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INDIGENOUS RELIGIOUS Part 4: Individual and

TRADITIONS Group Observances:


Ritual
RITUAL: PROTOTYPE
Stylized, symbolic bodily gestures and actions
repeated in specified ways on occasions of significance
and in special contexts usually involving what
participants take to be sacred presences
LOCATE A NON INDIGENOUS
RELIGIOUS RITUAL FROM EACH
OF THESE TYPES
1. Technological
control nature
2. Therapeutic/Anti-therapeutic
control health
3. Ideological
control behavior, mood, sentiments
4. Salvation
control individual destiny
5. Re-vitalization
control collective destiny
AMERICAN INDIAN SUN
DANCE
Mechanics
1. Annual observance
2. Select cottonwood tree for sacred pole
3. Set up sweatlodges
4. Set up camp circle and Sun Dance lodge
5. Adorn and position sacred pole
6. Purification of everyone attending and esp. the
dancers
AMERICAN INDIAN SUN
DANCE
The Traditional Dance Pledges
1. Gazing at the sun
2. Pierced
3. Suspended
4. Dragging buffalo skulls
Other Pledges
5. Ear Piercing
6. Small skin excisions
AMERICAN INDIAN SUN
DANCE
As traditionally technological control buffalo
As revitalization promote Pan-Indian solidarity
As ideological promote an American Indian identity
and ethos
As a personal sacrifice of thanksgiving to the Great
Spirit
SUN DANCE 1975
INITIATION RITUALS:
IDEOLOGICAL RITUALS
Rites of Passage
dual processes of life and death

3 main cycles of initiation


1. Life
2. Nature
3. Status (religious office) Change

3 stages
1. Separation
2. Transition (liminal phase):space of death/chaos/rebirth
3. (Re) incorporation

Physical alterations as marks of initiation: scarification, male and female circumcision,


tattooing
RITE OF PASSAGE SYMBOLS

THE WOMB = THETOMB

Knowledge
Humility

Nakedness Disguise

Infancy
Death
Intoxication

Torture/Pain Example: the Bambara Kore (Mali, West


Africa)

Bisexuality
BAMBARA KORE MALE
INITIATION RITE
Separation
Boys taken to sacred grove (microcosm)
Stripped of identity
Transition
Initiates tortured by elders, return to infancy,
meditate in the womb
Taught knowledge (secret meanings, names)
Re-incorporation
Returned to the village
ANALYSIS OF BAMBARA
KORE INITIATION
Cosmic Dimension
Sacred Grove as microcosm with axis mundi at center
Initiate identified with the center of the cosmos and
returned to the primordial womb of creation
Initiate is taught cosmological knowledge: enlightened
in the processes of the universe
ANALYSIS OF BAMBARA
KORE MALE INITIATION
Social Dimension
1. Male role prescribed
2. Male role invested with meaning
3. Initiate is re-born into a role of authority
4. Male hierarchies supported and yet temporarily
suspended (communitas)
VISION QUEST

May serve as a male and female


puberty initiation rite
Serves as a source of direction
Serves as a source of power, esp. for
sacred persons (religious
authorities/mediators)
Facilitated by: fasting, prayer, and/or
psychotropic drugs
Balances individual identity
OJIBWA VISION QUEST
Ojibwa Vision Quest as Puberty Initiation
For both males and females
Preparations begin years before puberty
Ideological instruction before
Vision facilitated by fasting and seclusion
Vision granted by manido (spirits)
OJIBWA VISION QUEST
Social Dimension
Educates person in ways of the culture
Educates person about the roles, duties, and privileges of
adulthood
Educates person on how essential it is to live under the
direction and protection of the manido (spirits)
Prepares person physically and mentally
Cosmic Dimension
Person is connected to a manido (s)
Person acquires power
SACRIFICE
3 stages (Geoffrey Lienhardt):

1. Consecration/Invocation
2. Immolation
3. Communion/Purification
REASONS FOR
1. SACRIFICE
Exchanges and Thanksgiving: technological
2. Substitutions/ Atonement: therapeutic/(earthly) salvation
.Performed to heal illness, at marriages, during mortuary rites
NUER (SUDAN, AFRICA)
SACRIFICE
Consecration: area is charged with sacredness,
ashes rubbed on the back of the ox, identification
between sacrificer and victim
Invocation: God (Kwoth) and other spirits
invoked, intention and issues relevant to the
sacrifice are announced
Immolation: ox killed with spear
Communion: ox is consumed by participants and
Kwoth
Purification: area is returned to normalcy
NUER (SUDAN, AFRICA)
SACRIFICE
Social Dimension
1. Promotes group solidarity
2. Creates a space for reconciliation (atonement
sacrifice)
Cosmic Dimension
3. Sinful behavior is purged (atonement sacrifice)
THERAPEUTIC RITUALS: DINE
(NAVAHO) CHANTWAYS AND
SANDPAINTINGS
Navaho Sand Painting
Mediums for inviting the Holy Persons to aid
in restoring hozho
Paintings are combined with corresponding
chantways
Painting design is rooted in corresponding
myth Suffering Hero theme
Religious specialists, hataahtlis, animate the
paintings
Objective: restore ill persons inner hozho by
identifying person with the balance of the

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