Origin of Fetishes
If so, tant pis pour monsieur le President. But how does the unscientific conduct attributed to De Brosses implicate the modern anthropologist? Do we not try to find out, and really succeed sometimes in finding out, why a savage cherishes this or that scrap as a ‘fetish’? I give a string of explanations in Custom and Myth (pp. 229-230). Sometimes the so-called fetish had an accidental, which was taken to be a causal, connection with a stroke of good luck. Sometimes the thing—an odd-shaped stone, say—had a superficial resemblance to a desirable object, and so was thought likely to aid in the acquisition of such objects by ‘sympathetic magic.’ 117b
Other ‘fetishes’ are revealed in dreams, or by ghosts, or by spirits appearing in semblance of animals. 118a