Religion

A Luba diviner and her client, performing a divination ritual, jointly hold a friction oracle known as a kakishi on a woven mat on the ground between them..

(John Pemberton)

Albrecht Durer 1504

Genesis Ch 3 v 6-7

“And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food…. she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons”

Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II Westminster Abbey

2 June 1953.

Shoshone “Water baby”

PetroglyphDinwoody area Wyoming

The water babies (pa:unha) or children of the water live in creeks and lakes and are about 1 – 1 ½ half feet tall.

They sound like babies crying and are known for stealing babies if left unattended near the water.

Sometimes they will attract the mother with their cry. If the mother tries to stop the water baby from crying by letting it nurse, the water baby will attach itself to her breast and suck the blood from her body until she dies

(The wavy lines are an indication of a being that is under water)

The Major Features of Religion• Texts

• A means of explanation

• Stress/Anxiety Relief

• Body of myth

• Rituals

• Magic and witchcraft

• supernatural Beings and powers

• Specially skilled individuals

• Belief in the supernatural

• Symbolic

• Moral code

• Sacred vs. profane

• Emotional Experience

• Group membership/identity

• System

• A philosophy

What makes these religious?

“a set of beliefs, in supernatural forces that functions to provide meaning, and a sense of control over unexplainable phenomena (Ferraro 2005)”

What is considered the supernatural varies from one society to the next.

Defining Religion

Many societies don’t have a separate word for religion--it is so integrated into politics, or cultural identity

Explanations for the Universality of Religion

Psychological Sociological

Intellectual Emotional

InterpretativeFunctional

primitive man was a rationalist and a scientific philosopherthe notion of spirits was not the outcome of irrational thinkingpreliterate religious beliefs and practices were not “ridiculous” or a “rubbish heap of miscellaneous folly”they were essentially consistent and logical, based on rational thinking and empirical knowledge.Tylor’s minimal definition of religion “belief in spiritual beings” = animisfrom the Latin word anima meaning breath or soul.)

Intellectual approach

E. B. Tylor

(

1. “what is it that makes the difference between a living body and a dead one and what causes sleep, trance, disease, death?”

“ancient savage “philosophers” - impressed by two groups of biological problems:

2. “what are these human shapes which appear in dreams and visions?”

a spirit or soul, derived from the experience of human souls or spirits in `dreams and waking hallucinations' is thought to `animate' lifeless objects such as sticks or stones, trees, mountains, rivers, etc.

Animism

the idea that the world and everything in it is filled with souls or spirits.

These spirits can be communicated with.

Spirits “feel” and therefore, can be harmed, flattered, offended and can also hurt or help.

Psychological Approach Gives meaning to life – Yes there is life after death

a means for dealing with crises death and illness, famine, flood, failure

Reduces anxiety

provides comfort

helps people cope with reality.

Tells them how to behave

Removes burden of responsibility

Participation in religious ceremonies provides reassurance security, and even ecstasy, closeness etc

A man sleeps on an ancestral skull to ward off evil spirits in Asmat area of Irian Jaya, Indonesia

Sociological Approach religion stems from society and provides for societal needs

religions validate the social: they posit controlling forces in the universe that sustain the moral and social order

provide notions of right and wrong acceptable behaviour, group norms

provides moral sanctions for individual conduct

education function through ritual used to learn oral traditionseg. puberty rites provide information about tribal lore.

1. Social Control

2. Conflict Resolution

3. Group solidarity

"a religion is a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive and long-lasting moods and motivations by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic." “Clifford Geertz”

Interpretative Sees religion as a set of symbols and stresses the meaning of those symbols, as referents and creators of meaningful life.

Concerned with interpretation of rituals

Coping with Uncertainty

Magic, divination, oracles, & witchcraft

MAGIC

Nature is understood to be controlled by forces which can be manipulated

Magic is a way of controlling the natural elements. Magicians attempt to control the elements for the benefit

of their society or for the detriment of their enemies.

Rain Dance by Tom Philllips

Contagious Magic

Sympathetic Magic

                                             

Standing Bison, Altamira (Spain) c. 15,000-10,000 B.C

Cave art used for rituals of this sort?

Playoff Beard

Stephane Yelle

Jarome Iginla

Miikka Kiprusoff

Louis Van Zelst (c.1896-1915)

Philadelphia Athletics hunchback mascot and bat boy (1910-1914)

“better rub my hump for a hit”

Athletics won World Series in 1910, 1911, 1913 (top of league 1914)

Credited for the wins as much as the coach

1915 Athletics finished dead last

National Post

What is divination?

" the practice of foreseeing future events or acquiring hidden knowledge through supernatural means"

bronze model of sheep liver with Etruscan writing used for divination (hepatomancy)

The Piacenza Liver

Modern Examples?

http://www.mystery-games.com/ridtardec.html

http://www.channelone.com/games/numerology/?location=games

Omens

Ordeals

Oracles

An Azande diviner uses a friction oracle (iwa), holding his foot against the lower part to keep the instrument in place and rubbing the upper part against it.

Men always carry an iwa with them for consultation on questions ranging from whether or not to take a journey to identification of the witch who has made him suddenly and violently sick.

The small table-like portion is thought of as the female part. The rubber is considered male.

Rubbing Board oracles (iwa)

A diviner operating the rubbing-board oracle.

Any individual may make an iwa so long as he observes the appropriate taboos, such as abstaining from sexual relations for two days and not eating certain foods,

He must also follow prescribed procedures which include burning the surface of the wood with a red-hot spear, preparing and anointing the object with a mixture of boiled root juices and oil over which he has prayed:

‘the inherent power to harm other persons by supernatural means’ Evans-Pritchard

Witchcraft

The image of the Witch

When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning, or in rain?When the hurly-burly's done. When the battle's lost and won.That will be ere the set of sun...Fair is foul, and foul is fairHover through the fog and filthy air." Macbeth, Act I, Scene I

Christian Witch

White predominant color Black dominant (Black Mass)

Chastity Orgie

Heterosexual norm Homosexual norm

Holy Communion Cannibalism

Daytime Mass Night time Mass

Prayers said normally Prayers said backward

Worship God Worship devil

authority divinely ordained Authority from the devil (Eve)

Witches represent a reversal of normal behaviour

Where does this concept come from

Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger

first published in 1486

> 20 editions next 200 years

The Malleus Maleficarum (The Witch Hammer)

Pope Innocent VIII issued a Papal Bull in 1484. It’s inclusion made it appear that the whole book enjoyed papal sanction

Swearing allegiance to the Devil, by trampling the Cross... And kissing his behind

                                 

“He must not be too quick to subject a witch to examination, but must pay attention to certain signs which will follow.

And he must not be too quick for this reason: unless God, through a holy Angel, compels the devilto withhold his help from the witch,she will be so insensible to the pains of torture that she will sooner be torn limb from limb than confess any of the truth.”

-- Kramer and Sprenger, the Malleus Maleficarum

One 'foolproof' way to establish whether a suspect was a witch was ducking.

With right thumb bound to left toe, the accused was plunged into a convenient pond.

If she floated it proved she was a witch. Having rejected the baptismal water the water was now rejecting her.

She could then be hanged as a witch

If the victim drowned they were innocent. Given the position of the prisoner, it was more likely they would float

Matthew Hopkins, England's Witch-Finder General, explains how to identify witches and their familiars

In England, torture was not allowed against witches because witches were not believed to be conspirators.

Torture by sleeplessness, (Tormentum insomniae) was allowable perhaps because it did not seem to be a real torture.

Matthew Hopkins, known as “The Witch-Finder General”.  Was paid by local authorities to find witches. Between 1645-1646, Hopkins he was responsible for the condemnations and executions of some 230 alleged witches,

Some statistics:

Between c.1450 and c.1650, about 60,000 to 100,000 people were executed by legal authorities for witchcraft in Europe.

75%-90% of those accused were female.

The majority of those accused were over the age of 50.

When torture was used to extract confessions, 95% of suspects were convicted.

When torture was not used, only 50% were convicted.

“What else is a woman …but a foe to friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic danger, a delectable detriment, and an evil of nature painted with fair colors [she is, furthermore ]by her nature quicker to waiver in her faith which is the root of witchcraft.”

Kramer and Sprenger, the Malleus Maleficarum

Who were the witches?

“While this tradition of blaming unexpected misfortunes on black magic is found throughout rural Africa, in few places has it taken more victims than in South Africa's rural Northern Province. More than 500 people, mostly women, were accused of witchcraft and killed by mobs here between 1990 and 1995. Even more lost their homes and their possessions when they were either run out of town or had their homes torched.”

Christian Science Monitor Dec. 6, 2000

Sabrina Bewitched

Practical MagicWorst witch ever

Charmed

Ritual

Ritual Bathing in the Ganges on the ghats of Varanasi (formerly Banaras)

Hindu pilgrims, standing waist high in the water, pray to cleanse their souls as they face the rising sun to ensure a good rebirth

When people bathe in the holy Ganges, they scoop the water and pour it into the river as an offering.

“a ritual is a stereotyped sequence of activities involving gestures, words, or objects, performed in a sequestered place and designed to influence preternatural [magical] entities or forces on behalf of the actor’s goals or interests”

Victor Turner

• Sometimes ritual reenact myths and stories.

• sometimes involve particular kind of attire, or a specific location.

• They could be the reliving of an important event.

• a patterned form of behavior, generally communal and consisting of prescribed actions and words

• usually deeply meaningful for us

Rituals

Tibetan Llamas

1. They are by definition religious –involve magic, the supernatural

2. They are highly formalized or structured patterns of behaviour

3. rituals are belief in action

4. Out of the ordinary actions i.e. sacred

5. usually performed in a sequestered place

6. They have a goal or aim

7. They serve a function for the people concerned

8. They serve to provide a sense of solidarity

9. symbolic

10. multivocalic

Ten characteristics of rituals

Types of Rituals

•concerned with the natural world•seasonal•should guarantee success and wealth•raindance

•Rites of transition or passage, life cycle•concerned with the social world•changes in the individual’s status, role or position

•Critical or life-crisis rites

•Curing and magic

•Concerned with the individual

•Ritual For Group Welfare

1. Mass2. Communion3. Feast Days

•Calendrical rites

Solomon Grundy,Born on Monday,

Christened on Tuesday,Married on Wednesday,Took ill on Thursday,

Worse on Friday,Died on Saturday,Buried on Sunday:

This is the endOf Solomon Grundy

Solomon Grundy

What is a rite of passage?

Rites of passage are the mileposts or landmarks that guide travelers through the life cycle.

Quinceanera

Throughout our lives there are periods when not much seems to happen

Then there are times when our lives undergo dramatic change

After which nothing is quite the same as it was before.

These transitions are often marked by rituals

Arnold van Gennep(1873 - 1957)

The Rites of Passage (1908)1. separation - Preliminal

– purification rites– rituals symbolize cutting or

separating eg. removal of hair– seclusion

2. Transition - liminal – person symbolically placed

“outside” society – observes certain taboos or

restrictions– normal rules of the society

suspended– rite may be seen as a symbolic

death, leading to a rebirth

3. incorporation - postliminal 1. Symbolically reborn2. completes transition to a new

status3. lifting of restrictions4. wear new clothes and insignia

Initiation ceremonies for young boys culminate in circumcision.

The ceremonies are held at a special ceremonial grounds.

The final rituals are only open to men.

Australian Aborigine Initiation Rites

Young initiates are carried to their elders on the ceremonial ground and will stay with them during the all-night "Mandiwala" dance before their circumcision. Photo by Ludo Kuipers © OzOutback Internet Services

Boys are painted up for their "Mandiwala" initiation ceremony Their circumcision takes place early in the morning.

Photo by Ludo Kuipers © OzOutback Internet Services

Initiates during their ceremony in Borroloola; they are looking at a long line of dancers that will dance closely around them at the ceremony ground.

Photo by Ludo Kuipers © OzOutback Internet Services

the initiates act as though they were dead

about an hour before sunset, the instructors take their charges to an appointed place for a “surprise”

Several men emerge from the bush swinging their bull roarers

Photo by Ludo Kuipers © OzOutback Internet Services

Young boys from Numbulwar with small spears; they will try to hit the men, who will then have to dance for them at their circumcision ceremony.

"Daru" initiates in Borroloola. They are carrying small bark boomerangs with which they try to hit men

Photo by Ludo Kuipers © OzOutback Internet Services

A boy is painted with red ochre for his "Mandiwala" initiation ceremony. He wears a belt of human hair.

Photo by Ludo Kuipers © OzOutback Internet Services

When the neophytes wake, they are Invested with a 'belt of manhood' and their instruction begins

                                                                

                                         

Making fire with fire stick

ancestral beliefs about a great Being, who lived on the earth, and who taught the men how to make implements revealed to the novices

The Power of Myth Joseph Campbell, p. 81, Doubleday, New York, 1988

                                       

Initiation scars

Photo Andreas Lommel 1938

What is do these rituals do?

• What are some of the powerful messages that these rituals send to the boys (and girls) and to their communities?

• How do they use spiritual power to change to state of human beings?

Liminal period Initiate separated from normal life and secluded is in an ambiguous condition

Initiate has nothing – no status, property, rank or kinship position - sacred poverty state

initiates may be seen as sexless or bisexual, or considered unclean or polluting

treated as an embryo or a newborn infant, or thought of as “dead” (by and to his parents and community)

a suspension of normative obligations

stress on servility to absolute authority of the ritual elders

secret, esoteric knowledge – the sacra = the “crux of liminality”

unstructured and egalitarian bonds between people

Typical of the Liminal stage of a rite of passage

A communal bond that results from social leveling and shared experience of liminality

Among neophytes there is often complete equality

comradeship transcends distinctions of rank, age, kinship position

Communitas transgresses or dissolves norms that govern institutionalized relationships

Communitas emerges where structure is not

Communitas has an aspect of potentiality

Communitas

institutional functionaries vs. Inspirational functionaries

Religious Specialists

authority comes from his service in a sacred tradition

must have competence in conducting ritual -

Symbols of a rite are sensorial perceptible to a congregation and have a permanence in that they are culturally transmissible

The priest is an actor in a culturally scripted drama

efforts are individual and occasional

deals with spirits and lesser deities

tends to dominate in food-gathering societies

most frequently performs a curing rite

institutional functionaries

power inherited or derived from the body of codified and standardized – from society

Inspirational functionaries

Authority from supernatural

powers come from divine stroke and personal ability

Source of power comes from Belief in magic which has three aspects

1. The sorcerers belief in the effectiveness of his techniques

2. The patient’s or victim’s belief in the sorcerer’s power

3. The faith and expectations of the group,

The shamanistic complex

A shaman of the Sitka-Qwan Indians (Alaska), wearing a ritual mask, is doing a healing.

The Ghost Dance

Revitalization Movements

Revitalization Movements

deliberate and organized attempts by some members of a society to construct a more satisfying culture by rapid acceptance of a pattern of multiple innovations

political-religious movement

promising deliverance from deprivation,

the elimination of foreign domination

new interpretation of the human condition

common in societies undergoing severe stress

The traditional way of life had disappeared

Wovoka (= Jack Wilson)

Paiute Prophet

c. 1858–1932

A wickiup January 1889

A wickiup

central precept of the Ghost Dance involved the reuniting of the living and the dead accompanied by a glorious return of traditional Indian cultureLike many millenarian visions, Wovoka's prophecies stressed the link between righteous behavior and imminent salvation.Wovoka charged his followers to "not hurt anybody or do harm to anyone. You must not fight. Do right always... Do not refuse to work for the whites and do not make any trouble with them.“

Arapaho Ghost Dance

Salvation was not to be passively awaited but welcomed by a regime of ritual dancing and upright moral conduct.

Artwork based on photographs of James Mooney.

Ghost Dance Shirt

Wounded Knee Massacre South Dakota Dec 29th 1890

I Steady StateII Period of increased Individual StressIII Period of Cultural DistortionIV Period of Revitalization

1. Mazeway Reformulation 2. Communication 3. Organization 4. Adaptation 5. Cultural Transformation 6. Routinization

V New Steady State

Revitalization movements (Wallace)

Characteristic structure

cargo – pidgin English, for trade goods

religious movements that have as their most characteristic feature ~ the belief in a future Golden Age of prosperity and power conceptualized as the delivery and distribution of a cargo of consumer goods.

Cargo Cults

Messianic: i.e. often concerned with a utopian future brought about by the intervention of a Messiah.

syncretism between indigenous and colonial religious symbols and doctrines

Most common in New Guinea and the islands of Melanesia after WWII

Some recruiters or blackbirders with the crew of their boat. The rifles the crew are holding are to protect them when they go to find labourers to work in Queensland or Fiji.

Coast Guard landing craft and barges deliver

supplies in late-1942.

Although known since the 19th century most arose since WWII

A time of plenty had arrived

plane traffic flying over the islands carrying great loads of goods in the cargo bays of the airplanes

Scenes from Gualtiero Jacopetti’s pop documentary Mondo Cane, filmed in New Guinea in 1959

Cargo cults generally contain some ritual in imitation of the mysterious European customs

Model airplanes used in cargo cults

Another still from Mondo cane. This airstrip consists of a cleared mountain top overlooking the “real” airport at Port Moresby. The ritualists hope one night to entice a cargo plane to land at their airstrip, and thus help usher in the millennium

Planes come from paradise sent by their ancestors. The crafty white man (pirates) however, manages to get his hands on them by attracting them into a big trap of an airport.

You build your plane too, and wait with faith. Sooner of later, your ancestors will discover the white man's trap and will guide the planes onto your landing strip.

Then you will be rich and happy.

Field of Dreams 1989

"If we build it, they will come."

JOHN FRUM MOVEMENT

John Frum Effigy Remind you of anyone?

At the heart of the movement is a mythic messianic figure called Jon Frum

A spirit messiah who had come to change the people back to their traditional ways before corruption from the British missionaries and empower the people by giving them cargo wealth

Yasur Volcano Tanna

John Frum is believed to live  in the crater of the Yasur volcano with an army of 20,000 men.

Flag Raising ceremony - Re-enactment of US Military occupation from World War Two - still forms the

ceremonial centerpiece to John Frum Day (February 15th)

Red Crosses (from period of war hospitals) worshipped

John Frum “army”, in jeans and bare torsos with 'USA' painted on their chests and backs in day-glo pink magic marker, carry four-foot lengths of bamboo at the "shoulder arms" position, the tops cut to a bayonet point and colored red to evoke fire

John Frum Movement Flag

Berndt, Wallace

kaleidoscope of elements,

recombined to build new picture of

reality

Wallace

Childish, irrational wishful thinking

Lanternari

Covert form of revolutionary consciousness.

Proto-nationalism

Worsley, Jarvie.

Viewed in terms of situational analysis. A

rational form of action

Cargo Cults

Cargo Cult Interpretations

NATIVISTIC: rejection of alien values, customs and peopleE.g. Ghost Dance

REVIVALISTIC: Revival of customs and values of previous generations return to (presumed) ancient ways

E.g. Neoshamanism in Siberia

VITALISTIC: emphasis on importing alien elements (e.g. Singer sewing machines, Gordon’s gin)

E.g. Cargo cults (Vailala Madness, Jon Frum cult)

MILLENARIAN: apocalyptic transformation of the world, involving overturning of present social system, predicted to occur in near future Rooted in Judeo Christian messianism

E.g. Christian doctrine revealed in the Book of Revelations, Christ's return and his rule on earth for a thousand years

MESSIANIC: spiritual savior will appear, or is already present, to transform the world through his personalized power

Revitalization Movements

Wicca: What is it? Witchcraft also called Wicca or the Craft a neo-pagan, nature-centered religion It worships a Goddess and usually a God uses magic as a tool of personal and global

transformation. The fastest growing religion in the USA and Canada?

Gerald Gardner1884-1964

High Magic's Aid 1949 a fictional account of witches

1951 England repealed the witchcraft laws

Witchcraft Today 1954 a non-fictional account of modern witchcraft

The Meaning of Witchcraft 1959 A history of Wicca in Northern Europe.

These books formed the basis of modern Wicca

LadyBear...Child of Mother Earth

Woodstock

1969

Central law of Wicca: An It Harm None, Do What Ye Will" I.e. as long as you don't do anything that will hurt anyone (including yourself) it is allowed.

Second rule: Everything you put out comes back to you Three fold. Good or bad, good spells or bad spells

Sabbats

Samhain (Halloween) Yule

(Winter Soltice) Candlemas (Feb 2) Ostara

(Spring Equinox) Beltane (May day) Midsummer

(Summer Soltice) Lammas (July 31) Mabon

(Autumn Equinox)

Rituals & Beliefs

• Most rituals take place in a circular formation

• Symbolizes boundary between outside world and the world of the goddesses

• Earth religion: primary beliefs revolve around environment

• Rituals also honor birth, death and reincarnation. Beliefs expressed through music, dancing and/or meditation as a way for members to experience their own power and connectedness.

The pentagram – five pointed star

pentacle--pentagram inscribed in a circle

Spirit - symbolizes spiritual love

Air - the mind

Water - the cycle of life

Earth - the Mother element

Fire - passion

Was the attack political or religious?

What did World Trade Centre symbolize

to Americans

to Terrorists

Religious Nationalism

Reactions to September 11

"If you raise an objection to some unlawful religious practice in a public place, the people who complain are not only labeled anti-religious, but anti-American.” ACLU

Religious Nationalism

Religion, Nationalism, Capitalism Combined: The American Way

Has the American Flag become a religious symbol for Americans?

1. What is the purpose of divination among the Azande?

2. What is Witchcraft and what do witches do

3. Who are the Witches

4. What do witches epitomize?

5. Who do you accuse of being a witch?

6. what’s the first thing you do if you’re accused of being a witch

7. Why did the oracle “work” in the case of the adultery?

8. Who is the real victim in witchcraft accusations?

9. How do you prevent being accused of witchcraft

10. How are accusations of witchcraft a form of social control

11. How does consultation of oracles assist the Azande to cope with social and cognitive uncertainty?

12. How have Christian beliefs and values been incorporated in the Azande system?

Witchcraft Among the Azande