Test 4

Question 1

What does ritual have to do with mythology?

Answer 1

Rituals are the actions performed by a group.

Ex. going to church on Christmas, quincenera.

Question 2

What is unique about Victor Turner’s view of ritual?

Answer 2

that it is an important act to communities, the participants take real meaning into the ritual and believe their actions are important to change the world.
Ex. the praying for the sun to come up for 3,ooo years even though the sun would go up regardless.

Question 3

What makes a ritual a “rite of passage”?

Answer 3

After rituals like birth, graduation, marriage; individuals make the transition to a new role or condition in relation to society.

Question 4

What are the characteristics of a ritual?

Answer 4

1. refers to a public event that
   belongs to a community.
2. it expresses meaning.
3. Great importance to participant
4. Exhibits a symbolic or vicarious nature

Question 5

According to Victor Turner, what are the different dimensions of a ritual?

Answer 5

Exegetic: (point of view from the person involved in the ritual)
Operational: (2nd person, someone observing/ trying to understand the ritual)
Positional: (How someone outside of the ritual explains it)

Question 6

Know the difference between seasonal/cyclical and contingent rituals.

Answer 6

Seasonal: same time every year, like Christmas, new years
Contingent: When the ritual occurs only after a certain criteria has been met, like getting married, graduation, turning 18.

Question 7

What are the stages of a rite of passage?

Answer 7

separation, margin (or limen), and aggregation.

Question 8

Define liminality, liminal period, and liminoid.

Answer 8

Liminality—Refers to the state of being in between two stages of life, two communities, or two social statuses.

Question 9

The Liminoid:

Answer 9

The creature/person going through the liminal phase.

Question 10

Why is someone in the liminal stage “structurally invisible”?

Answer 10

Since you’re in between you are not part of any societal place, becoming invisible while in a liminal state like someone that is engaged waiting to marry.

Question 11

What is communitas?

Answer 11

Sense of community, a bonding community

Question 12

Who is Demeter?

Answer 12

Demeter, the Greek goddess of grain and agriculture

Question 13

What is the connection of Demeter to Eleusis?

Answer 13

it was the place Demeter came to when she went to earth to look for her daughter, Persephone. ceremonies in honor of the goddess, at her shrine in Eleusis, a town near Athens in Greece.

Question 14

What did Eleusis retain in its treaty with Athens?

Answer 14

In the peace treaty in which Eleusis accepted Athenian domination, it maintained control of the Mysteries of Demeter. The annual ceremony gave Eleusinians an opportunity to assert the value of their way of life.

Question 15

Why don’t we know much about the ceremony in which the hymn was used?

Answer 15

much of it was secret.

Question 16

What is a mystery religion?

Answer 16

Cults are known as mystery religions; only those who have been initiated into the mysteries reap their benefits.
Ex. Scientology

Question 17

Define: monism

Answer 17

Belief that a soul and body are really one inseparable substance, the soul being the way the body moves or acts. Thus, for a monist, when the body dies, the soul also is destroyed or recycled, like the other elements of the self.

Question 18

dualism

Answer 18

belief that the soul and body are separate. There are different degrees of the belief: some dualists believe that the soul and body are completely different and that only the soul survives after death

Question 19

gnosis

Answer 19

Gnostic religions are based on a secret teaching or gnosis that is revealed only to initiates.

Question 20

docetism

Answer 20

our world only seems real; the only reality is divine, and the best approach to living in this earthly world is to escape from its illusions, either by living a very simple life (asceticism), or by getting as much pleasure as possible (hedonism), until the time when the illusion passes and the initiate can enter the true reality of the gnosis.

Question 21

What is the basis of modern variations regarding the cult of Isis?

Answer 21

The goddess is often included or featured in religions aiming to recapture the roots of African spirituality

Question 22

During which historic period(s) is worship of Isis found?

Answer 22

The worship of Isis can be found in nearly every period.

Question 23

What role does Anubis play in the Isis and Osiris myth?

Answer 23

He conducted the final judgment before Osiris. Weiging og the heart

Question 24

How does the myth provide the rationale for mummification?

Answer 24

mummification practices that were believed to allow the survival of the body, and thereby to accord eternal life to the deceased.

Question 25

What animal is used as a representation of Isis?

Answer 25

goddess who often had the features of a cat, and as a result, she too was represented with a cat form.

Question 26

What are the oldest texts available as a source of Egyptian mythology?

Answer 26

the Pyramid Texts, which were inscribed by Pharaohs starting with those of Unas (2375–2345 B.C.E.) on the Pyramid at Saqqara.

Question 27

What are the Coffin Texts?

Answer 27

Texts, were written on the insides of the coffins of private persons, not kings. They contain material that was also found in the Pyramid Texts but with a different perspective, to suit the needs of the dignitaries whose coffins they adorn.

Question 28

Why did Plutarch’s rationalized story of Isis and Osiris create confusion?

Answer 28

Plutarch’s primary concern was to show the superiority of Greek philosophy to Egyptian cult, which he regarded as atheistic and barbaric.
Plutarch alters the Egyptian story from the Pyramid Texts and turns it into a hodge-podge whose components make sense neither as psychology nor as cosmology