Household deity

Some examples of these include: Although the cosmic status of household deities was not as lofty as that of the Twelve Olympians or the Aesir, they were also jealous of their dignity and also had to be appeased with shrines and offerings, however humble.

[3][4] Eventually, rationalism and the Industrial Revolution threatened to erase most of these minor deities until the advent of romantic nationalism rehabilitated them and embellished them into objects of literary curiosity in the 19th century.

[5]Drawing the picture with broader strokes, he continues: Three stages of ancestor-worship are to be distinguished in the general course of religious and social evolution; and each of these finds illustration in the history of Japanese society.

The first stage is that which exists before the establishment of a settled civilization, when there is yet no national ruler, and when the unit of society is the great patriarchal family, with its elders or war-chiefs for lords.

Finally, with the union of all the clans or tribes under one supreme head, there is developed the custom of propitiating the spirits of national, rulers.

Tylor disagreed with Herbert Spencer, another founder of anthropology, as well as of sociology, about the innateness of the human tendency towards animistic explanations, but both agreed that ancestor worship was the root of religion and that domestic deities were survivals from such an early stage.

[7] In contradistinction to both Herbert Spencer and Edward Burnett Tylor, who defended theories of animistic origins of ancestor worship, Émile Durkheim saw its genesis in totemism.

This distinction is somewhat academic since totemism may be regarded as a particularized manifestation of animism, and a synthesis of the two positions was attempted by Sigmund Freud.

[9] He explains in some detail in his Deutsche Mythologie: Larva betrays its affinity to lar ..., and the good kindly lares were often held to be manes or souls of departed ancestors.

Is not the bowl of milk placed for the Brownie in the corner of the room a survival of the drink-offering of wine which was poured out before the household gods of the Romans?

[12]Demonstrating that this evolution and functional equivalence has generally come to be accepted and that their nature is indeed that proposed by Grimm, one may refer to the early twentieth century New International Encyclopaedia:

The term fairy, however, is also loosely used to include other beings of a similar character like the brownie, elf, fay, gnome, goblin, kobold, pixy, puck, salamander, sprite, sylph, troll and undine. ...

[14]William Edward Hearn, a noted classicist and jurist, traced the origin of domestic deities from the earliest stages as an expression of animism, a belief system thought to have existed also in the neolithic and the forerunner of Indo-European religion.

He is usually described as attached to particular families, with whom he has been known to reside for centuries, threshing the corn, cleaning the house, and performing similar household tasks.

I recollect Aoibhell of Craig Liath, the guardian spirit of the Dal Caiss, mentioned in the narrative concerning Brian Boru in the Wars of the Gaedhel and the Gall; there is also Mag Molach or Hairy Hand, and Bodach An Duin of Rothiemurchus, as well as the more familiar belief in the Brownie which renders offices of help in some houses,—a feeble survival of early phases of cult.