Religious Symbols
Lecture’s
objective
 Introduction to symbols
 The significance of religious symbols
 Anthropological frameworks
Is this a symbol?
What is a
symbol?
 Symbols are ALL around us
 Humans recognize qualities of material
things around them
 They appropriate them, manipulate them,
and give them meaning
 An apple: shape, smell, taste, and
meaning (biblical)
What is this symbol?
 Symbol: “a thing regarded by general
What is a symbol?
consent as naturally typifying or
representing or recalling something by
possession of analogous (The Oxford English
Dictionary)
 Symbols can trigger social action and can
give personal action form in the public
arena.
 Example: A flag can represent nationalism
What is religious
symbol?
 Religious symbol: an iconic representation intended to
represent a specific religion, or a specific concept within a
given religion.
 “Religious symbols formulate a basic congruence
between a particular style of life and a specific
metaphysic, and in so doing sustain each with the
borrowed authority of the other” (Geertz, 1973: p. 90).
 Geertz argued that symbols were part of a series of
cultural patterns that provided both a ‘sense of direction’
and a ‘power of self control,’ (Geertz, 1973: p. 99).
 Symbols are open-ended and arbitrary
Symbols in General
 Displacement- ability to use symbols
to refer to things and activities that are
remote from the user
 Openness – new meanings can be
attached to new symbols
 Example: is a mask just a mask?
Semiotics- the study of signs and
symbols as elements of
communicative behavior; the
analysis of systems of
communication, as language,
gestures, or clothing.
Ferdinand de Saussure (18571913)
Types of
Symbols
 Words, both written and spoken
 Elements of music and dance and of
space and time
 Artistic expression (theatre, Wayang
kulit)
 Artifacts (Totem poles in Pacific
Northwest and Pacific Island
cultures.
Balinese Wayang Kuli
A totem pole in Hawaii
Religious
symbols
 A symbol such as the swastika can stand for very complex
ideas and can carry great emotional resonance.
 In 1919, the German Nazi Party adopted the swastika as its
symbol (right turning)
 For Jewish population, this same sign represents genocide and
trauma
 Hinduism, Buddhism- positive meaning such as prosperity and
good luck (left-turning)
 Sanskrit su(“good”) and avasti (“to exist”)
Figure 3.1 Navaho
Blanket with Swastika.
Early twentieth-century
Navaho blanket woven
of white, red, and dark
brown wool, with
swastika at each
end.Whirling Log
 Any five-sided figure
THE
PENTAGRAM
 Most widely used religious symbols, both historically and
cross-culturally.
 Early Christians used the symbol to represent the five
wounds of Christ and the star that prophesied the birth of
Jesus
 Witchcraze (14th-17th century) - “witch’s foot.”
 Satanists (20th C.E) adopted the pentagram as their
symbol
Man inscribed in a pentagram, from Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa's De occulta philosophia
libri tres. The five signs at the pentagram's vertices are astrological.
Figure 3.2 The Pentagram. (a) Pentagram, (b) Satanist inverted pentagram, (c) symbol of the Church of Satan.
 Even Christian symbols can be abirtrary
CHRISTIAN
SYMBOLS
 The cross did not gain general acceptance for many
centuries
 Christians argued against the use of the cross as a
symbol of Christianity (paganism or many gods)
 Roman Catholic (most identifiable) crosses are
symbolic of crucifixion scenes
 The Protestant cross does not show the body of
Christ
Figure 3.3 Some Christian Symbols. (a) Roman Cross, (b) Greek Cross, (c) Cross of
St. Andrew, (d) Tau Cross, (e) Coptic Cross, (f) Celtic Cross, (g) Cross of the Russian
Orthodox Church, (h) Cross and Flame of the United Methodist Church (®The United
Methodist Church), (i) Jerusalem Cross.
 Acrostic: a word that is derived from the first letter of a
series of words.
 Icthus: a representation of a fish used in ancient times as a
Symbolizing the
belief
pagan fertility talisman or amulet or as a Christian symbol
for the Greek word ichthys interpreted as an acrostic in
which the Greek letters are the initials of the words Iesous
Christos Theou Uiou Soter meaning Jesus Christ Son of God
Savior
Icthus
 The British anthropologist Mary Douglas stresses the power of
Mary Douglas
(1921-2007)
classification to order the world and make it conceptually
manageable.
 She affirmed that all human beings have a profound need for a
theory of a general order of existence, and religious symbols
fulfill that need.
 In Purity and Danger she wrote that it was almost inconceivable
for a person in a traditional society to be without religion: “The
person without religion would be the person content to do
without explanations of certain kinds, or content to behave in
society without a single unifying principle violating the social
order” (1975, p. 76).
 "Purity and Danger" is an inquiry into different notions of
dirt in different cultures
 What is sacred and profane? Pure or impure?
 Douglas studies the Jewish Kosher laws
 Douglas argued that Jewish Kosher laws were about
symbolic boundary-maintenance (sacred/profane)
 Prohibited foods were those that did not seem to fall neatly
into any category.
 For example, the place of pigs in the natural order was
ambiguous because they shared the cloven hoof of the
ungulates but did not chew cud.
 Interpretive anthropology: The study of cultural
Interpretive
anthropology and
Clifford Geertz
symbols and how those symbols can be used to gain a
better understanding of a particular society.
 Culture is a unique system of symbols with multiple
layers of meanings.
 People act out those meanings and communicate them.
 Example: Balinese cockfighting (rooster chickens). This
practice represents the political and social organization
of this society
 Anthropologists aim to “read” and interpret a culture’s
(emic) “text”.
Victor Turner
and Symbolic
Anthropology
 "Social drama“
 Conducted research with the Ndembu of Rhodesia
 Interested in social order
 Social order depended on rituals and ceremonial
performances
 Life crisis-rituals among the Ndembu include initiation
ceremonies for boys and girls, and funeral rites.
 Symbolic anthropology is fascinated by the richness of culture
 What is the meaning of this elaborateness?
 "It is one thing to observe people performing the stylized gestures
and singing the cryptic songs of ritual performances and quite
another to reach an adequate understanding of what the movements
and words mean to them" (1966)
 Forest of Symbols by Victor Turner (1970)
 Rite of passage: is a ritual that marks a change in a person's social
or sexual status
 Example: circumcision, transition into adulthood
 Rites of passage: 3 stages
 1st Stage • Separation: the ending of one social status.
3 Stages of
Transition
The individual may be physically and/or socially
removed from their normal everyday life.
 2nd Stage • Transition or Liminality: a stage between
one status and another: where one is neither one thing nor
another. (perhaps most important?)
 3rd Stage • Re-incorporation: the person is
reintroduced to society with a new social status. Regular
rules of behavior are once again followed.
 Male transition into adulthood tend to be more
ubiquitous in patriarchal societies
Ndembu boys go through an initiates, daubed in white clay. In the liminal stage they are all
nearly naked, and marked so as to be as nearly the same as the other initiands. The ritual is
over, they will now return to the village. source: from Forest of Symbols by Victor Turner,
from http://plato.acadiau.ca/courses/soci/chegwidden/rop/Ndembu/Ndemboys.html
 Artistic representations often illustrate and
supplement religious texts
 Examples: religious paintings, architecture,
monuments
Sacred Art
 Small and grand in scale
 Eastern and western
 Polytheistic and monotheistic
 Architecture often incorporate cosmology
Sistine Chapel Ceiling, Rome
Angkor Wat, Cambodia
 King Pakal (603 CE - 683 CE)
 Ruled the Mayans
 Sarcophagus is buried under a temple
The
Sarcophagus of
Lord Pakal
Sarcophagus cover in the Temple of the
Inscriptions, Palenque, Mexico.
 Pakal descending into the Underworld
 He will undergo a series of trials followed by
his resurrection as a god
The Maya ruins of Palenque sit in the mist-shrouded jungles of eastern Mexico. The Temple of the
Inscriptions, shown here, is the site's most impressive structure. Deep within the temple is an ornate, vaulted
chamber containing the crypt of the ruler Pacal.
Sacred Time and
Space
 Linear time (forward calendar)
 Solar / lunar time (cyclical seasons)
 Industrial (production)
 Hopi culture (time is chunks of
memorable and important moments)
 Music (organized sound) is a key element in
ritual
The Symbolism
of Music and
Dance
 Music: expresses emotional states, produces
altered states of consciousness, pleases
supernatural powers, or makes contact with them
 Music is the facilitation of memorization
 Narratives and prayers are frequently chanted or
sung (sound, rhythm, hymn)
Gamelan, Indonesian Music and Dance