“If we seek to penetrate the original nature of totemism, without regard to subsequent accretions or attenuations, we find that it’s essential characteristics are these: Originally, all totems were animals, and were regarded as the ancestors of the different clans. Totems were inherited only from the female line. There was a prohibition against killing the totem (or-which, under primitive conditions, is the same thing-against eating it). Members of the same totem clan were forbidden to practice sexual intercourse with one another.” -Freud
In all of Freud’s Totem and Taboo, we lack the grounding of a full discussion of Shamanism and it’s psychological effect on pre-patriarchal societies. Shamanic vision was at once metamorphosis and mystery. After the fall of the early matriarchal society, “from that day on, the mystery is also the thing you are ashamed of. This development depended, in turn, on the developing history of metamorphosis. Each from had its own perfect sharpness, so long as it retained that form, but everybody knew that a moment later it might become something else. At the time of Europa and Io, the veil of epiphany was still operating. The bellowing bull, the crazed cow, would once again appear as a god and girl. But as Generation followed generation, metamorphosis became more and more difficult, and the fatal nature of reality, its irreversibility, all the more evident. Only a generation after Europa, Pasiphae would have to crouch inside a wooden cow, a big toy on wheels, and have herself pushed as far a s the meadows of Gortyn, where the bull she desired was grazing. And from their union was born a creature who would never be able to go back to either being beast or man. He would just be a hybrid, forever. And just as the craftsman Daedalus had had to invent another object, the labyrinth, to conceal the son. The Minotaur would be slain, Pasiphae was to die in captivity and shame. Humans could no longer gain access to other forms and return from them. The veil of epiphany was rent and tattered now. If the power of metamorphosis was to be maintained, there was no alternative but to invent objects and generate monsters.” –Roberto Calasso
Totem, when associated with the Matriarchal line, puts one in the mind of Matrilineal succession of lineage, right to rule, and sacred marriage. The divine King was only such as result of his marriage to the divine Queen.
Freud makes an effort to explain why exogamy, or marriage outside of one’s clan, came into being for merely psychological reasons. He infers that natives knew nothing of the dangers of inbreeding. Freud is unlike many of his predecessors and colleagues, in his assertion that children growing up in close proximity did have sexual feelings toward each other which were not naturally curtailed by “familiarity during upbringing.”
It is to be understood that Freud was the major forerunner of the idea that children even had sexuality, a theme that Wilhelm Reich was to expound upon in his works. Freud believed there was concealed energy in sexual taboo which could be sublimated to higher civilized impulses. Reich differed, advocating that an extremely open sexuality was healthy and even necessary to full health.
Did Freud explain exogamy with the Oedipus complex? Are his theories purely scientific, practical, or even probable?
Freud believed that the taboo of exogamy was created by the guilt of “killing the father.” The Father, according to Freud, was associated with the totem animal. Freud theorizes: A dominant tribal male was leader and champion of a large band of women, who he alone slept with, and ruled. Lesser, marauding, jealous bands of “sons” waited in the wings for signs of the father’s weakness. The warrior-male bands, watched and probed for weakness, finally finding the bravery to overthrow and kill the father. Overcome with guilt, the men were unable to fully take the father’s place, and identified the father with the ritual totemic sacrifice, whom they deified.
Now, I can see where reading the myths of ancient Greece could put you in such a mind. What then, is the role of the Queen or Consort, in all of this generational warfare? Let’s take Zeus, the God of the Pantheon, and ruler of Olympus as a perfect example of this psychology. Zeus killed his father, the Titan Chronos, and took the kingdom of Earth as his own. Later, the God Thetis rejected Zeus, as a lover, out of knowledge that her own son would have the potential to overthrow him. Thetis so loved Zeus that she refused her own progeny existence, preserving his sovereignty by closing her legs. “Thus the need for a woman’s help was not limited to the heroes but also applied to the greatest of the gods.” -Roberto Calasso
Some help, that, a woman who chooses not to mate, for fear of her own offspring. There is something latent in the next generation, something to be feared. But none of this explains the continued respect and ancestor worship that predominated in these same early cultures. Kill the father, and then pray to him for advice? I don’t think so.
I believe the totem can be explained by shamanic vision trances, which also included visions of ancestors, and all under one common and well documented experience. I don’t buy into Freud’s confabulations. Oedipus makes a good Greek myth, and even a decent psychological truth, but tell us something about exogamy, it does not. Marriage is more custom than Psychology, and custom defers to tribal values over personal urges.
There is going to be some inbreeding, and I’m not even sure this is a great mystery. Perhaps the best boon to exogamy was the dowry. Perhaps the genetic traits that plague inbred people are washed out after several more generations of breeding with unrelated people. Royalty, Swineherds, and landlocked New Englanders have all been notoriously inbred, and apart from the ever-prevalent Innsmouth look, or hereditary harelip, what’s to worry about?
I think there is clearly a connection between totem and father figure, and it has to do with ancestry. I suspect, as time goes on, ancestor worship and spirit channeling will be studied covalently. I know that, for a fact, I am similar to my father. Even more interestingly, when I am “excited” I can literally channel certain expressions and speech patterns, especially in his physical presence. Combined with a potent belief system, and a sufficient level of ecstatic state, I could easily “possess” my father in a very convincing way.
I would also like to discuss a dream I had several days ago, I will note, I had this dream before I reread Totem and Taboo for this blog.
I began the dream with my father, who was an "Indiana Jones" type adventurer. He had stowed a large, “undocumented” Egyptian wooden totem in our basement. Later, I was in a large house with my mother. There was an approaching tornado, and my mother was “remodeling the house.” There were candles lit throughout the house, and I was concerned she would burn the house down. I retreated to the basement, to hide from the tornado. We lived off jerky that was human flesh, which I spit out, horrified.
Now let me interpret several factors of this dream. The human flesh is at a state of death, which entails decomposition, eating it adds another layer of slow decomposition which is digestion. This, I believe, is representative of a controlled or consuming destruction. The potential fire and tornado represent “fast destruction.” Additionally, you have my father identified as the one “bringing home the totem.” The totem represents ancestry, and mystery. It also seemed that the totem may have contained “mummy meat” which was the jerky that we were eating. I only remember the dream because the thought of eating the human flesh repulsed me so much. Tornadoes are also associated with consuming destruction on a large scale, which would have been worsened by fire.
Perhaps the native value of the original totem animal was the mystery of consumption; the mystery of life living upon life. Our physical bodies live by consuming the corporeal flesh of animals, while our souls live by consuming spiritual food. So, the answer to Freud's unintentional question of "how are totems and fathers similar?" is this: After death, the father, as ancestor, becomes the spiritual food, the sustenance of the soul.
“There is no such thing as an isolated mythological event, just as there is no such thing as an isolated word. Myth, like language, gives all of itself in each of its fragments. When a myth brings into play repetition and variants, the skeleton of the system emerges for a while, the latent order, covered in seaweed.” –Roberto Calasso
Sources:
Freud, Totem and Taboo
Roberto Calasso, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony
