The First Human Faiths
“They had what the world has lost: the ancient, lost reverence and passion
for human personality joined with the ancient, lost reverence and passion for
the earth and its web of life. Since before the Stone Age they have tended
that passion as a central sacred fire. It should be our long hope to renew it in
us all” (Huston Smith, The Illustrated World’s Religion: A Guide to our
Wisdom Traditions, [New York, New York: HarperCollins Publishers,
1994], p. 231. Hereafter referred to in the lectures as IWR.)
Chapter Objectives: After learning this material, you will be able to:
1. Describe prehistoric and tribal religion and understand it as the
backdrop of all later religion.
2. Understand the meaning of “cosmic religion”.
3. Discuss how the early religions are concerned with God and soul and
the importance of creation stories in that understanding.
4. Understand the important role played by initiations.
5. Describe the role of Shamans in the spirituality of tribal religion.
6. Be able to describe the religious nature of hunting and gathering
activities.
7. Understand the profound changes brought about by the beginnings of
agriculture.
8. Describe the role of women in hunting and gathering cultures and how
this changed as society changed.
My interest in the Early Religions began when I was very young. My father,
who was involved in a lot of social justice issues when I was growing up felt
it was important for my brothers and I to spend some time with Native
Americans and see what reservation life was like. We spent several weeks
over a couple of summers on a Native American reservation in Southeast
California. This was an eye opening experience to me. First hand I saw their
kindness and openness to my family. I was impressed with their willingness
to share what little they had. And little is exactly what they had. I have never
seen such poverty in the United States except among the camps for the
migrant field workers on California farms. Most people did not have running
water. Their houses were one and two room shacks.
Perhaps what I remember the most is the sense of hopelessness. Many of the
Native Americans did not have a sense of being able to change things and
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move on with their lives. Alcoholism had just wiped out a great number of
them. They seemed to feel that there was no place for them in our American
society and their own culture had been reduced to its lowest point.
Native Americans still, unfortunately, receive the short stick in modern
politics. As one example of modern injustice, you can study how Native
Americans are still fighting to have their treaties and reservations respected.
In Arizona, where they were given what was considered useless desert land
for their reservation, is now being challenged as miners have found
Plutonium under one of their mountains. There is a history of moving them
off any land found to have value to the dominant American system.
Thankfully, some things have been changing for the better. They have begun
to recover their own indigenous traditions and find some healing and
recovery as they renew and restore some of these rituals, beliefs and
practices that have held them together for so many centuries. It is this, their
religion and philosophy, that we will be studying this week.
As we begin this study it is important to remember that our knowledge of
Early Religion is somewhat limited. If you remember from the Introduction,
Early Religions came before the “historical period.” People did not write
down their thoughts and philosophies and keep track of time the way we do.
“Humans have been active on the planet for a million or more years, but we
know only a tiny fraction of human history… Of the total period of time
during which people have been on earth, we have written records
chronicling perhaps less than one-half of 1 percent. From these records, we
know a great deal about different cultures and religious experiences, but
there is an enormous amount we do not know” (Lewis M. Hopfe and Mark
R. Woodward, Religions of the World, Eighth Edition, [Upper Saddle River,
New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2001], p. 15. Hereafter referred to in the lectures
as RW.) The start of the historical period is really less than ten thousand
years old.
We learn about these religions in two ways. We study the findings of
anthropology and archeology and we study the remnants of those people
who still practice the early traditions in various areas of the world. “Today
only remnants of tribal, non-literate society and religion survive. But there
is enough to provide a picture of what it was like” (Robert S. Ellwood and
Barbara A. McGraw, Many Peoples, Many Faiths: Women and Men in the
World Religions, Seventh Edition, [Upper Saddle River, New Jersey:
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Prentice Hall, 2002], p. 26. Hereafter referred to in the lectures as MPMF.)
These two sources of knowledge are invaluable, but we also must realize
that they are very limited and we should not read too much into their
findings.
Studying the people who currently live according to ways that have been
identified with Early Religion is a bit difficult because we can’t assume that
those religions have stayed static for thousands of years. And there are not
that many people left. “Indigenous people comprise at least four percent of
the world population” (Mary Pat Fisher, Living Religions: A Brief
Introduction, [Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2002], p. 25.
Hereafter referred to in the lectures as LR.) Not all these people still follow
traditional ways of life. This means there are very few people to study.
While it is true that these religions did not change nearly so much as the
religions which emerged during the historical period, we can still suppose
that there was development and that what we see today in Native American
or Australian Aboriginal culture and beliefs is not the same as thousands of
years ago. “All contemporary societies, even the most technologically
simple, have long and complex histories. They have developed and evolved
over thousands of years in response to ecological and social environments
and have built upon the wisdom of many generations. None can be
considered really ‘primitive’ or representative of the earliest stages of human
development” (RW, p. 15.) But studying these cultures and religions does
give us a clue and helps us understand archeological finds and
anthropological studies.
Archaeology is a relatively new science and most of the archaeological work
has been done in the last century. Archaeologists study the remains of the
past. In the somewhat recent past, like the time of the Romans, there is much
to study. Old buildings, buried cities, many artifacts. However, “In studying
prehistoric … cultures, the task is more difficult. The main sources of
information are likely burial sites, weapons, and tools” (RW, p. 16.) In
addition to this, there is always the problem of interpretation. How does one
know what the findings at these sites mean? What is a community building
to one person may be a private home to another. “Some archaeologists may
assure us that Neanderthal people worshiped bears because bear skulls have
been found in burial sites. This may or may not have been the case. Perhaps
bear skulls were buried with these people as trophies of the hunt. With our
present limited knowledge about Neanderthals, we cannot be certain about
their religion” (RW, p. 16.) But between the studies of contemporary
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cultures of indigenous people and the studies of anthropology and
archaeology we can come to a certain level of understanding and it is this
that we will be studying. I want to make sure that each student realizes that
there are serious limits to what we can know and that a great deal of
educated speculation takes place.
These studies discovered a wealth of symbolism and ideas. “That was a
religious world without written texts but rich in art, myth, and dance”
(MPMF, p. 26.) And while the specific myths, art, and dances vary among
tribes around the planet, there are some common themes and beliefs that are
all we can truly study in a survey course like this.
“Prehistoric and tribal religion, the backdrop of all later religion, is a vast
and complex phenomenon. But it possesses certain basic themes which, in
modified forms, appear centrally in later religion as well. It is, first of all,
cosmic religion–concerned with showing the relation of humankind to nature
and the cosmos, it celebrates the turn of the seasons and places of special
sacred power. It has myths telling of the creation of the world by Divine
powers but often also adds a mythic account of a “fall” that explains why
humanity is no longer as close to the creative powers as at the time of
creation” (MPMF, p. 49.) The reason it is important to study the Early
Religions in a course on Western religion is because it is essential to
understand that the historical religions did not just pop out of a vacuum.
What was the very beginning of religion? This is a key question and there is
no certain scholarly answer. One suggestion: “Bishop Codrington studied
the Melanesian people during the nineteenth century and reported their
awareness of the unseen force called ‘mana.’ Others found a similar
phenomenon in different cultures. Therefore, Codrington came to believe
that an awareness of such a force as ‘mana’ might have been humankind’s
original religious impetus” (RW, p. 15.) This very subtle awareness may still
be what gives many of us a sense of faith in the sacred. Just a simple
awareness of an unseen force may be at the root of all religion.
Another possibility comes from the tradition known as “ancestor worship.”
If you love someone and they die and then you see them in a dream you may
have the idea that they are still alive in some way and have a way of
communicating with you. From this you start to sense that maybe there is
another life after this one. The earliest physical sign we have of the possible
belief in life after death is the care which humans took to bury their dead and
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even the costly ritual objects and tools they would place with the body. The
speculation runs along the lines that these dead folks would need these
utensils in their new life. Some people were buried in the fetal position
suggesting that death was seen as a new birth. But where the first
glimmerings of religion and spirituality came from may never be known.
That people have been religious by nature for most of human history seems
to be one of the things that makes us different from the animals.
Before the historical religions people were still religious. They had religious
ideas and rituals. “Everything that we find flowering in the historical
religions, monotheism for example, is prefigured in the primal ones [early
religions] in faint but discernible outlines” (IWR, p. 232.) Many
anthropologists think that one of the ways you can distinguish humans from
other animals is our religious nature. As far as we can tell, no other animal
has religion. This in turn may be a result of what psychology calls the selfreflective consciousness.
Many animals have consciousness, but as far as we know, only humans
know that they are conscious. We can think about ourselves, think about our
consciousness. In other words, we know dogs have awareness, a
consciousness; there is a difference between a sleeping dog and a dog that is
awake! But are they aware that they are aware? Do they remember the past
and envision the future? Whether they do to some extent or not, certainly
this religious trait is well developed in humans and rather unique if not
completely so. My main point is that our religious nature has been around a
long time and parts of our religious nature have not changed from the times
our ancestors practiced forms of Early Religion. We can see some forms of
this in certain religious symbols that are still used today like water for
baptism, fire used in candles and to burn incense and even in certain
holidays like Christmas, which has an assortment of pre-Christian symbols
associated with it, such as the Christmas tree.
What are some of these basic themes? Two of the most important: “We are
speaking of societies characterized by two determinative features: They are
nonliterate (that is, they do not have reading and writing), and they are
organized in very small political units, such as tribes or clans” (MPMF, p.
26.) One of the manifestations of the historical religions is that they are
huge. Millions of people did and/or do continue to follow them. But the
early religions were all tribal. They were practiced by relatively small
groups of people. Tribes might get together and have some similar beliefs,
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but they would also have differences that were more profound than Jews, for
example, who worship the same God whether they live in Israel, Europe or
the United States.
By saying tribes were non-literate we are not making a statement that they
were less intelligent. “Tribal people can think as rationally, and handle ideas
as complex, as any other adults. Their symbol systems often convey as
much complex information and insight as pages of writing or even
mathematical equations” (MPMF, p. 29.) Writing came about as a result of
large groups of people coming together in the agriculture era. Before that,
there was no writing. But this was more a choice then a lack of ability. There
was no need and so it never developed. These cultures relied on an oral
tradition that was very important. People spent years memorizing certain
stories that were then passed down from storyteller to storyteller.
The Early Religions have been referred to in many ways. “Primitive” was a
common way of describing them. If the word “primitive” simply meant
‘first” then we could still use it, but for most people it has taken on a
negative connotation. “We can begin by putting behind us the nineteenth
century prejudice that later means better, a view that holds for technology,
but not for religion” (IWR, p. 232.) We have to remember the important
difference between knowledge and wisdom. For example, a person who
lived in the time when the world was thought to be flat lived with a
definitely different cosmology than we do today. Nevertheless, was he or she
less wise? I think it would be arrogant to think that having advanced
scientific knowledge makes us wiser and better. People thousands of years
ago loved their children just as we do today. We might treat children
differently as a result of new understandings of psychology, etc., but I don’t
think we love our children more. Each generation has to try to do the best it
can with it’s state of knowledge. Qualities like wisdom and love and
compassion seem to have been with us a long time because they are a matter
of inner development rather than outer knowledge. A good humble thought
is to try to realize that the knowledge of the universe hundreds of years from
now may make our current knowledge look rather insignificant.
A definition I like of Early Religions refers to them as “cosmic religion.”
“Mircea Eliade has used the expression cosmic religion to refer to a
religious outlook largely coextensive with the religion of archaic hunters and
farmers but with continuations down to the present. Cosmic religion, he
tells us, has little sense of history or of what was discussed as linear time. It
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finds and expresses sacred meaning in aspects of nature and human life–
seasons, sacred rocks or trees, the social order, birth and death–without
linking them to historical personalities or written documents as do founderreligions” (MPMF, p. 27.) This was a religion that was closely observant of
the natural world and thus formed a strong belief in “animism.” “Animism,
or belief that everything in nature–stones, trees, mountains, lakes, as well as
human beings–has a soul or spirit” (MPMF, p. 27.) “Indeed, the belief that
nature is alive with spirits that have feelings and can be communicated with
is one of the most common to human religious experience” (RW, p. 19.)
This is an important theme throughout the Early Religions. As we will see,
many of the historical religions drew a sharp distinction between the secular
and the sacred. In the introduction we talked about conditioned and
unconditioned reality. But this distinction is not strong in cosmic religion.
Everything is seen as sacred. “It is the rites of hunting and archaic
agriculture where there is no sharp division between the phenomenal world
and an “Other” world; instead this world–here and now–is fundamentally
sacred, and everything is alive with spirit” (MPMF, p. 27.) This is one of
those ideas that are beginning to be renewed in various religious traditions
today as we see a growing ecological crisis. How would our world be
different if we treated everything as sacred?!
We can still see survival of animism, the belief in the aliveness of all things
in some modern customs. “Modern people place historic stones at the
corners of their new buildings; they build expensive, elaborate, useless
fireplaces; Muslims walk around the sacred black stone and kiss it during
their pilgrimage to Mecca; Hindus bathe in the sacred river Ganges; Parsis
bring gifts of sandalwood to be burned in the sacred fire temple; Christians
and even secular Americans go on pilgrimages to the graves of presidents
and rock stars; and on and on. The animistic understanding of life is one of
the most pervasive and influential of all the impulses of mankind–religious
and non-religious” (RW, pp. 20-21.) Here we see what value is placed on
rocks, water, fire, and sacred journeys. I am sure you can think of many
other examples like the use of candles, incense, Easter eggs, etc.
Another example of how the belief that everything is sacred influences
lifestyles: “Indigenous spirituality is a lifeway, a particular approach to all of
life. It is not a separate experience, like meditating in the morning or going
to church on Sunday. Rather, spirituality ideally pervades all moments, from
reverence in gathering clay to make a pot, to respect within tribal council
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meetings” (LR, p. 26.) In modern secular society this understanding of the
sacred is no longer central. But it is central to many modern religions. The
whole idea of mindfulness in Buddhism is to live and think with an
awareness that is always present to “that which is.” In monotheistic religions
like Judaism the idea is to “practice the presence of God,” which means to
live your life with a constant awareness, or openness to the presence of God.
There was a popular bracelet for a while with the letters WWJD that means
to help people keep the question “what would Jesus do?” central to their life
and spiritual practice. My whole point is to have you realize that many ideas
that are central to the Early Religions are still with us today, even though
their form is different.
When we study the historical religions we will study ideas, words, and
documents. With the Early Religions we study primarily symbols and
rituals. “In most native cultures, spiritual lifeways are shared orally.
Teachings are experienced rather than read from books” (LR, p. 26.) In
doing so it is important to keep the big picture (cosmic religion) in mind as
we now go into more detail. “All of these [symbols and rituals] go together
to make up a cosmos in which spirit and matter are thoroughly interwoven,
and everything is more than it seems, as myth, rite, and art make the
invisible visible. In this cosmos, human life is only complete in its total
relationships–with family, tribe, ancestors, and all that is spirit”(MPMF, p.
30.)
Gods, Spirits, and the World
This emphasis on the spiritual is a central idea of the tribal religions. In the
world of cosmic religion, Spirit is essential and everything else derives its
meaning and purpose from Spirit. “[Early] religion is concerned with soul or
spirit. Endeavoring to explain the diverse feelings people have within them,
it sometimes tells of two or more souls. Confronting the eternal human
dread of death, it describes the destiny of the soul in the afterlife:
Sometimes different souls have different destinies, sometimes one at least
goes to an alternative world, sometimes another aspect of the self remains
around its familiar haunts as a ghost, sometimes one is reincarnated in this
world. The spirits of ancestors or unappeased ghosts are usually feared and
propitiated” (MPMF, p. 49.) All of this information is passed on through
stories that relate the myths of each culture. Here it is important to remember
that myths do not mean lies. “Almost every religion has its stories about the
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dealings of the gods with humans. We call these stories myths, or poetic
ways of telling great truths. Myths are ways of thinking in pictures rather
than abstract concepts” (RW, p. 25.)
One of the first things you will run across in studying cosmic religion is the
interest in stories, especially creation stories. “In preliterate societies,
especially, a religion is sustained and explained by the transmission of its
myths from one generation to the next” (RW, p. 25.) Even today, many
children love to be read to and hear stories, especially about their own
families. And many people love films and television because in some way
they are part of that storytelling world. Sitting in front of the television loses
much of the flavor of sitting around a crackling fire listening to and telling
stories, but there is still some piece of it there. People who complain about
those who watch too much television are not so upset at the content of
modern stories (although they may be) as they are upset at the passivity of
just sitting there and taking it all in. When you don’t have a story shown to
you, then you must use your imagination, as when you read to picture the
setting, characters, etc. Think about the huge impact modern movies like
“Star Wars” has had. One of the reasons for this is that it deals with
universal themes like good and evil which have been the sources of
countless stories for many thousands of years. Something in the human spirit
responds to these themes!
All tribes have stories that tell not only where they came from, but also
about the origins of the world. “Because the traditions are oral rather than
written, these people must memorize long and complex stories and songs so
that the group’s sacred traditions can be remembered and taught, generation
after generation. It is very important to Australian Aborigines that their
children learn about the origin of the people and the local creatures, and that
they understand the weather and the patterns of the stars. Songs about these
matters may have a hundred verses or more. The orally transmitted epics of
the indigenous Ainu of Japan are up to ten thousand ‘lines’ long. Chants to
the Yoruba orisa comprise 256 ‘volumes’ of eight hundred long verses each”
(LR, p. 34.) How would you like to take a test on that?!
One of the things these stories have in common is a basic motif that things
were better in the past. In the past humans were much closer to the world of
the gods. “For primal peoples, ‘past’ means preeminently, closer to the
originating source of things” (IWR, p. 237.) Then something went wrong.
As a result of this problem, humans now live the life we are familiar with9
that is a life full of goodness for sure, but also a life full of sorrow and
hardship. Creation stories, by dealing with this, help provide a sense of
meaning to life. Knowing one’s story is very important, for it teaches one
what steps need to be taken to bring about renewal. “These steps are rites of
renewal, which primal religions regularly enact. The annual Sun Dance of
the Plains Indians, for example, is called the Dance for World and Life
Renewal” (IWR, p. 237.) Lighting of the Easter candle at Midnight Mass has
a similar meaning.
Many of these stories do talk about a high God or a creator God. Tribal
religions are often considered polytheistic, meaning they believe in more
than one God. There is a certain truth to this. But as I warned in the
Introduction, label (maps) are not the territory and it is important to realize
that many tribes did have a sense of the one God that is familiar to the
western religions as Monotheism. But instead of focusing on the one God,
many creation stories have that God sort of disappear or withdraw after the
creation of the world. “But though the creator high god (if there is one) may
be far removed from ordinary human affairs, many much more involved
spiritual entities inhabit the world” (MPMF, p. 31.) It is because tribal
religions focus on these other “spiritual entities” that they are considered
polytheistic. Native Americans referred to the high God as the “Great
Mystery.” I have always liked that term! When missionaries heard them
refer to the Great Mystery, they told the Native Americans that the Great
Mystery was actually called the Great Spirit. In many movies Native
Americans refer to God as the Great Spirit, but this only came after
encounter with missionaries.
Many of the spiritual entities took on roles as the gods did among the
Ancient Greeks. There were gods of the sky and earth, of water and forest,
etc. Other spiritual entities that played a strong role were ancestral spirits.
“Ancestral spirits” are likely to be especially loved and feared, for they stay
near their families to impart the strength that goes with the lineage, but they
also punish individuals whose faults dishonor it” (MPMF, p. 31.) Many
rituals and prayers were developed to honor and placate these ancestral
spirits. This tradition of honoring the dead is still carried on in more modern
religions, especially in the East in countries like Japan.
The stories are told to give people meaning and purpose within their society.
Another way they find their place is through the high importance placed on
initiation rituals. “But tribal religion is acted as much as it is thought.
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Among its best-known and most significant acts are initiations, scenarios
that enact views concerning birth and death as stages through which the soul
passes; and ancestors living and dead are seen as custodians of enabling
power” (MPMF, p. 31.) These will be of interest to those folks interested in
sociology among other things, because one of the reasons given for things
like gangs is the lack of initiations for children today. The argument is that
gangs are one way that young people initiate themselves.
Initiation Rites of Men and Women
“Initiations are very important for many primitive peoples. They serve the
end of social cohesion by inducting adults into the tribe after proper training
and a potent shared experience, and they often serve the end of individual
fulfillment as well by giving status and perhaps secrets of value in the soul’s
journey after death. Initiations involve a process of separation, marginality
when one is separated from the social structure but close to Divine powers,
and re-incorporation of the individual into the social order. Such initiations
also emphasize that the spirits of nature work through the natural processes
of the human body (particularly the female body, the processes of which are
mimicked in men’s initiation rites) and celebrate what sustains the tribe as
coextensive with ultimate cosmic reality” (MPMF, p. 49.)
Sometimes we can think of initiations we might still experience such as that
wonderful day we first receive our driver’s license. While a license to drive
definitely marks a passing, it is in no way equivalent to what the Early
Religions meant by initiations. “For most tribal cultures, life is a series of
initiations, and it is through them that its most meaningful signs of status are
bestowed, as well as the deepest mysteries of the ultimate meaning of human
existence revealed” (MPMF, p. 31.) These were forceful events, often
traumatic and difficult and sometimes they would go on for months. When a
boy was taken off to the woods for the secret ceremonies, he would often
come back looking different as well as acting different. Before he was a boy,
now he was a man with all the rights, privileges, and responsibilities that
went with manhood.
With women the situation is only beginning to emerge. For one thing, all the
early anthropologists were men who were never allowed by the women to
study their mysteries. Now, as more women have entered the field, we are
beginning to see that women’s mysteries and initiations were every bit as
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complex and life changing as the men’s were. While boys were initiated at a
time decided by the elders, women were somewhat self-initiated at their first
menstruation. In fact there is increasing evidence that men’s rites, especially
of circumcision, were done in order to “keep up” with women. “In fact, it is
probably the case that the male initiation rite, with its birthing imagery and
the shedding of blood through circumcision, mirrors women’s life
processes” (MPMF, p. 33.) A girl would be taken off by some of the women
and trained in the mysteries and when she came back, she came back to the
tribe as a woman, with all the rights, privileges, and responsibilities that
went with womanhood.
Because the spiritual and natural worlds were not that separate in tribal
religions, initiations were not simply a marking of passing time as in
receiving a driver’s license. It was a time of initiation into a new level of
spirituality as well. New songs and chants were learned, special dances
taught, and ways of seeking the divine were practiced. “Such tribal rites
reflect the interplay of spiritual forces in the affairs of human life. They
emphasize that the spirits of nature work through the natural processes of the
human body (particularly in the case of women whose bodily processes are,
therefore, mimicked in the men’s rites) and celebrate that which sustains the
tribe as coextensive with ultimate cosmic reality” (MPMF, p. 33.) Much
time and effort went into the preparing ceremonies and rites of passage.
Young people looked forward to them, but they also feared them. Adults
were good about keeping things a secret so that young people did not really
know what to expect. Playing a large role in these ceremonies were the
Shamans.
Shamans
“Shaman” is a Siberian word, but what you might also think of as a native
priest/priestess or medicine man or woman is understood as a Shaman.
“Shaman is used as a generic term by scholars for those who offer
themselves as mystical intermediaries between the physical and the nonphysical world for specific purposes, such as healing. Archaeological
research has confirmed that shamanic methods are extremely ancient-at least
twenty to thirty centuries years old. Ways of becoming a shaman and
practicing shamanic arts are remarkably similar around the globe” (LR, p.
36.) In fact, if there was ever a time when the world had one religion, this
was probably the time.
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Shamans play such a large role in tribal religion that it is sometimes referred
to as “Shamanism.” “The shaman is usually a person with a very special and
personal, often lonely, initiation. She or he is believed to have powers of
controlling spirits, healing, and confronting the gods, expressed through
dramatic scenarios of trance and dance” (MPMF, p. 49.) “The shaman is also
distinguished by a related factor, the nature of her or his “call” (MPMF, p.
35.) A person is recognized as “special” by having survived a traumatic
illness or injury. They are considered marked by the divine. “There are
persons singled out by the Divine to receive special ecstatic powers for
dealing with spiritual things. These are the men or women called shamans
or, less precisely, medicine men or witch doctors” (MPMF, p. 33.)
Shamans do not simply decide to go to school the way a person in a more
modern religion can decide to go to seminary to become a minister. They
must first demonstrate an ability to become a Shaman and then they must
find an older Shaman willing to undertake the long road to training them.
This is not easy nor is it supposed to be easy. One must train hard and it is
this difficult journey to a certain level of holiness that has become a kind of
archetype of the spiritual pilgrim. “Indeed, it has been argued that
shamanism is the prototype of much of the religious world” (MPMF, p. 33.)
Shamans were trained in the spiritual world of prayer, meditation, fasting
and chanting. They were also trained in the use of herbs and were the healers
among the tribes. This training included the use of what we would today call
psychedelic plants. “The shaman seems to, and often does, undergo the
psychic and physical changes attendant upon altered states of consciousness.
Anthropological work has brought to light that taking hallucinogenic plants,
such as the fly agaric mushroom in central Asia and plants of the datura
family in the Western Hemisphere, is a part of shamanism in many cultures.
The altered state of consciousness and the visions of the shaman, however
spiritual in the context of the culture, are often facilitated by the well-known
effects of these drugs” (MPMF, p. 35.)
It might be of interest to some of you that the modern Native American
Church has only recently regained the right to use peyote in some of their
ceremonies legally. For many years it was outlawed much to the outrage of
Native Americans who considered this yet another way to suppress their
culture and religion. It is also important to note that these drugs are never
used just to “party” but they are used in sacred ceremonies in special,
controlled conditions and with much preparation. The point is to open and
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expand consciousness in a way that will lead to greater insight and
compassion in one’s daily life and spiritual journey.
It is difficult to find Shamans today, but along with the renewal of traditional
Native American spirituality, many Native Americans are seeking to recover
that learning and role played by Shamans for so many centuries. I know,
because I looked for a long time for a Shaman who I felt was authentic. As
with all things spiritual, a professor once told me, “we want to keep our
minds open, but not so open our brains fall out!” I am aware that many
people out there are phonies, but I guess I have a certain faith that if one
sincerely seeks, eventually the real thing can be found. In my case, it took
about twenty years! But in May 2003 I was able to do a sweat lodge
ceremony with a Native American Shaman named Bear Heart. It was a very
moving and wonderful experience. An authentic ceremony takes place when
it is performed with sacred intention as well as correct “know-how”. His
autobiography is titled “The Wind is my Mother” and I highly recommend
it. If any of you can find an authentic tribal ceremony to attend for your
Final, I would really encourage you to give it a try.
Many of us might think of shamanic healing as pre-rational. But again, prerational does not mean irrational or wrong. It is just a different way of
approaching health and healing than in the modern western world. What is
interesting is that their healing methods work! “These shamanic healing
methods, once dismissed as quackery, are now beginning to earn respect
from the scientific medical establishment. Medicine people are permitted to
attend indigenous patients in some hospitals, and in the United States, the
national Institute of Mental Health has paid Navajo medicine men to teach
young Indians the elaborate ceremonies that have often been more effective
in curing the mental health problems of Navajos than has Western
psychiatry” (LR, p. 34.) Many of you may practice “alternative therapies” in
your own health management such as acupuncture, herbs, massage, etc.
Slowly but surely we seem to be learning that there is more to reality (in this
case health) than we have recently been led to believe!
However much emphasis is placed on Shamans, it must be remembered that
Shamans were used for special reasons, but they were not a substitute for
one’s own spiritual practice. Every person was responsible for their own
spiritual journey, for saying prayers, for learning the proper ways of doing
things, etc. “Guardian spirits and visions are sought by all the people, not
just specialists such as Shamans. The Shaman may have more spirit helpers
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and more power, but visionary experiences and opportunities for worship are
available to all” (LR, p. 41.) All tribal members participated in sweat lodge
ceremonies and things like vision quests.
Archaic Hunters
In the earliest societies we know of, the hunters and gatherers, there were
special rituals and ceremonies that went with hunting and gathering. “The
religion of hunter-gatherer peoples expresses the hunter’s sense of
dependence on the animal, as well as the gatherer’s dependence on the
natural world to provide the staples of the diet of the tribe. The hunter knows
that the hunted animal, and often a “master or mistress of animals” deity in
charge of a species must be kept as a benign spirit if game is to be taken; the
gatherer knows that the secrets of nature must be unlocked in order to
receive the gifts of the earth spirit’s bounty” (MPMF, p. 49.) First, we will
look at hunting.
Due to a lack of separation between the secular and the sacred, hunting was
a sacred activity as was everything else. “A hunter does not set out simply to
forestall his tribe’s hunger. He launches on a sequence of meditative acts, all
of which–whether preparatory prayer and purification, pursuit of the quarry,
or the sacramental manner by which the animal is slain and subsequently
treated–are sacred” (IWR, p. 238.) There was an honorable way to hunt and
a dishonorable way to hunt. “Going into the field, tracking, and taking the
animal is, so to speak, an act of interplay with spiritual forces and in this
respect is comparable to going to church or temple” (MPMF, p. 40.) Native
Americans and other tribal people did not hunt just for the fun of it. Animals
were considered sacred and you did not kill lightly. “Killing, in other words,
entails all sorts of responsibilities. This is a different world of humananimal relations from that of the modern slaughterhouse or of many a
modern sportsman with his high-powered rifle, telescopic sight, and desire
for a “trophy” (MPMF, p. 40.)
“It is necessary to prepare spiritually for a great hunt” (MPMF, p. 40.) There
were ceremonies in which the hunters prayed to the spirits of the animals,
asking their permission to kill them and letting these animals know that they
were needed for the hunters to survive. “To take the animal requires in some
sense the consent of the animal or that of its Divine masters, due propitiation
for the wrong done to it, and proper magic to make anything happen at all”
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(MPMF, p. 40.) In many ways it comes down to respect. There is a primary
recognition that other forms of life also have the right to live. There is also
an important recognition that life does have a brutal aspect to it. In order to
live we all must eat. But what is important is how we go about our eating
and the kind of respect we show in the process of getting our food.
Balance is the key idea. Tribal religions are not sentimental. They can, in
fact, be quite brutal. But I have found it inspiring how they try to bring a
spiritual understanding to even the most horrible facts of life like death and
killing. “It is therefore important that humanity live in reverent harmony
with the biological and spiritual ecology of nature. Animals treated rightly
will cooperate and return to offer themselves as game to hunters again; those
who are not will be enemies, now and hereafter” (MPMF, p. 41.) You can
hopefully see why the modern ecology movement looks toward traditional
spiritualities for some of its inspiration.
Archaic Gatherers
In many films and books a great deal of emphasis has been placed on the
hunting aspect of tribal life that makes it appear to play a larger role than it
did. In actuality women and children provided most of the tribe’s diet. Some
estimates range as high as 80% of a tribe’s calories came from food that was
gathered rather than hunted. “The relation of the archaic gatherer to the land
also reveals an especially rich center of spiritual life. Here, too, there is an
interplay of ordinary activities for the well-being of the tribe with spiritual
forces. Recent archeological and anthropological evidence indicates that for
many prehistoric and tribal groups, the main diet consisted not of large game
(an occasional and special food) but of plant-foods and small animals
gathered, for the most part, by women. The gatherers had special knowledge
of the earth spirit (or spirits) who provided these “gifts” out of her (or
sometimes his) bounty” (MPMF, p. 41.)
Because women provided so much of the diet there was a level of respect
and equality that is only now beginning to be shown toward women once
again. I wrote about this aspect of economics in the Introduction. When
agriculture took over in a big way, women did not do as much providing of
the food for the people. Of course they worked hard cooking and preparing
it, but something seems to have changed between men and women when
men started providing more of the tribe’s calories. “The important role of
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women as gatherers is reflected in the high status accorded them in huntergatherer societies where there appears to be an egalitarian bent exhibited by
a great degree of complementarity in the roles of men and women” (MPMF,
p. 41.) Perhaps now that so few people farm and technology has made it so
that brains rather than body size are the determining factors, equality is once
again rearing its head. A pregnant woman may not be able to plow like a
man without endangering her pregnancy, but she can run a computer or a
company for that matter. It would be interesting to speculate what role
economics had on the changing religious roles of women.
For in the days of hunters and gatherers there were medicine women as well
as men. Again, a person was chosen and sex did not matter. Aptitude is what
mattered. There is also a good chance that as the gatherers of plant food
women had a superior knowledge of the plants used to heal which was an
important part of the Shaman’s business. There was of course a transition
from hunting and gathering to major agriculture, and during this transition
time things like sticks were used to dig a hole and plant a seed. This was the
time of the archaic farmers.
Archaic Farmers
Many of the creation stories that talk about a “fall” seem to occur around the
time hunting and gathering faded away for the most part into an agricultural
society. You can see the remnant of this in the Bible with the Garden of
Eden story. Adam and Eve lived in a beautiful garden where all was
provided, but after the fall men (and notice it is men) will earn their bread
“by the sweat of their brow.” “Agriculture gave a tremendous impetus to
human culture but seems often to have been perceived as a sort of “fall”
from a purer state. The religion of agriculturalists tends to involve more
blood and sacrifice, and more antagonism between the sexes, than that of the
hunters and gatherers. Agriculture tore the earth deeply but also allowed the
rise of sedentary societies, great increases in population, and finally the
ancient empires” (MPMF, p. 49.) Many studies tell of how hunters and
gatherers could do all their “work” in three or four hours a day. The rest of
their time was given over to ceremonies and preparing for ceremonies,
socializing and storytelling. Compare that to how farmers (and probably
most of the students in this class!) work from sun up to sun down.
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For the last ten thousand years we have lived in a society very much
different from how our ancestors lived for hundreds of thousands of years. In
terms of our long history it is relatively short. And yet we are now, it seems,
on the verge of another major change. “The beginning of agriculture,
perhaps at several places, some 10,000 years ago, and the subsequent spread
of the practice of planting and harvesting produced probably the most farreaching religious changes of any transition in the history of religion. In
many ways we are still living in the age set in motion by the development of
agriculture. The modern city is an extension of the village of the first
sedentary planters. ” (MPMF, p. 42.)
At least until the twentieth century, the average person almost anywhere in
the world was a peasant who lived close to the soil and seasons and whose
life and values were more like the life and values of the archaic, Neolithic
agriculturalists than those of the workers in contemporary technological
society. It may be that today, as we finally move away from the world
shaped culturally by the peasant farmer’s way of life into a truly urban world
of computers and space travel, religious changes as marked as those that
separate the archaic farmer from the hunter will eventuate” (MPMF, p. 42.) I
often wonder what forms religion will take in the future.
A little tangent: I already notice that many people try to distance themselves
from religion and yet claim to be spiritual. Some people seem to feel there is
a real difference between religion and spirituality. If things do change then
one direction that change may go is toward what I call post-dogmatic
religion. Religion will be about communities of people who gather to
support one another on the horizontal level and learn transformational skills
(like meditation) on the vertical level. There will be less an emphasis on
what you believe than on how you live. You can already see this in twelve
step groups where people gather to help each other stay sober, lose weight,
pay debts, etc. but no one is required to “believe” anything to join. No one
can make you join or kick you out. Most likely it will take new forms that
we don’t even recognize yet. Back to Early Religion!
One of the things hunters and gatherers and the early farmers (simple
horticulture) learned was that the earth provided for them out of its
abundance. They didn’t have to “wrestle” their food out of the land. This
would all have a powerful influence on their philosophy and worldview.
“This…is very instructive of the profound relation between religion–or, if
one prefers, worldview–and culture, and conversely of the deep impact such
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things as economic system and social organization have on religious forms.
Each does much to determine what is, at least psychologically, available in
the other sphere” (MPMF, p. 42.) The way we live influences how we live
just as much as how we live influences the way we live. To see the earth as a
provider rather than a competitor is profound.
What does this say about how our ancestors saw the role of humans in this
world? “They saw the human state as that of a being who wanders about the
face of the earth under the sky, going whither the guardians of the forest
directed and accepting what they chose to give. Holding such a worldview,
it would not occur to them to consider the possibilities of sedentary
habitation on one small piece of land deliberately worked for all it could
produce” (MPMF, p. 42.) This is a very different worldview from today,
which is often referred to as a “materialistic age.” This is a term that is
thrown around a great deal, but it has the specific meaning of accumulating
goods. The more stuff you have, the bigger house you need to keep all that
stuff safe. The bigger house you have, the more money you need to earn.
The more money you earn, the more “stuff” you can buy. It becomes an age
where we see bumper stickers like “he who dies with the most toys wins.”
This is not to say materialism is all bad. Many of the things we own bring us
pleasure and enjoyment; they make life worthwhile. When philosophers
criticize materialism they do not mean the material things themselves; they
mean the uncritical acceptance of the values that go with materialism. It is
the process of getting caught up in it to the point where it is no longer a
conscious choice, but an obsessive habit.
The study of Early Religions is a good place to check these values because
we come up against a worldview that simply says working that hard is no
fun; it is not a way to live a satisfying life. “And, in any event, timeconsuming and laborious agricultural work may not have been thought
worth the trouble by those in hunter-gatherer tribes who found no difficulty
finding food” (MPMF, p. 43.) These people liked moving around and not
having to drag a lot of stuff around with them. They liked having a lot of
time to do other things besides working for the necessities of life.
Try to imagine how the average life of a child growing up changed during
this transition period. History tends to glorify the changes because history
tends to focus on those few people (usually men) who benefited from the
change and were free to write philosophy and literature, wage wars, and
build cities. But the vast majority of people were virtually slaves. “The
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introduction of agriculture resulted in considerable advancement in human
living standards and culture for some [a small minority], though for vast
numbers of those who sunk to peasant class as tillers of the fields it probably
meant a more impoverished diet, depending on only a few staples, and
certainly a life of more monotonous labor than that of the hunter-gatherer.
Indeed, the discovery of agriculture seems often to have been halfconsciously regarded as an unlocking of forbidden knowledge or to have
involved a crime, a murder, which although it may have brought humankind
wealth was spiritually a second “fall,” putting humanity still farther away
from the gods and primal innocence” (MPMF, p. 44.) Some people gained
greater freedom, but so did the violence of war and damage to the
environment. It is almost as though with every move forward in human
evolution and development more could go wrong as well as get better.
One of the changes in religion had to do with a new understanding of life
and death. Just as a seed was planted in the earth (buried) but would come
alive again in the springtime, so the worldview of tribal people began to
change. “A grim basic principle came to affect that agricultural worldview
even more than the hunter’s: the principle of death for life. Agriculture
seems to have brought out a new and darker sense of the interconnection of
death and life” (MPMF, pp. 44-45.) It seems to be at this stage that you hear
about human sacrifice on a massive scale as people tried to manipulate the
gods into bringing about a fruitful harvest. “In all of this, it is clear that
human sacrifice meant a transfer of power from the victim to the sacrificer
or his or her works” (MPMF, pp. 45-46.)
The Negative Side of Early Religion
The darker side of tribal religions took place more in the time of early
agriculture than it did in the hunting and gathering time. “But in agricultural
society, all of this becomes more accentuated, often reaching a point that
seems a grisly preoccupation with ritual death, whether animal or human.
Religious headhunting, human sacrifice, and large-scale animal sacrifice are
not genuinely primitive but are usually associated with agricultural societies
and are a part of the mentality to which it gave rise” (MPMF, p. 45.) I often
wonder if hunting and gathering times were not like the childhood of
humanity and the big change to agriculture like the adolescence of humans.
If there is some truth to that, then we are hopefully about ready to emerge
into some sort of mature adulthood before we blow the planet up or destroy
its ecology.
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It is easy to romanticize the practitioners of early religion. They had a
lifestyle and philosophy that has much to teach us today. But we must
remember that when we study different eras we see how some qualities and
values are lost and others gained. For example, when someone got too old to
provide for him or herself they were often abandoned to die. While this was
culturally acceptable and expected, most of us would not like that to happen
to our loved ones or ourselves. Social roles were very constrained. Each
person had his or her role to fulfill and there was not much room to choose
something different. The sort of choices and freedom we have today would
simply be unbelievable.
Another factor that made Early Religion difficult was that it was a shamebased society. It controlled people by very strict conditions of acceptable
behavior and if you crossed the line you could be banned from the tribe and
that was a virtual death sentence. “To be separated from the tribe threatens
them with death, not only physically but psychologically as well” (IWR, p.
238.) They didn’t have jails and mental institutions, but they didn’t have
much freedom to think for themselves. For example, a friend of mine who
grew up in Africa talked about how discipline was different among the
natives from what he saw in the United States. His son would not listen to
him and would talk back to him here in California. He was frustrated and did
not know what to do. But he told me that in Africa the boy’s uncles would
have taken him out to the wilderness and tied him up against an anthill and
left him there for twenty-four hours! While he was glad that this didn’t
happen to his son, he realized that it did simplify things! You wouldn’t have
the same problems with discipline! But who today would want to live that
way?
Early Religions get a lot attention for their ecological views, but these can
often be exaggerated. Oftentimes tribal religions could be very rough on
their surroundings. For example, sometimes buffalo were driven over cliffs
in large numbers as a method of hunting. Tribal people did not always live
up to their ideals any more than modern people do. There was cruelty, war
and torture. There was not always the sense of regard for the others’ welfare
that we try for in modern times. Often if a person was disabled they would
be abandoned to die. They saw this as the way of nature. They saw in nature
that a disabled horse hurt the whole herd and was usually the first horse to be
killed by predators. So in a survival culture they would deal with problems
in ways that we might consider less than loving! Often they receive credit
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for a lack of damage to their environment when the lack of damage was not
due to a consciousness of restraint as much as that there were not as many
people and they did not have the sort of modern technology that causes so
much damage and pollution today. There is even evidence that groups like
the Mayans may have self destructed due to environmental reasons.
So I am all in favor of taking a long look at the Early Religions and having
them teach us many things we need to know today, such as respect for all
living things and the sacredness of nature and our planet. This is a wisdom
we need to imbibe before we do even more damage to our air, land and
water. But it is also important to keep in mind the many wonderful advances
that have been made with each new age of human experience.
Before we move on, I want to take another look at Women and Religion as
promised in the Introduction.
Women in Early Agrarian Societies and the Reassertion of
Masculine Interests
While I have been trying to emphasize that the role of men and women has
never been static and that agriculture played a part in what women
experienced as oppression, I don’t want to go to the extreme of saying that
women used to have it good and then men ruined it. I think that is too
simplistic and makes men look horrible and women look “stupid,” which
doesn’t help us today. People have probably always had to find ways to
work together. In times past it seems that things were more equal, but the
fact is that we know very little about ancient times and there is a lot of
speculation that goes on. As times changed and humans continued to evolve
through different ages it is more likely that men and women had to work
together to make those changes. It might be interesting to remember: “Many
traditional languages make no distinction between male and female
pronouns, and some see the divine as androgynous, a force arising from the
interaction of male and female aspects of the universe” (LR, p. 29.) The
Lakota have an important ceremony using their sacred pipe, where the stem
symbolizes the male aspect of god and the bowl symbolizes the female
aspect of God. Only when the stem and bowl come together can the pipe be
used and smoked. So in spiritual terms the understanding means that one
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should not get caught up so much in whether God is male or female, but
instead go past those polarities to the One beyond.
The fact that things became oppressive is more along the lines of how more
things can go wrong as people develop than an argument against
development. “Feminists, such as the late Marija Gimbutas and others, have
theorized that considerable evidence of pervasive female symbolism during
this time reflects the prominence of women and perhaps matriarchal
societies. Such ideas are very controversial, however, because the academy
in general holds that there is very little evidence that there were societies
where women ruled, and there appear to be no such societies extant today.
The common view is that pervasive goddess symbolism did not reflect the
holding of power on the part of earthly women but rather represented the
importance of fertility to the archaic community” (MPMF, p. 46.) This is a
topic that is still a great controversy and very interesting to those who like to
follow these kinds of intellectual debates.
It would seem that even if things were actually better for women in the past,
we can at least be sure that those days are gone and will never come back as
they were. An isolated person here and there may decide to go back and
become a hunter and gatherer, but the majority of humans are going to
continue to move forward. The real question is, can we find the wisdom in
the past that we can take with us into the future even as the outer conditions
change? Can men and women find a way to honor and cherish and respect
one another with neither being oppressed and both finding fulfillment in the
lives they choose for themselves?
The rest of the religions we will study will be more properly the Western
religions. It is important to keep in context that all of these religions arose
after what has been called the patriarchal revolution that coincided with the
agricultural revolution. “The last archaic stage has been called the
‘Patriarchal Revolution.’ At the onset of the ancient civilizations–whether in
Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, or China–we see a vigorous assertion of male
primacy in powerful sovereigns and a corresponding suppression of female
religious figures, whether queens, goddesses, or shamanesses” (MPMF, p.
47.) In terms of women’s roles it will be important to look at whether the
religions oppressed women in and of themselves, or whether the religions
were simply manifesting at a time when patriarchy was the way things were.
23
This will in turn have an important bearing on whether you as students find
patriarchy an essential or an accidental part of the religions we study. For
example, when Saint Paul wrote that women should obey men, was he
stating an essential principle of Christianity, or was he doing his best to
understand Christian family relations in a time of patriarchy? If the first is
correct then there is not much that we can do about it because apparently
God (speaking in scripture through Saint Paul) wants women to obey men. If
the second choice is correct then there is room for feminists to argue that
women obeying men has nothing to do with God’s will, but is simply an
expression of the culture at the time. Feminists might argue that when you
look at the big picture, God seems to desire love and harmony among family
members. At the time it was understood in an authoritarian way. But how
can we understand the need for family love and harmony today at the
beginning of the twenty-first century?
Summary Based on Joachim Wach’s Three Forms of Religious
Expression: MPMF, p. 48
FUNDAMENTAL FEATURES OF PREHISTORIC AND
TRIBAL RELIGIONS
THEORETICAL
Basic Worldview
The universe is a place animated by many
spirits, some friendly and some not.
Humans have a real place in the cosmos,
which works by rules and cycles that can be
known.
God or Ultimate Reality
Many gods and spirits; but perhaps a high
God or unifying force over them.
Origin of the World
Either no point of origin or created by the
Gods or a high god who may subsequently
have withdrawn from activity.
Destiny of the World
Usually not clear.
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Origin of Humans
Often children of gods or semidivine primal
parents.
Destiny of Humans
Frequently we go after death to another
world, not unlike this world, sometimes also
to be reborn here in this world.
Revelation or Mediation
Between the Ultimate and
The Human
Myth, often told and enacted at festivals and
by shamans; benign gods and ancestral
spirits as helpers.
PRACTICAL
What Is Expected of Humans
Worship, practice, behavior to undergo
initiation; to honor and sacrifice to gods and
Ancestors; to observe tribal norms of
behavior and taboos.
SOCIOLOGICAL
Major Social Institutions
Tribe as a spiritual unit; shamanism.
On we go!
Bibliography:
Robert S. Ellwood and Barbara A. McGraw, Many Peoples, Many Faiths:
Women and Men in the World Religions, Seventh Edition, [Upper Saddle
River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2002]
Mary Pat Fisher, Living Religions: A Brief Introduction, [Upper Saddle
River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2002]
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Lewis M. Hopfe and Mark R. Woodward, Religions of the World, Eighth
Edition, [Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2001]
Huston Smith, The Illustrated World’s Religion: A Guide to our Wisdom
Traditions, [New York, New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1994]
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