What is the term for the organized performance of behaviors intended to influence spiritual powers quizlet?

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Cultural Anthropology

Terms in this set (29)

Beliefs about Supernatural Powers

Usually gods and other kinds of beings respond to human actions in some way: If you communicate with them, they will listen, and if your actions displease them, they will react negatively.

Myths

Stories that recount the deeds of supernatural powers and cultural heroes of the past.

What do Myths do

Myths do more than satisfy curiosity and help pass the time. Myths help to form a people's worldview: their conceptions of reality and the interpretations of events that happen in society and the natural world.

Rituals

Organized, stereotyped, symbolic behaviors intended to influence supernatural powers.

Two Bases of Rituals

The first basis is their conscious purposes- the reasons people themselves give for performing rituals.

The second basis of classifying rituals is their timing - on a regular schedule or simply whenever some individual or group wants or needs them.

Crisis Rituals

Performed whenever some individual or group needs, wants, or asks for them - for purposes of curing, ensuring good hunting or fishing, burying or honoring the dead, or accompanying other events that happen sporadically or unpredictably.

Intellectual/ Cognitive Approach

The notion that religious beliefs provide explanations for puzzling things and events.

Anthropomorphically

We tend to attribute human motives, purposes, feelings, senses, and other characteristics to living and nonliving things that are not human.

Psychological Approaches

The notion that the emotional or affective satisfactions people gain from religion are primary.

Why Religion Works

There are always natural phenomena that people cannot control and that constantly threaten to ruin their plans and efforts.

Belief in the power of ritual to control these elements instills confidence and removes some of the anxiety that results from the uncertainties of life.

Sociological Approach

The effects of religion on maintaining the institutions of society as a whole by instilling common values, creating solidarity, controlling behavior, and so forth.

Sorcery

The performance of rites and spells for the purpose of causing harm to others by supernatural means.

Imitative Principle

"Like produces like" That is, if an object resembles a person and the sorcerer mutilates the object, the same thing will happen to the person.

Contagious Principle

"Power comes from contact" That is, things once in contact with someone can be used in rites and spells to make things happen to that person.

Witchcraft

The use of psychic powers to harm others by supernatural means.

Main Differences between Sorcerers and Witches

Sorcerers manipulate objects

Witches need only think malevolent thoughts to turn their anger, envy, or hatred into evil deeds.

Individualistic Organization

Each individual has a personal relationship with one more supernatural powers, who serve as the person's guardians and protectors.

Shaminisitic Organization

Some individuals, have relationships with supernatural powers that ordinary people lack. They use these powers primarily for socially valuable purposes, to help others in need.

Communal Organization

The members of a particular group gather periodically to perform rituals that benefit the group as a whole.

Ecclesiastical Organization

Some societies have full-time religious practitioners who form a religious bureaucracy.

Vision Quests

The attempt to enlist the aid of supernatural powers by intentionally seeking a dream or vision.

Shaman

Part-time religious specialist who uses his special relationship to supernatural powers for curing members of his group and harming members of other groups.

Qualities of Shamans

Have access to the power of spiritual beings, can cure or cause harm, practice trance, which is the sign that some spirit, has physically entered the shaman's body.

Ancestral Rituals

Rituals the conscious purpose of which is to worship, honor, or beseech the deceased ancestors of a kin group.

Totemic Rituals

A form of communal religious organization in which all members of a kin group have mystical relationships with one or more natural objects.

Rites of Solidarity

In addition to their conscious purposes, respecting ancestors, controlling nature, and so forth, they provide a ritual means to strengthen and maintain good relationships among the group's members.

Priest

A kind of religious specialist, usually full-time, who officiates at large scale, bureaucratically organized rituals that keep the population in proper relationship to deities or cosmic forces.

Differences between Priests and Shamans

With the exception of people like the Zuni, shamans are not organized as a group and cooperation between them is minimal. Priests are hierarchally organized and supported by a formal government.

Priests undergo a lengthy period of formal training because they must master the complex rituals needed to perform their role.

Priests were at or near the top of the social ladder in ancient civilizations, so individual priests lived much better than the population at large.

Shamans typically perform mainly crisis rituals, whenever some person requires their services.

Revitalization Movements

A religious movement explicitly intended to create a new way of life for a society or group.

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