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)

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”
Albrecht Durer 1504

Coronation of
Queen Elizabeth
II Westminster
Abbey
2 June 1953.

Shoshone “Water baby”
Petroglyph
Dinwoody area Wyoming
(The wavy lines are an indication of a being that is under water)

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 Major Features of Religion
•
Belief in the supernatural
•
Texts
• Symbolic
• A means of explanation
• Moral code
• Stress/Anxiety Relief
• Sacred vs. profane
• Body of myth
•
Emotional Experience
•
Rituals
•
Group membership/identity
•
Magic and witchcraft
• System
• supernatural Beings and powers
• A philosophy
•
Specially skilled individuals

 “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.
 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
Functional Interpretative
Psychological Sociological
Intellectual Emotional

(
E. B. Tylor
Intellectual approach
 primitive man was a rationalist and a scientific philosopher
 the notion of spirits was not the outcome of irrational thinking
 preliterate 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” = animis
 from the Latin word anima meaning breath or soul.)

“ancient savage “philosophers” - impressed by two groups of biological problems:
1. “what is it that makes the difference between a living body and a dead one and what causes sleep, trance, disease, death?”

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
A man sleeps on an ancestral skull to ward off evil spirits in
Asmat area of Irian Jaya,
Indonesia

Participation in religious ceremonies provides reassurance security, and even ecstasy, closeness etc

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 traditions
 eg. puberty rites provide information about tribal lore.
1. Social Control
2. Conflict Resolution
3. Group solidarity

Interpretative

Sees religion as a set of symbols and stresses the meaning of those symbols, as referents and creators of meaningful life.

"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”

Concerned with interpretation of rituals

Magic, divination, oracles, & witchcraft



 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

Cave art used for rituals of this sort?
Standing Bison, Altamira
(Spain) c. 15,000-10,000 B.C

Jarome
Iginla Playoff Beard
Miikka Kiprusoff
Stephane Yelle

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

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

The Piacenza Liver bronze model of sheep liver with Etruscan writing used for divination (hepatomancy)
Modern Examples?

Oracles
Ordeals
Omens

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.

Rubbing Board oracles (iwa)

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.

A diviner operating the rubbingboard 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:

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

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 fair
Hover through the fog and filthy air ."
Macbeth, Act I, Scene I

Witches represent a reversal of normal behaviour
Christian
White predominant color
Chastity
Heterosexual norm
Holy Communion
Daytime Mass
Prayers said normally
Worship God authority divinely ordained
Witch
Black dominant (Black Mass)
Orgie
Homosexual norm
Cannibalism
Night time Mass
Prayers said backward
Worship devil
Authority from the devil (Eve)
Where does this concept come from

The Malleus Maleficarum (The Witch Hammer)
Heinrich Kramer and James
Sprenger first published in 1486
> 20 editions next 200 years
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 devil to 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

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

Who were the witches?
“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
Kramer and Sprenger, the Malleus Maleficarum

“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
Charmed
Worst witch ever
Practical Magic

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
Tibetan Llamas

Ten characteristics of rituals
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

Types of Rituals
•
Calendrical rites
• 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. Mass
2. Communion
3. Feast Days

What is a rite of passage?
Solomon Grundy
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 end
Of Solomon Grundy

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
–
Symbolically reborn
– completes transition to a new status
– lifting of restrictions
– wear new clothes and insignia

Australian Aborigine Initiation Rites
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.

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

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

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

Photo Andreas Lommel 1938
Initiation scars

• 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”

Communitas
 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

Religious Specialists institutional functionaries vs. Inspirational functionaries

institutional functionaries
 power inherited or derived from the body of codified and standardized – from society
 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
Inspirational functionaries

Authority from supernatural
 powers come from divine stroke and personal ability
 efforts are individual and occasional
 deals with spirits and lesser deities
 tends to dominate in foodgathering societies
 most frequently performs a curing rite

The shamanistic complex
Source of power comes from
Belief in magic which has three aspects
1. The sorcerers belief in the effectiveness of his techniques
A shaman of the Sitka-
Qwan Indians (Alaska), wearing a ritual mask, is doing a healing.
2. The patient’s or victim’s belief in the sorcerer’s power
3. The faith and expectations of the group,

Revitalization Movements
The Ghost Dance

Revitalization Movements
 political-religious movement
 promising deliverance from deprivation,
 the elimination of foreign domination
 new interpretation of the human condition
 common in societies undergoing severe stress 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

The traditional way of life had disappeared

Wovoka (= Jack Wilson) c. 1858 – 1932
Paiute Prophet

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 culture

Like 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 29 th 1890

Revitalization movements (Wallace)
Characteristic structure
I Steady State
II Period of increased Individual Stress
III Period of Cultural Distortion
IV Period of Revitalization
1. Mazeway Reformulation
2. Communication
3. Organization
4. Adaptation
5. Cultural Transformation
6. Routinization
V New Steady State

Cargo Cults
 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.

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.

Although known since the 19 th century most arose since WWII
A time of plenty had arrived
Coast Guard landing craft and barges deliver supplies in late-1942.

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
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
Remind you of anyone?

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 15 th )

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

Wallace
Childish, irrational wishful thinking
Worsley, Jarvie .
Viewed in terms of situational analysis. A rational form of action
Cargo Cults
Lanternari
Covert form of revolutionary consciousness.
Protonationalism
Berndt,
Wallace kaleidoscope of elements, recombined to build new picture of reality
Cargo Cult Interpretations

Revitalization Movements
 NATIVISTIC: rejection of alien values, customs and people

E.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 JudeoChristian 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

 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 Gardner
1884-1964
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

Woodstock
1969
LadyBear...Child of Mother Earth

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

 Samhain
(Halloween)
 Yule
(Winter Soltice)
 Candlemas (Feb 2)
 Ostara
(Spring Equinox)
 Beltane (May day)
 Midsummer
(Summer Soltice)
 Lammas (July 31)
 Mabon
(Autumn Equinox )

•
•
•
•
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

What did World Trade
Centre symbolize to Americans to Terrorists
Was the attack political or religious?

Religious Nationalism

Reactions to
September 11

Religious Nationalism
"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

Religion, Nationalism, Capitalism Combined:
The American Way

Has the American Flag become a religious symbol for
Americans?

Witchcraft Among the Azande
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?