Kayla Shahid
Pg. 74-94
Scared Ritual
This week’s reading is about sacred ritual. The chapter starts off by stating a specific definition for religious ritual. As stated in class, ritual can just be a general routine that is done consistently. Mantras are the sound of chants or tactile feel of water and fabric. It could also be aroma of symbolic food. A good example of mantras is when you go to church and they are using holy water. Ritual can be categorized in three steps which are also called the rites of passages. The first step is separation which involves removing of an old status like being a child. The second step is transition which also involves liminal stage. The liminal stage refers to not being in a specific status but being in-between of two different statuses. They are not completing finished with their previous status and not in another one yet. The last and final stage is reincorporation which involves getting the new statuses. Communitas is the stripping of a status which goes along with different status changes. There are different types of rituals such as society puberty rites, vocation initiation rites, marriage/funeral rites, life crisis rites and calendar/seasonal rites. Durkheim’s views religion as social bonding and sees religion functionally. It looks at it in a way to see what religion does for society. It also teaches individuals how to act toward each other and give gender roles and culture norms. Freud views religion as being equivalent to having a mental illness. E. B. Taylor was an anthropologist that believed that sacrifice involved three different stages which are gift giving, homage and abnegation. The first stage gift giver is referring to the act of kindness to the god or holy being (to be favorably inclined). W. Robertson Smith also puts purpose of sacrifice. He thought it was securing of a social bond. The use of the word scapegoat is differently defined. It is defined the belief that one person or animal can represent the whole tribe. Sacraments are expressed as rituals that are holy or sacred.