The concepts of myth, magic, and ritual work together in anthropology under the bigger umbrella of "religion." An anthropological inquiry into religion can easily become muddled and hazy because religion (like culture) encompasses intangible things such as values, ideas, beliefs, and norms. Frequently, anthropologists bookend their understanding of religion by citing two well-known definitions:
French sociologist Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) used an anthropological approach to religion in his study of totemism among Indigenous Australian peoples in the early 20th century. In his work The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1915), he argues that social scientists should begin with what he calls “simple religions” in their attempts to understand the structure and function of belief systems in general. His definition of religion takes an empirical approach and identifies key elements of a religion.
Definition: Religion (Durkheim)
A unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a church, all those who adhere to them.
This definition breaks down religion into the components of beliefs, practices, and a social organization—what a shared group of people believe and do.
An outdoor Christian worship service timed to coincide with the sunrise on Easter morning. Religion includes a great variety of human constructs and experiences. (credit: “Easter Sunrise Service 2017” by James S. Laughlin/Presidio of Monterey Public Affairs/flickr, Public Domain)
The other signpost used within anthropology to make sense of religion was crafted by American anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1926–2006) in his work The Interpretation of Cultures (1973). Geertz’s definition takes a very different approach.
Definition: Religion (Geertz)
(1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in [humans] by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.
Geertz’s definition, which is complex, holistic, and addresses intangibles such as emotions and feelings, presents religion as a different overall model for how we see systems of belief. Geertz views religion as an impetus to view and act upon the world in a certain manner. While still acknowledging that religion is a shared endeavor, Geertz focuses on religion’s role as a potent cultural symbol. Elusive, ambiguous, and hard to define, religion in Geertz’s conception is primarily a feeling that motivates and unites groups of people with shared beliefs.
When anthropologists study religion, it can be helpful to consider both of these definitions because religion includes such varied human constructs and experiences as social structures, sets of beliefs, a feeling of awe, and an aura of mystery. While different religious groups and practices sometimes extend beyond what can be covered by a simple definition, we can broadly define religion as a shared system of beliefs and practices regarding the interaction of natural and supernatural phenomena. And yet as soon as we ascribe a meaning to religion, we must distinguish some related concepts, such as spirituality and worldview.
Definition: Religion (simplified)
A shared system of beliefs and practices regarding the interaction of natural and supernatural phenomena.
Over the last few years, a growing number of Americans have been choosing to define themselves as spiritual rather than religious. A 2017 Pew Research Center study found that 27 percent of Americans identify as “spiritual but not religious.” There are different factors that can distinguish religion and spirituality, and individuals will define and use these terms in specific ways; however, in general, while religion usually refers to shared affiliation with a particular structure or organization, spirituality normally refers to loosely structured beliefs and feelings about relationships between the natural and supernatural worlds. Spirituality can be very adaptable to changing circumstances and is often built upon an individual’s perception of the surrounding environment. While 'religion' better fits Durkheim's definition, 'spirituality' still fits Geertz's.
Many Americans with religious affiliation also use the term spirituality and distinguish it from their religion. Pew found in 2017 that 48 percent of respondents said they were both religious and spiritual. Pew also found that 27 percent of people say religion is very important to them (Lipka and Gecewicz 2017). Another trend pertaining to religion in the United States is the growth of those defining themselves as nones, or people with no religious affiliation. The percentage of adults assigning themselves to the “none” category has grown substantially, from 16 percent in 2007 to 23 percent in 2014; among millennials, the percentage of nones was even higher, at 35 percent (Lipka 2015). In a follow-up survey, participants were asked to identity their major reasons for choosing to be nonaffiliated; the most common responses pointed to the growing politicization of American churches and a more critical and questioning stance toward the institutional structure of all religions (Pew Research Center 2018).
It is important, however, to point out that nones are not the same as agnostics or atheists. Nones may hold traditional and/or nontraditional religious beliefs outside of membership in a religious institution. Agnosticism is the belief that God or the divine is unknowable and therefore skepticism of belief is appropriate, and atheism is a stance that denies the existence of a god or collection of gods. Nones, agnostics, and atheists can hold spiritual beliefs, however.
When anthropologists study religion, it is very important for them to define the terms they are using because these terms can have different meanings when used outside of academic studies. For example, it is important to note that 'atheism' refers specificially to belief in no gods and does not refer to non-religion; traditional Buddhism, for example, is an atheistic religion. In addition, the meaning of terms may change. As the social and political landscape in a society changes, it affects all social institutions, including religion.
Even those who consider themselves neither spiritual nor religious hold secular, or nonreligious, beliefs that structure how they view themselves and the world they live in. The term worldview refers to a person’s outlook or orientation; it is a learned perspective, which has both individual and collective components, on the nature of life itself. Individuals frequently conflate and intermingle their religious and spiritual beliefs and their worldviews as they experience change within their lives. When studying religion, anthropologists need to remain aware of these various dimensions of belief. The word religion is not always adequate to identify an individual’s belief systems.
Like all social institutions, religion evolves within and across time and cultures—even across early human species! Adapting to changes in population size and the reality of people’s daily lives, religions and religious/spiritual practices reflect life on the ground. Interestingly, though, while some institutions (such as economics) tend to change radically from one era to another, often because of technological changes, religion tends to be more viscous, meaning it tends to change at a much slower pace and mix together various beliefs and practices. While religion can be a factor in promoting rapid social change, it more commonly changes slowly and retains older features while adding new ones. In effect, religion contains within it many of its earlier iterations and can thus be quite complex.
Witchcraft, Sorcery, and Magic
People in Western cultures too often think of religion as a belief system associated with a religious institution but religion is much more diverse. In the 1960s, anthropologists typically used an evolutionary model for religion that associated less structured religious systems with simple societies and more complex forms of religion with more complex political systems. Anthropologists noticed that as populations grew, all forms of organization—political, economic, social, and religious—became more complex as well. For example, with the emergence of tribal societies, religion expanded to become not only a system of healing and connection with both animate and inanimate things in the environment but also a mechanism for addressing desire and conflict. Witchcraft and sorcery, both forms of magic, are more visible in larger-scale, more complex societies.
The terms witchcraft and sorcery are variously defined across disciplines and from one researcher to another, yet there is some agreement about common elements associated with each. Witchcraft involves the use of intangible (not material) means to cause a change in circumstances to another person. It is normally associated with practices such as incantations, spells, blessings, and other types of formulaic language that, when pronounced, causes a transformation. Sorcery is similar to witchcraft but involves the use of material elements to cause a change in circumstances to another person. It is normally associated with such practices as magical bundles, love potions, and any specific action that uses another person’s personal leavings (such as their hair, nails, or even excreta).
Definition: Witchcraft
The use of intangible (not material) means to cause a change (positive or negative) in circumstances to another person.
Definition: Sorcery
The use of material elements (object, potions, leavings) to cause a change in circumstances (positive or negative) to another person.
While some scholars apply the terms witchcraft and sorcery only to “dark,” negative, antisocial actions that seek to punish others, ethnographic research is filled with examples of more ambiguous or even positive uses as well. Cultural anthropologist Alma Gottlieb, who did fieldwork among the Beng people of Côte d’Ivoire in Africa, describes how the king that the Beng choose as their leader must always be a witch himself, not because of his ability to harm others but because his mystical powers allow him to protect the Beng people that he rules (2008). His knowledge and abilities allow him to be a capable ruler.
While many people think of witchcraft and sorcery as "primitive" practices, scholars argue that witchcraft and sorcery may be later developments in religion and not part of the earliest rituals because they can be used to express social conflict. What is the relationship between conflict, religion, and political organization? As a society’s population rises, individuals within that society have less familiarity and personal experience with each other and must instead rely on family reputation or rank as the basis for establishing trust. Also, as social diversity increases, people find themselves interacting with those who have different behaviors and beliefs from their own. Frequently, we trust those who are most like ourselves, and diversity can create a sense of mistrust. This sense of not knowing or understanding the people one lives, works, and trades with creates social stress and forces people to put themselves into what can feel like risky situations when interacting with one another. In such a setting, witchcraft and sorcery provide a feeling of security and control over other people. Historically, as populations increased and sociocultural institutions became larger and more complex, religion evolved to provide mechanisms such as witchcraft and sorcery that helped individuals establish a sense of social control over their lives.
Magic is essential to both witchcraft and sorcery, and the principles of magic are part of every religion. The anthropological study of magic is considered to have begun in the late 19th century with the 1890 publication of The Golden Bough, by Scottish social anthropologist Sir James G. Frazer. This work, published in several volumes, details the rituals and beliefs of a diverse range of societies, all collected by Frazer from the accounts of missionaries and travelers. Frazer was an armchair anthropologist. In his work, he provided one of the earliest definitions of magic, describing it as “a spurious system of natural law as well as a fallacious guide of conduct” (Frazer [1922] 1925, 11). A more precise and neutral definition depicts magic as a supposed system of natural law whose practice causes a transformation to occur. In the natural world—the world of our senses and the things we hear, see, smell, taste, and touch—we operate with evidence of observable cause and effect. Magic is a system in which the actions or causes are not always empirical. Speaking a spell or other magical formula does not provide observable (empirical) effects. For practitioners of magic, however, this abstract cause and effect is just as consequential and just as true.
Frazer refers to magic as “sympathetic magic” because it is based on the idea of sympathy, or common feeling, and he argued that there are two principles of sympathetic magic: the law of similarity and the law of contagion. The law of similarity is the belief that a magician can create a desired change by imitating that change. This is associated with actions or charms that mimic or look like the effects one desires, such as the use of an effigy that looks like another person or even the Venus figurine associated with the Upper Paleolithic period, whose voluptuous female body parts may have been used as part of a fertility ritual. By taking actions on the stand-in figure, the magician is able to cause an effect on the person believed to be represented by this figure. As a contemporary example, think of a golfer or bowler swinging their hips to the side imagining this action will influence the ball's movements. The law of contagion is the belief that things that have once been in contact with each other remain connected always, such as a piece of jewelry owned by someone you love, a locket of hair or baby tooth kept as a keepsake, or personal leavings to be used in acts of sorcery.
The Venus figurine was a genre of art most frequently associated with the late Upper Paleolithic period, 25,000–12,000 BCE. It is considered a form of magic because the exaggerated female body parts are believed to be related to ideas of female fertility and reproduction. (credit: “Venus von Willendorf” by Anagoria/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0)
This classification of magic broadens our understanding of how magic can be used and how common it is across all religions. Prayers and special mortuary artifacts (grave goods) indicate that the concept of magic is an innately human practice and not associated solely with tribal societies. In most cultures and across religious traditions, people bury or cremate loved ones with meaningful clothing, jewelry, or even a photo. These practices and sentimental acts are magical bonds and connections among acts, artifacts, and people. Even prayers and shamanic journeying (a form of metaphysical travel) to spirits and deities, practiced in almost all religious traditions, are magical contracts within people’s belief systems that strengthen practitioners’ faith. Instead of seeing magic as something outside of religion that diminishes seriousness, anthropologists see magic as a profound human act of faith.
Practices that we might define as “witchcraft” today have been performed for many thousands of years all over the world without being labeled in those exact terms. For most of human history, these practices were not seen or defined as witchcraft, but were simply the religious and spiritual practices of people.
Imagine living in a hunter-gatherer (or early agricultural) world, not knowing exactly what caused illnesses, whether there was going to be a harsh winter, or whether there would be plenty of game to satisfy the needs of the community. People created ways to seek out answers and interpret signs that could explain events or foretell the future. Like all religious traditions, these practices have and continue to give people a sense of security, a way to alleviate anxiety about unknown events, ensure a livelihood, or even bring retribution to those who have wronged them.
Cross-culturally and in anthropological terms, "witches" are believed to be individuals who can manipulate the natural world through magical means (imitative and contagious). Witchcraft also includes the practice of divination—which is closely connected to both forms of magic.Divination is a magical procedure designed to find out what is not knowable by ordinary means; such as the foretelling of the future by interpreting omens. Types of divination that we might find familiar in society are Tarot cards, tea leaf reading, and bibliomancy (use of books to answer a question). The entrails of animals or random casting of stones (runes), as well as interpreting the movements and actions of animals or other natural events may also be used in divinatory rituals.
The contemporary usage of the term “witchcraft” has many connotations from the New Age/Earth-Based/Goddess-worshipping perspective to the perspective of witchcraft as something evil and dark. Remember, however, that both of these perspectives are Eurocentric (grounded in European thought and belief). The modern/Western Wicca religion is based on pre-Christian Celtic religious beliefs (i.e. European), while the view of witchcraft as dark and dangerous stems from a medieval European Christian perspective. Even the Eurocentric term “witchcraft” is based on the Celtic word “Wicca” meaning ‘wise one’. None of these understandings of witchcraft take into consideration the rest of human history or and a Non-European worldview, where people engage in what we define as witchcraft. For billions of people, these practices are considered beloved religious traditions that connect them to the spirit world and give people a sense of hope and faith.
Let’s explore this further. When we use the term “witchcraft,” we must be careful to clarify the exact context within which we are using the word. Consider the following:
Witchcraft in pop culture : Witches are presented in popular culture as evil-doers who cause harm by harnessing dark, magical forces. This representation does not actually reflect any major religious or spiritual belief or practice and is used as a story-telling device.
Witchcraft as a spirituality: There does, however, exist a myriad of religions and spiritualities that believe in every person’s inherent power and in the divine elements of nature. Some of these groups engage in rituals that rely on magical beliefs. These practitioners may call themselves, “witches”. These groups are firmly against using magic to harm others and do not resemble horror-based witches from movies and television.
The witchcraft accusation: Across many human cultures and across generations, humans have utilized what anthropologists call “witchcraft accusations.” The witchcraft accusation is a cultural tool that is used to punish individuals who do not conform to society’s expectations. For example, if a woman in a religious society refuses to embody her culture’s values of feminine docility, she might be publicly accused of being a “witch” so that her community can exercise power to more strictly control her behavior and regulate her life. While many are familiar with the way witchcraft accusations were applied throughout the Salem Witch Trials, these accusations were and are still used in other places around the globe, too.
Specifically, within Christian society, the witchcraft accusation takes on a unique set of characteristics. While some cultures view witchcraft as a natural or neutral force, Christian cultures are more likely to equate witchcraft to negative forms of sorcery.
Witchcraft accusations exist outside of Europe, and the most famous anthropological examination of this took place in Central Africa. E.E. Evans-Pritchard was a British anthropologist who lived among the Azande people in central Africa (in the North-Eastern area). People within Azande communities build tall granaries on wooden stilts to hold their food and supplies so that no animals are able to get it. And since the region is very hot and offers little sources of shade, people often meet under the granaries to talk and share the news of the day. Unfortunately, sometimes the termites of the region will chew through the granary stilts, causing the granary to collapse and tragically injure or kill everyone underneath. In the worldview of the Azande, a person who dies in this type of accident has been killed by an act of witchcraft. This situation was particularly interesting to Evans-Pritchard and led to his publication on the matter.
Evans Pritchard tried to explain to the local people that, actually, it was termites that were causing the tragedy. The local people turned to him and explained that they understood termites caused the collapse, but the odds that a person was standing underneath the granary at that exact moment was an unfortunate event and misfortune that needed to be explained. In Azande society, misfortune and suffering is typically thought to be caused by witchcraft (Evans-Pritchard 1935, 19).
This is not an entirely unique worldview; actually, all cultures have beliefs like this to some degree. The idea that a person’s feelings or thoughts can lead to negative outcomes serves two functions in society. First, this belief prevents antisocialbehavior. We define antisocial behavior as any behavior that does not conform with society’s expectations. So, for example, if you get into a fight with a person in public and then learn that they fell and broke their leg afterward, you might be accused of hurting them with your anger. In Azande society, a person who is accused of witchcraft is often kicked out of the community or sometimes killed. So, many of the Azande will make an effort to maintain composure and to not behave with great jealousy because they don’t want to be accused of being witches if the person they fought with has some bad luck (Evans-Pritchard 1935, 419). Second, these beliefs explain misfortune or suffering. To many human beings, life can feel exceptionally illogical and out of our control. All cultures find a way to explain why bad things happen. Witchcraft beliefs explain misfortune by tying the misfortune to people’s intentions (Evans-Pritchard 1935, 30).
In the Azande worldview, a person is born with a physical ability to curse another with witchcraft powers. Witches can be both men and women and the ability is passed down genetically (from mother to daughter and father to son). The substance that gives the person powers is called mangu and it’s believed that it can be seen at night. A person does not necessarily know that they were born with mangu though, and they can harm an enemy accidentally.
By practicing cultural relativism, we can understand the cultural logic of this belief system. By taking a cross-cultural perspective, we can understand that we have similar beliefs in our own culture, and by examining the function we can see the role that this belief system plays in society. Witchcraft explains unfortunate events and is an explanation for suffering. We ask ourselves: “Why has someone died?” Or perhaps, “why are we not able to kill the wild pigs that are destroying the crops?” Nothing bad happens by chance alone. When there are unfortunate events in society that are not explainable, witchcraft accusations are hurled at antisocial persons or those who otherwise do not fit the social mould. It is typically part and parcel to a worldview that supports the pre-established moral order of that particular culture.
Anthropologist James Brain argues that witchcraft accusations are more prominent in societies with little or no social mobility. Social scientists refer to “social mobility” as the ability for families or individuals to move between class and social levels. In other words, a culture that allows people to advance their social status through different careers may have high social mobility. On the other hand, a society that strictly ties class and social status to race or gender will have less social mobility. In Brain’s view, societies with little or no social mobility are more likely to strive to change their own social status and/or to reinforce the pre-existing social order through witchcraft accusations (Brain 1989, 15-27).
Exercise
Consider the following. Re-read the points regarding witchcraft accusations as expressions of social conflict and lack of social mobility in a society. How do these apply to today's politics, media, and rhetoric around the "immigration crisis" in the United States?
Supernatural Forces and Beings (Pantheon)
As stated earlier, religion typically regards the interaction of natural and supernatural phenomena. A supernatural force is a figure or energy that does not follow natural law. It is non-empirical and cannot be measured or observed by normal means. Religious practices rely on contact and interaction with a wide range of supernatural forces of varying degrees of complexity and specificity. In many religious traditions, there are both supernatural deities (gods) who are named and have the ability to change human fortunes, and spirits, who are less powerful and not always identified by name. Spirit or spirits can be diffuse and perceived as a field of energy or an unnamed force.
Practitioners of witchcraft and sorcery manipulate a supposed supernatural force that is often referred to by the term mana, first identified in Polynesia among the Maori of New Zealand (mana is a Maori word). Anthropologists see a similar supposed sacred energy in many different religious traditions and now use this word to refer to that energy force. Mana is an impersonal (unnamed and unidentified) force that can adhere for varying periods of time to people or animate and inanimate objects to make them sacred. One example is in the biblical story that appears in the Christian Bible (Mark 5:25–30) in which a woman suffering an illness simply touches Jesus’s cloak and is healed. Jesus asks, “Who touched my clothes?” because he recognizes that some of this force has passed from him to the woman who was ill in order to heal her. Many Christians see the person of Jesus as sacred and holy from the time of his baptism by the Holy Spirit. Christian baptism in many traditions is meant as a duplication or repetition of Christ’s baptism. In the Jewish Bible (the Christian Old Testament), the 'bread' or 'food' from Heaven (a sort of life-force) given to the Jewish people is sometimes also translated as "mana."
Some version of 'mana' or spiritual feeling is common among all religious experiences. How can that be? When we begin to think deeply about it, it doesn't make a lot of intuitive logical sense that individuals should carry a common feeling of force or power—even if they are members of the same culture. But the answer is possibly elegant. Émile Durkheim concluded that the feeling we feel and ascribe to other sprits we believe in is ultimately the feeling of society itself! This is an excellent answer to this question because it doesn't foreclose the reality of the spiritual world; in fact, it supports it—the spiritual world of a society is responsible for the goings on of the society itself. This approach to 'mana' helps to explain feelings of awe, guilt, connection, fear, and compassion often associated with both socieities moral fabrics and their religious traditions.
There are also named and known supernatural deities. A deity is a god or goddess. Most often conceived as humanlike, gods (male) and goddesses (female) are typically named beings with individual personalities and interests. Monotheistic religions focus on a single named god or goddess, and polytheistic religions are built around a broader pantheon, or group, of gods and/or goddesses, each usually specializing in a specific sort of behavior or action. And there are spirits, which tend to be associated with very specific (and narrower) activities, such as earth spirits or guardian spirits (or angels). Some spirits emanate from or are connected directly to humans, such as ghosts and ancestor spirits, which may be attached to specific individuals, families, or places. In some patrilineal societies, ancestor spirits require a great deal of sacrifice from the living. This veneration of the dead can consume large quantities of resources. In the Philippines, the practice of venerating the ancestor spirits involves elaborate house shrines, altars, and food offerings. In central Madagascar, the Merino people practice a regular “turning of the bones,” called famidihana. Every five to seven years, a family will disinter some of their deceased family members and replace their burial clothing with new, expensive silk garments as a form of remembrance and to honor all of their ancestors. In both of these cases, ancestor spirits are believed to continue to have an effect on their living relatives, and failure to carry out these rituals is believed to put the living at risk of harm from the dead.
Religious Specialists
Religious groups typically have some type of leadership, whether formal or informal. Some religious leaders occupy a specific role or status within a larger organization, representing the rules and regulations of the institution, including norms of behavior. In anthropology, these individuals are called priests, even though they may have other titles within their religious groups. Anthropology defines priests as full-time practitioners, meaning they occupy a religious rank at all times, whether or not they are officiating at rituals or ceremonies, and they have leadership over groups of people. They serve as mediators or guides between individuals or groups of people and the deity or deities. In religion-specific terms, anthropological priests may be called by various names, including titles such as priest, pastor, preacher, teacher, imam (Islam), and rabbi (Judaism).
Another category of specialists is prophets. These individuals are associated with religious change and transformation, calling for a renewal of beliefs or a restructuring of the status quo. Their leadership is usually temporary or indirect, and sometimes the prophet is on the margins of a larger religious organization. German sociologist Max Weber (1947) identified prophets as having charisma, a personality trait that conveys authority: "Charisma is a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities. These as such are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them the individual concerned is treated as a leader." (358–359)
A third type of specialist is shamans. Shamans are religious specialists who work with clients to address very specific and individual needs by making direct contact with deities or supernatural forces. While priests will officiate at recurring ritual events, a shaman addresses each individual need. One exception to this is the shaman’s role in subsistence, usually hunting. In societies where the shaman is responsible for “calling up the animals” so that hunters will have success, the ritual may be calendrical, or occurring on a cyclical basis. While shamans are medical and religious specialists within shamanic societies, there are other religions that practice forms of shamanism as part of their own belief systems. Sometimes, these shamanic practitioners will be known by terms such as pastor or preacher, or even layperson. And some religious specialists serve as both part-time priests and part-time shamans, occupying more than one role as needed within a group of practitioners.
Shamanism is a practice of divination and healing that involves soul travel, also called shamanic journeying, to connect natural and supernatural realms in nonlinear time. Associated initially with small-scale societies, shamanic practices are now known to be embedded in many of the world’s religions. In some cultures, shamans are part-time specialists, usually drawn into the practice by a “calling” and trained in the necessary skills and rituals though an apprenticeship. In other cultures, all individuals are believed to be capable of shamanic journeying if properly trained. By journeying—an act frequently initiated by dance, trance, drumbeat, song, or hallucinogenic substances—the shaman is able to consult with a spiritual world populated by supernatural figures and deceased ancestors. The term itself, šamán, meaning “one who knows,” is an Evenki word, originating among the Evenk people of northern Siberia. Shamanism, found all over the world, was first studied by anthropologists in Siberia.
While shamanism is a healing practice, it conforms to the anthropological definition of religion as a shared set of beliefs and practices pertaining to the natural and supernatural. Cultures and societies that publicly affirm shamanism as a predominant and generally accepted practice often are referred to as shamanic cultures. Shamanism and shamanic activity, however, are found within most religions. The world’s two dominant mainstream religions both contain a type of shamanistic practice: the laying on of hands in Christianity, in which a mystical healing and blessing is passed from one person to another, and the mystical Islamic practice of Sufism, in which the practitioner, called a dervish, dances by whirling faster and faster in order to reach a trance state of communing with the divine. There are numerous other shared religious beliefs and practices among different religions besides shamanism. Given the physical and social evolution of our species, it is likely that we all share aspects of a fundamental religious orientation and that religious changes are added on to, rather than used to replace, earlier practices such as shamanism.
Whirling dervishes enter a trance state during a ceremony in Turkey by practicing a rhythmic, spinning dance. In this state, they are able to commune with the deity. (credit: “Whirling Dervishes 2” by Richard Ha/flickr, CC BY 2.0)
Indigenous shamanism continues to be a significant force for healing and prophecy today and is the predominant religious mode in small-scale, subsistence-based societies, such as bands of gatherers and hunters. Shamanism is valued by hunters as an intuitive way to locate wild animals, often depicted as “getting into the mind of the animal.” Shamanism is also valued as a means of healing, allowing individuals to discern and address sources of physical and social illness that may be affecting their health. One of the best-studied shamanic healing practices is that of the !Kung San in Central Africa. When individuals in that society suffer physical or socioemotional distress, they practice n/um tchai, a medicine dance, to draw up spiritual forces within themselves that can be used for shamanic self-healing (Marshall [1969] 2009).
Shamanism is an early form of religion. It is based on perceived contact between natural and supernatural realms. Here, a Kwakiutl shaman from the Pacific Northwest coast of the United States makes contact with supernatural forces. (credit: “Hamatsa emerging from the woods—Koskimo” by Edward S. Curtis/Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online Catalog, Public Domain)
Shamanistic practices remain an important part of the culture of modern Inuit people in the Canadian Arctic, particularly their practices pertaining to whale hunting. Although these traditional hunts were prohibited for a time, Inuit people were able to legally resume them in 1994. In a recent study of Inuit whaling communities in the Canadian territory of Nunavut, cultural anthropologists Frédéric Laugrand and Jarich Oosten (2013) found that although hunting technology has changed—whaling spears now include a grenade that, when aimed properly, allows for a quick and more humane death—many shamanistic beliefs and social practices pertaining to the hunt endure. The sharing of maktak or muktuk (whale skin and blubber) with elders is believed to lift their spirits and prolong their lives by connecting them to their ancestors and memories of their youth, the communal sharing of whale meat connects families to each other, and the relationship between hunter and hunted mystically sustains the populations of both. Inuit hunters believe that the whale “gives itself” to the hunter in order to establish this relationship, and when the hunter and community gratefully and humbly consume the catch, this ties the whales to the people and preserves them both. While Laugrand and Oosten found that most Inuit communities practice modern-day Christianity, the shamanistic values of their ancestors continue to play a major role in their understanding of both the whale hunt and what it means to be Inuit today. Their practice and understanding of religion incorporate both the church and their ancestral beliefs.
Contemporary Inuit still use shamanistic practices when they hunt and fish. Here, an Inuit fisherman in Greenland goes out seeking fish. (credit: Renate Haase/Pixabay, CC0)
Above all, shamanism reflects the principles and practice of mutuality and balance, the belief that all living things are connected to each other and can have an effect on each other. This is a value that reverberates through almost all other religious systems as well. Concepts such as stewardship (caring for and nurturing resources), charity (providing for the needs of others), and justice (concern and respect for others and their rights) are all valued in shamanism.
The Institutionalization of Religion
Shamanism is classified as animism, a worldview in which spiritual agency is assigned to all things, including natural elements such as rocks and trees. Sometimes associated with the idea of dual souls—a day soul and a night soul, the latter of which can wander in dreams—and sometimes with unnamed and disembodied spirits believed to be associated with living and nonliving things, animism was at first understood by anthropologists as a primitive step toward more complex religions. Today, we know it is not quite so simple. Animism is just one 'worldview' among many equally valid approaches to religious life.
Part of the reason early anthropologists believed religions followed linear evolution is because, particularly among state societies, religion becomes 'institutionalized.' As population densities increased and urban areas emerged, the structure and function of religion shifted into a bureaucracy, known as a state religion. State religions are formal institutions with full-time administrators (e.g., priests, pastors, rabbis, imams), a set doctrine of beliefs and regulations, and often a policy of growth by seeking new practitioners through conversion. While state religions continued to exhibit characteristics of earlier forms, they were now structured as organizations with a hierarchy, including functionaries at different levels with different specializations. Religion was now administered as well as practiced. Similar to the use of mercenaries as paid soldiers in a state army, bureaucratic religions include paid positions that may not require subscribing to the belief system itself. Examples of early state religions include the pantheons of Egypt and Greece. Today, the most common state religions are Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism.
Rather than part-time shamans, tribal and state religions are often headed by full-time religious leaders who administer higher levels within the religious bureaucracy. With institutionalization, religion began to develop formalized doctrines, or sets of specific and usually rigid principles or teachings, that would be applied through the codification of a formal system of laws. And, unlike earlier religious forms, state religions are usually defined not by birthright but by conversion. Using proselytization, a recruitment practice in which members actively seek converts to the group, state religions are powerful institutions in society. They bring diverse groups of people together and establish common value systems.
There are two common arrangements between political states and state religions. In some instances, such as contemporary Iran, the religious institution and the state are one, and religious leaders head the political structure. In other societies, there is an explicit separation between religion and state. The separation has been handled differently across nation-states. In some states, the political government supports a state religion (or several) as the official religion(s). In some of these cases, the religious institution will play a role in political decision-making from local to national levels. In other state societies with a separation between religion and state, religious institutions will receive favors, such as subsidies, from state governments.
Symbols
Religions and rituals often employ symbols to succeed. A symbol is, of course, not always religious. A symbol is any object, image, gesture, vocalization, or event conventionally associated with a particular meaning. Colors, shapes, gestures, animals, plants—all of these commonly acquire specific cultural meaning. For a Hindu wedding, a bride typically wears a bright red sari, as red is an auspicious color associated with change, passion, and prosperity. White, on the other hand, is typically worn to Indian funerals. Compare this to the symbols of white and black respectively in contemporary United States culture. Symbols are useful cultural aggregates because they provide a kind of shorthand for expressing complex ideas—including religion!
This popular American bumper sticker incorporates a variety of religious and social symbols. (credit: “Coexistence” by Rusty Clark/flickr, CC BY 2.0)
Combining symbols from Islam, Judaism, Taoism, Christianity, paganism, women, men, and the peace movement, this sticker aims to promote multicultural diversity. Rather than listing the various religions, identities, and ideologies and describing the conflicts among them, the message simply incorporates their symbols into a word (another type of complex symbol) urging mutual tolerance. Although symbols have conventional meanings, they can mean different things in different contexts or to different people. Although the intended meaning of the above bumper sticker is diversity, some people interpret it as an emblem of radical atheism. In the wake of the 2016 presidential election, some Americans started wearing safety pins to show their solidarity with LGBTQIA+ people, people of color, and others who had become targets of post-election harassment. For some, however, the safety pin symbolized pretentiousness and hypocrisy.
Symbolism plays a vital role in religion. A symbol stands for something else, is arbitrary, and has no inherent connection to its reference. There are two main types of symbols. A symbol can be a metaphor, meaning that it is completely disconnected from what it represents, such as the Islamic symbol of the crescent and star, which represents enlightenment brought about through God. Or a symbol might be a metonym, in which the part stands for the whole, such as the cross, which is an artifact of a specific portion of Christian history that is now used to stand for Christianity as a whole. Symbols are multivocal by nature, which means they can have more than one meaning. Their meaning derives from both how the symbol is used and how the audience views it. The more common and widespread a symbol, the more conflicting references and meanings may coexist. As an example, think of the U.S. flag; when draped over a veteran’s casket, the flag has a different meaning from when it is waved at a rally or burned in protest. One symbol, multiple meanings.
Left: In the first image, fog represents the collision of warm and cold air over San Francisco Bay; it is a natural effect. Right: In the second image, the fog/smoke is artificially created onstage at a Rolling Stones concert to establish a particular mood and association. It is symbolic. (Credits: Left "Above the fog" by CucombreLibre/flickr, CC BY 2.0, Right "StonesLondon220518-82" by Raph_PH/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0)
The prevalence of symbolism in religion indicates that religions are learned and shared systems of belief. While there are empirical aspects to religion, especially in regard to religious practices such as dance, trance, and prayer, the meaning behind the practices is entirely learned. Symbolism is attached not only to supernatural deities and spirits but also to religious places, myths, and rituals.
The tools used for working magic displayed on this traditional Wiccan altar include an athame, a ritual knife that is used in many rituals, among them the ritual of casting a circle (creating a sacred place). Also shown are a boline, sword, wand, pentacle, chalice, and censer. (credit: “Wiccan Altar” by Fer Doirich/Wikimedia Commons, CC0)
Definition: Symbol
A object, image, gesture, vocalization, or event conventionally and arbitrarily associated with a particular meaning.
Myths and Stories
Taken to their extreme, large clusters of symbols produce art. While this section is not about a theory of art, anthropologists define “art” rather simply as as: symbolic representations of thought, feeling and ideas. Art is central to the foundation, establishment, and maintenance of all human societies. Human societies created visual and verbal arts before the invention of writing (which only occurred around 5,000 years ago). As a result, societies across time have used (and continue to use) art to give meaningful expression to almost every part of their culture. This includes ideas about religion, kinship, and ethnic identity. Therefore, the verbal arts: myths, stories, and folklore, became a form of cultural reinforcement (a way to enculturate the next generation into a religion and dispense morals and values central to cultural survival).
The verbal arts include myths, folklore, narratives, dramas, poetry, incantations, proverbs riddles, word-games, even things like naming procedures, compliments and insults! As you know, the United States has historically been a society made up from people originating in many different lands, all with their unique set of myths and traditions.
The word myth is often used often in popular culture to mean something that is false or deceptive, a made-up story that is not true. In anthropology, however, myth is defined as a well-known story that explains primary principles, beliefs, and values outside of chronological time. Pieces of a myth may or may not be true. Its veracity is not what matters; it is most important for what it teaches. Many times, the characters within myths are culture heroes, semidivine persons whose experiences and lives serve as a teaching tool, allowing those within the culture to identify with them and learn from their challenges. Myths shape a society’s worldview, explain its origins, and also teach and affirm social norms.
Definition: Myth
A well-known story that explains primary principles, beliefs, and values outside of chronological time; a sacred or sacred-like story that reflects and reinforces a community’s worldview
The word myth is derived from the Greek word: mythos , meaning speech or story. A myth is a sacred story that reflects and reinforces a community’s worldview. Myths explain the fundamentals of human existence, explain where everything we know comes from, why we are here, where we are going, and even our existential purpose. It’s important to understand that when the term “myth” is used, it is not to imply that the narrative is false, but rather to indicate that the narrative is sacred.
Myths provide the rationale for religious beliefs and practices and sets cultural standards for appropriate behavior. Traditional myths, as long as they are believed, are accepted and perpetuated in a culture and then expressed as part of a people’s worldview. They also sanction certain attitudes and behaviors. They are a product of creative imagination and works of art, as well as potentially religious or ideological statements.
Malinowski wrote the following about myths: “Myth fulfills…an indispensable function; it expresses, enhances, and codifies belief; it safeguards and enforces morality; it vouches for the efficacy of ritual and contains practical rules for the guidance of [humanity]. Myth is thus a vital ingredient of human civilization; it is not an idle tale, but a hard-worked active force. ” What Malinowski is saying is that we turn to our sacred stories as a moral compass for behavior. Please note that not all myths are religious. There are a variety of sacred, cultural stories that we tell. For example, we like to say that George Washington chopped down his father’s cherry tree but that he was such an honest young man that he immediately confessed to his crime. It’s unlikely that this actually happened, but we tell the story because we like to steep our nation’s founding in the inherent value of genuine honesty. "Honesty" is a sacred element in U.S. collective consciousness.
Anthropologists like to study myths because they reveal a great deal about a culture. Myths provide insight into: cultural practices, values and ethical codes, humanity’s relationship with the gods, relationships between humans and nature, and so on.
The Power of Story-Telling
American Anthropologist Keith Basso specifically examined a particular style of myth called “Placemaking” whereby the story-telling connects their cultural stories to a physical location that can be visited. Basso explained, “Place-making involves multiple acts of remembering and imagining which inform each other in complex ways” (Basso 2010, 5).
Let’s pause for a moment here to recognize the universality of Basso’s claim. Human memory is not perfect. If you were asked to recall exactly what happened to you yesterday, you would likely be able to recall about 50% of what happened in your day. If you were asked to recall what happened to you 2 weeks ago, maybe you could only recall about 20% of the day. If you were asked to recall what happened to you five years ago, you would likely be able to recall less than 1% of your day with any kind of accuracy. Recall the last time that you had an argument with a loved one; it’s likely that you both recalled the conflict differently. So, what happens when the human mind cannot remember what “actually happened”? We fill in the gaps of our memory with imagination. Perhaps we remember ourselves as better than we actually were, and we remember our enemies as worse than they actually were.
Life does not have an inherent plot structure; the traditional plot structure that we use for storytelling was constructed by the human mind. Rather, we are all imagining our life story as if it is following a plot structure that does not inherently exist. For example: you are certainly the protagonist in your story although you are certainly the antagonist and at least one person’s story. We often tell ourselves things like, “If that person hadn’t broken my heart, I never would have met this better person, or I never would have had this new job.” We make sense of misfortune, and confusing events by assigning a traditional plot structure and logic to our imagined life.
Myths among some Apache groups are excellent examples of “placemaking.” The Apache are a Native American group in the Southwest United States and, since the Apache people have lived in this part of the world for a long time, their origin stories, sacred myths, and histories literally happened in the land that surrounds them. This is unlike those Americans who believe in Biblical stories because the majority of Christianity happened in the Middle East. If you are a Christian, imagine how it would feel to be able to look outside your kitchen window and literally see the Mount of Olives. Every time you saw this place you would remember the important Christian themes that are taught through that site (including the Garden of Gethsemane associated with the Passion narrative). If you saw this place every single day, it’s possible that the story surrounding it would have even greater power in your life.
Many of the Apache stories literally happened in the physical environment within which they live today. The result is that they can tell sacred stories in times of crisis and they can look around their physical environment to remember their cultural values. Placemaking stories recall history, build community, explore ethical questions, recall the Earth’s original and ever-changing appearance, and remind listeners that change is inevitable
Basso lived for a long time among the Apache of Cibecue, Arizona. (The words that we now use to refer to native American groups do not necessarily reflect the way the native American groups identified themselves historically. The word "Apache" is a broad brush used to refer to a group of people who share the similar Athabascan language. All people who identify as Apache are not the same, they are a diverse group like any other. Keith Basso specifically studied one group of Apache people who live in Cibecue, Arizona.) During his time living with this community, he mapped 296 important cultural locations and worked to record information about their importance. Specifically, Basso discussed the way that this community connected storytelling to the land and to behavior. This particular community uses their culturally specific stories to help reinforce behavioral norms from generation to generation. Basso describes storytelling in the following way, “For what people make of their places is closely connected to what they make of themselves as members of society and inhabitants of the Earth, and while the two activities may be separable in principle, they are deeply joined in practice.” Here, Basso is explaining that our very logic is largely connected to our physical environments.
Comparatively, British Anthropologist Mary Douglas argued that human beings strive to control our environments and physical spaces in order to create a sense of the world that we prefer. So we, on the one hand are deeply influenced by our physical spaces and we also strive to reflect our cultural values upon our physical spaces. This is what Basso studied among the Apache.
Bronislaw Malinowski wrote, “… we are confronted by a vast apparatus, partly material, partly human, and partly spiritual, by which [humanity] is able to cope with the concrete, specific problems…” (Malinowski 1944, 36)
Anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss saw myths as containing both universal messages about shared human experiences and concerns and particular messages about the cultures with which they are associated. His approach to understanding myth is part of the theory of French structuralism we have read about. It separates myth into its component parts in order to understand the underlying form—the structure. Lévi-Strauss believed that mythic structure was the same across all cultures. He argued that the concerns of all cultures, expressed within their myths, are very similar. Structural analysis can be very complicated. At each step, as the myth is gradually “stripped down,” the information it reveals is more enlightening. There are approaches to structuralism that can be applied more quickly, however, allowing a more penetrating look at the “real story” within the myth.
A brief version of a structural analysis will have at least three major components: binary oppositions, which are two contrasting concepts; mythemes, which are the stripped-down minimal units, or story components, that form the structure of the myth; and the primary messages of the myth, which are universal.
Many myths and legends involve taking journeys. We call this the “Hero Myth” or “Hero’s Journey”. It involves a regular person leaving home, encountering something or someone who unlocks or teaches them a secret power, that “hero” fighting and triumphing over evil, and then returning home to be welcomed as the hero. Think of some of these and compare and contrast the central ideas with the Hopi Origin story.
As mentioned before, traditional myths, as long as they are believed, are accepted and perpetuated in a culture and then expressed a part of a peoples’ traditional worldview. But what if you don’t believe the myth to be factual? What if you don’t believe that a boy named Luke Skywalker who came from a planet called Tatooine really grew up to be a Jedi Knight to fight with the resistance, only to realize that his archenemy was really his father? What happens if you don’t believe that any of that really happened? Is it still a myth? Can it really still influence a culture? Are we still being enculturated by the stories that permeate our culture? Yes—they are folktales.
Folktales are stories considered and taken to be fictional. They tend to exist outside of time and space and usually begin by indicating this feature. Many stories begin with, “Once upon a time…” or “A long, long time ago…” An important feature of folktales is that they contain moral lessons but are presented as entertainment for the reader. The characters are purposefully created to warn of dangers for the hero. Many of these characters tend to be anthropomorphic animals, illustrating the supernatural elements of folktales even though the stories are not fully sacred.Folktales exist in multiple versions and no text is the 'correct' one. However, they all tend to have very specific features present in most versions. One important feature is the poorly developed two-dimensional characters that represent opposites. In the story of Little Red Riding Hood, these characters are Little Red Riding Hood, representing innocence, goodness, and kindness, who is contrasted with the big bad wolf, representing evil, manipulation and cunning. Another important feature in folktales is the simple and repetitive actions within the storyline. Often times in Indo-European folktales these actions tend to occur in threes—consider The Three Little Pigs or Goldilocks and the Three Bears. In both these stories there is simple repetitive action that occurs three times. Other cultures use other numbers with significant meaning to them.
The narratives of folktales reflect the worldview of various real-life relationships. One only needs to look at Disney stories to observe this process. The stories in Disney are designed to construct gender and gender roles. Of course, the construction of gender norms has changed in Disney over time and a comparison of the older stories with the more recent ones demonstrates the significant differences. Older Disney stories tend to have princesses who are docile, abused, persecuted, patient, obedient and quiet. Newer Disney princesses are often brave, at times rebellious, and independent. This reflects the shift in American culture’s worldview surrounding gender norms.
It is hypothesized that humans employ verbal arts as an approach to confront the specific problems that face us. Native Americans refer to myths and stories as ‘medicine’ – intended to teach us, comfort us, console us, and guide us. How else can we explain the human need to re-read a sacred text on a weekly basis, or watch the Star Wars marathon for the millionth time?
Myths serve to enculturate us and they serve a basic tenet of instructing us on the code of conduct that would enable our survival. They provide a foundation for our worldview and remind us of our purpose.
The hero myth is such a common theme in the most beloved books and movies of our society because it also serves the function to provide hope to all us everyday people. In reality, we do not have superpowers or magic, but if an ordinary person can overcome obstacles and become the hero of the story, then maybe we can overcome the hurdles in our lives and become the heroes of our own stories.
Religious Places
Anthropologists distinguish between space, an unmarked physical field on which imagination or action can occur, and place, a location that has sociocultural meaning(s) attached. Many religions and religious practices are defined by sacred places that serve as settings for hierophany: the manifestation of the sacred or divine. Commonly, the sense of the sacred derives from the prior history and the use of a place. A place is its own kind of symbol, and in most religions, sacred places are marked by other symbols.
A Jewish home, for example, is identified as a special religious place. One way of marking this sacred place is by attaching mezuzahs, small casings containing a tiny parchment with a verse from the Torah to external and internal doorposts. Placings mezuzahs at the points of entry mark the place inside as holy, sacred, and set apart. Like most religious places, the Jewish home is a densely symbolic place.
Religious places are part of the built environment, or places that people create as representations of their beliefs. Religious scholar Mircea Eliade identifies three characteristics associated with sacred places. He suggests every sacred place:
Is marked by a threshold which separates the two spaces, the sacred inside and the profane outside. It marks a passageway and a new mode of being.
Memorializes hierophany, or sacred events, by including an area within the sacred place that is most holy—usually where something sacred has occurred in the past. connects practitioners with deity and/or spirit, memorializing the occurrence of something special that happened (or happens) here. In many religious places, there will be an altar or some sort of commemoration in this spot.
Represents an image or microcosm of the world as seen from the religious perspective. In some religious traditions, sacred places will be decorated with reminders of what is most valued by that tradition, using various types of artworks. In Catholic churches, for example, paintings of the events associated with the crucifixion of Christ, known as the stations of the cross, remind believers of Christ’s sacrifice.
Eliade’s characteristics of sacred places can be useful tools for beginning to understand the role of a place in a religion or a religious practice that is unfamiliar to us. They prompt us to look at the place through a believer’s eyes: What happens here? What are the meanings associated with the different parts of this place? What are the proper ways to enter and exit and show respect? Because religion is heavily symbolic, we must strive to understand these places from inside the religious belief system.
Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris is a sacred place marked by numerous symbols. Note that elaborate stained glass, Gothic arches, candles, and incredibly high ceiling. It is shown here before a 2019 fire that caused considerable damage. (credit: “Inside Notre Dame” by Kosala Bandara/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0)
Rituals
Combining objects, actions, meanings, and places, ritual is a special kind of repeated, patterned action conventionally associated with a particular meaning. Rituals incorporate symbols and roles along with routinized activities such as gestures, music, and movement. Many rituals are performed by specialists in group settings to accomplish specific group or individual goals. Rituals bring together symbols, practices, and worldviews.
Rituals, also called rites, are performative acts by which we carry out our religious beliefs, public and private. As sociologist Émile Durkheim noted, they follow a formal order or sequence, are performed in a place that is set apart and sacred (at least during the time of the performance), and are inherently social. Rituals are learned and shared. They foster social solidarity and identity within a community of believers (this is a focus of Durkheim’s). Even when performing a religious ritual alone, such as walking a labyrinth during meditation, the ritual itself, because it is learned as part of a larger body of religious practices, connects the individual to the larger community.
Walking a labyrinth, such as this one in Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, California, is experienced by many people as a meditative or prayerful ritual. (credit: “Grace Cathedral Labyrinth” by Jay Galvin/flickr, CC BY 2.0)
Rituals tend to have a common structure even though ritual and ritual performance can be quite variable. Even when rituals are scripted and parts are carefully read and followed, individual participation and collaboration will subtly change a ritual each time it is enacted or performed. Rituals are never exactly duplicated, and not all rituals serve the same purpose. Some are primarily performed to affirm, strengthen, and maintain solidarity within the group; some are social markers of life transformations for individuals, families, or groups; and others address healing and the need for renewal. There are many categories of ritual: commemoration feasts or rituals (e.g., Christmas or Hannukah), which are usually held over a calendrical cycle, usually a year; divinatory rites to find the causes of illness, ask for healing, or prophesy about the future, which usually occur on an as-needed basis; and rites of rebellion, in which social rules and norms may be inverted to emphasize their value within a society. Among the most common broad types of religious ritual are rites of intensification, rites of passage, and rites of affliction.
Rites of Intensification
Called by various names, such as rites of affirmation and calendrical rites, rites of intensification are performed to affirm, strengthen, and maintain bonds of solidarity. These are some of the most familiar rituals to modern Westerners. Most of the repetitive religious services that are offered through churches, synagogues, and mosques are rites of intensification. These rituals tend to have a rather stable and repetitive structure that allows practitioners to follow along easily. If you attend or participant in any kind of repetitive daily, weekly, or monthly religious ritual, it is likely a rite of intensification. These rites define and indoctrinate individuals so that they identify as a religious community, even though there may be other ritual acts accompanying it. It is not unusual in state religions for these rites to create unity among believers across cultures and nation-states. A good example is the daily practice of Islamic prayer, or salat. Salat involves praying in the direction of the holy city of Mecca at dawn, noon, midafternoon, sunset, and evening every day, regardless of where the believer is located or even what they are doing. Salat establishes a direct relationship between the believer and God and affirms one’s membership in a global community of Muslims.
An Islamic congregation practices a rite of intensification called salat, or ritual prayer. (credit: “Istanbul” by FaceMePLS/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0)
Rites of Passage
First identified by anthropologist Arnold van Gennep in 1909, rites of passage mark social transformations in people’s lives and establish a change in social status within their communities. As a result, these tend to be the most anthropologically interesting—as they reveal things about broader social structures and beliefs. Associated most commonly with birth, puberty, marriage, and death, these rituals can be brief or prolonged ceremonies during which individuals receive instruction and preparation for this change in their lives. Gennep noted that there are three stages in a rite of passage—separation, transition, and incorporation—and that during the transition stage, the individual must traverse a threshold (limen in Latin) from their old social position or status to a new one.
The separation (or pre-limen) phase is marked by detachment from one’s previous status. While the person or people involved may be physically separated and held in a special place, the separation normally occurs within daily life over a period of time and is always marked symbolically. Some examples of separation are the formal engagement of a couple with rings and a period of preparation for the upcoming marriage; the process of catechesis, or formal religious instruction, for young people planning to be baptized or confirmed in a Catholic or other Christian church; and wearing special clothing or colors while mourning the death of a family member.
The transition (liminal) phase is marked by an ambiguity of status and associated with instruction and teaching. This phase is usually restricted to the period in which an active and public ritual transformation is taking place. The person or people involved, already separated from their previous status and identity, are now transformed into a new status. This is the most active phase of a rite of passage. It is highly scripted and almost always involves teachers, guides, or mentors who usher the individuals through the proper steps to a new social status. Some examples of transition are the marriage ceremony itself, the actual baptism or confirmation ritual in the church, and the funeral service for a loved one.
The reincorporation (post-limen) phase is marked by a formal public presentation of the person or people who have gone through the ritual. During incorporation, different symbols are used to express a new social status and identity. In this last stage, those going through the transformation begin to assume the rights, privileges, and responsibilities of their new social status. This might include changing their names, moving to a new location, or wearing different clothing. In many rites of passage, this is an extended period that can last from months to years.
Anthropologist Victor Turner (1969) discusses in detail the significance of liminality in rites of passage. During liminality, an individual is what Turner calls “betwixt and between” (95), without social status or standing, outside of the structure, and in transition from one social stage to another. It is a form of social death. Often, the individual will be dressed in uniform, unmarked clothing and follow behaviors associated with humility and anonymity in their culture. There is also an expectation of total obedience during the change of status, as the individual depends on ritual leaders (gatekeepers) to teach, coach, and mentor them through the passage. If there is a cohort of individuals participating in the rite of passage, such as an age grade going through puberty rites, the participants will share a strong sense of equality and social bonding among themselves, referred to as communitas. Through Turner’s research on the Ndembu of Zambia, anthropologists were better able to understand these common mechanisms of social change.
One example of a rite of passage among the Navajo of the southwestern United States is the Kinaaldá. The Kinaaldá is a traditional coming-of-age ceremony (a puberty rite) for young Navajo women that occurs shortly after a girl’s first menstrual cycle and involves her extended family and community (Carey 2010; Meza 2019). Typically, the ceremony lasts four days and occurs both inside a traditional Navajo house, called a hogan, and in the surrounding area, where the girl will periodically run to ensure that she has a strong and healthy life. At the beginning of the ceremony, as separation begins, the girl lies down and her family straightens her limbs and helps dress her and prepare her for the transition. During the days of seclusion, there are many different tasks as the girl is initiated into womanhood. On the third day, she and her mother will bake a corn cake called an alkaan, and then, led by a Navajo medicine man or woman, they will sing prayer songs all night until the sunrise. During the final stage of the Kinaaldá, in the morning of the fourth day, the mother washes her daughter’s hair and dries it with cornmeal (corn is a Navajo deity). The young woman will then take her last run toward the east, now followed by many young children, so that she might eventually become a loving mother whom her children will always follow. After the ceremony, she is reintroduced to her community as a woman and not a child; she is now considered a young adult.
Not all rites of passage are religious. There are also secular rites of passage, such as graduation or quinceañera, a celebratory birthday for 15-year-old girls in many Latin American communities. Sometimes the religious and the secular are intermingled, as in a marriage ceremony that is both civil and religious. Societies use both secular and religious rites of passage to mark changes in the life cycle of their members.
Rites of Affliction
Unlike rites of intensification and many rites of passage, rites of affliction are usually non-calendrical and unplanned. Normally classified as healing rituals or petitions for supernatural intervention, these rites seek remedy or compensation for the affliction. Whether directly through a shamanic journey or through the mediation of a religious leader, communities petition the spirits or deity for healing or a blessing. While illness and health in most Western societies are understood to be biomedical phenomena based on empirical evidence, in non-Western societies and in localized religious traditions across cultures, well-being is viewed as a relationship between body and soul and thus is believed to have a religious component.
While nonbelievers might refer to rites of affliction as superstition, a belief or practice that has no credible evidence for its efficacy, for believers, these religious rites allow them to plead for help and sometimes control the outcome of threatening life events. Rites of affliction, first described by vary greatly depending on the need. People may perform witchcraft and sorcery to determine the source of affliction, exorcism to remove the presence of an adverse spirit, or divination to identify the source of harm. Divination is a practice or test intended to gain understanding, guidance, or advice about an event or situation. There are literally hundreds of different methods of divination. Some examples include scapulimancy (burning the shoulder blade of a cow or antelope and reading a message in the burn pattern), tasseomancy (reading tea leaves at the bottom of a cup), oomancy (rubbing an egg over an area of illness or pain and then breaking it open to read a pattern), bibliomancy (randomly opening the Bible or another book and seeking a message in whatever passage is on that page), reading tarot cards, and checking astrological signs.
Pilgrimages are a common form of rites of affliction. A pilgrimage is a spiritual journey to a sacred site undertaken to address or appease supernatural forces. Appeasing these forces can eitehr stave off or remedy illness, misfortune, or other suffering in a person's life. A famous contemporary example is that many Muslims continue to complete a pilgrimage known as the hajj to Mecca. Historically, pilgrims arrived by walking, using the travel time and its accompanying struggles to focus on growing in their faith. Some individuals continue these traditional means while other devotees arrive by boat, bus, or plane, dedicating themselves to contemplation once they arrive. Many Muslims complete a pilgrimage known as the hajj to Mecca, an important symbolic place for Muslims because it was the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad. During the hajj ritual, the pilgrims will perform many faith acts, including circling the Ka’aba, a building at the center of the mosque representing the most sacred place, seven times clockwise to open the ritual; praying; running between the nearby hills of Safa and Marwah; clipping their hair; going east of Mecca to confess their sins and seek atonement; gathering pebbles to perform a symbolic stoning of the devil; buying sacrifice vouchers so that an animal will be sacrificed on their behalf; and then again circling the Ka’aba seven times, this time counterclockwise, to close the hajj.
Rites of Rebellion
A "rite of rebellion" is a periodic, ritualized event during which a society's norms and hierarchies are temporarily inverted or transgressed. The concept, developed primarily by anthropologist Max Gluckman, suggests that these rituals serve as a controlled "safety valve" to release social tensions without threatening the underlying power structure. Instead of sparking an actual revolution, these brief, cathartic expressions of rebellion ultimately reinforce the very social order they appear to challenge. A rite of rebellion involves a limited and brief suspension of social rules, which may include role-reversals between different groups, such as men and women or rulers and subjects. Although the ritual is rebellious on the surface, its temporary nature and prescribed format ultimately reinforce the importance of the normal social order. The participants reinstituted the norms once the ritual is over.
Incwala, a ritual found among the Swazi, a group in southern Africa, is a national holiday during which many social rules are suspended or inverted, allowing women to take on men’s public roles and men to take on women’s household duties in a public farce. Among the Swazi, this ritual is understood to illustrate the value of different gender roles in society as well as the importance of social norms in reducing social disorder. In the United States, Halloween is also a rite of rebellion, one in which children go out at night to beg for candy from neighbors.
Conclusion
The way a society is formally organized is called social structure. Typically, a society organizes a set of routine activities and objects in space and time to accomplish a particular function, such as community decision-making, the production and circulation of goods, or religious observance. Social structure is the framework for those realms, designating when, where, how, and by whom these functions are accomplished. Social structures combine material culture (such as buildings) with practices (such as meetings) and ideas (such as the rules and procedures of those meetings). Consider the social structure of community decision-making, or the political realm. In some societies, community decisions are routinely made under the authority of a person inhabiting an inherited political office, called a chief or king. Chiefs often have a council of community elders, the heads of local extended families. A chief is expected to consult with this council in all community matters. Other groups in society may represent the interests of youth, women, farmers, or traders. Each group will have its own leader who communicates directly with the local chief. Regular procedures govern how issues are raised and discussed and how decisions are taken. Together, the groups, roles, relationships, and procedures all constitute the social structure of the political system. Rather than seeing social structure as fixed and immobile, some anthropologists emphasize that people continually make and alter their social structures through everyday forms of interpretation, participation, and resistance. These processes mean that social structures are always subject to a variety of forces in a constant state of change.
Myth, religion, and ritual are fundamental components of human cultural life, shaping how communities respond to uncertainty, misfortune, and change—they help us to provide structures where 'real life' lacks it. These cultural features provide ways to interpret events that might otherwise appear arbitrary or threatening. Myths offer shared narratives that explain the origins of the world, the nature of human existence, and causes of misfortune. Stories are not simply fanciful tales; they are cultural blueprints that encode moral lessons, social values, and collective histories. They provide moral guidance and reinforcing the efficacy of ritual practices. They teach communities how to behave, how to interpret challenges, and how to locate themselves within a broader cosmological order.
Religions create shared frameworks of belief and practice that unify individuals into cohesive communities. Durkheim emphasized that religion is a social institution that binds people together around sacred beliefs and practices, transforming individual experiences into collective ones. Geertz’s definition highlights how religion establishes “powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations” by presenting symbolic models of existence that people experience as uniquely real.
Rituals give physical and social form to these beliefs and narratives. They are patterned, symbolic actions that mark significant transitions, reaffirm group identity, and address misfortune or uncertainty. Rituals are inherently social—even when performed alone, they connect individuals to a larger community of adherents. Through ritual, abstract beliefs are embodied, experienced, and transmitted across iterations and generations, ensuring their durability.
Taken together, myth, religion, and ritual form deeply interconnected systems through which human communities confront the unpredictability of life and maintain social cohesion. Myths provide shared explanations and moral frameworks; religion unites people through common worldviews and moral commitments; and rituals translate these shared ideas into practices. Even in societies (like our own!) where traditional religious affiliation is declining, mythic narratives, symbolic worldviews, and ritualized practices persist in new secular or hybrid forms.
Ultimately, these cultural systems help people make sense of the world, manage fear and uncertainty, and forge durable social bonds. They are essential not only for explaining misfortune but also for sustaining the moral, emotional, and social fabric of communities. Recalling that culture is a way of dealing with the world and with each other, by examining myth, religion, and ritual through an anthropological lens, we gain insight into both the diversity of human belief systems and the shared strategies through which societies navigate the challenges of existence.
Left: In the first image, fog represents the collision of warm and cold air over San Francisco Bay; it is a natural effect. Right: In the second image, the fog/smoke is artificially created onstage at a Rolling Stones concert to establish a particular mood and association. It is symbolic. (Credits: Left "Above the fog" by CucombreLibre/flickr, CC BY 2.0, Right "StonesLondon220518-82" by Raph_PH/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0)
