Masks as Instruments of Illusion
Humans have been wearing masks for thousands of years, and in the majority of cases today the mask is intended to create an illusion. A fairly modern instance is the masked ball, where dancers wear masks depicting animals such as monkeys or leopards or mythical beings such as angels or demons to convey a sense of mystery to the other dancers. This use of masks is purely festive, and everyone attending the ball fully realizes that the woman wearing the leopard mask, for example, is not really a leopard, even though she might act out certain behaviors of a leopard during the event. Most would agree that this use of masks is totally appropriate, and its effect is both fun and harmless. Anyone who thinks that the leopard mask actually converts the wearer into a leopard would be considered to be crazy or at least to have an overactive imagination.
But there is another use of masks in which the mask is thought to have genuine powers that accomplish actual effects. For example, in China the children used to wear gaudily colored masks looking like dragons to ward off measles, and in Burma people wore similar masks to fend off cholera epidemics. This employment of masks is not just useless, being grounded in superstition, but positively harmful if it is used as a substitute for vaccination. In North America, Iroquois tribes used corn husk masks to ensure an abundant harvest, and different masks were used in dance rituals to bring rain. Some tribes still use masks in fertility rites to guarantee that women bear healthy children. Today practically everyone would agree that such employments of masks are useless at best.
Masks were an important accouterment of most, if not all, ancient religious rituals, and the sheer fact that priests chose masks for these rituals should tell us that these rituals were intended to create or reinforce illusions. Anyone with any common sense knows that masks are all about pretending. But the priests persuaded their followers that these ritual masks had special powers that could produce genuine effects. A good example is provided by the ancient Inca religion in which the sun god, Inti, was the central deity. In Inca rituals the king, acting as high priest, would don a gold mask resembling the sun. He would stand outside under the blazing sunlight, and the attendees, who numbered in the thousands, were convinced that the power of the mask converted its wearer into a god, specifically an avatar of the sun god up in the heavens. This belief was encouraged by ensuring that the people arrived at the ritual ceremony thoroughly intoxicated from having consumed large quantities of beer, which the Incas were adept in brewing. The overall effect was amplified by the great golden mask. The intense rays of the sun reflecting from its polished surface mesmerized the attendees, and this helped convince them that the king really was a god.
Of course the wearer of the mask was not really a god any more than the wearer of the leopard mask at the masked ball was really a leopard. The effect was completely an illusion, and the king depended on this illusion to maintain power over his subjects. For this reason it is quite remarkable that the last king of the Incas, when faced with death at the hands of the Spanish conquistadors, admitted that the entire ritual was a fake. (See The Last Days of the Incas by Kim MacQuarrie.) Prior to his execution, in 1572, King Tupac Amaru addressed those in attendance. Speaking in his native language, he said:
…everything that my ancestors the Incas and I have told you up till, now—that you should worship the sun god Punchao [a sun image made of gold], and the shrines, idols, stones, rivers, mountains, and sacred things—is a lie and completely false. When we used to tell you that we were entering [a temple] to speak to the sun, and that it told you to do what we said and that it spoke—this … [was] a lie. Because it did not speak rather we did, for it is an object of gold and cannot speak.
This speech is noteworthy in that it may be the only occasion in the history of western religion that a high priest admitted that the beliefs of his religion amounted to an illusion. Today’s religions are the residue of their ancient predecessors. The masks are gone, but the illusion remains.