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= Myth_and_ritual =
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Introduction
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Myth and ritual are two central components of religious practice.
Although myth and ritual are commonly united as parts of religion, the
exact relationship between them has been a matter of controversy among
scholars. One of the approaches to this problem is "the myth and
ritual, or myth-ritualist, theory," held notably by the so-called
Cambridge Ritualists, which holds that "myth does not stand by itself
but is tied to ritual." This theory is still disputed; many scholars
now believe that myth and ritual share common paradigms, but not that
one developed from the other.
Overview
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The "myth and ritual school" is the name given to a series of authors
who have focused their philological studies on the "ritual purposes of
myths." Some of these scholars (e.g., W. Robertson-Smith, James George
Frazer, Jane Ellen Harrison, S. H. Hooke) supported the "primacy of
ritual" hypothesis, which claimed that "every myth is derived from a
particular ritual and that the syntagmatic quality of myth is a
reproduction of the succession of ritual act."
Historically, the important approaches to the study of mythological
thinking have been those of Vico, Schelling, Schiller, Jung, Freud,
Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, Lévi-Strauss, Frye, the Soviet school, and the Myth
and Ritual School.
In the 1930s, Soviet researchers such as Jakov E. Golosovker,
Frank-Kamenecky, Olga Freidenberg, Mikhail Bakhtin, "grounded the
study of myth and ritual in folklore and in the world view of popular
culture."
Following World War II, the semantic study of myth and ritual,
particularly by Bill Stanner and Victor Turner, has supported a
connection between myth and ritual. However, it has not supported the
notion that one preceded and produced the other, as supporters of the
"primacy of ritual" hypothesis would claim. According to the currently
dominant scholarly view, the link between myth and ritual is that they
share common paradigms.
Ritual from myth
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One possibility immediately presents itself: perhaps ritual arose from
myth. Many religious rituals—notably Passover among Jews, Christmas
and Easter among Christians, and the Hajj among Muslims—commemorate,
or involve commemoration of, events in religious literature.
E. B. Tylor
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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 Edward Burnett Tylor is the classic exponent
of this view. He saw myth as an attempt to explain the world: for him,
myth was a sort of proto-science. Ritual is secondary: just as
technology is an application of science, so ritual is an application
of myth—an attempt to produce certain effects, given the supposed
nature of the world: "For Tylor, myth functions to explain the world
as an end in itself. Ritual applies that explanation to control the
world." A ritual always presupposes a preexisting myth: in short, myth
gives rise to ritual.
Myth from ritual (primacy of ritual)
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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
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This view was asserted for the first time by the bible scholar William
Robertson Smith. The scholar Meletinsky notes that Smith introduced
the concept "dogmatically." In his 'Lectures on the Religion of the
Semites' (1889), Smith draws a distinction between ancient and modern
religion: in modern religion, doctrine is central; in ancient
religion, ritual is central. On the whole, Smith argues, ancients
tended to be conservative with regard to rituals, making sure to pass
them down faithfully. In contrast, the myths that justified those
rituals could change. In fact, according to Smith, many of the myths
that have come down to us arose "after the original, nonmythic reason
[...] for the ritual had somehow been forgotten."
As an example, Smith gives the worship of Adonis. Worshipers mourned
Adonis's mythical death in a ritual that coincided with the annual
withering of the vegetation. According to Smith, the ritual mourning
originally had a nonmythical explanation: with the annual withering of
plants, "the worshippers lament out of natural sympathy [...] just as
modern man is touched with melancholy at the falling of autumn
leaves." Once worshipers forgot the original, nonmythical reason for
the mourning ritual, they created "the myth of Adonis as the dying and
rising god of vegetation [...] to account for the ritual."
Stanley Edgar Hyman
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In his essay "The Ritual View of Myth and the Mythic", (1955) Stanley
Edgar Hyman makes an argument similar to Smith's:
Here Hyman argues against the etiological interpretation of myth,
which says that myths originated from attempts to explain the origins
(etiologies) of natural phenomena. If true, the etiological
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 etiological 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 etiological story.
James Frazer
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The famous anthropologist Sir James George Frazer claimed that myth
emerges from ritual during the natural process of religious evolution.
Many of his ideas were inspired by those of Robertson Smith. In 'The
Golden Bough' (1890; 1906-1915), Frazer famously argues that man
progresses from belief in magic (and rituals based on magic), through
belief in religion, to science. His argument is as follows.
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
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The classicist Jane Ellen Harrison and the biblical scholar S. H.
Hooke regarded myth as intimately connected to ritual. However,
"against Smith," they "vigorously deny" that myth's main purpose is to
justify a ritual by giving an account of how it first arose (e.g.,
justifying the Adonis worshipers' ritual mourning by attributing it to
Adonis's mythical death). Instead, these scholars think a myth is
largely just a narrative description of a corresponding ritual:
according to Harrison, "the primary meaning of myth ... is the spoken
correlative of the acted rite, the thing done."
Harrison and Hooke gave 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."
Like Frazer, Harrison believed that myths could arise as the initial
reason 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
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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
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The classicist Walter Burkert believes myths and rituals were
originally independent. When myths and rituals do come together, he
argues, they do so to reinforce each other. A myth that tells how the
gods established a ritual reinforces that ritual by giving it divine
status: "Do this because the gods did or do it." A ritual based on a
mythical event makes the story of that event more than a mere myth:
the myth becomes more important because it narrates an event whose
imitation is considered sacred.
Furthermore, Burkert argues that myth and ritual together serve a
"socializing function." 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." 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.
Bronisław Malinowski
======================
Like William Smith, the anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski argued in
his essay 'Myth in Primitive Psychology' (1926) that myths function as
fictitious accounts of the origin of rituals, thereby providing a
justification for those rituals: myth "gives rituals a hoary past and
thereby sanctions them." However, Malinowski also points out that many
cultural practices besides ritual have related myths: for Malinowski,
"myth and ritual are therefore not coextensive." In other words, not
all myths are outgrowths of ritual, and not all rituals are outgrowths
of myth.
Mircea Eliade
===============
Like Malinowski, the religious scholar Mircea Eliade thinks one
important function of myth is to provide an explanation for ritual.
Eliade notes that, in many societies, rituals are considered important
precisely because they were established by the mythical gods or
heroes. Eliade approvingly quotes Malinowski's claim that a myth is "a
narrative resurrection of a primeval reality." Eliade adds: "Because
myth relates the 'gesta' [deeds] of Supernatural Beings [...] it
becomes the exemplary model for all significant human actions."
Traditional man sees mythical figures as models to be imitated.
Therefore, societies claim that many of their rituals were established
by mythical figures, thereby making the rituals seem all the more
important. However, also like Malinowski, Eliade notes that societies
use myths to sanction many kinds of activities, not just rituals: "For
him, too, then, myth and ritual are not coextensive."
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 Eternal return (Eliade)):
Recital of myths and enactment of rituals serve a common purpose: they
are two different means to remain in sacred time.
See also
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General
* Comparative mythology
* Mythology
* Ritology
* Religion and mythology
* Magic and religion
* Etiology
* Anthropology of religion
People
* Walter Burkert
References
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* Burkert, W. (1979). '[
https://books.google.com/books?id=APcX1KKHF9wC
Structure and history in Greek mythology and ritual]'. Sather
classical lectures, v. 47. Berkeley: University of California Press
* 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. 'The Golden Bough'. New York: Macmillan, 1922.
* Meletinsky, Eleazar Moiseevich
'[
https://books.google.com/books?id=E5oa-sE8FzYC The Poetics of Myth]'
(Translated by Guy Lanoue and Alexandre Sadetsky, foreword by Guy
Lanoue) 2000 Routledge
* 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.
Further reading
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* Ackerman, Robert (2002) 'The Myth and Ritual School: J.G. Frazer and
the Cambridge Ritualists', Routledge, .
* Burkert, W. (1983) 'Homo necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek
Sacrificial Ritual and Myth', trans. Peter Bing, Berkeley: University
of California Press. .
* Burkert, W. (2001). '[
https://books.google.com/books?id=awwccCCL4YMC
Savage energies: lessons of myth and ritual in ancient Greece]'.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Kwang-chih Chang, '[
https://books.google.com/books?id=91wi7XDF7ywC
Art, Myth, and Ritual: The Path to Political Authority in Ancient
China]'. 1983.
* Segal, Robert A. (1998).
'[
https://books.google.com/books?id=4_p4yf48N5QC The myth and ritual
theory: an anthology]'. Malden, Mass: Blackwell.
* Watts, A. (1968). '[
https://books.google.com/books?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' (Paladin, 1972, London) translated by
Annette Lavers
* Wise, R. Todd, The Great Vision of Black Elk as Literary Ritual, in
'Black Elk Reader', Syracuse University Press, June 2000.
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