For vernacular man, to increase his stock of ‘vital force’ is to follow the Way

“The ultimate goal of the Bantu is to possess as much vital force as possible, while what he fears most is to see a reduction in his stock of this inestimable commodity. Every disease, wound or suffering or depression, every injustice and every failure is interpreted by the Bantu as a sure sign that there has been a reduction in his stock of vital force.”

   Father Placide Tempels

“A vast old religion which once swayed the Earth lingers in unbroken practice there in New Mexico . . . In the oldest religion, everything was alive, not supernaturally but naturally alive. There were only deeper and deeper streams of life . . . So rocks were alive, but a mountain had a deeper, vaster life than a rock. . . . For the whole life-effort of man was to get his life into direct contact with the elemental life of the cosmos, mountain-life, cloud-life, thunder-life, air-life, Earth-life, sun-life, to come into immediate felt contact, and so derive energy, power and a dark sort of joy. This effort into sheer naked contact without an intermediary or mediator is the root meaning of religion.”

   D. H. Lawrence

“What is required is restoring the category of the sacred, the category most thoroughly destroyed by the scientific establishment.”

   Hans Jonas

Vernacular man follows the Way even in those societies in which the concept has not been clearly articulated. Most vernacular societies have developed another key concept, that of ‘vital force’, which one can identify with the better-known concept of the sacred. Cornford tells us that in the classical world, a place was regarded as sacred because of the presence in it of a dangerous power that made it sacrosanct – “not to be set foot on by the profane”. [1]

Thus things that were sacred had to be treated with great respect, indeed with trepidation. They were the source of every benefit and also of all misfortunes, for sacred things contained this dangerous energy or ‘vital force’. Every traditional society had its word for it: Mana for instance among the Melanesians and Polynesians; orenda among the Sioux; and muntu among the Baluba.

Durkheim regards vital force as “the source of all religiosity”. He sees “the spirits, demons, genii and gods of every sort” as “the concrete forms taken by this energy”. [2] It is partly, at least, because they are endowed with this vital force that they are sacred and have become objects of religious cults. The sun, the moon and the stars are also worshipped for this reason.

“They have not owed this honour to their intrinsic nature or their distinctive properties but to the fact that they are thought to participate in this force which alone is able to give things a sacred character, and which is also found in a multitude of other beings even the smallest.” [3]

Lods considers that

“the very ancient term which is found in all Semitic languages to express the idea of ‘god,’ one of the various forms of el (Hebrew), ilu (Babylonian), ilah (Arabic), originally denoted the vague force which was the source of all strength and life.” [4]

Vital force is seen as powering the whole living world. To acquire it personally is the only sure avenue to success. Placide Tempels, in his seminal work on Bantu philosophy, tells us that for the Bantu

“supreme happiness, the only form of good fortune is to possess the greatest possible amount of vital force, while the worst adversity and indeed the only real misfortune is to see a reduction in one’s stock of this power.” [5]

Among the Baluba, vital force is referred to as ‘muntu’. A powerful man is described as ‘rnuntu mukulumpe’, a man with a great deal of muntu; whereas a man of no social significance is referred to as a ‘muntu mutupu’, or one who has but a small amount of muntu.

A complex vocabulary is used to describe all the changes that can affect a man’s stock of muntu. All illnesses, depressions, failures in any field of activity are taken to be evidence of a reduction in this vital force and can be avoided only by maintaining one’s stock of it. A man with none left at all is known as ‘mufu’. He is as good as dead. [6]

Tempels considers the same to be true of the Bantu in general. “The goal of all efforts among the Bantu”, Tempels tells us, “can only be to intensify this vital force”. And indeed, their customs only make sense if one interprets them “as a means of preserving or increasing one’s stock of vital force”. [7]

Leopold Senghor, the poet, philosopher and former President of Senegal, considers that the goal of all religious ceremonies, all rituals and indeed of all artistic endeavour in Africa, is but “to increase the stock of vital force”. [8] The same is true in Melanesia; so much so that, according to Codrington,

“all Melanesian religion consists in getting this mana for oneself, or getting it used for one’s benefit.” [9]

Vital force was not just accumulated by individuals; it is usually seen as flowing through the cosmos and concentrating in certain things and beings and in so doing, forming a pattern of power and hence of sanctity – a philosophy known as ‘Hylozoism’. Paul Schebesta tells us that for the Pygmies of the Ituri forest in Zaire, vital force or megbe

is spread out everywhere, but its power does not manifest itself everywhere with the same force nor in the same way. Certain animals are richly endowed with it. Humans possess a lot more of some types of megbe but less of other types. Able men are precisely those who have accumulated a lot of megbe: this is true of witch-doctors. [10]

For the Comanches of the Nevada Desert, according to Ralph Linton, the constituents of the natural world are imbued with different sorts of vital force. The greatest is personified by the eagle, the Earth, the sky and the sun. The highest force is God. After him come the first fathers who founded various clans, and next comes the head of the tribe. The living also form a hierarchy in accordance with the vital power that they possess and animals, plants and minerals are also organised in the same way. [11]

For the Bantu, according to Senghor,

“All the forces are organised hierarchically: first come the demi-gods or genii; then the original mythical ancestors; then the ordinary ancestors; then living men, in order of primogeniture; then animals, plants and minerals.” [12]

It seems that this pattern of power, and hence of sanctity, faithfully reflects what was taken to be the hierarchical structure of the cosmos. In this way, the distribution of vital force serves to sanctify the cosmic hierarchy and hence to preserve it against human depredations. Significantly, the amount of vital force residing at the different levels of social organization reflects the extent to which the society is integrated or centralised. Thus in a very loose society, individuals and families are endowed with a considerable proportion of the society’s vital force.

On the other hand, in highly centralised traditional kingdoms such as ancient Egypt or Benin (now part of Nigeria) the vital force becomes concentrated in the person of the divine king, who is divine precisely for that reason. In such a society, what is more, the welfare of all the inhabitants is regarded as totally dependent on the fulfilment of the important rituals and ceremonies designed to preserve and increase the king’s stock of vital force and on the observance of the many taboos surrounding his person.

It is only if one realises this that the practice of killing the king at regular intervals, as described by Frazer in The Golden Bough, can possibly make sense. The king was killed because, for reasons that varied from one society to another, he was no longer seen as being a fit repository for the society’s stock of vital force which, if society is to avoid the most terrible calamities, must thereby be transferred to a more appropriate repository.

The relationship between things and beings at different echelons in the hierarchy of the cosmos is not symmetrical. Vital power flows downwards to vitalise and hence sanctify things and beings at the lower echelons, though it will only do so if the latter fulfil their obligations towards the higher echelons and hence towards the cosmos as a whole.

It is thus understandable that so many of the rituals and ceremonies of a traditional people – and indeed, their whole way of life – should be designed to maintain the correct distribution of vital force at each level in the cosmic hierarchy. In this way they can maintain the critical order and stability of the cosmos, and thereby follow the Way.

To neglect the performance of these sacred rituals and ceremonies – worse still, to break the sacred laws that govern their performance – is to violate a taboo. This can only lead to a disastrous change in the distribution of vital force within the cosmic hierarchy. An act is taboo, according to Roger Caillois, because it disrupts “the universal order, which is at once that of nature and society” and as a result,

“the earth might no longer yield a harvest, the cattle might be struck with infertility, the stars might no longer follow their appointed course, death and disease could stalk the land.” [13]

This all-pervading fear of disrupting the critical order of the cosmos is reflected in the taboos set up in all tribal societies against mixing things that belong to the different classes or provinces into which the cosmos is seen to be divided. This goes a long way towards explaining food taboos. If it is taboo to eat pork among the Hebrews, this is because the pig, as Mary Douglas notes,

is put into the class of abominable, unclean creatures, along with the hare, the hyrax and the camel. The grounds alleged are that these creatures either cleave the hoof or chew the cud, but do not do both. In other words, they don’t quite make it into the class of ungulates. [14]

To eat water creatures that do not have fins and scales is also taboo for they do not fall into natural cosmic categories either. Nor do air creatures that do not fly or hop on the Earth and do not have wings and two legs. To eat such creatures can only reduce a person’s vital force and simultaneously threaten the critical order of the cosmos. Mixed marriages between people from naturally exogamous social groups are seen in the same light; they threaten the critical order of society and thereby that of the cosmos of which it is part.

Among the Igbo of Nigeria, according to Emefie Ikenga Metuh, “deviations which disrupt the natural order are called ‘Aru’; literally, ‘abominations’.”. The word ‘Aru’, however, also means ‘crime against nature’. [15]

Such crimes include a number of unnatural acts that defy normal behavioural categories, such as a man having sexual intercourse with his father’s wife or with an animal. The birth of twins and a hen hatching but one chick also fall into this category. These taboo events are Aru because the Igbo believe “that they transgress the laws guiding the ontological order and will therefore bring disaster to the community”. [16]

The naïve and irresponsible tampering with the inner processes of the natural world by scientists, technologists and industrialists would be impossible in such a society.

For instance, feeding chickens on their own excrement; cows on offal derived from their fellows; or worse still, as has recently been reported in Switzerland, on human placentas, acquired from the maternity wards of local hospitals, would undoubtedly be classified as ‘crimes against nature’, and would be subject to the most stringent taboos.

More so still would be the transplant of human genes into pigs in order to make them fatter; or the transformation of these unfortunate creatures into living factories, churning out ‘human milk’ to be fed to our babies as a substitute for the real human milk that would otherwise be provided by their mothers. Built into the cultural pattern of vernacular society was the knowledge that such sordid practices are violations of the moral laws governing the cosmic order and that this can only lead to catastrophes on an unimaginable scale.

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