ANTH 202 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Clifford Geertz, List Of Tree Deities, American Anthropologist
14 Feb 2018
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Religion: ritual, myth and the cosmos 1/31/2011 6:28:00 pm. Other definitions of religion stress the belief in spiritual beings; yet others stress the quality of sacredness that demarcates the religious from the secular, that is, everyday life. Religions also vary with regards to the deities and agencies they posit, and with how people relate to them. Religions are expressed through myths, doctrines and rituals: myths are sacred texts (oral or written) that seek to explain the order of things and the state of the world. They usually explain how things came to be the way they are: myth of origin, myth of creation: doctrines establish the rules (for human behaviour, and for behaviour vis- -vis the supernatural beings and the spirits. They are formal statements: rituals are often described as beliefs in action. Well-performed rituals are the ways to honour deities or spirits, to propitiate them, to appease them, and to communicate with them.
