Religion

What is Religion? Universality and Definition

Religion is one of the most complex and fundamental of all cultural institutions. It is found in every known human society past and present making it a cultural universal in the strict sense. Archaeologists have found signs of religious belief associated with anatomically modern humans who lived at least 60,000 years ago: deliberate burial of the dead with grave goods such as food, tools, and red ochre suggests beliefs about an afterlife. Some of the artistic productions of modern humans after 30,000 years ago including sculpted female figurines with exaggerated secondary sex characteristics may have been fertility charms embedded in religious practice.

Defining religion has proved enormously difficult because the institution takes such varied forms. Edward B. Tylor proposed the minimal definition: religion is belief in Spiritual Beings. This formulation is broad enough to include animism, polytheism, and monotheism while excluding magic, which does not require the postulation of personal supernatural agents. Durkheim offered a sociological definition: religion is "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." Durkheim's definition stresses the collective, social character of religion and introduces the all-important distinction between the sacred and the profane.

What is of interest to anthropologists is not which religion is superior, but why religion is found in all societies and how and why it varies from society to society. The cross-cultural study of religion has generated some of the most sophisticated theorising in the entire discipline.

Theories of the Origin and Functions of Religion

Evolutionary Approach: Tylor, Marett, Frazer

The earliest systematic anthropological theories of religion were framed within 19th-century evolutionary thinking. These thinkers sought to identify the primordial form of religion and trace its evolution toward the monotheism of Western civilisation.

E.B. Tylor argued in Primitive Culture (1871) that animism belief in souls was the earliest and most basic form of religion. In his view, religion originated in human speculation about death, dreams, and trances. The lifelike appearances of the dead in dreams suggested a dual existence for all things: a physical visible body and a psychic, invisible soul. At death, the soul permanently leaves the body; because the dead appear in dreams, people came to believe that souls of the dead are still present and active. As souls became numerous and were worshipped on different occasions, belief in polytheism arose; following the logic of cultural evolution, polytheism eventually reached monotheism. Tylor described religion as a cultural universal, for no known culture was entirely without such beliefs. He also held that religion was a sort of proto-science: primitive peoples used it to explain natural phenomena that they could not otherwise account for.

R.R. Marett, one of Tylor's students, argued that Tylor's animism was too sophisticated an idea to represent the very origin of religion. Marett proposed that animatism preceded animism: a belief not in personal souls but in an impersonal supernatural force or power. The Melanesian concept of mana a concentrated, transferable supernatural force that inheres in persons, objects, and animals exemplifies this notion. A Melanesian chief was believed to possess abundant mana; at death, whoever assumed the chieftainship automatically acquired that mana. Mana could be lost through failure and gained through success. In Polynesia, mana was tied to political office and hierarchical rank: the mana of high chiefs was so intense that contact with ordinary people was dangerous, requiring purification rites when accidental contact occurred. Marett also drew on concepts like mulungu (supreme creator, Africa) and orenda (magic power, America) as further instances of animatistic thinking. His broader point was that religion began as a profound emotional response to the extraordinary not as an intellectual or explanatory exercise.

Sir James Frazer in The Golden Bough proposed a three-stage linear evolutionary progression: magic → religion → science. In his view, early humans were dominated entirely by magic, which assumed that nature operates according to invariable laws that the magician could exploit. Magic rests on two principles: the Law of Similarity (like produces like imitating an effect produces the effect; pouring water to bring rain) and the Law of Contact (once in contact, always in contact acquiring hair or nail clippings of a person and mutilating them causes the same harm to the person). When humans realized that these magical laws did not always work and that they could not control nature by their own effort, the conviction arose that higher supernatural powers governed the universe. Religion was born: magicians became religious specialists who propitiated these supernatural beings. Finally, the scientific stage superseded religion. Frazer called magic the "bastard sister" of science both rest on the premise that nature is orderly and controllable, but magic employs false laws. His scheme gave magic, religion, and science an evolutionary relation in which each was replaced by its successor.

Anthropologists such as Boas, Benedict, Mead, and Kroeber discredited the speculative evolutionary perspective, arguing that similarities in ritual and myth across cultures reflect cultural diffusion and contact rather than independent parallel evolution through fixed stages.

Psychological Approaches

Sigmund Freud derived religion from the psychology of the unconscious. He postulated that early humans lived in groups dominated by a tyrannical father who monopolised all the women. The sons, on maturing, joined together to kill the father; but overcome with guilt and remorse, they prohibit themselves from killing a totem animal (the father substitute). On ritual occasions, this original act of parricide was re-enacted in the form of a totem meal. Over time these early practices became transformed into the worship of gods modelled after the father. Freud's broader point that infantile dependency on all-powerful parents is projected onto gods has been more widely accepted than his specific historical hypothesis. The helplessness and dependency of the infant become the model for adult relationship to supernatural beings: when people feel out of control, they regress to infantile feelings and look to gods as they once looked to parents.

Bronisław Malinowski argued that in all societies people face anxiety and uncertainty that their technical knowledge cannot fully resolve. The most frightening prospect is death. Religion affirms the conviction that death is neither real nor final, that personality persists after death. Religious ceremony allows people to communicate with those who have died and achieve some comfort. Religion does not eliminate anxiety but provides a framework for coping with it. Malinowski showed that Trobriand fishermen performed elaborate magical rituals when venturing into the deep sea where danger and uncertainty were high but minimal rituals when fishing in safe, familiar backwaters. The more dangerous and uncontrollable the situation, the greater the role of religion and magic.

Rudolf Otto emphasised the emotional dimension of the sacred through the concept of the numinous: a feeling of awe, mystery, and dread before something uncanny and wholly other, which he characterised as mysterium tremendum et fascinans (a fearful and yet fascinating mystery). Religion, for Otto, is rooted in this distinctive emotional response to the holy.

Wilhelm Wundt held that religion is a projection of fear into the environment. Neo-Freudian Kardiner sought to show that the religious institutions of tribal peoples are projections of "basic personality structures" formed by child-rearing practices, extending Freud's insights in an empirically more tractable direction.

Durkheim and the Sociological Approach

Émile Durkheim's The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912) is perhaps the single most influential work in the anthropological study of religion. Durkheim argued that religion arises not from individual psychology or speculation but from the experience of living in social groups. Social life subjects individuals to powerful invisible forces custom, law, public opinion that direct their behaviour. Because these forces are largely invisible and unexplained, people experience them as mysterious and attribute them to gods and spirits. Durkheim's famous thesis was that society is the real object of religious worship: when people worship god, they are really worshipping their own society in disguised form.

Durkheim studied the totemic religion of the Arunta of Australia. Nothing inherent in a lizard, rat, or frog would make it sacred. The totem must therefore be a symbol but of what? Durkheim argued it symbolises both the clan and the clan's spiritual force, which is nothing other than the moral power of the group itself. This is why totemic rituals periodic collective ceremonies in which all clan members come together produce such powerful emotional effects: they are moments of heightened social experience, what Durkheim called collective effervescence. The sacred therefore derives from this collective dimension: sacred objects are those that the community has collectively marked off and treated with reverence and awe.

For Durkheim, the division of the world into sacred and profane things set apart and forbidden versus ordinary, everyday things is the fundamental religious distinction. The sacred involves belief in power or force; it is characterised by ambiguity (both attractive and repellent, helpful and dangerous); it is non-utilitarian and non-empirical; it makes moral demands on believers; and its source lies not in any inherent property of objects but in collective conscience. Sacredness is attributed by collective social thinking holy water is not sacred because of its chemical composition but because the community has collectively endowed it with holiness.

Durkheim described seven qualities of the sacred: it involves belief in power or force; it is characterised by ambiguity; it is non-utilitarian; it is non-empirical; it does not involve rational or scientific knowledge; it strengthens and supports worshippers; and it makes moral demands on the believer.

Guy Swanson extended Durkheim's framework by arguing that belief in spirits derives from the existence of sovereign groups groups with independent jurisdiction over some sphere of life (family, clan, village, state). Such groups are immortal: they outlast their individual members. The spirits people invent personify these powerful, immortal decision-making groups. Cross-cultural survey data broadly supported his predictions.

Functionalist Approach: Radcliffe-Brown, Malinowski, Srinivas

Functionalist anthropologists focused on how religious systems serve both individual and collective needs. They moved away from the question of origins to the question of what religion does.

Malinowski emphasised psychological functionalism: religion fulfils the psychological need for certainty and security that rational knowledge alone cannot provide. A mortuary ritual, for example, is intended to release the soul, prevent it from returning to haunt the living, and help the bereaved cope with loss.

Radcliffe-Brown offered a different kind of functionalism. In his study of Andamanese religion, he showed that weeping was practised not only in grief but on many social occasions as a means of renewing social relations that had been interrupted. His famous formulation: "Weeping is the affirmation of a bond of social solidarity." Ritual value is attributed to something not because the object is important in itself but because it symbolically represents certain aspects of social life. He showed that totemic beliefs and ancestral cults correspond closely to lineage structures and social organisation, demonstrating the tight fit between religious beliefs and social structure. For Radcliffe-Brown, religion integrates society and rituals create solidarity: "Every custom and belief of a primitive society plays some determinate part in the social life of the community, just as every organ of a living body plays some part in the general life of the organism."

In the Indian context, M.N. Srinivas's study of the Coorgs showed religion operating at multiple levels local, regional, peninsular, and all-India with rituals organised at the levels of family, patrilineal joint family (okka), village, and naad bringing solidarity and unity among different social segments.

Marxist Approach

Karl Marx viewed religion as a form of false consciousness that serves to maintain class differences and distract the exploited from the conditions of their exploitation. As an economic determinist, Marx held that religion, like other institutions, reflects the underlying modes of production. By focusing the attention of the working class on eternal bliss awaiting them in heaven, religion diverts it from the misery of earthly life and from recognition that they are being exploited by the ruling class. His famous characterisation: "Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people."

Maurice Godelier developed a more sophisticated Marxist account. Analysing the Mbuti Pygmies, he showed how they imagined the forest which provides all their food and sustenance as an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient kinsman to whom prayer and thanks are owed. The real productive relation (hunters depending on the forest) is transformed into an imaginary one (the forest as divine kinsman). Godelier argued that religion thus represents both real and symbolic action on real and imaginary conditions: real causes are transformed into effects of imaginary forces, and the transcendent causes are personified as an omnipotent being. He also showed that shamans, by mediating between nature and society in imaginary conditions, acquire power over their equals religion underwrites class differentiation and exploitative social relations even in small-scale societies.

Structural Approach

Drawing on structural linguistics (Saussure), Lévi-Strauss argued that myths reveal a grammar of the mind a universal psychology with a genetic base that gives rise to social structures. Myths are fundamentally communication systems; they constitute the medium through which the human mind works through fundamental binary oppositions (nature/culture, raw/cooked, life/death). In his structural analysis of myth, Lévi-Strauss showed that mythemes the constituent units of myth are arranged in contrastive pairs, and that myths across cultures share deep structural patterns. Primitive religious systems, for him, are symbolic systems: totems are "good to think" rather than merely "good to eat."

In the Indian context, Louis Dumont took a structural perspective on village deity worship, finding the opposition between purity and impurity at the heart of religious thought values that have transcended into the caste system.

Symbolic and Interpretive Approach: Geertz, Turner

Clifford Geertz proposed that religion is part of the cultural system a system of symbols that establishes powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in people by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with an aura of factuality. For Geertz, a symbol is any object, act, event, quality, or relation that serves as a vehicle for a conception. People act according to the systems of meanings they hold, and the anthropologist's job is to interpret these meanings. The cultural system both shapes and is shaped by people a continuous dialogue between meaning and action.

Geertz proposed the theory of thresholds to explain the motivating power of religious symbols. Humans turn to religion to overcome three critical thresholds. First, the threshold of reason: the limits of analytical ability why did this happen? Why me? Second, the threshold of suffering: religion does not relieve suffering but provides the psychological resources to bear it whether through the concept of karma or the promise of heaven. Third, the threshold of evil: religion provides the only satisfying explanation for why the corrupt and evil prosper through notions of ultimate karmic retribution or divine punishment in another world. It is only these religious explanations that motivate moral life when purely rational arguments fail.

Victor Turner's detailed work on Ndembu rituals showed that this society was saturated with ceremony life cycle crisis rituals and rituals of affliction all dense with symbolic meaning. Turner developed the concept of liminality (borrowed from van Gennep) and showed how the Ndembu use colour symbolism (white, red, black) across multiple domains of social life.

Social Functions of Religion

Social Control:: Religion serves as a mechanism of social control through both positive and negative sanctions. Every religion, regardless of form, is an ethical system that prescribes proper behaviour. When social sanctions are backed with supernatural authority, they become more compelling. The Lugbara of Uganda scrupulously avoid antisocial behaviour out of belief in ghostly vengeance by ancestor-gods. Belief in witchcraft in societies without centralised political systems also functions as social control: an individual thinks twice before offending a neighbour believed capable of supernatural retaliation.

Conflict Resolution:: Religion reduces stress and frustration that might otherwise lead to conflict. Natural calamities may be attributed to evil deeds in other villages; by concentrating on protective religious rituals, people avoid turning their frustrations destructively on their own society.

Reinforcement of Group Solidarity:: Religion intensifies group solidarity by enabling people to express their common identity in an emotionally charged environment. Powerful social bonds form among those who share religious beliefs, practices, and rituals. Those who practice a religion share in its mysteries; those outside are excluded. This dual structure of inclusion and exclusion strengthens group identity.

Cognitive Function:: Religion is psychologically comforting because it explains the unexplainable. It assures believers that the world is meaningful, that events happen for a reason, that there is order in the universe, and that apparent injustices will be rectified. A medical pathologist can explain that a child died of a malaria mosquito bite, but cannot explain why this mosquito bit this child. Religion provides satisfying answers to such questions through supernatural authority.

Emotional Function:: Religion helps individuals cope with anxiety, illness, accidents, and death. Because people never have complete control, they turn to religious ritual in an attempt to maximize control through supernatural means. Trobriand Islanders perform magico-religious rituals before long voyages; men in New Guinea put magical leaves across garden fences to paralyse any thief. Even if such practices do not work materially, they may provide the psychological confidence that improves performance.

Animism, Animatism, and Totemism

Animism

Animism (from Latin anima, soul) is the belief in spiritual beings. As a philosophical theory it is sometimes called pan-psychism the doctrine that all objects in the world have an inner soul. Tylor proposed animism as the earliest form of religion, arising from speculation about death, dreams, and trances. The dead appear in dreams as lifelike presences, which led primitive peoples to postulate a dual existence for all things: a physical visible body and a psychic invisible soul. Illness is due to intrusive corruption of the soul; the long sleep of death occurs when the wandering soul does not return to the body. As souls multiplied ancestors of the dead, spirits of animals, trees, rivers they became the objects of worship, generating polytheism, which eventually evolved toward monotheism.

Animatism

Animatism, coined by Marett, refers to belief in a generalised impersonal supernatural power over which people have some measure of control. Unlike animism, animatism does not require the postulation of personal spirits with intentions and personalities. Mana is the concentrated form of animatistic force: it is impersonal, transferable, and responsible for success and failure. In Melanesia, mana could be acquired by effort or chance and was not confined to elite persons; in Polynesia, mana was attached to political office and was concentrated in chiefs and nobles, whose bodies were so charged with it that contact with commoners was physically dangerous, requiring purification. Taboo the set-apart, forbidden status of the chief's person and possessions was the protective corollary of this concentrated mana. Marett believed that since Melanesians lived in conditions resembling those of early humans, their beliefs should represent the earliest form of religion.

Totemism

Totemism is a system of belief in which humans are said to have kinship or a mystical relationship with a spirit-being, such as an animal or plant. The term derives from the Ojibwa word ototeman, meaning "one's brother-sister kin." People generally view the totem as a companion, relative, protector, progenitor, or helper, ascribing to it superhuman powers. There is usually a prohibition or taboo against killing, eating, or touching the totem. Clans in totemistic societies typically claim descent from their totem.

Frazer explained totemism through his theory of soul: savages believed that after death, souls resided in plants, trees, animals, or birds. The plant or animal possessed by the soul of a dead person came to be respected, and killing or eating it was tabooed. Citing the Arunta of Australia, Frazer noted that totems were believed responsible for causing pregnancy among women thus totemism arose from the female side. As totems became hereditary, exogamy developed as a means of preventing inbreeding.

Radcliffe-Brown held that totemism was composed of elements drawn from different areas and institutions; what they had in common was a tendency to characterise social segments through a connection with portions of nature. An animal becomes totemistic when it is important in the social life of a group not merely when it is "good to eat," since many totems (crocodiles, flies) are dangerous or unpleasant.

Lévi-Strauss's structuralist account is the most influential modern treatment. For him, totems are not "good to eat" but "good to think" not valued because of their practical utility but because of the logical operations they facilitate. The diversity of natural species provides a model for social diversity: because each clan has a different totem, social differences mirror natural contrasts. But on another level, all totemic species are united as parts of nature, just as all human groups are united as parts of society. Natural diversity becomes a means of thinking social diversity; the unity of nature is used to express the unity of the human social order. Totemism is, for Lévi-Strauss, fundamentally a mode of classification a way of using natural categories to think through social relations.

In India, Stephen Fuchs documented totemic practices among central Indian tribes: the Gonds have a goat clan whose ancestors were saved from punishment for theft when their stolen goat miraculously turned into a pig; the Korkus have tree totems, as their ancestors hid under trees to escape enemies; the Balahis have snake and owl totems as these animals protected helpless infant ancestors. When a clan becomes too large, it may segment and each segment may adopt part of the original totemic species a tiger clan splitting into sections representing head, tail, claws, and teeth giving rise to the concept of a phratry (a group of brother clans).

Sacred and Profane

Durkheim's distinction between the sacred and the profane is the foundational category of his sociology of religion. The sacred comprises things set apart and forbidden objects, spaces, times, and beings that are treated with reverence, awe, and special care. The profane comprises everything ordinary, everyday, and accessible. The sacred is not an inherent property of objects; it is attributed to them by collective social thought. A wooden churinga inscribed with a totemic symbol is sacred not because of its material composition but because the Arunta community has collectively set it apart. Similarly, holy water is sacred not because of its chemistry but because of the holiness the community has attributed to it.

Almost anything can be sacred: a god, a rock, a cross, the moon, the earth, a king, a tree, an animal, or a symbol. Once established as sacred, an object becomes a symbol of religious beliefs, sentiments, and practices. Durkheim describes seven qualities of the sacred: it involves belief in power or force; it is characterised by ambiguity (both attractive and repellent, positive and negative); it is non-utilitarian; it is non-empirical; it does not involve rational or scientific knowledge; it strengthens and supports worshippers; and it makes moral demands on believers.

The profane is not mere absence of the sacred but its structural opposite. Profane objects, if they come into contact with the sacred, are believed to contaminate it; conversely, the sacred can harm those not ritually prepared to encounter it. The strict maintenance of boundaries between sacred and profane through taboos, ritual purity requirements, and the spatial organisation of temples and sacred places is a central preoccupation of religious practice.

Ancestor Worship

Ancestor worship is the reverence granted to deceased relatives who are believed to have become spiritual beings or to have attained divine status. It rests on the conviction that ancestors remain active members of society and retain interest in the affairs of their living relatives. The cult of ancestor worship is extensively documented in West African societies (particularly the Bantu), and among Indo-European peoples, especially in Japan, China, and India.

Ancestors are generally believed to wield great authority, possessing special powers to influence the course of events and to control the well-being of their living relatives. Their primary concern is the protection of their kin. They are regarded as intermediaries between the Supreme God and the living and can communicate through dreams and possession. The attitude toward them is one of mixed fear and reverence: if neglected, the ancestor may cause disease and misfortune.

In societies with patrilineal descent, ancestors are typically male. In matrilineal societies such as the Nayar of India or the Ashanti of Africa ancestorhood is bestowed upon the mother's brother, who holds jurisdiction over the lineage as lineage head. Ancestor shrines are commonly built, with regular offerings and sacrifices. Functionalists such as Malinowski explain ancestor worship as emotional reassurance against loss; it also serves as a powerful source of social harmony and stability by reinforcing the value of kinship bonds and continuity between the living and the dead.

Other Forms of Religion: Naturism and Fetishism

Naturism nature worship holds that the veneration of natural phenomena (the sun, moon, rivers, mountains, fire, plants) was a primary source of religious ideas. Max Müller argued that since the gods of various societies were originally personifications of natural phenomena, human perception of nature must have been a powerful agency in the origin of religion. Nature presented both terror and marvel phenomena that were powerful, regular, and yet inexplicable. The worship of the sun (as creator and sustainer of life), the moon (with its shifting phases and connections to water and fertility), mountains, rivers, and trees is documented across a vast range of cultures. Lévi-Strauss contended that religion involves the humanisation of the laws of nature.

Fetishism a term derived from the study of West African religious beliefs refers to the attribution of inherent supernatural powers to objects. A fetish is an object believed to have supernatural powers, or a human-made object that has power over others. In Auguste Comte's scheme, fetishism was the earliest stage of religious evolution, followed by polytheism and then monotheism. Fetishism is present in virtually all religions, though its clearest ethnographic documentation comes from West Africa and from Voodoo traditions derived from African beliefs.

Sacred and Profane, Magic, Religion, and Science

The relation among magic, religion, and science has been a central preoccupation of anthropologists since Tylor. Tylor saw religion as proto-science and argued that science and higher religion could coexist, but that animistic religion was antithetical to scientific thought.

Frazer arranged magic, religion, and science in a linear evolutionary sequence: magical thought (primordial) replaced by religious thought, then by scientific thought. Magic was pseudo-science a false application of the genuine intuition that nature is orderly. Religion arose when the failure of magic convinced humans that nature was controlled by personal supernatural beings who could be propitiated. Science finally superseded religion by establishing the correct laws governing natural phenomena.

Durkheim disagreed with this evolutionary scheme. He held that it was not magic that gave way to religion but religion that preceded and generated both magic and science. Magic and religion are not the same: religion is characteristically social and integrative; magic is individual and instrumental. The essential difference is that magic may be but is not necessarily social in character. Religion creates a moral community; magic lacks this social force. Durkheim further held that religion would persist alongside science because it serves a public function providing social solidarity that science cannot replace. Indeed, he argued that "scientific thought is nothing but a more perfect form of religious thought."

Malinowski synthesised the positions by showing that there is no primitive people entirely without scientific knowledge. Every craft and art requires careful observation of natural processes and powers of reasoning. Every person, no matter how primitive, uses both science and magic. The Trobrianders use rational technical knowledge for familiar, controllable aspects of cultivation; they resort to magic only for the uncontrollable uncertain weather, failure of crops, the outcome of distant voyages. Magic is not a substitute for rational knowledge but a supplement to it, invoked precisely at those points where rational knowledge and skill cannot provide certainty.

Myth and Ritual

Nature of Myth

A myth is a symbolic narrative, usually of unknown origin and at least partly traditional, that ostensibly relates actual events and is especially associated with religious belief. Myths are specific accounts of gods or superhuman beings involved in extraordinary events in a time understood as existing apart from ordinary human experience. The word derives from the Greek mythos ("story"), which can be contrasted with logos ("argument" a word whose validity can be demonstrated). This contrast has sometimes led to the equation of myth with falsehood; in the study of religion, however, the important distinction is between myth and stories that are merely untrue myths function as vehicles of religious truth for those who hold them.

Boas tried to understand social organisation and religious ideas from myths. Malinowski argued that myth is a powerful social force: it expresses and codifies beliefs, works toward the efficacy of ritual, and provides a practical guide for living a "charter" for social institutions. For Lévi-Strauss, myth is a logical model a cultural artefact in which the human mind, freed from practical constraints, works through fundamental contradictions. Myth provides the conceptual frame for social order but need not correspond with the ethnographic facts of social organisation.

Functions of Myth

Explanation:: The most obvious function of myths is explaining facts the origin of corn, fire, death, or the structure of the cosmos. A North American Abenaki myth explaining the origin of maize exemplifies this explanatory function; the narrative form distinguishes it from a straightforward intellectual answer and gives the explanation imaginative power and memorable, enduring form.

Justification and Validation:: Many myths explain ritual and cultic practices. A myth from Ceram (Indonesia) describes how the killing and dismemberment of the girl Hainuwele, whose body planted in earth caused tubers to spring up, validates the annual ceremonies of the people it provides the mythical warrant for these rituals. Ruling families across ancient civilisations China, Egypt, the Hittites, Polynesia, the Incas justified their positions by invoking myths of divine origin.

Description:: Myths describe what people can never see for themselves: the origin of the world, its eventual end, the character of paradise or the underworld. This descriptive function is especially important in traditional, preindustrial societies where no separate philosophical inquiry system exists myths form the primary available model of instruction.

Healing and Renewal:: Creation myths play a significant role in healing in some societies. Among the Navajo of North America, creation myths are recited when an individual's life is in jeopardy; the recitation of a cosmogony functions as a magical incantation. Similarly, the recitation of the Ramcharitmanas is believed to bring peace and healing in the Hindu tradition.

The Myth-Ritual Relationship

The relationship between myth and ritual has generated one of the richest debates in the anthropology of religion. Tylor held that myth was primary: myth explains the world, and ritual is an application of myth an attempt to produce effects given the supposed nature of the world. "For Tylor, myth functions to explain the world as an end in itself. Ritual applies that explanation to control the world." A ritual always presupposes a pre-existing myth; myth gives rise to ritual.

William Robertson Smith argued the reverse the primacy of ritual. In ancient religion, he argued, ritual was central and doctrine secondary. Myths often arose after the original nonmythic reason for a ritual had been forgotten, as explanations provided after the fact. Frazer and many 19th-century anthropologists followed this position.

Malinowski took a more nuanced view: myths function as fictitious accounts of the origin of certain rituals, thereby providing justification for them myth "gives rituals a hoary past and thereby sanctions them." But myths are not coextensive with rituals: many cultural practices besides ritual have related myths, and not all myths are outgrowths of rituals. The dominant contemporary scholarly view, following Stanner and Turner, is that myth and ritual share common paradigms structural templates without either having necessarily preceded or produced the other.

Nature and Structure of Ritual

Ritual is the performance of ceremonial acts prescribed by tradition or sacerdotal decree. It is a specific, observable mode of behaviour found in all known societies. As Gilbert Lewis puts it, rituals are "a category of standardised behaviour in which the relationship between the means and the end is not intrinsic it is either irrational or non-rational." Edmund Leach defined ritual as culturally defined behaviour that can be regarded as a form of social communication. Eliade and Rudolf Otto emphasised the sacred dimension of rituals that they express an encounter with the supernatural and therefore have a numinous character that sets them apart from ordinary actions.

Ritual must have a structure: it follows a given script, adheres to stringent rules, follows a time frame, and is usually repetitive or occurs at specific designated points in the life cycle or natural processes. It also requires a designated space and time, spatial organisation, personnel of specified ritual status, and a material infrastructure. Most of these have no apparent rational content; any explanation for them is always mythical.

Types of Ritual

Positive and Negative Rituals:: Most positive rituals are concerned with consecrating or renewing an object or an individual. Negative rituals involve avoidance the Polynesian word tabu (taboo) describes the category of things to be avoided or forbidden. Taboo designates those rituals that concern something prohibited and set apart because of its sacred or polluting character.

Rites of Passage:: Van Gennep identified rites of passage as ceremonies marking the transition from one social status to another: birth, puberty, marriage, and death. He described three stages in every such ritual: separation (the individual is removed from normal life, surrounded by taboos, given ritual status); liminality (the transition period the individual is betwixt and between, suspended in social space and time, neither in the old status nor yet in the new); and incorporation (the individual is reintegrated into society in a new status, with new rights and responsibilities). In India, the Hindu rite of being "twice born" exemplifies this structure the young boy who receives the sacred thread in the upanayana ceremony goes through an elaborate ritual viewed as a second birth.

Rites of Intensification:: These rituals occur during crises in the life of the group drought, epidemic, enemy attack and serve to bind individuals together through mass ceremonies. They ease the sense of danger, unite people in collective action, restore balance in social relations, and affirm the community's values. Annual harvest and planting ceremonies among horticultural and agricultural peoples are rites of intensification tied to the critical moments of the agricultural cycle. Funerary ceremonies are also rites of intensification: they allow the living to express grief in non-disruptive ways while providing for social readjustment after the loss of a member.

Durkheim's analysis of totemic rituals in Elementary Forms showed how collective ceremonies establish within participants a sense of oneness with the sacred totemic ancestor, reinforcing the solidarity of the clan. Radcliffe-Brown's structural-functional analysis showed how collective rituals reinforce social structure by emphasising socially important values food, relationships, events thereby reintegrating them into the social fabric and maintaining social harmony.

Malinowski's analysis of the role of ritual can be understood through the metaphor of anxiety management: all humans have rational knowledge of the tasks they must do, but uncertainty always remains. The role of rituals is to address this grey area the residual uncertainty that no amount of skill can eliminate. This is why even space scientists, despite the best material and intellectual resources, sometimes perform rituals at Tirupati: the greater the danger of failure, the greater the anxiety, and the stronger the pull toward ritual.

Kinds of Religion: Wallace's Typology

Anthony Wallace proposed a widely used typology of religious organisation based on the complexity of the supernatural and the nature of religious specialists.

Shamanic religions are most characteristic of foraging societies, especially in the northern latitudes. The shaman is a part-time religious practitioner who mediates between people and supernatural beings. Unlike priests, shamans are not full-time religious officials and are not part of a bureaucratic religious organisation.

Communal religions have, in addition to shamans, community-wide rituals such as harvest ceremonies and rites of passage. They are characterised by belief in several deities (polytheism) but lack full-time religious specialists. Common among horticulturalists; Australian totemism is an example.

Olympian religions arise with state organisation and marked social stratification. They add full-time religious specialists hierarchically and bureaucratically organised priesthoods. Olympian religions are polytheistic with powerful anthropomorphic gods gods of love, war, the sea, and death. Examples include classical Greece and Rome, the Aztecs, and several African and Asian kingdoms.

Monotheistic religions also have priesthoods but conceptualise the supernatural as one eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent Supreme Being, of whom all supernatural phenomena are manifestations or under whose control they fall.

Religious Specialists: Shaman, Priest, Sorcerer, Witch

Shaman

The word shaman derives from the native Siberian tongue, where shamanism is an ancient and well-documented tradition. As defined by anthropologist Michael Harner who conducted participant observation among Shuar (Jivaro) Amazon shamans a shaman is "a man or woman who enters an altered state of consciousness at will to contact and utilise an ordinarily hidden reality in order to acquire knowledge, power, and to help other persons."

The shaman is characteristically a part-time specialist found in societies with subsistence economies, typically nomadic or semi-nomadic food collectors. He or she mediates between the supernatural and individuals, working alone rather than as a representative of a group. A shaman typically learns from an elder shaman, undergoes an intense and often painful preparatory period that may last a decade or more, and claims to gain abilities through direct contact with supernatural beings often a guardian spirit that visits during trance, vision, or dream. The preparatory stage involves hard training by older shamans, withdrawal from ordinary social life, and encounters with supernatural beings who teach magical formulae.

The shaman's primary functions are divination (determining the cause of illness) and healing (curing disease through magical techniques). Shamans may also specialise in weather control, predicting disasters, and communicating with the spirits of the dead. Among the Ju/'hoansi of the Kalahari, illness and misfortune are caused by invisible arrows shot by spirits; healers who possess the powerful force called n/um (the Ju/'hoansi equivalent of mana) can remove these arrows in trance dances.

Two kinds of shamans are found: the Emotional Shaman, whose performances involve dramatic physical manifestations (convulsions, distorted features, rolling, foaming at the mouth as among Siberian and Ona shamans); and the Steady Shaman, who depends on guardian spirits coming in dreams for guidance and is not prone to emotional or epileptic fits (as among Californian shamans who converse with eagles, snakes, and bears in dreams). Both serve the community in their specific ways.

Typically, the shaman enters a trance state, experiences the sensation of travelling to an alternate world, and sees and interacts with spirit beings an inherently dangerous contest given the superhuman powers that spirits are thought to possess. In return for services, the shaman may collect a fee food, possessions or may be rewarded with prestige and social authority. Shamans often set themselves apart symbolically from ordinary people by assuming a different or ambiguous sex or gender role: among the Chukchee of Siberia, male shamans adopted the behaviour and lifestyles of women; among the Crow Indians, certain key rituals could be conducted only by berdaches (individuals who rejected the traditional male role, forming a third gender).

Priest

In societies with resources to support full-time occupational specialists, a priest or priestess guides religious practices and mediates with the supernatural. Unlike the shaman, the priest is a socially initiated, ceremonially inducted member of a recognised religious organisation, with a rank and function that belong to an institutionally defined position. The sources of priestly power are the society and the institution not personal gifts or altered states of consciousness.

A priest devotes full time to serving as an intermediary between the community and its deities. Different religions have different terms for this role: Rabbis, Ministers, Mullahs, Lamas, Imams. Priests are the keepers of sacred law and tradition, authorised to perform religious rituals designed to influence the supernatural and guide believers. In societies where a hierarchy of spirits and gods exists, the chief gods cannot be approached directly but only through the priest, who acts as the community's representative.

Priests perform periodic, calendar-based rituals related to agricultural cycles and seasons; rituals addressing disasters and epidemics; rites of passage for birth, puberty, marriage, and death; and ceremonies of political legitimation such as coronation. They are regarded as protectors of the community's ethics and morals and as symbols of the sacred, associated with shrine or sacred space where deities or spirits dwell. Anthropologists have observed that societies with full-time religious specialists (priests) are likely to be food producers rather than foragers, to use money, to have class stratification, and to have high levels of political integration all features of cultural complexity.

Sorcerer

A sorcerer is a magician who employs supernatural power for harmful, antisocial ends. Sorcery practices rest on two logical premises identified by Frazer: the imitative principle ("like produces like" a voodoo doll mutilated causes the same harm to the person it represents; a sorcerer imitates the symptoms of disease to inflict them on a victim) and the contagious principle ("power comes from contact" hair clippings, nail parings, clothing, and other objects once in contact with a person can be used to harm them). Sorcery using contagious magic requires people to carefully dispose of things that have been in contact with their bodies, to prevent enemies from using them.

Sorcery accusations reflect social tensions: co-wives in polygynous marriages, outsiders who have married into a community, rivals for political office or romantic partners. Among the Kipsigis of Kenya, the most powerful sorcerer (orgoiyat) could perform sorcery against the entire tribe, while a lesser sorcerer (bonnindet) targeted individuals; a separate specialist (chepsogeiyot) identified who the culpable sorcerer was in a given case.

Witch and Witchcraft

Evans-Pritchard distinguished the witch from the sorcerer in African ethnography. The witch's power is internal and often inherited it inheres in the body and operates through psychic power alone, without rites or spells. The sorcerer acquires the art of sorcery externally and uses specific techniques and rituals. The witch generally wills death and destruction; the sorcerer performs magical rites to achieve harmful ends. In Nupe society, witches were always women; among the Gwari (a neighbouring group with similar culture), a witch could be male or female.

Witchcraft functions as an explanation for misfortune: it provides the answer not just to "what caused this?" but "why me? why now?" the question of meaning that causal explanation alone cannot answer. Evans-Pritchard's classic analysis among the Azande showed how witchcraft beliefs were entirely coherent within their own logical framework and how they addressed the problem of contingency why a particular granary collapsed at the particular moment when a particular person sat beneath it. Witchcraft offers an explanation that leaves no room for pure chance and, in doing so, also provides the basis for remedial action. As among the Ibibio: even if a natural cause for illness could be demonstrated, the victim would still ask "Why me? Why now?" Witchcraft, and the suspicions it generates, reflects existing social tensions and often targets those already marginalised outsiders, competitors, those with whom relations are already strained.

Monotheism, Polytheism, and Dualism

Monotheism, the belief in one God, characterises Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The important distinction is not the number of gods but the uniqueness of the divine one god affirmed not as the logical opposite of many gods but as an expression of supreme divine might and power. The God of monotheism is conceived as the creator of both the natural world and the ethical and social order; God is holy, wholly other, and can be experienced as both mysterium tremendum (a fearful mystery) and mysterium fascinans (a fascinating mystery). Exclusive monotheism holds that no other gods exist, or that they are false gods or demons. Pluriform monotheism holds that the various gods of a pantheon are manifestations of one divine substance as in certain phases of Hinduism or the Oglala Sioux system, in which 16 gods divided into four groups form four gods, which are again one God (Wakan Tanka, the Great Spirit).

Polytheism, characterising virtually all religions other than the three Abrahamic traditions, holds that many gods exist. Sometimes a supreme creator god stands above the pantheon, as in certain forms of Hinduism; in other cases, all gods are coequal. The weakness of polytheism lies in the realm of questions about ultimate origins; the weakness of monotheism lies in explaining the origin of evil under the government of an all-powerful benevolent deity.

Dualism holds that the universe comprises two basic and usually opposed principles good and evil, spirit and matter. The most important instance is Zoroastrianism, in which Ahura Mazdā (the good, wise Lord) and Ahriman (the destructive spirit) are implacable enemies. Lévi-Strauss argued that the tendency toward dual organisation reflects the binary oppositions intrinsic to the human mind's perception of the world.