Magic, Witchcraft, Sorcery Short Answer
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36 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 holistic perspective | cultures are complex wholes. you can't just look at any one aspect in isolation, must be viewed in relation to the whole |
| comparative perspective | use broad sample to compare across cultures, to compare universals |
| relativistic perspective | there are universals across culture (ie. can't do whatever you want) |
| psychological explanations of religion | - a response to fear - COGNITIVE: people are trying to understand their world (ie. pain, adversity, etc.), lets you think through "why did this happen to me?" - SUBSTANTIVE: religion helps you psychologically to make life positive - EXPRESSIVE: there are anxieties that we have (things we do that we feel shameful or guilty about), uncomfortable things in our psyche and religion gives an outlet to control those uncomfortable things - A.R. Radcliffe Brown |
| sociological explanations of religion | - if you do stuff together it does something to ease that part of you - Emile Durkheim - social solidarity - ie. "The family that prays together, stays together" - collective beliefs |
| anthropological explanations of religion | - holistic: this brings together and considers all the elements of religion, socio, psych, historical, cultural, linguistical, etc. |
| wallace's typology of "cults" | - individualistic cults: *found in small-scale societies--wherein each person is their own religious specialist (there are no shamans, witchdoctors); direct access to the spirit world - shamanistic cults: *cults which have at least part-time religious specialists who help lay-people get in touch with or manipulate the spiritual realm; designated by experience, birth, or training, enlist the aid of the supernatural - communal cults: *cults wherein all the lay-people do religion and religious acts together. there is no extensive hierarchy, responsibility lies in the group - ecclesiastical cults: *there are leaders who do most of the world (professionals); there is a sharp division between leaders and lay-people who are passive *people's religions and beliefs ARE meaningful to them, even if they are not true reality ^the point is that you suspend your disbelief enough to understand and appreciate other's religions and beliefs |
| harris | - mana: in Melanesia people mana, the inherent force or power that can provide an explanation for many extraordinary events and for success and failure in life's endeavors - animism: harris says (reiterates Tylor) that all religious systems are most basically animism. today's religions are all just children of animism which grew through the growing pains of societal and cultural growth - "soul(s)": throughout the world in different cultures there are different beliefs to how many souls a person can have. in ancient Egypt they believed someone had 7 souls (inside brain, heart soul, name soul, life force soul, body soul, shadow soul, and ghost soul), westerners believe that there is only one *concept of inner being leads to animism leads to religion |
| lee | - mysticism: presupposes a prior separation of man from nature. for us, religion is the reintegration of the self and the mystical power (for the indians, lee describes, it is nature). many cultures do not have this separation - for them, all is related to religion: man and nature (or w/e the mystical power is for the culture being studied) are one interlocking concept |
| gould | - NOMA: "non-overlapping magisteria" - NOMA is an idea that tells religions to stay out of the way. there need not be any conflict with science and religion because they don't need to overlap one another, it's ultimate goal is to obtain wisdom. religion is something that cannot be proven, but science is fact. both are legitimate but separate |
| root-bernstein | in order to think like a scientist "take nothing for granted... that is what makes a scientist..." a good scientist must be skeptical, scientific theory must be falsifiable (otherwise it is religion which cannot be falsified) |
| myth | "a sacred narrative (believed to be true by some groups of people)" ceases to be a myth when people stop believing it, it then becomes folk-tale characteristics of myth: *"a social character - aka guides for behavior (Bronislaw Malinowski) *functional: has a social function (ie. holding the society together through rules, giving identity, and tying people into their relationship with Big R Reality *"validity in its own cultural context" |
| symbol | - culture specific - Clifford Geertz: Symbols, like totem poles, unite people to a group giving each individual a social identity. important to group survival - mutlivocalic nature of symbols: Victor Turner - religious symbols: *there is also emotional commitment to cultural symbols - like the symbol of the cross - within rituals there is a reliance upon symbols |
| taboo | - taboos are "ritual avoidance" - taboos teach people to interact with the world - the idea is that flout or live outside of the categories are "dangerous". taboos teach people to live within social order - the breach of a taboo can supernaturally cause illness. it can cause social disorder and isolate the person who breached the taboo |
| leonard and mcclure | myth and ritual school - functionalist - Frazer: book The Golden Bough - myth is a script derived from rituals and were in origin the spoken part of ritual performance malinowski - myth is not an explanation in satisfaction of a scientific interest - myth is true in the sense that it has a visible role as pragmatic charter of primitive faith and moral wisdom - real in the sense that it could be observed by field researchers in the form of oral performance rituals and ceremonies, and that it visibly influenced a living people's sociopolitical behavior freud and jung - both: myth comes from the unconscious - freud: myth comes from an individual's unconscious - jung: myth comes from a collective unconscious. the unconscious is not individual, but universal... it has contents and modes of behavior that are more or less the same everywhere and in all individuals structuralist approach - attempting to put myth into a formula - mega myth, the general shape of all narratives across the board - in each myth, there are polar and/or binary opposites - the hidden structures of myth and language are the hidden bedrock upon which narratives are built eliade - myth provides a way to sometimes go back and start life over again - space, time, and objects are perceived by the religious imagination in binary terms as either sacred or profane *sacred: things, spaces, and times available to people through special ceremony or ritual *profane: things, spaces, and time available to people without special ceremony or ritual - archaic vs modern man *archaic peoples are more attuned than modern, history-obsessed peoples to the sacred and express this understanding more clearly in their relationships to nature and in their myths - time of origin vs human history *moderns live in unhappy exile from the Paradise of cosmic time in which a vital connection to the sacred is natural *myth provides moderns with a vehicle through which they can periodically return to the time of origins and thus begin their lives anew |
| douglas | theory of contagion - native theory of taboo that is concerned with keeping certain classes of people and things apart lest misfortune befall impurity/dirt and danger - this is the idea of "matter out of place"; therefore dangerous and can cause impurity. this is what a taboo is... "matter out of place" |
| daugherty | symbol and sacrament - snake handling is a symbol that represents victory over death, which is done ritualistically as a sacrament similar to communion |
| ritual | - are experienced differently - have real consequences - change - teach and create social values and orderings - festivals - open to most of the community - prayers and offerings - ritual versus magic |
| rite of intensification | intensify feelings of group belonging |
| technological rituals | - tries to control nature - divination rites (let people gain hidden information) - rites of intensification - protective rites (trying to cope with the uncertainties of nature) |
| therapy and anti therapy | - these are intended to control human health, anti-therapy would be to get someone sick |
| ideological rituals | - controlling ones behavior or moods - rites of passage - rites of intensification - taboos (ritual avoidance) courtesies, etc. - rites of rebellion *fairly rare, events like halloween, mardi gras |
| salvation rituals | - repair broken identities or redeem someone after having done something stupid - possession - acceptance of an alternate identity - a new status acquired for a time in order to be release from some bad characteristic |
| revitalization rituals | when a society needs a new face in order to function better |
| turner | van gennep's 3 phases: - separation: "comprises symbolic behavior signifying the detachment of the individual or group from an earlier fixed point in the social structure or a set of cultural conditions (a "state") - margin (or limen): the "in between" period. an ambiguous state which the ritual subject is in. this is a realm/state that has few or no attributes of the past or coming state (invisible) - aggregation: the stage in which the passage is consummated and the passenger becomes a part of a new group in society |
| I-thou v I-it | I-it = getting from the other what your needs demand I-thou = trying to submit to this authority |
| communication to vs communication from mystical beings | to: speaking to a spiritual being on behalf of a group of people from: listening to that being as it speaks to you, rather than you being the aggressor in the conversation, taking a more passive position and listening |
| turner (shamanism) | Charisma - "The Authority of the prophet is founded on revelation and personal 'charisma.' This term has been variously defined... but it may be broadly held to designate extraordinary powers. These include, according to Weber, 'the capacity to achieve ecstatic states which are viewed, in accordance with primitive experience, as the preconditions for producing certain effects in meteorology, healing, divination and telepathy. But charisma may be either ascribed or achieved. It may be an inherent faculty ('primary charisma') or it may be 'produced artificially in an object or person through some extraordinary means.' Charisma may thus be 'merited' by fastings, austerities, or other ordeals." A person may already have a seed of charisma in them, lying dormant in them. "The prophet, then, is a 'purely individual bearer of charisma...' In Weber's view, the charisma of a prophet appears to contain, in addition to ecstatic and visionary components, a rational component, for he proclaims 'a systematic and distinctively religious ethic based upon a consistent and stable doctrine which purports to be a revelation." - As seen by Max Weber; Turner pg.142-143. from the priestly viewpoint: the office, role, and script are sacred and "charismatic" - not the priest who fills that office. |
| von furer-heimendorf | ecstatic state: *"the ecstatic state is considered to be the supreme religious experience, and the shaman is the great master of ecstasy ^priests must display excitability or temperament ecstasy is visible means of divine inspiration |
| howells | "artistic temperament": "shamanism is a calling for a certain psychological type: those who are less stable and more excitable than the average, but who have at the same time intelligence, ability, and what is vulgarly called 'drive'. they are familiar to us, perhaps most so in what we think of as the artistic temperament; ... we are given to calling them introverted, and think them somewhat difficult. they find the expression they need mainly in the arts." |
| bates' definition of drugs | almost all materials taken for a reason other than nutritional reasons to be drugs. |
| phantastica | the state of consciousness caused by hallucinogenic drugs - the state of consciousness where religious experience takes place |
| huxley | - artificial paradise: "the poet Baudelaire described drugs which affect the mind as 'artificial paradises' ... a substance known as a drug in the pejorative sense of that word also has the characteristic of being at once paradisaical and poisonous, as though it were one product of the serpent coiled about the Tree of Life - why non-traditionals have "bad trips" *"what is known as a 'bad trip' is caused by the anxiety which the approach of such psychological dismemberment evokes and which generates an increasing feeling of loss and horror when it cannot be properly discharged..." it seems similar to a schizophrenic attack, and episodes have been reported to last days or even months *this occurs because in non-traditional users of drugs have no direction/expectation/goal when they use drugs, traditional users had a goal which was religious, or diagnostic or worshipful etc. ^they knew to define limits (only drug use in ritual setting, with a "road guide", etc.) other the result was madness |
| de ropp | mind at large: the brain is a reducing valve, which reduces our perception of reality in order to keep the subject from being overwhelmed |
| etiology | - causation in where illnesses come from - illnesses are often defined in terms of social contexts - medical anthropology helpful 5 supernatural causes of illness - sorcery - breach of taboo - intrusion of a disease object - intrusion of a disease causing spirit - loss of soul |
| ruel | belief vs believing: i believe is a declaration of moral living. belief denotes a set of accepted propositions but does not particularly transfer over to the way in which one conducts their life. but to believe in, those propositions presuppose that the person's life will follow in their beliefs. believe is a verb, belief is a noun. believing asserts both that one has put confidence in the object of their belief and their obedience to that object belief = pistis believe = pisteuo belief isn't the primary question, allegiance is. belief should be defined by where allegiance lies. believing (the adventure of faith) = acting on the "belief in" |
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