that Buddhism was atheistic and thus could not be considered
a religion on supernaturalistic grounds. He also thought that some small-scale
societies lacked supernaturalistic concepts. This led him to the conclusion that
the essence of religion was its concern with a realm defined as sacred, that is,
the object of special reverence, respect, and even awe. This realm stood in sharp
contrast to the realm of the profane, or the world of ordinary, everyday existence.
Durkheim’s formal definition of religion declared it to be “a unified system of
beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and
forbidden, beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called
a Church all those who adhere to them” (1965: 62; emphasis in original). Candace

8Religious Evolution and the Axial Age
Alcorta and Richard Sosis follow Durkheim, saying, “At the heart of all religions
is the separation of the sacred from the profane. . . . In contrast to the profane, or
ordinary, the sacred is both mystical and extraordinary. Sacred places, objects,
symbols, and beliefs comprise the core of religion; it is the sacred that instills
faith and inspires the devotion of the faithful” (2013: 573).
But this seems mistaken, and for two reasons. First, contrary to Durkheim,
the idea of supernatural beings is indeed universal. “Atheistic” Buddhism is
in fact limited to elite Buddhism; the vast majority of Buddhists worship the
Buddha and Buddhas-in-the-making, the so-called bodhisattvas. And the
primitive tribes that Durkheim thought lack notions of the supernatural turn out
on closer inspection to have them after all. Second, it is the concept of the sacred
that turns out not to be universal. Religion is frequently associated with a realm
humans regard as having sacred significance, but not all societies with beliefs and
practices devoted to supernatural beings mark out a sacred realm (Southwold,
1978). Alcorta and Sosis (2013) insist that the distinction between the sacred and
the profane really is universal, but to make this claim they rely on an expanded
notion of what is sacred to include things like purity, danger, and even national
flags. But these things are not unique to religion, existing in nonreligious realms
(or at least realms that few would regard as religious). Strong patriots regard
their nation’s flag as sacred and regard burning it or stomping on it as an act of
defilement. Yet it is highly doubtful that they would see the flag in the same way
that they view their beliefs in supernatural beings and the worship of them.
Others have objected to the focus on supernaturalism in a somewhat different
way. They do not think it wrong to see the supernatural as a key element of
religion, only too restrictive. They want to expand the definition of religion so
that it includes all systems of belief and practice oriented to “ultimate human
concerns.” Thus religion can be considered a “set of symbolic forms and acts
which relate man to the ultimate conditions of his existence” (Bellah, 1964: 359),
or “a system of beliefs and practices by means of which a group of people struggles
with these ultimate problems of human life” (Yinger, 1970: 7). These so-called
ultimate concerns have mainly to do with the fact of death; the need to cope with
frustration, suffering, and tragedy; the need to bring hostility and egocentrism
under control; and the need to “deal with the forces that press in upon us,
endangering our livelihood, our health, and the survival and smooth operation of
the groups in which we live—forces that our empirical knowledge cannot handle
adequately” (Yinger, 1970: 6). Many who favor this kind of expansive definition
go so far as to regard as religions not only theistic systems organized around the

9What Religion Is
concept of a supernatural power or powers, but also various nontheistic belief
systems such as communism, nationalism, or humanism. Robert Bellah even
refers to something he calls “American civil religion,” by which he means a set of
beliefs, rituals, and symbols celebrating the distinctiveness of the United States
as a nation (Bellah, 1967).
The problem with this more expansive conceptualization of religion is, well, it
is just too expansive (Steadman and Palmer, 2008). Even though some nontheistic
systems share important elements in common with theistic ones, it is an
intellectual distortion to lump theistic and nontheistic systems together as if they
were essentially the same kind of thing. It is of crucial significance whether or not
a belief system postulates the existence of a supernatural realm. Surely a secular
humanist or a communist has an orientation to the world fundamentally different
from that of a Christian Fundamentalist, an Orthodox Jew, or a pious Sikh.
I therefore propose to define religion simply as beliefs and practices devoted
to supernatural agents. An agent is “a being that seems to have some kind of
internal source of energy or force that explains its self-propelledness, that acts
teleologically in pursuit of goals, and that has cognitive properties; that is, it
can perceive, think, know, and remember” (Pyysiäinen, 2004: 188). The key
feature of specifically supernatural agents is that they are counterintuitive, that is,
they violate natural human intuitions about the world. These agents are usually
invisible and their existence is merely postulated or assumed. They may be gods,
or some types of spirits. Some of these spirits and gods do good things, whereas
others are malevolent and need to be propitiated to prevent them from doing
harm. Supernatural agents might also be witches, who are actual persons rather
than spirits, and so they might be called visible supernatural agents. However,
since their witchcraft is assumed rather than observed, witchcraft itself belongs
to an invisible and nonempirical realm. Witches are persons who are visible, but
their “witchiness” is not visible. Another type of supernatural agent is ghosts,
beliefs in which are widespread in human societies (Boyer, 2001; Atran, 2002;
Pyysiäinen, 2004).
There is disagreement concerning whether beliefs or ritual practices are the
more important feature of religion. Anthropologists and sociologists influenced
by Durkheim generally come down on the side of ritual. Durkheim thought
that in performing religious rituals people were not actually worshiping gods,
but indirectly society itself, especially its power over them. This view converges
with Durkheim’s contention that religion is about the sacred rather than the
supernatural, since in their rituals society is the most important thing that people

10Religious Evolution and the Axial Age
are making sacred. Alcorta and Sosis take a similar view and, like Durkheim, link
ritual with the sacred: “The means for creating sacred things is communal ritual.
It is through such ritual that people, places, objects, and beliefs are imbued with
sacred meaning, rendering them powerful, awesome, and dangerous” (2013:
574; cf. Rappaport, 1999).
Rodney Stark (2001b, 2007) takes the side of beliefs. He is highly critical
of the Durkheimian emphasis on ritual, pointing out that when people pray
or worship, there must be an object of their prayer or worship. As he puts it,
“People pray to something! To something above and beyond the material world.
To something to hear prayers and having supernatural powers needed to
influence nature and events. Real or not, such ‘somethings’ are Gods. Variations
in how God or the Gods are conceived is the crucial difference among faiths and
cultures” (Stark, 2007: 15). There is no doubt that ritual is a crucial feature of
religions everywhere, but I find Stark’s emphasis on belief more compelling, and
thus much more attention is given to it in this book.
We can summarize this conceptual discussion by identifying religion’s
universal and variable features:
Universal Features
●●Supernatural agents (most frequently spirits and gods)
●●Good and evil supernatural agents
●●Belief in souls
●●Rituals
●●Sacrifice
●●Cosmogonies, cosmologies
●●“Overworlds” (e.g., Heaven) and “underworlds” (e.g., Hell)
●●Religious specialists
●●Polluting substances
●●Taboos
Variable Features
●●Shamans
●●Priests
●●Prophets
●●Messiahs
●●Disciples

11What Religion Is
●●Missionaries
●●Evangelists
●●Witches, sorcerers, soothsayers, mediums, diviners
●●High gods, active gods, inactive gods, moralizing gods
●●Trances
●●Concept of afterlife
●●Polytheism
●●Monotheism
●●Anthropomorphic gods
●●Transcendent gods
●●Virgin births
●●World-destroying floods
●●Abstract otherworldly essences
●●Written doctrines
●●Emotionally arousing rituals
●●Animal sacrifice, human sacrifice
●●Physical representation of deities (e.g., idols, graven images)
●●Prayer
●●Quest for the meaning of existence
●●Ethical concepts
●●Reincarnation
●●Ascetic practices (e.g., fasting, renunciation of the material world)
●●Monastic orders
●●Ancestor worship
Technically, a trait can count as a universal only if it occurs in every society
without exception. However, this is perhaps too restrictive. Many traits occur in
all societies, but some occur only in the vast majority. These traits can be called
near-universals, and to count as a near-universal a trait should be found in, say,
at least 95 percent of societies. For example, the incest taboo is considered a
universal even though it is technically a near-universal. All societies look
askance on incest, but a few have allowed brother-sister marriage. Yet nearly all
anthropologists call it a universal.
We can see from these lists not only that religion has a core set of elements but
also that there are numerous ways in which these core elements are constructed
in the world’s societies. In the chapters ahead we shall explore these core elements
and many of their variations. But first it may be helpful to have an overall sense
of things if only to get our bearings.

12Religious Evolution and the Axial Age
Spirits and gods
Since most supernatural agents are spirits and gods, it is useful to consider how
they are different. Ilkka Pyysiäinen (2009) says that it is difficult to know exactly
what puts a supernatural entity into the category of a god. However, it seems
largely to be that gods are superior to spirits in the sense that they do more or
at least can do more. Gods, for example, can be implored to provide assistance
in love and war, to show mercy, or to save one’s soul. But spirits don’t do these
things. Good spirits can do beneficial things, but only on a small scale, such
as a guardian angel providing protection. And evil spirits can cause illness and
other misfortune, but they do not consign anyone to hell and eternal damnation.
Yet it is not always possible to distinguish between spirits and gods; sometimes
they blur together. For example, in the religion of the Yoruba tribe in Africa
the so-called orishas are considered ancestral spirits, but also divinities just
below the high god Olorun. In Japanese Shintoism both spirits and gods are
represented by the word kami.
Pyysiäinen suggests that the similarities and differences between supernatural
agents can be mapped as a system of Cartesian coordinates in which the degree
of mental activity is placed on the X axis and the degree of embodiment on the
Y axis. Since Pyysiäinen constructed no graph, I have done so myself, which is
represented by Figure 1.1. Humans are at the origin point in the extreme lower left
corner since they have ordinary bodies and ordinary consciousness. The God of the
Near Eastern world religions is in the extreme upper right corner since He has no
body and is fully omniscient. As we move from left to right we see that the mental
powers of supernatural agents gradually increase, and as we move from bottom
to top supernatural agents become increasingly disembodied. The supernatural
agents with the least mental power and that are the most embodied are the various
types of lesser spirits. Continuing up and right, we find the so-called high gods of
primitive societies (see below). Further up and to the right we can place the pagan
gods of antiquity, such as Zeus among the Greeks and Jupiter among the Romans.
They were anthropomorphic (human-like) gods with somewhat more mental
power. Then, just before reaching the God of the Near Eastern religions, we find
the gods of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Daoism. They are not fully omniscient and
cannot be said to be completely without bodies since the Buddha and Laozi were
humans who later became deified. The Buddha had a body, but certainly not an
ordinary one; it did not pass through infancy or old age nor did it have any of the
kinds of limitations characteristic of ordinary bodies (Pyysiäinen, 2009).

13What Religion Is
It is important to stress that the placement of supernatural agents along
these axes, with the exception of the Near Eastern world religions, and to some
extent the East and South Asian religions, cannot be precise. This is so for
several reasons. The pagan gods varied considerably among themselves in their
powers, as do primitive high gods. There are several types of spirits; witches, for
example, have human bodies, but ghosts do not. Moreover, the embodiment of
any particular spirit varies over time, passing back and forth between different
degrees of embodiment (Pyysiäinen, 2009). Therefore Figure 1.1 can only
represent a rough guide, but it should be useful nonetheless.
Many years ago the sociologist Guy Swanson (1960) surveyed the types of
gods found in primitive societies. He came up with a category that he called
“high gods.” A high god is a deity who is “the ultimate source of events in nature
and supernature” (Swanson, 1960: 56). If a society has a high god, this god must
Figure 1.1 Characteristics of spirits and gods

14Religious Evolution and the Axial Age
be the only god, although there can still be other supernatural entities. High
gods are often thought to have created the universe. They may or may not be
worshiped, and may or may not be interested in human affairs. Some high gods
simply withdraw after the act of creation. Still others may take an interest in
some human affairs but not others. And high gods interested in human affairs
may or may not take an interest in human morality. Thus we have four categories
into which the religion of any society can be placed: no high god, an inactive
high god, an active high god not concerned with human morality, and an active
high god who does take an interest in human morality.
Swanson was careful to point out that the high gods of the vast majority of
primitive societies, especially small-scale societies, are very different from the
gods of the great world religions, such as Judaism and Christianity. Unfortunately,
he created confusion by calling the religions of primitive societies possessing
high gods “monotheistic.” Because the high gods of the major world religions are
so different from primitive high gods, the term monotheism should be reserved
for the former.
The anthropologist George Peter Murdock has assembled a very large data
bank of 1,267 preindustrial societies known as the Ethnographic Atlas (Murdock,
1967).
1
The Atlas contains information on high gods for 748 of these societies.
Of these, 37 percent have no high god, 33 percent have only an inactive high
god, 6 percent have an active high god not concerned with human morality, and
24 percent have an active high god concerned with morality. It is instructive
to see how high gods are distributed across the various evolutionary stages of
human society. The major stages prior to the development of modern industrial
societies, based on their mode of subsistence technology, are hunter-gatherer,
horticultural, pastoral, and intensive agricultural (sometimes called agrarian)
societies. Hunter-gatherers live in small bands and forage for game and plant
matter; they practice no plant cultivation. Horticulturalists are farmers who
cultivate the land by using hand tools such as digging sticks or hoes. Their
plots under cultivation usually take the form of small gardens rather than large
fields, and crops tend to be various types of root crops, such as yams. Intensive
agriculturalists are field tillers, often cultivating with the aid of plows and draft
animals, and concentrating on cereals such as wheat, barley, or rice. Pastoralists
live by animal herding with very little, if any, attention to cultivation.
Nearly two-thirds of hunter-gatherers have no high god, and only 10
percent have an active high god. In the case of horticulturalists, a third
have no high god, another half only an inactive high god, and only some 20

15What Religion Is
percent an active high god. Active high gods are more common in intensive
agricultural societies, but they are as much the exception as the rule. A quarter
of these societies have no high god, and another quarter only an inactive
high god. It is pastoral societies that are most likely to have an active high
god. Nearly three-quarters have an active high god, and almost all of these
gods are concerned with human morality. However, the figures for pastoral
societies are somewhat misleading because many of these societies are in the
Middle East and have been subject to the spread of Islam by conquest over
many hundreds of years.
Let’s look at the religious beliefs and practices of some representative societies.
I concentrate here (and in the next section on ritual) mostly on religions in
small-scale societies because the religions of large-scale societies are discussed
in Chapter 2.
2

Among the Mbundu of Africa the focal point of religion is ancestral deities,
who are worshiped by both commoners and elites. There is belief in a supreme
being known as Suku, who is thought to have created the sky, rivers, mountains,
and humans. He is, however, only vaguely conceived and has little interest in
human affairs. Suku’s role is secondary to the worship of ancestors. There are no
animistic notions of spirits in trees, rivers, animals, and the like, and there is no
conception of sin. The spirits of the king’s ancestors, known as Ahamba, are the
principal kingdom deities (Human Relations Area Files, FP13).
The African Thonga have a creator god, Leza, who was inactive in traditional
Thonga society but is now identified with the Christian God. There are a
variety of spirits that are concerned with human life. Basangu take an interest
in the affairs of entire communities or even regional groups of communities.
Mizimo are the spirits of dead ancestors who show an interest in their own
kin. These spirits receive regular offerings. Basangu and mizimo do favorable
things, but if offended can do unpleasant things. Another kind of spirit,
masabe, does harm. Masabe, along with ghosts (zelo), attack individuals and
rain misfortune down upon their heads. It is naturally important to discover
the will of these spirits, and this is done by spirit mediums and diviners
(O’Leary and Levinson, 1990, vol. 9).
The Shilluk, an African society living in the southern part of Sudan, have a
creator god that they call Juok, who is manifest in all places at all times. He is an
active god who is addressed through the sacrifice of sheep, goats, and cattle. The
Shilluk also associate Juok with a river spirit that is thought to have given birth
to Nyikang, another deity (O’Leary and Levinson, 1990, vol. 9).

16Religious Evolution and the Axial Age
The Semang, hunter-gatherers who live on the Malay Peninsula, conceive
of the earth as a disk of land resting on a huge snake or turtle floating in a
subterranean sea. The sky is a cool, sandy place containing fruits and flowers.
The earth and the sky are connected by stone pillars. The sky, underworld,
and pillars are inhabited by beings who are considered both superhuman and
immortal. They created the rain forest in which the Semang live in order to
supply their earthly needs. Some superhumans once lived on earth as ordinary
humans, and they occasionally return to earth to visit or listen to Semang
singing. Most superhumans are anonymous and are frequently associated with
such natural phenomena as fruit and wind. Some are considered deities and
thus are given individual names. The most prominent of these deities is the
thunder god (Karey or Gobar). He sends thunderstorms to punish Semang who
violate prohibitions, such as mixing incompatible foods or mocking particular
animals. The thunder god may kill Semang by causing trees to topple on them,
or by causing a tiger attack or a disease. The thunder god sometimes collaborates
with a female deity of the underworld called Ya’, or “Grandmother.” She can act
by producing a flood beneath the offender. It is possible to avoid the wrath of
these deities by scraping some blood from the shin, mixing it with water, and
presenting it as an offering to the thunder god and Grandmother. After death
Semang believe that they become immortal superhumans themselves (O’Leary
and Levinson, 1990, vol. 5).
The religion of the Aranda of central Australia is centered around myths of
totemic ancestors who are thought to have created the universe. Some myths
are secret and known only to particular groups. These ancestors have spiritual
essences that are pervasive in their influence. Whereas these ancestors are
basically good, Aranda culture contains spirits and ghosts who do bad things
(O’Leary and Levinson, 1990, vol. 2).
The Hidatsa of North America believe in a supernatural force, existing
in all animate and inanimate objects, that can be accessed by such means as
fasting and vision experiences. It can be used by individuals to gain success in
hunting, war exploits, and healing, and for a variety of other aims, both good
and evil. The supernatural world contains a vast array of inanimate forces,
human personifications, and spirits. The Hidatsa recognize three important
culture heroes, Charred Body (founder of the Awatixa Hidatsa), First Creator,
and Only Man. The Awatixa are thought to have descended from the sky, led by
Charred Body. It is thought that the related Awaxawi Hidatsa emerged from the
underground after the creation of the earth (O’Leary and Levinson, 1990, vol. 1).

17What Religion Is
Popular Vietnamese religion is a complex mixture of beliefs drawn from
animism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism. Veneration of ancestors is a
very important part of traditional folk beliefs, and beliefs in the intervention of
spirits, astrology, and geomancy are all widespread. Villages have cults devoted
to a village guardian spirit, which were traditionally very important cult figures.
Spirits are thought to provide assistance if properly respected and propitiated,
but cause misfortune and illness if ignored. People who succumb to violent
deaths are thought to turn into angry spirits; if not propitiated they can bring
misfortune. There are many types of evil or potentially evil spirits, such as ghosts
and demons. Many minor deities may intervene in human life for either good or
malevolent purposes (O’Leary and Levinson, 1990, vol. 5).
Although Theravada Buddhism is the principal religion of Cambodia, Khmer
religion adds elements of animistic beliefs and practices, as well as features
of Hinduism and Chinese culture into a unique blend. There are numerous
supernatural beings: guardian spirits of houses and animals, spirits in the natural
environment or certain localities, ancestral spirits, ghosts, demons, and many
others. Some spirits are generally benign and can provide for human needs as
long as they are propitiated. Others can cause illness if the behavior toward them
is improper or disrespectful (O’Leary and Levinson, 1990, vol. 5).
The Micmac inhabited parts of the Canadian Atlantic provinces. There are
two major deities, a creator known as Khimintu or Manitou, who is an object of
worship, and, alongside him, Glooscap, a legendary hero who has supernatural
power. Glooscap is a teacher and protector and appears to the Micmac when
they are most in need. When Catholic missionaries converted the Micmac to
Christianity, (Kji)Mintu became the term for the Christian devil. Micmac religion
is highly syncretic, with traditional supernatural beings mixed together with
Christian beliefs. These traditional beings include Kukwes (a giant cannibal),
Wiklatmuj (little forest people), and Jenu (northern ice giants) (O’Leary and
Levinson, 1990, vol. 1).
In traditional Pawnee religion, all life is considered to flow from the uniting
of male and female forces in the sky. There is a supernatural power at the apex
of the sky where the male and female forces met. Known as Tirawa, he brought
the world into being by means of a series of violent storms. He also created
star gods, and they in turn created humans. The two principal star gods are
the Evening Star, a fertility god who lives in the western sky, and Morning Star,
a god of fire and light who inhabits the eastern sky (O’Leary and Levinson,
1990, vol. 1).

18Religious Evolution and the Axial Age
Religious rituals
Religion consists of rituals in addition to beliefs. The anthropologist Roy
Rappaport defines ritual as “the performance of more or less invariant sequences
of formal acts and utterances not entirely encoded by the performers” (1999: 24;
emphasis in original). Note that this definition does not refer specifically to
religious rituals. Indeed, Rappaport intends it to apply to all forms of human
ritual. Rituals of many types occur in all societies, and humans are easily
characterized as “ritual animals” (Collins, 2004). Rappaport lists five levels of
ritual of increasing formality and decreasing spontaneity:
1. stylized words and gestures occurring in ordinary conversation, such as the
type of ritual made famous by the sociologist Erving Goffman
2. stylized greeting behavior and expressions of deference and demeanor (also
central to the work of Goffman and developed more recently by Randall
Collins, 2004)
3. patterned formal interactions, such as those that occur in courtrooms
4. inaugurations, coronations, marriages, baptisms, anointing, and suchlike
5. the most formal of all rituals in which nearly all aspects of performances
consist of invariant sequences of stylized and highly stereotypical words.
Rappaport suggests that religious rituals fit into this last category. Religious
rituals are usually carried out in specified contexts and are governed by time as
established by calendars, clocks, and biological rhythms. Most often they occur
in specifically designated places. There is much repetition and attention to detail.
Two main types of religious ritual can be distinguished on the basis of
the degree of emotional intensity of ritual leaders and participants. Harvey
Whitehouse has identified two “modes of religiosity,” each of which is associated
with a particular type of ritual (Whitehouse, 2004; Atkinson and Whitehouse,
2011). In the imagistic mode, rituals involve great emotional intensity and are
highly arousing. Included here are “traumatic and violent initiation rituals,
ecstatic practices of various cults, experiences of collective possession and altered
states of consciousness, and extreme rituals involving homicide or cannibalism”
(Whitehouse, 2004: 70). These are the oldest types of rituals and are most often
found in nonliterate societies. The doctrinal mode is associated with rituals that
are highly routinized and normally low in the level of emotional intensity of
leaders and participants. The saying of mass in the Roman Catholic Church is
a classic example. Doctrinal rituals can be highly mechanical, dull, and lead

19What Religion Is
to high levels of tedium. They are commonly found in more socially complex
societies with literacy, and, as the name suggests, with written doctrines.
Among the Thonga, spirit guardians make offerings to the ancestral spirits.
Shrine custodians carry out first-fruit rituals in their homes as well as rituals at
neighborhood shrines. Diviners have the task of probing into the intentions of
spirits. In earlier times appeals for rain and community protection were held
at local shrines. Neighborhood delegations seek out mediums to learn why
communal spirits are angry and how to appease them. The spirits may request
the sacrifice of a chicken, goat, or cow, or perhaps an offering of beer. People
pour an offering of beer at a special spirit shrine or at the doorway of a dwelling.
Particular dances and dramas are held in order to counteract possession by
invading spirits (O’Leary and Levinson, 1990, vol. 4).
The Indian Punjab as of the 1980s was about 60 percent Sikh and slightly
more than one-third Hindu. There were also very small numbers of Muslims,
Christians, Buddhists, and Jains, as well as various other groups. Rural Punjabis
of whatever religion share many customary ceremonies associated with the
round of the seasons, village life, and the individual life cycle. There are specific
ceremonies associated with marriages, birth, naming, and death. On the night
known as Diwali in the Fall, the buildings of a village are outlined in oil lamps,
and people ask God for prosperity. In midwinter there is a ceremony called
“Tails,” during which men build a fire of dung (a traditional cooking fuel) at the
village gate and pray to God for the health of boys and the birth of more boys
in the future. Farmers offer first fruits at village shrines (O’Leary and Levinson,
1990, vol. 3).
In Yunnan, Guizhou, and Guangxi provinces in China the traditional Yi
religion mixed in older beliefs with elements of Buddhism and Daoism. In the
Liangshan region, the Chinese religion had less affect on Yi religion. Here Yi
religion includes belief in a variety of spirits that are associated with plants and
animals, as well as the sun, moon, stars, and other natural phenomena. The
worship of gods and ghosts and sacrifices to the ancestors are a major part of
ritual. Practitioners known as bimo and suyi preside at religious ceremonies in
which they serve as intermediaries between the supernatural and the human
world. The bimo is responsible for carrying out sacrifices and the suyi control
ghosts through magic; in some instances these roles overlap. Ceremonies are
held for the reconciliation of feuds, for marriage, and for initiations. There
are common ceremonies held on calendrically fixed occasions (O’Leary and
Levinson, 1990, vol. 6).

20Religious Evolution and the Axial Age
Among the Bororo of Brazil, religion is a mixture of traditional animistic and
Christian beliefs. Among some Bororo the Christian God is merged with the
sun culture hero. A corn festival takes place at the beginning of the January corn
harvest. There is an anteater dance that is also performed at that time. In a ritual
involving mask dancing, men wear huge painted masks while they chant and
dance around the village. Every four or five years initiation rites are held for boys
between the ages of fourteen and nineteen; this is a male ritual from which girls
and women are barred. Five Brazilian holy days are celebrated, those of Saint
Sebastiao, Saint Benedito, Saint Antonio, Saint Pedro, and Saint Joao, and are
marked by music, dancing, and feasting (O’Leary and Levinson, 1990, vol. 7).
Among the Fon of West Africa ceremonies are elaborate performances.
Worshipers dance to drum music and may go into a trance. Spirits may
heal the sick and take part in judging cases of conflict. There are aesthetic
conventions for rituals that have long traditions behind them. Ceremonies
are often dazzling because of the perfection of their collective execution.
Lines of dancers dressed in ceremonial attire move across a ritual area as if a
single individual, performing specific movements, and drums always provide
a context for movement. Ceremonies are events during which symbolic
associations are reinforced and particular aspects of identity are recalled. Above
all, exhilaration, ecstasy, and awe are produced. Ceremonies are considered
gifts to the gods (O’Leary and Levinson, 1990, vol. 9).
The religion of most Amhara, an Ethiopian ethnic group, is Monophysite
Christianity, and the term “Amhara” is used synonymously with “Abyssinian
Christian” (Abyssinia being the older name for Ethiopia). The Amhara follow
the Julian calendar, but the year begins on September 11, following ancient
Egyptian usage, and is called amete mehrat, or “year of grace.” The first month
of the new year is Meskerem, which is named after the first religious holy day of
the year, Mesqel-abeba. On the seventeenth day of the month, poles are stacked
up for an evening bonfire, and there is much public feasting, dancing, and
parading. Christmas (Ledet) actually has little significance, except for a game
played by young men. Of much greater importance is Epiphany (Temqet), which
occurs on the eleventh day of the month of Ter. There are ceremonial parades in
which priests carry the tabot, symbolic of the holy ark, on their heads. There are
services lasting through the night, prayers for plentiful rains, and public feasting
(O’Leary and Levinson, 1990, vol. 9).
Islam spread among the Kurds in the seventh and eighth centuries CE.
Kurdish pre-Islamic cults associated with ancestors, lakes, stones, graves, trees,

21What Religion Is
and fire continue to flourish, however, alongside many Muslim beliefs and rites.
Reverence toward pirs (holy places), of which there are three types, is widespread.
The first consists of stone mounds created by casting stones at places regarded
as sacred. Part of a mound is often covered by pieces of fabric hung on small
trees or bushes by women. These mounds, which are revered primarily by the
nomadic Kurds, are thought to save them from misfortune. The second type of
pir is built by sedentary Kurds and is associated with the graves of saints and
the cult of the ancestors. On various days the villagers bring offerings to these
graves. The third type of pir, which has devotees among both the sedentary and
nomadic populations, reflects the cults of trees, stones, and water (O’Leary and
Levinson, 1990, vol. 6).
Among the Khmer there are numerous annual Buddhist ceremonies, the
most important of which are the New Year celebration held in April, the Pchum
ceremony held in September to honor the dead, and Katun festivals in which
Khmer contribute money and goods to temples and their resident monks.
Also conducted are life-cycle rituals that mark births, marriages, and deaths;
these are performed at home. Weddings are especially festive occasions. Rituals
associated with the propitiation of supernatural spirits, agriculture, and healing
are common (O’Leary and Levinson, 1990, vol. 5).
The Inca of ancient Peru worshiped a variety of supernatural beings, but
primarily the creator god Viracocha, who was said to have created all other
supernatural beings. The Incas also worshiped gods of thunder, the weather, the
stars, the moon, the earth, and the sea. There was a specialized class of priests
which was organized into a hierarchy that corresponded to the hierarchy of
government officials. The priests engaged in divination, the interpretation of
oracles, and confession. War ceremonies were conducted both to divine the
outcomes of war campaigns and to weaken enemies. Sacrifice was part of every
rite, and included both animals and humans. Shrines and great temples were
built to house priests, attendants, and cult objects. Ceremonies took place outside
temples, which were well decorated and used solely for religious purposes. The
holiest of all the temples was the “Temple of the Sun,” which housed caretakers,
diviners, and sacrificers (Human Relations Area Files, SE13; D’Altroy, 2002;
Parrinder, 1983).
Among the Karaja of Brazil (formerly known as the Shavante), nature spirits
are personified in rituals in which pairs of male dancers carry masks representing
each of the spirits. These rituals are called Aruana, which is the name of a fish
found in the Araguaia River. Other ceremonies attempt to pacify the souls of

22Religious Evolution and the Axial Age
enemies killed by the Karaja a long time ago, such as the Tapirape. There are
elaborate rites of passage, the most important being that of Hetochoka, which
involves communicating religious knowledge to the younger male generation
and stages of their initiation to adult life. There are also seasonal feasts, such as
the honey feast held in August (O’Leary and Levinson, 1990, vol. 7).
Religious specialists
There are three major types of religious specialists in the world’s societies:
shamans, priests, and prophets. There are also a few minor types, such
as diviners, magicians, mediums, disciples, evangelists, and missionaries
(Whitehouse, 2004), but here I limit myself to the major types. I give only a
very brief sketch, fleshing out the discussion in later chapters. Shamans are
the earliest and oldest type of religious specialist, found mostly in hunter-
gatherer societies but also in horticultural societies as well as societies at more
advanced stages of social evolution. Shamans specialize in healing, finding lost
souls, and protecting game animals. They are part-time specialists who take
on “clients.” Among the Inuit (Eskimos) of the far north, the shaman, known
as an angakok, is a person considered to have superior spiritual experience.
An angakok makes an annual trip to the bottom of the sea to persuade the
sea goddess, Sedna, to release her game so that the Inuit can live for another
year. The angakok is also called upon to diagnose illness and to use his special
powers to treat it (Wallace, 1966).
In more advanced religions we find priests. Priests perform rituals for
laypersons, who are largely an audience. Even when laypersons may take an
active role, the priests are the organizers and directors of the rituals. Priests
differ considerably from one society to another. In some cases they operate
part-time, have limited authority, and possess limited religious knowledge. In
other cases they operate full-time, have great authority, and hold a monopoly
over an extensive amount of religious knowledge. The Maori of New Zealand
had priests who received specialized training. They had considerable
knowledge of genealogies and tribal history, were thought to be able to control
the weather, and carried out esoteric rituals. Their focus was on the major
deities. Shamans were also present, but they served local family deities, whom
they communicated with by means of spirit possession and sorcery (O’Leary
and Levinson, 1990, vol. 2). The polytheistic and monotheistic religions of the

23What Religion Is
ancient world all had priests as their leading specialists, although, as among
the Maori, shamans were often found as well. In some cases priests might
do double duty as shamans, at least among some of the earlier polytheistic
religions.
The third major type of religious practitioner is the prophet. Prophets differ
from priests in that they proclaim new religious ideas and messages and seek a
following for them. In essence, they found new religions and help them spread.
There have probably been thousands of prophets in human history, but most of
these have passed into obscurity because their ideas did not resonate with large
numbers of people, either important elites or, more to the point, the masses.
Prophets seldom become priests, although their role in codifying and spreading
the faith is often very substantial. After the death of Jesus, for example, the apostle
Paul preached as a prophet and became a central figure, if not the central figure,
in the establishment of early Christianity. But after prophets die and the new
religion becomes established, the way is paved for priests to enter the picture.
The best-known prophets, of course, have been the Jewish prophets, Zoroaster
of ancient Iran, Jesus, Muhammad, the Buddha, and, in very recent times,
Joseph Smith of the Mormons. These prophets, some of whose activities will be
discussed in later chapters, arose in large-scale societies, but prophets have also
been widely found in small-scale societies. In many small-scale societies there
have arisen religious movements known as revitalization movements, which are
devoted both to restoring the previous state of society and to ushering in a new
age of peace and prosperity (Wallace, 1966). In Melanesia toward the end of the
nineteenth century these movements took the form of what have been called
cargo cults (Worsley, 1968). The dominant element in these cults was the belief
that large shipments of Western industrial goods would soon be arriving for
the use and enjoyment of the natives. The goods were thought to be sent by the
natives’ ancestors, who had risen from the dead. One cargo cult was led by a
prophet in New Guinea by the name of Evara, who claimed to have had divine
revelations. He prophesied that a steamer would be bringing cargo accompanied
by the spirits of the dead ancestors. The cargo, which consisted of such items
as flour, rice, tobacco, and rifles, could only be obtained if white colonists were
driven out (Worsley, 1968).
On the island of Tanna in the New Hebrides a prophet named John Frum
organized a cult around himself. Frum prophesied that there would be a
cataclysm in which “the volcanic mountains would fall and fill the river beds
to form fertile plains, and Tanna would be joined to the neighboring islands of

24Religious Evolution and the Axial Age
Eromanga and Aneityum to form a new island” (Worsley, 1968: 154). At this
point Frum would bring in a reign of bliss in which the natives would become
young again, sickness would disappear, and the white colonists would go home.
Frum envisioned a future in which the natives would acquire all of the material
possessions and riches of the whites.
In North America in the nineteenth century a famous revitalization
movement known as the ghost dance arose (Lanternari, 1963; Thornton,
1981). There were two waves. In 1870 a prophet named Wodziwob founded a
movement among the Paviotsos after receiving a vision. He foresaw a cataclysm
that would shake the entire world and eliminate the whites from Indian land.
The earth would open up and swallow the whites, but their buildings, tools,
and other goods would be left to the Indians for their own use. In the second
wave in 1890, a Paiute Indian by the name of Wovoka prophesied that strong
winds would blow all of the whites away while leaving their possessions intact.

2
The Evolutionary Forms of the Religious Life
In an article provocatively entitled “Are there any religions?” Joseph Bulbulia
(2005) stresses that religions are far more similar than different. He makes an
analogy with language. Language, he says, exhibits limited variation, and the
variation is mostly in language’s more superficial aspects. Presumably he is
referring to such linguistic features as whether adjectives precede or follow
nouns, whether verbs follow nouns or are placed at the end of sentences, how
tenses are constructed, and so on. And so it goes for religion. For Bulbulia
“it appears that there is only one human religion with minor but strategically
important variation in its conventional expressions” (2005: 72). Pascal Boyer
takes a different tack, giving more weight to differences. He points out that
most religions are not about creation, seldom about God, and only in a few
instances about salvation of a soul; that most religions do not have doctrines to
which individuals are expected to adhere; and that most religions are not highly
coherent integrated wholes, but rather are piecemeal (Boyer, 2004; as discussed
in Saler, 2004).
In this chapter and the next I try to show that it is Boyer who has the more
persuasive argument. I begin by looking at two well-known efforts to classify
religions and situate them in a long-term historical perspective.
Types of religion
Just as societies’ modes of technology and their economic and political
institutions have evolved over time, so have their religions. There have been
some remarkably similar evolutionary transformations of religion throughout
human history, and these have been captured in typologies developed by the
anthropologist Anthony Wallace (1966) and the sociologist Robert Bellah
(1964).

26Religious Evolution and the Axial Age
Wallace considers the religion of any society to be a conglomeration of what
he calls cult institutions. A cult institution is “a set of rituals all having the same
general goal, all explicitly rationalized by a set of similar or related beliefs, and
all supported by the same social group” (1966: 75). Wallace identifies four main
types of cult institutions. Individualistic cult institutions exist when there are
no shamans, priests, or other religious specialists available to perform rituals;
rather, each person acts as his or her own specialist, performing specific rituals
as the need arises. In shamanic cult institutions there exists a part-time religious
specialist, a shaman, deemed to have special religious qualifications and powers.
Shamans intervene with the supernatural powers on behalf of their clients. In
contrast to individualistic cult institutions, shamanic cult institutions maintain
a religious division of labor in which there is a distinction between religious
specialists possessing special skills and powers and laymen who lack such special
attributes.
A third level of cult institution is the communal. Communal cult institutions
are characterized by groups of laymen who “are responsible for calendrical
or occasional performance of rituals of importance to various social groups
ranging in scope from the members of special categories—such as age grades,
the sexes, members of secret societies, particular kinship groups, and sufferers
from particular diseases—to the whole community” (1966: 86–87). Whereas
communal cult institutions are characterized by a specific type of religious
specialization, there is no full-time priesthood or extensive religious hierarchy.
The latter are found, however, among ecclesiastical cult institutions. These cult
institutions are based on the existence of professional priesthoods organized
bureaucratically. Members of the priesthood are full-time religious specialists
elected or appointed to permanent religious offices. A sharp demarcation
exists between priests and religious laymen; the former monopolize religious
knowledge and the direction of religious rituals, while the latter are essentially
passive recipients of knowledge and ritual.
Wallace identifies four evolutionary types of religion based on combinations
of cult institutions:
1. Shamanic religions, which contain only individualistic and shamanic cult
institutions. Religious practice beyond the level of the individual focuses
solely on the conduct of a shaman and there are no calendrical rites.
2. Communal religions, which contain individualistic, shamanic, and
communal cult institutions. Religious practice focuses primarily on the

27The Evolutionary Forms of the Religious Life
conduct of laypersons engaged in collective calendrical rites, although
shamanic rituals still exist and remain important.
3. Olympian religions, which contain all four cult institutions, especially
specialized priesthoods. Numerous gods, frequently organized in a
hierarchical pantheon, are worshiped and worship is led by full-time priests.
4. Monotheistic religions, which contain individualistic, shamanic, and
communal cult institutions, along with ecclesiastical cult institutions
organized around the concept of a single high god.
Note that at each “higher” stage of religious evolution, features of the previous
stage do not disappear, at least not completely. Shamans, for example, are found
in all four stages even though they are most prominent in the first stage. Most
Olympian societies have shamans. Shaman-like practitioners are even found at
the highest stage in the form of so-called faith healers. But of course faith healers
at this stage are a minor part of religious activity.
This is a useful scheme, but with two problems. The term Olympian is
problematic because it is too narrow in referring to ancient Greek religion
with its Mount Olympus. What Wallace means is clearly polytheistic religions,
so that term is preferable. However, even this term is not ideal, because such
religions have other important features. Therefore, I propose to use the old-
fashioned term pagan to identify these religions. Unfortunately, this term has
often been used pejoratively, especially in Christianity, to refer to those who
adhere to traditional non-Christian or pre-Christian religions. Etymologically,
pagan derives from the Latin paganus, meaning “rustic” or “country dweller.”
Yet the term continues to be used in a non-pejorative way by numerous students
of religion, including highly respected historians (e.g., Stark [1996, 2006, 2011];
MacMullen [1981, 1984]; and Athanassiadi and Frede [1999]; see Clark [2004]
for further clarification). Shorn of any pejorative implication it is actually quite
a good term.
The other problem with Wallace’s terminology is the term monotheistic. Since
the world religions of South and East Asia are not strictly monotheistic, another
term is needed. As Chapter 3 will suggest, the kind of religion that Wallace has
in mind is characterized by a kind of world transcendence regardless of the
number of gods. Therefore, the term world transcendent (or world salvation)
religions seems more accurate, as will be explained in Chapter 3.
In Bellah’s scheme there are five stages of religious evolution: primitive,
archaic, historic, early modern, and modern. The last two are not relevant to this

28Religious Evolution and the Axial Age
book because they are beyond its historical time span, so I shall ignore them.
Table 2.1 outlines the features of the first three stages. It is clear that Wallace’s
and Bellah’s typologies overlap and in some important respects complement
each other. Bellah’s primitive type encompasses Wallace’s shamanic and
communal, the archaic type consists mostly of Wallace’s Olympian/polytheistic/
pagan type, and the historic type corresponds to Wallace’s monotheistic/world
transcendent type. Bellah’s scheme captures many key features of these three
types of religion, but there are several difficulties. First, the idea that primitive
religions have no gods that are worshiped is simply wrong. The emphasis is
on spirits but, as we saw in the previous chapter, there are numerous hunter-
gatherer and horticultural societies that have gods, even high gods, and in quite
a few instances these gods are worshiped. Second, and more seriously, Bellah
does not mention shamans at all, but as we shall see below, they are crucial
religious specialists in most primitive religions. Third, it is not exactly true that
primitive religions have no spectators. They hardly have the kinds of spectators
found in modern religions, but in shamanic rituals the entire band, clan, or
village may constitute spectators. Fourth, Bellah overemphasizes the importance
of animal sacrifice in primitive societies. And finally, sin was not invented in the
historic religions, but existed in some archaic (pagan) religions (although it is
true that it became much more important in the historic religions). Nonetheless,
shorn of these difficulties Bellah’s scheme is extremely useful and can be used in
conjunction with Wallace’s.
The way of the shaman
The earliest and oldest religious specialists are shamans (Eliade, 1964;
Winkelman, 1990, 2000; McClenon, 2002; Hayden, 2003). Shamans are “religious
functionaries who draw on the powers in the natural world, including the
powers of animals, and who mediate, usually in an altered state of consciousness,
between the world of the living and that of the spirits—including the spirits
of the dead” (Jolly, 2005). In the religions of the hunter-gatherer ancestral
environment in which all humans once lived prior to about 10,000 to 11,000
years ago, the shaman was usually the only religious specialist, which is why
Wallace has called these religions shamanic religions. The principal shamanic
ritual was the curing ceremony, an event that Michael Winkelman describes
as of “unparalleled importance in hunter-gatherer societies” (2000: 61). In this
ceremony the shaman

29The Evolutionary Forms of the Religious Life
Table 2.1
Bellah’s typology of religious evolution
Type of religion
Characteristics
Examples
Primitive
Symbol System
: Myths are dream-like, occurring “out of time.” Mythical characters are human and
animal ancestral figures. They are heroic beings, but not gods. They do not control the world and are not worshiped. They were the progenitors of human beings. There is no deep gulf between ideals and reality. There is only “one world.”
Action
: Community members act out myths, identifying themselves with the mythical beings they
pretend to become, often believing they are literally transformed. Most important rituals are rites of transition, such as “puberty rites,” and rites of sacrifice—a communal slaughtering and consumption of the sacred totemic species of the clan.
Organization
: Religion is an attribute of the kinship system. No separate organizations of
specialists exist. Church and society are one. Age is an important criterion of leadership.
Ojibwa, !Kung,
Mapuche, Pawnee, Aranda, Bororo, Karaja
Archaic
Symbol System
: Mythical beings are considered gods. They actively, willfully control the world, and
must be worshiped in a prescribed manner. A hierarchy among the various gods is established. The afterlife becomes an important religious concern. There is still, basically, “one world,” but a hierarchy between “this world” and the “other world” is established, with the “other world” being more powerful. Individuals and society are seen as merged into one divine cosmos.
Action
: Humans are subjects, and gods are objects to be worshiped. Sacrifice is the principal means
of communicating with the gods. Specialists (priests) emerge to mediate between subjects and the gods, presiding over sacrifices.
Organization
: Each god is the focus of a cult, with its own specific rituals. Priests are in charge of
each cult, but there is no congregation. Different social groups focus on different cults. Religious organization is still merged with social structure, but only at the top. A certain degree of conflict involving power struggles is set in motion between religious and military authorities, but not enough separation for religion to be clearly differentiated and independent of political authority. At the top, in the person of the king, religious and military-political leadership are combined.
Yoruba, ancient
Hawaiians, Aztecs, Incas, Meosopotamians, Egyptians, Aryans, Greeks, Romans
(
Cont.
)

30Religious Evolution and the Axial Age
Table 2.1
(Continued)
Type of religion
Characteristics
Examples
Historic
Symbol System
: Literacy develops, and with it, sacred writings. Monotheism emerges. The realm
of the sacred, the “other world,” is portrayed as more remote, more judging of action in “this world.” Both “this world” and the “other world” are hierarchically organized. Monistic cosmology is replaced by dualism. Reality is clearly dualistic, with the afterlife either heaven or hell.
Salvation becomes the primary focus of religious concern, though it is conceptualized somewhat
differently in each major religion. Salvation is achieved by bringing people into harmony with God. Magic is de-emphasized. Historic religion says mankind has a deep-seated flaw that is responsible for human unhappiness. Religious truth is said to be divinely inspired, based on revelation from God. The idea of a special, inner self, capable of moral choice is developed—a responsible, knowing self. The theme of world rejection is entirely new, being absent from primitive and archaic religions. The concept of sin is created.
Action
: Religious action is action that is necessary for salvation. Community values are sacralized
within this overarching concern, as salvation requires, among other things, living in harmony with other people. Because of the severe dualism, religious action also often requires ascetic withdrawal from as much of “this world” as possible, including vows of poverty, and other forms of self-denial for those who are especially worried about salvation. Mankind is doomed without the benefits of religion.
Organization
: The profound dualism of historic symbolism is expressed in social structure by the
development of separate religious and political institutions. The distinction between religious adherent and political subject is developed. The priesthood has a special relationship with God. Religious membership begins to develop, as membership in one’s cultural group and in the religion are essentially the same. Various orders develop in which individuals can withdraw from most contact with the daily life of society in order to focus on salvation.
Zoroastrianism,
Judaism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism
Sources
: Bellah (1964). Updated and expanded version online at http://www.faculty.smcm.edu/ccraney/restricted/PDF/Religious_Evolution.pdf.

31The Evolutionary Forms of the Religious Life
brought the local community into interaction with the spirit world in a ritual
charged with fear, awe, and other powerful emotional experiences. . . . The
shaman enacted struggles and battles of animals and spirits, summoning
spirit allies while beating drums, singing, chanting, and dancing violently and
excitedly. Finally the shaman collapsed exhausted and, through magical flight,
entered into the spirit world, ascending to the upper world and descending to
the lower one to communicate with the spirits and to obtain their cooperation.
(2000: 61–62)
Shamanic practices assume the existence of a world populated by a wide variety
of spirits that affect all aspects of human life. The shaman is able to control these
spirits, which are in fact the vehicle through which he is able to accomplish his
goals. Shamanic curing assumes that illness is the result of people having lost their
souls or of being under the influence of ghosts, spirits, witches, or malevolent
acts performed by other shamans. Shamans appear to undergo altered states of
consciousness that are trance induced. Trances can be induced by hunger, thirst,
loss of sleep, or other forms of sensory deprivation; by extreme forms of sensory
stimulation; or by various psychophysiological sensitivities that may result from
nervous system imbalances (Winkelman and Baker, 2010). Perhaps the most
frequent means of inducing trances is the use of hallucinogens or opiates. Such
hallucinatory drugs as ephedra and ayahuasca can create experiences that are often
understood as contact with another reality. Drugs made from the plant family
Solanaceae can create the feeling that one has been transformed into an animal,
as well as sensations of flying (Pearson, 2002; as discussed in Pyysiäinen, 2009).
1

In addition to healing and curing, shamans engage in divination, protect and
find game animals, communicate with the dead, recover lost souls, and protect
people from evil spirits and the practitioners of malevolent magic. Shamans also
go on “soul flights” and “vision quests.” The striking similarities in shamanic
activities all over the world suggest that they are not the result of cultural diffusion,
but rather of continual rediscovery and reinvention (Winkelman, 2000).
The Sakha (also known as the Yakut) are a people of northeast Siberia, the
region of the world where shamans were first discovered in the nineteenth century.
The Sakha, who live through hunting, fishing, and raising horses, cattle, and
reindeer, exhibit the classical form of shamanism described above. Individuals
considered to have special abilities are thought to be able to mediate between
the spirit world and the community by communicating requests to supernatural
forces. Shamans fell into trances that were accompanied by drumbeating,
singing, dancing, and reciting on the part of the community. During his trance,

32Religious Evolution and the Axial Age
a shaman would experience hallucinations, dreams, and visions induced by such
hallucinogenic substances as toadstools, blueberries, or a special tea, as well as by
playing musical instruments and the monotonous repetition of prayers. In a state
of ecstasy, the shaman travels to other worlds to retrieve souls that evil spirits
may have abducted, to pacify angry spirits, and to approach good spirits with
requests made by some members of the community (Kósko, 2004).
Shamans among the !Kung of southern Africa display many similar
characteristics. Shamans attempt to cure illness and protect people from malevolent
spirits responsible for misfortune. They are thought to have a supernatural power
that allows them, among other things, to see into the future, control the weather,
and ensure good hunting. !Kung shamans enter trance states, which are thought
to occur when they please a spirit and are thereby temporarily absorbed into
the spirit. This absorption allows the shaman to locate the source of a person’s
illness, and then to heal him by using such ritual devices as tortoise-shell rattles,
herb bundles, charms, and beads. Then the shaman lays his hands on the patient
and tries to pull his illness out of his body. In doing so, the shaman absorbs the
illness into his own body and then expels it. A major reason for a person’s illness
is thought to be angering the ancestors by killing more than his share of game
and distributing it in a wasteful or greedy manner. When a shaman cures such a
transgressor, he tells other members of the community the reason for the illness,
and warns them against such transgressions (Butler and Salamone, 2004).
!Kung shamans also play an important role in attempting to prevent food
shortages, and the induction of trances is involved here too. In a trance a
shaman summons animal spirits and attempts to mediate between them and
the animals:
Acting here as spirit mediums, healers beseech the animal spirits to make the
actual animals come closer to the camp. While entranced, the healer undergoes
a personal transformation in which he forges spiritual bonds of understanding
between himself as hunter qua healer and the types of game that sustain the
community. Thus, in addition to the latent function of ensuring food stuffs,
there are more manifest reasons for holding a trance dance: namely, curing
people, rainmaking, controlling and finding animals for the hunt—all of which
contribute to !Kung subsistence. (Butler and Salamone, 2004: 894)
The Ojibwa of North America, who make their living by hunting, gathering,
and fishing, have several types of shamans. The first type performs a healing
ritual based on the use of tubes to suck out a patient’s illness. The ritual begins
when a bowl of water is placed next to the patient. The shaman sings and shakes

33The Evolutionary Forms of the Religious Life
a rattle, all the while tapping on the patient’s body to try to locate the part of it
that contains the illness. Once he locates it, he uses his tubes to suck the illness
out and then blows the “foreign substance” into the bowl of water. A second type
of shaman builds a circular lodge that ritual participants enter and, once inside,
petition certain spirits. The shaman may then use his bare hands to scoop meat
from a boiling pot and give it to the person with the illness. The ill person is
told to eat the meat, which is thought to have curative powers. Yet another type
of shaman attempts to conjure spirits from whom valuable knowledge can be
obtained. He enters a lodge to which rattles have been attached and begins to
sing and pray. At some point the lodge will shake violently, and strange voices
will be heard and strange lights seen. Later the shaman will leave the lodge and
tell others what he learned from the spirits (Ferris, 2004).
The Mapuche are a horticultural tribe living in Chile. Mapuche shamans,
which are known as machi and are most often women, consume hallucinogenic
seeds to enter into altered states of consciousness. This allows them to treat
pain and various illnesses, exorcise evil spirits, and divine the future. They also
use dreams and drumming. Machi try to diagnose illness by looking through
their patients’ clothes, looking into their eyes, or examining urine samples. The
most elaborate ritual is the Datun, designed to treat people whose illnesses are
considered of spiritual rather than natural origin. The machi spends all night at
a patient’s house in order to expel evil spirits from both his body and his house.
The patient lies on the floor face up and the machi places two crossed knives on
the patient’s chest or under his head. The machi drums and calls out the names
of deities and spirits. She beats faster and faster and goes in and out of altered
states of consciousness. While in an altered state, the machi communicates with
various spirits in order to divine the patient’s illness, after which she sucks on the
body to get rid of the illness, rubs the patient with herbal remedies, and provides
him with herbal drinks (Bacigalupo, 2004).
As noted above, shamans are found in more advanced societies even though
the role they play there is significantly reduced. And shaman-like behavior has
been observed in religious specialists who were not themselves shamans. The
great sociologist of religion Max Weber pointed to what can only be described as
astonishingly shaman-like behavior among some of the early Hebrew prophets.
As he notes, “They described visual and auditory hallucinations and abnormal
sensations of taste and feeling of diverse sorts. . . . They felt as if they were floating
. . . or borne through the air, they experienced clairvoyant visions of spatially
distant events like, allegedly, Ezekiel in Babylon at the hour of Jerusalem’s fall”

34Religious Evolution and the Axial Age
(1952: 287). Moreover, “They saw hallucinatory blinding flashes of light and in it
the figures of superhuman beings” (1952: 287).
Communal rites and practices
In some hunter-gatherer and many horticultural societies a variety of collective
rites are added to shamanic rituals, creating communal religions. Many communal
rites center around agricultural practices. Cultivation of crops is frequently filled
with anxiety over the adequacy of the harvests and potential crop failures, and
many agricultural rituals focus on relieving this anxiety. Practitioners of these
rituals often perceive that a “force” is present in the harvests, and agricultural
rites are often intended to maintain favorable relations between people and this
force (Eliade, 1964). The other main type of collective performance is devoted to
rites of passages—puberty rituals and the like.
A type of communal ritual that is very widespread is ancestor worship.
2

Where ancestor worship is practiced, the spirits of the dead ancestors are often
the key supernatural entities. Ancestor worship is likely to become of increased
importance in horticultural societies because these societies are usually
organized into elaborate descent groups—lineages and clans—identified with
a putative founding ancestor. Such groups require respect for ancestors, both
living and dead. As authority figures, living ancestors are the sources of both
rewards and punishments. It is very bad form to offend them either when they
are living or when they pass into the realm of the dead.
Among the Mbuti of the Ituri rain forest of Africa, the most important
collective rites are associated with hunting, honey collection, and death. The
frequency and intensity of hunting rituals relate to the uncertainty, danger, and
difficulty of the hunt. The gathering of the first honey of the season leads to
collective rituals involving music and dancing. Rituals performed after someone
has died involve the participation of the forest spirit (O’Leary and Levinson,
1990, vol. 9).
Among the Bamiléké of Africa (also known as the Massa or Bana), several
groups are important in religious practice. Among them are lineage heads
who act as custodians of ancestral skulls, and diviners and spirit mediums
who determine the need for ceremonies and healing. Life-cycle ceremonies
include burying at birth a mother’s umbilical cord and placenta by her kitchen,
circumcision for boys, and prepuberty seclusion for girls. Other life-cycle

35The Evolutionary Forms of the Religious Life
ceremonies are burial and death rituals performed approximately a year after
death. Death celebrations mark the end of a period of mourning, during which
the deceased is said to have completed the transition to ancestorhood (O’Leary
and Levinson, 1990, vol. 9).
Among the Lakher or Mara of northeastern India the major rituals are
Pazusata, a feast marking the end of the year, and Pakhupila, a so-called knee
dance occasioned by an excellent crop. The Siaha royal clan carries out numerous
additional rites of a sacrificial nature that are associated with the subsistence cycle,
domestic affairs, and ancestor worship. During one of these, the Khazangpina
sacrifice, the sacrificer asks for blessings on himself and his family concerning
wealth, health, an abundance of children, good crops, and fertile domestic
animals. This ritual is unsurpassed in importance. Rituals also play an important
role in the major life-cycle events (O’Leary and Levinson, 1990, vol. 3).
The Tiwi of Australia perform an annual yam ceremony near the end
of the wet season (November to March). This ritual lasts three days and
involves digging, preparing, cooking, and eating a type of wild yam. The yam
symbolizes reproduction and the maintenance of both human and nonhuman
life. In addition to carrying out the preparation and cooking of the yams, ritual
participants must compose and sing at least a dozen new songs throughout the
three days (O’Leary and Levinson, 1990, vol. 2).
The ceremonial cycle of the Ingalik of Alaska consists of seven major
observances, most of which are concerned with ensuring a plentiful food
supply. Each fall a shaman conducts a ritual in which he uses dolls to predict the
game supply. During the winter a so-called bladder ceremony is performed to
increase the supply of game. At the peak of the ceremonial calendar (midwinter)
a ceremony known as the Potlatch for the Dead is conducted and is followed
(or sometimes preceded) by the Animal’s Ceremony. These ceremonies, which
consist of symbolic and imitative dances and singing, are also intended to enhance
the game supply. A number of more minor rituals are given to please important
spirits, and there are a variety of ceremonies that involve the presentation of food
or gifts to mark life-cycle passages (O’Leary and Levinson, 1990, vol. 1).
Religious specialists among the Pawnee of North America consist of a group
of wise men whose authority comes from a star. They are said to stand between
ordinary people and the creator god Tirawa and supervise an annual round of
rituals performed in order to bring success in farming, hunting, and warfare. The
annual ritual cycle begins with the first sound of thunder in the spring and ends with
the maize harvest in the autumn. Another important ritual involves preparations

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when you---- But enough. You also know well how every plea of his
was rejected by me.
"He, too, told the same tale. He protested to me that on the
morning you left St. Germains Madeleine Baufremont set out on the
same southern road, that your carriages met and joined at Étampes,
and that thence you travelled together to Moret."
"The devil can indeed speak the truth," muttered Bertie, as he
read thus far.
"Still, I would not--I could not--believe. Our last parting was fresh
in my mind, ay! in my heart; our last vows and last farewells, our
projects for the future, our hopes of days of happiness to come--
forgive me if I remind you of them--they are wrecked now! I say I
could not believe. Yet, wherever I looked, wherever I made inquiries,
there was but one answer. The English, Scotch, and Irish gentlemen
who frequented my father's house all gave the same answer, though
none spake the words I feared. Some, I observed, regarded me with
glances that were full of pity--for which I hated them--others
preserved a silence that was worse tenfold than speech, some
smiled in their sleeves. And Larpent was ever there--always, always,
always. And one day he came to where I was sitting and said to me,
'Kitty, if you will indeed know the truth, there is a witness below who
can give it to you. The curé of Moret has come to Paris with a
petition to the king against the exactions of the Seigneur. Kitty, he it
was who made Bertie Elphinston and Madeleine Baufremont man
and wife."
"'So be it,' I replied. 'Yet, remember their marriage makes ours no
nearer.' 'It will come,' he replied. 'I can not believe that my reward
will never come.' Whereon he left the room and came back with the
curé. Alas! he told so plain a tale, describing you with such precision
and Madeleine Baufremont also, that there was, indeed, no room left
for doubt. Yet still I could scarce believe; for even though you had
not loved me, even though your burning words, your whispers of

love had all been false, why, why, I asked again and again, should
you have stooped to such duplicity? If you had tired of me, if that
other had turned your heart from me to her, one word would have
been enough; I must have let you go when you no longer desired to
stay by my side. Mr. Elphinston, I wrote to you at Rome, to the
address you had given me and to the English College there; I wrote
to Father Sholto--alas! I so much forgot my pride, that I wrote to
Douglas, who had then joined the squadron commanded by
Monsieur de Roquefeuille for the invasion of England. I could not
part from you yet"--these words were scored out by the writer, and,
in their place, the sentence began--"I could not yet believe in your
deceit, in your cold, cruel betrayal of a woman who had trusted in
you as in a god; it seemed all too base and heartless. Yet neither
from you nor the Sholtos came one line in answer to my prayer."
Elphinston groaned bitterly as he read the words. He knew now
how easily the trap had been laid.
"Then, at last, I did believe. Then, at last, I renounced you and
your love. I denied to my own heart that I had ever known a man
named Bertie Elphinston, that I had ever been that man's promised
wife. I tore you from my heart for ever. It was hard, yet I did it.
Time passed, no intelligence came of you or Madeleine Baufremont.
I even heard that the Duc de Baufremont had petitioned the king
that, if you again entered French territory, you should be punished
for abducting his daughter. Yet, as the days went on, I allowed
Simeon Larpent to approach me no nearer on the subject. So he and
my father concocted a fresh scheme by which I was at last led to
consent to become his wife. We were, as you know, poor, horribly
poor; the Cours d'Escrime hardly provided for our needs. Often,
indeed, I had wondered how we managed to subsist so well on what
seemed to me to be nothing. My father talked vaguely of an
allowance to him, in common with other refugees from England,
from the French king or from the Chevalier St. George, or the Scotch
Fund. Now--for at this period the old Lord Fordingbridge died--he
said we had been subsisting for some time on money lent, or we

could, if we chose, consider it given to us, by the present lord. He
would never, my father said, demand repayment; indeed, such was
his lordship's respect for him and his admiration for me, that he
would cheerfully continue his allowance, or, since he was now very
well-to-do, increase it. So I learnt that I had been dependent for the
bread I ate, the dress I wore, to this man. Need I say more! You
know that I became the wife of Lord Fordingbridge.
"A month had not passed ere I knew the truth as to how I had
been duped and deceived--as to how I had been false to you. De
Roquefeuille's squadron was driven back by Sir John Norris, and
Douglas Sholto returned to Paris. He told me all; that it was your
kinsman and namesake of Glenbervie who had left Paris with you to
espouse Madeleine Baufremont, and that you--tied under a solemn
promise to in no way let his approaching marriage with her be
known--had kept the secret even from me. Alas! had you given me
one hint, spoken one word, how different all would have been! Yet, I
do not reproach you for fidelity to your friend; I only ask that when
you think of me--if you ever think at all--as not trusting you, you will
recollect that your own silence made it possible for me to doubt.
"One word more, and I shall not trouble you further. It is to
beseech you to quit London at once, to put yourself in safety, with
the seas between you and the English Government. For, even though
you might lie hid from the vengeance that will fall on all followers of
the prince who may be caught, I fear that private malice, aided by
personal fear of you, may lead to your betrayal. Be warned, I
beseech you. Farewell and forgive.
"CathÉêinÉ FoêdingbêidgÉ ."

CHAPTER IV.
THE SUBJECTS OF KING JAMES.
The letter written by Lady Fordingbridge, read in conjunction with
some other remarks made by other persons who have been
introduced to the reader's notice, may serve to inform him of the
state of affairs that led to the position in which things were at the
period when this narrative commences, namely, the month of May,
1746. A few other words of additional explanation alone are
necessary.
At the time when Cardinal Tencin (who looked forward to
becoming the successor of Fleury as Prime Minister of France, and
who owed his elevation to the purple as well as to the Primacy of
France to the influence of the old Pretender) persuaded Louis XV. to
support the claims of the Stuarts as his great-grandfather and
predecessor had done, Paris was, as is well known to all readers of
history, full of English, Scotch, and Irish Jacobites. These refugees
from their own countries were to be found in all capacities in that
city, some serving as the agents of the exiled Chevalier de St.
George, who was now resident at Rome, and others as
correspondents between the followers of the Stuarts in London,
Rome, and Paris; also, some resided there either from the fact that
their presence would not be tolerated in England or its
dependencies, and some because, in their staunch loyalty to the
fallen House, they were not disposed to dwell in a country which
they considered was ruled over by usurpers. To this class belonged
the late Viscount Fordingbridge, a staunch Cheshire nobleman, who
had been out in the '15, had afterwards escaped from the Isle of
Skye, and had also had the good fortune to escape forfeiture of his
estates, owing to the fact that, though he had been out himself, he
had neither furnished men, arms, nor money, so far as was known.

But also in Paris were still others who, loyal Jacobites as they
were, and followers of a ruined party, were yet obliged to earn their
bread in the best way they were able. Thus Doyle Fane, Kitty's
father, an Irish gentleman of good family who had himself seen
service under France and Austria, eked out a slender allowance--paid
irregularly by James Stuart--by lessons in swordsmanship, of which
art he was an expert master. Some, again, obtained commissions in
French regiments, many, indeed, being glad to serve as simple
privates; while several who were more fortunate--and among whom
were Douglas Sholto and Bertie Elphinston--obtained positions in the
Garde du Roi or the Mousquetaires, or other corps, and so waited in
the hopes of a descent on England in which they would be allowed
to take part by resigning temporarily their French commissions.
Of priests affecting Stuart principles there were also several,
some, as was the case with Archibald Sholto, being temporarily
attached to St. Omer, at which there was a large English seminary
for the education of young Catholics, but all of whom were
frequently in London and Paris, plotting always restlessly for the
overthrow of the present reigning House in England, and for the
restoration of the discarded one.
Fane's residence at this period, which was shortly before the
expedition of Charles Edward to recover, if possible, the throne of
England for his father, was a popular resort of many of the exiled
English, Scotch, and Irish, principally because, in the better classes
of men who were still young, the practice of the sword was
unceasing, and also, perhaps, because in the next house to his was
a well-known tavern, "Le Phœbus Anglais," kept by a Jacobite, and a
great place of assembly for all the fraternity. But for the younger
men there was an even greater attraction than either the
advantages of continued practice in swordsmanship or a cheap but
good tavern--the attraction of Kitty Fane's beauty.
Kitty kept her father's house for him, kept also his accounts, made
his fees go as long a way as possible, and his bottle last out as well

as could be the case when submitted so often to the constant
demands on it, and was admired and respected by all who came to
the little house in the Rue Trouse Vache. Besides her beauty, she
was known to be a girl who respected herself, and was consequently
respected; and as Doyle Fane was also known to be a gentleman by
birth, and Kitty's mother to have been a daughter of one of the
oldest families in Ireland, none ever dreamed of treating her in a
manner other than became a lady.
Of declared lovers she had two, one whom she disliked for
reasons she knew not why--at first; the other whom she adored.
Simeon Larpent, heir to the then dying Lord Fordingbridge, was one;
Bertie Elphinston, of the Regiment of Picardy, the other. With
Larpent, however, the reasons why she disliked him soon made
themselves apparent. He was crafty by nature, with a craft that had
been much fostered at St. Omer and Lisbon, where he was
educated, and he was, she thought, lacking in bravery. When other
men were planning and devising as to how they could find a place in
that army which--under Count Saxe, to be convoyed to England by
De Roquefeuille--was then forming, he made no attempt to become
one of its number, giving as his reasons his father's ill-health and his
opinion that he could better serve the Cause by remaining in France.
Yet Bertie Elphinston had at the same time a delicate mother
residing at Passy, and Douglas Sholto was in poor health at the
moment; and still they were both going.
Moreover, Simeon Larpent's admiration was distasteful to her. He
had then but recently come back to Paris from Lisbon, from which he
brought no particular good character, while he appeared by his
conversation and mode of life to have contracted many extremely
bad habits. In the Paris of those days the practice and admiration of
morality stood at a terribly low point, yet Simeon Larpent seemed
more depraved than most young men were in that city even. In a
morose and sullen fashion he revelled in all the iniquities that
prevailed during the middle of Louis XV's reign, and his name
became noted in English circles as that of a man unscrupulous and

abandoned, as well as shifty and cunning. Moreover, even his
Jacobitism was looked upon with doubtful eyes, and not a few were
heard to say that the hour which witnessed his father's death would
also see him an avowed Hanoverian. That such would have been the
case was certain, had not, however, the old lord's death taken place
at the very moment when Charles Edward made the last Stuart bid
for restoration in England. But at such a time it was impossible that
the new peer could approach the English king. Had he done so it
would have been more than his life was worth. At the best, he would
have been forced into a duel with some infuriated Jacobite; at the
worst, his body would have been found in the Seine, stabbed to the
heart.
Meanwhile those events which Lady Fordingbridge had spoken of
in her letter to Bertie Elphinston had taken place; nothing was heard
by her either of her lover or the Sholtos, and she became the wife of
Fordingbridge. For a month he revelled in the possession of the
beautiful woman he had coveted since first he set eyes on her; then
she found out the truth and his lordship had no longer a wife except
in name. She had one interview with him--alone--and after that had
taken place she never willingly spoke to him again. Her pride
forbade her to separate from him, but with the exception that the
same roof sheltered and the same walls enclosed them, they might
as well have dwelt in different streets. Against all his protestations,
his vows, his declarations that love, and love alone, had forced him
to play the part he had, she turned a deaf ear; she would not even
open her lips if possible, to show that she had heard his words. She
had come to hate and despise him--as she told him in that one
interview--and her every action afterwards testified that she had
spoken the truth.
And now, when the married life of Lord and Lady Fordingbridge
had arrived at this pass, the time was also come when scores of
Jacobites, militant, priestly, or passive as they might be, poured into
England. For Charles Edward had landed at Moidart, Tullibardine had
displayed at Glenfinnen the white, blue, and red silk standard of the

prince, the march southward had begun. Following on this news--all
of which reached Paris with extraordinary rapidity--came the
intelligence of the Battle of Preston, the capture of Edinburgh,
Charles's installation at Holyrood, the rout of Cope's army, the march
into England, and the determination of George II. to take the field in
person against the invader. And among those who received their
orders to at once proceed to England was Lord Fordingbridge, such
orders coming from out the mouth of the restless Father Sholto.
"But," exclaimed his lordship, "I have no desire to proceed to
England. My unhappy married life--for such it has become--will be
no better there than here. And in France, at least, matrimonial
disputes are not regarded."
"Your desire," said the priest, "is of no concern. I tell you what is
required of you--there is nothing left for you but to conform. We
wish a goodly number of adherents to the Stuart cause--indeed, all
whom it is possible to obtain--to be in London when the prince and
his army arrive, as it is now an almost foregone conclusion they will
do. You must, therefore, be there. Only, since you are of a
calculating--not to say timorous--nature, and as no Jacobite
nobleman will be permitted to enter England until the prince is in
London, you will travel with papers describing you as a nobleman
who has given in his adherence to the House of Hanover. I shall go
with you--it is necessary that I keep you under my eyes as much as
possible; also it is fitting that I should be in London. In either case
my services will be required, whether we are successful or not."
In this way, therefore, his lordship returned to England in
company with his wife and his wife's father as well as the Jesuit.
Only, he made several reservations in his own mind as to how he
would manage his own political affairs, as to how, indeed, he would
trim his sails.
"For," said he to himself, "whether I become Hanoverian or
remain Jacobite will depend vastly on which side wins. Once in

England I shake off this accursed hold which Sholto and all the other
priests of St. Omer have on me; nay, if Hanover comes up
uppermost, Sholto himself shall be laid by the heels. There will be a
pretty sweep made of the Jesuits if Charles gets beaten. If he drives
out George, why, then--ah! well, time enough to ponder."
The events of three months soon showed to which side victory
was ultimately to belong. Cumberland destroyed the Scotch army,
Charles Edward was in hiding in the land he had entered attended
by such bright hopes and prospects; all who had fought on his side
were either dead, in prison, or fled. And Simeon Larpent, Viscount
Fordingbridge, was--quite with the consent for the time being of
Archibald Sholto--an avowed Hanoverian and received into favour by
the Hanoverian king, though with a strong watch kept on all his
actions by that king's Ministers.
CHAPTER V.
MY LORD GOES OUT OF TOWN.
On the day after Bertie Elphinston received the letter from his lost
love, Lady Fordingbridge, his lordship himself set out from London to
journey into Cheshire, there to visit his estate in that county. He had
previously intimated to his wife--who had told Father Sholto of the
fact--that he intended being absent from London for some weeks;
indeed, had asked her whether it was her desire to accompany him.
To this question or invitation her ladyship had, however, returned the
usual monosyllabic answer which she generally accorded him, and
had briefly replied "No." Then being pressed by him to give some

reason for her refusal to so accompany him, she had turned round
with that bright blaze in her blue eyes which he had learnt to dread,
and had exclaimed:
"Why pester me--especially when we are alone--with these
useless questions and formalities? We have arranged, decided the
mode in which our existences are to be passed, if passed together--
it is enough. We remain together ostensibly on the condition that I
share this house with you--I will have no other part in your false life.
And if you cannot conform to this arrangement, then even this
appearance of union can--had best be--severed."
The viscount bit his lips after her cold contemptuous tones, yet,
with that strange power which he possessed, he overmastered the
burning rage that rose up in his heart against her. Only he asked
himself now, as often before he had asked himself, would he always
be able to exercise such control--able to refrain from bursting forth
against her, and by so doing put an end to the artificial existence
they were living?
But now the morning had come for him to depart for the country;
outside in the square he could hear the horses shaking their harness
while his carriage waited for him; it was time for him to go.
Therefore he went to his wife's morning-room and found her
ladyship taking her chocolate.
"I come, madam," he said, with that usual assumption of
courtliness which he always treated her to since they had become
estranged, "to bid you farewell for some few weeks. I will notify you
by the post of my proposed return. Meanwhile your ladyship need
not be dull. You have the entry now to the Court circles, you have
also your respected father with you in this house. And there are
many friends of your younger days in London"--he shot an evil,
oblique glance at her out of the corner of his eye as he said this,
which was not lost on her--"to wit, Mr. Archibald and--and--others.

Doubtless ere I return you may have renewed some of your earlier
acquaintanceships. They should be agreeable."
For answer she gave him never a word, but, stirring her cup of
chocolate leisurely, looked him straight in the face; then she let her
eyes fall on the journal she had been perusing and again
commenced to do so as though he were not in the room.
"Curse her," muttered her husband to himself as her indifference
stung him to the quick, "curse her, ere long the bolt shall be sped."
After which he exclaimed:
"My lady, as is ever the case, I perceive my presence is
unwelcome. Once more I bid you adieu," and took himself out of the
room and also out of the house. And so he set forth upon his
journey.
For a young man on the road to his old family seat, Lord
Fordingbridge was that morning strangely preoccupied and
indifferent to the events around him, and sat in his carriage huddled
up in one corner of it more like an elderly sick man than aught else.
The cheerful bustle of the village of Islington, the pretty country
villas at Highgate, the larks singing over Finchley Common and
Hadley Green, had no power to rouse him from his stupor--if stupor
it was--nor either had the bright sun and the warm balmy spring air
that came in at the open windows. A strange way for an English
nobleman to set out upon his journey to the place where his
forefathers had dwelt for ages! A strange way, indeed, considering
that he might be regarded as an extremely fortunate man. The head
of a family with strong Stuart tendencies, and suspected of himself
participating in those tendencies, he had yet been at once received
into favour by the King on returning to London. This alone should
have made his heart light within him, for he had but now to conform
to that King's demands to pass the rest of his existence in peace and
full enjoyment of his comfortable means--to feel that his father's and
his family's Jacobitism was forgotten, that all was well with him.

George was now welcoming to his fold every exiled Jacobite who
had not openly fought or plotted and schemed against him in the
recent invasion, and many peers and gentlemen who had long lived
abroad in exile were hastening to tender their adherence to the
German king, feeling perfectly sure that, after the events of the past
three months, the day of the Stuarts was past and gone for ever.
Why, therefore, could not Simeon Larpent look forward as
hopefully to the future as all his brother exiles who had returned
were doing? Why! Was it because of the enmity of his wife to him,
an enmity which he knew could never slacken; or was it because of
his fear of that other man whom he had so deeply wronged; or
because of what his scheming mind was now fashioning? This we
shall see.
The roads were heavy with the recent spring showers so that the
four horses of his coach could drag it but tediously along them, and
it was nightfall ere South Mimms was reached, and night itself ere
they arrived at St. Albans, and Lord Fordingbridge descended at the
Angel. To the bowing landlord he gave his name, and stated that he
wished a bedroom and a parlour for himself, and a room for his
men; and then, as he was about to follow his obsequious host up
the broad staircase, he said, pulling out his watch:
"It is now after seven. At nine I expect to be visited by a
gentleman whom I have appointed to meet me here. His name is
Captain Morris. You will please entertain him at my cost to-night,
and do so at your best. On his arrival, if he hath not supped, ask him
to do so; if he hath, show him in at once to me. Now I will prepare
for my own meal."
Again Boniface bowed low--lower even than before, after he had
become acquainted with his visitor's rank and position--and escorted
him to a large, comfortable bedroom on the first floor, in which a
cheerful fire burnt in the grate. And throwing open two heavy

folding-doors, he showed next a bright sitting-room, also with a fire,
and well lit.
"This will do very well," said his lordship. "Now send my servant
to me with my valise. And let him wait on me at table."
All through the repast he partook of the viscount meditated
gloomily and gravely, eating but little of the substantial meal
provided by the landlord, drinking sparingly, and addressing no
remark to his servant. Then when he had finished, he had his chair
drawn up before the fire, a bottle of wine and another of brandy
placed on the table, and, bidding the servant withdraw and bring
Captain Morris to him when he should arrive, he again fell to
meditating and musing, speaking sometimes aloud to himself.
"It is the only way," he muttered, in disconnected sentences, "the
only way. And it must be done at one swoop; otherwise it is useless.
So long as one of them is free I am fettered. The only way! And--
then--when that is accomplished--to deal with you, my lady. Let me
see." He began counting on his fingers and tapping the tips as still
he pondered, touching first his forefinger, then the second and third,
and once or twice nodding his head as though well satisfied with
himself.
"As for Fane," he muttered next, "he scarce counts. Yet he, too,
must be taken care of. But of that later. Doubtless when I begin with
my lady--Vengeance confound her!--he will become revengeful, but
before he can do so--well, he will be harmless. So, so. It should
work."
The clock struck nine as he spoke, and he compared it with his
great tortoiseshell watch, and then sat listening. The inn was very
quiet, he doubted if any other travellers were staying in it, especially
as the coach from London passed through early in the day, but
outside in the street there were signs of life. The rustics bade each
other good-night as they passed; a woman's laugh broke the air now

and again; sometimes a dog barked. And at last, above these
sounds, he heard a horse's hoofs clattering along the street as
though ridden fast.
"That," said his lordship, "may be he. 'Tis very possible. For one
of his Majesty's servants, he is none too punctual."
As he spoke the horse drew up with still more clatter at the porch
below his window, and he heard a clear, firm voice ask if Lord
Fordingbridge had that day arrived from London. And two or three
moments later his servant knocked at the door, and, entering, said
that Captain Morris was come.
"Has he supped?"
"He says he requires nothing, my lord, but desires to see you at
once. He rides to Hertford to-night, he bid the landlord say, and has
but little time at his disposal."
"So be it. Show him in," and a moment later Captain Morris
entered the room.
A man of something more than middle age, this gentleman's
features, aquiline and clear cut, presented the appearance of
belonging to one in whom great ability as well as shrewdness and
common sense were combined. Tall and extremely thin, his undress
riding-habit of dark blue embroidered with gold lace set off his figure
to extreme advantage, while the light sword he carried by his side,
his gold-trimmed three-cornered hat with its black cockade, and his
long riding boots all served to give him the appearance of an
extremely gentlemanly and elegant man.
"Welcome, sir," said Lord Fordingbridge, advancing to meet him
with extended hand, while at the same time he noticed--and took
account of--the clear grey eyes, the thin lips, and aquiline nose of
his visitor. "Welcome, sir. I am glad you have been able to reach

here to-night. To-morrow I must resume my journey. Be seated, I
beg."
"The orders which I received from London," replied Captain
Morris, in a clear, refined voice that corresponded perfectly with his
appearance, "made it imperative that I should call on you to-night.
As your lordship may be aware, in this locality I have certain duties
to perform which can be entrusted to no one else."
"I am aware of it," Fordingbridge replied. Then he said, "Before
we commence our conversation, let me offer you a glass of wine or
brandy. The night is raw, and you have doubtless ridden long."
Captain Morris bowed, said he would drink a glass of wine, and,
when he had poured it out of the decanter, let it stand by his side
untouched for the moment. After which he remarked:
"I understand, my lord, that I am to receive from your lips to-
night some information of considerable importance to his Majesty,
touching those who have been engaged in plotting against his
security. May I ask you to proceed at once with what you have to tell
me? I have still some distance to ride to-night, and also other work
to do."
"Yes," answered Fordingbridge, "you have been exactly informed.
Yet--how to tell--how to begin, I scarcely know. My object is to put
in the King's hands--without, of course, letting it be known that the
information comes from me--some facts relating to several notorious
Jacobites now sheltering in London. Men who are," he continued,
speaking rapidly, "inimical to his Majesty's peace and security, hostile
to his rule, and, if I mistake not, bent at the present moment in
endeavouring in some way to effect a rescue of the Scotch lords now
in confinement at the Tower."
A slight smile rose upon his visitor's face as he uttered these last
words; then Captain Morris said quietly:

"That is hardly likely to come to pass, I should imagine. The
Tower does not disgorge its victims freely, certainly not by force. As
for the Scotch lords, I am afraid they will only quit the place for their
trials and afterwards for Tower Hill."
"Yet," remarked Lord Fordingbridge, "the attempt may be made.
Of the men I speak of, two are desperate, and both fought at
Culloden and the battles that took place during the Pretender's
march into England. They will stop at nothing if," with a quick glance
at the other, "they are not themselves first stopped."
"Give me their names, if you please," said Morris, with military
precision, as he produced from his pocket a notebook, "and where
they are to be found."
"Their names are Bertie Elphinston and Douglas Sholto--the
former a kinsman of the Lord Balmarino. Both have lived in exile in
France, serving in the French King's army, one in the Garde du Roi at
first, and then in the Regiment of Picardy. The other, Sholto, has
served in the Mousquetaires."
"Their names," said Captain Morris, "are not in the list," and he
turned over the leaves of his notebook carefully as he spoke. "But
for you, my lord, these men might have escaped justice. 'Tis strange
nothing was known of them."
"They crossed from France with Charles Edward. Many names of
those who accompanied him are probably not known. You may rely
on my information. I myself returned but from France some weeks
ago. I know them well."
"Indeed!" exclaimed Captain Morris. "Indeed! Your lordship
doubtless came to support his Majesty shortly after so many of his
enemies crossed over."
"Precisely. But I will be frank. I should tell you I am myself a
converted--perverted, some would say--Jacobite. My father, the late

lord, died one, I do not espouse his political faith."
Captain Morris bowed gravely; then he said:
"And you know, therefore, these gentlemen--these Scotch rebels."
"I know them very well. Shall I furnish you with a description of
their persons?"
"If you please;" and as the captain replied to the question, he--
perhaps unwittingly--pushed the untasted glass of wine farther away
from him into the middle of the large table, where it remained
undrunk.
After the appearance of Elphinston and Sholto had been fully
given and noted in the captain's book, he asked:
"And where are these men to be found, Lord Fordingbridge?"
"They shelter themselves in the village of Wandsworth, near
London, in an old house on the Waterside, as the strand there is
called. It is the first reached from the village."
Again this was written down, after which Captain Morris rose to
take his departure, but my lord's tale was not yet told. Pointing to
the chair the other had risen from, he said:
"I beg you to be seated a moment longer. There is still another--
the worst rebel of all--of whom I wish to apprise you. A priest."
"A priest! You speak truly; they are, indeed, his Majesty's worst
enemies. A Jesuit, of course?"
"Of course. With him it will be necessary to use the most astute
means in the Government's power to first entrap him, and then to
deal with him afterwards. He should, indeed, be confined in total

solitude, forbidden, above all things else, to hold any communication
with other rebels."
"You may depend, Lord Fordingbridge, on all being done that is
necessary, short of execution."
"Short of execution!" interrupted the other. "Short of execution!
Why do not the scheming Jesuits--the mainspring of all, the cause of
the very rebellion but now crushed out--merit execution as well as
those who routed Cope's forces and hewed down Cumberland's
men? Grand Dieu! I should have thought they would have been the
first to taste the halter."
"Possibly," replied the captain in passionless tones, and with an
almost imperceptible shrug of his shoulders, "but at present no
Jesuit priests have been executed. I doubt if any will be. The
Government have other punishments for them--exile to the American
colonies, and so forth. Now, my lord, this priest's name and abode."
"He is brother to Douglas Sholto, an elder brother by another
mother, yet they have ever gone hand in hand together. Named
Archibald, of from thirty-eight to forty years of age. Crafty,
dissimulating, and----"
"That is of course," said Captain Morris. "Now, tell me, if you
please, where this man is to be found. Is he also in hiding at
Wandsworth?"
"Nay," replied the other--and for the first time the informer
seemed to hesitate in his answer. Yet for a moment only, since again
he proceeded with his story. "He is disguised, of course; passes as a
Scotch merchant having business between London and Paris, and is
known as Mr. Archibald." He paused again, and Captain Morris's
clear eyes rested on him as, interrogatively, he said:
"Yes? And his abode?"

"Is my own house. In Kensington-square."
This time the officer started perceptibly, and fixed an even more
penetrating glance upon the other than before. Indeed, so apparent
were both the start and look of surprise on his face that the traitor
before him deemed it necessary to offer some excuse for his strange
revelation.
"Yes," he said, "in my own house. It has been necessary for me to
let him hide there awhile the better to--to entrap--to deliver him to
justice."
"Your lordship is indeed an ardent partisan," coldly replied Captain
Morris; "the King is much to be congratulated on so good a convert."
"The King will, I trust, reward my devotion. The Stuarts have
never shown any gratitude for all that has been done for them--by
my family as much as any. Now, Captain Morris," he went on, "I
have told you all that I have to tell. I have simply to ask that in no
way shall it be divulged--as, indeed, I have the promise of his
Majesty's Ministers that nothing shall be divulged--as to the source
whence this information is derived. It is absolutely necessary that I
appear not at all in the matter."
"That is understood. The Secretary of State for Scotch affairs,
from whom I receive my instructions, knows your lordship's desire,
without a doubt."
"Precisely. It is with him I have been in communication. Yet, still, I
would make one other request. It is that Father Sholto may not be
arrested in my house. That would be painful to--to--Lady
Fordingbridge, a young and delicate woman. He can easily be taken
outside, since he quits the house fearlessly each day."
"That too," replied Morris, "I will make a note of for the
Secretary's consideration. I wish you now, my lord, good evening,"
saying which he bowed and went toward the door.

"If I could possibly prevail on you to refresh yourself," said
Fordingbridge, as he followed him to it, "I should be happy," and he
held out his hand as he spoke.
But the captain, who seemed busy with his sash, or sword belt,
did not perhaps see the extended hand, and muttering that he
required no refreshment, withdrew from the room.
Nevertheless, when he reached the bar in the passage below he
asked the smiling landlady if she could give him a glass of cordial to
keep out the rawness of the night air, and to fortify him for his ride.
Also he asked, in so polite a manner as to gratify the good woman's
heart, if he might scrawl a line at her table whereat she sat sewing
and surrounded by her bottles and glasses. Buxom landladies rarely
refuse politenesses to persons of Captain Morris's position, especially
when so captivatingly arrayed as he was in his undress bravery, and
as he wrote his message and sealed it she thought how gallant a
gentleman he was.
Then he looked up and enquired if there was any ostler or idle
postboy about the place who could ride for him with a letter to-
morrow morning to Dunstable, and receiving a reply in the
affirmative, paid for his cordial, the hire of the next morning
messenger and his horse's feed, and so bade her a cheerful good-
night.
In the yard, while his animal was being brought out, he looked
with some little interest at his lordship's travelling carriage, inspected
the crest upon its panels and the motto, and, tossing the fellow who
brought the nag a shilling, and seeing carefully to his holsters, rode
away into the night.
Upstairs, my lord, standing before the fire, noticed the unemptied
glass of wine, and, remembering that the captain had not chosen to
see his outstretched hand, cursed him for an ill-conditioned
Hanoverian cur. Downstairs, the hostess, being a daughter of Eve,

turned over the captain's letter addressed to "Josias Brandon, Esq.,
Justice of the Peace," and would have given her ears, or at least a
set of earrings, to know what its contents were. Had she been able
to see them they probably would have given her food for gossip for
a twelvemonth, brief as they were. They ran:
"The Viscount Fordingbridge passes through Dunstable to-morrow
in his coach on his road to Cheshire. From the time he does so until
he returns through your town to London, he is to be followed and
watched and never lost sight of. Let me be kept acquainted with all
his movements--by special courier, if needful.--Noel Morris, Captain."
CHAPTER VI.
KATE MAKES AN APPOINTMENT.
Between Lady Fordingbridge and her father a better state of
things existed than that which prevailed between her and her
husband. Indeed, Kitty, who could not forgive the treachery of the
man who was now her husband, could not, at the same time, bring
herself to regard her father's share in that treachery in as equally
black a light. She knew that it was the actual truth that he had been
much in debt to Simeon Larpent (as he was then), and she had
persuaded herself also to believe that which he constantly assured
her was the truth--and, perhaps, might have been--that Larpent
would have proceeded against him for his debt, in spite of the story
Fane had been instructed to tell to the effect that the other was very
willing to continue their creditor. Moreover, old and feeble as her
father was now--broken down and unable any longer to earn bread

to put in their mouths, she did not forget that, until the events of the
last few unhappy months, he had been an excellent parent to her.
For, hardly and roughly, by long days of weary work, the bread had
been earned somehow, the roof kept over their heads, the clothes
found for their backs. Hour after hour, as she remembered, the
worn-out old Irish gentleman--once the brilliant young military
adventurer had stood in the room set apart for the fencing school,
giving his lessons to men young enough to be his sons; and also she
recalled how every night, it seemed to her, he was more fatigued
than before, his back a little more bowed, his weariness greater. And
as--even after the marriage had taken place into which she had
been hoodwinked--she thought of all this, and of how he had grown
older and more feeble in his fight to keep the wolf from the door,
she almost brought herself to forgive him entirely for the great
wrong he had done her.
She sat thinking over all this on the morning after her lord's
departure for the country, while opposite to her, toasting his feet in
front of the fire, her father sat. The old man was well dressed now;
he was comfortable and without care--an astute Irish attorney
settled in Paris had tied the viscount up as tightly as possible in the
matter of jointure, settlements and dowry for Kitty, not without
remonstrance from Fordingbridge, which was, however, unavailing;
and out of her own money she had provided for her father. And as
her eyes rested on him she felt that, badly as he had behaved to her,
she was still glad to know that his laborious days were past. At this
time Kitty was very near to forgiving him altogether; her strong,
loving heart remembering so much of all he had done for her in the
past, and forgetting almost all of his wrongdoing.
"What do your letters say to ye, Kitty, this morning?" asked Doyle
Fane, who, after more than forty years' absence from his native
land, still retained some of its rich raciness of tone and accent.
"Ye've a big post there before ye, me child."

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Religious Evolution And The Axial Age 1st Edition Stephen K Sanderson

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