Literature

Basic:

Charles R. Monroe. World Religions : an Introduction / Charles R. Monroe. — Amherst, N.Y. : Prometheus Books, 1995. — 439 p.

Supplementary:

Bryan S. Rennie. Reconstructing Eliade. Making Sense of Religion / Bryan S. Rennie. — Albany : State University of New York Press, 1996. — 293 p.

Primary sources:

Carl Jung. Psychology and Religion: West and East / Carl Jung : [transl. by R. F. C. Hull]. — Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 1969. — 699 p.

Émile Durkheim. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life / Émile Durkheim : [transl. by Joseph Ward Swain]. — Mineola, N.Y. : Dover Publications, Inc., 2008. — 456 p.

James George Frazer. The Golden Bough : a Study in Magic and Religion / Sir James George Frazer. — New York : Oxford University Press, 1994. — 858 p.

Joseph Campbell. The Hero With a Thousand Faces / Joseph Campbell. — Novato, Calif. : New World Library, 2008. — 418 p.

Mircea Eliade. The Sacred and the Profane : the Nature of Religion / Mircea Eliade : [transl. by Willard R. Trask]. — New York : Harcourt, Brace, 1959. — 256 p.

Rudolf Otto. The Idea of the Holy : an Inquiry into the Non-rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and its Relation to the Rational / Rudolf Otto : [transl. by John W. Harvey]. — New York : Oxford University Press, 1958. — 232 p.

Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo : resemblances between the psychic lives of savages and neurotics / Sigmund Freud : [transl. by A.A. Brill]. — Amherst, N.Y. : Prometheus Books, 2000. — 281 p.

William James. The Varieties of Religious Experience : a Study in Human Nature / William James. — New-York : University Books, 1963. — 626 p.

Unit 23

Primitive religious beliefs and ethnic religions

The aim of the theme is: to master primitive forms of religion, to grasp the mythological worldview, to reveal the peculiarity of eastern way of thinking and understanding of human, to analyze the content of such notions as non-causal connection, tao, karma and its moral dimension.

Key words of the theme: myth, ontology, cosmology, eschatology, karma, Brahman, sansara, nirvana, atman, Tao.

23.1. Primitive Religions

In his famous book “A Myth of Eternal Return” Mircea Eliade examines the primitive (prehistoric) society in his attitude to the realm of sacred. According to Eliade, myth is a story originated in ancient times giving explanations of natural events, seasons, the origin of race, nation and earth. For ancient society it was not something imaginary or impossible. It was not interpreted as a fancy. Eliade claims that myth has ontological meaning. It is known that ontology is the branch of philosophy that studies the being, reality and truth. Ontological level is the level of being, reality. The ontology answers the following questions: Does something possess real being? Does it exist really? Is it real or unreal?). A lot of myths, rituals and symbols of primitive society give us key to these ontological questions. For prehistoric society usual things of the world are insignificant because they do not truly exist, they are unreal. Only sacred realm possesses real being and significance. So the function of the ritual and myth is to connect insignificant and unreal worldly things with the real being. For example, a stone, a tree, or river remains usual, profane, and ordinary until we serve some special ritual. Only ritual procedure turns an ordinary thing into a holy one – a sacred stone, tree, a real sanctity.

The archaic ritual always should repeat some mythological prototype. All rituals connected with food, marriage, hunting, rituals of initiation should repeat or imitate the mythological prototype. It can be some deeds, actions that were once accomplished, performed by gods or heroes in times of creation. Eliade claims that this is a very special mythological time – “once upon a time”, time of creation. “Once upon a time” for archaic people means a primary time that had been before human history. So there is a prototype, model or pattern, which had happened once upon a time. We call it also archetype, “archaic type”. Every ancient city, temple, cultural phenomenon (dance, song, hunting) was deemed to have pattern, archetype in times of creation.

Myth of origin, creation and development of the earth is called the myth of cosmogony.

What is creation or cosmogony for the archaic people? It means a process of turning chaos into the cosmos. Chaos is translated as a “disorder”, with no shape and structure, something indivisible. Chaos is a non-being, nothingness, something that is unreal. To create for primitive people means to make order from disorder, to give world a being, start to exist. Most of the rituals of archaic society follow this archetype, the process of creation. For example: each war, act of conquest of the foreign land and occupying it is considered to be a holy war, a holy conquest because it repeats the myth of cosmogony (myth of origin and development of the universe). There is analogy between alien and foreign land of enemy and the chaos, disorder, non-being. There is analogy between conquest and process of creation, turning disorder into the order.

Calendar of ancient people also repeats the creation. The seasons remind the highlights of cosmogony. For example: Jewish Shabbat (day of rest and worship of God - Saturday) imitates the sixth day of god creation, when He had rest-day. Calendar is connected with renewal or renovation of the time. Every archaic culture had the festival or feast of New Year. It symbolizes the end of the old time and the beginning of the new one. NY-feast repeats the creation, the cosmogony once again. People endeavor to return to chaos. The system of society, system of do`s and don’ts is being ruined for one day. During this feast slaves become masters, priests can break some moral rules, dead men come back to their family and can speak to living. So, ancient civilizations had the myth about resurrection that would happen in the end of the world. It is called the eschatological myth. (Eschatology - branch of theology concerned with the end of the world and the history).

One of the symbols of the sacred is the Centre of the world. It can be Holy Mountain, the king’s Palace, the tree of life, the temple. All of them express the idea of the centre or axis of the world, so called “Axis mundi”. The world centre or axis connects the heaven, the earth, and the hell, the world of sacred and the one of profane. For example: the mount of Meru in Indian mythology, the mount of Sion in Jewish one. The centre is like the first place of creation, the place from which everything has been started. That is why the centre of the world sometimes is called the navel of the world. The ancient Babylon, ancient Israel and ancient Greek had their mythological centre of the world. The centre of the world is the territory of absolute reality.

The significance and reality of archaic rituals, of every deed must have prototype in the time of creation and all of them were prescribed by gods or cultural heroes.

Primitive religions were inherent in primitive society. Undeveloped doctrines and worship were typical for them, later they became the ground for more complex religious forms. All these forms are closely related and can not exist without one another.

Primitive forms of religion are the following:

Animism - (from Latin anima "soul, life") is a philosophical, religious or spiritual idea that souls or spirits exist not only in humans but also in animals, plants, rocks, natural phenomena such as thunder, geographic features such as mountains or rivers, or other entities of the natural environment. Animism may further attribute souls to abstract concepts such as words, true names or metaphors in mythology. Animism is particularly widely found in the religions of indigenous peoples, although it is also found in Shinto, and some forms of Hinduism, Sikhism, Pantheism and Neo-Paganism.

Fetishism – from fetish (from Latin facticius, "artificial" and facere, meaning "to make") - is an object believed to have supernatural powers, or in particular, a man-made object that has power over others. Essentially, fetishism is the attribution of inherent value or powers to an object.

Totemism - (referred to something kinship-related) - is a religious belief that is frequently associated with shamanistic religions. The totem is usually an animal or other natural figure that spiritually represents a group of related people such as a clan. Totemism was a key element of study in the development of XIX and early XX century theories of religion, especially for thinkers such as Émile Durkheim, who concentrated their study on primitive societies (which was an acceptable description at the time). Drawing on the identification of social group with spiritual totem in Australian aboriginal tribes, Durkheim theorized that all human religious expression was intrinsically founded in the relationship to a group. Generally, totem watches over or assists a group of people, such as a family, clan, or tribe. Totems support larger groups than individuals. In kinship and descent, if the apical ancestor of a clan is nonhuman, it is called a totem. Normally this belief is accompanied by a totemic myth.

Shamanism is an anthropological term referencing a range of beliefs and practices regarding communication with the spiritual world. A practitioner of shamanism is known as a shaman. Shamanism encompasses the belief that shamans are intermediaries or messengers between the human world and the spirit worlds. Shamans are said to treat ailments/illness by mending the soul. Alleviating traumas affecting the soul/spirit restores the physical body of the individual to balance and wholeness. The shaman also enters supernatural realms or dimensions to obtain solutions to problems afflicting the community. Shamans may visit other worlds/dimensions to bring guidance to misguided souls and to ameliorate illnesses of the human soul caused by foreign elements. The shaman operates primarily within the spiritual world, which in turn affects the human world. The restoration of balance results in the elimination of the ailment.

Magic as a means of influencing the world seems to have been common in all primitive cultures. There was considerable overlap between beliefs and practices that were religious and those that were magical, their mutual influence was significant.

Unlike other kinds of magic, religious magic usually involves requesting the intervention of a personal deity or deities - or often an impersonal divinity or spiritual force - to enact the desired effect. It is up to the deity in question whether or not to grant the request. In the case of an impersonal spiritual force, as in Taoism or other eastern or shamanic or pagan religions, it may require some specific religious or spiritual discipline, such as esoteric meditation methods or fasting or vision questing, to attune oneself to the divine power that is capable of effecting the desired magical change.

Some anthropologists have asserted that "magical thinking" is a form of proto-science or pseudoscience rather than a form of religious practice, most notable among them being Sir James George Frazer and Bronisław Malinowski. By this line of thought, early magical beliefs developed through a post-hoc fallacy - a supplication was made on the altar, and then it rained shortly afterward. Regardless of whether the supplication was the actual cause, it was credited with the change, and thus magical beliefs could grow. Magical thinking is causal reasoning that looks for correlation between acts or utterances and certain events. In religion, folk religion and superstition, the correlation posited is between religious ritual, such as prayer, sacrifice or the observance of a taboo, and an expected benefit or recompense. Bronisław Malinowski in his book “Magic, Science and Religion” (1954) discusses magical thinking, in which words and sounds are thought to have the ability to directly affect the world. This type of wish-fulfillment thinking can result in the avoidance of talking about certain subjects ("speak of the devil and he'll appear"), the use of metaphors instead of certain words, or the belief that to know the "true name" of something gives one power over it, or that certain chants, prayers, or mystical phrases will bring about physical changes in the world. More generally, it is magical thinking to take a symbol to be its referent or an analogy to represent an identity.