6 Rituals

6.2 Who Conducts Rituals?

Any one instance of a ritual might be performed by a large group or by a single individual. Rituals undertaken by groups or communities usually build a sense of cultural continuity. For example, if you were baptized in a church, and your parents and grandparents were also baptized, then it likely holds a great deal of meaning when you also baptize your children. This generational baptism links all of the family together and reinforces the family’s commitment to a certain set of values. 

Here are some other examples of religious rituals and the means by which they foster a sense of community: 

• Takuhatsu: Takuhatsu is the word used to refer to almsgiving among Zen Buddhist monks (other Buddhist groups use different words). In most Buddhist traditions, the monks are believed to be servants of the community-at-large. In order to maintain their residency in a local monastery, the monks are expected to conduct religious ceremonies for the community, offer teachings, and serve. It is traditional for Buddhist monks to walk through the community and to beg for food (Carney 2016). This tradition allows the local community to earn good karma by giving a donation to the monks. Furthermore, this tradition maintains a relationship between the monks and the community because, if the monks aren’t serving the community properly, they will not receive any donations. This covenant between the religious leaders and the community is maintained where both rely on and support each other. In many modern American temples today, online fundraisers serve the same function whereby members are likely to give to a temple that is better serving the community.
• Hare Krishna Mantra: The International Society for Krishna Consciousness is a modern religious movement that believes in the God Krishna’s power. This religion is quite popular in the United States and has a big following in Los Angeles, specifically. Members of this religious group put their faith in Krishna for salvation and usually live communally. This group believes that they can achieve enlightenment through a variety of lifestyle changes and rituals and they believe that their religious chant that starts with, “Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare…” can be chanted in order to elevate the mind. Members of this community further believe that one can help others by chanting outside; the belief is that all people and animals who hear the chant will be blessed. So, you may see members of this group walking outside in their peach robes and chanting and now you can understand that they are seeking to help you achieve spiritual transcendence.
• Mortuary Temple Worship in Ancient Egypt: Ancient Egyptians had a similar creation myth as the Judeo-Christian Genesis myth in that darkness and chaos turned into life through the emergence of the “Island of Creation” from the primordial waters. This set the stage for mortuary temples, whose function was to provide a home for a deity and perform daily rituals and offerings to the deity so that the king (pharaoh) would have eternal life, and so that Egypt and its people would have prosperity (David 1998, 139). The ritual included taking the deity’s statue, washing and clothing it, and giving it food three times per day. In this case, we see how a society’s creation myth directly impacted daily rituals in the religious community.

6.3 Secular and Religious Rituals

6.7 “Too Costly to Fake” 

Anthropologist Richard Sosis is an American/Israeli anthropologist who is interested in examining rituals that are dangerous, painful, or costly to a community. Sosis was inspired to study these elements of ritual while observing Orthodox Jewish people praying at a holy site called the Wailing Wall. During Sosis’ observations, the climate near the Wailing Wall is hot and sunny, and the Orthodox Jewish people he observed there wore thick black clothing from head to toe. And yet, in spite of the risk of heatstroke, they continued to pray for hours on end at the religious site. Sosis asked himself: why do many groups engage in such difficult and/or costly ritual practices?

Sosis begins his response to this question by explaining the concept of a ‘free rider.’ To illustrate the concept, consider this: in every society, it is in the best interest of the general population if all members contribute equally to the well-being of the society. On the other hand, it is in any individual’s best interest not to contribute if they can still benefit from the contributions from the rest of the community while avoiding doing the extra work themself. In other words, if everyone contributes, then everyone needs to contribute slightly less. When one or a few members refuse to contribute, the remaining contributors must do more work.  

A free rider is someone who benefits from contributions of the community without contributing themself. It’s important to note that the term “free rider” is often used politically to blame one group or another for the problems of larger society. So, when you hear this term being thrown around, look deeply into the speaker’s motivations and question the assumptions before buying into their claim. Consider the way that “productivity” is defined differently within different contexts and that not all people are in agreement about which contributions are necessary to keep society afloat. 

In Sosis’ view, communities often establish rituals that are extremely costly in order to identify which community members are genuinely prepared to contribute equally to collective tasks required for the community’s survival and which are liable to become free riders. He also notes that they may be particularly important in communities that lack surplus resources, since these communities are least likely to be able to support the added burden created by free riders. Sosis suggests that the Orthodox Jewish people he observed are a minority group who possess limited resources. For this reason, the free rider problem is a particularly important one for them to address. According to Sosis, they do so in part by creating and undertaking such costly rituals. 

Other costly rituals might include monetary cost, health cost, a time cost, or a dignity cost. Together, these costly rituals are a way to demonstrate that one’s commitment to the group is greater than commitment than personal preservation. Sosis argues that costly rituals are a common way that human societies deter would-be free riders, as this is a risk most societies face.

6.9 Visual perception in Hindu worship 

The ways in which religious practitioners engage the senses in ritual vary widely, as do the meanings that participants assign to sensory experience. One example, in Hindu worship, visual perception of sacred images (darsan) is already a form of worship, and is thought of as a kind of touching (Eck 1998). Thus, sacred images can cue multiple senses as they are used in worship (puja). Sacred Hindu images are not fully “active” until their eyes, and particularly the pupils, have been painted. The unveiling of a newly painted sacred image in a temple is a momentous occasion, particularly the very moment that the gaze of the deity falls upon the worshipper. In this way, the visual aesthetic of Hindu worship is dynamic, polysensory, and multidirectional (Eck 1998).

In addition to building on Arnold van Gennep’s three stages of rites of passage, Victor Turner (discussed in the previous section) also observed that the power of a ritual comes from its drama (Davis-Floyd 2003, 14). You may already understand this argument because, probably, the more dramatic a ritual feels to you, the more meaningful it feels. For example, if you sit in the back of a church, temple, mosque, or any other venue where rituals occur, and roll your eyes during ceremonies while texting on a phone, then those rituals probably don’t mean very much to you. But, if you attend a ritual at one of these venues during a time of personal crisis or loss, you may find a great deal of meaning in it. And on this occasion, you may cry and feel more connected to your religious beliefs. Human beings strive to create meaning through ritual, and the power of the ritual comes from the drama.  

Turner proposed that as a person experiences the liminal phase of a rite of passage, they take on the following characteristics:

• Necessarily ambiguous,
• “Betwixt and between” identities,
• “Neither here nor there,”
• No status, no insignias,
• Seems to possess nothing; naked,
• Groups become homogenized, builds camaraderie (Turner 2017, 96).

Perhaps you can recall rites of passage in your own life. We encourage you to take a moment to do so, and try to identify the liminal phase within the broader event, using the attributes listed above. After all, if rites of passage are common in most societies as a way of marking when a person changes their social role, it is very likely that your society features them too, particularly since there exist so many social roles that a person can have over the course of their life!

Turner also argued that challenging rituals serve the function of building “communitas” within a group (Turner 2017). We define communitas as the feeling of camaraderie that binds together people after going through a trial or tribulation. If you have ever worked in retail, for example, then you are familiar with the way that the stress of working through the holiday season can bond coworkers together on an unexpected level. This is a feeling that often manifests through sleep-away camp or military training. By struggling together, people feel a stronger bond.

6.17 Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela

The Camino de Santiago de Compostela is a famous Catholic pilgrimage that originated in the medieval era and continues to this day, although the passage of centuries has witnessed transformations both in pilgrimage and the people who undertake pilgrimage to Santiago. Every year hundreds of thousands of pilgrims, the majority on foot, make their way to Santiago de Compostela, a medieval pilgrimage destination in northwestern Spain. Others travel by bicycle, and some by horseback or wheelchair.

There are a number of routes to Santiago, but the most popular is the French Route, which traverses northern Spain from the French border, passing through the Pyrenees, over the high, flat meseta of central northern Spain, and, finally, over a mountain pass to reach the verdant region of Galicia and the city of Santiago de Compostela. Along the route, the pilgrim encounters tiny hamlets, towns, and large cities; grand cathedrals and tiny chapels and monasteries, old pilgrims’ hospitals and modern refuges. The journey on foot from the French border is approximately 750 kilometers, and takes about a month of steady walking to complete.

The roots of the pilgrimage are old and are shrouded in myth and legend and can be traced back to the origins of Christianity and stories of the religion’s spread throughout Europe.

James (Santiago in Spanish) was a follower of Christ who, according to the New Testament of the Christian bible, was beheaded in Jerusalem in the year 44 CE. Nowhere in the New Testament is the Iberian Peninsula mentioned, but centuries later, in the 8th and 9th centuries CE, documents circulated that claimed that Jesus had sent James to the Iberian peninsula and to convert the people he encountered there to Christianity. Legend holds that after his death, James miraculously returned to the Iberian Peninsula, specifically to the spot where the city of Santiago is today.

The legends continue from there: a bright star allowed for the discovery of James’ tomb in the 9th century and the Bishop of Santiago ordered a chapel to be built on the site. The first pilgrims began to make their way to Santiago shortly thereafter.

Pilgrims range in their intent for undertaking the pilgrimage: from devout Catholics to those in search of a spiritual awakening to those in search of a psychologically and physically demanding adventure. Pilgrims come from many dozens of countries to travel to Santiago, from across Europe, North and South America, Asia and Africa, although nearly half hail from Spain. There are about equal numbers of men and women.

As soon as pilgrims begin to walk, they enter into a liminal state: they are geographically between starting point and destination, the usual signs of social status (age, gender, socioeconomic status) begin to drop away. Many pilgrims discuss pilgrimage as an escape from the dulling effects of the daily routine of work, as a site of healing from traumatic experiences such as the death of a loved one, as a way to fulfill a promise or a vow, or, somewhat less commonly, from difficult situations such as drug abuse or hard living. In the latter case, pilgrimage, and the difficult journey it entails, is a mode of purification.

Pilgrims en route to Santiago de Compostela often experience communitas as they form intimate ties with the other pilgrims with whom they walk, share meals, and sleep alongside, and also with those unknown masses of pilgrims who have traveled the Camino before them. As they walk, pilgrims seek out an unmediated experience of nature and face-to-face encounters with fellow pilgrims, punctuated by periods of solitude and contemplation; in sum, a return to a simpler, slower pace of life.

The everyday experience of pilgrimage is characterized by the rhythms of a repetitive, stripped-down routine: waking up, often before dawn, breakfast and packing up; walking with a break for a small snack or cup of coffee at a village bar; reaching a refuge, eating, resting, showering, eating again, and sleeping. Pilgrims become keenly aware of the basic needs of every human being: water, food, and shelter, alongside the need for human connection and relief from the bodily injuries and pain that can arise after long days of walking.

The slow, unmediated journey to Santiago de Compostela ideally sparks an interior journey that carries with it the possibility of transformation: being touched by the sacred (understood as closeness to God, or for some, forms of New Age spirituality often described in terms of energy concentrated in particular locales) or achieving a deeper knowledge of the self.  Interestingly, a number of pilgrims do not stop at the cathedral in Santiago and visit the relics of St. James in the cathedral’s crypt as their ultimate destination. Some pilgrims continue on after reaching Santiago either by bus or on foot to Finisterre, a small fishing village on the Galician coast whose name means “Land’s End.” Attracted by the idea of reaching what seems to be the absolute end. Here, some pilgrims engage in what they understand to be pre-Christian, even Celtic rites of death and rebirth. After sundown, they build a fire, burn objects associated with the Camino (clothes, boots, walking stick).  Pilgrims sometimes undress and plunge into the cold waters of the Atlantic: a rite of purification, of symbolic death and rebirth before the return home.

6.18 The Roles Bedouin Women Play on Pilgrimages to Holy Sites in Southern Jordan

In much of the Islamic world, sacred places have defined the religious and spiritual landscape for worship. Many of these shrines are tombs of important religious and historical figures, but still, the majority of these sacred spaces are dedicated to the ancestors of local families or tribes. These tombs function as a religious center of the community, providing avenues for community worship, but, also, private visitation for individuals who seek council. While women partake in public displays of veneration, the private and independent prayer that takes place at these central shrines are traditionally and frequently sought by women.

In Jordan, the wealth of holy sites, shrines, and tombs of tribal ancestors is vast. These sites are frequently and regularly visited by the descendants of these tribal leaders. The most prominent holy site, the shrine of Harun, or biblical Aaron, is visited on an annual cycle, but also on an individual basis. Located on a mountaintop, this shrine is visible from afar. Women are permitted to partake in pilgrimages to the shrine of Aaron. However, it is difficult to reach, given the rugged terrain and its mountaintop location. As a consequence, women are more likely to visit holy shrines within the confines of their villages or towns rather than the shrine of Aaron. Many such shrines are located along water sources, allowing more effective accessibility for women to visit (Miettunen 2018).

While many important celebrations take place annually to commemorate and venerate shrines of tribal ancestors in which women are permitted to participate, males and females are not treated equally during the course of the celebration. Women are most likely the ones unable to disengage themselves from their duties at home; indeed, they continue cooking, cleaning, and childrearing during these events. Women are also expected to prepare food for feasting during the celebration. Finally, during public pilgrimages, women are stringently controlled by their family and friends for fear of contact with strangers over the course of these celebrations. This strict control over women is stemmed by fears of inappropriate behavior or promiscuity on the part of the woman during public gatherings (Miettunen 2018).

As a consequence, women infrequently participate directly in these celebrations, instead preferring independent spiritual journeys.  Throughout the year, these women visit shrines or tombs individually or in small groups, and organize female-centric public pilgrimages to overcome these challenges. One such example is the Rain Mother ritual, where women participate  in a pilgrimage that involves singing and dancing to honor the Rain Mother.  Although these types of pilgrimages occur, younger women rarely engage in them because many believe that these are pagan in nature and women are now commonly able to obtain jobs and educational pursuits outside of the household (Miettunen 2018).

6.19 Possession in Voodoo

Haitian Voodoo ceremonies are highly secretive and are typically not open to outsiders of the religion. While there is no central authority who defines or regulates the religion, the word “Bembe” is often used to refer to a religious service performed to connect with the loas (Brown 2010). Loas are divine spirits that are human-like with human tendencies, and are interested in human affairs. Bembes are led by the religious leaders (oungan/priest or manbo/priestess) whereby the leader ritually invites a loa to join the ceremony. The group will always offer the loa’s favorite items (including food, drink, tobacco, perfume, etc.) as a ritual sacrifice to them.

Practitioners of Haitian Voodoo know that the loa is present in the ceremony when the leader of the ceremony changes her or his behaviors and starts to behave like the loa. It’s believed that the loas possess the bodies of the participants and, as a result, the possessed person will start to exhibit the behaviors that each particular loa is known for (Brown 2010). This change, where a participant adopts a new pattern of perception in order to experience the ritual in a spiritual manner, is a great example of an altered state of consciousness.

There are stories of Voodoo priests or priestesses who, for example, have ingested excessive amounts of alcohol during the ceremony when possessed by a loa who likes to drink. But, in spite of taking in so much alcohol, they report feeling completely sober after the loa has left their body (Brown 2010).

6.20 Ayahuasca

Ayahuasca, also called la purga, is a brew made from the ayahuasca vine, chacruna leaves and the leaves of various plants and shrubs indigenous to the Amazon region of South America. It is a hallucinogen that has been used for attaining ASC during healing rituals in various indigenous Amazonian cultures.  It is a very potent hallucinogenic with evidence of healing qualities (but note that inappropriate use of ayahuasca can cause severe psychological side effects and in some cases even death).

Use of ayahuasca has migrated out of the Amazonian cultures over time to various religious communities in Brazil and South America, such as the Santo Daime followers in Brazil.  Increasingly, there are also people traveling from North America, Europe and Australia to South American countries like Peru to ritually consume the drug, where the use of the ayahuasca brew for healing is still practiced.  This is becoming problematic, since the plant is over-harvested and is destabilizing the fragile Amazonian ecosystem.  There are also reports that ayahuasca tourism is becoming a driver of trade of jaguar body parts, since they are being sold to tourists to supposedly enhance the ayahuasca experience.

Another major problem with ayahuasca tourism surrounds the guidance of appropriate consumption of the substance. Religious specialists guide the use of ayahuasca and other powerful substances to ensure a proper and safe experience for the believer taking part in the ritual. Increasingly, more tour guides have completed short programs for distributing ayahuasca.  This is problematic, since the skills passed down to religious specialists over multiple generations are bypassed for a quick lesson and can lead to more people becoming sick from the substance and even dying.  The podcast in the optional resources section discusses some of these issues surrounding ayahuasca tourism.

 6.21 Case Study: Body Rituals Among the Nacirema

The following article was written by anthropologist Horace Miner in 1956. The text discusses the ritualistic practices and worldviews of a community that Miner calls “the Nacirema.” Closely read this text and take notes on the rituals that are described. Then, answer the related questions. 

The anthropologist has become so familiar with the diversity of ways in which different people behave in similar situations that he is not apt to be surprised by even the most exotic customs. In fact, if all of the logically possible combinations of behavior have not been found somewhere in the world, he is apt to suspect that they must be present in some yet undescribed tribe. The point has, in fact, been expressed with respect to clan organization by Murdock^[1]. In this light, the magical beliefs and practices of the Nacirema present such unusual aspects that it seems desirable to describe them as an example of the extremes to which human behavior can go.

Professor Linton^[2] first brought the ritual of the Nacirema to the attention of anthropologists twenty years ago, but the culture of this people is still very poorly understood. They are a North American group living in the territory between the Canadian Cree, the Yaqui and Tarahumare of Mexico, and the Carib and Arawak of the Antilles. Little is known of their origin, although tradition states that they came from the east. According to Nacirema mythology, their nation was originated by a culture hero, Notgnihsaw, who is otherwise known for two great feats of strength—the throwing of a piece of wampum across the river Pa-To-Mac and the chopping down of a cherry tree in which the Spirit of Truth resided.

Nacirema culture is characterized by a highly developed market economy which has evolved in a rich natural habitat. While much of the people’s time is devoted to economic pursuits, a large part of the fruits of these labors and a considerable portion of the day are spent in ritual activity. The focus of this activity is the human body, the appearance and health of which loom as a dominant concern in the ethos of the people. While such a concern is certainly not unusual, its ceremonial aspects and associated philosophy are unique.

The fundamental belief underlying the whole system appears to be that the human body is ugly and that its natural tendency is to debility and disease. Incarcerated in such a body, man’s only hope is to avert these characteristics through the use of ritual and ceremony. Every household has one or more shrines devoted to this purpose. The more powerful individuals in the society have several shrines in their houses and, in fact, the opulence of a house is often referred to in terms of the number of such ritual centers it possesses. Most houses are of wattle and daub construction, but the shrine rooms of the more wealthy are walled with stone. Poorer families imitate the rich by applying pottery plaques to their shrine walls.

While each family has at least one such shrine, the rituals associated with it are not family ceremonies but are private and secret. The rites are normally only discussed with children, and then only during the period when they are being initiated into these mysteries. I was able, however, to establish sufficient rapport with the natives to examine these shrines and to have the rituals described to me.

The focal point of the shrine is a box or chest which is built into the wall. In this chest are kept the many charms and magical potions without which no native believes he could live. These preparations are secured from a variety of specialized practitioners. The most powerful of these are the medicine men, whose assistance must be rewarded with substantial gifts. However, the medicine men do not provide the curative potions for their clients, but decide what the ingredients should be and then write them down in an ancient and secret language. This writing is understood only by the medicine men and by the herbalists who, for another gift, provide the required charm.

The charm is not disposed of after it has served its purpose, but is placed in the charmbox of the household shrine. As these magical materials are specific for certain ills, and the real or imagined maladies of the people are many, the charm-box is usually full to overflowing. The magical packets are so numerous that people forget what their purposes were and fear to use them again. While the natives are very vague on this point, we can only assume that the idea in retaining all the old magical materials is that their presence in the charm-box, before which the body rituals are conducted, will in some way protect the worshiper.

Beneath the charm-box is a small font. Each day every member of the family, in succession, enters the shrine room, bows his head before the charm-box, mingles different sorts of holy water in the font, and proceeds with a brief rite of ablution^[3]. The holy waters are secured from the Water Temple of the community, where the priests conduct elaborate ceremonies to make the liquid ritually pure.

In the hierarchy of magical practitioners, and below the medicine men in prestige, are specialists whose designation is best translated as “holy-mouth-men.” The Nacirema have an almost pathological horror of and fascination with the mouth, the condition of which is believed to have a supernatural influence on all social relationships. Were it not for the rituals of the mouth, they believe that their teeth would fall out, their gums bleed, their jaws shrink, their friends desert them, and their lovers reject them. They also believe that a strong relationship exists between oral and moral characteristics. For example, there is a ritual ablution of the mouth for children which is supposed to improve their moral fiber.

The daily body ritual performed by everyone includes a mouth-rite. Despite the fact that these people are so punctilious^[4] about care of the mouth, this rite involves a practice which strikes the uninitiated stranger as revolting. It was reported to me that the ritual consists of inserting a small bundle of hog hairs into the mouth, along with certain magical powders, and then moving the bundle in a highly formalized series of gestures^[5].

In addition to the private mouth-rite, the people seek out a holy-mouth-man once or twice a year. These practitioners have an impressive set of paraphernalia, consisting of a variety of augers, awls, probes, and prods. The use of these items in the exorcism of the evils of the mouth involves almost unbelievable ritual torture of the client. The holy-mouth-man opens the client’s mouth and, using the above mentioned tools, enlarges any holes which decay may have created in the teeth. Magical materials are put into these holes. If there are no naturally occurring holes in the teeth, large sections of one or more teeth are gouged out so that the supernatural substance can be applied. In the client’s view, the purpose of these ministrations^[6] is to arrest decay and to draw friends. The extremely sacred and traditional character of the rite is evident in the fact that the natives return to the holy-mouth-men year after year, despite the fact that their teeth continue to decay.

It is to be hoped that, when a thorough study of the Nacirema is made, there will be careful inquiry into the personality structure of these people. One has but to watch the gleam in the eye of a holy-mouth-man, as he jabs an awl into an exposed nerve, to suspect that a certain amount of sadism is involved. If this can be established, a very interesting pattern emerges, for most of the population shows definite masochistic tendencies. It was to these that Professor Linton referred in discussing a distinctive part of the daily body ritual which is performed only by men. This part of the rite includes scraping and lacerating the surface of the face with a sharp instrument. Special women’s rites are performed only four times during each lunar month, but what they lack in frequency is made up in barbarity. As part of this ceremony, women bake their heads in small ovens for about an hour. The theoretically interesting point is that what seems to be a preponderantly masochistic people have developed sadistic specialists.

The medicine men have an imposing temple, or latipso, in every community of any size. The more elaborate ceremonies required to treat very sick patients can only be performed at this temple. These ceremonies involve not only the thaumaturge^[7] but a permanent group of vestal maidens who move sedately about the temple chambers in distinctive costume and headdress.

The latipso ceremonies are so harsh that it is phenomenal that a fair proportion of the really sick natives who enter the temple ever recover. Small children whose indoctrination is still incomplete have been known to resist attempts to take them to the temple because “that is where you go to die.” Despite this fact, sick adults are not only willing but eager to undergo the protracted ritual purification, if they can afford to do so. No matter how ill the supplicant or how grave the emergency, the guardians of many temples will not admit a client if he cannot give a rich gift to the custodian. Even after one has gained and survived the ceremonies, the guardians will not permit the neophyte to leave until he makes still another gift.

The supplicant entering the temple is first stripped of all his or her clothes. In everyday life the Nacirema avoids exposure of his body and its natural functions. Bathing and excretory acts are performed only in the secrecy of the household shrine, where they are ritualized as part of the body-rites. Psychological shock results from the fact that body secrecy is suddenly lost upon entry into the latipso. A man, whose own wife has never seen him in an excretory act, suddenly finds himself naked and assisted by a vestal maiden while he performs his natural functions into a sacred vessel. This sort of ceremonial treatment is necessitated by the fact that the excreta are used by a diviner to ascertain the course and nature of the client’s sickness. Female clients, on the other hand, find their naked bodies are subjected to the scrutiny, manipulation and prodding of the medicine men.

Few supplicants in the temple are well enough to do anything but lie on their hard beds. The daily ceremonies, like the rites of the holy-mouth-men, involve discomfort and torture. With ritual precision, the vestals awaken their miserable charges each dawn and roll them about on their beds of pain while performing ablutions, in the formal movements of which the maidens are highly trained. At other times they insert magic wands in the supplicant’s mouth or force him to eat substances which are supposed to be healing. From time to time the medicine men come to their clients and jab magically treated needles into their flesh. The fact that these temple ceremonies may not cure, and may even kill the neophyte, in no way decreases the people’s faith in the medicine men.

There remains one other kind of practitioner, known as a “listener.” This witchdoctor has the power to exorcise the devils that lodge in the heads of people who have been bewitched. The Nacirema believe that parents bewitch their own children. Mothers are particularly suspected of putting a curse on children while teaching them the secret body rituals. The counter-magic of the witchdoctor is unusual in its lack of ritual. The patient simply tells the “listener” all his troubles and fears, beginning with the earliest difficulties he can remember. The memory displayed by the Nacirema in these exorcism sessions is truly remarkable. It is not uncommon for the patient to bemoan the rejection he felt upon being weaned as a babe, and a few individuals even see their troubles going back to the traumatic effects of their own birth.

In conclusion, mention must be made of certain practices which have their base in native esthetics but which depend upon the pervasive aversion to the natural body and its functions. There are ritual fasts to make fat people thin and ceremonial feasts to make thin people fat. Still other rites are used to make women’s breasts larger if they are small, and smaller if they are large. General dissatisfaction with breast shape is symbolized in the fact that the ideal form is virtually outside the range of human variation. A few women afflicted with almost inhuman hyper-mammary development are so idolized that they make a handsome living by simply going from village to village and permitting the natives to stare at them for a fee.

Reference has already been made to the fact that excretory functions are ritualized, routinized, and relegated to secrecy. Natural reproductive functions are similarly distorted. Intercourse is taboo as a topic and scheduled as an act. Efforts are made to avoid pregnancy by the use of magical materials or by limiting intercourse to certain phases of the moon. Conception is actually very infrequent. When pregnant, women dress so as to hide their condition. Parturition takes place in secret, without friends or relatives to assist, and the majority of women do not nurse their infants.

Our review of the ritual life of the Nacirema has certainly shown them to be a magic-ridden people. It is hard to understand how they have managed to exist so long under the burdens which they have imposed upon themselves. But even such exotic customs as these take on real meaning when they are viewed with the insight provided by Malinowski^[8] when he wrote:

“Looking from far and above, from our high places of safety in the developed civilization, it is easy to see all the crudity and irrelevance of magic. But without its power and guidance early man could not have mastered his practical difficulties as he has done, nor could man have advanced to the higher stages of civilization.”

Footnotes 

1.  Murdock, George P. 1949. Social Structure. NY: The Macmillan Co., page 71. George Peter Murdock (1897–1996 [?]) is a famous ethnographer.
2. Linton, Ralph. 1936. The Study of Man. NY: D. Appleton-Century Co. page 326. Ralph Linton (1893–1953) is best known for studies of enculturation (maintaining that all culture is learned rather than inherited; the process by which a society’s culture is transmitted from one generation to the next), claiming culture is humanity’s “social heredity.
3. A washing or cleansing of the body or a part of the body. From the Latin abluere, to wash away
4. Marked by precise observance of the finer points of etiquette and formal conduct
5. It is worthy of note that since Prof. Miner’s original research was conducted, the Nacirema have almost universally abandoned the natural bristles of their private mouth-rite in favor of oil-based polymerized synthetics. Additionally, the powders associated with this ritual have generally been semi-liquefied. Other updates to the Nacirema culture shall be eschewed in this document for the sake of parsimony.
6. Tending to religious or other important functions
7. A miracle-worker.
8. Malinowski, Bronislaw. Magic, Science, and Religion. Glencoe: The Free Press, page 70. Bronislaw Malinowski (1884–1942) is a famous cultural anthropologist best known for his argument that people everywhere share common biological and psychological needs and that the function of all cultural institutions is to fulfill such needs; the nature of the institution is determined by its function.