The Hindu Religions Tradition of Not Eating Beef Is an Example of Which Supernatural Function The
Sashur Henninger-Rener, Academy of LaVerne and the Los Angeles Community College District
Humans have always wondered near the meaning of the life, the nature of the universe, and the forces that shape our lives. While information technology is incommunicable to know for certain how the people who lived thousands of years ago answered these kinds of questions, at that place are some clues. L g years ago, human communities buried the expressionless with stone tools, shells, fauna bones, and other objects, a practice that suggests they were preparing the deceased for an afterlife, or a world across this one. 30 thousand years ago, artists entered the Chauvet cave in France and painted dramatic scenes of animals on the cave walls along with abstract symbols that advise the images were part of a supernatural belief system, perchance one focused on ensuring safety or success in hunting (Figure 1).[ane]A few thousand years later, collections of small-scale clay sculptures, known as Venus figurines, began actualization across Eurasia. They seem to express ideas about fertility or maternity and may have been viewed as magical (Figure ii).[2]
Effigy 1: An image from Chauvet cave painted most 32,000 years ago. The paintings may have been role of religious ceremonies intended to ensure success in hunting.
Because ideas virtually the supernatural are part of every man civilisation, agreement these beliefs is important to anthropologists. All the same, studying supernatural beliefs is challenging for several reasons. The first difficulty arises from the challenge of defining the topic itself. The word "religion," which is commonly used in the United states to refer to participation in a distinct form of faith such every bit Christianity, Islam, or Judaism, is non a universally recognized idea. Many cultures have no word for "religion" at all and many societies do non make a clear distinction between beliefs or practices that are "religious," or "spiritual" and other habits that are an ordinary function of daily life. For instance, leaving an incense offering in a household shrine dedicated to the spirits of the ancestors may be viewed as a simple part of the daily routine rather than a "religious" practice. There are societies that believe in supernatural beings, just do non phone call them "gods." Some societies do not run into a distinction between the natural and the supernatural observing, instead, that the spirits share the same physical earth as humans. Concepts like "heaven," "hell," or fifty-fifty "prayer" do not exist in many societies. The split between "religion" and related ideas like "spirituality" or fifty-fifty "magic" is likewise murky in some cultural contexts.
Figure two:< The Venus of Willendorf figurine was made between 28,000 and 25,000 BC and may have been associated with spiritual beliefs about motherhood or fertility.
To study supernatural beliefs, anthropologists must cultivate a perspective of cultural relativism and strive to sympathize behavior from an emic or insider's perspective. Imposing the definitions or assumptions from one culture on some other is likely to lead to misunderstandings. One example of this problem tin exist found in the early on anthropological inquiry of Sir James Frazer who attempted to compose the start comprehensive report of the world's major magical and religious belief systems. Frazer was part of the early generation of anthropologists whose work was based on reading and questionnaires mailed to missionaries and colonial officials rather than travel and participant-observation. As a result, he had just minimal information about the behavior he wrote about and he was quick to utilise his own opinions.
In The Golden Bough (1890) Frazer dismissed many of the spiritual beliefs he documented: "I await upon [them] non merely as false merely equally preposterous and cool."[3] His gimmicky, Sir E.B. Tylor, was less dismissive of unfamiliar belief systems, but he defined religion minimally and, for some, in overly narrow terms as "the belief in supernatural beings." This definition excludes much of what people effectually the world really believe.[4]As researchers gained more information most other cultures, their ideas about faith became more circuitous. The sociologist Emile Durkheim recognized that religion was not simply a belief in "supernatural beings," but a set of practices and social institutions that brought members of a community together. Religion, he said, was "a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set bated and forbidden—behavior and practices which unite into 1 single moral community called a Church building, all those who adhere to them."[v]
Durkheim's analysis of organized religion emphasized the significance of spiritual beliefs for relationships betwixt people. Subsequent anthropological research in communities around the world has confirmed that rituals associated with behavior in the supernatural play a pregnant function in structuring community life, providing rules or guidelines for behavior, and bonding members of a community to ane another. Interestingly, religious "beings," such as gods or spirits, likewise demonstrate social qualities. Most of the fourth dimension, these beings are imagined in familiar terms every bit entities with personalities, desires, and "agency," an ability to make decisions and take action. Supernatural beings, in other words, are not so different from people.[vi] In keeping with this thought, organized religion can be divers as "the means past which human club and civilization is extended to include the nonhuman."[7] This definition is deliberately broad and can be used to cover many dissimilar kinds of conventionalities systems.
Many religions involve ideas or rituals that could be described every bit "magical" and the relationship between religion and magic is complex. In his book A General Theory of Magic (1902), Marcel Mauss suggested that religion and magic were two reverse poles on a spectrum of spiritual beliefs. Magic was at one finish of the spectrum; information technology was private, secret, and private. Religion was at the opposite end of the spectrum; information technology was public and oriented toward bringing the community together.[8] Although Mauss' conception presented religion and magic as office of the same general way of thinking, many gimmicky anthropologists are convinced that making a distinction between faith and magic is artificial and usually not especially useful. With this circumspection in mind, magic tin be divers as practices intended to bring supernatural forces nether i's personal command. Sorcerers are individuals who seek to use magic for their ain purposes. It is important to call back that both magic and sorcery are labels that have historically been used by outsiders, including anthropologists, to describe spiritual beliefs with which they are unfamiliar. Words from the local language are most ever preferable for representing how people call back nigh themselves.
THEORIES OF Faith
Sir James Frazer'southward endeavor to interpret religious mythology was the first of many attempts to empathise the reasons why cultures develop various kinds of spiritual beliefs. In the early twentieth century, many anthropologists practical a functional approach to this problem by focusing on the ways religion addressed human being needs. Bronislaw Malinowski (1931), who conducted research in the Trobriand Islands located near Papua New Guinea, believed that religious behavior met psychological needs. He observed that religion "is not born out of speculation or reflection, yet less out of illusion or apprehension, but rather, out of the real tragedies of human life, out of the conflict between man plans and realities."[9]
At the time of Malinowski's research, the Trobriand Islanders participated in an event called the kula band, a tradition that required men to build canoes and sail on long and dangerous journeys between neighboring islands to exchange ritual items. Malinowski noticed that before these dangerous trips several complex rituals had to be performed, but ordinary sailing for fishing trips required no special preparations. What was the deviation? Malinowski concluded that the longer trips were non just more dangerous, but also provoked more anxiety considering the men felt they had less control over what might happen. On long voyages, at that place were many things that could go wrong, few of which could be planned for or avoided. He argued that religious rituals provided a way to reduce or command feet when anticipating these weather.[10] The use of rituals to reduce anxiety has been documented in many other settings. George Gmelch (1971) documented forms of "baseball magic" among professional athletes. Baseball game players, for example, have rituals related to how they eat, wearing apparel, and fifty-fifty drive to the ballpark, rituals they believe contribute to adept luck.[11]
Every bit a functionalist, Malinowski believed that religion provided shared values and behavioral norms that created solidarity between people. The sociologist Emile Durkheim also believed that faith played an important part in building connections between people by creating shared definitions of the sacred and profane. Sacred objects or ideas are set autonomously from the ordinary and treated with great respect or care while profane objects or ideas are ordinary and can be treated with disregard or contempt. Sacred things could include a God or gods, a natural phenomenon, an animal or many other things. Religion, Durkheim concluded, was "a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices that unite, into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them."[12] One time a person or a matter was designated as sacred, Durkheim believed that celebrating it through ritual was a powerful way to unite communities effectually shared values.[13] In addition, celebrating the sacred tin can create an intense emotional feel Durkheim referred to equally collective effervescence , a passion or energy that arises when groups of people share the same thoughts and emotions. The experience of collective effervescence magnifies the emotional impact of an event and tin can create a sense of awe or wonder.[14]
Following Durkheim, many anthropologists, including Dame Mary Douglas, have found it useful to explore the ways in which definitions of sacred and profane structure religious beliefs. In her book Purity and Danger (1966), Douglas analyzed the fashion in which cultural ideas about things that were "dirty" or "impure" influenced religious beliefs. The kosher dietary rules observed by Jews were one prominent case of the application of this kind of thinking.[15]
The philosopher and historian Karl Marx famously called religion "the opium of the people."[16] He viewed faith as an credo, a way of thinking that attempts to justify inequalities in power and status. In his view, organized religion created an illusion of happiness that helped people cope with the economical difficulties of life under commercialism. As an institution, Marx believed that the Christian church helped to legitimize and support the political and economic inequality of the working class by encouraging ordinary people to orient themselves toward the afterlife, where they could look to receive condolement and happiness. He argued that the obedience and conformity advocated by religious leaders as a means of reaching heaven besides persuaded people not to fight for ameliorate economical or social weather in their current lives. Numerous examples of the use of organized religion to legitimize or justify power differences accept been documented cross-culturally including the beingness of divine rulers, who were believed to be empowered by the Gods themselves, in aboriginal Egyptian and Incan societies. A glimpse of the legitimizing office of religion is likewise seen in the U.Due south. exercise of having elected officials take an oath of office using the Bible or some other holy book.
The psychologist Sigmund Freud believed that faith is the institution that prevents united states from acting upon our deepest and nearly atrocious desires. One of his about famous examples is the Oedipal complex, the story of Oedipus who (unknowingly) had a sexual relationship with his mother and, once he discovered this, ripped out his own eyes in a violent and gory death. One possible interpretation of this story is that there is an unconscious sexual desire amidst males for their mothers and among females their fathers. These desires can never exist best-selling, permit alone acted on, considering of the damage they would cause to society.[17] In i of his most well-known works, Totem and Taboo, Freud proposes that religious beliefs provide rules or restrictions that keep the worst anti-social instincts, like the Oedipal circuitous, suppressed. He developed the thought of "totemic religions," conventionalities systems based on the worship of a particular animal or object, and suggested that the purpose of these religions was to regulate interactions with socially significant and potentially disruptive objects and relationships.[18]
One interesting interpretation of religious beliefs that builds on the piece of work of Durkheim, Marx, and Freud is Marvin Harris' analysis of the Hindu prohibition confronting killing cows. In Hinduism, the cow is honored and treated with respect because of its fertility, gentle nature, and association with some Hindu deities. In his book Moo-cow, Pigs, Wars, and Witches (1974), Harris suggested that these religious ideas about the cow were actually based in an economic reality. In India, cows are more valuable live as a source of milk or for doing work in the fields than they are dead as meat. For this reason, he argued, cows were defined equally sacred and gear up autonomously from other kinds of animals that could be killed and eaten. The subsequent development of religious explanations for cows' specialness reinforced and legitimated the special handling.[19]
A symbolic approach to the study of faith developed in the mid-twentieth century and presented new ways of analyzing supernatural beliefs. Clifford Geertz, one of the anthropologists responsible for creating the symbolic approach, defined religion every bit "a system of symbols which acts to constitute powerful, persuasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations…. by formulating conceptions of a full general lodge of being and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic."[twenty] Geertz suggested that religious practices were a way to enact or make visible important cultural ideas. The symbols used in whatsoever religion, such equally a cross or even a cow, can exist interpreted or "read" by anthropologists to discern important cultural values. At the same time, religious symbols reinforce values or aspirations in members of the religious community. The Christian cross, which is associated with both death and resurrection, demonstrates ideas about cede and putting the needs of others in the community beginning. The cross also symbolizes deeper ideas nigh the nature of life itself: that suffering can take positive outcomes and that there is something across the current reality.
A symbolic approach to religion treats religious beliefs as a kind of "text" or "operation" that tin be interpreted by outsiders. Like the other theories described in this section, symbolic approaches present some chance of misinterpretation. Religious beliefs involve complex combinations of personal and social values every bit well as embodied or visceral feelings that cannot ever be appreciated or even recognized by outsiders. The persistently big gap betwixt emic (insider) and etic (outsider) explanations for religious beliefs and practices makes the study of faith one of the most challenging topics in cultural anthropology.
ELEMENTS OF Faith
Despite the broad variety of supernatural beliefs plant in cultures effectually the world, nearly conventionalities systems practice share some common elements. The first of these feature is cosmology , an explanation for the origin or history of the world. Religious cosmologies provide "big picture" explanations for how human life was created and provide a perspective on the forces or powers at piece of work in the world. A second characteristic of religion is a belief in the supernatural , a realm beyond direct human feel. This belief could include a God or gods, but this is not a requirement. Quite a few religious beliefs, every bit discussed below, involve more abstruse ideas about supernatural forces. Most religions also share a third feature: rules governing behavior . These rules define proper conduct for individuals and for society every bit a whole and are oriented toward bringing individual actions into harmony with spiritual beliefs. A fourth element is ritual , practices or ceremonies that serve a religious purpose and are usually supervised by religious specialists. Rituals may be oriented toward the supernatural, such as rituals designed to delight the gods, but at the same time they address the needs of individuals or the community as a whole. Funeral rituals, for instance, may be designed to ensure the passage of a deceased person to the afterlife, but also simultaneously provide emotional comfort to those who are grieving and provide an outlet for the customs to express care and back up.
Religious Cosmologies
Religious cosmologies are ways of explaining the origin of the universe and the principles or "social club" that governs reality. In its simplest course, a cosmology tin can be an origin story, an explanation for the history, nowadays state, and possible futures of the world and the origins of the people, spirits, divinities, and forces that populate it. The ancient Greeks had an origin story that began with an human action of cosmos from Anarchy, the first thing to exist. The deities Erebus, representing darkness, and Nyx, representing nighttime, were born from Anarchy. Nyx gave nativity to Aether (light) and Hemera (mean solar day). Hemera and Nyx took turns exiting the underworld, creating the phenomenon of solar day and nighttime. Aether and Hemera side by side created Gaia (Earth), the mother of all life, who gave birth to the heaven, the mountains, the sea, and eventually to a pantheon of gods. One of these gods, Prometheus, shaped humans out of mud and gave them the gift of fire. This origin story reflects many significant cultural ideas. Ane of these is the depiction of a world organized into a hierarchy with gods at the top and humans obligated to accolade them.
Traditional Navajo origin stories provide a different view of the organization of the universe. These stories suggested that the world is a gear up of 14 stacked "plates" or "platters." Creation began at the lowest levels and gradually spread to the superlative. The lower levels contained animals like insects too as beast-people and bird-people who lived in their own fully-formed worlds with distinct cultures and societies. At the top level, Commencement Human and Showtime Adult female somewhen emerged and began making preparations for other humans, creating a sweat lodge, hoghan (traditional house), and preparing sacred medicine bundles. During a special ceremony, the showtime human men and women were formed and they created those who followed.[21] Like the Greek origin story, the Navajo cosmology explains human identity and emphasizes the debt humans owe to their supernatural ancestors.
The first 2 chapters of the Biblical Book of Genesis, which is the foundation for both Judaism and Christianity, draw the cosmos of the earth and all living creatures. The exact words vary in dissimilar translations, just describe a God responsible for creating the world and everything in it: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the world." The six-day process began with the segmentation of light from darkness, land from water, and sky from earth. On the fifth solar day, "God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird later on its kind; and God saw that it was good."[22] On the 6th mean solar day, "God created man in His ain prototype, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them."[23] This cosmology differs from the others in describing an act of creation past a unmarried deity, God, merely shares with the Greek and Navajo versions a clarification of creation that emphasizes the relationship between people and their creator.
Reading these cosmologies also raises the question of how they should exist interpreted. Are these origin stories regarded as literal truth in the cultures in which they originated? Or, are the stories metaphorical and symbolic? There is no simple answer to this question. Within any civilization, individuals may disagree about the nature of their own religious traditions. Christians, for instance, differ in the extent to which they view the contents of the Bible as fact. Cultural relativism requires that anthropologists avoid making judgments about whether any cultural idea, including religious beliefs, is "right" or "true." Instead, a more useful approach is to try to understand the multiple means people interpret or make sense of their religious behavior. In addition information technology is important to consider the function a religious cosmology has in the wider society. As Bronislaw Malinowski observed, a myth or origin story is not an "idle tale, merely a hard-worked agile forcefulness."[24]
Conventionalities in the Supernatural
Some other characteristic shared by most religions is a concept of the supernatural, spirits, divinities, or forces not governed past natural laws. The supernatural can take many forms. Some supernatural entities are anthropomorphic , having human being characteristics. Other supernatural forces are more generalized, seen in phenomena like the power of the wind. The amount of involvement that supernatural forces or entities have in the lives of humans varies cantankerous-culturally.
Abstruse Forces
Many cultures are organized effectually belief in an impersonal supernatural forcefulness, a type of religion known every bit animatism . The idea of mana is one example. The word itself comes from Oceania and may originally have meant "powerful wind," "lightning" or "storm." Today, information technology nevertheless refers to power, but in a more general sense. Aram Oroi, a pastor from the Solomon Islands, has compared mana to turning on a flashlight: "You sense something powerful only unseen, and so— click —its power is fabricated manifest in the world."[25] Traditionally, the ability to accrue mana in certain locations, or in one's own body, was to become potent or successful.[26] Certain locations such as mountains or ancient sites ( marae ) have particularly strong mana. As well, individual behaviors, including sexual or violent acts, were traditionally viewed as ways to accumulate mana for oneself.
Interestingly, the thought of mana has spread far beyond its original cultural context. In 1993, Richard Garfield incorporated the thought in the bill of fare game Magic: The Gathering. Players of the game, which has sold millions of copies since its introduction, use mana as a source of ability to battle wizards and magical creatures. Mana is also a source of power in the immensely popular figurer game World of Warcraft. [27] These examples do prove cultural appropriation, the human action of copying an thought from some other culture and in the procedure distorting its meaning. Still, they also demonstrate how compelling animist ideas most abstract supernatural power are beyond cultures. Another well-known instance of animism in popular culture is "the Force" depicted in the George Lucas Star Wars films. The Force is depicted every bit flowing through everything and is used by Luke Skywalker as a source of potency and insight when he destroys the Death Star.
Spirits
The line betwixt the natural and the supernatural tin exist blurry. Many people believe that humans have a supernatural or spiritual element that coexists within their natural bodies. In Christianity, this element is called the soul. In Hinduism, information technology is the atman.[28] The Tausūg, a group who alive in the Philippines, believe that the soul has 4 parts: a transcendent soul that stays in the spiritual realm even when a person is alive; a life-soul that is attached to the body, but can move through dreams; the breath, which is e'er attached to the body, and the spirit-soul, which is like a person's shadow.[29]
Many people believe that the spirit survives afterward an individual dies, sometimes remaining on Earth and sometimes parting for a supernatural realm. Spirits, or "ghosts," who remain on Earth may continue to play an active role in the lives of their families and communities. Some will be well-intentioned and others will be malevolent. Well-nigh universally, spirits of the deceased are assumed to be needy and to make demands on the living. For this reason, many cultures have traditions for the veneration of the dead, rituals intended to award the deceased, or to win their favor or cooperation. When treated properly, antecedent spirits can be messengers to gods, and can act on behalf of the living afterward receiving prayers or requests. If they are displeased, ancestor spirits can become aggravated and wreak havoc on the living through affliction and suffering. To avert these problems, offerings in the form of favorite foods, drinks, and gifts are made to appease the spirits. In Communist china, as well as in many other countries, filial piety requires that the living continue to care for the ancestors.[30] In Madagascar, where bad luck and misfortune tin be attributed to spirits of the dead who believe they have been neglected, a trunk may be repeatedly exhumed and shown respect by cleaning the bones.[31]
Figure 3: A spirit business firm in Thailand. The houses provide shelter for local spirits that could problem humans if they become displeased.
If humans contain a supernatural spirit, essence, or soul, it is logical to recall that not-human entities may have their ain sparks of the divine. Religions based on the idea that plants, animals, inanimate objects, and even natural phenomena like weather have a spiritual or supernatural element are called animism . The showtime anthropological description of animism came from Sir Edward Burnett Tylor, who believed it was the earliest blazon of religious practice to develop in human being societies.[32]Tylor suggested that ordinary parts of the human experience, such as dreaming, formed the basis for spiritual beliefs. When people dream, they may perceive that they take traveled to another place, or may be able to communicate with deceased members of their families. This sense of altered consciousness gives rise to ideas that the world is more than than information technology seems. Tylor suggested that these experiences, combined with a pressing need to answer questions almost the meaning of life, were the basis for all religious systems.[33] He likewise assumed that animist religions evolved into what he viewed equally more sophisticated religious systems involving a God or gods.
Figure 4: The showtime Torii at the entrances to njikko Tosho-gu, Tochigi Prefecture, Japan.
Today, Tylor'due south views about the development of organized religion are considered misguided, as no belief system is inherently more sophisticated than another. Several animist religions exist today and have millions of adherents. 1 of the about well-known is Shintoism, the traditional religion of Nippon. Shintoism recognizes spirits known as kami that exist in plants, animals, rocks, places and sometimes people. Certain locations accept particularly stiff connections to the kami, including mountains, forests, waterfalls, and shrines. Shinto shrines in Japan are marked by torii gates that marking the separation between ordinary reality and sacred space (Effigy four).
Gods
The most powerful non-human spirits are gods, though in practise there is no universal definition of a "god" that would exist recognized by all people. In general, gods are extremely powerful and non function of nature—not homo, or fauna. Despite their unnaturalness, many gods have personalities or qualities that are recognizable and relatable to humans. They are often anthropomorphic, imagined in human course, or zoomorphic , imagined in animal course. In some religions, gods interact directly with humans while in others they are more remote.
Anthropologists categorize belief systems organized effectually a God or gods using the terms monotheism and polytheism. Monotheistic religions recognize a single supreme God. The largest monotheistic religions in the world today are Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Together these religions have more than than 3.8 billion adherents worldwide.[34] Polytheistic religions include several gods. Hinduism, i of the world'due south largest polytheistic religions with more than 1 billion practitioners, has a pantheon of deities each with unlike capabilities and concerns.[35]
Rules of Beliefs
Religious beliefs are an important element of social command because these beliefs aid to define adequate behaviors as well equally punishments, including supernatural consequences, for misbehavior. One well-known example are the ideas expressed in the Ten Commandments, which are incorporated in the teachings of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism and prohibit behaviors such as theft, murder, adultery, dishonesty, and jealousy while also emphasizing the demand for honour and respect between people. Behavior that violates the commandments brings both social disapproval from other members of the religious community and potential punishment from God.
Buddhism, the earth's fourth largest religion, demonstrates the strong connection between spiritual beliefs and rules for everyday behavior. Buddhists follow the teachings of Buddha, who was an ordinary homo who achieved wisdom through written report and discipline. In that location is no God or gods in Buddhism. Instead, individuals who practice Buddhism apply techniques like meditation to accomplish the insight necessary to lead a meaningful life and ultimately, after many lifetimes, to achieve the goal of nirvana , release from suffering.
Although Buddhism defies easy categorization into any anthropological category, there is an element of animatism represented by karma , a moral force in the universe. Private deportment have effects on one'southward karma. Kindness toward others, for instance, yields positive karma while acts that are disapproved in Buddhist teachings, such as killing an beast, create negative karma. The corporeality of positive karma a person builds-up in a lifetime is important considering it will determine how the private volition exist reborn. Reincarnation , the idea that a living existence tin begin another life in a new body after death, is a characteristic of several religions. In Buddhism, the form of a man's reincarnation depends on the quality of the karma adult during life. Rebirth in a human being class is considered proficient fortune because humans have the ability to control their own thoughts and behaviors. They can follow the Noble Eightfold Path, rules based on the teachings of Buddha that emphasize the demand for discipline, restraint, humility, and kindness in every aspect of life.[36]
Rituals and Religious Practitioners
The most easily observed elements of whatsoever religious conventionalities system are rituals. Victor Turner (1972) defined ritual as "a stereotyped sequence of activities … performed in a sequestered place, and designed to influence preternatural entities or forces on behalf of the actors' goals and interests."[37] Rituals have a concrete purpose or goal, such every bit a hymeneals ritual that results in a religiously sanctioned union between people, but rituals are as well symbolic. The objects and activities involved in rituals "stand up in for" or mean more than what they actually are. In a wedding anniversary in the United States, the white color of the wedding dress is a traditional symbol of purity.
A large amount of anthropological research has focused on identifying and interpreting religious rituals in a broad variety of communities. Although the details of these practices differ in various cultural settings, it is possible to categorize them into types based on their goals. 1 type of ritual is a rite of passage , a anniversary designed to transition individuals between life stages.[38] A 2d type of ritual is a rite of intensification , actions designed to bring a community together, often following a flow of crisis.[39] Revitalization rituals , which also ofttimes follow periods of crunch in a customs, are ambitious attempts to resolve serious bug, such every bit war, famine, or poverty through a spiritual or supernatural intervention. [xl]
Rites of Passage
In his original clarification of rites of passage, Arnold Van Gennep (1909) noted that these rituals were carried out in three distinct stages: separation, liminality, and incorporation. During the first phase, individuals are removed from their current social identity and begin preparations to enter the next phase of life. The liminal menses that follows is a time in which individuals often undergo tests, trials, or activities designed to set up them for their new social roles. In the final stage of incorporation, individuals return to the community with a new socially recognized condition. [41]
Rites of passage that transition children into a new status equally adults are mutual around the globe. In Xhosa communities in South Africa, teenage boys were traditionally transitioned to manhood using a serial of acts that moved them through each of the iii ritual stages. In the separation stage, the boys leave their homes and are circumcised; they cannot express distress or signs of pain during the procedure. Following the circumcision, they alive in isolation while their wounds heal, a liminal phase during which they do non talk to anyone other than boys who are too undergoing the rite of passage. This stressful time helps to build bonds between the boys that volition follow them through their lives equally adult men. Earlier their journey abode, the isolated living quarters are burned to the ground, symbolizing the loss of childhood. When the participants render to their community, the incorporation phase, they are recognized equally men and allowed to larn the surreptitious stories of the community. [42]
Rites of Intensification
Rites of intensification are also extremely common in communities worldwide. These rituals are used to bind members of the community together, to create a sense of communitas or unity that encourages people to run across themselves equally members of community. One particularly dramatic case of this ritual is the Nagol country diving anniversary held each spring on the island of Pentecost in Vanuatu in the South Pacific. Like many rituals, land diving has several goals. One of these is to assist ensure a good harvest by impressing the spirits with a dramatic display of bravery. To accomplish this, men from the customs construct wooden towers threescore to eighty feet loftier, tie ropes made from tree vines around their ankles, and jump head-first toward the ground (Figure 5). Preparations for the land diving involve almost every member of the customs. Men spend a month or more working together to build the tower and collect the vines. The women of the community set special costumes and dances for the occasion and everyone takes intendance of state defined who may exist injured during the dive. Both the preparations for the land diving and the festivities that follow are a powerful rite of intensification. Interestingly, the ritual is simultaneously a rite of passage; boys tin can be recognized every bit men by jumping from high portions of the tower witnessed by elders of the customs. [43]
Figure five: Land diving on Pentecost Island, Vanatu.
Rites of Revitalization
All rites of revitalization originate in difficult or even catastrophic circumstances. Ane notable example is a ritual that developed on the island of Tanna in the South Pacific. During Globe War 2, many islands in the Due south Pacific were used by the U.S. armed forces as temporary bases. Tanna was one of these locations and this formerly isolated customs experienced an extremely rapid transformation as the U.S. military introduced modernistic conveniences such as electricity and automobiles. In an effort to make sense of these developments, the island'southward residents developed a variety of theories almost the reason for these changes. One possible explanation was that the foreign materials had been given to the islanders by a powerful deity or ancestral spirit, an entity who eventually acquired the name John Frum. The name may be based on a mutual proper noun the islanders would accept encountered while the war machine base was in operation: "John from America."
When the war ended and the U.S. military departed, the residents of Tanna experienced a kind of trauma every bit the cloth goods they had enjoyed disappeared and the John Frum ritual began. Each twelvemonth on February fifteenth, many of the island's residents construct copies of U.S. airplanes, runways, or towers and march in military formation with replicas of military rifles and American bluish jeans. The ritual is intended to attract John Frum, and the fabric wealth he controls, back to the isle. Although the ritual has non yet had its intended transformative effect, the participants continue the ritual. When asked to explain his continued faith, i hamlet elderberry explained: "You Christians have been waiting ii,000 years for Jesus to render to Earth, and you haven't given up hope." [44] This John Frum custom is sometimes called a cargo cult , a term used to describe rituals that seek to attract material prosperity. Although the John Frum ritual is focused on bolt, or "cargo," the term cargo cult is by and large not preferred by anthropologists because it oversimplifies the complex motivations involved in the ritual. The word "cult" besides has connotations with fringe or dangerous beliefs and this association too distorts understanding of the practise.
Religious Practitioners
Since rituals tin be extremely complicated and the outcome is of vital importance to the community, specialist practitioners are oft charged with responsibleness for supervising the details. In many settings, religious specialists have a high social condition and are treated with corking respect. Some may become relatively wealthy by charging for their services while others may be impoverished, sometimes deliberately every bit a rejection of the material world. In that location is no universal terminology for religious practitioners, but there are three of import categories: priests, prophets, and shamans.
Priests , who may be of any gender, are full-time religious practitioners. The position of priest emerges only in societies with substantial occupational specialization. Priests are the intermediaries betwixt God (or the gods) and humans. Religious traditions vary in terms of the qualifications required for individuals entering the priesthood. In Christian traditions, information technology is mutual for priests to complete a program of formal higher education. Hindu priests, known as pujari , must learn the sacred language Sanskrit and spend many years condign skillful in Hindu ceremonies. They must also follow strict lifestyle restrictions such as a vegetarian nutrition. Traditionally, only men from the Brahmin degree were eligible to go pujari, simply this is irresolute. Today, people from other castes, besides as women, are joining the priesthood. 1 notable characteristic of societies that use full-time spiritual practitioners is a separation between ordinary believers and the God or gods. As intermediaries, priests have substantial dominance to set the rules associated with worship practice and to control access to religious rites. [45]
The term shaman has been used for hundreds of years to refer to a special kind of priest. Shamans carry out religious rituals when needed, but also participate in the normal work of the customs. A shaman'south religious practice depends on an ability to engage in straight communication with the spirits, gods, or supernatural realm. An of import quality of a shaman is the ability to transcend normal reality in order to communicate with and mayhap even manipulate supernatural forces in an alternating world. This ability can be inherited or learned. [46] Transcending from the ordinary to the spiritual realm gives shamans the ability to do many things such as locate lost people or animals or heal the ill by identifying the spiritual cause of illness.
Among the Chukchi, who alive in northern Russia, the function of the shaman is idea to be a special calling, one that may be particularly advisable for people whose personality traits seem aberrant in the context of the customs. Young people who suffer from nervousness, anxiety, or moodiness, for example may feel a call to accept up shamanistic practice. [47] There has been some enquiry suggesting that shamanism may be a culturally accepted way to deal with conditions like schizophrenia. [48] If true, this might be because achieving an contradistinct land of consciousness is essential for shamanic work. Entering an altered land, which can be achieved through dreams, hallucinogenic drugs, rhythmic music, exhaustion through trip the light fantastic, or other ways, makes it possible for shamans to straight appoint with the supernatural realm.
Shamans of the upper Amazon in Due south America have been using ayahuasca , a potable made from plants that take hallucinogenic effects, for centuries. The effects of ayahuasca start with the nervous organization:
One under the control of the narcotic sees unroll before him quite a spectacle: almost lovely landscapes, monstrous animals, vipers which approach and wind down his body or are entwined like rolls of thick cable, at a few centimeters distance; as well, one sees who are true friends and those who betray him or who have done him sick; he observes the crusade of the disease which he sustains, at the same time being presented with the nigh advantageous remedy; he takes office in fantastic hunts; the things which he most dearly loves or abhors acquire in these moments extraordinary vividness and colour, and the scenes in which his life normally develop adopt the most beautiful and emotional expression. [49]
Amongst the Shipibo people of Republic of peru, ayahuasca is idea to exist the substance that allows the soul of a shaman to go out his body in order to call up a soul that has been lost or stolen. In many cultures, soul loss is the predominant caption for illness. The Shipibo believe that the soul is a split entity from the body, 1 that is capable of leaving and returning at volition. Shamans can also steal souls. The customs shaman, under the influence of ayahuasca, is able to find and recall a soul, perhaps even killing the enemy every bit revenge. [50]
Anthropologist Scott Hutson (2000) has described similarities between the altered state of consciousness accomplished by shamans and the mental states induced during a rave, a big dance party characterized by loud music with repetitive patterns. In a rave, vivid lights, exhausting dance, and sometimes the use of hallucinogenic drugs, induce like psychological effects to shamanic trancing. Hutson argues that through the rave individuals are able to enter contradistinct states of consciousness characterized by a "self-forgetfulness" and an ability to transcend the ordinary self. The DJ at these events is often called a "techno-shaman," an interesting allusion to the guiding function traditional shamans play in their cultures. [51]
A prophet is a person who claims to have straight communication with the supernatural realm and who can communicate divine messages to others. Many religious communities originated with prophecies, including Islam which is based on teachings revealed to the prophet Muhammad by God. In Christianity and Judaism, Moses is an instance of a prophet who received direct revelations from God. Another instance of a historically meaning prophet is Joseph Smith who founded the Church of Latter Day Saints, later receiving a prophecy from an angel named Moroni who guided him to the location of a buried set of golden plates. The information from the golden plates became the basis for the Book of Mormon.
The major distinction between a priest and the prophet is the source of their authority. A priest gets his or her say-so from the scripture and occupational position in a formally organized religious institution. A prophet derives say-so from his or her direct connexion to the divine and ability to convince others of his or her legitimacy through charisma. The kind of insight and guidance prophets offering can be extremely compelling, specially in times of social upheaval or suffering.
One prophet who had enormous influence was David Koresh, the leader of the Branch Davidians, a schism of the Seventh Day Adventist Church. The Branch Davidians were millenarians, people who believe that major transformations of the world are imminent. David Koresh was extremely charismatic; he was handsome and an eloquent speaker. He offered refuge and solace to people in need and in the process he preached about the coming of an apocalypse, which he believed would be caused past the intrusion of the United States government on the Branch Davidian's lifestyle. Koresh was and so influential that when the United States government did eventually try to enter the Co-operative Davidian compound in Waco, Texas in 1993 to search for illegal weapons, members of the grouping resisted and exchanged gunfire with federal agents. Eventually, under circumstances that are yet disputed, a burn erupted in the compound and eighty-six people, including Koresh, were killed. [52] Ultimately, the U.Due south. government helped to fulfill the apocalyptic vision of the group and David Koresh became a martyr. The Co-operative Davidians evolved into a new group, "Co-operative, Lord our Righteousness," and today many expect Koresh's return. [53]
Determination
Religion is of central importance to the lives of people in the majority of the world'southward cultures; more than eight-in-ten people worldwide place with a religious group. [54] However, information technology is likewise true that the number of people who say that they have no religious affiliation is growing. There are now about every bit many people in the globe who consider themselves religiously "unaffiliated" as there are Roman Catholics. [55] This is an important reminder that religions, similar culture itself, are highly dynamic and bailiwick to constant changes in interpretation and allegiance. Anthropology offers a unique perspective for the study of religious beliefs, the way people call back almost the supernatural, and how the values and behaviors these beliefs inspire contribute to the lives of individuals and communities. No single set up of theories or vocabulary tin can completely capture the richness of the religious diversity that exists in the world today, merely cultural anthropology provides a toolkit for understanding the emotional, social, and spiritual contributions that religion makes to the human experience.
Give-and-take QUESTIONS
- This chapter describes theories about religion developed by Durkheim, Marx, and Freud. What are the strengths and weaknesses of each theory? Which theory would be the most useful if you were attempting to learn nigh the religious behavior of some other culture?
- Rites of passage and rites of intensification are an important function of many religious traditions, but these same rituals too be in secular (non-religious) contexts. What are some examples of these rituals in your own customs? What role do these rituals play in bringing people together?
- Durkheim argued that a distinction betwixt the sacred and the profane was a central feature of religion. Thinking about your own culture, what are some examples of ideas or objects that are considered "sacred"? What are the rules concerning how these objects or ideas should be treated? What are the penalties for people who do not follow these rules?
GLossary
Animatism : a religious system organized around a belief in an impersonal supernatural force.
Animism: a religious system organized around a belief that plants, animals, inanimate objects, or natural phenomena have a spiritual or supernatural element.
Anthropomorphic: an object or being that has human characteristics.
Cargo cult : a term sometimes used to draw rituals that seek to attract material prosperity. The term is generally not preferred by anthropologists.
Commonage effervescence: the passion or energy that arises when groups of people share the same thoughts and emotions.
Cosmology : an explanation for the origin or history of the earth.
Cultural appropriation : the human action of copying an idea from another culture and in the process distorting its meaning.
Filial piety : a tradition requiring that the immature provide care for the elderly and in some cases ancestral spirits.
Magic : practices intended to bring supernatural forces under i's personal command.
Millenarians: people who believe that major transformations of the world are imminent.
Monotheistic : religious systems that recognize a single supreme God.
Polytheistic : religious systems that recognize several gods.
Priests : full-fourth dimension religious practitioners.
Profane : objects or ideas are ordinary and tin can be treated with disregard or contempt.
Prophet: a person who claims to have straight communication with the supernatural realm and who can communicate divine messages to others.
Reincarnation: the idea that a living existence can begin some other life in a new body later decease.
Religion : the extension of human society and culture to include the supernatural.
Revitalization rituals : attempts to resolve serious problems, such equally war, dearth or poverty through a spiritual or supernatural intervention.
Rite of intensification : actions designed to bring a community together, often following a catamenia of crisis.
Rite of passage : a anniversary designed to transition individuals between life stages.
Sacred : objects or ideas are set apart from the ordinary and treated with great respect or care.
Shaman : a function fourth dimension religious practitioner who carries out religious rituals when needed, only also participates in the normal work of the community.
Magician : an private who seeks to employ magic for his or her own purposes.
Supernatural: describes entities or forces not governed past natural laws.
Zoomorphic : an object or existence that has animal characteristics.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sashur Henninger-Rener is an anthropologist with inquiry in the fields of comparative religion and psychological anthropology. She received a Master of Arts from Columbia University in the City of New York in Anthropology and has since been researching and teaching. Currently, Sashur is teaching with The Academy of LaVerne and the Los Angeles Community Higher Commune in the fields of Cultural and Biological Anthropology. In her free time, Sashur enjoys traveling the world, visiting archaeological and cultural sites along the way. She and her husband are actively involved in animal rescuing, hoping to eventually found their own animal rescue for animals that are waiting to find homes.
Source: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-esc-culturalanthropology/chapter/religion/
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