1-Basic concepts
1.1-Definition of religious anthropology
Anthropology of religion is a branch of anthropology that studies the origin, development and evolution of religious phenomena in different societies and human groups. Modern anthropology adopts a complete continuity between magical thought and religion and that each religion is a cultural product created by the community that practices it.
Religion, due to its universality and evolution through times and cultures, is a concept that is very difficult to define. It can be said that there are as many definitions as there are scholars of the religious phenomenon. But we can group them into three categories: historical, theological-philosophical, and anthropological.
Religion is in its infancy in charismatic movements, and in full development in fixing dogma and beliefs in the form of normative text.
1.2-Brief introduction to associated concepts
The word magic comes from the Latin magic, which in turn is derived from a Greek word, the main meaning is "fact contrary to natural laws." This is an art whose main goal is to surprise people by manipulating the perception of things, using words or movements that manage to confuse the human brain and gives the feeling of supernatural acts. People who practice this art are denominated magicians.
-Temperance;It's the self-control of a behavior among a variety of tastes, leading us to an inordinate enjoyment of the pleasures of life which they entail; recreation, clothing, time devoted to oneself such as sleeping, the way we talk or even laugh, it is called temperance that when we moderate our actions we contemplate an inner life of calm of thought and peace.
-Mentalism; is a philosophical principle that is based on the presence of a mental reality proper, of different essence and independent to the corporal one. In the psychological aspect this term includes any theory that uses concepts like mind, spirit, mental faculties, etc. as well as all the psychology it requires from meditation.
-Benevolence; it is a quality of the human being with which it demonstrates in society that it is good with which you coexist.
-Abominable; its meaning is cursing, boring. It is all that is considered evil, perverse, being the object of repudiation by people for violating established principles. In the Bible it is considered an abomination to deny God, kill, worship false gods, and so on.
2-Global religious historical and chronological evolution
2.2.1-Magic
Magic has existed since ancient times. The first time we heard of a magician was in Egypt. A papyrus called Westcar was discovered. In this papyrus appeared a magician named Dedi and who was in a palace in Memphis the residence of the pharaohs.
The trick told in papyrus was that the magician cut off the head of a goose and placed it on the ground. Saying a few magic words the goose walked again as if nothing had happened.
Even ancient magic is not really how we understand it today. Long ago magic was used as a measure to convince the masses. It served to scare people and to be able to control them in a simpler way. magic at that time was used to deceive and to take advantage of people.
Already in the Middle Ages a large number of actors emerged. You people used to be puppeteers, minstrels and presented different magic tricks that they mixed with songs and stories.
In the seventeenth century we find the first time that professional magic is used as a method to entertain people. In the following century, the variety theater was born in the 18th century. It’s an important time for magicians because they stop being considered fairgrounds and become professional artists who charge entry to entertain the audience.
We are already talking about modern magic. There is something that all magicians agree with. It was Robert Houdin who began to disprove the fraudulent magicians who believed that they were gods and that they had true powers. Robert was a giant step for The Magic. He was the one who installed the magician in a tailcoat and who acted in theaters of high social class.
He included in his numbers a different technology coinciding with the industrial revolution and was the one who produced great illusions through mechanics and electricity. It was this man who popularized magic as the art we know today.
That is why he is known as the father of modern magic.
Undoubtedly another of the magicians worth mentioning is Harry Houdini. This locksmith magician by profession influenced the whole world with his magic. He made his numbers heard all over the earth making him the best known magician in the world in his time and practically ours as well. He became famous for his exploits of escapism.
Today, magic evolves daily. Today's magicians, more than working in theaters, have taken to the streets and are on television, on the internet.
It is clear that magic is advancing by leaps and bounds every day and we have to climb the wave that this incredible art offers us. Magic must be a very important instrument to continue believing in life, to continue believing that the most important thing is to live with enthusiasm.
2.2.1.1-Types of magic
Like all practices in the world, this has a good side and a bad side and is that this art is divided into white magic and black magic. White magic has as its main function the well-being of individuals and those who practice it perform their spells and spells in order to achieve health, ward off evil and bad luck, as well as everything that can hurt a person. This was the official magic for many historical times.
For its part, black magic is composed of all spells that seek to negatively affect an individual's well-being and luck, thus affecting their health, causing accidents or loss of possessions, including of other misfortunes.
Likewise, magic has many classes that seek to perform supernatural acts in people's lives, among which are: Chactas, alibamones, santeria, shamanism, voodoo, candomblé (Brazilian voodoo), spiritualism , Wicca, among other classes that seek to elevate human experiences, either by worshiping God or worshiping the Devil.
2.2.1.2-Witchcraft as a profession
The most frequent use of the term today and almost always in feminine refers to people who practice black magic, but this was not always the case. This is because historically in both Europe and Africa and the Orient, divinatory arts, magic, and witchcraft were always practiced by men, except at the time when "demonic witchcraft" was persecuted in Europe during the Middle Ages, when witches were considered mostly female. It is with Christianity that the manipulation of hidden forces, traditionally in male hands - the only ones with enough power to perform charitable spells - become consecrated to female hands, the only ones capable of performing evil spells on parents. of the Church.
The idea that the main distinction between witchcraft and sorcery is that in the latter there is no pact with the devil is shared by other authors. Thus, while witchcraft uses herbs, ointments, and hallucinogens to produce suggestion in its victims, witchcraft uses empirical materials.
2.2.2-Ritual
To practice magic rituals we must keep in mind that we will need to have at our disposal all kinds of tools and fundamental elements so that they can be carried out; although if we are convinced that the desires we ask for during these magical rituals will surely do so as faith plays an important role in the practice of white magic and black magic.
Rituals are performed for various reasons, such as the worship of a God (which would correspond to a religious ritual), a national celebration (such as the independence of a country), the death of a member of the community. as a burial and / or vigil). It is necessary to differentiate between a ritual and a daily action that has been repeated for a long time, for example: after getting up in the day, open the windows. Rituals are sets of actions that are related to beliefs, so they are special actions, different from ordinary ones, although they can be practiced daily. Rituals respond to a need, that of realizing or reinforcing some belief.
2.2.2.1-Type of rituals
The rituals of purification, through which it is tried to clean of the impurities of the people and where the water plays a determining role, since it allows to make them worthy and deserving of the divinities that evoke. water medium: for example, ritual baths and baptisms.
Initiation rituals, which are performed when a person joins a particular group, such as a sect, a magic circle, a religion, etc.
The rituals of passage, are those that occur when someone goes to another special state in his life, as happens in marriage, at birth, from adolescence to adulthood or death. a person's life (birth, puberty, marriage, death); they are specific to each community and culture.
The rituals of atonement are those that allow those who perform them to be forgiven by their divinity after some fault that offended them.
Commemoration rituals are used to remember or celebrate a special moment, both good and bad. Funerals: related to death and the passage to another life.
The rituals of exorcism, are those that allow to move away the evil spirit of some demonic entity of the other world that comes affecting our natural surroundings. To remove the evil spirits or demons from some place or some person .
They arise in the shedding of blood: for example, circumcision for religious purposes or religious sacrifices.
· Initiation: Those whose intention is to symbolize and mark the transition from one state to another in a person's life.
· Relating to natural phenomena: spring, planting, harvesting, storms.
In some religions, rituals can be performed by any believer, while in others the mediation of a special person or institution is needed: the officiant. This is the difference between individualistic religions, such as the Eskimo religion, and community and ecclesiastical religions, such as Christian or Islamic, which presuppose the work of a priest or mediator.
3.Ideologies of recognized anthropologists and sociologists
3.1-Tylor's animism
He argued that non-Western societies used animism to explain why things happened. Animism would thus be the oldest form of religion, which would explain why humans developed religions to explain reality. By the time Tylor presented his theories (Primitive Culture, 1871), these were politically revolutionary.
It is based on the belief in a survival after death, where the first ancestors of mankind are considered deities. Two currents, one in Africa and another in America: a community of life between the living and the dead is proposed. Death is not a rupture but a passing. The dead still belong to the family. They are not afraid or worshiped. Another current, in Asia: the dead go to the other world that has nothing to do with it. This explanation, like that of Taylor, appears rather as part or complement of a religion and not as its origin.
3.2-Frazer's golden branch
"The Golden Branch," (1890) by J. G. Frazier., has been considered one of the most brilliant works in anthropology, especially considering that it was written at a very early time by this discipline of the social sciences. The knowledge they had been able to muster at the time was not much compared to that of today, and in addition it had to deal with all sorts of religious and racial prejudices that reached as far as the academic realms themselves. However, this classic work offers us an overview of human nature that is still valid and that manages to become fascinating.
Although it would seem to be an explanation of magic and religion, in reality, the author understands that explaining magic and religion is equivalent to explaining the human being himself, a company that carries out a form in indirect appearance, by means of a careful relation of documents, of judgments, even of mythical histories representative of all the historical periods during which a same instinctive nature of the human being in community has persisted.
Ultimately, magic, religion, and science are nothing more than theories of thought, and just as science has displaced its predecessors, so too can it later replace another more perfect hypothesis, perhaps some totally different way of considering phenomena.
"The Golden Branch" is remembered above all for its simple and relentless explanatory formulation of the phenomenon of human action in the face of supposed supernatural events.
3.3-The structuralism of Lévi-Strauss
Structuralist anthropology, or structuralism, is a theoretical current of anthropology. According to her, social phenomena can be approached as systems of signs or symbols, so the anthropologist must be careful not to treat them solely or primarily as events, but as meanings.
Thanks to Lévi Strauss many scientific researchers began to practice the theory that there are patterns common to all human life, which are manifested in all cultures, language patterns, myths and behaviors. Peoples who were previously classified as barbarians, and for whom an ethnocentric approach to our Western culture was used, despising other cultures, began to be recognized with fairer values. Oriental culture and other cultures previously considered primitive began to be studied in all their manifestations. Classifications such as those made by nature and the diagnosis of diseases were revalued. Lévi Strauss was more than half a century ahead of the environmental controversy, speaking of an ecological treatment for nature, which had never before been seen in Western culture.
Lévi Strauss's structuralism has its roots in the ideas of Marx's scientific method and Ferdinand de Saussure's linguistic protostructuralism. Lévi Strauss himself quotes Marx when he teaches that social science is no longer built on the plane of events, just as physics is not built on sensitivity data: the purpose is to build a model, to study its properties and the different ways it reacts in the laboratory, to then apply these observations to the interpretation of what happens empirically and which may be very far from the forecasts. On the other hand, Saussure found the tools to apply it with a modern scientific basis, as a mechanistic practice where human development does not count. It was precisely this idea that caused him a famous controversy with Sartre, the existentialist philosopher.
For Lévi Strauss things consist of structures that can be discovered and analyzed in detail. It considers that just as language consists of minimum units that are ordered according to a series of rules to produce a meaning, culture is communication and consists of minimum units that are combined according to certain rules into larger units that form a meaning. For him to break down culture into its basic units and to understand the rules by which they are combined is to understand the meaning of culture. It considers that the mind organizes the knowledge according to a logic of which our human brain is provided genetically and which is applied to different things following laws already determined by its same biological structure, which is what the fact provides to us of having been that privileged species of which we are proud in vain.
3.4-Malinowski functionalism
Malinowski's functionalism, according to certain authors, is of a bio-psychological nature because it is based on the fact that man has a series of needs (nourishment, security, growth) that are met by social institutions and cultural. He assigns an institution to each function. He was criticized for his determinism as he does not recognize that an institution meets various needs over time.
Malinowski is the representative of a very deterministic (rigid) functionalism, he states that there are different authors who consider that there are 3 postulates from which Malinowski's functionalist theory is based:
·Postulate of the functional unit of society: It is a very abstract-conceptual way of explaining. The functional unity of society, through this postulate Malinowski says that every constituent element of a society will be functional for the whole social system and therefore this system is fully organized.
·Postulate of universal functionalism: All the constituent elements of a society perform a function.
·Postulate of necessity: Each constituent element of a society is an indispensable part of it.
3.5-Durkheim's toteism
The Elemental Forms of Religious Life (French: Les forme élémentaires de la vie religieuse), is a book by the famous French sociologist Emile Durkheim published in 1912. The work analyzes religion as a social phenomenon and attributes its origin to security emotional achieved by the individual in living with others.
Durkheim finds that the essence of religion is the idea of the sacred. This concept is the only one that is repeated in all religions. For example, totemism was based on human beings linking their feelings to inanimate objects in their environment, to which they attributed superhuman powers. Other cases examined by the book are the rain dances of the village Indians, the Australian Aborigines, and the psychopharmaceutical-induced hallucinations.
The comparison of Durkheim and Freud around the subject of totemism aims to elucidate convergences and divergences on a reality that both raise as essential to the construction of the social and cultural world.
They understand that in totemism are the essential parameters that will continue in religion and that these characteristics harmonize the link between the individual and his community.
The analysis is carried out on his central works that realize around this thematic one: Totem and Taboo in Freud, and the elementary forms of the religious life in Durkheim, that arise in almost simultaneous form, 1912 the d 'the latter and 1913 -1914 that of Freud.
The main authors on whom they both base their work are the same: Taylor, E.B. Roberson Schmit, Herbert Spencer and Frazer, J.G especially the latter who in 1910 published a voluminous work on the history of religions.
The explanation given about the need that gives rise to totemism is fundamental to the general contribution they make. They argue that totemism arises from the individual for Freud and from the community for Durkheim. And linked to this, the function it will fulfill will be to integrate members into its community in one, and to collaborate in resolving a tension in the individual, in another.
The analysis of the concepts of integration and tension will refer us, to link with these, to others such as those of isomorphism and duality.
3.6-The Marxism of Karl Marx
Marxism has traditionally beenopposed to all religions. Marx wrote about this that "" the foundation of irreligious criticism is: human beings make religion, religion does not make man "and the phrase the end would become famous:
Religious misery is, on the one hand, the expression of real misery and, on the other, the protest against real misery. 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.
The reference to opium has lent itself to a vulgar interpretation as it is not - as is often assumed - a narcotic or a hallucinogen, but a narcotic analgesic. This misunderstanding of the contemporary reader has led to a frequent confusion regarding the Marxist sentence, according to which Marx would seem to despise religion. The full quotation reveals the reason for the reference to an opiate: he never intends religion to be considered a form of intellectual degradation nor a mere illusion generated by the ruling classes (non-Marxist interpretation that would suppress the idea that he had of ideology, that is, the illusion of universality within each class), but that religion is the necessary anesthetic of the whole society in the face of social alienation and of the oppressed classes in the face of their material conditions of existence.
In Marxism, the critique of religion is not a defense of atheism, but the critique of society that makes religion necessary. The suppression of these conditions and the full realization of human communion is detached from the biological condition. The philosophical foundation of Marxist rejection of religion has been linked to the development of dialectical materialism by Engels and Lenin.
P.d.; I did that because I love histoy and I'm about to finish the career (and finally become an archeologist). Hope you enjoy it, I'm gonna publish more if someone react positively about this one :P It's my first one...