World Design/Multi-Cultural Fictional Settings/Worship

World Design

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Worship, v. 1. To treat with the reverence due to merit or worth; to respect; honor. Obs or R. 2. To pay divine honors to; to reverence with extreme respect and veneration; to perform religious exercises in honor of; to adore; venerate.

Worship is fairly easy to understand. When something excites our respect and in return we honor it, then the honor we give may loosely be termed worship. Respect may be earned by strength, beauty, intellect, spiritual fortitude, good deeds, popularity, or anything which an individual or culture values. Respect doesn't have anything to do with whether or not we like something. An enemy may be respected, though hated. Respect is merely an assessment of ability, not necessarily of moral quality. You can use quite a few words instead of worship if that word seems wrong for the circumstances. For instance, try veneration if you don't want to "worship" dead people and other entities that are not strictly divine. Other synonyms include honor, reverence, adoration, glorification, homage, regard, respect, and devotion.

For our purposes we will divide worship into two general areas, morality and ritual. In their sacred stories religions recount divine actions and draw morals, or teachings from them. These morals form a system of morality that shows believers how to be human. Moral behavior counts as worship. Through moral behavior the world is blessed with the divine presence, and in return the divinity gets stronger in its alternate reality. Ritual is the other aspect of worship. Ritual consists of various actions modeled on mythic and legendary acts, the effect of which is to talk to, feed, and clean up for the divine presence.

Righteous Life

No god, no culture hero ever revealed a profane act.

Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane

Religion places some emphasis on the right beliefs of believers. Right beliefs are those teachings or moral rules that guide people's lives. They could also be called morality, ethics, or philosophy. Such rules help the community to stay together. They help people to get along with others, and to know what to expect. They also bring believers closer to the divine sources of their religion. If a god behaves in a certain way in a story that everybody knows, then someone who imitates the god's actions becomes more like the god, at least for a moment. This kind of imitation or morality serves as worship. Not only do the actions of the believer bring him or her closer to the divine ideal, but they also strengthen the presence of the divine.

As long as believers imitate the divine sources of their religions they are right and good. When they go against their religion's teachings then they are wrong or evil. Religion is the basis of all teachings about right and wrong, good and evil. A divine source gives morality its authority and believability.

What does this mean for roleplaying games? It means that when you make up religious and cultural systems for your campaign you will want to decide how you want to handle morality in the game. Here are some questions you may want to answer.

  1. Will your campaign feature absolute morality? With absolute morality there is only one scale for good and evil, one divinely inspired moral message, and good people do not oppose other good people except through tragic misunderstandings. With relative morality good people can oppose each other bitterly and without quarter because they both know through divine wisdom that they are in the right.
  2. Will your campaign feature races who are intrinsically good or evil?
  3. Do the gods value the morality of believers?
  4. How effective is moral behavior as a form of worship? How much power do the gods get from moral acts?
  5. How do people's moral positions change?
  6. Is it possible to force somebody against their will to change their morality? How hard is it?
  7. How does your game system measure morality? Do you want to stick with it or modify it?
  8. How can you best tell your players the moral system in your campaign so that they understand it as well as you do?
  9. How do you measure a character's piety?
  10. How will a character's moral beliefs and piety affect its game abilities, its skills, characteristics, talents and powers?

The next few pages will try to give you some ideas about how to address these questions, but we can't bottle a solution and sell it to you like a magic potion. Every GM will have to decide these questions to fit his or her own religious and moral feelings, what feels "right" in the game, and the beliefs and feelings of the other players in the campaign.

Note that religious belief systems are meant to assist roleplaying. They are not strait-jackets to keep characters from deviating from religious ideals. Anthropological research indicates that about 35% of any group are almost identical to the ideal personality and another 25% are close, while the remaining 40% have personalities all over the map. If you choose to follow these proportions then about 35% of the people in any religious group will be an excellent match to the religion's belief system, and another 25% will be pretty close. The other 40% is where the trouble-makers come from, and that is plenty of room for mavericks. Casual believers in a religion don't have to follow any of its moral rules, and if they participate in the expected rituals they can even pass as moral believers.

Belief Systems

The simplest way to record the moral position of a character is to note the character's personality, its belief system. One character might be "greedy and talkative," another might be "nervous and easily amused." You would record the belief system on the character sheet. Hopefully your character sheets have a place where you can jot down information about the character's personality. If not, just write it on any blank area where you can find it.

Not only does this work for individuals, it works for religions too. When you invent or record a religion for your campaign, list several adjectives or descriptive phrases to give you some idea of the moral teachings of that religion. Once you've recorded the belief system of a religion, then players who select that religion will be able to better understand their characters and have more fun playing. They can choose how they want to appear to co-religionists and the gods. They can choose whether they want to be good or bad in the eyes of their fellows by obeying or ignoring religious teachings.

If you use this method to denote personal and religious morality you may also want to think about the game effect of morals. Does a character who sticks closely to his or her religion's morality get any game benefits? Does a character who deviates from religious morality feel backlash?

If there are benefits to sticking to a morality, are they received from a divine source or are they personal, psychological benefits? Some games include some kind of piety score which measures how well characters match their declared morality. This piety score might affect the chance of divine aid, of miraculous occurences, of divine visions and warnings, or of mundane help from the religious hierarchy. If you don't have a piety score, you may want to invent one.

On the other hand, some people think that game rewards for moral behavior are artificial. Piety points and the like offend their sense of what is lifelike in the campaign. There is something to be said for both sides in this debate, and I don't want to stick my head in it. Suffice it to say that I hope you make the best decision for you and the players in your campaign.

Alignments

An alignment system is a perfectly fine way to portray a belief system such as a religion. Everybody who shares one belief system agrees that some things are bad or evil, some things are good, and yet other things are most excellent, superb, transcendental. That's simple enough.

The simplest alignment systems in roleplaying games use a single ruler to measure beliefs. Most of these systems seem to descend from Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion series of books with the gods arrayed into two opposing sets according to which godly political party they claimed as their own. A typical example of this would pit law against chaos, with the middling category of neutral for non-aligned folk. Each character would have to fit in one of the three categories. Alternately there could be five choices, from good to orderly to neutral to chaotic to evil.

In Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion series of books some gods are of the party of Chaos and others are of the party of Law. A small number of mysterious forces are dedicated to the Balance, a secret third party that tries to pit Law and Chaos against each other and protect the underdog in any exchange, so that neither Law nor Chaos can dominate the universe. Mortals can declare allegiance to one of these divine parties or they can try to stay neutral and clear of divine entanglements. Elric starts out pledged to Chaos, then tries to be unaligned, and finally switches his allegiance to the Balance. He tries to stay clear of godly meddling, but is doomed to hitch his boat to one party or another. Characters in roleplaying games are often faced with the same kinds of decisions and forced to change their belief systems to survive.

Other roleplaying games have designed alignment systems with more than one axis. Some of these games measure alignment along two axes, producing what are called alignment matrixes. The two dimensional alignment systems are easy to graph in squares like those following. The most common two dimensional alignment systems, also known as alignment matrixes, have one axis measuring good to evil and the other one going from law to chaos. Each character can be charted and tracked on the matrix. You could design another alignment matrix with one axis from brave to cowardly and the other one from generous to miserly. Or you can pick any two axes you want.

Yet other roleplaying games have alignment systems with lots of axes, from ten to twenty or even an infinite number. Each axis is defined as a pair of opposing religious, personal, moral, or ethical traits. Characters are graded or scored in important traits. For instance "honest" might be paired with "deceitful." A truthful character would be on the "honest" end of this trait pairing, while a habitual liar would tend towards the other end.

Here we've seen several different ways of using alignment systems that vary according to the number of axes measured. This may give you some ideas on new ways to use alignments in roleplaying systems that use them.

Alignments are a good way to quantify beliefs. However, they have a quirk, in that an alignment system presumes a single system of morality. If one character is honest then every other character that is honest should be honest in the same way, or the meaning of the alignment is diluted and eventually empties out. If you use an alignment system with good and evil then you will have to have one meaning for good and evil throughout the campaign. Everyone will understand good and evil the same way. An alignment system lends itself well to an absolute, universal morality in the campaign, but it doesn't handle multiple, conflicting moral systems. That's the problem that some people have with alignment systems. If you don't think it's a problem, then an alignment system may be the best choice for you.

Divine Archetypes

Archetypes are an excellent shorthand way to describe people. They work with looks ("She looks like Marlene Dietrich." "He looks like Groucho Marx, especially when he smokes that cigar"). They work with voices ("He bellows like Foghorn Leghorn." "She bellows like Ethel Merman.") Our modern archetypes are often the stars of film and television, but in the old days, before these things were around, archetypal models were a lot closer to home. People used gods, saints, and heroes to label others, and they chose their own archetypes, role models, to impress other people or get the results they wanted.

Many religions include several divine or semi-divine figures who can serve as role-models for believers. These can be gods, goddesses, saints, heroes, ancestors, buddhas, bodhisattvas, kings, queens, warriors, inventors, or any other figure of import. In addition to the universal moral qualities that a religion encourages in everybody, role models provide more specialized paths for individuals who want such guidance. A woman could choose a goddess as her role model, while her brother chooses an ancestor as his role model. An individual who worships a role-model in this way studies the sacred stories and attempts to imitate the actions of the divine figure wherever possible.

To use such a system in a campaign the campaign designer or GM must decide on a bunch of role models that cover the likely activities of characters in the game. The next step is to write part of the life story of the role-models, or at least to sum up how they acted so that players understand how their characters should imitate them. You will need to write up quite a few role-models for a campaign, the more the better. Five is about the minimum that you can get away with. Also note that in most human societies the role-models for women have been completely different from those for men. If you want to get away from a sexual division in your campaign you may want to ignore this difference. However, it increases the lifelike feel of a campaign if you have female role-models for women to imitate and male role-models for men. Though it doubles the work, requiring a minimum of ten role-models for your religion, it's worth it.

Greek Example

The Olympian pantheon of ancient Greece included many gods who defined acceptable behavior for religious greeks. Women had one set of gods to serve as their examples, and men had another.

Goddess

Role and Personality
Aphrodite
Lover, creative woman, love and beauty
Artemis
Competitor and sister, the hunt
Athena
Strategist and father's favorite, crafts
Demeter
Farmer's wife, nurturer and mother, child's protector
Hera
Queen, wife, maker of commitments, driver of husband
Hestia
Maiden aunt, hearth and temple
Persephone
Mother's daughter, maiden, passive woman

God

Role and Personality
Apollo
Favorite son, archer, lawgiver
Ares
Warrior, dancer, lover
Dionysos
Mystic, lover, wanderer, drunkard, pervert
Hephaestos
Inventor, loner
Hermes
Trickster, traveler, thief, communicator
Poseidon
Farmer, emotional man, ocean
Zeus
King, father, thunder, sky, seducer

People who behaved like one of the gods were understood. People might say of an emotional man, "he is like Poseidon." They might say a woman who is devoted to her home is like Hestia. Even if a god played a role which society normally frowned on, such as Hermes the thief and jokester, or the powerful woman Aphrodite, they were incorporated in the belief system. They fit in.

[Footnote: After Jean Shinoda Bolen's _Goddesses in Everywoman_, and _Gods in Everyman_. I've corrected the personalities and roles to match the sources I have for Greek religion, and removed Hades who wasn't REALLY worshipped by the Greeks, nor held up as an example, but the idea is the same.]

Note that archetypes break down when they cross cultural lines. Describe an ancient Greek as a Hestia and she may be pleased or insulted but at least she'll know what you mean. Describe a housewife as a Hestia and unless she is a scholar of Greek religion she will be confused. You're using a word out of context. Nowadays to most people Hestia is an obscure figure out of ancient poetry. People don't refer to Greek gods to describe people any more. On the other hand, tell a modern woman she's a Marilyn Monroe, and she'll be as pleased as an ancient Greek woman confused with Helen of Troy.

Ritual

Rituals are actions that synchronize the world with myth. Rituals carry the performer into the world of myth; they make myth and the gods immanent, immediate. Some rituals will be common to many religions but performed differently because of mythological differences. Remember that we use the technical meaning of Myth. Myth is a sacred story, not a false one. If we call something a myth, that doesn't mean we're pooh-poohing it.

The Eucharist or Holy Communion is a Christian ritual in which the celebrants are miraculously transported to Jesus' Last Supper with his Apostles, which is the mythic basis for the Communion Ritual. By eating the wafer, drinking the wine, and praying along with the rest of the celebrants, each celebrant becomes physically present at the Last Supper along with all the myriad Christians who perform that ritual in the past, present, or future. For the duration of the ritual each celebrant is transported out of Linear Time into the wheel of Mythtime.

Purpose

People perform rituals for three basic purposes. First they clean. They clean themselves to prepare for contact with divine power. They clean other things to ready them as vessels for divine power. Second they wish to talk with the divinity, and they want to get answers back. Talking to a divinity is called prayer, and when a divinity replies it's called divination. Third they want to feed the divinity. They praise, sacrifice, and perform other rituals in order to feed the divinity with sacred, spiritual nourishment. These are the three basic purposes of religious ritual, all of which binds divinity and mortal believer together in a mutual system.

Clean

Talk

Feed

Types of Rituals

Depending on what they want to discover about a religion, people have divided ritual according to many schemes. They have classified rituals by the identity of the subject. They have grouped them into good and bad, choosing as good those rituals practiced by their own religions. They have grouped them into rituals performed for strictly theological reasons and those that aren't. They have divided them into various rites of passage. They have divided them into rituals intended to unite and those intended to separate.

Complexity

Simple rituals are just that: Simple. An example would be a quick prayer to do well on a test. The chinese custom of burning a stick of incense before a wooden plaque with the name of an ancestor on it is a simple ritual. Simple rituals consist of one or two pieces, rarely more.

Complex rituals consist of many, many pieces including other simple and complex rituals. While a simple ritual takes seconds or minutes to perform, a complex ritual may take hours, days, months, or even years.

The American presidential elections form a very complex ritual. For months and months candidates tramp around the country shaking hands, kissing babies, and attending celebrations. They perform activities in ritualized fashion, and in a similarly ritualistic fashion the press trails them and reports every picayune detail. This part of the election seems to be intended to prove the purity and preparation of the candidate. After much of this, including a preliminary election, the actual election is held. According to strict laws the voters line up and perform their own individual voting rituals in the voting booth. At the end, after the votes are counted by people who have taken an oath to obey the laws and forms of the nation for which the ritual is performed, the winner is chosen. Finally, years after the ritual began, the winner is initiated in a final, massive ritual and becomes the new president.

Rituals which are simple in one culture may be complex in another. For instance, a marriage which would take a couple from Las Vegas 10 minutes in a drive-through wedding chapel might take 10 days for a Hindu couple from New Delhi to complete.

Personal vs. Domestic vs. Corporate

Some people find it useful to make a distinction between Personal, Domestic, and Corporate rituals. Personal rituals are performed for one person's benefit. Domestic rituals are performed for one family or household. Corporate rituals are performed for the benefit of a large community or group.

Personal rituals primarily affect a single person. They may change that person. One person is the primary actor in a personal ritual. Someone else may help, but the ritual is performed by and directed towards a single person. Shamanic initiation is a personal ritual. Though shamanic initiation eventually impacts upon the community, the initiation is a personal ritual. Typically the old shaman induces a trance in the novice, by means of drumming, fasting, music, and perhaps a few psychedelic drugs. The shaman watches over the trance to try to stop anything really bad from happening, but for the most part it's the job of the novice to make the ritual a success. At the end of the ritual initiation the new shaman returns from the Otherworld to the everyday world having activated his or her miraculous powers. The initiate is transformed by the ritual. He or she went into the trance as a normal person and came out a worker of miracles, a shaman.

Domus, the Latin word for home or household, is the root word for domestic. A miracle which primarily affects a household is a domestic ritual. Marriage is an example of a domestic ritual. Though marriage intimately affects the two persons who are joined by it, and it also affects the community around them, its primary effect is to form a new household. Though marriage may also change the individual and community its primary effect is on the household that it defines. Marriage is the ritual which creates a household, and as such is a very important domestic ritual.

In many parts of the world boys undergo their initiation to manhood all together in one large group. At a mythically determined time they are mock-kidnapped by the adult men, who disguise themselves as demons or enemies and drag them into the woods. There the boys are hidden from the women and children of the village. They undergo instruction in the men's secrets. They go through a simulated death and rebirth, and may undergo painful or dangerous ordeals. At the end, having passed tests of knowledge and bravery, along with whatever else the men deem important in one of their own, they become men. Then they are taken back to the village, with their new manly names, and introduced to everybody. Though initiation profoundly changes each of the boys, it is performed by the entire community and it changes a group of boys into men, all at once at an appropriate mythic time. They are more than individuals; they are more than a household. The male initiation is a community ritual.

Analytically the distinction between personal, domestic, and community ritual doesn't tell us very much. Still, it does establish a convenient shared vocabulary if you want to talk about rituals involving a group of people.

Morality

It is hard for Religious People to look at features of alien religions without carrying moral baggage from their own religion. You can understand a ritual which appears in your own religion, but a ritual alien to you will be morally repugnant. If you understand a ritual then you're likely to think it good, sensible and civilized. If you don't understand a ritual then you will think it bad, barbaric and evil. For example, European explorers who traveled to Africa and the Americas identified the natives as savages in large part because of the evil or barbaric rituals which they performed. At the same time the natives believed that their own rituals were civilized while those of the European explorers were wrong or barbaric.

Many distinctions that are drawn between rituals of one's own religion and alien religions find their source in the moral contrast between good and evil or right and wrong. Any distinction where one culture or religion has the moral high ground over another, as with legality, morality, or human nature, can usually boil down to the good versus bad thing. It's a matter of two religions with two different belief systems. What's right in one may not be right in the other.

Ecofest vs. Theofest

Some people make a distinction between rituals performed for ecological reasons and those performed for divine or personal reasons. Ecological rites, performed at regular phases of the moon, planting or harvest time, equinoxes and junctions of the seasons, or at other times determined by cosmic activity or the ordinary progression of the year, are cosmological in origin, and may even be called Ecofests. Rites performed upon the occasion of some action or episode in the life of a god, or upon a reflection of that episode in the life of a member of the community, are theological in origin, and may be called Theofests. This lends itself to use by ecological activists who want to point out the ecologically correct activities hidden in useless traditional mummery. For this reason I think it fits in the good versus bad division.

Rites of Passage

Rites of Passage, also known as initiatory rituals, formally mark certain passages in the life of an individual or group. Some examples might include:

  • Pre-Natal rituals, to make sure the child is perfect and healthy
  • Infant, to transform the subject from a thing into a real person, one of "our people"
  • Naming, to give the child or initiate a unique identity in the group
  • Puberty, to make the child into a youth, a near-adult, sexually able, responsible member of the group
  • Marriage, to mark the transition from youth to adult or prospective parent; also to unite the families of the married couple and thereby combine their clans or bloodlines
  • Initiation, to induct the candidate into a selective group such as a warrior society or private club
  • Retirement, to mark the transition of the retiree from working adult into group elder, from one admired for strength to one admired for wisdom

Unity and Separation

A distinction may also be made between rituals which unite and those which separate. Uniting rituals are happy, public rituals marked by celebration. Birth, adoption, coming-of-age, marriage, laying the foundation of a new house, and the commencement of any new venture are all marked by rituals intended to unite the participants together into a community, to bind them into a greater society. Separating rituals are unhappy, often private, rituals, marked by fear and haste. The death of a person in the community, moving away, closing a business, closing a church, all of these are marked by separating rituals, which are designed to render impotent a formerly powerful part of the community's life, to make the separation from it as painless as possible for those who are left.

The separating and uniting aspects of rituals are reflected in the structure of rituals. Professor Constance Goodman has proposed that all rituals borrow their structure from the primal human experience, that of birth. Her theory makes a lot of sense, and will enable us to use a unified description of ritual for rituals from any society. The total pattern for ritual within this framework is Death-Welcome-Strengthen-Teach-Sex.

According to Goodman's theory, childbirth was traditionally thought to follow this pattern.

  • Death. Birth begins with death, according to traditional societies. When a person dies his or her soul eventually goes to the otherworld, to dwell with the other ancestral spirits, the gods, and other spirits. The souls of people yet to be born come from this otherworld. They may be souls of ancestors who are ready to be born again, they may be new souls, or they may be the souls of something else. The soul must be coaxed into the newborn's body. The baby develops in its mother's belly slowly, and the mother-to-be does whatever she must to encourage the best soul to enter into her child. Finally, after almost ten moons the baby is ready to be born and things move into high gear. As the baby passes through the birth canal the newborn spirit passes from the spirit world to our world and joins with the infant body, to form a human baby.
  • Welcome. Now the baby is welcomed, the mother lifts it and greets it, cradling it in her arms. The tribe may give a feast or other celebration to celebrate the birth of the new child. The mother thanks the spirits, the gods, and her ancestors for helping to put a good spirit in her new child.
  • Strengthen. After recovering from its traumatic passage into life the infant begins to hunger, and its mother feeds it. Mother's milk sustains the child. Mother's milk strengthens it.
  • Teach. During the following months and years, the mother and family teach the child many of the things required for survival and prosperity. They teach the ways of the world, of humanity, and of the gods. They teach the child what is right and wrong behavior. They pass on their knowledge to the child. After years of this the child knows enough to become a fully adult member of the community.
  • Sex. Adulthood comes to the child around the time of puberty. For girls, the evidence of puberty is sudden and obvious. At the time of her first menstruum a girl will go through the induction into adulthood. For boys, puberty is less evident, and so all the boys of one age are inducted at once, in a group initiation taking several days. Now the new and fully adult child can rejoin the community.

Ritual Rich and Poor

Use Ritual Rich and Ritual Poor as terms for the amount of ritual activity in a culture. Ritual Rich cultures may have one hundred holy festivals in each standard year, or even more, up to thirty or even more rites of passage to mark important events in each person's life, standardized rituals for waking, food preparation, cleansing, sleeping, and all the other acts of a day. Ritual Poor cultures may have no more than a few holy festivals in a year, only a few rites of passage, and no everyday rituals at all. The ritual richness of a culture doesn't have anything to do with whether rituals are complex or simple. However, a ritual rich culture which tends towards complex rituals will be readily apparent. It will be very hard to get anything done in a timely fashion in such a place. On the other hand, a ritual rich culture tending toward simple rituals may not be very obvious to the visitor. They may wonder why people do such strange things all the time, but that may be the extent of it.

Player characters who run across a culture rich in religious ritual will notice the people's religious leaning. Rather than calling it "ritual rich" you may want to call it a religious culture or society. Irreligious player characters may wonder at the exasperating complexity of even the simplest tasks in such a society, and most likely will not understand why people take so long to produce so little visible effect, since the rewards of ritual behavior are not pragmatic ones. Religious player characters often enjoy the atmosphere and may find such a place bolsters their own faith.

Player characters who encounter a ritual poor culture will note the pragmatic anti-miraculous tone of life in that place. They may even feel a drop in the power level of magic or miracles in such a place. Religious player characters should not be blamed if they become upset in such an environment.

[Is the ritual rich/poor thing a necessary section? I suspect it isn't.]

A Warning About Rituals

When a myth comes to sacred life in a community, and people perform various acts to recreate the sacred truths of myth, to re-enact the acts of the gods, then you have a ritual. Bizarre acts by disturbed individuals are not rituals, though they may have ritualistic trappings. All the rituals described in this chapter are only powerful, only meaningful, if they occur in the context of a community with a mythology that supports them. For instance, this chapter lists many ways to achieve Divine Ecstasy, many of which are unacceptable or illegal within modern American society. For that reason it just won't do to participate in the Soma Sacrifice in the USA in 1992. Not only will you be arrested if found out, but you lack a meaning for it, a context or frame in which the ritual is true. You will only experience an illusion. Such a ritual without context can only serve to separate you from your community, to throw you out of your society. For this reason, I recommend that you do not yourselves perform the rituals in this chapter, unless instructed to do so by someone whom you respect who understands ritual, such as a parent, priest, minister, rabbi, or another person with more experience than you.

Sample Rituals

"Mother," asked the young girl, "why do you say a blessing before smashing the rice?"

"In the old days, my daughter, the sky was very close to the earth, so close that one day a woman who was pounding rice hit the sky with her pestle and hurt it. The sky roared and cried and fled away from the earth in pain, and ever since we say we are sorry before we grind the rice. Whenever the sky cries on us we recall that time. That is why we must always say a blessing before grinding rice, to remember what we did to the sky."

Rituals are performed for many reasons, but most often in order to recall an aspect of myth. This may be done consciously or unconsciously. Characters in your game world do not all have to be religious fanatics, well versed in myth and dogma, in order to participate in ritual. Many "normal" occurrences in the surrounding society are ritually based. For example, Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, is the last day before Lent, the month-long christian fast that precedes Easter. Anyone who has been in New Orleans during the Mardi Gras festival knows that there is very little that is religious about the festivities. They have become a civic festival celebrated by natives and and visitors of any and all religions. Your campaign worlds may be filled with such ceremonial occasions, and the majority of persons in the world may not know the reasons why they started. In fact, these are details you can fill in afterwards. After you have introduced the rituals you can later decide on the mythic backdrop to them.

The person who performs a ritual is called the actor or performer. If multiple people are involved, they're all actors and performers. This is not because they're faking, but because they act in service of the ritual. They perform the ritual. They aren't putting on an amusement for those who watch them. They perform an important role. In fact, the roots of european theater and acting lie in religious rituals, in the so-called "mummer plays" which re-enacted the crucifixion and other mythic and legendary episodes in order to instruct and enlighten the audience. Theater has learned many things from religion. Not only are the words borrowed, but so are many of the techniques. [TANGENT WARNING: This also hints why so many theatrical actors are intense, messianic. They want to show people the truth. They want to show people the true religion, the true way. They are convinced that they speak the plain unvarnished truth, while their audience thinks that actors simply speak pleasant fictions.]

Rituals which are performed in preparation for other rituals, are called preparatory rituals. That makes sense. Preparatory rituals are most often purifications which cleanse the actor and tools, sacrifices which summon and please the gods or spirits, or ecstatic rituals which bring the actor into the proper frame of mind. Purification rituals remove a taint from something: the people who perform the ritual; a ceremonial site; or some place. Sacrifices are used to enrich the gods and the spirit world or to placate angry spirits. Purification, sacrifice and ecstasy are often used within other rituals, to prepare for them or in support of the main part of the ritual. They may also be the main point of the ritual. This is especially likely when sacrificing large animals or humans.

Purification Rituals

Before most any other ritual the worshipper must purify herself and any and all tools or ritual objects, so they may interact with the divine spirit without being contaminated or destroyed by the experience. Almost all cultures agree that the Sacred is dangerous if treated carelessly, and purification is the primary way to protect the worshipper from the side-effects of divine power.

Summary

Purify the actor and tools.

Description

Confession: The actor first confesses his or her sins and moral faults to a religious authority, who ritually forgives the actor for minor sins or those which are easily forgiven and suggests penance or appropriate courses of action for severe sins. You can usually tell which sins are deemed to be severe, because a society based on the religion will set the penalty for those sins at death. If no taint of sin remains, that is if the actor has not committed a severe or unpardonable offense, then this part of preparation is completed.

Washing and Annointing: The actor washes himself and his tools (or herself and her tools) and applies perfumes and perfumed oils so that he or she will smell sweet and pleasant when in the presence of the gods. Clothing is clean and freshly laundered, and may be perfumed with pleasant smells. Colors are bright and pure.

Meaning

Magical and religious power is dangerous. It is especially dangerous to those who are impure and thus unready to receive it. Purification makes mortals and mortal tools more like the divine, which is pure beyond mortal capacity. No purification can completely prepare a mortal to handle divine energies but rigorous purification is likely to improve the chances of things working.

Variations

  1. Preparation for evil rituals (however a society defines evil) may require a ritual desecration instead of a ritual purification. This will attract malevolent influences rather than the beneficent influences desired in more socially acceptable rituals. The actor would boast of sins and moral flaws, be acclaimed for them, would douse the tools and himself or herself in foul smelling things, put on dirty, dull, dark clothes, and curse the gods. Of course all these things increase the danger involved in ritual, so those who engage in evil rituals often come to a quick and spectacular end.

Sacrifice

To sacrifice is to make something sacred. saying grace over a meal is a sacrifice. some part of the thing sacrificed is conveyed to the divine figure. the rest isn't as important, and might be given to a mortal priest, to the religion, to a needy co-religionist, or consumed by the sacrificer.

The actor in a sacrifice believes that the gods and the universe sacrifice themselves every day for mortals. In return, mortals must demonstrate their worthiness by sacrificing something back for the gods and the universe. What goes around, comes around. Everyone is an equal participant in this redistributive economy of sacrifice. The Green Man gives his body as fruit and grain. The Corn Woman is buried to provide nutrition for the new corn and thus feed her descendants. Osiris, hacked into a dozen pieces, provides nourishment to the entire Nile river valley. In return for the sacrifices of these gods mortals must enter into the sacrificial economy. They sacrifice the first fruit from tree and harvest, blood from food animals, fat, perfumes, and other riches.

Summary

By burning or other destroying something in a manner revealed through sacred knowledge, such as myth or writ, the destroyed thing is conveyed to a holy state.

Description

At a time and place designated in sacred knowledge a fire is built. First the lesser sacrifices are offered (such as fruit if the main sacrifice is an animal), along with fine scented oils and perfumes. the sacrifice is thus annointed. If a human it may be brought to sacred (ecstatic) state by whatever means are appropriate: If the victim is a volunteer then trance will work; if the victim is an involuntary one then drugs or alcohol may be in order. Once the fire is blazing then the main sacrifice is killed and placed on the flames, sacrificed. For a foundation sacrifice the cornerstone or a piece of the foundation will then be placed on the hot ashes.

Meaning

To sacrifice is to make sacred. Sacrifice conveys the sacrificed to the Otherworld, the spirit realm which is the dwelling place of gods and ancestors. It empowers the sacrificial victim with sacred power and for that reason is sometimes considered to be an honor.

Variations

  1. Water, drowning instead of burning, bent or broken, humans or animals may first be strangled with a cord.
  2. votive images or icons to commemorate miraculous act or in hope that miracle will affect the thing in which the votive image is offered in token.
  3. coins, often bent. even worthless ones are appropriate sacrifices to the spirits.
  4. valuable item can be left in a holy place. presumably the god takes it or gets some use out of it. tender of shrine will probably get the best use out of it.
  5. Hanged in a tree. Hanged by the neck. Alternately, head and limbs are severed and hung in the tree. Some people have speculated that this may be the source of the Christmas tree tradition. The ancient Celtic tribes used to cut off the heads and limbs of sacrifices and hang them on the branches of a huge evergreen tree, thus the red and green colors of the holiday.
  6. Severing. As this severs one part from another, so may the soul be severed from the body and go directly to the other world, not hang around the world of the living.
Propitiation

aka Appeasement.

Summary

Sacrifice is offered to angry or hostile gods or spirits, or those who are potentially angry or hostile.

Description

The actor invokes the gods and spirits to be appeased in a mild-mannered fashion, continually thanking them and complimenting them profusely. Angry gods and spirits are treated as tyrants. They are blandished with pleasantries and invited into the bosom of the people. First the fire is lit and perfumed oils are scattered in it, to scent the smoke which rises to heaven and attracts the gods. Then fine fruits and other agricultural products are offered up, usually burned on the sacrificial fire. Finally, a major sacrifice, most often a large animal or human, is offered to the angry god in hopes that more aren't taken. Thus the ritual reaches its climax.

Meaning

An angry god or spirit may be mollified by a sacrifice. Its anger may be reduced or eliminated by pleasant words and offerings. In general, people who believe in many gods believe in doing everything possible to protect themselves from the actions of the gods. This means appeasing angry and hostile gods, as well as asking boons of friendly gods.

Variations

  1. Enemy gods aren't treated so kindly. They are likely to be appeased in the grudging way that people give change to beggars, furtively and with a barely suppressed wish that they go away. Sometimes people wonder why anyone would worship a god or spirit of disease, or death, or adultery, or any other undesirable thing. People do not worship such gods in order to get them to act. They offer worship so that the gods will withhold their curses. Mortals have often thought that the gods were bad tempered or all around bad, and by means of sacrifices they hoped to restrain the divine anger of the gods.
Foundation Sacrifice

Summary

A sacrifice is laid under the walls or doorway of a building.

Description

A human head, head of an animal or the entire animal, weapon, coin, or effigy is buried under the wall or door of a building. In an example of the ceremony, the foundation stones are first decorated and annointed with sweet smelling oil, then the sacrifice is burned on the stones or dirt beneath the walls, and various substances such as incense, grain, honeycomb, and wine are thrown on the flames. Once the flame has gone down, the first course of stones is laid on the smoking ashes of the sacrifice.

Meaning

This is believed to imbue a building with a protective spirit, which will guard against the magical attacks of witches and sorcerers. In theistic cultures, this ritual may be diluted, and will done to appease the gods, or to bring good luck.

Variations

  1. Any site may be protected with this ritual, not only buildings. For example: Terminus was the Roman god of boundaries, and in his worship a boundary sacrifice was offered at the same time that the stone wall that marked the boundary of real estate was laid in place.
Votive Sacrifices

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Dedication or Commencement Sacrifices

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Closing or Separation Sacrifices

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Separation Sacrifice

Summary---An animal or valuable is sacrificed when a sacred or semi-sacred structure is abandoned or destroyed.

Description---[fill in later]

Meaning---The sacrifice is meant to appease the gods or spirits who dwelt in or around the formerly holy area. This is a standard appeasement sacrifice.

Variations

  1. Removing the Dangerous Sacred Power from a Temple or Shrine.
  2. Filling in a Well.
  3. Leaving a Home Behind.
  4. Beheading statues and symbols of power to destroy their power.
Royal Horse Sacrifice

Summary---A pure white stallion is chosen by a victorious king who would become known as a universal sovereign or emperor, the ruler of many tribes and lands, and after a year of preparations he ritually sacrifices the horse, guaranteeing his power.

Description---Emissaries search far and wide for a pure white male colt, which is protected from harm and carefully raised to adulthood. Once a yearling it is enclosed with a hundred mares, but prevented by a great number of guards from mating with them. After a year the entire tribe participates in a multi-day ritual which sets the stage for the final ritual, and at the end of it, the tribal leader sacrifices the horse.

Meaning---The horse is a widespread symbol of the primordial waters, which are also symbolized by dragons, chaos, and chaotic monsters. Thus the horse is sacrificed to symbolize the king's victories over the enemies of the kingdom who may be valiant and glorious but are in the end impotent. At the end of a successful ceremony, the king who conducted the sacrifice is acclaimed as a universal sovereign (in his own kingdom, at the least, and possibly beyond it) and may be elevated to divine status in the eyes of his people.

Variation

  1. This may be performed with a pure white bull, or a white bull with certain fateful markings, or with any other respected animal or being which is associated with the sea and or chaos in the local mythology.
  2. As in the human sacrifice, a less valuable sacrifice may at the last minute be substituted for the chosen victim. This is likely to be controversial in the period during which the ritual changes.

Ecstatic Rituals

The pursuit of ecstasy is a large part of almost all religions. However, most cultures reject all techniques of ecstasy other than the techniques they claim as their own, and may even declare other techniques to be illegal. We recommend that you do not break laws or hurt yourself or anyone else in the pursuit of religious ecstasy.

Here are some of the ways that people try to reach sacred ecstatic states.

  • Breathing, the control of breath
  • Dancing
  • Drug use and intoxication
  • Drumming
  • Fasting
  • Gorging, especially on spicy food or hot peppers
  • Meditation or concentration
  • Music
  • Pain, such as self-flagellation, scarring, or tattooing
  • Sensory deprivation
  • Sexual congress
  • Sexual deprivation
  • Sleep deprivation

Here are some of the expected results of ecstatic states.

  • Divine Visions, see Divination, below.
  • Healing of Ills
  • Miracles
  • Necromancy, or summoning the spirits of the dead
  • Out of body travel
  • Possession by spirits or gods
  • Travel to the upperworld and underworld

Note that shamans frequently use these ecstasy-producing techniques to allow them to heal, to enter the other world, and to see and control spirits. They will be the most spectacular users of ecstatic techniques in most campaign worlds, as they are in the real world.

Divination

The Greek mantis was a prophet who could speak with the gods and bring back secrets about the past, the future, and events that occur far away. He lent his title to many of the arts of divination such as oneiromancy or divination by dreams, astromancy or divination by the stars, and necromancy or divination by speaking with the spirits of the dead. Did you ever wonder where "a little bird told me" came from? The augur was another type of Greek prophet, one who could understand the speech of birds, who lent his name to the word "augury." By listening to bird songs the augur could discover hidden knowledge.

It seems that almost every possible technique has been used to try to predict the future. Divinatory rituals may involve meditation and concentration on a featureless object until the future is revealed, either by an instant understanding or by the cumulative accretion of many small truths. Humanity is a primarily visual species, so the visual forms of divination such as crystal gazing, examining the entrails of sacrificed animals, or fire gazing, are the commonest techniques. There are other techniques that use the other senses. Sometimes divinations are performed by generating some kind of random result and interpreting it. For example a Ouija Board selects letters in random order and it is up to the user to understand what they mean. Many more techniques have been tried. Some have been discarded, others have been expanded into entire branches of knowledge. Astromancy or astrology, for example, is the parent of astronomy and may be credited as the basis for not only modern astronomy, but also for the basis of calculus and physics.

Types of Divination

  • Visual Divination, involving staring into a featureless object or into some object with so many features that they cannot be comprehended until shapes and movements appear, containing clues to future events.
    • Astrology, Astromancy, the use of astronomical observation in order to discern the movements of the spheres and tell the future. "As above, so below" is the rule governing Astrology.
    • Extispicy, or Haruspication, is divination using the entrails of sacrificed animals.
    • Cartomancy is the use of playing cards or Tarot in order to read the face of the future. "It's in the cards."
    • Crystal Gazing is divination by concentrating on a crystal ball, or some other glass or mirrored item, until scenes from the future appear on it. "Clear as crystal."
    • Water Gazing is divination by concentrating on a featureless, clear pool, well, or puddle, until scenes from the future become apparent.
    • Pyromancy involves staring into a fire until the future's secrets are revealed as shapes in the leaping flames. Divination by altered states. It is possible for people who are in altered states of reality to have prophetic insights into the future or into present situations.
    • Oneiromancy is the interpretation of dreams.
    • Ecstatic Visions. Visions following techniques of ecstasy may lead to divine wisdom.
    • Near Death Visions. A person who has almost died and survived will often bring back marvelous stories of other places and times, often these people are transformed by the experience, sometimes they are treated as powerful and semi-divine. Auditory Divination. By listening to formless sounds until divine words become apparent, the diviner can tell the future. Alternately, an unexpected meaning can be discovered in formal speech such as poetry.
    • Aeromancy. Breezes are often thought to carry secrets for those who would listen.
    • Aquamancy. Water, especially in the burbling of streams, speaks worlds to those who know how to listen.
    • Poesomancy. Poetry, a highly formal kind of speech, may hold secrets passed to the poet by a divine muse and understood by the careful listener.
    • Augury. Birdsongs are thought to contain many secrets. "A little bird told me" reminds us moderns of an ancient kind of divination practiced, among others, by the Augurs of Rome.
    • Shell-listening, placing an ear to a conch or similar shell and listening, is common near seas and oceans. Kinesthetic divination, or divination using the sense of touch, involves the random movement of the body and divination by its selection of something or another.
    • Sacrificial animals may be closely watched to see whether they fall in one direction or another, or animals may be hunted down and the place where they fell chosen as the site of a new temple or dwelling.
    • Divining rods are held in the user's hands and twist and pull depending on how close they get to some desired, sacred object. Water, the source of life, is commonly found by "water witches."
    • Ouija boards have the letters of the alphabet arranged across them and the operator spells out words by randomly moving a marker to one part, then another, of the board. The words must be interpreted. Other senses, such as Smell and Taste, aren't such great methods of divination for humans, since we can't distinguish many differences in them, but still the identification of good by its sweet smell and pleasant taste and evil by chemical tastes or the smell and taste of rot is a common sort of divination, though usually not a formal prophetic method. It may still be quite useful as a way of detecting poisons in food.

Seasonal Rituals

Festivals tend to roll around regularly, along with the wheel of Mythic Time, generally once each year, sometimes more frequently, or happen whenever some normal occurrence warrants a feast. They generally mark some cosmic or mythical happening, and come at an important juncture of the economic year.

  • New Year---this holiday marks the birth of the new world after the old world has been used up by the passing of the previous year. It is a positive festival, and may include some kind of Sacred King or other ritual appointment to symbolize the new year.
  • Spring---a festival to celebrate the spring usually begins at a meaningful phase of the moon, and includes the crowning of a Sacred Queen and may also include her ritual marriage to the Sacred King.
  • Mid-summer---the halfway point of the year when the days are longest, after the planting has been done and before the harvesting begins. Mid-summer is an important festival.
  • Harvest---there is a lot of food, enough to share its bounty, and everybody celebrates the successful crops. If the crops failed this festival may take on an air of desperation, but it will still happen as next year's crop may depend on it.
  • Mid-winter---ghosts and other creatures of darkness come out during the winter and a festival must be held to appease them, as well as to raise the morale of those who are becoming bored with the foodstuffs they have laid up for the winter and seek a little variety, such as a roast boar, in their diet.
New Year Ritual

Summary

Following a ritual destruction of the world, society, and order, a Sacred ruler is chosen to act the part of the creator god, and his or her performance of the New Year rituals determines the fortune of society for the following year.

Description

The New Year ritual takes place at the end of winter and the beginning of the spring, and begins with the destruction of the old world. This is the period known as the Saturnalia, when the gates of the town are thrown open, slaves may order their masters around, people run around the streets in masks, all the rules of order are thrown out; this is the time of Chaos. At midnight, the height of the pandemonium, then the New Year Ritual begins. First the Sacred King walks around the town in a Parade or Procession, eventually wending his way to the center of town, and there he ritually creates the world and banishes chaos as it was done by the creator. This is timed to finish around dawn. As the sun rises upon the successful conclusion of the ritual, there is a huge celebration, including contests and feasting. The world has been created anew. If the ritual is not successful, then the celebration will be muted, but will still continue.

Meaning

The gates are thrown open to allow chaos to enter the town. The end of the world ritual, a saturnalia or orgiastic celebration, is a symbol of the destruction of the bonds that order society into a community, a destruction that takes place so that the world may be created anew, as it was from chaos in the beginning. The idea is to renew, to make it new.

The Procession of the Sacred King draws a circle around the Sacred World and protects the town from chaos, which has infiltrated during the end of the world ritual.

Variations

  1. The modern, cosmopolitan New Year festival includes a wild party at the end of the old year, but it's hard to imagine where the other half of the ritual, the one that recreated a new world out of the mess of the old, went to. Prayer to the porcelain god and plentiful preparations of hangover cures don't seem to fully replace it. In fact the re-creative aspect (as opposed to the recreational) of the traditional New Years ritual still exists, just barely, in the New Years resolution. The re-creation of the world at the New Years is a good time to quit smoking or decide to lose weight or take some other personal step.

[[[fill in]]]

Harvest Ritual

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Spring Fertility Ritual

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Spoken Rituals

Bless

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Curse

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Oath

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Prayer

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Divine Ecstasy

Summary---The worshipper uses culture-specific techniques to reach an ecstatic state.

Description---Depending on the mythical and legendary activities of the deities and ancestors, members of a religion will choose one or several methods for reaching an altered state of consciousness. Though not strictly the goal of any ritual, the ecstatic experience is arguably the most important part of religion, it is identical to what William James, the 19th century explorer or the psyche, called the religious experience, the experience which brings meaning and identification to otherwise empty ceremony and dogma, producing worship and myth.

Some ways to reach a state of divine ecstasy might include: Meditation; Dreaming; Fasting; Self-deprivation; Illness; Sexual union; Dancing; Music; Drumming; Contemplation of beauty; Self-flagellation; Tattooing; Body piercing and modification; Solitary living; Alcoholic beverages; Spoken invocation of deity; Mind-altering drugs.

Meaning---Divine Ecstasy allows the worshipper to leave her body, to see and interact with spirits, to incarnate a deity, and have other important religious experiences. Divine Ecstasy is used as a building block for many other rituals such as the circular dance, sacrifice, prophecy, glossolalia (speaking in tongues), and so on.

The ecstatic state that a worshipper reaches is of divine origin. The divinity has made the transcendental state of being, and the trance itself, possible. The shaman can leave her body by using holy ecstasy.

Variations---Divine Ecstasy is found in all human cultures. It is one of the most widespread and basic patterns in human religion. Though it is widespread, many religions and religious societies approve of only a few methods of reaching an ecstatic state of consciousness, and will discriminate against those who use others. They may make the possession of certain implements, professions, or intoxicants illegal, or use other means, such as rules against gatherings, to discourage those who persist in pursuing divine ecstasy in forbidden ways.

Soma Sacrifice

Eating amanita muscaria, fly agaric, sacred mushrooms to go into a transformative state of ecstasy. prepare as for any other sacrifice. once the high ranking people, who can afford the soma, have taken it, the lower ranking people actually drink the urine of their superiors to get the active ingredient, which is passed out through the urine.

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Shamanic Rituals

The shaman is medicine man, priest, and psychopomp: He cures illness, directs the communal sacrifices, and escorts the souls of the dead to the other world.

A male shaman is called a shaman; a female shaman a shaman or shamana. The plural of shaman is shamans.

The shaman's primary ritual technique is the use of Divine Ecstasy to allow him to leave his body.

Shamanic Journey

Summary---The shaman induces an ecstatic trance in himself and goes into the upper or under-world, where he treats with ancestral and other spirits, and gods, in order to heal a sick person or bring back something of importance.

Description---The goal of the shaman may be to reach the spirit of a person, driven by a disease from her body, or someone who has suffered from evil sorcery or bad luck. The shaman may want to accompany a dead soul to its proper place in the upper or lower world. Or the shaman may be searching for a special secret or power in order to bring it back to the normal world, the middle world. After a prearranged period of time, the drumming (there is always drumming) changes to a pattern which is designed to draw the shaman out of the otherworld, and the shaman awakes from his trance, hopefully after resolving the situation in the otherworld.

The shaman goes into a dark place [expand this], and enters a state of Divine Ecstasy, a shamanic state of consciousness, by means of which the shaman's spiritual self may go to the otherworld. In this state of consciousness, the shaman's vital signs may be so suppressed that he appears to be dead or in a coma. The shaman perceives the experience as a physical trip to a distinct other world. The path to this other world is a tube beginning at a hole in the ground, the ceiling, or the sky. At the end of the tunnel, the shaman emerges into the other world, which may be the upper world, a world above the sky, or the underworld, a world below the ground. In this otherworld, animals and people still have not been differentiated. The rules of myth are still in force. The trip is a perilous one, and may or may not involve a meeting with the greatest gods, those who live in the farthest reaches of the other world. [and there he seeks out the spirit which he hunts. expand.] Meaning --Obviously this is what Joseph Campbell describes as the heroic journey or cycle. The shaman is the hero who goes into the otherworld and brings back an elixir which will cure the sick one, the king of the wounded land. The successful shaman is a tribal hero. The tunnel journey is like a trip through the birth canal; symbolically speaking the shaman is reborn every time he travels to the other world.

Variations

  1. Shamanic techniques are often derided as primitive or savage religious beliefs. It is true they are predominant among pre-literate hunter-gatherer tribes, and other aspects of religion come to the fore in agricultural and settled societies, but shamanic techniques are widespread even in the most urbane, civilized cultures.
Shamanic Healing

According to many pre-literate societies sickness is caused by one's soul being out of the body and lost. As a shaman can see spirits, a shaman can find a person's lost soul and return it to the proper body before the body wastes away and dies.

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Psychopomp, Escort of Dead Souls

The shaman is also a psychopomp, one who escorts the souls of the dead to their proper afterlife.

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Possession

Possession includes speaking in tongues, riding the loa, channeling, and any time that a worshipper takes on the personality or attributes of the divinity, whether the divine is actually inhabiting the worshipper or whether it is imaginary. in games with concrete gods and magic, we don't even need to use invention/imagination as an option, though I'd prefer not to rule it out.

In a Possession ritual one or more people participate in a ceremonial which may involve dance, music, intoxicants, and other techniques of inducing ecstasy in order to summon spirits of ancestors and the gods and induce them to enter into the body of a worshipper. Some spirits voluntarily leave the body when the ritual is over, others must be forced out.

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Exorcism

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Necromancy

Necromancy---like Odysseus did, summoning the spirits from the vasty deep in order to speak with them.

Necromancy, the art of controlling spirits of the dead, is a widely reviled variation of shamanic practice. The necromancer compells the dead to come to him by magical means or threats, rather than going in trance into their world. The necromancer slaughters animals, invokes the underworld god, and summons the dead in order to learn a secret from a particular ghost. Greek myth tells us that ghosts can smell blood when it is spilled, and hunger ravenously for it, and that is why spirits throng around sacrifices. Odysseus used this in order to summon ghosts to him, and refused to let them drink the blood until they brought the ghost of Tieresias to him and he could obtain a prophecy from that blind seer.

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Initiation Rites

Summary---The actor goes through a frightening or embarrassing ordeal in order to join a group.

Description---The novice is an actor in the ritual who undergoes initiation in the ritual. Before the ritual helpers will instruct the novice in any details which are needed to pass the ordeal. Some details may be left out. If so, then the novice is expected to be able to guess them or otherwise play along in the right spirit. If the novice does not play along with the ordeal consequences can be dire. The novice is dressed appropriately and taken to a sacred site, then blindfolded and led through a confusing series of rooms, stairs, and other paths designed to confuse the sense of direction. Once in the initiatory site, the blindfold is removed. All the other actors in the ritual, whether they are friends or not, are dressed strangely. They may wear masks. They may be decorated and disguised. The novice realizes he is in a strange and dangerous world where the normal rules of society are fluid and malleable. This is the world of myth, the mythic reality. Now the ordeal progresses. The novice may be attacked by monsters, or by friends disguised as monsters, or may think he is falling through space, or about to be engulfed in flame, and is expected to react appropriately. The actions of the initiate are supposed to match the god's or hero's mythic actions. The ordeal may involve tattoing, scarring, or other body modifications. It is likely to be painful, and it will definitely be scary. However, unless the novice makes a mistake or fails the test it should not be fatal. Once the ordeal is over and the novice has passed, for the ordeal is not given to someone who is not expected to pass it, the novice becomes an initiate. The novice has successfully passed from one stage in life to the next. Now the celebration commences.

Meaning---Nearly all initiation rituals have one feature in common. They represent the death and rebirth of the participant. Speaking symbolically, Initiation is the death of the old life, and a birth into a new one, destruction and creation in one, a descent into and victory over chaos. The ritual reflects a heroic journey, somewhat like the otherworldly journey of a shaman or mystic. The actor descends into darkness and fear, then conquers the evil monster or shadow according the guidelines of the group, and then returns to the light and the sane, normal world.

Initiation also serves to indoctrinate the novice in the organization and thus it really does give the initiate a higher purpose.

Initiation ordeals work just like brainwashing, in that they frighten the novice and break down his or her defenses, making it possible to imprint new thought patterns, new loyalties, new patterns of behavior, on him or her. In many ways Initiation is the same thing as Brainwashing. It works the same way. The main distinction between the two seems to be that folk refer to an Initiation of which they do not approve as Brainwashing. Boot Camp is an initiation into the armed forces. What the Hari Krishnas do to recruits is brainwashing. In other words, brainwashing is another moral judgment disguised as a definition.

Variations---

  1. Initiation involving immersion in water is one powerful example of this symbolism. The water is an ancient symbol of Chaos, formless and featureless, it is necessary for life itself, the source of life and symbol of the descent into the silent formlessness of death.
  2. Other ordeals involve the drawing of blood, tattoos, scarification, and other disfiguration, bloodcurdling oaths, entombment, burial, the hunt or the battlefield. All of these require the initiate to overcome the apparition of death or an actual risk of dying.
Birth

Summary. Mother and child are prepared for the transition from pre-life to life then brought through the changes.

Description. When the mother-to-be's belly swells with new life she is set aside from other people. She may be shunned or pampered, but she is somehow set aside and prepared for the experience of birth. Some cultures value children and others do not, and this will be reflected in the preparatory rituals. When time comes for the child to be born the mother is sequestered, often her only acceptable helpers are other women. It may be taboo for men to witness birth. After birth, the child is welcomed to the world. In some cultures the child is slapped so that it cries and starts to breathe. [Got any others?] Finally, at some fairly early time the infant will go through a special rite, an infant rite of passage that formalizes the transition from soulless thing to human being.

Meaning. The infant is initiated from the status of a pre-infant---depending on cultural variables the status of an animal, unlife, or a piece of the mother---to the status of a human being. The thing becomes a family member, a human.

Variations.

  1. The Birth initiation may include mutilation such as circumcision.
  2. Naming is sometimes a part of the birth initiation. Sometimes actual naming occurs some time later, perhaps as late as puberty.
  3. The first action of the newborn infant is often watched carefully and used as an omen. A good omen may entitle the infant to good treatment, while a bad omen may entitle it only to abandonment. Likewise, anything that happens while the child is born is likely to be consulted as an omen. For example, a comet was supposed to reign over the birth of Merlin the Magician.

Example

Christian Baptism is an example of an Infant rite of passage which submerges the subject in watery chaos, then brings the subject out of chaos, symbolizing the transformation of the subject from an outsider, a creature of chaos, into one of "our people." According to medieval sources, baptism even works on monsters! When monsters that dwelt in the mountains were baptized their tails fell off. They became fully human.

Male Puberty

Summary

The adult men take the boys out into the forest and require the boys to withstand various hardships and prove their manhood.

Description

When the boys in a tribe reach an age around thirteen or so, though it may be as young as eleven or as old as fifteen in some societies, they are old enough to become men. Once a year the initiation takes place. First the men of the tribe prepare a sacred ground for the initiation. Second the novices are separated from their mothers, and from all women, and may be covered with thatch or rugs to symbolically kill them. It is taboo for women to watch the rest of the ritual, for they might overhear the men's secrets. Third, the older men instruct the novices in the secrets of the hunt and the other secrets that the men hold. During this time the novices must follow various dietary taboos and prohibitions. Finally, the novices must suffer another ordeal and assume a mark of the tribe. This usually requires an operation such as tattooing, piercing, circumcision, subincision, scarification, or the removal of a tooth or finger. At last the initiation is over and the new man participates in the hunt, or may return home. The new man may also receive a new name at this time.

Meaning

All initiations serve to end an old life and inaugurate a new one. The male puberty initiation represents the figurative death of a boy and birth of the man he is to become, instructs him in the necessary traditions of his tribe, and forms a bond between him and the tribe.

Variations

  1.  ?
Female Puberty

Summary

When a girl first menstruates, she is segregated from all men for a day or two, and then the adult women initiate her formally into the tribe.

Description

When a girl first menstruates, the adult women of the tribe take her and sequester her in a darkened hut or in a cave. The novice is left alone for about three days. It is taboo for anybody, especially a boy or man, to see her at this time. She also must adhere to dietary taboos and prohibitions. At some time in the last day of confinement, the adult women all gather together in the chamber with the novice, instruct her in the women's secrets, and mark her with the signs of full womanhood. The marks may be permanent ones, which also serve as ordeals, such as a tattoo, piercing, female circumcision, scarification, or impermanent, such as the customary patterns of paint or makeup. She may also receive a new name at this time. [LJM's guesses. Must fact-check and correct.]

Meaning

All initiations serve to end an old life and inaugurate a new one. The female puberty initiation marks the figurative death of a girl and birth of the woman she is to become. The dark dwelling place represents a tomb and a womb. The three days of isolation correspond to the dark period of the moon, which is the primary symbol of death and rebirth in any human society on earth.

Variations.

  1.  ?
Marriage

The dedication of a couple to fertility, with rice throwing and so on, and to union. In addition to acknowledging the couple's fertility marriage also unites the families of the couple into a single family.

Summary.

Two people join in a marriage, which forms one person out of two persons.

Description.

The parents arrange the marriage of their children. This may take many months. The ceremony proper, which follows a religious ritual, occurs at a prescribed time of day in a prescribed place. It is embedded in many other ceremonies and rituals that go on for days and make it seem like a community festival. One common ritual is the throwing of grain at the newlyweds. At some time after the actual ceremony of marriage the newlyweds may consummate their marriage. This may be the same night. It may be several days later. Once the marriage has been consummated it is complete and the ritual is over.

Meaning.

In some religions, such as Hinduism, the bride is likened to a plowed field, while the groom is likened to grain. This is why people throw rice or other grains at newlyweds. Apart from the obvious fertility connections, marriage's main effect upon society is continuance of a family line. The newlyweds form a point at which their clans or families may join. Their children may lengthen either or both of the bloodlines, depending on what the culture allows. The parents and other relatives of the newlyweds become relatives of each other. Marriage is a kind of social glue that keeps clans and bloodlines from continually warring upon each other. This purpose of marriage is one reason for the widespread incest taboo, and the reason why many cultures encourage people to marry outside the clan, village, or family.

Variations.

  1. Divorce is the separation ritual that breaks a marriage. In general, the procedures of a marriage are reversed. It may be difficult or impossible to get a divorce, or one partner may have a much more difficult time than the other.
  2. The "reward" for a young man who causes a young woman of marriageable age to become pregnant may be forced marriage to her. Americans call this a shotgun marriage, but it might be a crossbow marriage or an axe marriage in standard fantasy settings.
  3. Some cultures recognize marriage between two people of either sex. Obviously they cannot breed to produce their own young, but one can serve as legal protection for the other, and clans may be joined through such a marriage. Some other cultures believe that such a marriage is evil.
  4. Some cultures expect people to choose their own marriage partners. In other cultures all marriages are arranged by parents.
  5. Marriages do not have to take days to complete and involve entire communities. Some chapels in the USA, for instance, offer drive-through weddings for those who want to get married in a hurry.
  6. According to the myths of some religions, mortals were originally created in a hermaphroditic form. They were complete in both sexes, both male and female. As a result of some mythic act, they were broken into two parts, the male half and the female half. Under such a mythic concept marriage is a sacred joining of male and female halves into a whole person.
Shamanic Initiation

Some shamans inherit their profession from a parent or other mentor. Some shaman are chosen by the spirits. Some shamans choose the profession and train for it alone. Others are chosen by the tribe. Which of these paths are preferred depends on the culture. Some cultures prefer one method, other cultures prefer other methods.

Summary

After displaying suitability for the life of a shaman the shaman-to-be goes through a dangerous ordeal and emerges as a shaman.

Description

Shamans are initiated into the profession in a lengthy, often dangerous, initiatory ordeal. Often this involves a lengthy sickness or illness where the shaman comes close to death, and may in fact be taken as dead several times before she finally recovers. Sickness, however, is not sufficient to initiate one as a shaman. Rather, the shaman must overcome the ordeal, reframe it as a religious experience, and emerge from it with strength and a secret which can save her society.

Meaning

The above is how an onlooker might describe the shamanic experience. The shaman would say that spirits stole her away from her body. While she was gone the shell of her self left in her body grew sick or exhibited signs of madness. As the novice shaman traveled in spirit form through the Otherworld she learned how to heal the sick, recognize the myriad types of spirits, and guide dead souls to the other world. She returned from this long journey a full fledged shaman.

Variations.

  1. Male shamans are usually called shamans. Female shamans exist, though they are rare. Some of them are called "shaman," which is the male title and the gender-neutral title. Some are called "shamana," "shamanka," or "shamanga," which are female versions of the word "shaman."
  2. Instead of striking the future shaman with a deadly disease, the ordeal may force the future shaman to wander the wilderness alone, engaging in behavior so eccentric she could be thought mad.
  3. The shamanic phenomenon stretches all over the world, but the word itself comes from the Tungus tribes of Siberia. Other religious specialists who venture into the Otherworld in the manner of a shaman include the mystic, prophet, magus, hero, visionary, even philosophers such as Pythagorus and sorcerers such as John Dee.
  4. Some shamans are taught their knowledge by their shaman predecessor. Others seem to know all they need to know when they are born. They are born with the mind of an elder and the body of an infant.
  5. Shamanic power, the ability to wield magical and divine power as a shaman does, often runs along family lines. Usually only one child in any generation will have the power.

Funerary Rituals

According to the modern cosmopolitan view of humanity we are all mobile organisms on a rotating planet that circles a small star, and is itself circled by another celestial body we call the moon. According to this view of reality we are born out of purely biological combinations and when we die we go back into nothing. Human beings are nothing more than chemical reactions and biological processes.

The traditional view of life and death is different. According to this version of reality, which is the version of reality accepted by most Religious People, people exist as souls both before and after their biological existence. Some say that souls only get to live once, others claim that souls pass through many lives, that souls are recycled. The transition from a soul's pre-life period to its mortal period is covered by birth rituals, above. The transition from the living period to the post-life period is covered by death rituals.

The dead can be divided into at least two groups. There is one group of souls who once lived who are honored and respected. They retain their position in family life. This group is known as the ancestors, and they are akin to the gods. The living respect their ancestors with various rituals, and in return the ancestors keep an eye out for their faithful descendants. The other group of souls are troublesome ghosts who wander around, scaring people and possessing bodies. It is good to have many ancestors and bad to have many ghosts.

In traditional societies the primary reason for funerary ritual is to ensure that people who die become revered ancestors rather than plaguesome ghosts. Failing that, those who are likely to become a plague upon the living should at least be driven far away. The spirits of the dead must depart to the afterworld without trouble or delay. Whether the newly dead are appeased by sacrifice or driven off by magical force, the living expect that if they perform the funerary rites as they always have the dead will not haunt them. Once the spirits of the newly dead have been sent to their proper place in the otherworld, other initiatory rites may be performed in absentia to establish their position and confer honor upon them.

In addition to banishing ghosts and turning likely ghosts into valuable ancestors, funerary rituals, if properly designed, form a community psychodrama that will help the surviving relatives and friends of the dead to relieve their dread, guilt, and anger. This is a cosmopolitan view based on modern psychological theories. It is true anyway, but it is not the sole reason for funerary rituals.

Here are brief outlines of some of the more common patterns of funerary ritual.

  • Burial underground
    • horizontally in the ground, facing up or down
    • in a fetal position, head up or down
    • vertically, head up or down
    • away from human habitation
    • next to inhabited house Submersion in Water
    • placed in a boat and set adrift
    • dropped into water Burned on a Pyre
    • ashes scattered
    • ashes buried
    • ashes kept in survivor's home Dismembered
    • parts buried separately
    • parts buried together
    • head removed, kept with ancestral skulls, body disposed of elsewhere
    • head removed, buried under house as guardian, body exposed Exposed to the elements
    • in a "city of the dead," bones picked clean by scavengers and scoured by the elements are buried after a period of exposure
    • in the wilderness
    • left in place of death, place abandoned and declared taboo Entombment
    • corpse embalmed to preserve for reanimation
    • covered by a pile of rocks called a "cairn"
    • in a monumental tomb or temple
Burial or Inhumation

Summary. Place the body of the deceased in a hole in the ground.

Description. The body of the deceased is placed in a hole in the ground. It may be placed in a prone position, facing up or down, or vertically with the head at the top or bottom of the body, and may be oriented towards any direction of the compass.

Meaning. Obviously, this burial in the ground reflects the planting of crops in an agricultural society. Burial may be symbolically linked to fertility. The symbolism of burial and the direction of the compass varies widely in different cultures. The direction in which the body faces is meant to point the ghost in the proper direction for its afterlife.

Variations.

  1. The proper direction for the body to face varies. Ancient Egyptians buried their dead vertically, with the head downwards, in shafts cut out of rock, in order to point the dead towards the underworld. Likewise, some European tribes buried their dead horizontally, facing downward, to guide them towards the underworld. Finally, Christian tradition demands that the dead be buried horizontally, face upwards, with their feet towards the east, because Christ will appear in the east and that way the dead can simply sit up in their graves and face the returning savior.
  2. Entombment is burying the dead in a tomb. A tomb is a home for the dead, often made of stone and built to resist weather and the ravages of grave-robbers. If a religion buries its dead in tombs then the dead must have some reason which requires their bodies to be kept safe from wild animals and natural forces of decay. Generally, cultures which build tombs believe that the dead will eventually be resurrected. They certainly do not believe in multiple reincarnations. What would be the use of a preserved body for a soul which had already passed through several incarnations?
  3. Embalming, like entombment, is a way to preserve dead bodies. After death, in order to avert decay, the body of the deceased person is preserved by whatever means are available. It may be wrapped in a shroud, dried with lime or some other desiccant, smoked, sprinkled with plaster of Paris, placed in an airtight coffin or tomb, preserved with salt, naphtha, or other spices, freeze-dried or otherwise frozen, vacuum packed, or anything else that staves off decay for a time. Embalmed bodies may be created not only for the possible future resurrection of the dead, but so that faithful people can view them, or as a subject for future miraculous, medical, or scientific action.
  4. Exposure. With exposure, the body of the deceased is exposed to the elements and scavengers. The process of natural decay is encouraged. In some cultures the body is also mutilated, perhaps beheaded, and severed parts disposed of separately. Finally, some cultures have huge roofless towers, teeming with vultures and scavengers, into which the bodies of the dead are thrown. Obviously religions that practice exposure of the dead believe that the dead have no good use for their abandoned bodies (or maybe an Evil use is more likely).
  5. Other cultures dispose of the dead by burning and disposing of the ashes.
  6. Sometimes corpses are beheaded or otherwise mutilated. Restless ghosts worry many societies. A corpse may be beheaded in order to ensure that the ghost will not animate its former body, or to remind it to go to the appropriate afterlife instead of hanging around and causing trouble. Severing the head from the body also directly symbolizes the separation between the world of living people and the afterlife in which the dead dwell, and may serve to magically banish the ghost. If a restless ghost bothers the community, the body of the deceased may be disinterred and the head severed in order to force the ghost to pass to its afterlife. The bodies of the once living aren't the only bodies which might be mutilated or beheaded. A statue or memorial of a war hero or other famous figure, thrown down in a popular revolt or by hereditary enemies, may be beheaded or otherwise severed in order to discredit it, and negate its considerable symbolic power.

Human Sacrifice

Sacred Kingship

Summary---A ceremonial victim is chosen, given a year as ceremonial ruler of society, occasionally is the actual ruler, and at the end of the term is sacrificed to guarantee prosperity.

Description---As the year begins, a sacrificial victim, chosen from the nobility or warrior classes, is acclaimed as sacred king. He is allowed some freedom and perhaps real temporal power, but can not avert his fate or escape it. It is a "friendly" confinement, but confinement nonetheless. After a year of the perks and obligations of kingship, in a prolonged year's end celebration involving the entire tribe or state, a number of lesser sacrifices and rituals are offered, culminating in the sacrifice of the sacred king. After the victim is dead, the queen of the kingdom may lie down beside him in a pantomime of intercourse. Then the new year celebration begins with the selection of the new king. "Out with the old, in with the new." "The King is dead, long live the King." The sacrificial victim is generally accepted to be responsible for the fortunes of the kingdom in the following year(s). Meaning --The sacrificial victim is likened to wheat, corn, rice, millet, or barley: whatever is the prevalent grain crop of the region. The reverent treatment of the prospective sacrifice infuses him with mystical power; by killing the victim and spilling his blood on the ground, loosing the power thus gathered within him, plenty is bestowed upon the land. This is an extremely powerful ritual---the most powerful ritual of all.

Variations

  1. The sacrificial victim may not have to actually die; at the last minute an animal is substituted for the man and the sacrifice goes on. Doubt not that this variation was widely condemned as decadent and weak when it was first introduced.
  2. In some cultures, the ruling council chooses the sacred king from the nobility, and once crowned sequester him from the populace. In such cultures the sacred king may be the actual ruler of the society, so the council that chooses a king will choose a full-grown man, who already has children---someone who is not likely to act rashly and endanger his family. It is taboo for the king to be sick or meet the common people. When the king travels the common people flee from him, as they also do from his wives if they travel, for it is taboo to offend the king or lie with his wives. This sacred king does not have a pre-set term limit of one year; rather, if the king grows ill then the ruling council secretly kill him and bury him with living slaves and companions, and choose a new king. Only after choosing the new king will the death of the old king be announced.
  3. This may be an annual or more frequent affair with many victims chosen from criminals and prisoners of war, or it may be performed only if the kingdom was in dire straits the year previous.
Companion for the Dead

When a king or queen or other important person dies, often a number of companions, servants, and slaves are sacrificed in order to accompany or guard the shade of the deceased in the underworld. Likewise, until recently widows in some parts of the globe were expected to throw themselves on their husbands' funeral pyres in order to accompany him into the afterlife. Such a practice has not been customary for bereaved husbands in any known culture on earth.

Appeasement

Appeasing the Gods---Some gods are said to be gladdened whenever human blood is shed. Human sacrifice to such deities may be performed daily, weekly, monthly, on solstices, annually, or only on special occasions, such as the construction of a house or temple. The aztecs sacrificed thousands of victims every year, and arranged mock wars with neighboring states in order that both sides could capture prisoners from the other side for use as sacrifices. Rome accused the druids of mass human sacrifice, by burning in the infamous wickerwork giants, by hanging, and by drowning, and used this supposed practice as a pretext to destroy them.

Abandonment of Children

Lacking reliable methods of birth control people give birth to children that they do not want or cannot afford to keep. Unwanted or ill-omened children (especially girl children, who are considered of little value in many cultures, or any child which a culture does not value) may be abandoned or exposed to the elements in the expectation that they will die. This is not a sacrifice per se, but unwanted children are often sacrificed for various purposes. Abandonment could be rationalized as appeasement of a wilderness god, and the Romulus and Remus legend, which features twin children abandoned on a hillside and raised by wolves and gods shows that there is enough mythical and legendary justification for the practice. {bf [Confusing]} Children have been abandoned on the church or abbey steps frequently, if that doesn't show an intention to give the child to the deity then what does? Children have also been given to hermits, who are holy by reason of their isolation from humanity, with similar reasoning.

Foundation Sacrifice

This works just like the foundation sacrifice with animals, but since it involves the sacrifice of an intelligent being it is more powerful. The guardian spirit created by such a sacrifice is better all around, more powerful, more intelligent, and braver than an animal guardian.

Punishment

Society contains criminal and anti-social persons, and aliens who don't quite fit into society. Criminals and outsiders are considered to be admirable sacrifices in many cultures, both ancestor spirits and gods are pleased by their sacrifice. Such punishment sacrifices may also be used as a tool of political terror, in order to frighten disenfranchised members of society into passivity.

War

When one force defeats another force in pitched battle, in addition to those killed in the battle itself often the victorious side will sacrifice some or all of the captured prisoners in order to please and appease its gods. This tactic is likely to discourage one's enemies from surrendering, and so is deficient strategically, yet it has been oft done in warfare, in the names of many gods. For example: The romans "decimated" enemies whom they wished to punish and frighten, killing every tenth person.

Bloodsports

Some of the gods are believed to be gladdened when blood is spilled in battle between warriors. In order to satisfy this (somewhat bloodthirsty) religious urge some societies institute gladiatorial battle as a spectator sport. The contest may or may not be fair, and it may be between animals, men versus animals, or between men; It may be one on one, many on one, or many on many. The winner becomes a hero, the loser dies anonymously, and presumably the sacrifice pleases the gods.

Cannibalism

Some societies engage in cannibalism under the belief that one may gain the skills or power of a creature by eating certain parts of its body. As eating a lion's paws will give one the strength of a lion, so eating the palms or heart of a mighty warrior will give one the strength and bravery of that warrior. Some societies may be so poor in sources of animal protein that they kill and eat other humans as a dietary supplement. This is a notoriously difficult field of study, and almost all documentation for nutritional cannibalism is suspect or speculative.

Community Rituals

Feast

Summary---One household invites the neighboring households to a large, formalized meal, and once the meal is over the visitors take food home with them.

Description---One household in a village invites the neighboring households to a communal feast. The neighbors come to the feast, and as the host is cooking, perform religiously important activities, such as preparing the body for a burial, as are appropriate to the subject of the festivity. Once the cooking and other ritual preparations are complete, the people eat the food. After everyone has eaten they address the subject of the ceremony, if there is one. Finally, the visitors wrap up some amount of food and take it home with them when they leave.

Meaning---The feast promotes neighborhood solidarity. Smells of cooking food and incense, and sounds of prayer and music, nourish or appease the spirits or gods.

Variations---

  1. Only one representative member of each household goes to the feast, and eating at the central house is hurried; most of the prepared food is wrapped up in a defined manner and taken home to the individual homes, where the rest of each household partakes.
  2. Each household brings some of the food for the meal; when the households leave the feast they take some food with them that was supplied by other people---bringing one's own food back is considered bad form.
Parade or Procession

Summary---The people gather at a boundary and pass in an orderly procession to the center of whatever is bounded.

Description---Common in towns and cities, parades almost inevitably begin with a crowd of people travelling to or already at the outer boundary, or border, of the settlement. The crowd then proceeds in a celebratory spirit from the edge of the settlement to its center. They may spiral inwards or travel in a straight line. The more important the occasion the longer the parade will last.

Meaning---A heroic personage or a powerful spirit or god is met at the outer boundaries of the settlement and escorted to the center of the settlement. This will bless the town, most especially those who participate in the parade, whether they march in it or cheer it on.

Variations

  1. Villainous persons and dangerous spirits will be escorted out of the settlement, following the same path only in reverse.
  2. If the occasion is especially important there may be efforts to pass every possible street and home during the parade, and thus involve everybody in the occasion.
Circular Dance

The circular dance is performed prior to a hunt or battle or some other important and dangerous undertaking. The shape of the circular dance echoes the shape of the world and the horizon. It brings the entire community together. It joins those who will participate in a dangerous undertaking in a sort of club, or phratry, and also incorporates that group within the structure of the greater community.

Summary---Before an important hunt, the adult men of a tribe dance in a circle.

Description---The ceremony takes place the night before a major hunt. The hunters paint themselves with colorful dyes and stains. They may take intoxicants, fast, or prepare otherwise. In a circle, they dance to the drums and voices of the tribe. The ritual continues for several hours of constantly increasing intensity, until the men have reached a state of Divine Ecstasy. When the ceremony reaches its peak the men embark on the hunt.

Meaning---The paint embodies and symbolizes the otherworldly power, the supernatural ability, the magic or medicine, of the painted hunter. The trance-state improves morale as well as imbuing the dancers with magical powers. The dance is done at night for two reasons: At night the ancestral spirits may be summoned, and their powers may be given to the warriors; successful hunters start early, before light, so they may surprise their prey.

Variations

  1. The War Dance: The circular dance is also performed before war. Everything is as it is in the hunting ceremony, but the painted patterns of color are more intense, the dancing likewise, and the need for morale and magical powers correspondingly greater.
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