Scholars have long been fascinated by the idea that something like the primordial or original religion existed until recently and may in fact be curated by a few people even today. If such “religions” could be identified, scholars hoped they could sketch the historical development or genealogy of religions. For old-time cultural evolutionists this amounted [...]
Tags:Aboriginal·Australian religions·Bushmen·dreaming·Edwin Wilmsen·Emile Durkheim·Max Charlesworth·Mircea Eliade·primitive religion·primordial religion·San
“It has long been recognized that any interpretation of prehistoric religious behavior should be based on concrete archaeological evidence. Yet evidence for Paleolithic belief systems is extremely scanty, and that which does exist is usually enigmatic — or as [Mircea] Eliade has expressed it, semantically opaque” (Freeman & Echegaray 1981).
Three lines of evidence are typically [...]
Tags:Cantabria·cave·dualism·El Juyo·El Juyo face·figurine·J. Gonzalez Echegaray·L.G. Freeman·Magdalenian·mask·methodology·Mircea Eliade·mobiliary·Orc·overinterpretation·Paleolithic·parietal·parsimony·ritual·Rorschach·sanctuary·Spain·temple
John Jeremiah Sullivan’s piece on America’s ancient cave art has prompted some thinking — always the sign of good writing. If you haven’t read it yet, you should. Here are some of the things that have me cogitating:
Simek the Scientist v. Reilly the Symbolist
This is not a lawsuit — it is the tension Sullivan establishes [...]
Tags:altered states of consciousness·art·ASC·birds·caves·complex societies·dark zone·data·emic·etic·F. Kent Reilly·Jan Simek·John Jeremiah Sullivan·meaning·Mircea Eliade·Mississippian cultures·Mound Builders·Piers Vitebsky·Plains Indians·pre-state societies·shamans·soul flights·Southeastern Ceremonial Complex·Southern Death Cult·survivals·symbols·unknown caves
In The Religions of the American Indians, Ake Hultkrantz is clearly interested in reconstructing the supernatural beliefs and practices that the First Americans would have carried with them to the New World. Because Hultkrantz wrote the majority of the book (in Swedish) in 1967 and updated it for the English translation in 1979, the “Clovis [...]
Tags:Adena·Ake Hultkrantz·Amerindians·Bering Land Bridge·Beringia·Clovis first·David Meltzer·diffusion·First Americans·guardian spirit complex·high god concept·Hopewell·Meadowcroft Rock Shelter·Mesopotamia·Mircea Eliade·Mississippian cultures·Monte Verde·Mound Builders·Neolithic Revolution·peopling of americas·Peopling of North America·Piers Vitebsky·Plains Indians·Siberian hunter-gatherers·soul flight·Sumer·Sun Dance·The Religions of the American Indians·Urmonotheismus
Among scholars and historians of religion, there has long been an unfortunate tendency to treat myth as mere text — disembodied, free-floating, timeless, and ahistorical. In such non-contexts, myth is considered to be something universal or essential, that which captures and expresses archetypes, or even worse, an archaic and tentative approach to monotheism.
In the fifth [...]
Tags:ahistorical·archaic·archetype·Carl Jung·disembodied·history·Homo faber·Homo religiosus·Imagining Religion·incipient monotheism·interpretation·Io·Io myth·Jonathan Z. Smith·Karl Marx·Maori cosmology·Maori creation myth·Mircea Eliade·monotheism·myth·native·primordial·text·timeless·universal
