18 - Tools for thought: the ritual use of ordinary tools

Summary

Introduction: local versus universal explanations

A man grabs an axe-head, inserts its bit into the ground and addresses it, allegedly to ward off rain. Given how relatively straightforward it is to refute the claims of that action's efficacy, we may legitimately wonder why people would foster long enough the counterintuitive beliefs needed to support the practice or should ever feel compelled to perform it at any particular time? Is this a simple case of erroneous assumptions about tools and their potential effects in the world? And why those actions?

The example of the anthropomorphization of an axe-head, taken from Evans-Pritchard's description of an Azande ritual, is in no sense unique (Evans-Pritchard 1937: 471). Examples range from anointing a gun with chyme to ensure that it will hit its targets or stepping on an axe buried in chyme during the central sequence of an apotropaic ritual (Liénard 2003, 2006; see accounts below) to verifying a person's death by tapping the deceased's forehead with a miniature golden hammer while calling his name, a ritual act that is part of the final rites administered to a pope. Similar actions involving the non-ordinary ritual use of tools are found worldwide, very often in religious contexts. And this phenomenon is not limited to the immediate human historical present. As the archaeological record suggests, vestiges of past human societies seem replete with tantalizing evidence of such practices.