Animal worship
Animal worship is an umbrella term designating religious or ritual practices involving animals. This includes the worship of animal deities or animal sacrifice. An animal 'cult' is formed when a species is taken to represent a religious figure. Animal cults can be classified according to their formal features or by their symbolic content.
The classical author Diodorus situated the origin of animal worship in a myth in which the gods, threatened by giants, disguised themselves as animals. The people then began to worship these animals and continued even after the gods returned to their normal state. In 1906, Weissenborn suggested that animal worship resulted from humans' fascination with the natural world. Primitive man would observe an animal that had a unique trait and the inexplicability would engender curiosity. Wonder resulted from primitive man's observations of this distinctive trait. As such, primitive man worshipped animals that had inimitable traits. Lubbock proposed that animal worship originated from family names. In societies, families would name themselves and their children after certain animals and eventually came to hold that animal above other animals. Eventually, these opinions turned into deep respect and evolved into fully developed worship of the family animal. The belief that an animal is sacred frequently results in dietary laws prohibiting their consumption. As well as holding certain animals to be sacred, religions have also adopted the opposite attitude, that certain animals are unclean.
The idea that divinity embodies itself in animals, such as a deity incarnate, and then lives on earth among human beings is disregarded by Abrahamic religions. Sects deemed heretical such as the Waldensians were accused of animal worship. In Pentecostal churches, animals have very little religious significance. Animals have become less and less important and symbolic in cult rituals and religion, especially among African cultures, as Christianity and Islamic religions have spread.
The Egyptian pantheon was especially fond of zoomorphism, with many animals sacred to particular deities—cats to Bastet, ibises and baboons to Thoth, crocodiles to Sobek and Ra, fish to Set, mongoose, shrew and birds to Horus, dogs and jackals to Anubis, serpents and eels to Atum, beetles to Khepera, bulls to Apis. Animals were often mummified as a result of these beliefs. In Wicca, the Horned God represents an animal-human deity.
Hunting cults
Bear
There is evidence that connects the Greek goddess Artemis with a cult of the bear. Girls danced as "bears" in her honour, and might not marry before undergoing this ceremony. According to mythology, the goddess once transformed a nymph into a bear and then into the constellation Ursa Major.The existence of an ancient bear cult among Neanderthals in the Middle Paleolithic period has been a topic of discussion spurred by archaeological findings. Ancient bear bones have been discovered in several different caves and their peculiar arrangement is believed by some archaeologists to be evidence of a bear cult during the Paleolithic era.
Image:AinuBearSacrificeCirca1870.jpg|thumb|upright=1.35|right|The Ainu Iomante ceremony. Japanese scroll painting, circa 1870
The Ainu people, who live on select islands in the Japanese archipelago, call the bear "kamui" in their language, which translates to mean god. While many other animals are considered to be gods in the Ainu culture, the bear is the head of the gods. For the Ainu, when the gods visit the world of man, they don fur and claws and take on the physical appearance of an animal. Usually, however, when the term "kamui" is used, it essentially means a bear. The Ainu people willingly and thankfully ate the bear as they believed that the disguise of any god was a gift to the home that the god chose to visit.
Whale
Whales were little understood for most of human history as they spend up to 90% of their lives underwater, only surfacing briefly to breathe. Many cultures, even those that have hunted them, hold whales in awe and feature them in their mythologies.A prevalent whale cult in Japan occurs around the coastal area. There are cemeteries with memorial stones dedicated to the whales which were hunted and killed to feed the people. Buddhist epitaphs mark these stones which implore that Buddha is reborn as a whale. Along with these memorials, there is evidence that whale embryos, found in a deceased mother's womb, were extracted and buried with the same respect as a human being. For certain shrines, the bones of a perished whale were also deposited in the area.
In Alaska, there are cultures that have ceremonial tributes to whales after they are captured in a hunt. Some tribes bring the hump, the fins, or the nose of the whale into their camps or the whaler's house. These parts are meant to represent the entirety of the whale and are honored as such during the festival. The bones of a whale are also given ritual treatment. The Alaskan tribes that participate in such acts believe that their ceremonies protect the whale's soul from injury and the soul can then be free to return to the sea.
In China, Yu-kiang, a whale with the hands and feet of a man, was said to rule the ocean.
In the Tyrol region of Austria, it was said that if a sunbeam were to fall on a maiden entering womanhood, she would be carried away in the belly of a whale.
Paikea, the youngest and favourite son of the chief Uenuku from the island of Mangaia, in the present day Cook Islands, was said by the Kati Kuri people of Kaikōura to have come from the Pacific Islands on the back of the whale Tohora many centuries before.
The whale features in Inuit creation myths. When 'Big Raven', a deity in human form, found a stranded whale, he was told by the Great Spirit where to find special mushrooms that would give him the strength to drag the whale back to the sea and thus return the order to the world.
The Tlingit people of northern Canada say that the orcas were created when the hunter Natsihlane carved eight fish from yellow cedar, sang his most powerful spirit song and commanded the fish to leap into the water.
In Icelandic legend, a man threw a stone at a fin whale and hit the blowhole, causing the whale to burst. The man was told not to go to sea for twenty years, but in the nineteenth year he went fishing and a whale came and killed him.
In East African legend, King Sulemani asked God that he might permit him to feed all the beings on earth. A whale came and ate until there was no corn left and then told Sulemani that he was still hungry and that there were 70,000 more in his tribe. Sulemani then prayed to God for forgiveness and thanked the creature for teaching him a lesson in humility.
Some cultures that associate divinity with whales, such as some Ghanaians and Vietnamese, coastal Chinese except for southernmost region, Japanese, occasionally hold funerals for beached whales; a throwback to Vietnam's ancient sea-based Austro-Asiatic culture. See also the below-mentioned Ebisu in fish part for more details. In some lore, whales have been told to work for Ryūgū-jō as well.
Indigenous Ainu tribes on Hokkaido revered killer whales as Repun Kamuy, "God of Sea/Offshore" in their folklore and myths that the deities will bring fortunes to coastal people.
Domesticated mammals
Cattle and buffalo
Many religions have considered cattle to be sacred, most famously Hinduism from India and Nepal, but also Zoroastrianism, and ancient Greek and Egyptian religion. Cattle and buffalo are respected by many pastoral peoples that rely on the animals for sustenance and the killing of an ox is a sacrificial function.The Toda of southern India abstain from the flesh of their domestic animal, the buffalo. However, once a year they sacrifice a bull calf, which is eaten in the forest by the adult males. The buffalo plays an important part in many Toda rituals. These buffalo are currently endangered.
The Ancient Egyptians worshipped a great number of deities who were either depicted entirely as cattle, or incorporated cattle features in their appearance. Hesat, a goddess of milk and motherhood, was depicted as a full cow, as was Mehet-weret, a sky goddess, identified as the Celestial Cow whose body made up the sky, and whose four legs marked the four cardinal directions. Bat, a goddess of music and dance, was depicted as a woman with bovine ears and horns, as was Hathor, a very major goddess who borrowed a lot of her attributes from Bat. The great antiquity of the worship of Bat is evidenced by her appearance on the Narmer Palette, made by the very first of the dynastic pharaohs. When identified with the Celestial Cow Mehet-weret, the sky goddess Nut may also take the form of a cow, as in the Book of the Heavenly Cow. When acting in her role as a heavenly goddess, the mother goddess Isis may also be shown with bovine horns, adopting the traditional headdress of Hathor.
As well as these female cow goddesses, the Egyptians also had a number of male bull gods. Conspicuous among these was the bull god Apis, who was embodied in a living bull kept at the Temple of Ptah at Memphis. Regarded as Ptah's herald, the Apis bull was distinguished by certain marks, and when the old bull died a new one was sought. The finder was rewarded, and the bull underwent four months' education at Nilopolis. Its birthday was celebrated once a year when oxen, which had to be pure white, were sacrificed to it. Women were forbidden to approach it once its education was finished. Oracles were obtained from it in various ways. After its death, it was mummified and buried in a rock tomb. A similar practice was in place at Heliopolis with the Mnevis bull, the herald of Ra, and at Hermonthis with the Buchis bull, the herald of Montu. After their death, all these sacred bulls were considered to become part of Osiris.
Similar observances are found in our own day on the Upper Nile. The Nuba and Nuer revere cattle. The Angoni of Central Africa and the Sakalava of Madagascar keep sacred bulls. In India respect for the cow is widespread, but is of post-Vedic origin; there is little actual worship, but the products of the cow are important in magic.
While there are several animals that are worshipped in India, the supreme position is held by the cow. The humped zebu, a breed of cow, is central to the religion of Hinduism. Mythological legends have supported the sanctity of the zebu throughout India. Such myths have included the creation of a divine cow mother and cow heaven by the God, Brahma and Prithu, the sovereign of the universe, who created the earth's vegetation, edible fruits, and vegetables, disguised as a cow.
According to Tadeusz Margul, observations of the Hindu religion and the cow have led to a misunderstanding that Hindi has a servile relationship with the zebu, giving prayers and offerings to it daily. Typically, however, only during the Cow Holiday, an annual event, is the cow the recipient of such practices. Margul suggests that the sanctity of the cow is based on four foundations: abstaining from cow slaughter, abstaining from beef consumption, control of breeding and ownership, and belief in the purification qualities of cow products.