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5. Names of Gods tabooed
PRIMITIVE man creates his gods in his own image. Xenophanes remarked
long ago that the complexion of negro gods was black and their noses
flat; that Thracian gods were ruddy and blue-eyed; and that if
horses, oxen, and lions only believed in gods and had hands
wherewith to portray them, they would doubtless fashion their
deities in the form of horses, and oxen, and lions. Hence just as
the furtive savage conceals his real name because he fears that
sorcerers might make an evil use of it, so he fancies that his gods
must likewise keep their true name secret, lest other gods or even
men should learn the mystic sounds and thus be able to conjure with
them. Nowhere was this crude conception of the secrecy and magical
virtue of the divine name more firmly held or more fully developed
than in ancient Egypt, where the superstitions of a dateless past
were embalmed in the hearts of the people hardly less effectually
than the bodies of cats and crocodiles and the rest of the divine
menagerie in their rock-cut tombs.


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