Episodic Religiosity

Cultural anthropologist Harvey Whitehouse divides modes of religiosity into “episodic” and “doctrinal.” One relies on dramatic ritual experiences, the other on creeds, sermons, texts, exposition, etc.

In his book Arguments and Icons: Divergent Modes of Religiosity, he writes that in small, tribal, or breakaway groups, “religious life is focused around very infrequent, traumatic ritual episodes.” “Traumatic” seems rather strong, unless, of course, you’re thinking of adult circumcision, the knocking out of teeth, scarification, tattooing, etc.–and a lot of Whitehouse’s field work was done in Melanesia, where some of these practices are or were common.

But now here is an example of a traumatic initiation ritual. If there were other candidates besides the late Mr. James, we can be sure that they will never forget their initiation.

Archaeology of religion

May’s issue of The Pomegranate will carry an excerpt from archaeologist Brian Hayden’s new book on ancient religion, Shamans, Sorcerers, and Saints: A Prehistory of Religion.

A news release about the book from his university, Simon Fraser in British Columbia, is here.

A key sentence: Hayden argues religious behaviors have largely been shaped by our response to ecological factors, such as the environment, reproduction, survival and the use of energy sources, as well as ?an innate emotional foundation in humans that distinguishes us from other animals.

Archaeology of religion

May’s issue of The Pomegranate will carry an excerpt from archaeologist Brian Hayden’s new book on ancient religion, Shamans, Sorcerers, and Saints: A Prehistory of Religion.

A news release about the book from his university, Simon Fraser in British Columbia, is here.

A key sentence: Hayden argues religious behaviors have largely been shaped by our response to ecological factors, such as the environment, reproduction, survival and the use of energy sources, as well as ?an innate emotional foundation in humans that distinguishes us from other animals.

Archaeology of religion

May’s issue of The Pomegranate will carry an excerpt from archaeologist Brian Hayden’s new book on ancient religion, Shamans, Sorcerers, and Saints: A Prehistory of Religion.

A news release about the book from his university, Simon Fraser in British Columbia, is here.

A key sentence: Hayden argues religious behaviors have largely been shaped by our response to ecological factors, such as the environment, reproduction, survival and the use of energy sources, as well as ?an innate emotional foundation in humans that distinguishes us from other animals.

Archaeology of religion

May’s issue of The Pomegranate will carry an excerpt from archaeologist Brian Hayden’s new book on ancient religion, Shamans, Sorcerers, and Saints: A Prehistory of Religion.

A news release about the book from his university, Simon Fraser in British Columbia, is here.

A key sentence: Hayden argues religious behaviors have largely been shaped by our response to ecological factors, such as the environment, reproduction, survival and the use of energy sources, as well as ?an innate emotional foundation in humans that distinguishes us from other animals.

Let’s Hear It for Flax

The latest snow is melting, and two early perennials are showing new growth: wormwood, which is bulletproof, and blue flax (Linum perenne lewisii according to the Plants of the Southwest catalog).

Blue flax is a winner for gardeners in the Southern Rockies. It handles all weather: snow, severe cold, and hot, windy, blowtorch summer days, with a minimum of water. I planted some two years ago in a southwest-facing bed behind a rock retaining wall, where it is just scorched by the afternoon sun. Last year, the second year, it bloomed bounteously all summer, contrasting with the wormword and other Artemisias in the same bed–blue and silver together.

The comet that hit Chicago

On our last Amtrak layover in Chicago, last December, Mary and I walked up through the “Miracle Mile” shopping district and saw the ornate municipal water tower that stood alone, surrounded by desolation, after the Great Fire of 1871.

Now comes a suggestion that a comet, not Mrs. O’Leary’s cow kicking over the kerosene lantern, might have started the fire. From Discover magazine via Cronaca.

This history of the great fire contains a sentence that the comet hypothesis (multiple impacts=multiple fires) could explain: Before tracing the progress of the fire further northward must be mentioned the burning of the water works, and the curious or rather incomprehensible manner in which it caught fire almost two hours before the time that the fire first reached the north division across the main branch.

Dissoi Logoi and Flying Ointments

Researching the motif of the “flying ointment” in the early modern period for my paper for the Sophia Centre conference on consciousness, I had to turn to the Malleus Maleficarum, that lovely book on witch-hunting (and on the general female predisposition to evil) written by two fifteenth-century Dominican monks.

Studying the section on “Why Superstition is chiefly found in Women,” I suddenly realized that my recent attention to Classical Rhetoric was paying off. What I might earlier have dismissed as mere wordiness was actually the use of one of those good old techniques of developing argument from the use language itself, such as dissoi logoi or Aristotle’s “common topic of degree.”

Knowing what the monks (trained, no doubt, on Aristotle and Quintillian) were doing, I found myself more willing to sit back and enjoy their verbal display–honed over hours of preaching out loud, no doubt–despite my disgust with their larger world view.

Basement ritual

. . . and other memories. Yeah, this sounds familiar–and for a bookstore too. Thanks to Life on the Mississippi for the link.

Estonian shamanism site

With thanks to the dashing Odious and Peculiar, a link to a site on Estonian shamanism created by Aado Lintrop. Most of the links are in English, some in Estonian.

But Lintrop links to the dreaded Michael Harner’s site. Quick, call the Culture Police! (No, not them; I mean the ones that you might find down the corridor in the anthropology department.) Arrest him for felonious cultural appropriation and misdemeanor neoshamanism!