Ritual and Religion Flashcards
Rite of passage
- (Anthropology & Ethnology) a ceremony performed in some cultures at times when an individual changes his status, as at puberty and marriage
- a significant event in a transitional period of someone’s life
Rites of passage have three phases: separation, transition, and reincorporation
liminality
during ritual, when you are in transition between old and new
reincorporation
3rd phase of a rite of passage - Re-incorporation is characterized by elaborate rituals and ceremonies, like debutant balls and college graduation, and by outward symbols of new ties: thus “in rites of incorporation there is widespread use of the ‘sacred bond’, the ‘sacred cord’, the knot, and of analogous forms such as the belt, the ring, the bracelet and the crown”
religion
belief and ritual concerned with supernatural beings, powers and forces
mana
impersonal sacred force so names in Melanesia and Polynesia
taboo
sacred and forbidden prohibition backed by supernatural sanctions
animism
belief in souls or doubles
magic
use of supernatural techniques to accomplish specific ends
ritual
formal, repetitive, stereotyped behaviours based on a liturgical order
cosmology
a system often religious for imagining and understand the universe
totem
an animal, plant or geographic feature associated with a specific social group to which that totem is sacred or symbolically important
levelling mechanism
custom that brings standouts back in line with community norms
shaman
a part-time magico-religious practitioner
revitalisation movements
movements aimed at altering or revitalising a society
syncretisms
cultural especially religious mixes emerging from acculturation
