sfy human needs, as they appear
under the demonistic interpretation of the world and human life.

The most important immediate and direct consequences of demonism in the
second stage, when it is brought back to the work of life as a normative
system, are the notions of uncleanness and of the evil eye.

+558. Uncleanness.+ The notion of uncleanness is ritual. It is not
entirely irrational. Contagious diseases and diseases which are the
result of ignorance and neglect of sanitation give sense to the notion.
The interpretation of those phenomena as due to the intervention of
superior powers is like the interpretation of other diseases as due to
demons. In fact, uncleanness is a step towards a rational view of
disease, because it brings in secondary causes, and puts the action of
demons one step further off. The effect of uncleanness was that it made
the affected person unfit and unable to perform ritual acts on which
human welfare was supposed to depend. The affected person became
dangerous to others, and was forced to banish himself from societal
contact with them. He was also cut off from access to the superior
powers. It was therefore indispensable that he should recover cleanness
in order to carry on his life. The recovery was accomplished through
ritual acts and devices, and chiefly through the intervention of
shamans, who were experts in the rites and devices required.

+559. Female uncleanness.+ The ritual notion of uncleanness, being a
product of deduction from demonistic world philosophy, was arbitrary,
and was capable of indefinite extension. It was not a disease, was not
held to facts by symptoms of pain, etc. Women were held to be unclean,
and causes of uncleanness by contact, at marriage, menstruation, and
childbirth. They were always possessed by demons, which accounted for
their special functions as mothers. The periods mentioned were periods
of special activity of the demonistic function. The belief was common in
the Orient that a woman was dangerous to her husband at marriage. A
demon left her at that time in the nuptial bloodshed. At menstruation
women were dangerous to men. The ritual idea of uncleanness was so
extended that women were put under a kind of imprisonment for a time,
especially in the Zoroastrian system (sec. 561), in order to remove them
from social contact. At child bearing also they were forced into
retirement for a specified period.[1767] Corpses also were unclean and
made all those un