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The mana of the slain beast is in the hide and head and blood and fur, and the man who wants to be in thorough contact with the divinity gets inside the skin and wraps himself deep in it. He begins by being a man wearing a lion's skin: he ends, as we have seen, by feeling himself to be a lion wearing a lion's skin. And who is this man? He may on particular occasions be only a candidate for purification or initiation. But par excellence he who has the right is the priest, the medicine-man, the divine king. If an old suggestion of my own is right, he is the original θεός or θεσός, the incarnate medicine or spell or magic power.ssss1 He at first, I suspect, is the only θεός or 'God' that his society knows. We commonly speak of ancient kings being 'deified'; we regard the process as due to an outburst of superstition or insane flattery. And so no doubt it sometimes was, especially in later times—when man and god were felt as two utterly distinct things. But 'deification' is an unintelligent and misleading word. What we call 'deification' is only the survival of this undifferentiated human θεός, with his mana, his κράτος and βία, his control of the weather, the rain and the thunder, the spring crops and the autumn floods; his knowledge of what was lawful and what was not, and his innate power to curse or to 'make dead'. Recent researches have shown us in abundance the early Greek medicine-chiefs making thunder and lightning and rain.ssss1 We have long known the king as possessor of Dike and Themis, of justice and tribal custom; we have known his effect on the fertility of the fields and the tribes, and the terrible results of a king's sin or a king's sickness.ssss1


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