Religion: Concepts, Rituals, Symbolism, and Religious Specialists
Block 6 RELIGION
Introduction to the relationship between religion and society, particularly in traditional societies.
Religion regulates various aspects of life (economy, polity, life cycle).
Marxist structuralists (Maurice Godelier, Meillassoux) saw religion as a mode of production in societies where it was predominant.
Religion is a key social control mechanism, even today.
Religion and society are intricately related.
Traditional societies: religion is community-oriented.
Modern societies: religion is individual-driven.
This block contains three units:
Unit 1: Concepts and Approaches to the Study of Religion
Unit 2: Rituals and Symbolism
Unit 3: Religious Specialists
Unit 1: Concepts and Approaches to the Study of Religion
Introduces the concept of religion as evolved in anthropology, differing from other disciplines.
Anthropological perspective: 'field view'.
Acquaints with different concepts in the study of religion from an anthropological perspective.
Helps understand the anthropological perspective of religion and different approaches to study religion.
Enables analysing religion from an anthropological lens.
1.1 Introduction
Explains how anthropology deals with religion differently from philosophy, theology, comparative religion, and religious studies.
Focus: Why religion is important in people's lives, taking their perspective.
No known society exists without religious ideas.
Anthropologists seek the relevance of religion in human societies, whether technologically advanced or primitive.
Anthropological approach: studies human societies as integrated wholes, considering religion as part of culture.
Each culture is unique.
The world can be viewed in multiple ways; representation of culture cannot be monological, authoritative, and bounded.
Anthropological perspective of religion: how practitioners see the world, interpret, and differentiate themselves.
Defining religion: No single definition adequately covers all aspects of religion practiced by all human societies.
Introduces basic concepts and various approaches to studying religion (evolutionary, psychological, functional, Marxist, and symbolic).
Box No. 1 Definition of Religion
Edward B. Tylor (1832-1917): Religion is the belief in spiritual beings (1871).
Emile Durkheim (1858-1917): Religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, uniting adherents into a moral community called the Church (1961:62).
Clifford Geertz: Religion is:
a system of symbols that
establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations by
formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and
clothing these conceptions with an aura of factuality, so that
the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic (1973:90).
1.2 Concepts of Religion
Major concepts in the study of religion:
Supernatural beings (polytheistic and monotheistic beliefs)
Forms of religion (animism, animatism, totemism)
Ritual, myth, religious symbolism
Ancestor worship
Magic, witchcraft, and sorcery
1.2.1 Supernatural Beings
Dichotomy: natural vs. supernatural worlds.
Natural world: explained by cause and effect.
Supernatural beings: gods, goddesses, spirits, ancestors, ghosts, demons.
Supernatural beings may be visible or invisible, not subject to natural laws.
Theism: focus on supernatural beings within religious practices.
Polytheistic religion: belief in multiple supernatural beings (e.g., Hinduism).
Monotheistic religions: belief in one supreme supernatural being (God, Yahweh, Allah) (e.g., Christianity, Judaism, Islam).
Interaction between humans and spiritual beings: spirit possession, visions, dreams, trance.
Links established between humans and the supernatural world.
1.2.2 Animism
Coined by E. B. Tylor (1871).
Belief in soul or life force and personality in animate and inanimate objects.
Common in tribal religions.
Tylor's theory: humans interpret mysterious phenomena (sleeping, dreams, death) with the idea of soul.
1.2.3 Animatism
R. R. Marett (1866-1943).
Belief in impersonal forces in nature and certain objects.
Creates religious feelings: awe, fear, wonder, respect, admiration.
Primitive man couldn't distinguish between natural and supernatural, living and dead.
Animatism: condition before the idea of soul; named after mana (power in Polynesia).
1.2.4 Naturism
Max Muller: gods originated from natural phenomena (sun, thunder, trees, animals, mountains, etc.).
Human perception of nature: powerful agencies for origin of religion.
Nature: surprise, terror, marvel, miracle; influences human affairs.
Religious thoughts originated from conceptualization and worship of nature.
1.2.5 Totemism
Belief system: objects, plants, or animals have kinship relationship with social groups.
Objects serve as emblems, giving identity to groups.
Creates religious feelings, objects of worship, reverence, and sacredness.
Durkheim: earliest form of religion, prominent among Australian tribes and American tribes.
1.2.6 Taboo
Polynesian concept (tabu/tapu), widely used in anthropology.
Something whose use is collectively and strictly forbidden in religious context.
Violation: temporary defilement, crime to be punished, sanctions of supernatural beings.
Associated with mana; totems are considered taboos.
1.2.7 Sacred and Profane
Durkheim: central concepts of religion.
Sacred: things/spaces set apart for religious purposes.
Profane: secular things.
No equivalent terms in several religions, and often overlap.
1.2.8 Ritual
Difficult to define due to diversity and complexity.
Formalized actions performed with symbolic value in a socially relevant context (e.g., worshiping a deity).
Customary observance involving stereotyped behavior.
Variations in form and content within/across religions.
Involves participation, physical movements, verbal/non-verbal communication, shared knowledge.
Infused with moods and emotional states.
Box No. 2 Victor Turner on Ritual
Victor Turner: Ritual is “prescribed formal behaviour for occasions not given over to technical routine, having reference to beliefs in mystical (or non-empirical) beings or powers regarded as the first and final causes of all effects” (1982:79).
Gluckman and Turner: Ritual vs. ceremony.
Ritual: social status, transition of status, transformative.
Ceremony: associated with social status, confirmatory.
Distinction often blurred.
Classifications: religious, magical, calendrical, sacred, secular, private, public, sacrificial, totemic.
'Rites de passage' (Arnold van Gennep): separation, margin (limen), incorporation.
Turner: transitional phase (liminality) in Ndembu study.
1.2.9 Myth
Believed truthful accounts of the past, narratives giving religious sanctity and sacred character; often associated with ritual.
Not all myths depend on the past or deal with the sacred but refer to putative factors providing social credibility.
Creation myths are well-known.
Myth vs. legend: characters in myths are usually not humans, offer explanations for customs/practices; legends are about culture heroes, historical figures in historical events that transit into contemporary life.
Folk tales: not sacred, stories/fiction for entertainment, secular, characters may be human/non-human, exist independent of time/space.
Strong relationship between myth and ritual (debate on which came first).
Franz Boas: understood social organization, religious ideas/practices from myths.
Malinowski: myth is a powerful social force for relevance to pragmatic interests, expresses/codifies beliefs, works towards efficacy of ritual, provides a practical guide.
Levi-Strauss: myth is a logical model, cultural artefact, human mind structures reality, area where human mind enjoys freedom, unrestrained creative thinking.
Myth provides the conceptual frame for social order, but needn't correspond with ethnographic facts of social organization.
Levi-Strauss: method for structural analysis of myth.
Later studies: myth interprets reality but doesn't necessarily represent social order.
Reflection and Action 1
Find rituals and myths in your own cultural lore; identify any relationships.
1.2.10 Cult
Derived from French culte (worship/particular form of worship), used neutrally/negatively.
Neutral sense: 'care', 'cultivation', 'tended', deity/idol/saint image who is venerated, devotion.
Negative sense: practice of deviant religious group or new religious dogma from syncretism (cultural mix of ideas/practices).
Cargo cults (Melanesia/Papua New Guinea): Christian doctrine with native beliefs, spirits of dead bring European goods.
Caribbean vodum (voodoo), Cuban santeria, Afro-Brazilian candomble` deities: referred to as cults.
1.3 Religious Symbolism
Symbol: object, picture, written word, sound, idea, color representing something else in association, resemblance, or convention.
Religious symbolism: how symbols are employed in religious context.
Cross (Christianity), Swastika (Hinduism), Crescent Moon (Islam) are religious symbols.
Symbols communicate meanings shared by the community, associated with human interests.
Symbols are dynamic, evoke moods/emotions, create philosophical contexts.
Sacred art, pictures, drawings, designs used in ritual/religious context convey religious meanings.
Turner: three properties of religious/ritual symbols: condensation, unification of disparate significata, polarized meanings.
Condensation: represents many ideas, actions, meanings into a single symbol (e.g., Shiva Ling).
Unification of disparate significata: unifies diverse elements (e.g., milk tree in Ndembu ritual).
Polarization: distinguishing poles of meanings (matriliny/patriliny in Ndembu puberty ritual).
1.4 Religious Knowledge and Practices
Institutionalized religious knowledge: doctrines/practices categorized as little/great traditions.
Little traditions: mundane issues.
Great traditions: philosophical and other-worldly issues.
Little traditions: shamanism, spirit possession, oracle/prophecy.
Great traditions: formal learning, priesthood, monasteries.
Knowledge passed orally/subjectively in little traditions; in great traditions, literature/sacred texts contain spiritual knowledge.
Division between those with specialized knowledge and ordinary members.
1.4.1 Ancestor Worship
Worship of deities through rituals is common; ancestor worship associated with little tradition.
Great tradition: worship of single/multiple deities.
Asia, Africa, etc.: venerating ancestors; ancestors hold power over progeny and affect society.
Soul survives after death.
Not worshiping the dead but respecting the deified dead/transformed spirit.
Funerary rites are performed.
Only a few become ancestors and receive ritual attention.
Descent through males: ancestors are male.
Matriliny (Nayar/Ashanti): ancestorhood bestowed upon mother’s brother.
Ancestor shrines: offerings/sacrifices are made.
Functionalists (Malinowski): emotional reassurance against loss.
Meyer Fortes (structuralist): ancestor worship is an extension of authority over successive generations, supernatural idiom of supportive relationship manifested in religious ideology.
1.4.2 Magic and Magician
Religious practices include/supplemented by magic.
Magic: activity/method by which the supernatural interferes in human affairs to bring about a particular outcome.
Related to religion, though both can be distinguished.
Similarities: related to supernatural, rich in symbolism, involve rituals.
Differences: religion is supplicative (seeks intervention, requests favors); magic is manipulative (uses formulas to force intervention).
Durkheim: no church for magic.
Magic frequently used for public good.
Frazer (1890): magic works on the Law of Sympathy (association/agreements of things); two parts: Law of Similarity, Law of Contagion.
Law of Similarity: effect resembles its cause (homeopathic/imitative magic; like produces like).
Law of Contagion: things once in contact continue to be in contact (contagious magic).
Imitative magic: use image/figurine to represent a person/animal to cast spells/harm.
Contagious magic: body part affects the animal/person.
Frazer: magic is closer to science; primitive man's thinking was pre-logic.
Malinowski: Trobrianders possess empirical knowledge but believe there are agencies influencing the natural order, so they use magic to control these forces; function of magic: ritualize man's optimism over fear/ill-luck.
1.4.3 Witchcraft and Sorcery
Magic is mostly for public good; witchcraft/sorcery are used for harming individuals, seen as anti-social.
Black magic equated with witchcraft/sorcery, negative sanction of society/individuals.
Source of supernatural in witch's body, often inherited; sorcerer acquires art and doesn't necessarily pass it on.
Witch wills death/destruction; sorcerer performs magical rites to achieve evil ends.
Witchcraft is an evil force bringing misfortune.
Found in many parts of the world, including scientifically developed countries.
Christianity recognizes evil spirits under Satan who is hostile to God; witches/sorcerers maintain close liaison with Satan.
Evans-Pritchard (1937): classical example of witchcraft among the Azande in Africa; witchcraft provides explanation for unexplainable events, cultural behavior dealing with misfortunes, helps defining morality.
Reflection and Action 2
Find the differences among ritual, magic, witchcraft, and sorcery; do they overlap?
1.4.4 Evil Eye
Belief: some individuals cause illness/misfortune by simply looking at others (mostly when children get sick).
Not just looking but also praise/complementary comments.
Victims are mostly children.
Prosperous individuals/households face misfortunes attributed to evil eye.
Dundes (1981:266-267): some structural principles operate in evil eye concept.
Life depends on non-renewable liquid resources (semen, milk, blood, saliva); drying them up causes illness (evil eye).
Limited amount of good (health, wealth); gain of one comes at expense of other. If a person of evil eye acquires more of limited good, the other will lose.
Equilibrium model of life: haves/have-nots coexist in balanced manner, but have-nots become envious, haves lose health/wealth.
Eyes symbolize breasts/testicles, evil eye threatens the supply of precious liquids (milk/semen).
1.5 Anthropological Approach to Religion
Draws attention to anthropological theories about religion: evolutionary, psychological, functional, Marxist, symbolic perspectives.
John Lubbock (1834–1913): combined archaeological/anthropological evidence to trace the origin/evolution of religion.
Absence of religious ideas → fetishism → nature worship → totemism → shamanism → anthropomorphism → monotheism → ethical monotheism.
Late 19th century: anthropological study on religion grew rapidly (Max Muller, W. Robertson Smith, Edward B. Tylor, Marrett, Sir James G. Frazer).
Scholars suggested tribal religions could be studied, following the rules of scientific method, and posited specific methodological procedures for the comparative analysis of religious beliefs and practices.
Emile Durkheim: concept of sacred/profane orders, so-called supernatural/natural categories.
British structural-functionalists: Radcliffe-Brown, E.E. Evans-Pritchard, Meyer Fortes, Melford Spiro; focused on the religion of tribal groups.
Contemporary exponents: Clifford Geertz, Melford Spiro, Victor Turner, Sherry Ortner, Mary Douglas, Stanley Tambiah; devoted attention to local variants of major world religions (Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Christianity) and their impact in developing countries.
Contemporary ethnographers examine religious diversity in complex societies rather than uniformity in tribal religions.
1.5.1 Evolutionary Perspective
Study of religious notions of primitive people arose within context of evolutionary theory.
Evolutionists had Eurocentric biases but made valuable contributions.
Most 19th-century anthropologists derived assumptions about religion from Judeo-Christian heritage/experiences.
E.B. Tylor (Primitive Culture, 1871): animism is the earliest and most basic religious form → fetishism, belief in demons, polytheism → monotheism (exaltation of a great god).
Defines religion as ‘the belief in Spiritual Beings’, a cultural universal; began as rational effort to explain empirical phenomena (death, dreams, possessions).
Herbert Spencer: advocated ancestor worship (similar to Tylor’s animism).
R.R. Marrett (1909): animatism as beginning of religious ideas (mana, mulungu, orenda – supernatural power).
Criticized Tylor for overly intellectual approach; primitive religion 'not so much thought out as danced out,' primary emotional attitude is awe.
Sir James Frazer: progression from magic to religion to science, his book The Golden Bough (1890), he attempts to construct a universal theory of magic, religion and science.
Magic is the primordial form of human thought; Magic → nature without the intervention of personal agency.
Magicians: developed imaginary laws.
Intelligent members conceived of spiritual beings who could be induced by propitiation.
Contends magic is based on the principle of contagion or on ‘sympathy’ or the notion of imitation, said to be the earliest form; advanced societies, magic is replaced by religion, and both are finally replaced by science.
Durkheim: evolutionary advancement: emergence of specific, analytic, profane ideas from diffuse, global, sacred images.
‘Collective representations,’ included sacra as ‘mana’, ‘totem’ and ‘god’.
The above postulates on religion come from intellectual theorisation made from the existing reports, travelogues, and Christian missionary works.
'Armchair anthropologists': Anthropologists never had firsthand experience of non-western cultures nor did they theorise on the basis of systematic study of culture of the people in totality.
Franz Boas, Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, Alfred Kroeber: discredit speculative evolutionary perspective, seek explanations through culture contact.
Cultural dispersion is the reason for similarities.
Emphasize need for understanding culture as an integrated whole.
Emile Durkheim: emotions/collective consciousness shape religious feeling.
Max Weber: beliefs/emotions evolved into rational religion/higher thinking.
Meyer Fortes, Clifford Geertz: recognize psychological component.
1.5.2 Psychological Approach
Systematic psychologism of psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud: religious rituals/beliefs are homologous with neurotic symptoms (Eriksen, 1950).
Religious rituals and beliefs are homologous to neurotic symptoms - result of subconscious psychological conflict within social groups.
Psychological defence mechanisms involve projections to avoid conflict and reduce anxiety.
Childhood experiences influence adult life, dependency on parents is projected on spiritual beings.
Carl Jung: projections to cultural level of group’s collective consciousness.
Kardiner (neo-Freudian): religious institutions of tribal people are projections of “basic personality structures,” formed by child-training practices.
Eriksen (1950): psychobiological maturation, cultural context, historical experience interpreted religious notions of Yurok/Sioux.
Ruth Benedict (1934): background for culture-personality studies, cultural patterns of American Indians in terms of configurations from personality types.
The psychological approach has been superseded by functionalist approach but recently the significance of psychology once again came to light in a different route as symbolic anthropology
Primitive thought vs. modern rational thought: commonalities/continuities.
Clifford Geertz: modern/primitive religion can be understood through symbolism.
1.5.3 Functionalist Approach
Various forms of functionalism focus on social patterns/institutions with reference to their functions in the larger cultural context.
Helped discover interrelations between differing aspects of religion as it connects various institutions.
Anthropologists like Malinowski, Evans-Pritchard, Radcliffe-Brown provide explanation that satisfies human needs and solidarity of the group.
Malinowski emphasizes on the close relationship between myth and ritual and psychological functionalism, religious acts fulfilling psychological need and satisfaction.
Evans-Pritchard observes witchcraft has to be understood in social context.
Radcliffe-Brown presents an organic picture of society; religion integrates society and rituals bring in solidarity of the group.
Contibution to the study of religion in functionalist M.N. Srinivas (1952) integrates social structure with religion operating at different levels (local, regional, peninsular, all India).
Religious activities in functionalist perspective bring bring in solidarity and unity among different social segments.
1.5.4 Structuralist Approach
Rejecting functionalist, sociological and psychological approaches as being too light in interpreting mythology, Levi-Strauss’ (1958) new “structuralism” posited a universal logical pattern to the human mind.
He explains that myth is language: to be known, and to be told; it is a part of human speech.
Levi-Strauss has sought to reveal a grammar of the mind, a kind of universal psychology with a genetic base, which gives rise to social structures.
All societies distinguish between the raw and the cooked, the raw standing for nature (and women) and the cooked for culture (and men).
Primitive religious systems are like all symbolic systems, fundamentally communication systems.
Dumont (1959) takes the structuralist perspective of religion manifested in the worship of village deities oppositions between ‘purity’ and ‘impurity’ and interdependency of both the values in the religious thoughts.
1.5.5 Marxist Approach
Karl Marx: religion/religious belief as fictions that support the status quo and maintain class differences.
Religion reflects false consciousness, outcome of human distress used to get along with capitalist culture.
Maurice Godelier finds Marx’s view of religion as reflection of the real world in the human mind nature personified unconsciously as objective realities.
Godelier (1975) explains this by analysing the Mbuti Pygmy’s relation with the forest as hunters.
Maurice Bloch (1986) views society and culture as natural and these are governed by general laws of the nature or earthly characters but not divine.
1.5.6 Symbolic Approach
Evans-Pritchard (1956) first recognized the symbolic aspect of religion, and that has inspired several anthropologists approaches religion through symbols, the meanings given by the participants to the elements of religion and rituals, and interpretations that anthropologists can offer.
Victor Turner (1967), Mary Douglas (1970) and Clifford Geertz (1973) are the important anthropologists that have contributed for our understanding of religion from symbolic perspective.
Victor Turner’s analyzed Ndembu religious life with life cycle crisis ritual and ritual of affliction
Mary Douglas emphasizes that the idea of the dangerous and powerful sacred is formed by living together and trying to coerce one another to conform to a moral idea.
Geertz proposes religion as the part of the cultural system and people act basically according to the systems of meanings thus anthropology must interpret and prove descriptions.
1.6 Summary
The anthropology of religion addresses the significance and role of religion in people's lives, regardless of technological advancement.
Due to its complexity, anthropologists have developed new concepts and specific meanings to comprehend religion.
Key concepts: supernatural beings, animism, animatism, naturism, totemism, ritual, myth, symbols, ancestor worship, magic, witchcraft, sorcery, evil eye.
Anthropologists offered various theoretical perspectives, including evolutionary, psychological, functional, structural, Marxist, and symbolism.
While each framework explains religion, no single framework explains everything.
Unit 2 RITUALS AND SYMBOLISM
2.1 Introduction
This unit discusses the significance of rituals as the performative aspect of religion.
Defines rituals and discusses their functional aspects.
Focuses on how they operate as vehicles of symbolic communication.
2.2 Symbols and Social Life
Human life consists of symbolic communications that enable us to weave a meaningful world around us.
Almost nothing in our lives isn't symbolically constructed.
Language, relationships, material culture, and the environment are made meaningful by us through the cultural system.
Clifford Geertz (1973): sacred symbols instill deep emotional moods, leading to strong motivations.
Humans look towards religion to overcome three critical thresholds:
Reason (limits of analytical ability)
Suffering (support to bear it)
Evil (lack of explanation of why it exists)
Power of rituals lies in the strong impression they make, evoking awe, commitment, and a sense of accomplishment.
2.2.1 Ritual
A ritual is first of all a performance and to be socially meaningful, it must have a public content.
Private rituals don't qualify to be studied by anthropologists - subject matter of psychologists.
Every culture prescribes a specific format for performance of rituals
Rituals are rarely seen to have an instrumental function - relationship between the means and the end is not ‘intrinsic’, i.e. is either irrational or non-rational
Edmund Leach: rituals are culturally defined behaviour that can be regarded as a form of social communication.
Mircea Eliade (1987) and Rudolph Otto (1958) emphasized a sacred dimension of rituals - express an encounter with the supernatural.
Eliade divides rituals into two types: confirmatory and transformatory, bodily movements recreate archetypical cosmological conceptions.
Rituals follow a given script and adhere to rules and regulations, a time frame, designated space and time, spatial organisation, personnel, their ritual status and a material infrastructure.
The rituals verbally have no specific meaning and serve to establish the power of the ritual specialists by mystical and authoritative rendering.
They convey both condensed and elaborated meanings, like in the Christian mass or social scripts in the Ramayana
2.2.2 Key Symbols
Sherry Ortner (1973): key symbol plays a central role in a culture.
Identified if prominently/publicly displayed, frequently occurs in conversation, plays a central role in language (metaphors/tropes).
Two types: Summarizing Symbol, Elaborating Symbol.
Summarizing symbols : wide range of meaning and evoke emotions
Christian cross, Nazi swastika, Hindu swastika, Japanese chrysanthemum, national flags.
Elaborating symbols:
Expand/clarify symbolic meanings: key scenarios, root metaphors.
Key scenarios: enactments/narratives that simplify actions/values (e.g., Ramayana).
Root metaphor: central symbol used in various situations (e.g., Bible for Christians, cattle among the Nuer).
Symbols manifest in rituals and make them meaningful.
2.3 Functional Study of Rituals
Foremost is Emile Durkheim showing how totemic rituals create awareness of the sacred and sense of solidarity.
Establish stable society that has internal coherence.
Led to comment that God is nothing but society. Harmonious relationship between humans and nature
Durkheim names two specific kinds of rituals: universality and significant function and the rituals associated with death
A.R. Radcliffe-Brown followed Durkheim to give a structural-functional analysis of collective rituals uphold the social structure with social solidarity
A number of functions are emphasized in the socially important like food, relationships and events.
B. Malinowski’s analyzed rituals from the perspective of individuals explaining rituals has relieving rather than creating anxiety
In his work, The Coral Gardens helps regulate agricultural work that imposes a rational time schedule for compliance and less chances of people defaulting
Discussion Point Critically assess piacular rituals. Do you agree with Durkheim’s view?
2.4 Rituals of Liminality
The concept of liminality in rituals was introduced by Van Gennep (1909) and elaborated by Victor Turner and Edmund Leach. A liminal period is ‘a betwixt and between’ period where normal life and time stands still or is reversed
Van Gennep analysed the role of lifecycle rituals Individuals transition from one status to another at birth, puberty, marriage and death, mark stages of transition in an individual’s life, where a person makes a transition from one status to another.
There is a stage of separation, a liminal stage and a final stage of incorporation
Edmund Leach has used the concept of liminality to describe what he calls the marking of structural time, or intervals where important social events mark the oscillations of time, from one period to another, and there is a sense of reversal.
2.5 Rituals as Protest and Change
In situations of change and oppression, people may resort to some kinds of rituals to register their protest and also to address the injustice they feel they are subjected to.
African Zionism opposed Protestant orthodoxy and capitalist imposition as the Churches in Africa combined biblical symbolism with African nationalism.
The rituals enable performers to act upon external power to construct a self constructed and dissenting identity.
2.6 Rituals as Communication
The cognitive dimension of ritual as communication was made explicit in the works of many scholars, of which Roy Rappaport is one of the foremost. He identifies both form and structure in ritual.
The meaning conveyed through performance cannot be conveyed by any other means.
The performative aspect of ritual emerges as the most important.
The power of ritual as communication through power, conveys meanings that are powerful in communicating by the supernatural and clothing
Ritual is not only efficacious but assumed to be so by others.
Lewis (1980) has also described rituals as vehicles of expression, where all three parties to the communication, the emitter, the message and the recipient are involved in a system of symbols, where the meaning conveyed may be both public and private,
They express more than what seems apparent or represent something other than what is manifest. It is their very ambiguity that invests rituals with deeper significance and meaning.
2.7 The Nature of Rituals
While ritual is usually seen as action and dichotomized from thought, it is at the same time is seen as integrating thought and action.
Thus functional/communicative dimensions shows rituals transmitting values, norms or principles that may have a creative, anti-establishment or anti-structural space that communicates a criticism of the established social norms and values.
Thus, ritual may act either way both to functionally establish values and create for a situation by which tensions of oppression are released.
Clifford Geertz stated ritual is a point of entry for the observer, for while the theorists are watching performances for their own thoughts about a scholar created a meaningful system.
Critical thinking would see this in a subjective level where rituals are extracted form public performances.
Symbolic acts and shared system in knowledge of every one acquired through an environmental setting that made rituals in shared experiences and understanding.
2.8 Summary
Rituals may appear meaningless in a rational framework but are full of symbolic meaning and linked to practice.
They are a script for reading deep-seated values and merit deep, focused attention on both symbolic and performative dimensions.
Note: Unit 3 is missing. Fill in the details yourself based on the document content. Include sections for various religious specialists Shaman, Informal Specialists, Formal Specialists and finish with the summary.
Unit 3 RELIGIOUS SPECIALIST
3.1 Introduction
Religious knowledge is neither possessed uniformly nor equally shared among all the members of society. It cannot be the monopoly of one individual.
They may also have certain distinctive personality traits that make them capable of performing such works.
3.2 Categories of Specialists
Shamanism is most common, and is duly recognised among localized religions but it has not attained reputed status in the world religions which is more organised and it is often relegated to the folk religion.
Formal:
*Priests
*Clergy
*Saint/ Seer
*Monk
*Missionary
Informal Specialists
*Faith Healer
*Prophets
*Mediums
3.3 Shaman
The term shaman seems to have been derived from the Tungus language of Central Siberia, but some claim its origin to be Sanskrit. From around 1970s new shamanistic movements have sprung in USA and Europe among the urbanised people with the motifs of western culture drawing upon the indigenous “other” and ancient wisdom which may be called neo-shamanism.
3.3.1 Siberian Shamanism
In the Arctic shamanism, the shaman is a master or mistress of spirits. She or he uses hand-held drums, performs dance and uses elaborate costumes and engages in rituals which are dramatic aided by the use of various theatrical techniques of shaman.
3.3.2 Tapirape Shamanism
The unseen world of the Tapirape Indians of Central Brazil consists of spirits known by generic term ancunga that consist ghosts. Treating sickness is the most common duty of the shaman.The curing is most frequently done by extraction of a malignant object by sucking which is aided by ‘eating the tobacco smoke’ and vomiting of the stomach.
3.3.3 Korean Shamanism
The Korean society believes in the spirits that possess individuals and trouble them causing illnesses to the living. Even though the Koreans are converted to Buddhism that has no place for pre-Buddhist beliefs, the traditional beliefs have not been totally replaced by Buddhist beliefs.
3.3.4 Neo-shamanism
Urbanites of United States of America and Europe started showing interest in shamanism since 1970s. the New Age, self-help, self realisation movement, etc., have contributed to this development. Anthropologists Carlos Castaneda and Michael Harner who studied Yaqui of Arizona (USA) and Jivaro of Amazon have promoted neo-shamanism.
3.4 Informal Specialists
3.4.1 Medium
Close to shaman is medium. A medium is a human channel of either sex through which god or ancestor or spirit communicates with the living members