Only a few groups permit exogamy, that is marriages with others than members of the clan, and even where the system persists it does not seem to be due to any defined totemic rule.
For example, in totemic groups unions between persons who have entered into a compact with the same totem are invariably prohibited.
Besides, it is well known that competent observers have frequently confused totemic practices with certain customs whose origin is rather to be looked for in zoolatry or theriolatry (ther, a wild beast).
The Lacandones, a Maya people, show at the present time the remains of a totemic system (Tozzer, 1907, pp.
This is clearly of totemic significance here, as it occurs in that part of the codex where birth and infant baptism are shown.
It was carved all over with thetotemic images of the eagle and the brown bear, the totems of Snook's family.
As she spoke she went behind the carved totemic corner post which supported the roof, and brought forth old Snook's most valuable and proudest possession.
In the majority of these, the totemic symbols, and the representations of individuals by means of their animal or other cognomens, are abundantly apparent.
When the posts are the property of some individual, the personaltotemic sign is carved at the top.
In this early stage of development the widespread totemicbeliefs appear to have had origin.
The archaic Sumerian animal and composite monster gods of animistic and totemic origin survived after the anthropomorphic period as mythical figures, which were used for decorative or magical purposes and as symbols.
Totemic animals controlled the destinies of tribes and families.
Mr. Garstang, in The Syrian Goddess, thinks it possible that the boar which killed Adonis was of totemic origin.
Advocates of the Totemic theory, on the other hand, may hold that the association of doves with snake goddesses and fish goddesses of fertility was due to the fusion of tribes who had various animal totems.
It is not because the totemic animal has a certain aspect or property that it inspires religious sentiments; these result from causes wholly foreign to the nature of the object upon which they fix themselves.
The totemic animal is the pre-eminently sacred being; but for him who eats its flesh unduly, it is a cause of death.
We are now able to understand how the totemic principle, and in general, every religious force, comes to be outside of the object in which it resides.
This is why it is necessary to study totemism as a religion before studying thetotemic clan as a family group.
Men have not imagined their duties towards the animals of the totemic species because they regarded them as kindred, but have imagined the kinship to explain the nature of the beliefs and rites of which they were the object.
Also, these belong to no determined totemic group; they are outside the social organization.
We shall presently see that streams of blood are poured upon the rocks which represent the totemic animals and plants.
In other words, the totemic species is made up of the group of ancestors and the mythological species much more than of the regular animal or vegetable species.
Strehlow himself recognizes this: "The totemic ancestor and his descendant, who represents him (der Darsteller) are presented as one in these sacred hymns.
As for the notion of the great god, it is due entirely to the sentiment whose action we have already observed in the genesis of the most specifically totemic beliefs: this is the tribal sentiment.
If the soul is only the totemic principle individualized, it should have, in certain cases at least, rather close relations with the animal or vegetable species whose form is reproduced by the totem.
But to-day we are able to state that on at least one point the demonstration is made: in fact, we have just seen that in an important number of societies the totemic sacrifice, such as Smith conceived it, is or has been practised.
The proof that this is the reason for the existence of the totemic image is the fact, which we have already mentioned, that it does not seek to reproduce the aspect of the thing it is supposed to represent.
Tom's totemic title, "Kitalbarra," is derived from a splinter of a rock off an islet to the southeast of Dunk Island.
Its totemic character, its organization with the alatunja at its head, the different functions of magico-religious character and many other social functions and characteristics define it perfectly well.
Here the connection of different norms with religion, myth, totemic cultus, organization of the secret society, etc.
I mean the other forms of kinship organization: the exogamy class, the totemic clan, possibly also the other divisions reported by Mr. R.
The ties between a totemic local group and its hunting-grounds are based on the whole cycle of totemic ideas on reincarnation, supernatural conception; on the Oknanikilla and Ertnatulunga.
In the third place I would like to deal with the question whether the totemicbeliefs concerning conception contain the idea of any reincarnation of ancestors, as this point will be subsequently of importance to us.
We know of a whole series of ideas of totemic character that bind a group of men to a given locality.
Very interesting is Withnell's information concerningtotemic local centres quite analogous[436] to those described by Messrs.
Spencer and Gillen's account of the totemic ceremonies of the Arunta tribe, however, points irresistibly toward a definite economic origin, an attempt to preserve and increase the totemic animals and objects for the good of the tribe.
A striking example of the use of such totemic symbols occurs in a petition sent by some Western Indian tribes to the United States Congress for the right to fish in certain small lakes near Lake Superior.
Its connection with transmigration is seen in the belief of the Moquis of Arizona, that after death they live in the form of their totemic animal, those of the deer family becoming deer, and so on through the several gentes.
The Indian did not appeal to him for assistance, as to his totemic and personal gods.
These three sub-tribes had each its totemic animal, from which it claimed a mystical descent.
The Turkey tribe painted only one foot of their totemic bird, and the Minsi the extended foot of the wolf, though they sometimes added an outline of the rest of the animal.
They also drew and perhaps carved emblems of their totemic guardian.
In referring to the totemic animals the common names were not used, but metaphorical expressions.
The small local or titular groups of ordinary Hindu castes are called 'section,' and the totemic groups of the primitive tribes 'sept.
The designs were almost entirelytotemic in character even when improvised for the occasion and apparently expressionless.
Of the five totemic families that form the Chilkat-kwan, not including a sixth subdivision, four are resident here, while individuals of the others through intermarriage are scattered through the village but without house standing.
The personal names more frequently refer to the Raven, their most honored crest, as they claim to be the first family of this phratry, and it is the more conspicuously displayed on the totemic headdress and ceremonial paraphernalia.
Thus the Thlinket, totemicon Australian primitive lines, do not regard their hereditary exogamous totems as "tutelary spirits.
The myth that totemic local ghosts are reincarnated cannot be older than local totem-centres, for it is their old local totem-centres that the totemic ghosts do haunt.
A group may have borne an animal name long before it evolved totemic beliefs about the animal, and recognised it as a totem.
Among the Arunta, as we know, each region has its local centre of totemic spirits awaiting reincarnation, one totem for each region.
The natives have merely hit on my own conjecture, as to the remote germ of totemic names, and applied it where the process never occurs.
In a conversation with the late Albert Gallatin, he informed me that he was told by the chiefs of a Choctaw deputation, at Washington, that in their tribe were eight totemic clans, divided into two classes, of four each.
Eagle totemic division of that tribe of Indians living in Canada.
The raison d’être of the proprietorship and regimentation reflected in the everyday customs is satisfactorily indicated by that totemic feature of the social organization revealed in the face-painting described in earlier paragraphs (pp.
On these is a painted model of the totemicanimals of the deceased.
The main dances of the Inviting-In Festival are totemic in character, performed by trained actors to appease the totems of the hunters, and insure success for the coming season.
This characterization applies to the Alaskan Eskimo only; so far as is now known the other Eskimo branches do not havetotemic dances.
But in spite of the attention which has been paid to American totemism, we possess very little information as to the vital point of the system, the relation between a man and his totemic animal.
Similarly among the Waheia, another tribe of the same region, if a man kills or eats the totemic animal of his clan, he is supposed to suffer from an eruption of the skin.
Among the Wahehe, another tribe of German East Africa, a man who suffers from scab or other skin disease will often set the trouble down to his having unwittingly partaken of his totemic animal.
If members of thetotemic clan of the Tiger should happen to be in a village when the carcase of a slain tiger is brought into it, they are bound to pay special marks of honour to its remains by putting betel in its mouth.
The Nyanja-speaking tribes of Central Angoniland, in British Central Africa, believe that if a person eats his totemic animal, his body will break out in spots.
The Chasas of Orissa believe that if they were to injure their totemic animal, they would be attacked by leprosy and their line would die out.
The Wagogo of German East Africa imagine that the sin of eating the totemic animal is visited not on the sinner himself but on his innocent kinsfolk.
From his totemic signature he was of the Wolf tribe of the Mahicans.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "totemic" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word. Other words: clannish; family; genetic; lineal; national; phylogenetic
