FETICISM. — The term fetico (enchantment, amulet), a word derived from the Latin factitius (cf. Italian fattura), was applied by the Portuguese, who reached the coasts of West Africa in the fifteenth century, to certain objects (trees, stones, shells, claws, sticks, vessels, etc.) toward which the Negroes showed particular veneration. Unfortunately, the term fetish, although extremely common, has never had a precise and generally accepted scientific meaning, and still less has this been true of its derivative, f., coined by Ch. de Brossea (v.). Indeed, the latter term has been given the most varied meanings and the widest range of application, in relation to different evolutionist theories of the history of religions.
De Brossea (Da culte des dieux fétiches, Paris 1760) held that f., deriving from a vague feeling of fear, had been, together with astrolatric Sabaism, the initial stage in the religious development of pagan peoples. N. S. Bergier (L'origine des dieux du paganisme, ibid. 1767) emphasized that f. and astrolatry depended upon a tendency to see things as animated by genii and spirits. Those who contributed most to giving f. that wholly generic and conventional meaning so often attributed to it were above all A. Canute (Cours de philosophie positive, ibid. 1830–42) and J. Lubbock (The origin of civilization, London 1879). The former, interpreting f. as the most elementary and indeterminate manifestation of religious spirit, placed it at the beginning of the evolutionary scale of religions, further broadening, for systematic reasons, the meaning of fetish so as to include the so-called great fetishes: the sun, moon, and earth; the latter made f., defined as the state in which man supposes that he can compel the divinity to satisfy his desires, follow a presumed primitive atheism, understood as the absence of precise ideas concerning the Divinity. The purely abstract and a priori nature of these evolutionary scales was inevitably to yield before the progress of ethnological studies: the first to disappear forever, as a supposed distinct phase in the religious history of humanity, was precisely f. E. B. Tylor interpreted f. within the framework animism (v.) which he had developed (Primitive culture, II, London 1872, chap. 14). According to the English scholar, an object should be considered a fetish whenever it is held that a spirit is incarnate in it, or acts or communicates through it, and whenever the object is consequently treated as endowed with consciousness and power. Tylor excludes from the category of fetishes objects that are merely signs, possessing a purely ideal significance; nor should the power of the fetish be confused with an impersonal magical efficacy immanent in the object. Naturally, the spirit animating the fetish may also be that of a deceased person: in such cases the fetish often consists of remains of the dead body, especially bones or the skull. Tylor’s interpretation of the phenomenon of f. certainly contains valid elements, but does not appear complete. A. Lang (The making of religion, ibid. 1898) and others had already insisted upon points not developed by Tylor: particular reasons of strancazzia or of experience would be what led people to recognize an object as a fetish, invested with vitality and power. Further limitations on the validity of the animistic interpretation of f. were to be introduced by the theory, which subsequently gained acceptance, of a pre-animistic stage in the development of religious concepts. In reality, such a complete dichotomy between soul and body, and above all a duality universally extended even to physical objects, as postulated by Tylor, does not seem to have been possible for primitive man, still less to have been the source of his psychological and religious conceptual heritage. With regard to physical reality, primitive man would have limited himself to perceiving a living personality, favorable or unfavorable according to circumstances, around those localities or in those objects that most impressed his wonder, or that had mysteriously or unexpectedly influenced his experience. Only later would the further development of the theory of natural spirits and the souls of the dead, together with the magical practices connected with their treatment, have given f. its often particularly evident character of degraded animism contaminated by magic.
Among the Negroes of western Guinea, to limit ourselves to the peoples most evidently devoted to fetish practices, the notion of a Supreme Being is familiar: after creating the world, he is said to have withdrawn from it, leaving it to be governed by spirits. This Supreme Being is never represented by idols, and is invoked only at exceptional moments, with brief and spontaneous formulas of prayer. It is to the spirits, instead, and to the souls of the dead, that the Negro continually has recourse, above all,
From what has been said, it clearly follows that fetishism does not constitute a type of religion in itself; rather, it is a secondary phenomenon in its most conspicuous manifestations, clearly degenerative, conceptually connected with other religious or magical phenomena and which, far from excluding religion or preceding it, coexists, among the same populations and in the same cultural environments, with belief in a Supreme Being, creator of nature.
Traces of fetishism understood in the sense clarified above may be found among various peoples of antiquity and among contemporary peoples; its classical land is West Africa (particularly Upper Guinea), but it is also found, in one form or another, in both Americas, in Polynesia, in India, and elsewhere.
Brm.: In addition to the works cited, cf.: F. H. Cushing, Zuni feticus, in Annual report of the bureau of ethnology, 1880-81, pp. 9 ff.; M. H. Kinsley, West african studies, London 1869;
R. H. Nassau, Fetishism in West Africa, there 1904; A. C. Haddon, Magic and fetishism, there 1906; A. Le Roy, La religion des primitifs, Paris 1909; J. T. Driscoll, Fetishism, in Cath. Esc., VI, pp. 52-58; W. G. Aston, Fetishism, in Enc. of Rel. and Eth., V, pp. 894-905; C. K. Meek, The northern tribes of Nigeria, Oxford 1925; W. Schmidt, Der Ursprung der Gottesidee, I, Münster in V, 1912; P. Amaury Talbot, The peoples of southern Nigeria, Oxford 1926; D. Westermann, Gottesvorstellungen in Oberguinea, in Africa, 1 (1928), pp. 189-200; W. Schmidt, Manuale di storia comparata delle religioni, Brescia 1928.