Search Results (12)

Durkheimian anthropology has so insisted on the primacy of the sacred that one scarcely pauses to think on what role the profane may play in the study of religion. This paper examines the cultivation of dead bodies in the Tantric ritual of shav-sadhana to draw out the element of the “profanation of holy objects” operative within religion. Based on ethnographic research among Tantric specialists in rural Bengal, this paper examines how impurity liquidates the distance between the sacred and the profane which opens a window on the role of mundanity in religious rites and beliefs. I begin by portraying the ritual act undertaken by Tantric practitioners in which corpses ensuing from sudden, untimely deaths are mobilized for spiritual advancement. The ritual and its mode of efficacy are evocative for using impure matter to turn the flow of human ideals away from transcendence to ordinary, human ones. This paper concludes with a snapshot of Kaliyuga, the last age of Hindu cosmogony and the most corrupt, to thematize how the profane forms a lure as much as a barrier to religion. Full article

Death is a painful reality that strikes and affects all human beings. Death knows no boundaries, race, age, gender, belief system or status. It affects the family; the social, political and economic networks of the deceased and the community at large. Death comes with different challenges that require coping mechanisms. While Africans from all walks of life use different approaches to help the bereaved deal with death and loss, the church has become the biggest role player in attending to this crisis. Although the church is a latecomer in the lives of African people in general, for the people of Collins Chabane Municipality in particular, it is given priority when death strikes. This article seeks to articulate how the church has become central to the death and burial rituals in that municipality. To that end, the researcher conducted a review of data collected through individual and focus group interviews carried out with traditional community leaders (local chiefs) in the municipality on the theme: The erosion of postcolonial African funeral traditions in rural South Africa (Limpopo). Full article

Slavic folk culture is a fusion of Christian and of pre-Christian, pagan beliefs based on magic. This article is devoted specifically to ancient pre-Christian ideas about death and posthumous existence and the associated magical rituals and prohibitions, which persist to our time. It considers the following interactions between the living and the dead: 1. the measures taken and prohibitions observed by the living to ensure their well-being in the other world; 2. the measures taken by the living to ensure the well-being of their dead relatives in the other world (including funeral rites; memorial rites; cemetery visits; providing the dead with food, clothes, and items necessary for postmortem life; and sending messages to the other world); 3. communication between the living and the dead on certain days (including taking opportunities to meet, see, and hear them; treat them; prepare a bed for them; and wash them); 4. fear of the dead and their return and the desire to placate them to prevent them from causing natural disasters (hail, droughts, floods, etc.), crop failures, cattle deaths, diseases, and death; 5. magical ways for protecting oneself from the “walking dead”; 6. transforming the dead into mythological characters—for example, house-, water-, or forest-spirits and mermaids. The material presented in the article is drawn from published and archival sources collected by folklorists and ethnographers of the XIX and XX centuries in different regions of the Slavic world, as well as from field recordings made by the author and his colleagues in Polesie, the borderland of Belarus and Ukraine, in the 1960–1980s, in the Russian North and in the Carpathian region in the 1990s. It shows that the relationship between the living and the dead in folk beliefs does not fit comfortably within the widespread notion of an “ancestor cult”. It argues that the dead are both venerated and feared and that the living feel a dependence on their ancestors and a desire to strictly observe the boundary between the two worlds. Full article

Many taboos and a high resistance to change are the hallmark of posthumous rituals and customs among all Slavic peoples, which has helped maintain their archaic nature. According to Slavic beliefs, in the otherworld, the souls of the deceased who were kind-hearted during their lifetime join the group of their ancestors who guard the living, providing them with prosperity and fertility. In return, living descendants had an obligation to periodically organize commemorations for the deceased, invoke memories of them, and make (food) offerings meant for the salvation of their souls. On the other hand, Slavs believed that the deceased who died prematurely or violently, or those who were dishonourable throughout their lives, became “the revenant deceased” or “the impure deceased” and could bring harm, sickness, and death to the living. For these reasons, people tended to prepare all of the dead—particularly the ones whose souls could potentially become members of the “impure” group—adequately for the funeral and to see their souls off from this world following traditional rites. This research is based on the presupposition that, among folk beliefs, customs, and rituals regarding the deceased (and their souls), there is a substratum whose archaic nature reaches back to the period when Slavic peoples lived together. These are folk beliefs and customs which appear in all three groups of Slavic peoples but are not related to any of the predominant religions, primarily Christianity, nor did they emerge under the influences of those religions. The sources used in the research include a published ethnographic corpus of data and scientific papers on posthumous rites among the Slavs. Also taken into account were archaeological, historical, and linguistic sources. Full article

Heresies are intrinsically intertwined with the evolution and inner growth of the very religions that denounce them. They serve as theological junctures, challenging and thus refining the orthodoxy of religious beliefs. The Pelagian heresy touches on one of the central tenets of Christian theology: the question of salvation. Pelagianism posits that human beings retain freedom of the will and, more specifically, the capacity to earn salvation through their own merits rather than relying solely on the grace of God in Christ. This stands in contrast to the predominant Christian view that Original Sin fundamentally impaired man’s will and intellect. A central tenet of Christianity is that through His suffering and death on the Cross, Christ atoned for humanity’s Original Sin and paved the way for our redemption. But what exactly made this redemption possible through the suffering and death on the Cross? Unlike many of the answers offered, Abelard’s explanation, also referred to as exemplarism, resonates with modern sensibilities: Christ set an example to imitate, and through this imitation, man learns humility and love. However, this stance faced criticism and was condemned by Bernard of Clairvaux as having Pelagian tendencies because it suggests that Christ’s redemptive work might not inherently require Christ’s divine nature. This study will attempt to defend the exemplaristic approach while ensuring Christ’s essential role and addressing criticisms against the Pelagian heresy. This discussion is further enriched by an examination of the Eucharist, illuminating the theological tension between symbolic and realistic interpretations of religious rites. Full article

This article adds to existing discussions on slave religions by offering the analysis of four post-mortem testaments left behind by formerly enslaved African women in nineteenth-century Salvador da Bahia to elucidate the different roles that faith and religiosity played within their lives, communities, and understandings of self. After contextualizing these primary sources within the relevant historiography on African and African descendant religiosity in Atlantic slave societies, it focuses on the centrality of baptisms, strong pleas for forgiveness, elaborate funerary arrangements, irmandade membership, and lives spent within the precepts of Roman Catholicism present in the testaments. It also considers the realities of enslavement and the Atlantic slave trade as important factors that shaped the considerations of freed Africans when faced with the imminence of death. In a world where life was fleeting, death became a major site for community formation, for the assertion of principles, and for exercising agency. The proximity of death and the realities of Atlantic slave societies shaped libertos’ considerations of justice and honor, as well as the final rites they required for their dignified passage to the afterworld. This article concludes that Africans in the diaspora constantly managed, negotiated, and enlarged the small spaces for self-determination, and for the preservation and recreation of identities and communities, with which they were left, while they also carved out other parallel spaces for themselves. Among these, Roman Catholic-derived religious communities and affiliations, and the continuation and creative adaptation of African religious practices, were of essential importance to the identities and community formations of libertos. Full article

European society has been described more than once as poor in shared rites of passage. The manipulation of skin seems to be an increasingly popular solution to fulfil perceived cultural gaps. Can contemporary tattoos be interpreted as tools of commemorating life events, especially in the occasion of births and deaths? This article analyses meanings associated with tattoos collected during two ethnographies in central Italy. Based on qualitative interviews and participant observation, the first fieldwork focuses on death-commemorative tattoos, while a 2020 (n)ethnography investigates birth-celebrative tattoos. Data confirm that the body is the mirror of the self and the skin works as the plastic stage where the embodiment of mourning and other emotions meets the social world. Tattoos are attempts of personalized spiritualities, where births and deaths become key-moments of existence that are elected pillars of the self. However, they are not (only) a private affair. This paper addresses the intersubjective valence of tattoos and their communicative purpose. In parallel with references related to both the self and the others, ethnographical data support an interpretation of tattoos as modern self-making strategies, applied to re-ordinate the past and to project a suitable self for the future. Full article

This article presents a new model of consolation that identifies five key themes: (1) an appeal to the inner strength of the consoland; (2) the regulation of emotion; (3) the attempt to preserve, re-write, and perfect the life of the deceased or, more generally, a person undergoing a radical psycho-social transition; (4) a ‘healing’ worldview, in which death has a legitimate place; and (5) reconnection with the community at the different levels of, for instance, family, society and humanity. The study is based on the Western tradition of written consolations. It partially confirms—and also supersedes—earlier studies of consolation based on different methods and smaller ranges of material. The article explores the applicability of the framework beyond the consolatory tradition by analyzing two versions of the Roman Catholic rite of anointing the sick. It argues for the heuristic usefulness of the model in the field of ritual studies, both by demonstrating the limitations of prevalent typologies of ritual and by suggesting a fresh look at ritual efficacy. Full article

Won Buddhism, established in 1916 by Founding Master Sot’aesan (少太山, 1891–1943), is one of the most active new religious movements in South Korea. When Korean society experienced a revolution in terms of values together with a swift transformation at the societal and national levels during the late 19th century, many novel religious movements emerged. Among these movements, Won Buddhism developed as one of Korea’s influential religions with an expanding role in society, both in performing the National funeral rites for deceased presidents and in the military religious affairs alongside Buddhism, Catholicism, and Protestantism. Unique interpretations of death underlie differences in rituals performed to pay homage to the dead. In this paper, I focus on the funerary rites of Won Buddhism. First, I will provide an introduction to Won Buddhism and subsequently give a brief overview of procedures involved in the death rituals of the religion. Finally, I will elaborate on the symbolism of the Won Buddhist funerary customs and discuss the deliverance service (K. ch’ŏndojae 薦度齋) as a practical demonstration of Won Buddhism’s teachings on birth and death. Full article

Rituals are embedded in a particular time and space, and so are their objects and meanings. The ‘chronotope’ we focus on here is the occasional—partly self-chosen, partly societally forced—ritual death of Hindu widows along with their deceased husbands. Although never widely practiced, widow-burning caught the imagination of Europeans as illustrating both Hinduism’s ‘barbarity’ and its ‘high conjugal ideals’. Although satī had been outlawed since 1829, in 1987 a new case inflamed opposing sentiments. In 2002, in a passage called ‘Ritual Criticism and Widow Burning’, Ronald Grimes drew attention to it as a rite of passage that calls for normative comments and ritual criticism. Since then, in circles of ritual studies Hindu, widow-burning has occasionally been repeated as one of the ritual practices in need of condemnation. In order to put this rare practice, banned since almost 200 years ago, back into a proper time–place perspective, both its ritual details and its sociocultural contexts are revisited. Finally, we propose some case-specific factors that could serve as retrospective ritual criticism. We conclude with a plea for time–space sensitivity. Full article

Doctrinal reasoning, the practice of chanting nam-myōho-renge-kyō and its vision for kōsen-rufu has been how Sōka Gakkai (SG) promulgated Nichiren Buddhism. This paper explores, in an in-depth anthropological manner, how doctrinal issues matter significantly in the meaning of funeral practices in contemporary SG. So-called Friend Funerals have become widely common and demonstrate how SG members’ understanding of death and mortuary rites differ in some significant ways from common practices in Japan. To understand why specific funeral rituals are not in and of themselves considered of primary importance when a person dies in SG, this paper discusses its reading of key tenants of Nichiren Buddhism. What hotoke or buddha means is commonly seen in Japan as something achieved upon death facilitated by specific funeral rites. How such views fundamentally differ in SG is explored here based on long-term fieldwork and participant observation, as well as interviews and review of its doctrine. The research suggests that SG members engage in a cross-generational endeavour for kōsen-rufu where personal actions—what could be described as the ‘political’ existence of this life—matters but in a non-dualistic way as this simultaneously becomes the sphere that ‘transcends’ that contemporary existence. How one views death is not only seen as something relevant at the end of life, nor only to those remaining, but is taken as a reality that becomes the impetus for giving deeper meaning to how one acts in daily life as part of a cross-generational movement. Full article

It is quite likely that the origins of prayer are to be found in ancient mourning and bereavement rites. Primeval ritual prayer was codified and handed down socially to become a deep-rooted feature of people’s cultural behavior, so much so, that it may surface again several years later, in the face of death, danger, need, even in the case of relapse from faith and religious practice. Modes of prayer depend on religious experience, on relations between personal prayer and political action, between prayer and forgiveness, and between prayer and approaches to religions. Various forms of prayer exist, from the covert-hidden to the overt-manifest kind. How can they be investigated? How can one, for instance, explore mental prayer? These issues regard the canon of diffused religion and, therefore, of diffused prayer. Full article