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Overview:

·        Religion/Science conflict: 50’s –60’s, Social Scientists predicted decline of religious interest in future decades.

·        Prediction was wrong. Even greater interest now (Assurance and Hope)

·        Anth committed to understanding of religious phenomena.

·        What can Anth ( a behav. Sci.) tell us about  religion?

·        Cannot make judgments or verify beliefs or practices

·        Why? Because it is based on Faith (not subject to falsification or verification through empirical means)

·        Faith is anchored on subjective experience (Internal beliefs) that are not provable through objective, sensory experience.

·        Not the purpose or goal of Anth to verify or falsify anyone’s religious beliefs

·        What is role of Anth in the study of religion?  : Focus on the external dimension of religion, that is the materials and behavior that manifest the internal beliefs. Public behaviors that are shared and observable.

·        Anth investigative methods help reveal both the internal and external aspects of religious belief and practice.

·        Generally speaking Anth is more concerned with the interrelationships and interconnections between peoples religious traditions and doctrines and other aspects of their society, such as the link between religious belief/practice and the economy, social life, politics, and art.

Discipline:

·        Cultural Anth: Enthnology  Study of contemporary cultures around the world.

·        Ethnography (description) Typically reports on environmental setting, economic patterns, social organization, political system, religious system and beliefs based on ethnographic data

Research strategy:

·        Fieldwork & participant/observation (learning through direct observation)

·        Key informant (interviews) Records qualitative data (Field Notes –systematic documentation of observations

Culture:

·        Fundamental concept within Anth:

·        Adaptive system based on all the learned and shared ideas and products of a society.

·        (society group of people inventing/using culture)

·        Knowledge---------------behavior--------------outcome of behavior

·        Learned, shared, symbolic, integrated

·        Acquired through Enculturation

·        Formal/informal & consciously/unconsciously (social interaction)

1.     Situational learning: conditioning/ trial and error learning/ stimulus and response

2.     Social learning: Observed in social context and added to the personal collection

3.     Symbolic learning: based on linguistic capacity..our ability to create and use symbols (arbitrary meaningful units, or models that we use to represent reality.Conceptual devises used to communicate abstract ideas to one another.)

·       This is what the majority of human learning is based on….most creative….forms the basis for our capacity to use culture.

Culture is the historical accumulation of symbolic knowledge that is shared by a society.

·       Enculturation is an imperfect process!

Material and non-material aspects of culture:

·       Technology

·       Values: explicit standards defining good/bad, ugly/beautiful, sacred/profane, shared by the society, and well known. Used to influence behavior

·       Beliefs: cultural conventions concerning true/false assumptions, specific descriptions  of the natural universe and our place in it….more specific that values (usually)

·       Worldview: interrelated beliefs and assumptions about the nature of reality. I.E. empirical. Provides a usually consistent orientation toward the physical, social and metaphysical world. They help people interpret and understand the world around them.

·       Cosmology: how humans are connected with the universe, explains existence, origins..addresses profound questions.

·       Norms: (Folkways or etiquette) Societies rules of right and wrong: guide to how it ought to be! Generally connected to values, beliefs and worldviews. Provides us with a set of expectations and assist members of a society in predicting what others will do in a particular circumstance. Mores are a type of norm stronger than etiquette norms..usually carry a more stringent negative sanction if broken.

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Anthropological Study of Religion

• Prehistory of Religion

• Earliest accepted evidence comes from Neanderthal Times (100 – 60 K), burials

• Practice becomes more elaborated and wide spread through time

• Early interpretations focus on utility: Explanation and solutions for adversity; seeking to explain what can not be explained through objective knowledge. Permit explanation of cause and effect relationship between the supernatural and the human condition.

• Leads us to the question of what is the reason for existence of religion??

• Behavioral Scientists have often approached the subject from a functional perspective:

• Psychological view has been based on explaining how it reduces anxiety and fears i.e. Malinowski, Spiro

• Sociology stresses the societal origins of religion, i.e. Durkheim viewed it as a manifestation of social solidarity and collective beliefs.

• These can, in part, explain the universality of religious behavior, but are limited in focus, as the center on human emotions and social structure, respectively.

• Neither really explores the wide variety of cultural expression of religion. By that I mean that where ever it has been observed it displays tremendous variety of cognitive and phenomenal expression, that anything less that an wide-ranging holistic approach will not allow true comparisons.

• This approach combines not only the psychological and sociological but historical, semantic and evolutionary perspectives as well.

• In order to make general statements about pan-human religious behavior, symbology, and ideology we must work from a common definition.

Definitions:

• To RELIGION we are going to give the broadest possible meaning9 Some societies don’t have a category for a particular aspect of life as “religion”.

• Various Anthropologists have formulated definitions. Here are some samples that are useful as general guidelines. Keep in mind that we are not going to exclude any aspect of thought or action because one of these definitions would exclude it.

1. Horton, Robin (1960). A Definition of Religion and its Use. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 90, 201-226.

“Religion can be looked upon as an extension of the field of people’s social relationships beyond the confines of purely human society.”

2. Spiro, Melford E. (1966). Religion: problems of definition and explanation. In Michael Banton (Ed.), Anthropological approaches to the study of religion, 85-126, London:Tavistock

“I shall define “religion” as “an institution consisting of culturally patterned interaction with culturally postulated super human beings.”

3. Geertz, Clifford. (1973) The interpretation of cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books.

“….a religion is (1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.”

• These definitions vary greatly.

• The first two are behavioral definitions; religious actions are those which persons act toward nonhuman entities as though they were human.

• The third refers to cognitive events within people: in distinguishing religion from other systems of symbols by its effects on moods and on sense of what is real.

The major implication of defining the subject more broadly than these writers is that we would not exclude magic.

• Magic is often distinguished from religion (see Frazer and his contemporaries) as not involving relations with superhuman entities.
• Magical explanations often attribute events to mechanical, cause-effect relationships, i.e. bad luck brought on by a black cat crossing one’s path.
• Magical practice involves the application of knowledge and the skills the magician has acquired about these relationships. ( how to stick a pin in a doll resembling ones’ victim)
• Because supernatural beings are not necessarily involved, the definitions of religion by Horton and Spiro would exclude magic.
• Geertz’s definition might exclude magic except when it happens to be integrated into a system of symbols that constitutes the religion of a particular society.

 To establish our working definition we will consider the following:

 Religion: any set of attitudes, beliefs, and practices pertaining to Supernatural power, whether it be forces, gods, spirits, gods, ghosts, demons, or any other imagined power.

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Sources of mystical (Supernatural) significance: Ways of Knowing (Invented Truth)

Religion: any set of attitudes, beliefs, and practices pertaining to Supernatural power, whether it be forces, gods, spirits, ghosts, demons, or any other imagined power.

In other words: All behavior, thoughts, and feelings that imply mystical (supernatural) power, whether that power is believed to reside in people, animals, inanimate things or events, or in beings that so far as observation tells us are imaginary.

Religion explains and gives meaning it also provides cohesion, support, education, discipline, revitalizes/euphoric, ecological…many over-lap.

Types of belief:

Supernatural Power (Mana)

Supernatural Beings, Gods, Souls, Demons, Ghosts, Tricksters, Witches (innate and unconscious) vs. Sorcery, which is a conscious and acquired skill)

Mystical Power: Common element is religion.

Power different from material power of physical forces and from personal forces of social interaction. (Distinction not always present in some cultures)

Often attributed to living persons or to supernatural entities.

Often appealed to explain events/actions/feelings

Mystical power as the core of religious thought was stressed in early accounts of Manna in the cultures of the Pacific. It was erroneously described as impersonal.

Mana:  Mana is a neutral force but very powerful. (concept) Like the air, it is everywhere, though it is often concentrated in objects, or people, or even part of a person.

• It may be harnessed by practitioners

•  It may flow in or out of objects and people.

• Some people are born with it, just as some objects naturally contain it.

• Mana may be drawn into objects by a practitioner who has the skills to do so.

• As a neutral and powerful force3 it has the potential of danger, so great care must be taken when dealing with it.

• If one obtains an object with mana, it is believed to enhance ones behavior or opportunities.

Sought by persons through a Quest, Acquistion/Purchase/Ceremonies/Medicine bundles/Gifts from Divinity/Killing another Human/Eating Human flesh

Can reside outside the person, in place (geographical) or in supernatural beings.

Magic:  Technique used to manipulate various supernatural forces or beings

• Can be sued by individuals using formulas, recipes or may call upon a practitioner
• Shaman (Siberian) a part-time practitioner who by training or inheritance has special powers to deal with the unseen universe.
• Shares some features with science
• Specifically, magical formulas have been acquired through trail and error. (Empirical approach)
• Headache herbs…some work some don’t…keep the ones that work most over time.ditch the ones that don’t.
• Not Scientific method but similar approach but attempt to explain and control environment and the events that effect them.
• It is effective.it works if you do it correctly and believe in its efficacy
• It explains things: sickness = evil magic, cure = correct formula, worsens+ incorrect formula, diagnosis was wrong, or more powerful magic is being used.

Myth: sacred story taken to be true (based on believe)

Folklore: body of shared, common knowledge taken in a particular social context in accordance with a particular performance.

Science: (Modern) ---it seeks to explain the universe purely in terms of observable or testable natural mechanisms. Therefore, physics describes the atomic nucleus with specific concepts governing energy and matter, and it tests those descriptions experimentally. Physicists introduce new particles, such a quarks, to flesh out their theories only when data show that the previous descriptions cannot adequately explain observed phenomena. The new particles do not have arbitrary properties, moreover---their definitions are tightly constrained, because the new particles must fit within the existing framework of physics.

Scientific Method:

• Observation
• Hypothesis
• Test
• Evaluation
• Theory

Theory: many people learned in elementary school that a theory falls in the middle of a hierarchy of certainty…above a hypothesis but below a law. However, scientists do not use the term that way

Time and again, science has shown that it can provide useful answers to many questions, detailed explanations to what were seemingly impenetrable mysteries: the nature of light, the causes of disease, how the brain works, how the living world took shape. According to the National Academy of Sciences, a scientific theory is “a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses.” No amount of validation changes a theory into a law, which is a descriptive generalization about nature. So when a scientist talks about the theory of something (evolution or the atomic theory), or the theory of relativity, they are not expressing reservation about its truth.

In addition to theory, one may speak of the FACT…the NAS defines Fact as “an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed and for all practical purposes is accepted as ‘true.’”

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Taboo: Rules for Right and Wrong.

Taboo: a ban or prohibition. The word comes from Polynesian language where it means religious restriction, to break would mean an automatic punishment.

In English the word has little of that meaning and little to do with religion. It generally implies a rule which has no meaning (reason), or one that cannot be explained.

Examples:

·        Cpt. Cook in Tahiti noting women were not allowed to eat with men, when asked the reply was “because it is right.” To the outsider the taboo seems irrational.

·        Orthodox Jewish prohibition of lighting or maintaining fires, lighting or putting out lamps on the Sabbath.

·        Usually land observers in some predicament: Eating Teal to circumvent prohibition of eating meat (Teal eat fish), or Maori hairdresser prohibited form using hands to feed himself after cutting hair of Chief.

In the last century, in European usage the word came to imply inferior mentality due to general ignorance of the physical world. Taboos (rules) were result of false science, leading to mistaken hygiene and faulty medicine.

Essentially bans on touching seeing, eating, speaking to avoid dangers and sickness.

Since it was seen as a rule to keep certain classes (categories) of people and things apart lest misfortune befall, it was considered a theory about contagion. It was a comparison: our hygiene protects from a real danger of contagion, theirs from something imaginary. Not a valid comparison. Misconception  of comparing True religion and primitive  magic, and modern medicine and primitive hygiene.

The mistake is to suppose our idea of dirt connotes and objectively real class from which real dangers of health may arise, and whose control depends on valid rules of hygiene. Dirt, like beauty, resides int eh eye of the beholder. (5 second rule)

We look at them separating this area from that, stopping x form touching y, men from eating with women and creating elaborate scales of edibility and inedibility among the animal and plant world……..we too are in the business of ordering and classifying things and activities.

No Taboo can ever make sense by itself. It is part of a whole system of rules. It makes sense as a part of a classification whose meaning is so basic to those who live by it that no piece-meal explanation can be given. It’s just the right thing to do.

The 19^th century scholars had such a hard time understanding Taboo because they were working out of the separate compartments of their own taboo system. For them, religion, magic, hygiene and medicine were as distinct as civilized and primitive. They put it in the realm of native thought. And therefore saw it as insoluble. Today we see it more as a problem of human learning.

·        Discard the idea that there is anything like a true, complete view of the world. Between what the scientists tell us and what we make of their knowledge there is a synthesis which is our own usable approximation of the rules we need to know to operate in the physical world.

·        Discard the idea that there can ever be a final and correct world view..the fullness of reality will always evade our singular comprehension. Learning is filtering and organizing. No 2 people will ever register the same identical patterns and faced with a similar environment, 2 cultures will construe 2 different sets of natural constraints and regular sequences. In other word; every culture constructs its own universe.

·        Every culture attributes to its own world a set of powers to be harnessed and dangers to be avoided.

·        Traditional culture, because of isolation has a unique world view. Modern industrial nations share a common experience, generally share the same rules about the powers and the dangers aroused.

·        For all humans the universe is a system of imputed rules. Using our own distinctions we can distinguish First: physical Nature, (inorganic, organic) with rules governing growth, lifespan, and death. Second: Human behavior, Third: interaction between these 2 groups, and Fourth: other intelligent beings, whether incorporeal, like gods, devils, and ghosts or mixtures of human and divine or human and animal and Fifth: interaction between the fourth group and the rest. Notice I have not used the word Supernatural to avoid the distinction between the natural and supernatural.

·        To reiterate: Taboos are understood to be rules about our behavior which restrict the human use of things and people. To break the rules is to be subject to consequence. Like rules of a game.

·        Try to imagine what social life would be like without any classification. It would be like playing a game without any rules. It is no exaggeration to de3scribe social life as the process of building classification systems. Everyone is trying to make sense of what is happening.

·        In the process of explaining, classifications are developed and more and more meanings are successfully added to them as people are persuaded to interpret them in the same way. Socail meaning is created.

Example:

·        The west room in an Irish farmers house used to be the room where the old couple retired when the eldest son married and brought his wife to the farm. West meant retirement as well as sundown.

·        In the Buddhist religion east is high status. Buddha’s statue is always placed on the shelf on the east wall. The husband always sleeps to the east of his wife. East means male and social superior.

·        Up, down, right , left sun ,moon, hot, cold , all the antithesis are able to carry meanings from social life.

·        Anyone who supports the social system finds him/herself impelled to support the classification system which gets meaning from it. Anyone who challenges the social system finds themselves up against a set of classifications which have to be rethought.

·        This is why a breech of the taboo arouses such strong feeling. Not because a minor classification is threatened but because the whole society is shaken if someone gets away with challenging the taboo.

·        Classification involves definition; definition involves reducing ambiguity; ambiguity arises in several ways and it is misguided to think it will ever be eliminated or excluded from our lives.

Example:

·        Animal classification : Structure, Habitat, Behavior

·        Penguin: behavior is more like a fish than a bird (using walking flying or swimming)

·        Structure: Skeletal and reproduction it is more bird like, than a flying fish.

·        Most classification is untidy. Men behave like women, adults act like children, even physically there are those that are born intersexed.

·        Rules of marriage and inheritance require clear cut categories, but there are always the exceptions.

·        Human classifications are always too crude for reality

·        A system of taboos covers up this weakness. It points in advance to the defect and insists that no one will give recognition to the inconvenient facts or behave in such a way as to undermine the acceptability and clarity of the system as a whole.

Taboos inject order into life:

·        The potential for disorder is tremendous, particularly when you consider the disorder of the mind.

·        Taboos help to break up the disorder into classes and rules, and so judges some activities to be right and proper and some to be horrific

·        This kind of rationality is the justification for taboos that we ourselves observe when we say it is not acceptable to pee in the kitchen sink, wash dishes in the toilet, or have sex on the front lawn at noon.

·        It helps us to inject order into our lives. It is not arbitrary, but is derived from social categories.

·        A taboo system upholds  a cultural system and a culture is a pattern of values and norms; social life is impossible without such a pattern.

·        Because taboos flow from the social boundaries and support the social structure, they seem irrational to the outsider. And as such, beyond challenge to the person living in the society.

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RITUAL:  Behavior that is formalized and regularly repeated.

·        Ritual may or may not be associated with supernatural beliefs.

·        Often involves symbols: cross, candle, totem, icon, or even a natural object like the sun and moon.

·        It may include action such as prayer, recitation, sacrifice, dance or other physical activities.

·        It has been seen as reinforcing group solidarity and cohesion as well as serving the psychological needs of individuals and the social needs of groups

·        Early studies limited the understanding of ritual to its role in the religious life of “Primitive” societies through Function, structure and meaning (symbols)

·        Contemporary analysis relax the connection between ritual and the sacred, and point out the relation between ritual, the sacred and power. (compelling force)

·        Today, in is common to look at commonalities between religious ritual and secular ritual.

·        Ritual and ritual symbols of varying kind are seen as playing a key part in creating tradition, and legitimizing power structures.

·        The social environment is “ritualized” in the sense of being habitually structured by predictable patterns of human action. (Remember, much of culture is seen in patterned behavior.) Thus ritual is now seen not only as plying a role in formulating times, eternal order, but rather as historically and socially constructed.

·        Ritual is primarily a distinct way of doing things.

·        Ritual encodes, actualizes, encourages and regulates social relationships in a powerful way.

·        To fully understand its power it has to be studied from a relational framework in which the significance of its symbols, and actions in the social and historical context in which it occurs.

·        Ritual has a crucial role in the construction of reality as provided by our worldview.

Rites of Passage:

A category of ritual that has been studied cross-culturally. Term was coined by Belgian sociologist Arnold Van Gennep.

·        Term use to refer to rituals associated with the stages in the arc of life: birth, puberty, adulthood, death, and other crucial occasions marking critical points of transition in an individuals life. (Universal biological phases)

·        They may include other rituals created to mark the social progress of an individual during their liftime. (change of status/role)

·        As a person moves from one biological and social stage to the next the persons social status and role within the group also changes.

·        Because of this change culturally created rituals will always involve the members of that specific group----either the entire culture or a segment (family, common interest group)

·        Members of one’s group must be able to change they way they have previously interacted with the individual as the transitions occur.

·        For example: We interact differently with adults than with children, and when a person dies the group must alter its relationship with the deceased.

·        In small societies, everyone is effected by the change, so involvement in the group activity prepares you for your own transitions.

Van Gennep viewed these types of rituals as occurring in 3 separate stages:

·        Separation (pre-liminal) Gk: limen: threshold : wherein the individual is removed or separated from the present group

·        Transition (liminal): Marked by a change in the individual, usuall the person is subject to certain rules or taboos. Sometimes, the normal rules of the society are suspended. (Cutting of foreskin or loss of virginity)

·        Reincorporation (post-liminal): The individual is reintegrated into the group in a new status /role, altered state. 

Conception: Male role

Birth: Couvade

Adulthood: Circumcision/sub-incision/ FGM: partial or complete removal of the clitoris or partial sewing together of the vulva (infibulation)

 Film:

Kepele burning knife shaman

M’Buti (Bamiki Bandula)

 Exercise:

Identify 3 rites of passage in your culture (subculture) that are identified and defined culturally rather than biologically.

Define each in terms of the three stages proposed by Van Gennep.

Remember to use criteria such as change of status or role.

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 Shamanism:  (From Tungus, saman: Sanskrit, sramana ; German, der schaman.)

Aka: medicine man, medium, sprit or faith healer, priest, oracle, witch doctor.

Romantic view: Religious virtuoso who takes magical, hallucinatory flights into the supernatural world, learns from and/or fights with spirits, ghosts or daemons, recapturing lost souls. Primordial, prototypical religious practitioner who has direct contact with the supernatural.

• This view is misrepresentative  of the shaman and shamanism
• Great difficulty in defining shamanism by standard criteria.
• Shamanism is highly diverse, culturally and historically relative phenomenon that encompasses a vast array of social behaviors and beliefs.
• It has been seen variously as an expression of archaic or pagan religion or the solution to contemporary human ecological, existential and personal crisis. (New Age)
• Theories used to explain Shamanism are incomplete, the human experience is more complex and rich than our abstractions of it. Our theories only focus on a particular segment of this diversity

• It is possible to point out a set of shared or perhaps core phenomena.

• Ritualist who is able to divine, predict, effect future outcomes
• Provide medical care
• Has direct access to the supernatural, phantasmic realm
• Gains power by being tutored by spirits, including deceased ancestors
• Usually found in societies where there are few social distinctions available
• Impossible to pinpoint the cultural origins of shamanic practice and art
• Found throughout the entire world and all social levels

• Cosmos: Upper/middle/lower worlds Shamans job is to help keep balance and harmony

• Training: Direct contact with spirits is universal. May inherit ability or be selected to receive this social responsibility. Training is a life-long process, abilities may wax and wane over time.

• States of Consciousness: Altered States of Consciousness (ASC) induced by plants, alcohol, hyperventilation, meditation, rhythmic drumming. Facilitates communication with supernatural.

• Sacramental Actions: Blowing, sucking, singing, massaging, spitting, smudging. Painting, chanting, touching, fanning, seeing, sprinkling water, ashes, corn meal, etc.. Sacramental actions are facilitation actions used for the benefit of the individual or community, made visible for all to see. (Performance)

• Shamanic Discourses: Verbalizations such as singing, chanting, story telling, verbal explanations, narratives.

• Empirical Observations: Systematic observations of surrounding sentient world serve as template for ultimate conception of soul, human body, the sacred, and the role of the supernatural in human affairs.

Sorcery/Wizardry (witchcraft):

·        Duality of terminology clouds meaning. Not all cultures/languages offer the distinction.

·        As with religion, belief and acceptance has not been diminished by the spread of literacy, science and the modern lifestyle.

·        Basic meaning is: spiritual malpractice, mystical evildoing, occult practice

·        Whatever it is called it is recognized world-wide.

o       Contains an element of opposition in its manner of operation: controlled/uncontrolled, internal/external, inherited/acquired, and motivation of practitioner: human feelings such as anger, jealousy, envy, malice

·        Common elements:

o       Ability to cause harm, misfortune, sickness, and death.

o       Part of the socio-political process (social control/power)

·        Witch Hunts:

o       Gender issues

o       Classic scapegoat figure often seen in other parts of the world is the person of anti-social habits who has no relative to defend them.

o       Movements seem to arise when dominant values are challenged by changing circumstances and/or social conditions are disrupted by famine, warfare, epidemics, etc..

o       Perception that there is a concentrated threat of anti-social/deviance (evil) in society

o       Social authority need to purge that source to legitimize and protect

o       Legal mechanism established to accomplish purge

·        Satanic Ritual Abuse:

o       Repeat of historical elements:

o       Dissemination and acceptance by those in power of a series of beliefs about secret activities of evildoers…defines the evil and justifies their persecution.

o       Willingness to act on the beliefs by setting in place procedures to apprehend, interrogate and prosecute suspects.

Dale Akiki Case

http://www.religioustolerance.com/ra_akiki.htm

http://www.religioustolerance.org/ra_rep02.htm

http://www.electpd.org/Wallis.htm

http://www.a-team.org/b_child_abuse_b.html

http://www.bapho.net/baphonet/bbs/l-drive/topicx/files/metaphysical/text/1994/met94176.txt

http://www.holysmoke.org/hs00/ritual.htm

·        The idea that there is a hidden evil among us, neighbors, and kinsmen, who could be guilty of the most hideous antisocial crimes: incest and cannibalization of innocent babies, is clearly a recurring cosmic nightmare.

·        It is clear that human fantasies about evildoing display remarkable similarity in a core area of elements.

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Aboriginal religions:

Stereotypes:

• All native peoples practiced “Animistic” religions.
• They were static, rigid and incoherent.

Animism: E.B.Tylor: concept of spiritual entity such as a soul

Animatism: supernatural force

Totemism:

• Can be plants, animals or geographical features.
• Member of Totmeic group think of themselves as descendants of the totem entity.
• Taboos exist to protect the totem, but might be lifted once a year (necessary for reproduction  and survival of totem)
• Uses nature as a model for society (Totems are usually plants and animals that are part of the environment
• Diversity in the natural order becomes model for diversity in the social order
• Unity of human social order is enhanced by symbolic association with and imitation  of the natural order
• Totems become sacred emblems symbolizing common identity
• Totemic carvings for examp0le commemorate, tell visual stories about ancestors, animals, spirits….associated ceremonies
• Totemic rites maintain oneness, community solidarity.
• Animals and plants entered 19^th C accounts of traditional religions in exaggerated emphasis on totemism as a uniform feature
• Use of plants and animals(things) as symbols of groups, beliefs and practices implying mystical power vary from society to society
• Along with totemic uses go other religious roles of animals and plants where they are associated with ideas of mystical power
• Religious role of animals has bas in spontaneous ascription of consciousness to animals and therefore souls
• Hunting societies seek to ensure a supply of game animals by encouraging reincarnation to replace what they have killed and by showing proper respect for the prey species and to the supernaturals who control them.
• They follow rules to ensure equitable distribution of the catch and readily appeal to animals as mystical helpers
• They may sacrifice domestic animals a an offering to supernatural figures…sometimes seen as way of sending a message that will be transmitted to the god or ancestral spirit by the victim.
• Plants appear in traditional religions in some of the same ways as do animals but less regularly
• Regarding plants is the ingestion of psychotropic plant material.

Supernatural Beings:

• Fall into 2 categories:
• non-human origins: Gods and spirits
• human origin: ghosts and ancestral spirits

• Gods: chief among non-human category; named personalities, often anthropomorphic(human characteristics/appearance)
• Major gods who either created the world or control everything that happens now. A single major god is found in many foraging societies as well as complex societies, especially those with active contact with other societies
• Can have shapes of animals, celestial bodies
• Gods are believed to have created themselves, but some are seen as the creation of other gods.
• Creation of world by gods may not been see as one act, or as result o gods at all
• Seen as remote, uninterested….may retire after act of creation….after setting thing into motion they are uninvolved in every day affairs
• Or creator gods may be interested only in one small segment of the world/people ( Maori God of Sea, Forest, Agriculture) Each is called upon in turn
• Roman gods were highly specialized: plow, sowing, weeding, reaping , storing grain, manure

• Spirits: Lesser than gods in prestige and statue…closer to people. Often un-named. Can be promoted to god status
• May be hobgoblin, mischief-makers…blamed for mishaps or may work evil on behalf of people.
• Guardian spirit. These spirits often stress individual achievement. Some Native AmerInds sought personal guardian spirit. Often seen as animals but could be in uniquely shaped rocks or landscape/natural features (Lake, mountain whirlwind, cloud)
• Often appeared in a dream or vision, usually in human form at the first meeting….conversation would reveal its true identity.

• Ghosts/Ancestor spirits: Once human…sprits of the dead, either the recently departed or more distant ancestors.  Emphasis is on ancestral sprits is favored by more sedentary societies that stress kinship as the basis of social structure.
• Belief is nearly universal Universality difficult to explain but may be seen in experience of presence of departed…evoked emotion that dead are present (reminder by a particular scent, sound, scene or in dreams) Familiar associations.
• Some societies see the dead as playing an active role in daily affairs…others do not.
• Belief in ghosts seem most prevalent in societies where there are active descent groups as decision making units. Ghosts are seen as taking an active interest in the fortunes of these groups and may extend this continuity to the supernatural world.

 Culture Heroes: Mythical figures said to have created in the distant past various features of the culture. To these should be added, as partial supernaturals, individual persons who are considered to have mystical powers

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Halloween

What Does "Halloween" Mean?

• One obvious question about Halloween is, "What does the word itself mean?"

·        The name is actually a shortened version of "All Hallows' Even," the eve of All Hallows' Day. Hallow is an Old English word for "holy person," and All Hallows' Day is simply another name for All Saints' Day, the day on which Catholics commemorate all the saints. At some point, people began referring to All Hallows' Even as "Hallowe'en" and then simply "Halloween."

• Taking from the Jewish tradition, Christians have traditionally observed holy days from sundown on one day until sundown on the following day. This is where we get the practice of celebrating Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve, etc. The direct predecessor of modern-day Halloween is the festivity that began All Saints Day, which started at sundown on October 31.

• While it takes its name from All Saints Day, modern Halloween is actually a combination of several different traditions. In fact, a lot of the things we do on Halloween predate Christianity! Let’s look at the chief traditions that feed into today's Halloween and see how they got all tangled up together in one holiday.

Samhain

• Most of the traditions of Halloween date back to Samhain (sow-en), the ancient Celtic New Year. Samhain, which translates to "end of summer," occurred around the end of October, when the weather started to get cold. At its heart, Samhain was an observance of all the things that were happening during this change of seasons.

• The Celtic people, who came together as a society around 800 B.C., kept  sheep and cattle. When the weather got colder, the shepherds brought their animals down from the hills to closer pastures. This shift changed daily life significantly. In the winter months, everybody stayed inside or close to home, working on handcrafts and spending time together.

• Samhain also marked the final harvest of the year, an event that is commemorated by festivals in many cultures.

• Celtic tradition held that turning points, times when things change from one state to another, had magical properties. Samhain marked the biggest turning point of the year -- a change in the weather as well as a shift in everybody's lives.

• The Celts believed this magical time opened up a sort of connection to the dead -- those souls that had passed through the ultimate turning point, the shift from life to death. They believed the world of the living was closest to the world of the dead at the time of Samhain, and that the spirits of the dead traveled again among the living.

• A lot of the activities of the Samhain festival were connected to this belief, and many of those practices evolved into modern day Halloween traditions.

• The Celts recorded their history orally -- they did not write anything down, but instead passed on beliefs and stories from person to person. For this reason, historians often disagree about the Celts' practices and beliefs. So nobody is really sure what the Samhain festival was like, but there are a number of accounts that provide interesting explanations of modern day Halloween practices.

All Saints' Day

• Christians have been honoring their virtuous dead from the earliest days of the religion. In traditional Roman Catholicism, exceedingly virtuous men and women may be canonized as saints in the afterlife. Since they are endowed with holiness, saints are close to God, and may perform miracles on earth.

• Roman Catholics, and some other Christians, honor saints, and ask them for guidance in daily life. Many saints are commemorated on their own "saints day," often the anniversary of their death. But with thousands of canonized saints, only a small percentage are recognized regularly.

•  In the seventh century, Pope Boniface IV officially established All Saints' Day in order to honor all the saints at one time. History records such a sacred day before Boniface's time, but it wasn't widely observed.

• All Saints' Day was originally observed on May 13, but in the eighth century, Pope Gregory III moved it to November 1. Officially, this new date was chosen to mark the papal dedication of a church honoring the saints. But it is commonly believed that the observance was actually moved to correspond with Samhain and other pagan fall festivals.

• The Catholic Church had a long-standing policy of incorporating non-Christian traditions into its holidays in order to bring people into the Catholic faith.

• This included moving the dates of Christian holidays to those of established non-Christian occasions. Many historians believe, for example, that Christmas was set on December 25 so that it would correspond with pagan winter solstice festivals.

• In any case, when All Saints' Day was moved to November 1, the church did begin to incorporate Samhain traditions into the holy day's activities.

• This helped bring descendents of the ancient Celts into Christianity, but it posed some problems for the Church. Much of the Samhain traditions centered on the supernatural and spirit world, ideas that don't have much of a place in Christianity. Recognizing saints, who were by definition deceased, covered a lot of the same ground, but the converts were still fascinated by the idea of their familiar dead returning to the world of the living.

• Despite some unease in the Church, many supernatural ideas persisted in All Saints' Day Eve celebrations, making the occasion a remarkable combination of Christian and pagan beliefs. At the end of the 10th century, the church tried to give these traditions a little more direction by establishing All Souls' Day, an occasion to recognize all Christian dead.

•  Let’s look at how this holiday is observed, and see how it relates to Halloween.

All Souls' Day

• All Souls' Day, observed on November 2, is celebrated with masses and festivities in honor of the dead.

• The living pray on behalf of Christians who are in purgatory, the state in the afterlife where souls are purified before proceeding to heaven. Souls in purgatory, who are members of the church just like living Christians, must suffer so that they can be purged of their sins.

• Through prayer and good works, living members of the church may help their departed friends and family. After its introduction, this holiday did sate many Catholics' interest in death and the supernatural.

• But the unchristian idea of wandering spirits persisted in some areas, as did the festivity atmosphere of Samhain.

• Conceding that they could not completely get rid of the supernatural elements of the celebrations, the Catholic church began characterizing the spirits as evil forces associated with the devil. This is where we get a lot of the more disturbing Halloween imagery, such as evil witches and demons.

• All Souls' Day lives on today, particularly in Mexico, where All Hallows' Eve, All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day are collectively observed as "Los Dias de los Muertos" (The Days of the Dead).

• First and foremost, the Days of the Dead is a time when families fondly remember the deceased. But it is also a time marked by festivities, including spectacular parades of skeletons and ghouls. In one notable tradition, revelers lead a mock funeral procession with a live person inside a coffin.

• This masquerade is closely connected to the celebration of Halloween, as are other elements of All Souls' Day.  Let’s look at  how one early All Souls' Day ritual may have led to modern trick-or-treating.

Trick-or-Treating

• In medieval times, one popular All Souls' Day practice was to make "soul cakes," simple bread desserts with a currant topping. In a custom called "souling," children would go door-to-door begging for the cakes, much like modern trick-or-treaters. For every cake a child collected, he or she would have to say a prayer for the dead relatives of the person who gave the cake. These prayers would help the relatives find their way out of purgatory and into heaven. The children even sang a soul cake song along the lines of the modern "Trick-or-treat, trick-or-treat, give me something good to eat." One version of the song went:

A soul cake!

A soul cake!

Have mercy on all Christian souls, for

A soul cake!

            NOTE:

• The National Sweet Tooth Trick-or-treaters rake in a lot of candy every October 31. In fact, according to the National Confectioners Association, Halloween is the number-one holiday for candy sales, beating out Christmas, Easter and Valentine's Day. The NCA estimates that Halloween candy sales will exceed $2 billion this year, in the United States alone. Typically, more than 85  percent of U.S. households hand out candy Halloween night.
• There is also some evidence of trick-or-treat type activities in the original Celtic tradition.

• Historians say the Celts would dress up in ghoulish outfits and parade out of town to lead the wandering spirits away. Additionally, Celtic children would walk door to door to collect firewood for a giant communal bonfire. Once the bonfire was burning, the revelers would extinguish all the other fires in the village.

• They would then relight every fire with a flame taken from the Samhain bonfire, as a symbol of the people's connection to one another.

• A lot of the Samhain celebration had to do with honoring Celtic gods, and there's evidence that the Celts would  dress as these deities as part of the festival.

• They may have actually gone door to door to collect food to offer to the gods. It is fairly clear that Samhain involved an offering of food to spirits. There may have been animal sacrifices, and some historians say the Celts even sacrificed people, but the evidence is not conclusive.

• The Celts believed in fairies and other mischievous creatures, and the notion of Halloween trickery may have come from their reported activities on Samhain.

• There's also good reason to suppose that the Celtic New Year's Eve was something like our own New Year's Eve -- a time when people let go of their inhibitions, drank heavily and got into trouble.

• The trickery tradition may simply come from this spirit of revelry.

• Now let’s look at another popular Halloween tradition with Celtic roots -- the Jack-o'-lantern.

Jack-o'-Lanterns

• As part of the Samhain celebration, Celts would bring home an ember from the communal bonfire at the end of the night. They carried these embers in hollowed-out turnips, creating a lantern resembling the modern day jack-o'-lantern.

• But the direct predecessor of jack-o'-lanterns dates from 18th century Ireland, where ancient Celtic traditions remained a significant part of the national culture.

• A very popular character in Irish folk tales was Stingy Jack, a disreputable miser who, on several occasions, avoided damnation by tricking the devil (often on All Hallows' Eve).

• In one story, he convinced Satan to climb up a tree for some apples, and then cut crosses all around the trunk so the devil couldn't climb down. The devil promised to leave Jack alone forever, if he would only let him out of the tree.

• When Jack eventually died, he was turned away from Heaven, due to his life of sin. But, in keeping with their agreement, the Devil wouldn't take Jack either. He was cursed to travel forever as a spirit in limbo.

• As Jack left the gates of Hell, the Devil threw him a hot ember to light the way in the dark. Jack placed the ember in a hollowed-out turnip, and wandered off into the world. According to the Irish legend, you might see Jack's spirit on All Hallows' Eve, still carrying his turnip lantern through the darkness.

• Traditional jack-o'-lanterns, hollowed-out turnips with embers or candles inside, became a very popular Halloween decoration in Ireland and Scotland a few hundred years ago.

• Folk tradition held that they would ward off Stingy Jack and other spirits on Halloween, and they also served as representations of the souls of the dead.

• Irish families who emigrated to America brought the tradition with them, but they replaced the turnips with pumpkins, which were much more plentiful in their new home. As it turns out, pumpkins were easier to carve than turnips. People began to cut frightening faces and other elaborate designs into their jack-o'-lanterns.

Note on Pumpkins:Frightful Fruit

·        Pumpkins, which are actually fruits, not vegetables, range considerably in size. Some varieties weigh less than a pound and giant pumpkins can grow to more than 1,000 pounds!

·        Pumpkins are members of the gourd family, which also includes watermelons and zucchini. They are 90-percent water and also contain high concentrations of  potassium and vitamin A.

·        Pumpkins, which grow from vines, originated in Central America and were a popular crop among Native Americans. Certain tribes used the seeds for food and medicine and made sleeping mats out of dried pumpkin strips.

·        American colonists invented the pumpkin pie, but their original version used the pumpkin as the crust, not the main ingredient. They cut off pumpkin tops to make handy edible bowls, which they filled with milk, honey and spices and then cooked over a fire or hot ashes.

 Bobbing for Apples

• All Hallows' Eve has long been a time to look into the future, and traditional festivities included several divination rituals.
• These come mostly from folk traditions from the British Isles, and many have their roots in the ancient Samhain festivities.
•  A lot of marriage divinations had to do with apples. In Celtic tradition, the fruit was associated with female deities who controlled the ways of love.
• This may have something to do with the inner structure of apples. When you slice an apple in two, you can see a pentagram shape (a star with five points) on each half, around the core.
• The pentagram was an important shape for the ancient Celtics, and many other cultures. Among other things, it was recognized as a Goddess symbol.

• One of the most popular divinations was for young unmarried people to try to bite into an apple floating in water or hanging from a string. This is something like the bouquet toss that still plays a part in wedding receptions -- the first person to bite into the apple would be the next one to marry.

• In another tradition, a young woman would light a candle and peel an apple in front of a mirror. While she was peeling the apple, her future husband would supposedly appear in place of her reflection. Peeling an apple was also a way to predict your life expectancy.

•  If you could cut off one long peel, you would live to an old age. If you only cut a small piece of peel, you would die young.

• Apples are still a big part of Halloween celebrations. In addition to apple-bobbing, modern Halloween revelers drink apple cider, make candy apples and hand out apples to trick-or-treaters.

Other modern traditions of Halloween, (most of which evolved in the United States.)

American Traditions

• Since the 1800s, when Irish and Scottish immigrants brought their Halloween festivities to North America, the holiday has evolved a good deal. The celebration's connection with All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day has mostly fallen by the wayside, and a number of new secular traditions have developed.

• For children, dressing up and trick-or-treating door to door is still the main event. Most households in the United States and Canada participate, and those who don't run the risk of petty vandalism. Many adults dress up themselves, to go out with their children or to attend costume parties and contests.

NOTE: Dressed to the Nines

·        Halloween continues to be extremely popular with kids of all ages; 85 to 90 percent of U.S. children go trick-or-treating or engage in other Halloween festivities every year, and many adults also join in on the fun.

·        In a 2000 poll, the National Retail Federation found that 65 percent of U.S. adults between 18 and 34 attended Halloween costume parties or other celebrations.

·        In the United States, Halloween lags just behind New Year's Eve and the Super Bowl in total number of parties, and it's second only to Christmas in total consumer dollars spent.

·        According to the National Retail Federation, U.S. consumers will spend an average of $44 per household in 2002 on Halloween candy, costumes and decorations. Familes with young children plan to spend an average of $62. The holiday should bring in about $6.9 billion in sales in the United States.

·        A number of other Halloween activities fill the whole month of October. These traditions preserve Samhain's spirit of revelry in the face of frightening thoughts of death and the supernatural.

·        Americans have added scary movies, community haunted houses, ghost stories and Ouija boards to the celebration. Greeting cards and festive decorations are also a big part of Halloween. The holiday is second only to Christmas in total revenue dollars for retailers.

• Another common Halloween custom is collecting money for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), in lieu of or in addition to candy. This started in 1950 in Philadelphia, when a Sunday school class had the idea of collecting money for needy children when trick-or-treating. They sent the money they made, about $17, to UNICEF, which was inspired by the idea and started a trick-or-treat program in 1955.

Halloween Controversy

• Although Halloween comes in part from Christian tradition, many Christian groups want nothing to do with the holiday because of its pagan elements.
•  Prominent Halloween figures, such as witches and ghouls, carry an uncomfortable satanic connotation to some Christians, and they do not want to expose their children to these images. Some groups are also disturbed by the origins of the holiday, as it is a common belief that the Samhain festival was a celebration of a devil-like god of the dead called Samhain.
• Most evidence suggests that this is not actually the case -- the main documentation for such a god comes from material apparently produced by the Catholic church hundreds of years ago, as a means of converting people away from Druidism.
• Christian groups are also disturbed by rumors that modern day Wiccans and Druids observe Halloween as an occasion to worship Satan or other evil forces. The established organizations of these groups completely disavow all knowledge of such practices, though they do say that Halloween is an important day of the year in their religion. Every year, there are some reports of satanic rituals and even animal sacrifices, but most of these stories prove to be fabrications. Any actual sacrifices are the practices of individuals and smaller extremist groups, operating outside any larger organization.

• Many Wiccans, modern day witches, get upset around Halloween because they feel that they are misrepresented by a few Christian spokesmen and the news media. They want to separate their religion from the popular notion of witches as evil figures in league with the devil.

• They say that modern witchcraft is based on ancient Wiccan and Druid beliefs that had nothing to do with Satan or other figures from Judeo-Christian theology.

• Wiccans say  that their religion is based on a connection to nature and the universe, not to dark forces and evil spells as the popular idea of a witch suggests.

• More generally, Halloween is controversial because some parents think it is an inappropriate, possibly dangerous holiday for children. In modern society, children are in some physical danger when they go trick-or-treating because they are walking around neighborhoods in the dark, accepting candy from strangers. The frightening imagery surrounding Halloween is also a concern.

• Many parents fear that monsters and ghosts are too disturbing to children, noting that younger trick-or-treaters have a hard time distinguishing between fantasy and reality and may be overwhelmed by people in monster costumes. In recent years, more and more parents have steered away from trick-or-treating, taking their children to school or church Halloween parties instead.

Why Do People Love Halloween?

• So now that we know where the different elements of Halloween come from, the question remains: Why do we revel in a celebration of death and supernatural forces?

• Two related questions are:

• Why do we enjoy being scared?
• Why do we enjoy dressing up as scary figures?

• All of these pleasures seem to be universal human traits, with death-related festivals and costume parades popping up in many cultures. As human beings, we are acutely aware of our own mortality and death in general.

• Human cultures are obsessed with death because we cannot understand it, yet it looms over everything we do. It is one of the most frightening mysteries we face in life. One way to feel more comfortable with this unknown realm is to make light of it with a festival. This brings all of the frightening ideas out in the open, where we can face them more comfortably, enjoying ourselves with other people instead of contemplating mortality on our own.

• In addition to working through uneasiness about death and supernatural mysteries, people like to feel frightened for purely biological reasons.
• When you watch a scary movie or take a ride on a roller coaster, your brain triggers a fear response. Your body releases adrenaline and other hormones that provide extra energy do deal with the situation.
• When you're actually in danger, of course, you don't enjoy the feeling of these hormones, you simply use them to fight, escape or take some other action.
• When the danger is simulated, though, your mind knows you're actually safe and you enjoy the energy that the hormones give you. Intentional, contained fear is fun because it provides a hormone rush and helps you work through your general fears in a safe environment.

• By dressing up as our fears, we embrace them even more closely, taking control of them to some extent. This can be particularly effective with children. They usually don't fear mortality as much as they do sinister figures like monsters and ghosts.

• Once they've dressed themselves up as a monster and played that character, they cut through some of the monster's mystery, making it less ominous.

• Trick-or-treating is not all about dressing up as frightening figures, of course. Just as often, children dress as a  favorite cartoon character or an adult figure such as a fireman or astronaut.

• The pleasure in this is the simple joy of play-acting -- kids look forward to Halloween because they get to inhabit a character, whether it be a frightening figure or an idolized superhero. Adults enjoy dressing up for similar reasons, and this is why the masquerade plays a part in so many festivals from different cultures. Putting on a mask lets people drop their inhibitions and step outside of themselves for an evening. People in costumes often say and do things they probably wouldn't say or do in their everyday life. It's very satisfying to step into another character for a while, even (or especially) for a grown-up.

• Halloween seems to serve a valuable function for many children and adults. It continues to be so popular because it fills our basic need to address the mysteries that frighten us, and even celebrate them.

• It is a real testament to the power of Halloween traditions that they have been passed down and embraced by so many generations.

Summary

• The origins of Halloween go back as far as 5 B.C..
• The Celtic people who occupied Europe divided the year into four major holidays. According to their calendar, the year began on a day that corresponds with November 1^st on our present day calendar.
• The day also marked the beginning of winter, the time to move the cattle and sheep to a secure pasture closer to home. It also meant the end of the harvest and a time of celebration.
• The festival was called Samhain (pronounced Sah-ween) meaning the end of summer.
•  It was believed that all the people that had died during the year would pass to the other side on this night.
• To aid in their journey, food was left out and bonfires were lit. To keep spirits from seeing their homes the Celts would extinguish the home fires and wear masks while heading for the bonfire.
• They believed the spirits were afraid of the fires and would pass by. During the celebration many would also wear costumes and everyone would dance around the fire and feast on fruits of the harvest.
• At the end of the night each family would take a torch and light it from the bonfire to light their home fire for added protection.

• When the missionaries came, they labeled all the Celtic holidays as evil.

• Church holy days were purposely set to coincide with native holy days. All Saints Day was assigned to November 1st ,the day set aside to honor all Christian Saints.

• The Celtics still celebrated with all Hollows Eve. The thought of the roaming dead was too strong. The church then devised All Souls Day where the living would pray for the dead.

• The pressure of the Church pushed followers of the old religion into hiding. Throughout the next centuries All Hallows Eve was observed in many ways but the old Celtic traditions never died away.

• American Halloween traditions were influenced by the flood of immigrants during the second half of the nineteenth century.

• These new immigrants, especially the ones from Ireland, helped popularize the celebration of Halloween nationally. Taking from the Irish and English traditions, Americans began to dress in costumes and go house to house asking for food or money, a practice that eventually became today's "trick or treat" tradition.

• In the late 1800's there was a move in America to mold Halloween into a holiday more about community and neighborhood "get-togethers," than about the supernatural.

• At the turn of the century, Halloween parties for both children and adults became the most common way to celebrate.

• In the 1920's and 30's Halloween became a secular but community centered holiday which was celebrated with parades and town wide parties.

• By the 1950's vandalism had to be brought under control and by this time Halloween was more of a child's celebration. Treats were handed out in order to prevent tricks like lawn rolling at each home.

• Those traditions have made Halloween the country's second largest commercial holiday to the tune of more than $2 billion spent on candy each year.

• Today, Halloween is once again being celebrated as an adult holiday or masquerade, like Mardi Gras. Men and women in every disguise imaginable are now participating in parades. Many parents decorate their homes and yards, dress in costume, hand out candy at their door or go with their children as they collect candy.

135-9 New World Religions/ Mesoamerica & North America

• Common to all NW religious traditions is a concern with the question of human origins and rituals designed to ensure the reliability of agricultural based food supplies.

• Creation/Emergence Stories are a common feature particularly among the City-state cultures.

• Often the elite linked themselves with the deities, which solidified and justified their special social position. (Exceptions would be the religious traditions at Teotihaucan and Chaco Canyon.

• In some cases the elite were able to shift from “friends of the gods” to living deities.

• The concept of sacred time cycles and ritual is seen in the city-states.

• Groups such as the Maya and Aztec created complex recording technologies that involved hieroglyphic writing and calendars systems based on astronomical observations of the sun, moon, and Venus.

• Linked with the concept of time was the concept of human sacrifices (offerings) to ensure the continuity of time, life and fertility.

• Temple construction: La Venta, Tikal, Copan, Tenochtitlan, Cahokia (Man-made mountains) Linked to political power structure,

• City- state: Pop over 5k supported by agricultural economy, Discrete territory governed by elite, and state system of government.

Olmec:  oldest Mesoamerica. Civilization (People of the rubber country).

• Tenochtitlan is oldest Olmec city (1200 – 900 BCE) in modern Mex. State of Vera Cruz
• Colossal stone heads, 3 tons, and3 meters high.

Maya:   600 BCE Tikal: pyramids, ball courts, blood offerings

Teotihuacan: 125,000- 2000,000 pop. Valley of Mexico (Place of the Gods) Temples of Sun and Moon, two levels of religion, state and household.

Aztec: 1300  Several Deities, many appropriated from neighboring , conquered groups. Like Maya religion, involved offering of blood. Related to Aztec creation story:

Lord and Lady Duality produced 4 sons each associated with a specific color and direction….a vegetation diety /red, a omnipotent diety /Jaguar & black, Windstorms, rain/white, and War/blue, they create lessor gods, humans a calendar, underworld, heavens, water, fire, earth.  After creation 5 “suns” transpire. An “age” is brought to a close by a battle between the 4 sons, Aztec believed they were created during the 5^th sun, when a god brought back bones and ashes of people killed during the 4^th sun. Aztec are created from these remains , plus the blood of the god that retrieved them. Humans must repay this “blood debt”

Chaco Canyon: (850 –1130 CE), 13 large towns linked by 250 miles of roads in modern Arizona Pueblo Bonita was largest (500 rooms and many smaller Kivas and a grand Kiva (55” in diameter) Ancestors of modern Hopi/Zuni       (kachinas)

Mississippian Cultures: A fortified site in Mississippi Valley (1000- 1450 CE) Cahokia is largest Pop est. at 50k covered 5  square miles. Mounds created in phases over 300 years. Woodhenge observatories rebuilt every 100 years: focused on ancestor worship and fertility, capture and rebirth of sun, revitalization and rebirth. Natchez are modern descendents.

135-10 Festivals

·        Rituals open to the whole community or large segments

• Some rituals focus on a particular individual, i.e. initiation or healing;
• More characteristic is a focus on concerns of the whole community. For example the food supply
• In most regions, the food supply may vary with the seasons, or reproductive cycle of the food source (plant and animal)
• Accordingly, most festivals are timed to an annual cycle; (calendrical ceremonies) though the calendar may be based on plant/animal cycles rather than one based on astronomy

NORTH AMERICA:

·        Pacific Northwest :(Many groups rely on the salmon as a source of protein and eat fish for many months. (caught in the ocean, rivers and dried)

·        For most NW tribes the year was divided into 2 parts (Bella Coola metaphor: For 9 months the canoe of the salmon was in the Bella Coola country.) When it departed another canoe bringing the winter ceremony arrived and remained for 4 months.

·        Appearance of first Salmon marked by the First Salmon Ceremony (distinguished by addressing needs of the entire community rather than an individual)

·        This ceremony was directed at ensuring the supply of an essential food for the entire community

·        Ceremony based on view that the salmon willed themselves to be caught, were potentially immortal, and must be treated in such a manner to ensure they would cooperate in being available in the future

·        These basic elements were a constant but particulars varied from one group to another.

·        For example some groups emphasized  taboos to ensure the fish was not offended – any person who was ritually “unclean” was to stay away from the ceremony.

·        Usually these taboos were strengthened by myth, such as telling how Coyote, long ago established the rules for the ceremony.

·        Sometime practical acts were emphasized – hear to first salmon caught was buried to make sure dogs didn’t desecrate it by eating it – or bones and heart were returned to the water to encourage reincarnation – Addressing the salmon by honorific titles when thanking it for giving its life for the people.

·        For some tribes this ceremony marked the beginning of a “new Year” and was part “world Renewal”, a common feature of many Native American groups. That is, renewing a productive relationship with the natural world.

·        To that end they were built around recall of the life of the spirits that had preceded humankind and after whom humans had patterned their lives.

·        In that manner the tribal economy was linked with the traditional cosmic view.

·        Creek: horticulturalist had ceremonies of similar significance – An 8 day ceremony timed to mark the ripening of corn, fire was newly made, people took purgative emetics, fasted, for bodily renewal, followed by feasting.

135-10 Creek cont.

·        Preceded by “stomp dances” and a feast celebrating the renewal of love and friendship.

·        Participation was considered a community obligation.

·        Pueblo: Incredible longevity and perseverance after 450 year of contact with Spanish and Americans.

·        Explicit function was to control sprits responsible for weather and growing season, and therefore crop yield.

·        This increased public confidence in getting a good harvest.

·        The festivals also involved a large accumulation of food, which was redistributed ceremonially. (leveling mechanism)

·        Potlatch : Held in winter, not because they relate to activities of that season, but because they require an accumulation of food and other goods, that can be accumulated only after a period of maximum economic productivity.

·        Describe Potlatch

OCEANIA:

• Tikopia (Rayond Firth 1928)  At heart of Tikopian religion were 2 sets of calendrical ceremonies: one held in the period of trade and the other in the period of the monsoon.
• Each set lasted more than a month and the entire body of ceremonies were known as “The Work of the Gods”
• Firth described the ceremonies as a formal, traditionalized means of maintaining contact with spiritual beings and inducing them to grant the people food and health.
• Spirits were seen as having a reciprocal relationship with certain clan and lineage leaders and their benefits spread to the community.
• The spirits had to be treated cautiously and with great respect, and deference, presentation of gifts using magic and honors not known to regular people.
• One main component of the Work Of the Gods ritual involved kava, a drink prepared from a root with mild narcotic (psychotropic) properties. M
• The Kava ritual involved preparation by a Chief acting as a Priest, and dispensing by an elder. Usually few actually would drink the kava as it was pour out as an offering to the spirits.
• This was a means of communication between the Chief and the spirits. When the human participants did drink the kava the altered state of consciousness was thought to facilitate the communication.
• The Chief was communicating (praying) on behalf of the community and the focus of the prayer was the work day( repair of canoes, nets, etc.) and the other was focused on yam cultivation.
• Participation in the ceremonies would strengthen the ties and traditions that existed among the lineages.
• Usually the ceremonies involved the accumulation and distribution of food, often in quantities that allowed the participants to take some home.
• Ceremonial exchange is also a common element among Polynesia/Melanseian communities as well. Economic and Spiritual balance among neighboring communities was extremely important
• Trobriand Islands: Practiced yam exchange among kinsmen using magic procedure intertwined with the practical work of every day of garden

135-10 OCEANIA cont.

preparation, cultivation, and harvest cycle. Among the Trobrianders the yam exchange festivals were not communal banquets, but rather a ritual giving of food for storage. Some food was set out for consumption by the spirits, shoes participation at the time of the harvest was crucial.

• Kula: Voyages made famous by the work of Malinowski’s Argonauts of the Western Pacific.
• The Kula is an exchange system in which men from one island trade two kinds of valued objects: shell armbands and necklaces. 
• When they travel to neighboring islands in a clockwise direction they receive necklaces, when they travel in a counter clockwise direction they receive armbands. This is accomplished through a network of individual trading partners on the different islands. The items are received as a gift and must be eventually passed on to another partner in the appropriate direction.
• Each kula object has a pedigree of sorts and is the object of much speculation and a source of varying prestige.
• The kula voyages are also an opportunity for practical trade as well and link distant islands in a economic network.
• The kula expedition may be seen as one long continuing communal ceremony. Ritual and magic mark each stage:
• Felling the tree to make a canoe, planning the voyage, loading the canoe, the sea voyage, on the approach there is beauty magic and magic employed to make the kula partner generous in the exchanges, and finally safety magic to protect the voyagers from attack by flying witches sent from other villages.

AFRICA :

• African religions are less dominated by economic concerns than social relations.
• Before European contact the herding and agricultural economies may have given Africans a greater  sense of control over the source of food than the simpler horticultural and foraging pursuits  of the other regions we have covered. (Also greater population density and larger communities)
• This may have promoted more rivalry and interpersonal frustrations that seen in smaller communities
• The Yako of eastern Nigeria: Ceremonies organized around the calendar of food –production.
• Live in villages of 1,000 and 10,000 pop. Each with separate ceremonial life defined by the horticultural cycle.
• 3 annual periods of ceremony in most Yako villages: one is around planting time at the beginning of the rainy season (January) , the second is the First Fruits Ceremony (July), and the third is in mid November – Harvest Rites.
• Yako Society is divided up along kinship lines, prestige and status, sex (female/male), & religious functions. Each group has a defined role in the First Fruits ceremonies, and group participation is stressed.
• Net effect is to inculcate the value of harmony and solidarity within the village and integrate each group into the community organization as a whole.
• Tellensi of Ghana: other African ceremonies stress reduction of inter-group rivalry and hostility ( clans and lineages)
• Nayakyusa of Tanzania: One ceremony that happens at 30 year intervals is a “coming out” ceremony.

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 AFRICA cont.

• The Nayakyusa society is organized into Chiefdoms, each enveloping a number of villages. Each village is divided into age segments rather than family or clan. Each has a village headman with considerable authority, who is appointed.
• The overall Chief is hereditary  and the ceremony in question takes place to mark a transfer in power at this level.
• The Coming Out ceremony begins with the new chief’s ending a period of seclusion , and is marked by group feasting and dancing and the naming of the new chief by the old one. There are also mock food seizing raids on other villages of other tribes and the old chief’s village.
• Conspicuous religious elements include ritual for increasing the power of the chief.
• Trees are planted and the health of these trees over the years is indicative of the status of the relationship between neighboring villages.
• Old fires are extinguished and new fire is made and distributed to each household.
• Each Chief marries two new wives who will now be the principal wives regardless of  his previous marriages.
• This is a renewal and rebuilding ceremony in which entire villages participate.

SUMMARY:

• For many societies around the world, festivals are major markers on the calendar.
• They are events that absorb the attention and effort at particular periods of the year, and are prepared for in other parts of the calendar cycle.
• They are often related to the economic cycle – fitted in when the pressures of food getting permit, celebrating the success of the food quest in providing security in times ahead, and seeking support for future successes.
• They are often accompanied by food exchange within the community which act as a leveling devise and when other communities are involved it broadens the availability of resources.
• The sense of mystical support for these activities strengthens the peaceful interaction both within and without the community.

135-11

Death & Afterlife

• LoDagga Funeral speech. (NW Ghana, mixed economy of horticulture , herding, foraging)
• Illustrates many aspect of LoDagga funerary customs, Most of which , not in concrete detail, are shared with most societies around the world.
• Death poses 3 problems that are more or less universal regardless of religion, but whose resolution are related to religion:
• What to do with the body of the deceased. Sometimes dealt with independently of religion.
• Some nomads just abandon it, sometimes with ceremony , others not.
• For most societies mode of disposition of the body is associated with religious practice, but may be influenced by practical issues (burial in frozen soil), but religious practice may be conspicuous

·        Deceased no longer available for customary interaction with others. Life connections are severed. A gap is created in the life of the survivors.

·        Grief appears as a response in most societies, even specific expressions are near universal. i.e.: Crying occasioned by death

·        Problem is how to work through it and resume some normality in the face of a loss.

·        Some responses are to remove physical items that were associated with deceased, move away from scene of death, no longer speaking the deceased name

·        Responses are often viewed in light of religious beliefs.

• Explaining the death: there may be competing explanations, may dictate competing responses revenge, prayer, improved sanitation.

·        Though the problem may not have been created by religion , it is often solved by religious means.

·        Even in our scientific world (medicine), people ask “Why my family?”

• Belief in some kind of afterlife is almost universal and poses the problems of what actions are the living to take in relation to the surviving spirit of the deceased?
• Speech of LoDagga youth illustrates this problem and how it is solved by that particular culture. (1. Body is about to be buried,(2. recognition of the severing of the friendship, ritual invitation for a new friend to take old one’s place by taking the offerings of beer and fowl brought to the deceased, if not he will be left in grief, (3. two explanations of the friends death are considered, on in which he is to blame, or others. (4. If the later is correct then the arrow may be used to avenge himself.
• Most of the speech is concerned with the afterlife. In the end the bereaved acknowledges that the friend may be irreplaceable and he will be left in grief.

Survival of the Soul:

·        Almost every society holds beliefs that some part of the person survives beyond bodily death.

·        Definite statements that the belief is absent are rare. (Hadza of Tanzania are explicit is stating when a person dies the body just rots and that is that!; Baka of the Ituri say that when you’re dead, you’re dead…the idea of an afterlife seems to have been introduced by missionaries; Dinka of Sudan view death as dreadful end mitigated only by the immortality of procreation.

·        Exactly what survives is thought of in various ways.

·        We’ll use the word SOUL but caution that it does not thought of or defined in  the same way everywhere. In fact many languages do not have a word to express the concept.

·        We’ll use it in its most general sense: any non-bodily part ascribed to a person. (SPIRIT is a useful term.

·        Frequently, a single soul is considered intrinsic to each person, it may be analogous to breath or a person’s shadow or to the body itself (though invisible).

·        Many societies have a more complex view, assigning more than one soul to a person, of which one or more survive beyond death. DOGON of Mali: 8 souls, 4 relate to the body and 4 to sexuality and reproduction. Only the reproduction souls  become enshrined as sprits, 2 of the sex-linked souls become ancestors and are important to the continuation of the lineage

·        The RARAMURI of Mexico: One principal soul and many smaller souls, with at least one located in each part of the body that can move.

·        Lugbara of E. Africa: only males have a soul that pertains to the continuation of the lineage.

·        Variations are found all over the world.

Support for belief in Survival of the Soul:

·        Speculation as to the origin of such an idea is not scientifically tested so has been abandoned.

·        However, one answer that has been tested through fieldwork in a traditional society is that belief in the survival of the soul is supported by the training of children, adolescents and even adults by their peers and elders. (Enculturation)

·        In our society, Clergy, scriptures, etc. promotes this. Polls show that vast majority of the public accept the idea of an afterlife, suggests the power of parents and peers in implanting and sustaining such a belief. ( A US senator once announced that Eleanor Roosevelt was unfit to represent the country because she expressed uncertainty in a personal afterlife.

·        Can we find a similar process in non-literate society? Kwoma of New Guinea: fear of dead relatives (ghosts). Children observe this fear in adults, are threatened with action of ghosts i.e. nocturnal sounds of animals are explained as ghosts on the prowl.

·        Other major kinds of major experiences support this belief:

o       Dreaming about a person who is dead may be taken as a contact with the deceased

o       Dreaming itself offers impressive evidence (in a non-scientific setting) for the reality of the soul and its independence from the body. (dream travel)

o       Irrational behavior may be explained by spirit possession (malevolent ghosts)

o       Response by bereaved to cues to which he/she responded to in company of deceased prior to death may evoke a sense of the presence of the deceased as it did in the past.

o       Death will have left survivors with unfinished activities that had been planed for  and can creat  in the living a motive for fantasying the presence of the deceased for carrying out the cooperative interaction.

Character of the Afterlife:

·        No abundant evidence that the idea of immortality of the soul is widespread among native peoples. Often the idea was projected by westerners own ideas of life eternal.

·         Rather field work indicates that the ideas pertain only to the continuity of life on both sides of death rather than a conception of everlasting life.

·        Survival of the soul beyond bodily death is no guarantee of longevity of the soul.

·        Manus, Pac Isl., Soul first becomes a wanderer, then a sea slug, Zuni, Amer. SW, Souls must die 3 deaths in the afterlife then becomes an animal for which it had an affinity for in life, Kraho, Brazil, soul dies several times after death and each time becomes a smaller and smaller animal, and ends as a stone, a root, or tree stump.

·        Afterlife is often conceived in relation to the personal interests and memory of the living rather than as an abstract doctrine.

·        There does not seem to be any universality to the character of the afterlife, though such a belief is found in every society.

·        Often based on an extension of normal life, in hunting societies, the spirits hunt, in agricultural societies they cultivate, they continue familiar activities and pursuits, familiar social interactions. Often there is little gap or bride seen between the natural and supernatural world. Not always seen in terms of punishment and reward, sometimes seen as having temporal stages in which the character changes.

Mortuary Rites/Becoming an Ancestor:

• One tendency of these rites around the world is that they are multiple, that is, on e set of rites are performed shortly after death,  and another set later, sometimes months or years after the first.
• Where there is this duality, often a time delay is required in that time is needed for the body to decompose sufficiently for the flesh to be cleaned from the bones.
• This may mirror the time needed for the soul to undergo a cleaning phase, and for the survivors to work through their grief and adjusting to the practical consequences of their loss before they are ready for a final farewell to the deceased.
• The initial rites, regardless of subsequent rites, are generally built around the disposition of the body.
• Burial is most common, but other practices abound
• Exposure to the elements is one, dressed and displayed
• Packed in a jar
• Treated in a manner of fear and avoidance and disposed of with finality
• Portions eaten by relatives or bones kept and displayed as reminders
• Treatment may be different according to the persons age , sex , status or circumstance of death.
• Men buried on Right side/women on left
• In most societies, the initial ceremony brings together the deceased persons immediate family, and perhaps other relatives and friends. It may be one of the few occasions in which the members of an important social group come together
• They serve to not only recognize the diminution of social ties by death , but also to renew other social ties and reinforce the basic social structure of society
• Emotions appropriate to the occasion may be expressed
• Brings people together to address a common threat, provide reassurance in the face of uncertainty, to promote positive interaction of the group, mutual solace of grief and fear
• There may also be the undercurrent of fear and hostility associated with blame on why the death occurred
• The LoDagga youth speculates on why his friend had died and speculates on the reason. Sometimes the initial ceremony is the appropriate place for such an inquiry to be initiated, with follow up at a later time.
• Death may be seen a polluting the livinfg and the ceremony may focus on removing the pollution of the survivors.
• The final ceremony or series of culminating ceremonies may be seen as a clear transition for soul, the body of the deceased and the survivors.
• It may be timed for the most convenient part of the economic year or cycle because the participants are numerous, far-flung and ceremonies may be lengthy. It may be collective and communal recognizing all the deceased from a certain period of time.
• May involve a reburial of re-disposition of the remains from the initial deposition
• For the survivors the final ceremony usually marks the end of mourning, taboos  may be lifted, a period of danger is over, and realistic implications recognized, such as the disposition of property and redistribution of privileges and responsibilities

Reincarnation:

• A standard belief in many societies and in some, and integral part of the life cycle
• Trobriand Is., Spirits play a vital role in conception by entering the womb of women of the same sub-clan and village as a spirit embryo. Aranda of Australia, also see spirits playing a major role in procreation, however not the spirit of a deceased person but of a mythical ancestral spirit associated with the dwelling place other location of  where the woman  is at the time of reincarnation.
• Kaguru of Tanzania, picture life and death as alternating periods…death is seen as a strengthening period for the spirits

Summary:

• The belief that a person has one or more souls that survive bodily death apparently occurs everywhere
• A number of more or less universal experiences seem to reinforce the belief
• Concepts of the Afterlife vary, but generally have in common the idea that they are based on the present life of the society
• Death occasions ceremonies, usually in sequence of 2 or more for each person, in many societies. These are diverse in detail but have almost uniform basic functions:

1. To dispose of the body of the deceased in a manner feasible in the physical setting and appropriate to the societies belief system.
2. To help the survivors adjust emotionally to their loss.
3. To facilitate any replacement that may be dictated by the kinship customs of the society.
4. To renew commitment to the established patterns of relation among kin, neighbors, and community.
5. To recognize the new status of the deceased person as a spirit
6. To relate to the spirit in whatever ways customs may dictate: protect from its attack, aid it on its way in the afterlife.