RELIGIONS WERE BORN
OF MAN'S DESIRE to understand and control the mysterious process
of nature. Fear of the eerie, unseen forces that cause birth,
reproduction, and death, awe before the power of fire, wind, and
water, made him worship the elements of the teeming world in which
he lived. Only by the existence of psychic forces and powerful
spirits could he explain the perpetual motion of the sun and the
moon, the roll of the sea, and the movements of the clouds, the
wind that shakes the trees, lightning, thunder, and rain. Health,
fertility, and success he attributed to his magic harmony with
these forces, while for earthquakes, volcanic disturbances, epidemics,
and the loss of crops he blamed the anger of spirits whom he had
failed to propitiate.
Eager to place his fate in the hands of superior beings who would
take care of his needs and on whom he could place the responsibility
for his failures, man created a pantheon of supernatural beings
- protective gods and adverse evil spirits - whose goodwill be
aimed to gain by rites, offerings, and sacrifices. Unconsciously,
by elaboration and by the adoption of new elements into the pantheon,
he ended by developing an elaborate system of ritual and magic
acts. Thus the primitive Balinese made of their island a magic
world populated by gods, human beings, and demons. each occupying
a level allotted by rank: the deified spirits of their ancestors
dwelling in the summits of the volcanoes that form the island;
ordinary human beings living in the middle world, the land that
lies between the mountain tops and the sea, which is the home
of devils and fanged giants, the enemies of mankind.
Placed between these two poles from which emanate opposing forces
(the positive from the mountains and the negative from the underworld),
the entire life of the calm and sensitive Balinese - their daily
routine, social organization, their ethics, manners, art; in short,
the total culture of the island - is moulded by a system of traditional
rules subordinated to religious beliefs. By this system they regulate
every act of their lives so that it shall be in harmony with the
natural forces, which they divide eternally -into pairs: male
and female - the creative principle; right and left; high and
low - the principles of place, direction, and rank; strong and
weak, or healthy and sick, clean and unclean; sacred and powerful
or unholy and dangerous; in general: Good and Evil, Life and Death. |
