The Never Ending
>.< -_- :D (: ^.^ D: ): >:D xD ):< (x Dx
§ Period of revitalization
§ New steady state
o Ghost Dance
§ Founder: Jack Wilson or Woroka
§ Practiced by mostly plain Indians in the late 19th century.
§ Rituals: Circle dances, chanting, ghost shirts.
§ Beliefs: Ghost dance would cause ancestors and buffalo to return.
§ They were destroyed in the Wounded Knee massacre.
o Cargo cults
§ Found in Melanesian islands of the pacific after WWII.
§ Rituals: Used effigies of soldiers and planes to compel cargo to return
§ Beliefs: attacked colonial powers for holding back cargo
§ Some are still around today
· Shamanism
o Shaman: Master of the spirits. Began in Siberia. They use hallucinogenic plants or rhythm for trance.
o World tree: connects the 3 realms
§ The underworld: realm of the powers of nature
§ Middle-Realm: everyday realm
§ Celestial worlds: realm of the star and sky spirits
§ All anchored by the pole star
o Carlos Castenada (Arana): From Peru
§ Responsible for creating new age shamanism.
§ Wrote the Eagles gift.
§ He says he was initiated into a Yaqui way of knowledge and was taught by Don Juan Matus. But there is not enough evidence to his story.
o Plain religions
§ The Lakota’s ceremonies include the sun dance, vision quest, night time ceremony, and sweat lodge.
§ Their sacred sites are the Devil’s Tower, Black hills, Bear Butle, Green grass, and pipestone.
§ Henotheistic
§ White buffalo calf woman
· Witchcraft
o Witches have the evil eyes. Witchcraft provides a convenient answer for misfortune.
o Mobility hypothesis: Witchcraft accusations are less common in hunter gatherer cultures and more common in patrileneal sedentary societies.
§ This is because in these societies women are seen as threats to father son transmission of property within the clan.
§ These accusations increase in times of social stress.
o Malleus Maleficarium (Hammer of witches)
§ Book published in 1440’s by 2 Dominicans that warn that witches are having intercourse with the devil and giving him their souls. They were also said to have identifying marks. This causes the witch hunts to begin.
o Salem witch hunts
§ Witch craze spread to America in Puritan Salem, Massachusetts.
§ It began because a black slave was teaching the local girls root charms and other things.
§ Many testified against others because of personal grudges. Many innocent women and men died.
o Wiccans
§ They believe that they practice witchcraft as a neopagan survival of ancient goddess religions driven underground by the witch craze.
§ Founder prob Gerarld Gardner
§ They’re harmless and don’t worship the devil.
§ Horned god is actually an antlered master.
§ Pentagram is a symbol for the 5 elements.
· The kabbalah
o Gematria
§ Numeric values generated for Hebrew letters. Sum us made for the wordm phrase or sentence and then an equivalent word or phrase is found.
o Tetragrammaton
§ Yod he vahv he- the shem ha metrorash or sacred name- theres a longer 72 letter name that no one knows too.
o Golem of Prague
§ Clay creature created by Rabbi of Prague who wrote Truth on its forehead.
o Tree of life
§ 10 Sfirot/ spheres of the kabbalah
§ 1. Crown….. 10. Kingdom
Ritual
· Rituals are fixed sequences of actions, culturally based, which are often cynically determined and serve to obtain specific ends.
· Types:
o Temporal – orienting time
o Spatial- Orienting space
o Body- physical transformation
o Fertility of crops and people
o Divinization- rituals of knowing the future
o Healing
o Taboos- rituals of negative prohibitions
· Liminality
o State of social in betweeness that ritual helps address and resolve. According to Gannep most rituals serve the purpose or separation, rebirth, and incorporation.
o Communitas: a state of radical social equality/ fellowship often brought about through rituals or social inversion.
· Life cycle rituals
o Birth- circumcision
o Adulthood- confirmation/ adulthood
o Marriage- wedding
o Giving birth – shower
o Old age- retirement party
o Death- funerary ritual
· Solstices and equinoxes establish the 4 season. They are marked by rituals worldwide.
· Pilgrimage
o Traveling to a sacred spot because of devotion.
o Compostela (Christian)
§ Northern spain
§ Site of the finding of the bones of St. James.
o Mecca (Muslims)
§ Saudi Arabia
§ Site of the black stone
o Wailing wall (Jewish)
§ Jerusalem
§ The western wall of King Herod expansion on the 2nd temple.
o Benares
§ On the Ganges river in India
§ Dedicated to Lord Shiva
§ Pilgrims seek to improve their Karma.
· Totem and taboo
o Fetish
§ Originally meant an African charm thought to be changed with mana but now it might be sacred rattles, masks, or statues used by shamans in ceremonies. (Ex: Totem)
o Manitou
§ Algonquians believed that everybody had a personal totem. This power animal watched over the person and was found through a vision quest.
o Taboo
§ Forbidden thing.
§ 2 types:
· Prohibition on act
· Prohibition on association
o Carnival (Mardi- Gras)
§ Celebration at the beginning of lent
§ Last chance to eat meat known as Fat Tuesday.
o Noahide laws
§ Israelites had to follow 10 commandments.
· No adultery
· No idolatry
· No murder
· No blaspheming the holy name
· No theft
· No cruelty to animals or eating living flesh
· Establish courts of justice
· Religion and the state
o Theocracy: religious law is secular law, religious officials govern
o Divine Kingship: Religious officials control secular king who may be divine or demigod.
o Dual state: Religion and the state are separate but co- equal spheres of mutual influence.
o Secular state: Religion is largely private, civil matter.
o Atheist state: Religion is forbidden.
o Fundamentalists Vs. Modernity
§ Modernists want separation of church and state Fund. Don’t.
§ Religious beliefs change and evolve over time, Fund. Don’t change, they go by literal meanings.
§ Statements in the bible might by allegorical or symbolic. Fund. Say its literal.
§ Modernists accept evolutions, fund. Accept creationalism.
o 1st amendment
§ Establishment clause
§ Exercise clause
o Scopes trial
§ Science teacher found guilty of teaching evolution
§ Lost the case but won in the long run.
