Cast-out Ghost
Manus (Titan) · numen · Manus (Titan) traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
The cast-out ghost is the dark counterpart of Sir Ghost, and in Manus belief the two are the same being at different stations. When a guardian permits a death in his house he is stripped of honour and his skull is thrown into the lagoon; thereafter he wanders the sea as a malignant spirit, one of the anonymous agents of disease whom mediums must identify and appease. The ghosts of men drowned or otherwise lost, whose skulls are never recovered and set in the house, share this unhoused and hostile condition. Sources describe these ghosts as a feared but essentially nameless multitude, individuated only by the identity of the dead man each once was.
Domains
- disease and affliction
- sea and lagoon
Powers
- brings sickness and death upon the households of the living
- roams the sea and reef where its skull was discarded
Relations
- enemy: Sir GhostThe cast-out ghost is a former guardian turned adversary of the very households the guardians protect.R. F. Fortune, Manus Religion (1935) (secondary)
Sources
- A Sir Ghost disgraced by a death in his household, or a man drowned and unenshrined, becomes a homeless malevolent ghost of the sea that afflicts the living with sickness.: R. F. Fortune, Manus Religion (Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society 3, 1935) (primary)