Test 4 Flashcards
What does ritual have to do with mythology?
Rituals are the actions performed by a group.
Ex. going to church on Christmas, quincenera.
What is unique about Victor Turner’s view of ritual?
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.
What makes a ritual a “rite of passage”?
After rituals like birth, graduation, marriage; individuals make the transition to a new role or condition in relation to society.
What are the characteristics of a ritual?
- refers to a public event that
belongs to a community. - it expresses meaning.
- Great importance to participant
- Exhibits a symbolic or vicarious nature
According to Victor Turner, what are the different dimensions of a ritual?
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)
Know the difference between seasonal/cyclical and contingent rituals.
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.
What are the stages of a rite of passage?
separation, margin (or limen), and aggregation.
Define liminality, liminal period, and liminoid.
Liminality—Refers to the state of being in between two stages of life, two communities, or two social statuses.
The Liminoid:
The creature/person going through the liminal phase.
Why is someone in the liminal stage “structurally invisible”?
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.
What is communitas?
Sense of community, a bonding community
Who is Demeter?
Demeter, the Greek goddess of grain and agriculture
What is the connection of Demeter to Eleusis?
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.
What did Eleusis retain in its treaty with Athens?
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.
Why don’t we know much about the ceremony in which the hymn was used?
much of it was secret.
What is a mystery religion?
Cults are known as mystery religions; only those who have been initiated into the mysteries reap their benefits.
Ex. Scientology
Define: monism
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.
dualism
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
gnosis
Gnostic religions are based on a secret teaching or gnosis that is revealed only to initiates.
docetism
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.
What is the basis of modern variations regarding the cult of Isis?
The goddess is often included or featured in religions aiming to recapture the roots of African spirituality
During which historic period(s) is worship of Isis found?
The worship of Isis can be found in nearly every period.
What role does Anubis play in the Isis and Osiris myth?
He conducted the final judgment before Osiris. Weiging og the heart
How does the myth provide the rationale for mummification?
mummification practices that were believed to allow the survival of the body, and thereby to accord eternal life to the deceased.
What animal is used as a representation of Isis?
goddess who often had the features of a cat, and as a result, she too was represented with a cat form.
What are the oldest texts available as a source of Egyptian mythology?
the Pyramid Texts, which were inscribed by Pharaohs starting with those of Unas (2375–2345 B.C.E.) on the Pyramid at Saqqara.
What are the Coffin Texts?
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.
Why did Plutarch’s rationalized story of Isis and Osiris create confusion?
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
