Health rituals at a Lebanese Shrine

Abstract

A great deal of interest has been evinced in the past few years in what appears to be the surprising survival of the practices of folk medicine. In the Near East as medical services based on Western scientific ideas spread down the urban social scale and into rural areas, it can be seen that folk medicine still often thrives although medical services fail to attract sufferers from certain kinds of illness. In recent studies on the Lebanon it has been suggested that the practice among childless women of making a pilgrimage to the source of the Adonis river during the spring in order to hang small strips of cloth on a particular tree is derived from the Phoenician cult of Astarte,' and several female health taboos are now thought to derive from the same ancient fertility cult.2 It is difficult to believe that Christians and Moslems would persist in activities which depend on a belief in a world order dominated by personalized natural forces, unless some further significance had been given to these practices. Often it is easier to see the link with the past than to understand the current significance given to health rituals, since those who participate in them are not completely articulate about what they do and are frequently understandably shy in explaining their actions. A few of the contemporary Lebanese rituals invoking the aid of St George may, however, provide an indication of the way in which certain ancient beliefs have evolved so as to remain acceptable, and of why in an environment of twentieth-century materialism the practices related to those beliefs may still seem effective. The cult of St George is an ancient one. In its Christian form it dates back to at least the fourth century A.D., but there is reason to believe that it has its origins in a much earlier pagan cult which was widely popular in Syria and Palestine,3 and closely related to the agricultural cycle. The two festivals of the saint support this hypothesis: April 23 marks the return of flocks from winter to summer pastures and the weaning of young animals born during the winter months, while the festival falling on November 16 coincides with the sowing of crops and the approximate start of the winter rains in Palestine. The Greek noun George itself means farmer and in some Syriac texts the saint was referred to as 'the good husbandman'.4 Contemporary evidence from Cyprus where churches are dedicated to St George of the Threshing Floor and St George of the Carob Trees5 makes this early connection with agriculture still more explicit. The first churches dedicated to St George were in Syrian and Palestinian towns, such as Lydda, which had a close relationship with the surrounding countryside. An inscription from Syria provides evidence of the conversion of at least one pagan temple to the cult of the saint,6 and