Myth and ritual
In traditional societies, myth and ritual are two central components of religious practice. Although myth and
Overview
The " Historically, the important approaches to the study of In the 1930s, Soviet researchers such as Following the World War II, the Ritual from myth One possibility immediately presents itself: perhaps ritual arose from myth. Many religious rituals--notably E. B. Tylor Leaving the sphere of historical religions, the ritual-from-myth approach often sees the relationship between myth and ritual as analogous to the relationship between science and technology. The pioneering anthropologist Myth from ritual (primacy of ritual) Against the intuitive idea that ritual reenacts myth or applies mythical theories, many 19th century anthropologists supported the opposite position: that myth and religious doctrine result from ritual. This is known as the "primacy of ritual" hypothesis. William Robertson Smith This view was asserted for the first time by the bible scholar As an example, Smith gives the worship of tanley Edgar Hyman In his essay "The Ritual View of Myth and the Mythic," Stanley Edgar Hyman makes an argument similar to Smith's: James Frazer The famous anthropologist Man starts out with a reflexive belief in a natural law. He thinks he can influence nature by correctly applying this law: "In magic man depends on his own strength to meet the difficulties and dangers that beset him on every side. He believes in a certain established order of nature on which he can surely count, and which he can manipulate for his own ends." However, the natural law man imagines--namely, magic--does not work. When he sees that his pretended natural law is false, man gives up the idea of a knowable natural law and “throws himself humbly on the mercy of certain great invisible beings behind the veil of nature, to whom he now ascribes all those far-reaching powers which he once arrogated to himself.” In other words, when man loses his belief in magic, he justifies his formerly magical rituals by saying that they reenact myths or honor mythical beings. According to Frazer, Jane Ellen Harrison and S. H. Hooke The classicist Harrison and Hooke given an explanation for why ancients would feel the need to describe the ritual in a narrative form. They suggest that the spoken word, like the acted ritual, was considered to have magical potency: "The spoken word had the efficacy of an act." [Hooke; quoted in Segal (no specific text cited), p. 72] Like Frazer, Harrison believed that myths could arise as the initial reason for a ritual was forgotten or became diluted. As an example, she cited rituals that center on the annual renewal of vegetation. Such rituals often involve a participant who undergoes a staged death and resurrection. Harrison argues that the ritual, although "performed annually, was exclusively initiatory"; it was performed on people to initiate them into their roles as full-standing members of society. At this early point, the "god" was simply "the projection of the euphoria produced by the ritual." Later, however, this euphoria became personified as a distinct god, and this god later became the god of vegetation, for "just as the initiates symbolically died and were reborn as fully fledged members of society, so the god of vegetation and in turn crops literally died and were reborn". In time, people forgot the ritual's initiatory function and only remembered its status as a commemoration of the Adonis myth. Myth and ritual as non-coextensive Not all students of mythology think ritual emerged from myth or myth emerged from ritual: some allow myths and rituals a greater degree of freedom from one another. Although myths and rituals often appear together, these scholars do not think every myth has or had a corresponding ritual, or vice versa. Walter Burkert The classicist Furthermore, Burkert argues that myth and ritual together serve a "socializing function." [Segal, p. 77] As an example, Burkert gives the example of hunting rituals. Hunting, Burkert argues, took on a sacred, ritualistic aura once it ceased to be necessary for survival: "Hunting lost its basic function with the emergence of agriculture some ten thousand years ago. But hunting ritual had become so important that it could not be given up." [Burkert (1979), p. 55] By performing the ritual of hunting together, an ancient society bonded itself together as a group, and also provided a way for its members to vent their anxieties over their own aggressiveness and mortality. [Segal, p. 78] Bronislaw Malinowski Like William Smith, the anthropologist Mircea Eliade Like Malinowski, the religious scholar Eliade goes beyond Malinowski by giving an explanation for why myth can confer such an importance upon ritual: according to Eliade, "when [ritually] [re-] enacted myth acts as a time machine, carrying one back to the time of the myth and thereby bringing one closer to god." But, again, for Eliade myth and ritual are not coextensive: the same return to the mythical age can be achieved simply by retelling a myth, without any ritual reenactment. According to Eliade, traditional man sees both myths and rituals as vehicles for "eternal return" to the mythical age (see Notes References * Burkert, W. (1979). " [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0520047702&id=APcX1KKHF9wC Structure and history in Greek mythology and ritual] ". Sather classical lectures, v. 47. Berkeley: University of California Press Further reading * Kwang-chih Chang, " [http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=91wi7XDF7ywC&oi=fnd Art, Myth, and Ritual: The Path to Political Authority in Ancient China] ". 1983. See also ;General: ;People:"In Fiji [...] the physical peculiarities of an island with only one small patch of fertile soil are explained by a myth telling how Mberewalaki, a culture hero, flew into a passion at the misbehavior of the people of the island and hurled all the soil he was bringing them in a heap, instead of laying it out properly. Hocart points out that the myth is used aetiologically to explain the nature of the island, but did not originate in that attempt. The adventures of Mberewalaki originated, like all mythology, in ritual performance, and most of the lore of Hocart's Fijian informants consisted of such ritual myths. When they get interested in the topology of the island or are asked about it, Hocart argues, they do precisely what we would do, which is ransack their lore for an answer." ["Myth: A Symposium", pg. 91]
Here Hyman argues against the aetiological interpretation of myth, which says that myths originated from attempts to explain the origins (aetiologies) of natural phenomena. If true, the aetiological interpretation would make myth older than, or at least independent of, ritual--as E.B. Tylor believes it is. But Hyman argues that people use myth for aetiological purposes only after myth is already in place: in short, myths didn't originate as explanations of natural phenomena. Further, Hyman argues, myth originated from ritual performance. Thus, ritual came before myth, and myth depends on ritual for its existence until it gains an independent status as an aetiological story."myth changes while custom remains constant; men continue to do what their fathers did before them, though the reasons on which their fathers acted have been long forgotten. The history of religion is a long attempt to reconcile old custom with new reason, to find a sound theory for an absurd practice." [Frazer, pg. 477]
"In imitating the exemplary acts of a god or of a mythic
Recital of myths and enactment of rituals serve a common purpose: they are two different means to remain in sacred time.
* Eliade, Mircea:
** "Myth and Reality". Trans. Willard R. Trask. New York: Harper & Row, 1963.
** "Myths, Dreams and Mysteries". Trans. Philip Mairet. New York: Harper & Row, 1967.
* Frazer, James G. "
* Meletinsky, Eleazar Moiseevich " [http://books.google.com/books?id=E5oa-sE8FzYC The Poetics of Myth] " (Translated by Guy Lanoue and Alexandre Sadetsky, foreword by Guy Lanoue) 2000 Routledge ISBN 0415928982
* Sebeok, Thomas A. (Editor). "Myth: A Symposium". Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1958.
* Segal, Robert A. "Myth: A Very Short Introduction". Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004.
* Smith, William Robertson. "Lectures on the Religion of the Semites". First Series, 1st edition. Edinburgh: Black, 1889. Lecture 1.
* Burkert, W. (1983) "
* Burkert, W. (2001). " [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0226080854&id=awwccCCL4YMC& Savage energies: lessons of myth and ritual in ancient Greece] ". Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Segal, Robert A. (1998). " [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0631206809&id=4_p4yf48N5QC The myth and ritual theory: an anthology] ". Malden, Mass: Blackwell.
* Watts, A. (1968). " [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0807013757&id=SysVuR-3bjcC Myth and ritual in Christianity] ". Boston: Beacon Press.
* Clyde Kluckhohn, "Myths and Rituals: A General Theory". The Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Jan., 1942), pp. 45-79
* Lord Raglan, "Myth and Ritual". The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 68, No. 270, Myth: A Symposium (Oct. - Dec., 1955), pp. 454-461 doi 10.2307/536770
* WG Doty, "Mythography: The Study of Myths and Rituals". University of Alabama Press, 1986.
* Stephanie W Jamison, "The Ravenous Hyenas and the Wounded Sun: Myth and Ritual in Ancient India". 1991.
* Christopher A Faraone, "Talismans and Trojan Horses: Guardian Statues in Ancient Greek Myth and Ritual". 1992.
* R Stivers, "Evil in modern myth and ritual". University of Georgia Press Athens, Ga., 1982
* SH Hooke, "The Myth and Ritual Pattern of the Ancient East". Myth and Ritual, 1933.
* HS Versnel, " Transition and Reversal in Myth and Ritual". Brill, 1993.
* Barthes, Roland, "Mythologies" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythologies_%28book%29] (Paladin, 1972, London) translated by Annette Lavers
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