Religion and society

1
Religion and society

• 3rd lecture Initiation in Ancient and Modern
  Societies. Eliade 2.

2
The world-view of the Ancient and the modern man

• The most important difference between the
  world-view of Ancient, pre-modern and modern,
  non-religious men is that the world of the former
  was organized by the sacred, and from the world
  of the modern man the sacred disappeared.
• A world which was organized by the sacred
  comprised centers in space, time, life (in
  everyday practical duties) and in society. A
  world which lacks for the sacred, that is to say
  a secular world, does not know such centers.
• In brief the world of Ancient man is
  inhomogeneous. The world of the modern man is
  homogeneous. (World here world-view). The
  homogeneous world is the world of natural
  sciences. It is an achievement of a long
  historical and cultural process.

3
The concept of initiation

• For the Ancient man the procedures of initiations
  served to initiate members of the community into
  the sacred dimensions of the world.
• Initiation is a rite of passage ceremony marking
  entrance or acceptance into a group or society.
  It could also be a formal admission to adulthood
  in a community or one of its formal components.
  In an extended sense it can also signify a
  transformation in which the initiate is 'reborn'
  into a new role.
• Examples of initiation ceremonies might include
  Hindu diksha, Christian baptism or confirmation,
  Jewish bar or bat mitzvah, acceptance into a
  fraternal organization, secret society or
  religious order, or graduation from school or
  recruit training.
• A person taking the initiation ceremony in
  traditional rites, such as those depicted in
  these pictures, is called an initiate or
  initiand.
• Wikipedia, Initiation
• Modern world still have the reminiscences of
  ancient ritual initiations, such as adult
  initiations, Gang initiations, initiations of a
  school, College or University, marriage.

4
Spiritual initiation

• A spiritual initiation rite normally implies a
  shepherding process where those who are at a
  higher level guide the initiate through a process
  of greater exposure of knowledge. This may
  include the revelation of secrets, hence the term
  secret society for such organizations, usually
  reserved for those at the higher level of
  understanding. One famous historical example is
  the Eleusinian Mysteries of ancient Greece,
  thought to go back to at least the Mycenaean
  period or "bronze age".
• Wikipedia, Religious and other spiritual
  initiations

5
Eliade concerning Initiation

• It has been often said that one of the
  characteristics of the modern world is the
  disappearance of any meaningful rites of
  initiation. Of primary importance in traditional
  societies, in the modern Western world
  significant initiation is practically
  nonexistent. To be sure the several Christian
  communities preserve, in varying degrees,
  vestiges of a mistery that is initiatory in
  structure. Baptism is an initiatory rite
  ordination to the priesthood comprises an
  initiation. But it must not be forgotten that
  Christianity triumphed in the world and became a
  universal religion only because it detached
  itself from the climate of the Greco-Oriental
  mysteries and proclaimed itself a religion of
  Salvation accessible to all.
• Eliade, Rites and Symbols of Initiation The
  Mysteries of Birth and Rebirth, Spring
  Publications, 2009 ix.

6
Eliade on Initiation

• Mircea Eliade discussed initiation as a principal
  religious act by classical or traditional
  societies. He defined initiation as "a basic
  change in existential condition," which liberates
  man from profane time and history. "Initiation
  recapitulates the sacred history of the world.
  And through this recapitulation, the whole world
  is sanctified anew... the initiand can perceive
  the world as a sacred work, a creation of the
  Gods.
• Wikipedia, Initiation, Eliade

7
Reasons for and functions of Initiation

• "this real valuation of ritual death finally led
  to conquest of the fear of real death."
• "initiation's function is to reveal the deep
  meaning of existence to the new generations and
  to help them assume the responsibility of being
  truly men and hence of participating in culture."
  
• "it reveals a world open to the trans-human, a
  world that, in our philosophical terminology, we
  should call transcendental."
• "to make the initiand open to spiritual
  values."

8
Types of initiation

• Eliade differentiates between types of
  initiations in two ways types and functions.
  Types
• 1. Puberty Rites- "collective rituals whose
  function is to effect the transition from
  childhood or adolescence to adulthood." They
  represent "above all the revelation of the
  sacred."
• 2. Entering into a Secret Society-
• 3. Mystical Vocation- "the vocation of a medicine
  man or a shaman." This is limited to the few who
  are "destined to participate in a more intense
  religious experience than is accessible to the
  rest of the community."
• These can be broken into two types. Functions
• puberty rites, "by virtue of which adolescents
  gain access to the sacred, to knowledge, and to
  sexuality-- by which, in short, they become human
  beings."
• specialized initiations, which certain
  individuals undergo in order to transcend their
  human condition and become protégés of the
  Supernatural Beings or even their equals."

9
Psychological effects of initiations

• Laboratory experiments in psychology have shown
  that severe initiations produce cognitive
  dissonance. Dissonance is then thought to produce
  feelings of strong group attraction among
  initiates after the experience, because they want
  to justify the effort used. Rewards during
  initiations have important consequences in that
  initiates who feel more rewarded express stronger
  group identity. As well as group attraction,
  initiations can also produce conformity among new
  members. Psychology experiments have also shown
  that initiations increase feelings of
  affiliation
• Wikipedia, Initiation

10
Sacred History

• The myths of origins of a particular traditional
  community refer to a sort of sacred history. The
  members of the community in question lived in the
  shadow of this sacred history, which was for them
  the origin of space, time, life, world and even
  gods and deities. The myths of origin narrated
  the fundamental structure of the world, and they
  explained for the traditional man why he or she
  should live in such a way in which he or she
  actually lives.

11
Mythology, culture and language in traditional
societies

• Karl Kerenyi quotes in his work concerning
  Ancient Greek mythology the case of Sir George
  Grey several times.
• Sir George Grey was sent by the British
  Government to New Zealand in 1845 to administer
  the affairs of the Government there.
• He was not able to communicate with the natives,
  not even by the help of translators. Soon he
  discovered that in order to understand the native
  people there, he had to learn their language too
  himself.
• Many words, expressions and idiomatic turns in
  the native Polynesian language referred to
  ancient myths, tales and narratives of the
  community. In order to understand what were those
  people actually talking about, he had to learn
  their complete mythology.

12
Language and mythology

• After these studies and investigations, after
  learning the language of Polynesian native people
  properly, Sir George Grey published his book in
  1855, under the title Polynesian mythology and
  ancient traditional history of the New Zealand
  race as furnished by their priests and chiefs.
• We find that the language of a people contains
  the complete cultural and social history of the
  people in a condensed, sedimented form.
• To every natural language belongs a history, a
  culture, a mythology, a set of folk customs,
  rituals, rites, even a geography of the land of
  people in question.
• In order to know the language, the culture of a
  people, we should also get acquainted with these
  layers of cultural memory and history.

13
Circular and linear history in mythical view of
world

• In Eliades opinion the circular conception of
  time and history is an essential characteristic
  of traditional, primitive, pre-modern societies.
• According to him the linear conception of history
  is the result of the eschatological and
  apocalyptical views of Western monotheistic
  religions, such as Judaism, Christianity and
  Islam.
• Linear conception of history an image of history
  according to which history takes the form of
  linear narrative with a peculiar form of
  development, so such a narrative which has a
  beginning, a central point or an axis and an
  end-point.

14
Exceptions

• In real there are no such rigid, inflexible and
  closed forms of views concerning history as
  Eliade thought. That is to say there are
  exceptions of circular conceptions of history and
  time in traditional, pre-modern communities.
• There are also mixtures of linear and circular
  view of time and history in traditional
  societies, though in most of them the motive of
  circularitiy is indeed very characteristic and
  very strong.
• Examples of exceptions Ragnarök in Poetic and
  Prose Edda in Norse mythology. Buddhist
  Eschatology.

15
Ragnarök

• Brothers will fight
• and kill each other,
• sisters' children
• will defile kinship.
• It is harsh in the world,
• whoredom rife
• an axe age, a sword age
• shields are riven
• a wind age, a wolf age
• before the world goes headlong.
• No man will have
• mercy on another.
• Note it was found in a 13th Century compilation
  of the Edda, so some researchers claim that it is
  the result of Christian influence.

16
Buddhist Eschatology

• Buddha described his teachings disappearing five
  thousand years from when he preached them,
  corresponding approximately to the year 2300. At
  this time, knowledge of dharma will be lost as
  well. The last of his relics will be gathered in
  Bodh Gaya and cremated. There will be a new era
  in which the next Buddha Maitreya will appear,
  but it will be preceded by the degeneration of
  human society. This will be a period of greed,
  lust, poverty, ill will, violence, murder,
  impiety, physical weakness, sexual depravity and
  societal collapse, and even the Buddha himself
  will be forgotten
• Wikipedia, Buddhist eschatology

17
Buddhist Eschatology 2.

• The earliest mention of Maitreya is in the
  Cakavatti (Sihanada) Sutta in Digha Nikaya 26 of
  the Pali Canon. In it, Gautama Buddha predicted
  that his teachings of dharma would be forgotten
  after 5,000 years.
• At that period, brethren, there will arise in
  the world an Exalted One named Maitreya, Fully
  Awakened, abounding in wisdom and goodness,
  happy, with knowledge of the worlds, unsurpas-sed
  as a guide to mortals willing to be led, a
  teacher for gods and men, an Exalted One, a
  Buddha, even as I am now. He, by himself, will
  thoroughly know and see, as it were face to face,
  this universe, with Its worlds of the spirits,
  Its Brahmas and Its Maras, and Its world of
  recluses and Brahmins, of princes and peoples,
  even as I now, by myself, thoroughly know and see
  them
• Digha Nikaya, 26.

18
Initiation as existential transformation

• For traditional, Ancient societies, initiation
  was a form of ritual death and rebirth.
• The event of biological birth (which, on its own
  turn, had a sacred character too) must be
  proceeded by a sacred death and sacred birth
  (rebirth) in puberty rites a death to the
  childhood and the birth in the adulthood.
• Rites of initiation meant entering into the
  domain of sacred or the domain of the
  transcendent. For this reason the rite was 1.
  either usually (almost always) lead by a
  spiritual leader, by a person who was already
  initiated into this transcendent domain, so he or
  she could show the way into this domain, 2. or by
  a transcendent, supernatural being himself or
  herself by a spirit or a deity.
• Example the initiation of Jacob by an angel in
  the Bible.

19
Cosmos as a world of rituals

• In Eliades interpretation the world of the
  Ancient man had two fundamentally separated
  domains a cosmic and a chaotic part.
• Cosmos (Greek world) was an essentially
  articulated, familiar, well-known domain. The
  world for the Ancient man appeared as an
  essentially structured, articulated familiar
  world. It was being.
• Chaos (Greek abyss, rupture) on the contrary
  was just the opposite of world. It was an unknown
  domain beyond the world, it was unarticulated,
  unstructured, messy, ungraspable domain. It was
  strictly speaking non-being.
• Rituals, rites, initiations as cultural codes
  formed the familiar world of traditional man. The
  world outside or beyond these cultural codes was
  a sort of other-world.

20
Manifestation of ethnocentrism in Ancient rituals
and rites

• Ethnocentrism is judging another culture solely
  by the values and standards of one's own culture.
  The ethnocentric individual will judge other
  groups relative to his or her own particular
  ethnic group or culture, especially with concern
  to language, behavior, customs, and religion.
  These ethnic distinctions and subdivisions serve
  to define each ethnicity's unique cultural
  identity. Ethnocentrism may be overt or subtle,
  and while it is considered a natural proclivity
  of human psychology, it has developed a generally
  negative connotation.
• The place of inhabitation of the traditional
  community in question was the center of the
  world. The rules of rites, rituals, initiations
  and everyday praxis were the rules and laws of
  the world itself. A domain which was unbounded by
  these rules and law did not even count as world
  for traditional communities. The members of the
  community, of the group counted as members of
  mankind, everybody else who did not share the
  cultural codes, the symbols, the myths, etc.
  counted as subhumans, uncivilized, barbaric
  people or even demonic creatures.

21
Reinhart Koselleck and The Historical-Political
Semantics of Asymmetric Counterconcepts

• The historian Reinhart Koselleck called
  counterconcepts those cultural codes by which
  cultures, communities, religions and peoples
  defined themselved in opposition with (every)
  other cultures, religions, peoples, etc.
• It is a cultural manifestation of ethnocentrism
  (which on its own turn has biological,
  evolutionary roots). We are the good, the morally
  superior beings in the world everybody else
  outside our group in a way or another inferior in
  comparison with us. I have an automatic,
  initial sympathy concerning the members of my
  group, and have a latent, implicit mistrust,
  aversion concerning outsiders.
• Kosellecks examples Greek-Barbarian,
  Roman-Barbarian, Christian-Pagan,
  Orthodox-Heretic, Proletarian-Bourgeois, etc.