#baudy

Now I've seen Hairy Holly

Down in Killarney,

I've shifted Gigglin Molly

Forget the stone at Blarney.

Last I courted Bouncy Matilda

Up Kilkee past Dundrum,

Now I'm a-train with Limping Hilda

The psychology of religion attributes the inclination towards the sacralization of leadership roles to paleopsychic hereditary dispositions: As all primates develop hierarchies and the higher-ranking group members have defensive functions, one can presume an instinctive willingness to seek shelter among the higher ranks. When this need is not met, because the respected individuals themselves feel a need for protection, imaginary high-ranking figures can close the perceived gap in the security system by way of fiction. If the symbolic regulating mechanisms constitute themselves via the cult of such projectively produced leader figures, this is connected to the fact that living figures of authority inherited their institution's rules from earlier authorities, meaning that the respective role of authority is a cross-generational archetype that no human individual can embody in the long term. Hence a people's gods are identical to the prototypical roles that have to be filled anew in each generation.

- Gerhard Baudy, Handbook of theological terminology, 1998

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