Road Apples
April 5, 2010

If your rituals aren't working for you, borrow one of ours

By Tim Sanders

This week I was unsure whether to write about legislation mandating carbon-neutral, methane-free political speech on Capitol Hill, or rituals. I flipped a coin, and rituals lost, so I went for the best two out of three. Rituals it is.

Our dachshund, Maggie, has a variety of rituals. One of her favorite rituals is to spin around four or five times when we fix her food. Initially there may have been an excellent reason for the spinning. She may have been after a mite in her tail section, who knows? Whatever the case, her tiny canine mind now associates food with spinning, so at meal time she spins. For several years my wife and I enjoyed watching a remarkable dog who sat outside a store on the old Cedar Bluff Highway. Every time a car passed, the dog would spin around, just like Maggie does now when food appears. But traffic spinning, not food spinning, was that dog’s ritual, and I’d be willing to bet that after Cherokee County’s version of rush hour, he had to lie down and take a pill.

“Big deal,” you say. “Most dogs have rituals.” Well, so do most humans. For example, we have two styles of spoons in our silverware drawer, but I will use only one style. It's a silly ritual. Then again, I’ve used my lucky spoons and steered clear of the others–the bad spoons–for over a decade now, and for over a decade I’ve never been hit by a bus.

I recently read an interesting BBC article about Cargo Cults. Dating from the late 1800s, these cults were a peculiar combination of South Pacific islanders’ ancient religion, which put a lot of emphasis on material goods, and Christianity, which, initially at least, didn’t. The islanders believed that one day their dead ancestors would come back to life and bring them just loads of material goods. When Europeans first visited New Guinea in the 1700s and brought with them gifts of steel axes and bolts of cloth, the islanders assumed these guys were their dead ancestors who’d come back to life and brought “cargo.” So the first Cargo Cult was born.

When the Germans colonized New Guinea and Lutheran missionaries tried to introduce Christianity to the natives, they didn’t pass out gifts on a regular basis, because they were Germans.

Instead they concentrated on hymns and sermons, which led the islanders to believe the Germans were stealing the cargo for themselves and hoarding it in Europe. After a couple of revolts in the early part of the 20th Century, the New Guineans decided that the best way of obtaining cargo was to adopt the Europeans’ religion, which obviously held the Secret of Cargo.

Here is an excerpt from the April 27, 2004 BBC article which tries to explain the islanders’ theology in the early part of the last century:


“[God] created Adam and Eve and gave them cargo of canned meat, steel tools, rice in bags and matches. He took it all away when they discovered sex and he sent a flood to destroy them, but he gave Noah a big, wooden steamboat and made him the captain so he would survive.

When Ham disobeyed his father his cargo was taken away and he was sent to New Guinea. Now his descendants were being given a chance to reform and regain their cargo.”


Perfectly clear so far? The article continues:


“All through the twenties the natives patiently worked hard, sang hymns and prayed ... But by the thirties it became clear that the missionaries were lying; they had been good Christians and worked hard, but it was the foreign bosses who did no work that got all the cargo.”


During the early months of World War II, the Japanese controlled many of the South Pacific islands. So the islanders’ Cargo Prophets decided the Japanese soldiers were their long deceased ancestors who’d returned to build airstrips and bring planes, and at least the promise some cargo which was on it’s way but being held up by the war. The rest of the story is quite convoluted, but later, when the American GIs landed, and were much more generous with their cargo than either the Japanese or the Germans had been, the Cargo Cult shifted gears again. When Cargo Cultists on the island of Tanna, who had worked building American landing strips on the neighboring island of Efate, saw the resulting cargo arriving, they decided this time they knew the Secret of Cargo. Putting two and two together and getting twenty-two, they returned to Tanna after the war and built primitive airstrips and warehouses, and carved bamboo airplanes and bamboo helmets and crude bamboo radio towers. They even mimicked the GIs’ behavior by marching, military style, to the Tannese version of that stirring American anthem,“Mairzy Doates,” which sounded almost exactly like the English version. If it worked for the islanders of Efate, who now had their very own jeep and nine toasters, it would certainly work for them.

There is a lot more in that little article, including the Tannese Cult of John Frum, who was purportedly an American WWII GI who knew the Secret of Cargo. John Frum Day (the day on which John Frum will return with canned ham and other valuable cargo) is still celebrated every February 15 on Tanna. There was also the attempt by the residents of New Hanover Island to buy Lyndon Johnson for $75,000 in 1968 and install him as their king because he obviously knew the Secret of Cargo. Lady Bird discussed the offer with her daughters, one of whom was also a Bird, and finally declined.

And speaking of religious rituals, we here in America certainly have our share. I heard of a devout snake-handler from Tennessee who married a foot-washer from Florida. They had a dyslexic son who told his parents he didn’t go for any of that crazy snake-washing stuff, but foot-handling was just his style. When he grew up he was arrested on an Atlanta street corner for practicing podiatry without a license.