Ritual Practices

,Les chapitres 158 à 162 du Skandapurāṇa ont pour particularité de mêler intimement mythe et prescription rituelle. Le chapitre 158 s'ouvre sur un dialogue entre Śiva et Pārvatī qui explique le bien-fondé du rituel d'adoption d'un arbre comme fils et en expose les détails liturgiques, tandis que le chapitre 162 relate comment la déesse en personne réalise la cérémonie précédemment décrite pour adopter un arbre aśoka. Bien que certains éléments narratifs présents dans ces chapitres puisent leur origine dans d'autres mythes connus, ils ne connaissent pas d'autres occurrences dans la littérature sanskrite. De la même façon, même si l'idée selon laquelle un arbre peut sauver la lignée des ancêtres trouve des échos das d'autres injonctions rituelles, le rite d'adoption d'un arbre par une femme recouvre un caractère inédit. Le présent article se fixe pour objectif de montrer cette double originalité, mythologique et rituelle, en examinant les processus d'écriture employés pour donner à ce rituel un caractère conventionnel.

This is the english abstract of my article entitled "La dimension dévotionnelle du Skandayāga : Atharvavedapariśiṣṭa XX sur le rituel en l’honneur de Dhūrta" published in the SPECIAL ISSUE of the Archiv orientální, Journal of African and Asian Studies:
Expressions de la bhakti dans les littératures indiennes, éditer by Nicolas DEJENNE and Eve TIGNOL, Volume 86, n°2.

There are numerous depictions of antlered figures in the rock art of prehistoric Eurasia and many representations of horned humans in the Far West of North America. These antlered and horned individuals have in some cases been interpreted as wearing animal headdresses. Headdresses with deer antlers are recognized archaeologically in Mesolithic Europe. A prehistoric bighorn sheep headdress has been discovered and dated from Utah in the United States. Also there is historic ethnographic evidence of deer and bighorn sheep headdresses/disguises for Siberia, northern Europe and North America. We propose to compare these data and review similarities and differences in these cultural traditions. We highlight comparative data regarding their age, and associated animal ceremonialism in indigenous religious expression.

Archaeology studies past practices through fields of action. In Mesoamerica, such fields exist across different scales of analysis, and for example lead research to identify individual or family routines in domestic and workshop settings. At the opposite end of this are large-scale periodic communal practices, often referred to as political or ritual. In these latter fields, insights into longue durée transformation are prone to be foregrounded at the expense of insights into human actions and its transmission within a group. The settings for such rituals are invariably referred to as 'public', 'ceremonial' or 'communal', depending on the archaeological region of period in question. Ritual practices in indigenous societies in Central America are mostly explained by viewing ritual in systematic terms, echoing Sahlins and Geertz. Chiefly authority is seen to be combined with that of ritual practitioner, rendering ritual itself seemingly a-historical and closely linking it to questions of political power. Ritual activity, and its pertaining material culture, is thus proposed as an irreducible functionalist fact, typically regarded for divination, communication with supernatural realms, and symbolic violence. Here, I will argue for a historical view on ritual in the prehistories we assemble and study, focusing attention on the question of ritual landscapes in southern Central America-a region with ample indicators for ritualized activity, but archaeologically challenged by a material culture with an abstract visual language, and a historical record lacking in individual events, except perhaps for volcanic eruptions.

Spanish: La arqueología estudia prácticas pasadas a través de campos de acción. En Mesoamérica, tales campos existen en diferentes escalas de análisis, y por ejemplo apoyan a identificar rutinas individuales o familiares en entornos domésticos y en talleres. En el extremo opuesto, se encuentran las prácticas comunitarias periódicas a gran escala, a menudo denominadas 'políticas' o 'rituales'. En los últimos campos, los conocimientos sobre la transformación longue durée son propensos a ser enfocados a expensas de la comprensión de las acciones humanas y su transmisión dentro de un grupo. Los espacios para tales rituales se denominan invariablemente como 'públicos', 'ceremoniales' o 'comunales', dependiendo de la región o período arqueológico en cuestión. Las prácticas rituales en las sociedades indígenas en el sur de Centroamérica se explican mayormente viendo a rituales en términos sistémicos, haciéndose eco de Sahlins y Geertz. La autoridad principal se considera combinado con la del especialista ritual, convirtiendo el ritual en algo aparentemente a-histórico y vinculándolo estrechamente a cuestiones de poder político. La actividad ritual, y su cultura material pertinente, se propone, así como un hecho funcionalista irreductible, típicamente destinado a la adivinación, la comunicación con los ámbitos sobrenaturales y la violencia simbólica. Aquí, propondré una visión histórica en las prehistorias que reunimos y estudiamos, enfocado en los paisajes rituales del sur de Centroamérica-una región rica en referencias a actividad ritual, pero desafiada arqueológicamente por cultura material con lenguaje visual abstracto, y un registro histórico que carece de eventos individuales, a excepción quizás de las erupciones volcánicas. 2

Du corps humain s'entend, dont nous renonçons à trouver une définition satisfaisante dans le maquis inextricable des théories qui lui furent consacrées. Celui auquel nous pensons associe le corps-objet, simplement matériel, et le corps-propre ou corps-sujet, spirituel, cognitif.
La réunion de recherches participant de problématiques différentes pourrait s'avérer d'un maigre profit, si elle n'était source d'occurrences surprenantes. Qu'on en juge !
Deux exposés ont pour cadre la Chine et présentent le corps, le premier, d'un défunt qu'on honore par des rites pour lui assurer un au-delà serein ; le second, d'une enfant, qu'on torturepour lui ménager un mariage fortuné ici-bas. L'article suivant rapporte les interdits régissant les contacts des cheveux, des humeurs avec les éléments, leur transgression exposait aux pires tourments. Puis vient une étude sur les corps... tatoués, pour le symbole ou l'esthétique ? Mais déjà il est temps de remonter le temps, huit siècles avant J.-C., à bord d'un vaisseau chargé d'amphores d'huiles parfumées et médicinales, faisant voile vers le Ponant. Le sixième récit nous fait redescendre le cours normal du temps en quête de peignes, objets terriblement protéiformes ! Du Paléolithique, on traverse la Grèce mythique, l'Occident celtique et ses légendes, un Moyen Âge aussi saint que païen, puis après avoir erré de l'Orient russe à son extrême catalan, on échoue chez un barbier drolatique ! Fin de notre studieuse odyssée en multiple splendeur sur le toit de l'Europe, le Grand Nord lapon. Un "noaidi" et son tambour y soulagent les corps souffrants en négociant le pardon de leurs âmes fautives auprès d'esprits puissants.

How do interfaith relations articulate with the democratic ideal of securing development and brighter futures for all? Rather than reducing religion to a variable for various development indicators, I pursue this question through the topic of anxiety. Despite the countless reports that document a steady decline in interfaith relations, a research project I have been leading since 2014 suggests that ritual engagement across “official” religious boundaries remains surprisingly common, though increasingly conducted in secrecy. The growing expectation to stick to the ritual repertoire that conforms with one’s religious identity is thus counteracted by the existential and economic anxiety that motivates experimentation in search for divine intervention. The chapter is primarily exemplified with ethnographic observations from Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, and raises the uncomfortable question of whether India’s multireligious fabric would be further jeopardized if the country ever succeeds with its ambition to provide development, social equality and secure future prospects to the entire population.

Second-Degree Liminality: Dynamics of Ritual Change in the Basel Fasnacht
Taking the example of the Basel carnival Fasnacht, the paper shows in what way ritual can maintain the impression of being traditional and unchanging, and yet be open to changes and innovations. As the basic conceptual framework we use the notion of liminality, which Victor Turner identified as the creative moment of ritual. In the Fasnacht this liminal dimension appears in two degrees. The carnival as such represents a reflexive liminal counterpart to the standard social structure, yet it is itself also highly structured and bound by conservative traditional rules. As a reaction to this there arises within the Fasnacht a „second-degree” liminality in the form of the so-called wild Fasnacht, which turns the official antistructural Fasnacht rules upside down once again, testing their validity. While the carnival structure offers a regulated opportunity for questioning everyday social behaviour, wild Fasnacht questions even this regulated manner of questioning as such, opening space for its reflection and modification. We use detailed examples to demonstrate how the subtle dialectics of structure and antistructure keeps the tradition of Basel’s Fasnacht alive and allows it to evolve without destroying its aura of traditionality.

Last week saw a flurry of news stories about the mass emergence of 13-year periodical cicadas in Georgia and other southeastern states of the U.S. These cicadas all belong to Brood XIX, aka the Great Southern Brood, which last appeared in 1998, and is due now to return in 2024. There are three broods of 13-year cicadas and 12 broods of 17-year cicadas in the States, most of them mixtures of different Magicicada species, and each with its own breeding calendar. It is thought that their long life cycles, periodicity and synchronous emergence have evolved to protect these cicadas against predation. Stephen Jay Gould wrote engagingly about this strategy of 'predator satiation' in one of his monthly columns for Natural History Magazine, reprinted in his first collection of essays, Ever Since Darwin (1978: 97-102). 'Of bamboos, cicadas, and the economy of Adam Smith' linked the phenomenon of the periodical cicadas with the similarly periodic and synchronous flowering of bamboos, and it was this botanical example that struck a chord when I first read it, rather than the evolutionary explanation that led Gould to summon the ghost of Adam Smith and his "invisible hand".

«Mantichora», 8, 2018

The subject of the present discussion is the fundamental liminal character of the Sacred in its relations with space and with mankind; and therefore the role of the Sacred in the production of the Communitas and its transformation into Mass. In this regard, we will refer to the thoughts of Victor Turner and Elias Canetti.
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Il soggetto della presente discussione tratta il carattere fondamentalmente liminale del Sacro e le sue relazioni con lo spazio e con l'umanità; e tratteremo anche il ruolo del Sacro nella produzione della Communitas e la trasformazione di questa in Massa. A tal proposito faremo riferimento alle riflessioni di Victor Turner e Elias Canetti.

The Alevi cem is a communal ritual that is performed weekly among members of a major religious minority in Turkey. Although formerly celebrated exclusively in rural village communities, this ritual became publicly accessible at the end of the 1980s when Alevi cultural associations were opened in the urban centers of Turkey. Since it was made public, the cem has undergone significant changes in the internal dynamics of its performance and in the formal design of its liturgy. By addressing multiple audiences in its urban milieu, the performance of the cem reveals moments of ritual reflexivity. Based on ethnographic research at a cultural association in Istanbul, this article focuses on a cem performance that led to ruptures and mishaps in the presentation of some ritual acts. We analyze the ritual leader’s response to these incidents and the theoretical implications of this account for the study of ritual reflexivity.

This article discusses conceptualizations of the role tombs and trees play in rituals of saint veneration among Arab Alawites and Orthodox Christians during the Hıdırellez spring festivals in Hatay, the southernmost region of Turkey. As tomb and tree veneration is known throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, the objective is to establish an analytical framework that better accounts for their role in religious practice. It is not by the belief of religious actors that saint veneration rituals are rendered efficacious, but rather by the dynamics of ritual networks the devotees are part of during visits to pilgrimage sites or celebrations of religious festivals. This argument is presented in three steps. After a critical assessment of past research on tomb and tree veneration in the Eastern Mediterranean, Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network Theory is proposed to better analyze the human ritual interactions with tombs and trees. With a refined analytical framework, the efficacy of material objects and non-human beings in saint veneration rituals in Hatay is presented, as mediated through ritual interactions with tombs and trees. Based on the Actor-Network Theory, the Hıdırellez is discussed as a case study to exemplify the spatial and temporal dynamics of ritual interactions with non-human agents. By accounting for those times and places where visible and invisible realms intersect, the Actor-Network Theory helps analyze how devotees aesthetically perceive and experience stones and trees as indexes of the saint’s agency.

Celem artykułu było zbadanie szczegółowego przebiegu tradycyjnego rytuału błogo-sławieństwa rodziców przed ślubem w sytuacji, kiedy organizują go niewprawni uczest-nicy, a znaczenie rytuału nie jest oczywiste w świetle zmian życia rodzinnego. Uznano, że badanie sposobu wykonania rytuału może powiedzieć coś ważnego o jego obecnym zna-czeniu. Materiałem empirycznym były filmy weselne. Z wyjściowej bazy 50 filmów wy-brano 20 sekwencji błogosławieństw, które poddano transkrypcji i analizie multimodalnej. W wyniku analizy pokazano, że charakterystyczna dla wykonania rytuału była niepewność uczestników, niekompletność i nadmiarowość gestów oraz ogólne zróżnicowanie ich form. Najważniejszym rysem organizacji rytuału w kontekście kształtowania relacji rodzinnych było odgrywanie jednakowości serii gestów rytualnych przez kolejnych wykonawców. Istotne były także nietypowe zmiany kolejności uczestników w sekwencjach rytuału. W dyskusji z kon-cepcjami, które ujmują kwestię społecznych oczekiwań wobec sposobu kształtowania rodziny w kontekście nierówności społecznych, podjęto próbę interpretacji znaczenia badanego rytuału dla zachowania tradycyjnego obrazu życia rodzinnego i zarazem ochrony statusu jej członków. Abstract The aim of this article is to analyze in detail the traditional ritual of wedding blessings , which are conducted by unskilled participants and often ambiguous in their meaning. The method of research was a multimodal analysis of 20 transcribed excerpts selected from 50 Polish wedding films. As a result, some characteristics of the ritual performance were identified, such as the uncertainty of the participants, the incompleteness and redundancy of gestures, and the general diversity of forms of enactment. In the context of family relations, the performance of a similar series of gestures by subsequent performers as well as order were most important. While discussing some concepts which connect the organization of family life with social inequalities and family ideologies, an attempt was made to interpret how the wedding blessing ritual could simultaneously preserve both the traditional image of family life and the status of its members.