Dema deity

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A Dema deity is a divine prehistoric being who lives in living beings or objects and whose body parts create new, vital things when it is killed. Most of them are crops that pass on their knowledge to humans in this way.

The origin of the idea is evidently the fact that tubers have to be cut up and buried in order to grow new fruits from them.

The term was introduced by Adolf Ellegard Jensen (1899-1965) - alongside Leo Frobenius (1873-1938) the most important representative of early cultural morphology . He took the word Dema from the language and culture of the Marind-anim in South New Guinea .

In early ethnology , the Dema deity was assigned to the early planters of the Neolithic as a basic religious concept. This broad interpretation (which only occurs in German ethnology) is controversial today because of the very narrow ethno- religious basis (see also: Dead ends in ethnological research on religion ).

Spiritual origin

The spiritual origin of the dema concept was probably the question of why people inexplicably kill other people and animals and also eat them to the glory of the gods. According to Jensen, the origin of this action was not the imagination of the hunters and gatherers , but that of the first farmers of the Neolithic , who would have known that they had to kill the fruits of the field in order to be able to eat them and this killing act of the existence of an original one Dema world, the killing of which in the form of the Dema deities first made human life possible and now repeats itself constantly in peasant rituals, just as humans are now exposed to birth and death. Ritual killing thus repeats the mythical process, so it is by no means to be interpreted as a sacrifice for a god. Human sacrifices in later cultures should therefore also be seen as degeneration with which the order of the world must be restored. At the same time, this explains the close connection between the Dema deities and the realm of the dead, because they were also the first to die and in the process turned into useful plants and the moon, both of which die and rise again (see Judgment of the Dead ).

Corresponding mythological ideas can be found not only in the ancient Indonesian religions and among the early planters of Oceania , but also in North, Central and South America, for example among the early corn farmers, which has led to speculation about their origins.

Definition according to Jensen

In “Myth and Cult among Primitive Peoples”, Jensen defines the Dema deity and its properties roughly as follows: The peculiar thing about these human, animal or plant-shaped Dema deities is that they are killed, dismembered and buried by humans. The food plants, especially the tuberous plants and palm trees, arise from the body parts. Although these deities, who primarily appear as cultural heroes - there are similar ideas about cultural heroes in the Pacific and in Africa - do not appear in all simple planter peoples, the idea that life arises from killing can be found primarily in simple planter cultures. The best-known variant of a Dema deity is the Hainuwele myth of the Wemale from the island of Ceram, as passed down by Jensen. The Dema deity according to Jensen differs from our familiar notions of God mainly in that it does not convey knowledge as a cultural hero, but rather passes it on directly through the death of their bodies, which are transformed into useful plants, which is then repeated again and again in the sacrificial cult.

Dema deity and man

The temporal effectiveness of the Dema deities lies in the past at the end of the "primeval times", where they were the dominant beings among the indigenous peoples known as Dema, with whom today's man remains connected by a long chain of ancestors and who are considered to be human, animals and plants can be described. This phase is over. The break between their and the human world comes about through the theft of divine property such as fire, grain, etc. by cultural heroes (e.g. Prometheus ), and has resulted in the separation of the human world as a punishment, with people emerging from the Demas after he became mortal. But there is also the idea that this was done through human intelligence (negative and positive variants).

Main characteristics

  • Through its creative work, the Dema deity first calls forth beings with their order and the people who are bound to them by a long chain of ancestors.
  • Animals and spirits also emerged from it.
  • Their mystical work is ended when they are killed.
  • However, it continues to work in various ways in the useful plants and in the realm of the dead, into which it is transformed on its journey through the dead.
  • Their work includes all aspects of reality, bad as well as good.

criticism

In the literature, however, there is also criticism of the concept of the Dema deity:

  • It is problematic to introduce this rather heterogeneous idea , which only exists in small groups of Melanesia and America, as a phenomenon for all prehistoric and early historical cultures of all climatic and environmental zones, because the Dema deities, which are typical for horticultural cultures are functionally contained in the old sky god. They may even have emerged locally as a special Neolithic form. The idea of ​​the dying god of vegetation, as found in the Adonis myth of Palestine and Greece, fits here much more into the neolithic rural context.
  • Another objection is that in the vast majority of the Neolithic cultures this classic fertility cult predominates and the concentration on the single symptom of sacrifice as the origin of the Dema cult seems very one-sided, especially since the Neolithic fertility cult is much more informally derived from old animistic ideas and also space for the supposedly widespread idea of ​​the mother goddess in the Neolithic .
  • The restriction to early forms of the Neolithic also seems questionable because of their poor archaeological traceability.
  • Jensen's dema concept is thus more in line with cultural anthropological interpretations, such as those from Sigmund Freud in Totem and Tabu (1912/13) or Émile Durkheim in Die elementarenformen des religious life (1912). Above all, however, his teacher Leo Frobenius with his concept of the Paideuma or cultural soul is considered to be his most important source of ideas.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Walter Hirschberg (greeting), Wolfgang Müller (red.): Dictionary of Ethnology. New edition, 2nd edition, Reimer, Berlin 2005. pp. 75–76 (Dema).
  2. ↑ Campbell, Mythologie der Urvölker
  3. ^ Encyclopedia Britannica

literature

  • J. Campbell: The Masks of God. Volume 1: Mythology of the indigenous peoples. Sphinx, Basel 1991, ISBN 3-85914-001-9 , pp. 198, 203, 206-209, 215, 240, 261.
  • Encyclopedia Britannica. 15th edition. 1993, ISBN 0-85229-571-5 , Vol. 4, p. 1; Vol. 24, p. 728; Vol. 26, p. 792.
  • M. Eliade: History of Religious Ideas. Vol. 4: Discoveries up to the present. Herder spectrum, Freiburg 1991, ISBN 3-451-05274-1 , pp. 107, 110, 152ff.
  • AE Jensen: The slain deity. World view of an early culture. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1966.
  • AE Jensen: Myth and cult among primitive peoples . dtv, Munich 1991, ISBN 3-423-04567-1 , pp. 131, 134–151, 160–165, 170–183, 186ff, 200, 208–213, 216–223, 231–250, 277, 314f, 389ff, 391-430, 447.
  • J. van Baal: Dema. Description and Analysis of Marind Anim Culture (South New Guinea) . The Hague 1966.