The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic & Religion. Study Course 01.09. The Succession to the Kingdom
This is the ninth chapter, in the first section of the book Book 01. Chapter 09 The Succession to the Kingdom describes the customs of succession by kings in various cultures and the customs involved in the appointment of new kings to the throne, the religious and symbolic associations therein, with my own additional discussion with emphasis on state, religion, and Natural Law
The chapter is a discussion on the question of succession of kingship in various ancient kingdoms, the customs and traditions around the world, the similarities between them, the differences between them, the symbolism, The historical outline and theoretical framework of succession to the throne by kings will be discussed.
Notes:
What was the rule of succession to the Latin kingship?
According to old tradition there were 8 kings of Rome, for the last five it is beyond doubt they actually sat on the throne and the traditional history of their reigns is correct.
Romulus said to have been descended from royal house of Alba, in which the kingship is represented as hereditary in the male line. Not one of the Roman kings was succeeded by his son on the throne. Yet several Kings left sons and grandsons behind them.
A switch to the female line was probably made according to the military or intelligence strategy, obviously back in those days the intelligence would have been a mystical order or club or something with a religious zeal in which to gather intelligence, and the military was probably in charge of some kind of liaison between the two.
On the other hand none of the Roman kings was immediately succeeded by his son, but three were succeeded by their sons-in-law, who were foreigners.
One of the 8 kings was descended from a former king through his mother, not through father, and three of the kings- Tatius, Tarquin, and Servius Tullius, were succeeded by son-in-laws, who were all of foreign descent.
Interesting parallel to allegorical symbolism in that the mother's line would be in line symbolically with Diana, as a goddess of the wilderness, the oaks and trees, and the hunt, which in symbolism stands as a symbol of man's inherent nature.
This suggests that the kingship was transmitted in the female line and was held by foreigners who married the royal princesses.
Right of the kingship was likely to be transmitted through the female line, and exercised by foreigners who married the royal princesses. This custom at Rome and probably in Latium generally determined by certain rules which moulded early society in many parts of the world, namely exogamy, been a marriage, a female kinship or mother-kin.
Exogamy is the rule which obliges a many to marry a woman of a different clan from his own, been a marriage is the rule that he must leave the home of his birth and live with his wife's people, and female kinship or mother-kin is the system of tracing relationship and transmitting the family name through the women instead of through men.
If this were the case in Latium, the state of things might follow- The religious and political centre of each community would be the perpetual fire on the king's hearth, tended by Vestal virgins 0f the royal clan. The king would be a man of another clan, perhaps of another town or race, who marries the daughter of his predecessor and received the kingdom with her. The children whom he had by her would inherent their mother's name, not his. The daughters would remain at home, the sons when they grew would be sent into the world, marry, and settle in their wive's country, whether as kings or commoners.
Of the daughters who stayed home, some or all would be dedicated as Vestal virgins for a longer or shorter time on the hearth, and one of them would in time become the consort of her father's successor.
An interesting part of all this is that the rulership of people by kingdoms and countries were oftentimes the distinction between 'us' and 'them' mentality and the vulnerabilities of taking in a foreigner to take over the throne would have some real problems if the object was to infiltrate and subvert the well-being of a country. What kinds of rules or customs were common back then to ensure this was not the case?
It also seems to be more the case that the process of the kingship and that seen in the vestal virgins that they would undergo a sort of indoctrination to hold the roles they play in society and the royalty.
This hypothesis explains some obscure features in the traditional History of the Latin kings, such as the stories of their miraculous birth.
Some obscure features of Latin kingship. The legends tell how Latin kings were born of virgin mothers and divine fathers are more intelligible.
Stripped of their fabulous element, tales of this sort mean no more than a woman has begotten a child with a man unknown; uncertainty as to fatherhood more compatible with a system of kinship which ignores paternity than with one which makes it all important. If at the time of birth for Latin kings their fathers were really unknown, the fact points to either a general looseness of life in the royal family or to a special relaxation of moral rules on certain occasions, when men and women reverted for a season to the license of an earlier age.
It seems to add more evidence to the atmosphere that could potentially support immoral behaviors as a way of trapping people into positions of obedience to the governing body. Saturnalia-like rituals or orgies at festivities would have provided an atmosphere in which royalty or statesman could involve themselves in immoral activities which caused them shame, and acted like an indoctrination mechanism, in the sacrificing of the individual's true spiritual initiation, to become obedient to the governing body which rules by fear, and if the individual's lived by fear, it would help bolster the indoctrination to such corrupted systems as Rome.
The Latin kings perhaps begotten at a Saturnalia
Such Saturnalias are not uncommon at some stages of social evolution. In UK, traces of them long survived in the practices of Whitsuntide and May Day, if not also at Christmas. Children born of more or less promiscuous intercourse which characterize festivities of the sort would naturally be fathered on the god to whom the particular festival was dedicated.
These Saturnalias sound akin to the description of bringing in the May Pole or May Tree at Whitsuntide on May Day, where the children went out into the woods at night and had to stay out there until dawn, and that hardly a third of them would return undefiled, or sexually assaulted or engaged in what would be publicly accepted as immoral, and was, since they were children.
The Roman festival of Midsummer was a kind of Saturnalia, and was specially associated with the fire-born King Servius Tullius
May not be a coincidence that a festival of jollity and drunkenness was celebrated by the plebeians and slaves at Rome on Midsummer Day, and that the festival was especially associated with the fire-born King Servius Tullius, being held in honor of Fortuna, the goddess who loved Servius as Egeria loved Numa.
popular merrymaking included footraces and boat-races, flower-wreathed boats, and the young sat in it drinking wine. Appears to have been some kind of Midsummer Saturnalia answering to the real Saturnalia which fell at midwinter. In modern Europe, the Midsummer festival had been above all a festival of lovers and fire. One of its principal features was the pairing of Sweethearts. They leap over bonfires hand in hand and throw flowers across the flames to each other. Many omens of love and marriage are drawn from the flowers which bloom at this mystic season. It is the time of roses and of love. May have been more course in immoral features which may have been the point of certain rites.
Among the Esthonian peasantry these features lingered down to the present day.
The custom of rowing in flower-decked boats on the river on this day proves that it was to some extent a water festival, and water has always played a conspicuous part in the rites of Midsummer Day. which explains why the church in throwing its cloak over the old heathen festival, chose to dedicate it to St. John the Baptist.
Frazer seems to understand that the depreciating or immoral factors had a role to play in the festivities themselves. May have helped to indoctrinate people and also used to coerce or blackmail those who are not indoctrinated easily. Of course, this may even be happening at the subconscious level, even if one wants to exclude a direct working together to conspire, but common is the spirit that breathes together working as one.
Krampus could be the comparable aggregation of spirit in the Saturnalia that occurred during the mid-winter festivities, and the May Day festivities could also have a similar mythical figure to represent for the lewd, creepy, aggressive behavior that was forced on many children in these festivities. Pan may have been Krampus' summer equivalent.
But the uncertainty as to the Roman kings may only mean that in the later times the names of their fathers were forgotten.
Latin kings begotten at annual festivals of love merely conjecture.
Quite possible that the uncertainty as to their fathers may not have arisen till long after the death of the kings, when their history began to melt away.
If they were foreigners, strangers and pilgrims of the land they ruled over, it would be natural enough that people would forget their lineage.
Final apotheosis, which represented the kings not merely sprung from the gods but as deities incarnate, would be much facilitated if in their lifetime they laid claim to divinity, which they often did.
My guess is that Frazer is probably more correct than not about the kings being conceived through activities at these festivals. This may have also helped add elements of ridicule and shaming as a way to keep the king and his family obedient to the terms of the kingdom customs. The pressure however, may come from outside the kingdom, if the new king who takes the throne has any communication with other kingdoms that may want to dominate the kingdom which a person is interbred with.
The claim to divinity may have some obscure origin that some of the royalties also believed in but was blurry as to the exact nature, and like the people of a kingdom fooled and ruled by superstition, the same may have been true within the ranks and royalties.
Where descent is traced through women only, girls of the highest rank may be married to men of humble birth, even to aliens and slaves.
If among the Latins the women of royal blood always stayed home and received their consorts of another stock, often of another country, who reigned as kings in virtue of their marriage with a native princess, it is understandable why foreigners always wore the crown at Rome, but also why foreign names occur in the list of Alban kings. In a state of society where nobility is reckoned only through women- where descent through the mother is everything and descent through father is nothing, no objection will be felt to uniting girls of the highest rank to men of humble birth, even foreigners or slaves, provided they appeared suitable mates.
What really matters is that the royal stock, on which the prosperity and existence of the kingdom depends, should be perpetuated in a vigorous and efficient form and for this women should bear children to men who are physically fit, according to the standard of the early society. The women to be in charge of the duties of procreation, so that picking a male consort it meant more to them that they pick someone who they like the qualities of physically and of possible mental fitness. If they had any royal background or from lineage high up in a society, all the better, but was not as essential as the more immediate qualities they would seek in physical form.
In many ways it was like the Eugenics philosophies, which of course, there is nothing new under the Sun, even in older times. It was perhaps a race to create the best, most agile and fit stock to come up as a kingdom. In that sense, the race of skin color and genes, may be a race like that seen to assume control as a superpower.
In Ashantee, where the kingdom descends through women, the rank of the king’s father is not regarded.
The Latin kingship hypothesis can be confirmed by analogy show the same to be the case elsewhere.
It was true for the Tshi-speaking people of West Africa.
In Ashantee, where the kingdom descends in the female line to the king's brothers and afterwards to the sons of his sister to the preference of his own sons, the sisters of the monarch are free to marry whomever they please, provided that the husband be a very strong and handsome man. It is preferred that he be of finer stock than the previous ones. Matters not how low his rank in society. If the sisters of the king have no sons, it passes to the king's sons but the sister sons are preferred when available.
In the Fantee country a slave who has the best looks and physique succeeds to that of the King's son. So little is paid in regard to the lineage by these peoples.
All of this lends more credibility to a race of eugenics and fitness to be the best rulers of men, and likewise would be seen later in Germany during the Second World War. Physical fitness was seen as more important than the direct link to family relations of trust, so they put a lot of emphasis on physical form, which would be the backbone of war. War being like a perpetual King of the Wood ritual, and likewise most males who go off to fight for armies at war are in their prime like the King of the Wood, with vital blood to shed.
Traces of female descent of the kingship in ancient Greece.
At Athens, as at Rome, we find traces of the succession to the throne by the marriage with a royal princess.
The two most ancient kings of Rome, Cecrops and Amphictyon, are said to have married the daughters of their predecessors, and evidence shows that at Athens male kinship was preceded by the female kinship.
The female line being the deciding factor may have been in realizing some kind of predisposition that the mother imparted to her child, perhaps a stable result they could rely on for the physical traits of the mother or her lineage. Or perhaps it was more symbolic, in that they were offering those of the female line, which could be associated with the inherent nature, as Diana could symbolize.
With this rule of descent of the kingship males rule over different kingdoms in successive generations.
If in ancient Latium kept their daughters home and sent forth their sons to marry princesses and reign among their wives people, it will follow that their male descendants would reign in succession at different kingdoms. Seems to have happened in Greece and ancient Sweden.
May have been a custom practiced in more than one of the Northern European stock.
This was my point earlier, that it may have been helpful as intelligence operations, methodologies to take the thrones of other kingdoms.
Migrations of the male descendants of Aeacus.
An example of the male reigning other neighboring kingdoms, the great house of Aeacus, the grandfather of Achilles and Ajax. Aeacus himself reigned in Aegina, but his descendants had been observed, 'from the beginning went forth to other lands.'
His son Telamon's son Teucer migrated to Cyprus, wedded the king's daughter, and succeeded the throne of his father-in-law.
Peleus, another son of Aeacus, quitted his native land and went away to Phthia in Thessaly, receiving the hand of the kings daughter.
This would have indicated a race, toward expansion and acquisition through spreading out their kingdom lines, and may be one of several important factors of why elite members of kingdoms today put so much emphasis on their bloodlines
These migrations not understood in later times.
Various reasons are attributed to the these migrations of princes. A common one is that the king's son being banished for murder, but this may be in error by the writers who cannot make sense of why they leave to go elsewhere when they have it so well at the kingdom.
The commoner was probably kept in the dark in the same way commoners are not usually privy to classified information today.
Traces of similar migrations in Scandinavian tradition.
In Scandinavian tradition, we meet traces of similar customs, daughters' husbands who received a share of the kingdoms of their royal fathers-in-law, even when the fathers-in-law had sons of their own.
During the five generations that preceded Harold the fair-haired, male members of the Ynglingar family, said to have come from Sweden, are reported in the Heimskringla or Sagas of the Norweigan Kings to have obtained at least six provinces in Norway by Marriage with the daughters of the local kings.
This would speak in favor of expansion to dominate other areas and take by relations if not by force.
A reminiscence of the kingship through women is preserved in popular tales.
Some Aryans or Northern Europeans, at a certain stage of evolution, it was customary to regard women and not men as the channels in which royal blood flows, and to bestow the kingdom in successive generations to the man of another family or kingdom or tribe, who marries the princess and reigns over his wife's people.
Perhaps certain traits that were more reliable to those born from a female line.
Where such customs prevail, the kingship is an appanage of marriage with a princess.
Kingship an appanage of marriage. The custom was seen for the Pictish kings. The Queen of Scotland, Hermutrude, a legendary queen, a historian from Denmark says "Indeed she was a queen' 'and but that her sex gainsaid it, might be deemed a king, nay (and this is yet truer), whomsoever she thought worthy of her bed was at once a king, and she yielded her kingdom with herself. Thus her sceptre and her hand went together. '
The custom was also observed from what Aegisthus did at Mycenae, and what Hamlet's uncle Feng and Hamlet's successor Wiglet did in Denmark, all three slew their predecessors, married their widows, and then sat peacefully on the throne.
Whenever doubt arose as to the succession the Picts chose from the female line rather than the male.
Historical evidence of the Pictish kings supports this. Fathers of the kings are never kings. No king succeeded the throne as a son of the king. The custom among the Picts was that of exogamy.
Perhaps it was so that the men could be more readily manipulated by the females and kept in line through their sexual pleasures and being 'whipped' as we call it today.
Succession to the throne determined by a race.
Sometimes the right to a throne or the princesses hand was determined by a race. The Alitemnian Libyans awarded the kingdom to the fastest runner. Among the Prussians, candidates for nobility raced on horseback to the king and the one who reached him him first was ennobled.
Perhaps this was an interesting parallel to the expansion of kingdoms being a race or competition, and they know the inherent nature of the divine masculine puts emphasis on ego, they could make the indoctrination of its expansion to be understood in this light, and taking advantage of it those involved would happily oblige.
Greek traditions of princesses whose hands were won in a race.
According to tradition the earliest games at Olympia were held by Endymion, who set his sons to run a race for the kingdom. His tomb was said to be at the point of the racecourse from which the runners started.
The famous story of Pelops and Hippodamia is perhaps only another version of the legend that the first races at Olympia were run for no less a prize than a kingdom.
The race then, serves as a good analogy for the symbolic rites of world domination, a competition, to be the most powerful superpower and take your competitors by force.
Custom of racing for a bride among the Kirghiz and Calmucks. Custom of racing for a bride among the Calmucks and some tribes of the Malay Peninsula.
There is one race called the 'Love Chase' which may be considered a part of the form of marriage among the Kirghiz.
The bride, armed with a formidable whip, mounts a fleet horse and is pursued by all the young men who make any pretensions to her hand. She will be the prize for the one who catches her, but she has the right to use her whip which is very harmful to fend off men she does not want and are unwelcome to her and will favor those she has probably already chosen in her heart.
But the custom also comes with a fee to the father of the woman, called a kalym, 'purchase-money' and an agreement has to also be made as to the amount of dowry which he is to give his daughter, and the Love Chase is a mere matter of form.
Ceremony of marriage among the Calmucks is also performed on horseback. Girl is mounted and rides full speed. The lover pursues and if he overtakes her she becomes his wife, marriage is consummated on the spot, afterwhich she returns to his tent. But no Calmack girl has to take the man if she does not want him and customs set up to enable this.
The race for bride seen in the Koryaks of northeastern Asia. Takes place in large tent and many seperate compartments setup called pologs, and the woman can be clear of marriage if she can run through all the compartments without being caught by bridegroom. The women in the encampment place every obstacle in his way so that he has little chance of winning unless the girl wishes it and waits for him.
Among the indigenous tribes of the Malay Peninsula 'marriage is preceded by a singular ceremony. An old man presents the future couple to guests, and followed by their families, leads them to a great circle, round which the girl sets off to run as fast as she can. If the young man succeeds in taking her, she becomes his mate, otherwise he loses all rights, which happens especially when he is not able to please the would-be bride.
All the usual elements at work, being whipped by a female, money to secure promised goods, all being factors that could help haze man and confuse his moral compass, seeing through the eyes of ego and winning competitions, while being at the mercy of worldly pleasures like woman and lust.
Caffre race for bride.
Other customs tell of racing to catch a bride by canoe. Before the wedding procession starts for the bridegrooms hut, a Cafrre bride is allowed to make one last bid for freedom, and a young man is told off to catch her. If he fails, she is theoretically allowed to return to her father, and the whole thing has to be repeated; but the flight of the bride is usually a pretence.
A pretence or a symbolic indoctrination for the subconscious mind just like the King of the Wood Ritual plays for those involved. It may be that the King of the Wood ritual devolved into a gladiator sport, but kept its symbolic association to the subconscious mind. It would be naturally expected, since the ritual itself symbolized a breaking of one's moral code in which they would descend, and the ritual custom itself would also devolve into something like a spectator sport, however in this case, would invite the general public to cheer it on. It is said that it may have devolved into a spectator or gladiator-like event during the rule of Caligula, who also had floating palaces built or setup on Lake Nemi, as an obvious symbolic reference to the God Neptune, the Greek equivilent of which was Poseidon, who rules from the water. Horses were also sacred to Neptune/Poseidon, and the servants of his rulership were horses, work horses and order takers, which the strong government depended on.
The annual flight of the king (regifugium) at Rome may have been a relic of his contest for the kingdom and for the hand of the princess.
The right to marry a girl, and especially a princess, has often been conferred as a prize in some athletic contest. No surprise if the Roman kings tested these men like this before bestowing them to their daughters.
The Roman king may have personated Jupiter and his divine consort, and in the character of these divinities may have went through an annual ceremony of a sacred marriage for the purpose of causing the crops to grow and men and cattle to be fruitful and multiply, in a way similar to the ceremony of May King and May Queen, which has sometimes given the right to play this role by winning a race.
May have been an old custom of marriage to test the fitness of a candidate for matrimony.
Such a test may have also been done to test the king of an empire and make him demonstrate his fitness and ability to dominate like Jupiter. To ensure that no defect in him was present that should show he lacked the performance necessary to those allegorical or mock marriage ceremonies of King and Queen, which may have been considered more important than his civil and military duties, and these marriage of nature to man may have been considered the prosperity in which the entire kingdom depends. So naturally he might have to demonstrate his fitness publicly to show that he was still equal to the level of the higher divinities.
A relic of that test may have survived in what is called the Flight of the King (regifugium), which continued to be observed annually down to imperial times. On the 24th day of February a sacrifice used to be offered in the Comitium, and when it was over the King of the Sacred Rights fled from the Forum.
Conjecture that the Flight of the king may have been a race for an annual kingship, which may have been awarded to the fastest runner. A king might continue running and keep office till he eventually is defeated or slain.
The rite was sometimes interpreted as a commemoration of the expulsion of the kings of Rome ceremony, but may have been devised as a way to explain a ceremony which the original meaning is forgotten.
The King of the Sacred Rites may have been merely keeping up an ancient custom which the regal period had to be annually observed by his predecessors the kings. Frazer thinks perhaps the yearly flight of the Roman king was a relic of time when the kingship was an annual office awarded, along with the hand of a princess, to the victorious athlete or gladiator, who thereafter figured along with his bride as a god and goddess at a sacred marriage designed to ensure the fertility of the earth by homoeopathic magic. All of this, says Frazer, is pure speculation and conjecture.
My feeling is that Frazer has it wrong, or at least in part. I would bet to say if there was an annual or recurring ceremony that includes an expulsion of the king, it is a symbolic ceremony to subconsciously declare to each person the destruction of the sacred masculine, so that the annual or at least recurring enough to keep driving the subconscious mind with the idea that the sacred masculine is no longer theirs and this would be done to influence the mind to be more obedient to government, because I would imagine that the order and control of the people is as important to the kingdom as the continuation of crops, which will come anyway, with or without their ceremonies, and I think they know that. We make them out to be dumber than they were.
Ensuring the stability of the empire depended on the law and order imposed, and thus justice would have been thought of as being able to control the members of any society to abide by the rules imposed.
The violent ends of the Roman Kings.
Frazer thinks if he is right in supposing that in a very early time the old Latin kings personated a god and were regularly put to death in that character, we can better understand the mysterious or violent ends to which so many of them are said to have come to. But Frazer says too much credit should not be given to this idea, since in any turbulent state of society, kings, like commoners, are apt to be faced with being killed for much sounder reasons than a claim to divinity.
What would the purpose of dying a violent death? Back in those times it was seen as honorable to die quickly and violently in the prime of life rather than getting old and decaying, as they say, better to burn out than to fade away, perhaps this was because of the way they were remembered when they died, the age they were at, or perhaps because the violent ends conjures more feeling and legacy than those who fade away and deteriorate, did they take their legacy to also deteriorate if not to die by violent means in their prime? Forming the same kind of sympathetic magic association to that seen throughout this book.
Death of Romulus on the seventh of July, the Nonae Caprotinae, at a festival resembling Saturnalia.
It is worth noting that Romulus is said to have vanished mysteriously like Aeneas, or to have been cut to pieces by the patrons who he offended, and that on the 7th of July, the day he vanished, was a festival which bore some resemblance to the Saturnalia. On that day the female slaves were allowed to take remarkable liberties. They dressed up in the attire of free women like matrons and maids, and in this guise they went forth from the city, scoffed and jeered at who they met, and engaged among themselves in a fight, striking and throwing stones at each other.
Here is an example of the ways in which these Saturnalia's could demonstrate that the festivals made the atmosphere for immorality ripe, and thus had a part to play in the indoctrination or hazing into the customs of religion/state. Perhaps in this case the result spun out of control.
Violent ends of Tatius, Tullus Hostilius, and other Roman kings.
Another Roman King who perished by violence was Tatius, the Sabine colleague of Romulus. Said that he was at Lavinium offering a public sacrifice to the ancestral gods, when some men to whom he had given some offense or disrespect had taken the knives and sharp objects from the altar and stabbed him to death. However, it is also possible that the death may have been a sacrifice rather than assassination. Tullius Hostilius, successor of Numa, was commonly said to have been killed by lightning, but many held that he was murdered at the instigation of Ancus Marcius, who reigned after him.
Speaking of the more or less mythical Numa, a type of priestly king, Plutarch observes that
'his fame was enhanced by the fortunes of the later kings. For of the five who reigned after him the last was deposed and ended his life in exile, and of the remaining four not one died a natural death, for three of them were assassinated and Tullus Hostilius was consumed by thunderbolts.'
'his fame was enhanced by the fortunes of the later kings. For of the five who reigned after him the last was deposed and ended his life in exile, and of the remaining four not one died a natural death, for three of them were assassinated and Tullus Hostilius was consumed by thunderbolts.'
This implies that King Ancus Marcius, as well as Tarquin the Elder and Servius Tullius perished by the hand of an assassin.
No other ancient historian claims this of Ancus Marcius, though one of them says that the king 'was carried off by an untimely death.'
Tarquin the elder was slain by two murderers whom the sons of his predecessor, Ancus Marcius, hired to do the deed.
Lastly, Servius Tullius came to his end by similar circumstances that resembled the combat for the priesthood of Diana at Nemi. He was attacked by his successor and killed by his order, though not by his own hands.
Interesting that Tullius said to have died by lightning, was this mere myth, allegorical, literal, or both simultaneously? it would make sense that the kingdom could be succeeded to another by slaying if the object was physical fitness, which, by the emphasis on the female line as the cohesive factor would lend more evidence to speak for a Eugenics-like mindset, where physical makeup and genes are everything, even if not understood at the cellular level. It was apparent through the physical makeup. The ritual murder that would have been employed would have found acceptance and even encouragement if the name of the game was to have the most strong and physically fit king.
The succession to the Latin kingship may sometimes have been decided by single combat.
Legends of the violent ends of the Roman kings suggest that the contest by which they gained the throne may have been a mortal combat rather than a race.
If so, it might tighten the explanation for the survival of the Priesthood of Diana at the Lake of Nemi.
At both places the kings were the living representatives of the godhead and thus would be liable to suffer deposition and death at the hands of any resolute man who could prove his divine right to the holy office by the strong arm and sharp sword.
Again there may be a general acceptance and encouragement if the average people are brainwashed to encourage such immoral codes if it equated to them as more security.
Combats for the kingdom in Africa.
A parallel to what Frazer conceives to have been the rule of the old Latin kingship is furnished by a West African custom of the time back then (1890). When the Maluango of king of Loango, who is deemed representative of God on earth, has been elected, he has to take his stand at Nkumbi, a large tree near the entrance to his sacred ground. Here, encouraged by one of his ministers, he must fight all rivals who present themselves to dispute his right to the throne.
This is one of the many instances in which the rites and legends of ancient Italy are illustrated by the practice of then-modern Africa.
Among the Banyoro, of Central Africa, whose king had to take his own life by his own hand whenever his health and strength began to fail, the succession to the throne was deemed by a mortal combat among claimants, who fought till only one was left alive.
Even in England a relic of a similar custom survived till later in the coronation ceremony, at which a champion used to throw down his glove and challenge to mortal combat all who disputed the King's right to the crown. This ceremony was witnessed by Pepys at the coronation of Charles the Second.
Taking by force seems to be the underlying message, which the governments and rulers end up doing to the commoners, so it seems to work in the Hermetic axiom, "As Above, So Below"