Myth and ritual
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In traditional societies, 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. Although anthropologists tend to agree that myth and ritual are related in their origins, they do not agree about which came first or which gave rise to which.
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[edit] Ritual from myth
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.
Leaving the sphere of historical religions, the ritual-from-myth approach often sees rituals as attempts to magically apply myth to the world. For the anthropologist E. B. Tylor, who "subsumes myth under religion" [1]"primitive religion is the primitive counterpart to science."[1] Like science, myth is an attempt to explain the world, except that it sees the world in a personalistic way (in terms of animism), rather than in an impersonal way. Thus, just as technology is an application of science, ritual is an attempt to apply 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. Ritual is the application, not the subject, of myth."[1]
[edit] Myth from ritual
Against the intuitive idea that ritual reenacts myth or tries to persuade mythical beings, many 19th century anthropologists argued the opposite position: that myth, or religious doctrine, results from ritual. In The Golden Bough, Sir James Frazer famously argues that man progresses from belief in magic (and rituals based on magic), through belief in religion, to science.[2] Man starts out with an innate belief in a natural law, and he assumes that he can influence nature by the correct application of natural 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."[3] However, the natural law he imagines--namely, magic--does not work. Man eventually realizes this. 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.”[4] 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. Frazer argues that
"myth changes while custom remains constant; men continue to do what their fathers did before them, though the reasons on which their fathers acted have been long forgotten. The history of religion is a long attempt to reconcile old custom with new reason, to find a sound theory for an absurd practice."[5]
In his essay "The Ritual View of Myth and the Mythic," Stanley Edgar Hyman makes a similar argument:
"In Fiji [...] the physical peculiarities of an island with only one small patch of fertile soil are explained by a myth telling how Mberewalaki, a culture hero, flew into a passion at the misbehavior of the people of the island and hurled all the soil he was bringing them in a heap, instead of laying it out properly. Hocart points out that the myth is used aetiologically to explain the nature of the island, but did not originate in that attempt. The adventures of Mberewalaki originated, like all mythology, in ritual performance, and most of the lore of Hocart's Fijian informants consisted of such ritual myths. When they get interested in the topology of the island or are asked about it, Hocart argues, they do precisely what we would do, which is ransack their lore for an answer."[6]
Here Hyman argues against the aetiological interpretation of myth, which says that myths began as explanations for the origins of natural phenomena. If true, the aetiological interpretation would make myth older than, or at least indepedent of, ritual. But Hyman argues that traditional man only uses myth for aetiological purposes after myth is already in place.
For scholars like Frazer and Hyman, myth appears only as a justification for ritual after people forget ritual's original purpose.
[edit] The "History of Religions" interpretation
Ignoring the question of which came first, Mircea Eliade, a proponent of the "history of religions" interpretation of myth, takes a different view of the relationship between myth and ritual. According to Eliade, traditional man sees both myths and rituals as vehicles for "eternal return" to the mythical age (see Eternal return (Eliade)):
"In imitating the exemplary acts of a god or of a mythic hero, or simply by recounting their adventures, the man of an archaic society detaches himself from profane time and magically re-enters the Great Time, the sacred time."[7]
Recital of myths and enactment of rituals serve a common purpose: they are two different means to remain in sacred time.
[edit] Notes
- ^ a b c Segal, Robert A. (2004). Myth: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, pg 14, 63. ISBN 978-0-19-280347-4.
- ^ The Golden Bough, pg. 711
- ^ The Golden Bough, pg. 711
- ^ Ibid., pg. 711
- ^ Ibid., pg. 477
- ^ Myth: A Symposium, pg. 91
- ^ Eliade, Mircea; Philip Mairet (trans.) (1967). Myths, Dreams and Mysteries. New York: Harper & Row, pg 23. ISBN 978-0-06-131943-3.
[edit] References
- James G. Frazer. The Golden Bough. New York: Macmillan, 1922.
- Thomas A. Sebeok (Editor). Myth: A Symposium. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1958.
