Taboo on rulers

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Taboos regarding rulers includes both taboos on people coming into contact with a ruler and the taboos regarding the ruler themselves.

Contents

Examples

Analysis

Freud attributes the existence of such taboos to an unconscious current of hostility toward the king/ruler. [3] In the following example the hostility toward the ruler is more obviously shown:

The savage Timmes of Sierra Leone, who elect their king, reserve to themselves the right of beating him on the eve of his coronation; and they avail themselves of this constitutional privilege with such hearty goodwill that sometimes the unhappy monarch does not long survive his elevation to the throne. Hence when the leading chiefs have a spite at a man and wish to rid themselves of him, they elect him king. [4]

But even in such glaring instances, however, the hostility is not admitted as such, but masquerades as a ceremonial.

Notes

  1. Freud 1919 , p.  70, quoting Frazer 1911 , 20.1. Chiefs and Kings tabooed
  2. 1 2 Frazer 1911, 17.1. Royal and Priestly Taboos.
  3. Freud 1919, p.  83.
  4. Frazer 1911 , 17.2 Divorce of the Spiritual from the Temporal Power

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