RELIGION: the recognition of superhuman controlling power ...



RELIGION: the recognition of superhuman controlling power, and especially

of a personal god entitled to obedience.

Human Characteristics:

1. A longing for value in life, a belief that life is not accidental

and meaningless.

2. A search for meaning leads to faith in a power greater than the

human, and finally to a universal or superhuman mind which has

the intention and will to maintain the highest values for human

life.

3. There is an intellectual element in religions, search for purpose

and value.

There is an emotional element in the dependence upon the power

which creates or guarantees those values.

Religion and Morality:

1. Religion has always been linked with morality, though moral

systems differ from place to place and century to century.

2. Hammurapi's Law Code (Babylon), which dates from the 18th Century

B.C., gave royal, feudal, legal, and social prescriptions, but

were said to have been received from the god of justice.

3. The philosopher A. N. Whitehead defined religion as what " the

individual does with his own solitariness" -- yet, religion has

always had a social side expressed in human behavior.

* organization and size has varied from culture to culture.

a. It is dependent upon society for approval and support.

b. The rules of moral behavior in most societies have a strong

religious basis, and they are supported by the teachings of

scriptures and the actions of religious officials.

4. The Study of Religion

a. Archaeology: has particular importance for our knowledge of

prehistoric and ancient history period of human life.

b. Anthropology and Sociology: considers the role of religion

in the lives of individuals and societies, especially

among modern illiterate peoples.

c. The Psychology of religion studies both the role of the

individual and the effect social activities have upon their

participants.

d. The comparative study of religions, traces their history and

examines similar patterns of behavior.

Origin of Religion:

1. Speculation as to how, when, and why religion began has

flourished only in the last one hundred years.

2. In Medieval and Modern Europe: it was assumed that the first

human beings, or Adam and Eve, in Genesis, had received a perfect

revelation from a divine being, or that they had worked out a pure

religion based upon the principles of reason.

a. Theologians held that this early religion was corrupted

by sin and the fall of man from grace.

b. Rationalists declared that priests and ignorance had

produced the idolatry and diversity of religion now

found in the world.

3. 1871: Edward B. Tylor developed a theory of religion known as

animisms.

a. Derived from the Latin word anima, meaning soul.

b. Animism suggested that primitive people had deduced

from dreams, visions, delirium and the fact of death

that they were inhabited by an immaterial soul.

c. Since the dead appeared in dreams it was assumed that

their spirits continued to exist after death, that they

might dwell in various objects, and it was suggested

that the dead gradually came to be regarded as gods.

4. Herbert Spencer (contemporary of Tylor)

a. Suggested that religion had its origins in visitors or

the appearance of ghosts of the dead, and these ances-

tors were worshiped as gods.

b. Such theories about primitive religion were conjecture

and could not be proven.

* Animism in this form is virtually abandoned as a scienti-

fic explanation for religion today.

5. 1899: R.R. Marett - expanded the theory of Animism.

a. He stated that primitive humans did not at first con-

ceive of personal souls, but believed in an impersonal

force or forces which animated from the world ---------

this he called "animatism".

* This theory assumes that a belief in this impersonal

power was the origin of religion.

b. Marett considered that early peoples were actors rather

than thinkers, saying that their religion was " not so

much thought out as danced out", so it was very little

different from magic in its early stages.

6. 1890: James Frazer - began publication of a long series of books,

the chief of which was the The Golden Bough. * It opened with a

story of a sacred tree guarded by a priest of Diana at Aricia in

ancient Italy.

a. Frazer thought that the view of the world as pervaded by

spiritual forces was the idea behind the practice of

magic, used by priests who were seeking to control

nature.

b. He held that magic was the first stage of human

intellectual development, a sort of primitive science,

in which people imagined that they could influence

their lives and those of others by means of magical

objects or incantations.

c. Some magic is described as sympathetic, because it had

a resemblance or contact with its object by a law of

similarity or a law of contagion.

1. Law of Similarity: Many magicians made images

of their enemies and struck thorns in places

where they wished to produce pain.

2. Law of Contagion: Magicians used hair or

nails of a victim, or some object close to

the person, in a ceremony designed to cause

pain.

d. He supposed that after the first magical phase had pro-

duced failures people imagined that there were super-

natural beings which could help them, and so they

turned to religion.

e. This belief in the supernatural turned out to be

illusion however, and eventually there came the know-

ledge of science and humans became logical and

experimental.

1. This hypothesis was attractive for a time

because it fit in with the theory of evolu-

tionary progress.

2. There is no evidence for the assumption that

magic came before religion - they have

existed together at many levels of culture.

3. The notion of a progression from magic to

religion to science is not historical and

many advanced and highly civilized peoples

have been profoundly religious.

* Frazer's theories on the origin and development of

religion are now abandoned.

7. 1922: Lucien Levy-Bruhl - advanced the theory of Primitive

Mentality.

a. He suggested that "savages" used a "pre-logical think-

ing" which was different from our own.

* Levy-Bruhl criticized the assumption of other

writers who stressed similarities between all humans

and imagined how they would act and think under

primitive conditions.

b. Levy- Bruhl emphasized the different conditions and

mental processes of civilized and primitive people.

* for example he said that all uncivilized races explain

death by other than natural causes, as being due not

simply to disease or weakness of old age, but rather to

the agency of a mystical force.

c. Levy-Bruhl, like many other writes on the origin of

religion (in the past 100 years), was an armchair

theorist.

1. He had no experience of modern primitive

peoples, and little knowledge of how pre-

historic men and women thought.

2. He made primitive people out to be much more

superstitious than they are, since they do

not live simply in an imaginary world but are

close to nature and can only survive if they

direct their lives by reason and experiment.

* Primitive people understand well how death is caused

physically, though generally they add a spiritual ex-

planation.

The Social Importance of Religion

1. 1912: Emile Durkheim (French) published a book on the elementary

forms of religious life.

a. He emphasized religion as a social fact and not simply

the product of the psychology of certain individuals.

* It could not be an illusion, for religion was universal

and had appeared in every age, producing great cultures

and systems of morality and law.

b. For Durkheim, religion is the worship of society

itself, though it may be disguised by myths and

symbols.

Society is an abiding reality: it has full control

over people and they depend upon it and pay it their

reverence.

c. Durkheim had to base his case on some of the aborigines

of Australia.

1. He came to the conclusion that all primitive

peoples have behaved like the aborigines.

2. The aborigines belong to clans which hold

certain plants or animals sacred and do not

harm them or eat them.

3. Their sacred objects and pictures made of

them were described as totems because of

their similarity to the totems of North

American Indians.

4. Durkheim saw the totems as embodying the the

ideals of the clan, so that in fact people

worshiped society itself.

* The meaning of the Australian totems is still

being debated: it differs from place to place,

and the assumption that this is the earliest

form religion is unwarranted.

Problem in Durkheim's Research:

a. He never went to Australia to observe

the aborigines.

b. He based his theory upon the incomplete

research of others.

* d. People do not usually worship society but claim to

revere something greater an more abiding, often in

opposition to the dominant organization of society.

2. 1913: Sigmund Freud published the book Totem and Taboo.

a. His theory on the origin of religion was based on the

behavior of some Pacific tribes, and also of wild

animals.

b. In Ancient Times the powerful father of the horde kept

all the females to himself and drove away his growing

sons.

c. The sons eventually became strong and joined forces and

killed their father dividing the females among them-

selves.

d. Freud said that these cannibalistic savages ate their

victim by which he meant they identified themselves

with whom they had feared, both acquiring his strength

and and giving him honor in repeated totemic feasts.

1. They made totems of animals which were

symbols of the power of the father.

2. The Totem Feast would be the commeration of

this criminal act with which Freud argued,

social organization, morality, art and

religion began.

e. There is no historical evidence that primitive peoples

ate their totems nor is there any evidence (historical

or archaeological) for the supposition that religion

began with a murderous attack on a father by jealous

sons.

One Supreme Being:

1. In opposition to psychological or sociological theories of reli-

gious origins, some writes have put forward the claim that the

earliest religious belief was in one supreme being.

1898: Andrew Lang - The Making of Religion

1912-55: Wilhelm Schmidt - The Origin of the Idea of God

a. These men were two leading exponents of this view.

b. Lang based his attitude from further study in

Australia.

Schmidt influenced by the Genesis story conducted an

extensive comparative study of primitive cultures.

Both concluded that a belief in god existed among the

most primitive peoples and might be called the earliest

form of religion.

2. Later writers, while agreeing that many peoples have a belief in

a heavenly god, who by location is high and lofty and often

supreme over others, try to show that this belief has existed

along side a faith in many spiritual beings and gods, so that

this is not a primitive monotheism, but an aspect of polytheism.

3. Today scholars are very cautious about speculating about the ori-

gin of religion due to so many errors in the past.

Mircea Eliade (Rumanian Authority): says that the modern

historian of religions knows that it is impossible to reach the

origins of religion, and this is a problem that need no longer

cause concern.

The important task today is to study the different phases and

aspects of religious life, and to discover from these the role of

religion for human kind.

4. It is important to bring a scientific approach to the study of

religious beliefs and practices of specific peoples at different

levels of material development.

a. Beliefs and rites must be studied as facts, whether or

not they are appealing.

b. It is an error to approach religious studies with the

intent to explain it away or hoping to undermine later

and higher religions.

* c. The importance is to attempt to understand the manner

in which a people conceives of a reality and their

relation to it.

5. 1859: Charles Darwin's "Theory of Evolution"

a. Darwin's theory is one of the most influential ideas of

modern times, and it has also been applied to the

development of religion.

b. It was assumed that evolutionary growth proceeded

everywhere in the same manner, that all peoples passed

through the same stages and that progress was inevit-

able.

c. Those who are now at low stage of material culture were

thought to have been there since pre-historic times.

* Little attention has been given to the fact of

degeneration as well as progress.

1. Those who are primitive today were believed to

show what religion was like in its earliest forms.

2. On the other hand, the "higher religions" were

supposed to represent the supreme peak of

religious development.

d. Are these assumptions fact? Can they be proved?

1. There is no reason why all peoples should pass

through the same stages of religious growth, and

there are great differences that cannot be

explained by inevitable development.

2. Some primitive peoples believe in a supreme god,

while many advanced Buddhists do not.

Prehistoric Religion

1. Assumption: that religion in some form or other has been an

essential element in the life and culture of mankind - prior to

the beginning of history.

* Many of the beliefs and practices of later religions,

both ancient and modern, are rooted in their prehistoric

prototypes of the Old Stone Age (c. 500,000 - 10,000

B.C.)

* It is also necessary to try to understand the mentality

of prehistoric time --------- to understand that they

were human beings with human emotion.

2. What is the importance of the "Shanidar Cave"?

* Paleolithic excavation in Northern Iraq ---- a skeleton of a

man was found whose arms were severed in his youth.

* It may show that there was an acceptance of nonutility and the

valuing of humanity just for itself.

3. The primary concern of Man: Survival

a. He was aware of the physical and natural world around

him ------- ie. Life Cycle.

b. Birth, subsistence, and death were issues that early

man was involved and absorbed in.

c. Man first attempted to understand the "mysterious

powers" to provide food and children.

d. John Bowker (British) said that early man had to crack

or break its "compound of limitations" to gain another

generation's worth of life.

COMPOUND OF LIMITATIONS: any set of factors that

threatens a species' existence.

* the need for food, liable to disease, vulnerable to

natural disasters.

Spiritual Vulnerabilities: madness, loss of hope,

and non-cooperation.

4. The earliest traces of religious belief are centered around the

burial of the dead.

a. There is evidence that ca. 500,000 years ago (from

caves around Peking) human bodies were buried in the

hope of an afterlife.

1. Evidence has been found of the cutting off and

preserving of heads of some of those buried.

2. This was done either to keep them as trophies or

to remove their contents to be eaten in order to

obtain the vitality of the deceased.

b. A corpse was laid in a grave containing red orcheous

powder, sometimes with quantities of shells and other

objects in bone and ivory.

1. The Ochre represented blood, the life giving

agent.

2. The shells were often shaped in the form of a

portal through which a child enters the world.

* these symbols were associated with the female

principle and were used as fertility charms and

givers of life.

3. If the dead were to live again in their own

bodies, to color the body red was an attempt to

revive it for its occupant in the next world.

c. A number of skeletons have been discovered that were

buried with great care and supplied with grave goods.

1. Near the hand was the foot of an ox, with the ver-

tebral column of a reindeer at its back. There

were quantities of flint implements and remains of

broken bones of contemporary animals.

2. There seemed to be a need to provide the corpse

with what would be needed after death.

5. Man believed that he was a part of the physical world around him.

a. From pre-historic art, it appears that plants and

animals were conceived as being fellow creatures

closely linked to humans in the chain of life.

b. The food supply had to be maintained as well as

procured.

1. Scenes (cave paintings) have shown a concern for

hunting magic and animal fertility.

2. The "Socerer": depicted with a human face and long

beard, the eyes of an owl, the claws of a lion and

the tail of a horse.

* He is believed to be a deity controlling the

multiplying of animals bringing men and animals

together in fellowship to conserve and promote

the food supply.

c. The Sky and the Earth:

1. Early man was aware of Nature's powers of life and

death ------- thus he felt a part of the seasonal

cycles.

2. Animals and plants were fellow creatures linked to

man in the chain of life.

3. The female principle was personified as the Great

Mother.

* As the mother of the race, woman was regarded

as the life-producer before the role of her

male partner was recognized.

6. Rite of Passage: Death

a. Man may have thought of death as a rite of passage, a

threshold to a new existence (or level of existence).

b. There may have been the belief that one's life force

would animate another breathing creature, even another

human being.

c. Man was probably aware of the interconnectedness of

living things.

* one often takes life from another to live.

d. They may have asked for aid from the Sky and Earth to

carry the dead across to a new life.

* The cyclical conflict of life and death may have

formed the center of pre-historic religion.

7. Hunting:

a. Man lived off animal flesh thus establishing a bond to

the animal world and a change in his evolution --------

(Eliade) "Hunting determined the division of labor in

accordance with sex thus reinforcing hominization.

b. The earliest remains believed to be used for religious

purposes are bones.

* meaning is difficult to ascertain.

c. Cave Paintings: Paleolithic Period (30,000-9,000 B.C.)

1. France: portrays a man killed by a bison with its

side pierced by a spear. To the left is a woolly

rhinoceros which seems to be moving away after

having ripped up the bison. In front of the man

is a bird on a pole.

2. Meaning: may be a votive painting to a deceased

hunter who was buried in the cave.

It may have been painted with the intent to bring

about the destruction of the hunter.

* Whether good or evil, it must have been

considered having great power - painted in a

very difficult and dangerous part of the cave.

d. Mesolithic Period: ca. 9,000 B.C.

1. Paintings show a concern with women and human

fertility-------- an increased interest in human

procreation and sexual complementariness.

2. Man attempted to coordinate sex, sacrifice, death,

animals, the moon and the stars.

3. Hunting Tribes: probably developed a code of

behavior and taboos which were attributed to their

ancestors.

Agriculture

1. The Mesolithic Period saw the advent of settled communities and

the domestication of plants and animals.

* 6500 B.C. ----- different Near Eastern Communities had

domesticated sheep, goats, and pigs.

2. The nomadic culture had depended on hunting, blood sacrifices,

and a close identification with animals - this heritage was kept

alive by military groups.

3. The religious impact of agriculture was revolutionary.

a. Man had to calculate the seasons more accurately -----

leading to astronomical calculations, astrology, and

the worship of planets and stars.

b. Greater awareness of the regular cycle of death and re-

birth.

c. The cultivator buries life in order to secure life.

* Eliade: says it is a remembrance of the primordial

murder.

d. In agriculture - generative elements became the most

sacred elements.

1. Women dominated agriculture and "Mother Earth" was

the prime focus.

2. Women developed agriculture and controlled it

because they issued all human life.

e. All of nature moved through a religious cycle of con-

ception, gestation, birth, nurturance, growth, decline,

and death.

4. Houses, villages, shrines, and burial vaults resembled a "womb"

architecturally.

a. The earth is a womb: from it we come, to it we return.

b. Myths of human creation speak of first ancestors crawl-

ing forth from mines and caves.

Funeral Ritual place the dead offspring back in Mother

Earth.

5. Neolithic Period: saw village life develop into city life as

agriculture spread and became more permanent.

a. Crafts (pottery, weaving, tool manufacturing) were

established.

b. Cults of fertility and death assumed greater

importance.

1. Turkey-ca. 7,000 B.C.: remains indicate worship

involved skulls and various gifts such as jewels,

weapons, and textiles.

2. Principal Deity was a goddess (in three forms)----

a young woman, a mother, and a a old woman.

* she is represented giving birth, breasts deco-

rate her cave site.

* in many caves the double ax, symbol of the

storm god, is present emphasizing the fertility

theme (rain impregnates mother earth).

3. Subordinate to the goddess was a male god, a boy

or youth, who seems to be her child and lover and

who has some correlation to the bull.

c. The Bronze Age - ca. 3500 B.C.: allowed more

specialized work to develop. ie. mining, smelting, and

casting

1. More efficient farming implements were made which

led to a surplus of food and division of labor.

2. A new class of religious specialists emerged and

metals led to exploration and colonization of new

territories.

6. Iron Age: between 1900 - 1400 B.C. iron came into wide spread

use.

a. The Hittites were the first people to develop the

smelting of iron.

b. The production of bronze and iron increased the

symbolic importance of Mother Earth.

1. Iron was originally a gift from the Sky coming in

the form of meteorites.

2. Mined iron came from the womb of the earth.

* a whole disciple of fasting, meditation, and

purification developed for those who had to go

into the sacred depths and extract a new form

of life.

c. A whole mythology of beings developed who lived under-

ground, assisting or witnessing the slow gestation of

mother earth's strongest children, the ores.

1. Coming from mother earth and a boon to humanity,

metals were sacred.

2. Being invulnerable and easily an instrument of

death, metal was too close to evil for humans to

handle it comfortably.

* The smiths entered the mythology of the gods

fashioning weapons for their heavenly battles

and tools for their heavenly enterprises.

Megaliths: one of the last prehistoric phenomenon.

1. Megalith means "great stone" --------- it is seen in the remains

of the famous cromlech (circle of stones) at Stonehenge in

England.

2. In some cases, either cromlechs or dolmens (huge capstone(s) sup-

ported by several upright stones arranged to form a sort of en-

closure or chamber. (from slabs weighing as much as 300 tons).

3. Megalith was the major symbol for the cult of the dead ----------

stone was a symbol of permanence -- of resistance to change,

decay, or death.

4. Megalith tribes sought close communion with the dead ------------

probably because they regarded death as a state of security and

strength.

a. It was believed that ancestors could be powerful

helpers and great allies.

b. By associating with "ancestral" stones - the bones of

of mother earth - man might overcome his frailty and

impermanence.

5. The megaliths represent burial vaults or ritual areas where this

faith was practiced.

a. The Cromlech at Stonehenge was in the middle of a field

of funeral mounds.

* Stonehenge was a sophisticated instrument that could

be used for making astronomical calculations.

b. Huge stones probably prompted certain ideas about

death, ancestors, permanence, and escape from time and

decay to peoples.

* If most prehistoric peoples were moved to consider

their mortality more deeply because of agriculture,

perhaps they used stones to assist them in their

contemplations.

6. Megalith societies continued into the 20th Century:

* In indonesia and Melanesia ------------ stone monuments de-

fended the soul during its journey to the beyond, ensured an

eternal existence after death, linked the living and the dead,

and fertilized the crops and animals through their sacred

durability.

Conclusions: The Ancient Religious Mind

1. The cyclical confliction between life and death probably formed

the center of prehistoric religion.

a. Early man knew death on intimate terms (a life

expectancy of less than half our own) --- they may have

had to make friends with the forces that seemed to

oppose death: the sun, the rain, the personages they

depicted as controlling animals.

b. When Man had to kill, to secure food or ward off

enemies--------- he probably did so with a feeling a

need to purify himself.

1. He did this so that he might not alienate the

powers of life.

2. The killing power of warriors seemed to conflict

with the nurturing power of mothers. Prehistoric

man probably kept these two powers apart, insisting

that both birthing mothers and slaying warriors se-

clude themselves from the community.

2. Religious rites depicted on prehistoric caves suggest a concern

with making contact with powers of life that controlled the

world.

a. Man identified himself with different natural forces

and animals that impressed or appealed to him.

* b. To dance in the gait of a bear, to prowl in the step of

a tiger, could be to associate himself with the bears

strength and take on some of the tiger's grace.

c. To draw these animals or other life - associated

forces, man would project himself into the world of

their vitality and strength.

d. Changing of seasons, the migration of herds, the flight

of birds had both economic and religious importance to

early man.

* Man concerned with the mysterious forces that seemed

to direct the interaction between human beings and

animals.

NON - LITERATE TRIBAL PEOPLES:

The Africans

1. Traditional Africans have been shaped by their land ----------

they have been forest people or mountain people.

2. The habitat of Africans has even determined their sense

perception (how they see and hear the world).

* Anthropologists have found Africans that can not see things in

perspective at far distances.

3. Because they were oral peoples, no materials are available for a

history of the cultural development of traditional Africans.

a. Analyst of African mythology find indications of very

ancient thought patterns, as well as of extensive

cross- cultural influences.

b. Among the Dogon, there is thought evidence of a time of

gathering and hunting, a time of early land

cultivation, and a time of contact with Hellenistic

Culture.

c. Parallels have been drawn between Egyptian attitudes

more than 4,000 years old and the twentieth century

African view.

4. World View

a. In traditional African religion, most tribes have had a

Supreme Being.

Mulungu (the name implies an impersonal spirit that is

far away).

1. Mulungu is creative, omnipotent, and omnipresent.

It can be seen in lightning and heard in thunder.

2. When personified, Mulungu is seen as having a wife

and a family --------- he molds human bodies and

gives them breath.

b. Subordinate Natural Powers: the most important are the

spirits of the storm, but earth spirits, water spirits,

and spirits associated with crafts (like blacksmithing

and weaving) have considerable influence.

c. West Africans have families of gods and build temples.

1. They pray daily usually for health, security, good

farming, or safe travel.

2. They normally sacrifice to a god usually offering a

liquid or cereal offering.

3. Special occasions may prompt an animal sacrifice,

and in ancient days human sacrifice (usually to

provide companions for a deceased king).

* Kings were crucial mediators of cosmic harmony,

and so somewhat divine.

4. The ox sacrifice of the Nuer takes place on

special occasions as weddings or feud settlements.

* Africans in general show great regard for

cattle, and the main idea in cattle sacrifice

seems to revere and tap the powers of procrea-

tion that bulls and cows represent.

d. Rites of Passage are also emphasized.

1. Birth, adolescence, marriage, and death have

religious significance giving the self a sense of

development.

2. They are usually performed at home under the guid-

ance of a family elder.

e. Many tribes are polygamous, and so African women often

are co-wives.

f. Africans consider marriage a sacred duty, and children

are a great blessing.

1. Menarche (first menstruation) can be a time of

tribal rejoicing.

ie. Elima: the Pygmies feast for young women.

2. Female fertility is directly linked to tribal

prosperity ----------- (security system) African

parents see many children as their hedge against

old age.

5. Representative Myths

a. Creation Myths

1. The Yoruba: the supreme god sends to a marsh an

artisan who is carrying a bag that lay between the

the great God's thighs

a. From the bag he shakes out soil and then a

cock and pigeon which scratch the soil until

the marsh is covered.

b. Their land is holy given from above.

2. The Dogon: God created the sun and the moon like

pots with copper rings. To make the stars he

flung pellets of clay into space, and he also made

the earth of clay.

b. African art tends to avoid representing the supreme god

---------- there are numerous myths of his withdrawal

to the distant heaven.

1. Stories that stress God's distance reflect an

African sense of a fall from heavenly grace.

2. African prayer shows that divinity is still

thought to be present and operative.

3. In ordinary times: through intermediary gods.

In crisis: through the high god himself.

c. God creates and sustains all things (though no one can

see him) ----- he creates man out of the ground in a

number of myths.

d. Nature is perceived as being bountiful and good--------

Gods's heavenly world is but a larger and happier ver-

sion of their present good life.

* Many tribes hope that after death there will be a

rebirth from the world of ghosts into another part

of the sunlit world.

e. Africans think that souls are numerous, that the world

is alive, and that a new child may inherit a soul from

an ancestor.

* Africans fear abnormal births, and disfigured per-

sons become outcasts.

* Twins are regarded differently. Some tribes expose

them to die while other welcome and honor them.

f. Many Africans have attributed death to a mistake.

* The Kono of Sierra Leone: God gave the dog new skins

for humans, but the dog put them down in order to

join a feast and a snake stole them. Since then the

snake has been immortal, changing skins, while

humans have died.

6. Divination: the art of discerning future events.

a. Two categories: Possession and Wisdom.

b. Possession: the diviner is filled by a spirit that

reads omens, interprets movements of sacred birds etc.

c. Wisdom: the spirits, gods, and the diviner's own per-

sonality are subordinate to the cosmic order.

* the role of the diviner is to conceive of a compre-

hensive view of how all events fit into a sacred

scheme.

* the difference between possession and wisdom is not

clearly differentiated.

d. Zimbabwe: (Mwari cultists) believe that God speaks

through mediums whom he possesses deep in certain

caves, and that these messages give a comprehensive

view of his operations in the world.

e. Intuitive Diviners:

* Ability to find lost articles, identify thieves, re-

cognize witches etc.

f. The typical Dogon Sage is a wisdom diviner, 3 Levels.

1. Themes: such as the loss of paradise and the

withdrawal of god. -------- these are common to

hunters and gatherers.

2. Deals with the marriage of heaven and earth ------

typical of early cultivators.

3. Deals with the Cosmic Egg.

g. The Diviner along with the Witch Doctor support the

forces of good.

Witches and Sorcerers are agents of evil.

1. Witches work at night (usually women) and inherit

or buy a power to inflict harm from demons.

2. Sorcerers tap the power that witch doctors use

turning it to harm. (potions, spells, or pins in

an image of the victim).

The Australians

1. The reconstruction of native Australian religious culture is very

difficult because of European settlement dating from the late

18th Century.

2. European Observations:

a. A people that were sensitive to the seasons, but also a

growing apparent listlessness that came with age.

b. Practical World ---------------- Dream World.

3. Historically: the Australian Aborigines.

a. Migrated from Southeast Asia (India, Sri Lanka)

ca. 50,000 years ago.

b. Spread throughout the continent and were isolated from

outside influences until the 18th Century.

c. 1778: the British established a penal colony in the

area that is now Syndey.

At that time: aborigines numbered about 350,000.

Now: they number ca. 120,000 while 45,000 are of pure

stock ---------- in the semi-desert northern region,

they maintain their original culture based on hunting

and gathering.

4. World View:

a. E.A. Worms: essential religious features.

1. A Person Sky Being.

2. Helping Spirit Beings.

3. Belief in holy, powerful objects left by the Sky.

4. Ritual drama to renew divine creativity.

5. Initiation Rites: both sexes.

6. Sacrifice and prayer.

7. Medicine Man Leader.

b. Most tribes believed in an eternal supernatural beings

whom they linked with totemic animals, plants, or

natural phenomena.

Totems: animal, plant or other objects representing the

emblem of a family or clan.

* Supernatural Beings = ancestors or clan founders.

c. Creation: Common Elements

1. Ungud: lived on the earth as a snake while Wallan-

ganda was in the sky.

* 2. During the night they created everything through

a creative dream.

d. Human Cycle

1. Life begins when a parent perceives the coming of

an ancestor's spirit into the womb.

* it occurs in a dream because of moving sickness

or birth pangs.

2. Initiation into Maturity: partially reenters

dream-time when he or she originated out of

eternity.

3. Adulthood: means returning deeper and deeper into

this time through religious ceremonies.

4. Death: one crosses the final threshold and becomes

a sacred spirit in the sky.

5. Ritual

a. Puberty Rites took place in secret or on sacred ground.

b. Representative of the world in the beginning and

participants relive the time of creation.

c. Boys are separated from their mothers.

* 1. Death and resurrection.

2. The child dies and a mature spiritual being is

born.

d. Older women teach girls songs and myths of female

dignity and duty.

1. The young woman then goes through a ritual bath

and then are presented as adults.

2. First step: marriage, child bearing, menopause,

and old age------- periods of further instruc-

tion in the nature of the sacred.

e. Myths speak of female ancestors who were more powerful

than male ancestors, and of men stealing songs, powers,

and artifacts that had belonged to the women.

* In modern times: they have had no part in the world

of men (their folklore).

1. Men say that women do not reenter the sacred dream

time.

2. Female ceremonies are not a steady return to

spiritual existence in the sky.

6. The Medicine Man

a. He receives his healing power from visionary contacts

with supernatural beings.

b. He possesses magical items that symbolizes his powers.

ie. quartz crystals, pearl shells, stones, bones etc.

c. His healing power was derived from his ability to

"travel to heaven".

* quartz crystals (part of divinity) and his

animal spirit (tiger snake) help in this.

d. Religion bound people to the land through myth and

ritual that brought them into contact with ancestral

totemic spirits or divinities.

e. The goal was to keep harmony with these powers.

Common Themes: Basic Religious Characteristics

1. The Sacred

a. Life and Death dominated prehistoric religion ---------

the ancient mind dealt with the sacred or holy.

1. It deals with the realm of the truly real, the

gods (valuable).

2. Need to be in harmony with the powers of the sky,

earth, and the sea.

* they saw what distinction disharmony could

bring.

3. Man's imagination impacted by the power that makes

everything that is.

b. The sacred can touch any aspect of creation or life--

for nothing that one saw or did was without its

heavenly force (powers).

c. An attitude that sacred power is perhaps omnipresent.

d. An attitude that the sacred is good or at least an

indifferent force -------------- if one is not in

harmony it can be destructive.

2. Myth and Ritual

a. Myth: is a story, an explanation of what has happened

----- man explaining how he came to be where he is.

b. Ritual: refers to the conduct of ceremonies ---------

dances and dramatic presentations to display their

mystic histories and realities.

c. Myth and Ritual is a process (means) by which ancient

peoples have explained the world, interacted with the

sacred, and solidified their community.

* to understand them - one needs to understand their

myths and rituals.

d. Creation Myths: is the subject of the most basic myth

which ritual uses to integrate a people with the

sacred.

e. Rites of Passage:

1. Ceremonies of the life cycle: religious dramas for

birth, puberty, marriage and death.

2. Each was a threshold to a new stage of

development, a new stage of intimacy

(understanding) with the sacred.

3. Rites of Passage

a. Young Men - they stress enduring suffering.

b. Young Women - they stress preparing for femi-

nine tasks (as a society conceives them).

* c. For Both - it is a time to learn about sexu-

ality, the tribal gods, and the discipline

that adulthood demands.

f. The Shaman: Elaiade - "The Shamam is a specialist in

archaic techniques of ecstasy."

1. They are selected for their ability to go outside

of themselves.

2. Initiation: is a ritualized experience of

suffering, death, and resurrection.

3. Functions of the Shaman:

ie. healing, guiding the dead to the afterworld,

and acting as a medium between the living and

the dead.

4. The Universe and Man are both dualistic.

a. Universe: includes the human realm and the

spiritual realm.

b. Man: he or she has both a bodily and a

spiritual part.

5. Purpose of a state of ecstasy--------- to gain

knowledge or power.

* While in a state of ecstasy - he reports on his

progress.-------- this recreates the commun-

ity.

a. Reasserts their view of the world.

b. He gives then an entertaining account of

his ordeal.

* Return: he often requires the community to

renew itself (to recreate harmony and reaffirm

its ethical ideal.)

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