One of the fantastic and daunting things about a project which seeks to comprehend “religion” in its historical entirety and cultural variety is that it’s impossible to read everything. The field for this kind of project is enormous and is touched upon, in one way or another, by nearly every discipline in the academy. This [...]
Tags:ecological anthropology·economic anthropology·Julian Steward·Native Americans·Plains Indians·ritual variation·Ruth Benedict·vision complex·vision quest
Glossolalia or “speaking in tongues” is known primarily from charismatic Christian churches. In that setting it has been studied extensively with some remarkable findings. In Tower of Linguistic Babel, I examined one of those studies and noted some curious features of “tongues” or glossas:
They are always derivative of the speakers’ native language. In other words, [...]
Tags:charismatic Christianity·dissociative speech acts·ermeneglossia·glossolalia·linguistics·Pentecostals·Phonation Frustes·shamanic speech·speaking in tongues·supernatural languages·Tower of Babel·xenoglossia
China is big, old, and fascinating. Its importance in the larger scheme of things is such that there should be what I call “The China Rule.” This rule would apply as follows. If a scholar claims that history unfolds directionally or according to general rules, s/he must specifically test the claim using China as datum. [...]
Tags:ancestors·canonization·China·Chinese religion·Confucian Cult·Confucius·Imperial Cult·ritual·ritual feasting·sacrifice·spirit feeding·Temple of Culture·The China Rule·Thomas Wilson
The 11,000 year old archaeological site of Göbekli Tepe in southern Turkey is undoubtedly one of the most important in the world. German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt began the ongoing excavations at Göbekli in 1994. Besides being a huge undertaking (less than 5% of the site has been uncovered), the finds — and claims associated with [...]
Tags:agriculture·earliest religion·Edward Banning·farming·foraging·Garden of Eden·Gobekli Tepe·Klaus Schmidt·megalithic·Neolithic Revolution·Neolithic transition·oldest church·pilgrimage center·ritual site·So Fair a House·temples·Turkey
There was a time when Paleolithic cave paintings were construed primarily through the lens of “art,” an interpretive stance which assumes that at least some Paleolithic peoples were “artists” who painted for pleasure. Because this lens is so subjective (and creative), all manner of interpretations were offered. Whether prosaic or fanciful, this approach raised troubling [...]
Tags:altered states of consciousness·art history·ASC·cave art·cave paintings·dark zone art·David Lewis-Williams·doodles·entoptics·flutings·form constants·France·functionalism·hallucination·Jessica Cooney·Kevin Sharpe·Leslie Van Gelder·Paleolithic·petroglyphs·play·ritual·Rouffignac·shamans·symbolism
“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”
With this famous sentence, Jean-Jacques Rousseau begins his masterful critique of political power. Less well known is another sentence from The Social Contract (1762): “No State has ever been founded without Religion serving as its base.”
My reading of history is that Rousseau was right. State-formation [...]
Tags:China·civic religion·disciplina·divination·Dominique Briquel·Etruria·Etruscan·Etruscan books·haruspices·haruspicy·J.G. Frazer·Jean-Jacques Rousseau·magic·politics·power·prodigia·religion·Roman·Roman epistemology·Rome·Romulus·science·Shang Dynasty·state formation·Tages Against Jesus
In his 1880 Hibbert Lecture on the history of early Christianity, Ernest Renan commented: “I sometimes permit myself to say that, if Christianity had not carried the day, Mithraicism would have become the religion of the world.” While it is doubtful that a Persian-influenced mystery cult which appealed primarily to Roman soldiers, officials, and aristocrats [...]
Tags:bull sacrifice·bull worship·Catal Hoyuk·Christianity·Commagene·Constantine·Crusades·early Christians·Ernest Renan·Franz Cumont·Kingdom of Commagene·Knights Templar·Mithraism·Mithras·mystery cult·Persian·Roger Beck·Rome·solar deity
Sometimes getting fooled again is good for you, as in healing good. Shamans have been healing people for tens of thousands of years, using their considerable powers of persuasion and that most efficacious of treatments: placebo.
While shamanic healing methods are varied, there is a great deal of ritual similarity across time and space: trance, sucking, [...]
Tags:Bali·Balian·Balinese healers·cultural tourism·Daniel McGuire·Ketut Liyer·Mangku Pogog·New Age·placebo·ritual healing·shamanic healing·suggestion·traditional healers
“I would suggest that, among other things, ritual represents the creation of a controlled environment where the variables (i.e., the accidents) of ordinary life may be displaced precisely because they are felt to be so overwhelmingly present and powerful.
Ritual is a means of performing the way things ought to be in conscious tension to the [...]
Tags:accidents·Bare Facts of Ritual·control·Jonathan Z. Smith·lack of control·ritual·variability
Head cheese may not be for everyone but it has an intensely devoted following. Most head cheese recipes call for the removal of brain, eyes, and ears before preparation, but purists scoff at this and include everything except bones. It is doubtful that Upper Paleolithic humans made head cheese; it is too time consuming. It [...]
Tags:Buran-Kaya·cannibalism·crania·Crimean Mountains·defleshing·diet·funeral·Goat's Head Soup·head cheese·head-hunting·mortuary·ritual·ritual behavior·rockshelter·Sandrine Plat·skulls·symbolic behavior·Upper Paleolithic
