FETISHISM. - The term fetish (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 15th century, to certain objects (trees, stones, shells, claws, sticks, vessels, etc.) toward which the Negroes showed particular veneration. Unfortunately the term fetish, although very widely used, has never had a well-defined and commonly accepted scientific meaning, and even less has its derivative f., coined by Ch. de Brosses (v.). Indeed, the latter term has been given the most varied meanings and the most varied extension, in relation to different evolutionist theories of the history of religions.
De Brosses (Du culte des dieux fétiches, Paris 1760) held that f., derived from a vague feeling of fear, had been, together with astrolatric sabaeism, the initial stage of the religious development of pagan peoples. N. S. Bergier (L'origine des dieux du paganisme, ibid. 1767) emphasized how f. and astrolatry depended on a tendency to see things as animated by genii and spirits. Those who contributed most to giving f. that entirely generic and conventional meaning that is all too often attributed to it were above all A. Comte (Cours de philosophie positive, ibid. 1830-42) and J. Lubbock (The origin of civilization, London 1879). The first, interpreting f. as the most elementary and indeterminate manifestation of the religious spirit, placed it at the beginning of the evolutionary scale of religions, widening still further, for systematic reasons, the meaning of fetish, to the point of including even the so-called great fetishes: sun, moon, earth; the second made f., defined as the state in which man supposes he can force the divinity to satisfy his desires, succeed a supposed primitive atheism, understood as the absence of precise ideas about the Divinity. The purely abstract and a priori nature of these evolutionary scales was bound to give way before the progress of ethnological studies: the first to disappear forever, as a supposed separate phase in the religious history of humanity, was precisely f. E. B. Tylor interpreted f. within the framework of the general theory of animism (v.) that he elaborated (Primitive culture, II, London 1872, ch. 14). According to the English scholar, an object would be considered a fetish if one believes that a spirit is incarnate in it, or that it acts or communicates through it, and if the object is consequently treated as endowed with consciousness and power. Tylor excludes from the category of fetishes objects that constitute mere signs, with purely ideal signification, nor is the virtue of the fetish to be confused with an impersonal magical efficacy immanent in the object. Naturally the spirit that animates the fetish can also be that of a deceased person: in such cases the fetish often consists of remains of the dead person's body, particularly bones or the skull. The interpretation given by Tylor to the phenomenon of f. certainly has elements of validity, but it does not appear complete. Already A. Lang (The making of religion, ibid. 1898) and others insisted on those points not developed by Tylor: it would be particular reasons of strangeness or of experience that lead one to recognize an object as a fetish, invested with vitality and power. Further limitations to the validity of the animistic interpretation of f. were to be introduced by the subsequently established theory of a pre-animistic stage in the development of religious concepts. In reality, so complete a dichotomy between soul and body, and above all a duality universally extended even to physical objects, such as that postulated by Tylor, does not seem to have been able to belong to primitive man, and even less to be the source of his conceptual, psychological and religious heritage. As regards physical reality, primitive man would have limited himself to seeing a living personality, favorable or unfavorable as the case might be, around those places or in those objects that most imposed themselves on his wonder or that had mysteriously or unexpectedly influenced his experience. Only later would the further development of the theory of nature spirits and of the souls of the dead, and the magical practices connected with their treatment, have brought f. to its often particularly evident character of degraded animism contaminated with magism.
To the Negroes of West Guinea, to limit ourselves to the peoples most evidently devoted to fetishistic practices, the notion of a Supreme Being is familiar, who, after creating the world, would have withdrawn from it, leaving it to be governed by spirits. This Supreme Being is never represented by idols, and is invoked only in exceptional moments, with brief and spontaneous formulas of prayer. It is to the spirits, on the other hand, and to the souls of the dead, that the Negro continually has recourse, espe-
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above all to ward off from himself the consequences of their possible ill will. These spirits can wander or dwell in particularly suitable places (imposing trees, caves, cliffs, etc., or, in the case of the dead, villages or tombs), including in fetish objects (gri-gris, ju-ju, etc.); moreover, they can be localized in such objects for longer or shorter periods by the arts of a witch-doctor (ugango). Naturally, the natives clearly distinguish between the physical object and the spirit that animates it; the latter can abandon the object, which then loses all value, nor would there be any lack of means (trial by fire or other) to ascertain the presence of the spirit. Fetishes, which receive aspersion with liquids (rham, palm wine, etc.), can be individual (carried on one's person or in special wrappings), familial, or belonging to the community (kept in particular buildings).
From what has been said, it clearly follows that fetishism does not constitute a religion in itself, but is rather a secondary phenomenon in its most conspicuous manifestations, clearly degenerative, which is conceptually connected to other religious or magical phenomena and which, far from excluding or preceding religion, coexists, in the same populations and cultural environments, with belief in a Supreme Being, creator of nature.
Traces of fetishism understood in the sense clarified above can be found among various peoples of antiquity and of the present day; its classic land is West Africa (particularly Upper Guinea), but it is also found, in one form or another, in the two Americas, in Polynesia, in India and elsewhere.