Religion and Society Final Exam Flashcards
Def’n ASC: BALDCHIC+
- Body image: distorted
- Altered thinking - concentration, memory
- Loss of Control - helplessness
- Disturbed time sense - time slows or speeds
- Change meaning - significance
- Hallucinations
- Ineffable - can’t put into words
- Change in emotions- moods
- Rejuvenation - feel as if reborn
Cause ASC: RAID +CI
- Reduced stimulation - sleep, solitary confine
- Altered body chemistry - fasting, drugs
- Increased sensory stimulation - possession
- Decreased alertness - watch tv, daydream
- Cleansing - alters body chemistry
- Increased mental alertness -concentration
Examples: fasting, dancing, drumming, pain, peyote,
Fasting and ASC
- alters body chemistry
- disciplines mind
- cleanses
- leads to hallucinations
Meditation and ASC
- Meditation increases: myelin sheath, gaba, melatonin, seratonin, lower cortisol
def’n mysticism
- internal thing that borders on “union or absorption with a deity”
- ineffable - cannot be put into words - e.g. ecstatic utterances by people in trances, ASC’s
- mysticism: the unitative experience of the One
def’n ecstasy
- Mindlessness - lack of thought
- Inebriation - regious intoxication
- Madness - acutally mystic thought most sane
Unitary State
- one with the universe, or supernatural beings or God
- orientation association structure shuts down; feel as one with the universe/supernatural
- loss of separation or distinction
- blurring of body/space
James’s 4 Characteristics mystical experience
- Passive: surrender
- Ineffable: cannot express it in words - music
- Noetic: states of insight into the truth
- Transiency: mystical states cannot be sustained
Perennialist School
- all mystical traditions access same universal truth then interpret it within the framework of their own religion
Constructivist View
- mystic can’t access universal truth, only what they have constructed for themself within their own religious framework
Forman’s Pure Consciousness
- content-less experience
- state of pure bliss
- similar to thoughtlessness
- goes AGAINST constructivism
Def’n religious specialist
- those who communicate with the supernatural
- full or part time jobs
- 2 major categories: shaman and priest
Definition Shamanism
- communicate with supernatural through trance
- spirit helpers - meet them in ASC
- use culturally specific symbols and paraphernalia
How to become a shaman
- chosen by the spirits
- have a calling (usually through stress/illness) through an ASC or dream
- candidate tested by spirits and must “die” before being reborn as a shaman
Characteristics of Shaman
- Transform into other beings / genders (Therianthrope: part human/animal)
- Enter ASC to communicate with spirit world
- Successfully maintain and control ASC (hard to do as obstacles)
- Travel to spirit world through Axis Mundi (tree ladder or pole) - links our world to higher and lower realms
Neoshaman/ Tensegrity
- focuses on the individual (self-help style) vs community
- Tensegrity - increase awareness of energy fields within humans (said to be fiction)
- Core Shamanism: (Harner) - no cultural perspective, uses ayahuasca and repetitive drumming to achieve ASC
Priests Def’n
- Full time religious specialist (key: memorize rituals and perform them properly)
- Larger, complex societies
- perform rituals - periodic, rites of passage, occasional, etc.
- formal training (versus shaman)
- can be inherited (Levi)
- Heriarchies
Shaman/Priest Similar
- both religious specialists
- both connect normal to supernatural world
- both sought out for rituals
- both serve community
- both have divine callings
Shaman/Priest Different
- Shaman: part time, training not formal, smaller culture, work alone, called by spirits, power through Spirit
- Priest: full time, formal training, industrial culture, hierarchy, personal choice OR divine calling, power through institution
Okinawan Priestess
- please Kami (supernatural beings) through rituals to avoid misfortune
- All speciaists women
- Kaminchu: no rituals but emit good energy
- Yuta: rituals and healings, divination
Herbalist
- use plants and other materials to heal and cure
- may prescribe or provide the plant (much healing based on magic)
Diviner
- specializes in divination (supernatural technique for obtaining information about things unknown - e.g. future events)
- sometimes enters an ASC, some use cards or oracles
- usually focus on practical questions (cause illness, identification of a witch, etc.)
Prophet
- mouthpiece of the God(s)
- communicate divine messages to common ppl
- e.g. Moses, Mohammed
- Ngundeng: 19C prophet - born with supernatural power, lifegiver & god of death)
Huichol Pilgrimage to Wirikuta
- religious specialist prepared them for journey and was healer, sang, chanted, received myths from fire
- Sacrifices and offerings: chicken sacrificed for blood, coins offered for good life, deer offered for the heart, peyote is shared to become one, of one heart
- prayer arrows: feather take prayers to universe
- purification: no salt, celibacy, fire cleansing,
- offerings left at ocean - respect where ancestors came from
- confessed transgression into fire
- peyote: leave roots in earth for future pilgrimages, so can regrow
Definition of Magic
- ability to compel the supernatural to behave in a certain way
- rituals that can produce results: e.g. rain dance
- divination, astrology, incantations, alchemy, sorcery, spirit mediation, and necromancy.
Magic -Tyler, Frazer, Malinowski
Tyler: said NOT religion cuz no spirits involved
Frazer: (evol) - magic first then religion
Malinowski: used when human beings can’t control something important in their lives; find magic where the element of danger is conspicuous
Law of Sympathy
Magic depends on the association or agreement between things
- Law of Similarity - (things that are alike are the same) homeopathy/imitative
- Law of Contagion - (things that were once in contact continue to be connected after the connection is severed) contagious magic
Law of Similarity
- things that are alike are the same
- Imitative or Homeopathic Magic (voodoo doll) - assumes a causal relationship between similar things
What are the 2 types of magic
- Imitative and Contagious magic
Contagious Magic
- things that were once in contact continue to be connected after the connection is severed
- e.g. rabbit’s foot for luck
- rub wart with penny - transfer disease to object
- Fore thought contagious magic (burying someone’s things and saying spell) caused the Kuru
- more personal objects better
Image Magic
- make image to represent living person or animal/can be harmed by doing things to the image
- vision board
Increase Rite
- fertility rituals to facilitate the reproduction of totem animal
Doctrine of Signatures
- signs that tell of plant’s use are imbedded in the plant (red clover for blood problem, yellow plants for digestion, carrots for eyes,)
Why does magic work?
- coincidence seen as causation if good result
- justify failures
- used to bring things that would happen anyway
- fault with magician not magic
- selective memory
Magic - Azande, Trobriand Islands
-
Azande:
- use plants (medicines) in which supernatural power resides - ritual changes the plant into medicine; burned or made into paste or drunk
- power in medicine not the spell
-
Trobriand
- learn magic from ancestors or purchase from owner through gifts;if person dies before passing it on magic can be lost
- spell the key & any deviation and may not work
Wicca
Perceived revival of pre-Christian religious practices
Magic central element of ritual
- identify the goal
- manipulate the objects
- do it in a sacred space
- move energy from practitioner to achieve goal
based on worldview that there is power in all things and it can be moved
Divination types
Based on interconnectedness of things & events - divination observes connections
- Fortuitous: no effort needed
- Deliberate: set out to do it (read tarot cards)
- Inspirational: direct contact with supernatural being through an ASC or possession (prophecy - fortuitous, psychic - deliberate)
- Non-inspirational: read natural events, manipulate oracle devices
- Prophecy: fortuitous as receive info through vision unexpectedly
- Possession: can be fortuitous or deliberate
Dreams and Oneiromancy
- common form of divination
- individual connects with supernatural world during sleep; much is symbolic so:
- Oneiromancy: Specialty of reading dreams
Presentiment
- feeling that something is about to happen
- ex: dread or body action (twitch/sneeze)
Necromancy
- divination through contact with the dead or ancestors
Ornithomancy
- read the path and form of flight of birds
Apatomancy/Haruspication
- apatomancy: crossing paths with an animal by chance
- haruspication: examine entrails of sacrificed animal to find answer to question
graphology/palmistry
- graphology: handwriting analysis
- palmistry: read lines of palm
Astrology
- influence of stars, planets and sun and moon on human beings and destiny; movement of celestial bodies thought to represent will of Gods
Aleuromancy/Tasseography
- aleuromancy: use flour (fortune cookes)
- tasseography: read tea leaves
Phrenology
- study of shape and structure of the head
Ordeals
- painful tests person does who is suspected of guilt (hand in hot oil example)
Iwa or Ouija board
- oracle of Azande - non-inspirational divination
- Iwa: rub with medicine, bury in ground first for it to work; female and male side (dakpa - termite oracle thought more reliable)
- Ouija: can go either way - some think do contact spirits - deliberate inspirational and others think deliberate non-inspirational
- Delphi Oracle: Pythia inhaled gas (ASC) then spoke the “word” of Apollo, priest interprets
Yoruba divination beads
- chant the esse for guidance - manipulate the seeds, many permutations; memorize them all
Omen
example of fortuitous divination
Definition Soul
- non-corporeal spiritual component of individual
- it animates the body (otherwise Zombie)
- exist after death
Souls in Dreams
- during dreams the soul leaves the body
- thought that illness can be due to soul leaving body and getting lost
3 Spiritual components in Haitian Voodo
- Met tet: master of the head (holy guardian angel)- are born with it, separated from person at death
- Ti-bonaj (little angel) - personality, individuality
- Bwo-bonaj (big angel) - character and intelligence (from ancestral spirits)
Jivaro 3 Souls
- Nekas - life force
- Aruntam - acquired in vision, power/intelligence
- Miuisak - avenging soul (if the aruntam is killed, the miuisk will avenge the death)
Ruh / Naf - Islam
- Ruh: soul when not connected to body
- Naf: soul when connected to body
- 3 stages:
- inciting soul (self that is inclined to evil)
- self-accusing soul (jihad of soul)
- soul when it is at peace
Soul after death
- migrates to another world (heaven, hell, valhalla, ancestral world)
- can reincarnate or transmigrate
Yup’ik and Soul
-
Yupik:
- cycle of rebirth, immortal soul based on reciprocal relationship humans/animals
- newborn name of recently deceased
- keep seal bladder, dry it and put it back in water to show reciprocity, know seal gave life and want it to be reborn for more food
- Hmong: placenta buried under floor house, at death soul travels back to it and puts on its “placenta jacket” to travel to land ancestors
Soul and Yanomamo
- main part of soul a no borebö at death
- If soul generous it goes to meet the ancestors
- If soul stingy sent to a place of fire
- “bore” released during cremation
- “Moamo” lives near liver - shamans try to remove moamo to make people sick
- “nonoshi” - everyone has one (spirit double) and what happens to one happens to other
Soul and Roman Catholicism
- destiny of soul determined by God
- Heaven for pure soul
- Hell for soul of those who have sinned
- Purgatory for those who die with lesser faults that need to be purified
Soul and Hinduism
- soul reincarnates, depending on Karma from past life
- Samsara: cycle of rebirth
- only escape Samsara upon finding Moksha
Soul and Buddhism
- NO belief in immortal soul or soul at all (anatman)
- do believe in karma
- 5 aspects of mental and physical aggregates:
- consciousness
- understanding
- physical body
- feelings
- will
Buddhist 4 Noble Truths
- Suffering is a part of life
- Suffering arises from attachment and desires
- Suffering ceases when one becomes non- attached to thoughts, behaviours, and desires
- Practicing the eightfold path ceases suffering and ends Samsara (Nirvana)