The Anthropology of Religion, Magic, and Witchcraft

Rebecca L. Stein is Professor of Anthropology and Department Chair at Los Angeles Valley College, USA. Philip L. Stein is Professor of Anthropology (Emeritus) at Los Angeles Pierce College, USA. He is a fellow of the American Anthropological Association and a past president of the Society for Anthropology in Community Colleges. Benjamin R. Kracht is Professor of Anthropology (Emeritus) at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. He is the author of Kiowa Belief and Ritual (2017), Religious Revitalization among the Kiowas: The Ghost Dance, Peyote, and Christianity (2018), and other books. Kracht has worked with the Kiowas for over 40 years and, more recently, has conducted fieldwork in Belize and New Mexico. Marjorie M. Snipes is Professor of Anthropology at University of West Georgia in Carrollton, Georgia. She has done extensive research in the Argentine Andes, as well as smaller research projects on religious change in the USA. Among her publications are The Intellectual Legacy of Victor and Edith Turner (2018) with Frank Salamone and OpenStax Introduction to Anthropology (2022) with Jennifer Hasty and David Lewis.

The Anthropological Study of Religion
The anthropological perspective

The concept of culture

Marginalia Cultural relativism and ethics

Four fields of anthropology

The holistic approach

The study of human societies

Ethnographic fieldwork

Box 1.1 First fieldwork

Marginalia Anthropology and ethics

The Fores of New Guinea: an ethnographic example

Two ways of viewing culture

Box 1.2 Fieldwork among the Kiowas

Viewing the world

Theoretical approaches to the study of religion

Evolutionary approaches to religion

The Marxist approach

The functional approach

The interpretive approach

The psychosocial approach

The bio-cognitive approach to religious behavior

Postmodernism

Attempts at defining religion

The domain of religion

The dependent and independent variables of religion

Table 1.1 Culture areas of the world

Table 1.2 Food-getting strategies

Conclusion

Summary

Study questions




Religious Symbols
What is a symbol?

Religious symbols

The swastika

The pentagram

Christian symbols

Box 2.1 The commodification of Zuni art

Sacred art and architecture

Maya architecture and hierophany

The meaning of color

Marginalia Commodification of color

Yoruba color terminology

Sacred space and sacred time

The Maya view of time

Box 2.2 The end of time

Rituals and calendars in modern world religions

Sacred time and space in Australia

Marginalia Animal symbols as mascots

Totemism and Dreamtime

The symbolism of music and dance

The symbolism of music

Marginalia Music and religion

Music in ritual

The symbolism of dance

Tattooing and other permanent body alterations

Conclusion

Summary

Study questions




Mythology
The nature of myths

Worldview

Stories of the supernatural

Myths and religion

Table 3.1 Forms of narrative

The nature of oral texts

Marginalia Oral tradition and the Shakers

Box 3.1 Genesis

Box 3.2 Gender and the Christian Bible

Understanding myths

Approaches to the analysis of myths

Searching for myth origins in the nineteenth century

Fieldwork and functional analysis

Structural analysis of myth

Box 3.3 The Gururumba creation story

Psychological symbols in myth

Common themes in myths

Origin myths

Marginalia Emergence myths

Box 3.4 The Navajo creation story: Diné Bahane’

Apocalyptic myths

Hero myths

Table 3.2 The monomyth in cinema: a sampling of common features

Conclusion

Summary

Study questions




Ritual
The basics of ritual performance

Prescriptive and situational rituals

Periodic and occasional rituals

A classification of rituals

Table 4.1 A classification of rituals

Technological rituals

Rites of intensification

Marginalia St. Francis rituals

Protective rituals

Divination rituals

Therapy rituals and healing

Navajo healing rites

Anti-therapy rituals

Ideological rituals

Offerings and sacrifices

Human sacrifice

Box 4.1 Morning star ceremony

Table 4.2 Skiri cosmology

Maya sacrifice and autosacrifice

Rites of passage

The structure of a rite of passage

Coming-of-age rituals

Transition and liminality

Table 4.3 Characteristics of liminality

Apache rite of passage

Secular rites of passage

Revitalization rituals

Alterations of the human body

Genital cutting

Marginalia Genital cutting in the U.S.

Pilgrimage as a religious ritual

Box 4.2 The hajj

The Huichol pilgrimage

Zuni quadrennial pilgrimages

Religious obligations

Tabu

Mana and tabu in Polynesia

Jewish food laws as religious ritual

Box 4.3 Menstrual tabus

Conclusion

Summary

Study questions




Altered States of Consciousness
The Nature of altered states of consciousness

Table 5.1 Characteristics of altered states of consciousness

Entering an altered state of consciousness

Table 5.2 Factors stimulating an altered state of consciousness

Fasting

Sacred pain

The biological basis of altered states of consciousness

Box 5.1 Altered states in Upper Paleolithic art

Ethnographic examples of altered states of consciousness

San healing rituals

The Sun Dance of the Cheyennes

The Holiness churches

Marginalia Christian snake-handlers

Hallucinogen-induced altered states of consciousness

Shamanism in South America

Hallucinogenic snuff among the Yanomamös

Tobacco in South America

Peyote in the Native American Church

Marijuana among the Rastafarians

Non-Indigenous uses of hallucinogens

Conclusion

Summary

Study questions




Religious Specialists
Shamans

Becoming a shaman

The shamanic role and rituals

Marginalia Shamanic visualizations

Siberian shamanism

Yakut shamanism

Korean shamanism

Pentecostal healers as shamans

Box 6.1 Clown doctors as shamans

Neoshamanism

Priests

Zuni priests

Okinawan priestesses

Eastern Orthodox priests

The monks on the Holy Mountain of Mt. Athos

Marginalia Religious icons

Other specialists

Kiowa owl prophets

Conclusion

Summary

Study questions




Magic and Divination
The nature of magic

Box 7.1 Why there is evil in the world

Magic and religion

Rules of magic

Homeopathic magic

Contagious magic

Marginalia Religious relics

Religious Relics and the Shakers

Magic in society

Magic in the Trobriand Islands

Learning magic

Trobriand garden magic

Magic among the Azandes

Kiowa power contests

Wiccan magic

Divination

Forms of divination

Table 7.1 A classification of methods of divination with examples

A survey of divination techniques

Noninspirational forms of divination

Box 7.2 I Ching: The Book of Changes

Inspirational forms of divination

Box 7.3 Spiritualism and séances

Ordeals

Astrology

Maya astronomy and astrology

Oracles of the Azandes

Divination in Ancient Greece: the Oracle at Delphi

Magical behavior and the human mind

Magical thinking

Why magic works

Conclusion

Summary

Study questions




Souls, Ghosts, and Death
Souls and Ancestors

Variation in the concept of the soul

Souls, death, and the afterlife

Examples of concepts of the soul

Yup’ik souls

Yanomamö spirits and souls

Hmong souls

The soul in Roman Catholicism

The soul in Hinduism and Buddhism

Ancestors

Yoruba ancestors

Beng ancestors and reincarnation

Tana Toraja ancestors and social death

Bodies and Souls

Ghosts

Box 8.1 A haunting in eastern Oklahoma

Ghosts around the world

Marginalia Ghosts in Southeast Asia

Dani ghosts

Bunyoro ghosts

The living dead: vampires and zombies

Vampires

Vampires in New England

Archaeological evidence of vampires in Poland

Haitian zombies

Zombies in contemporary culture

Marginalia Zombies as fear projections

Death rituals

Funeral rituals

Disposal of the body

Burial

The African Burial Ground

Secondary burials

Cremation

Mummification

Exposure

U.S. death rituals in the nineteenth century

U.S. funeral rituals today

Box 8.2 Roadside memorials

Days of Death

Halloween

Day of the Dead (Día de los Muertos) in Mexico and the Andes

Conclusion

Summary

Study questions




Gods and Spirits
Spirits

Marginalia Japanese kami

Dani views of the supernatural

Table 9.1 The supernatural world of the Danis

Guardian spirits and the Native American vision quest

Box 9.1 Kiowa vision quests

Jinn

Christian angels and demons

Box 9.2 Christian demonic exorcism in the United States

Gods

Types of gods

Table 9.2 The Roman gods and goddesses of agriculture

Gods and society

Gods reflect human behavior

Big gods

The gods of the Yorubas

Table 9.3 Some of the Yoruba orisha

The gods of the Ifugaos

Goddesses

Ishtar (Ancient Near East)

Isis (Ancient Egypt)

Kali (Hinduism)

Mary (Roman Catholic)

Monotheism: conceptions of god in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

Judaism

Christianity

Islam

Marginalia Jains and ahimsa

Atheism

Conclusion

Summary

Study questions




Witchcraft, Sorcery, and Wizardry
Witchcraft, sorcery, and wizardry

Witchcraft among the Azandes

The Zande belief in witchcraft

The role of divination

An analysis of Zande witchcraft beliefs

Witchcraft among the Zunis

Sorcery among the Fores

Kiowa sorcery

Euro-American witchcraft beliefs

The connection with pagan religions

The witchcraze in Europe

The witchcraze in England and the United States

Marginalia Tituba

Functions of Euro-American witchcraft beliefs

Witches as women

Box 10.1 The evil eye

Modern-day witch hunts

Box 10.2 Satanism

Neo-paganism and revival

The Wiccan movement

Wiccan beliefs and rituals

Marginalia The Wiccan athame

The growing popularity and persecution of Wicca

Conclusion

Summary

Study questions




Magic, Medicine, and Religion
Explanatory models

Disease/illness dichotomy

Healers in the three sectors of healthcare

Box 11.1 African healers meet Western medicine

Personalistic and naturalistic medical systems

Personalistic medicine in small-scale societies

Table 11.1 Cross-cultural causes, prevention, and treatments

Marginalia Taqui Onqoy, the Dancing Sickness

Shamanistic techniques

Cholera in a Chinese village

Novocain magic

Plant spirits and medicines in personalistic medical systems

Humoral pathology and the rise of Western biomedicine

Humoral pathology in the North American colonies

Box 11.2 Ancient symbols in Western medicine

The smallpox blanket myth

Negotiating medical models in clinical settings

Faith and the biomedical approach

Spiritual architecture in the biomedical environment

The labyrinth

Religious specialists in biomedical environments

Conclusion

Summary

Study questions




The Search for New Meaning

Classic revitalization movements

Box 12.1 The Asbury revival

Haitian Vodou

History of Vodou

Vodou beliefs

Santería

Cargo cults

The Ghost Dance movements of 1869 and 1890

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormonism)

Modern-day cultural revival in Belize

New meaning in fundamentalism

Characteristics of fundamentalist groups

The Iranian Revolution

Box 12.2 The veil in Islam

The Arab Spring

High demand religions

The "cult" question

Characteristics of high demand religions

Mind control?

Examples of high demand religions

Branch Davidians (Students of the Seven Seals)

Unification Church

UFO religions

Heaven’s Gate

Raelians

Marginalia Edgar Cayce

New directions and revitalization in religion

"Spiritual but not religious"

Conclusion

Summary

Study questions