Unit 7- Religion and Symbolism

Agnosticism

the belief that God or the divine is unknowable and therefore skepticism is appropriate.

Animism

a worldview in which there is believed to be spiritual agency in all things, including natural elements such as rocks and trees.

Atheism

the lack of belief in a god or gods.

Binary opposition

two opposing concepts, commonly found in institutions such as kinship and in myth.

Communitas

a cohort of individuals participating in a rite of passage who share a strong sense of equality and social bonding among themselves.

Diety

a god, usually named, with individual personalities and interests.

Divination

a practice or test to discern knowledge about a certain event or situation

Doctrine

a set of formal and usually rigid principles or teachings of a religious organization.

Earth-diver myths

creation myths in which a creator deity sends an agent, usually an animal, into deep waters to find mud that the deity will use to create dry land and humans

Exorcism

the removal of an adverse supernatural spirit from a person.

Goddesses

female deities.

Gods

deities; often, specifically male deities

Hierophany

the manifestation of the sacred or divine.

Law of contagion

the belief that things that have once been in contact with each other remain connected always; a theory of magic.

Law of similarity

the belief that things that are alike exert a force on each other; a theory of magic.

Liminality

a state in which an individual is viewed as being in a transition from one social stage to another.

Mana

an impersonal force that can adhere to people or animate and inanimate objects to make them sacred.

Magic

a supposed system of natural law, the practice of which causes a transformation to occur.

Metaphor

a symbol that is not naturally connected to what it represents.

Metonym

a symbol in which a part stands for the whole.

Monotheistic religion

a religion that centers on a single named god or goddess.

Multivocal

describes symbols that have more than one meaning.

Myth

a well-known story that teaches primary principles, beliefs, and values outside of chronological time.

Mythemes

the stripped-down minimal and portable units that form the structure of a myth.

None

a person with no religious affiliation.

Pilgrimage

a sacred journey to a shrine or other holy place.

Place

a location that has sociocultural meaning attached to it.

Polytheistic religion

a religion that centers on a group of gods and/or goddesses, each devoted to a specific action or behavior.

Priests

full-time religious leaders who manage and administer at a high level within the religious bureaucracy.

Primary messages

the meaning of a myth, which can be applied universally.

Prophet

an individual associated with religious change who calls for a renewal of beliefs or a restructuring of the status quo. A prophet’s leadership is usually temporary or indirect

Proselytization

a recruitment practice in which members actively seek converts to the group

Rite of affliction

a ritual invoked to seek some sort of redress, remedy, or compensation for an individual by means of supernatural intervention.

Rite of intensification

a ritual performed by a religious group to affirm, strengthen, and maintain bonds of solidarity.

Religion

a shared system of beliefs and practices that are highly regarded in society. Most often, religion is focused on the interaction of natural and supernatural phenomena.

Rite of passage

a ritual in which an individual or group marks a social transformation.

Rituals

performative acts by which people carry out religious beliefs, both public and private; also called rites.

Secular religion

a system of beliefs held by a society that elevates social ideas, qualities, or commodities to a metaphysical, semidivine status.

Shaman

a part-time religious figure who works to connect with deities on behalf of others.

Shamanism

a practice of healing and divination that involves soul travel to connect natural and supernatural realms in nonlinear time.

Sorcery

a practice involving the use of material elements to cause a change in circumstances to another person.

Space

an unmarked physical field; a place with no specific cultural meaning.

Spirit

supernatural being associated with specific activities, such as an earth spirit or guardian spirit (or angel).

Spirituality

a loose structure of beliefs and feelings about relationships between the natural and supernatural worlds.

State religion

a formal religious institution with full-time administrators, a set doctrine of beliefs and regulations, and a policy of seeking growth by conversion of new practitioners.

Structuralism

a theory and method focused on identifying patterns in culture; also includes mythic analysis.

Superstition

a belief or practice that is believed to have no credible evidence for its efficacy.

Syncretism

an integration or use of more than one religious system.

Symbol

something that stands arbitrarily for something else and has no natural connection to its referent.

Witchcraft

a practice involving the use of intangible means to cause a change in circumstances to another person.

Worldview

a specific outlook or orientation that an individual or group of individuals holds on the nature of the world.