Ritual Experts Research Articles

Isidore of Seville's Taxonomy of Magicians and Diviners

In Etymologies 8.9, Isidore presents a detailed classification of the diverse group of ritual experts he calls magi. Well organized, erudite, flexible enough to include a wide range of specialists, and, as its record of influence demonstrates, enormously useful as a template for later medieval classifications, the “De Magis” offers what can rightly be called the first definitive western Christian taxonomy of unauthorized practitioners. Although Isidore relied heavily on a wide range of pagan and Christian sources for the contents of the chapter, their selection, revision, and arrangement—the elements of his taxonomy—were all his own.

Isidore of Seville's Taxonomy of Magicians and Diviners

InEtymologies8.9, Isidore presents a detailed classification of the diverse group of ritual experts he callsmagi.Well organized, erudite, flexible enough to include a wide range of specialists, and, as its record of influence demonstrates, enormously useful as a template for later medieval classifications, the “De Magis” offers what can rightly be called the first definitive western Christian taxonomy of unauthorized practitioners. Although Isidore relied heavily on a wide range of pagan and Christian sources for the contents of the chapter, their selection, revision, and arrangement—the elements of his taxonomy—were all his own.

The Background of the Kong Family of LU and The Origins of Ruism

While it is generally believed that Confucius's devotion to the Zhou ritual system was, in part, a product of his background as a countryman of the traditionalist Zhou state of Lu, this study suggests that Confucius was raised in and influenced by the cultural sphere of a non-Zhou people, the region associated with the state of Zhulou, to which his mother's family belonged. Evidence from the Zuo zkuan lends support to the Shiji account of Confucius's family background, which has long been questioned. This evidence suggests that Confucius's father was a privileged associate of a leading Lu grandee household, the Zang clan, charged with defending the southern border of Lu, an area of Zhulou culture occupied by Lu in the century before Confucius's birth. Accounts of the Zang clan indicate an unusual family stature, involving ritual expertise and hereditary possession of the Lu office of minister of Crime. Shortly before his death, he himself having moved north with the Zangs, Confucius's father took a concubine from the Yan clan of Zhulou, who remained with her family to raise his orphan, Confucius. Evidence suggests that Confucius and his early followers, including members of the Yan clan, displaced, in some critical respects, the role formerly played in Lu by the Zang clan, after the leadership of that clan was exiled from Lu. Tensions between Zang and Yan clan elements appear to have left significant traces in the corpus of early Confucian texts, and to have played a role in the formation of the Ruist school.

Sounding the Center: History and Aesthetics in Thai Buddhist Performance

Sounding the Centre is an in-depth look at the power behind classical music and dance in Bangkok, the capital and sacred centre of Buddhist Thailand. Focusing on the ritual honouring teachers of music and dance, Deborah A. Wong reveals a complex network of connections among kings, teachers, knowledge and performance that underlies the classical court arts. Drawing on her extensive fieldwork, Wong lays out the ritual in detail: the way it is enacted, the foods and objects involved, and the people who perform it, emphasizing the way the performers themselves discuss and construct aspects of the ceremony. Only those who have been initiated by a master can manifest the divine in the human realm. The power held by the master musicians, Wong shows, is both ritual and social; they are not just ritual experts, they are also leaders at the government-run National Conservatory. This esoteric knowledge, Wong suggests, has helped Thai classical music endure in the face of changing patronage and the challenges posed by the urban environment that supports it. A compact disc accompanies the book.

When men are women: manhood among Gabra nomads of East Africa

In this fascinating exploration of the cultural models of manhood, When Men Are Women examines the unique world of the nomadic Gabra people, a camel-herding society in northern Kenya. Gabra men denigrate women and feminine things, yet regard their most prestigious men as women. As they grow older, all Gabra men become d abella, or ritual experts, who have feminine identities. Wood s study draws from structuralism, psychoanalytic theory, and anthropology to probe the meaning of opposition and ambivalence in Gabra When Men Are Women provides a multifaceted view of gender as a cultural construction independent of sex, but nevertheless fundamentally related to it. By turning men into women, the Gabra confront the dilemmas and ambiguities of social life. Wood demonstrates that the Gabra can provide illuminating insight into our own culture s understanding of gender and its function in society.

Rulers and Rainmakers in Precolonial South Pare, Tanzania: Exchange and Ritual Experts in Political Centralization

This article applies Bourdieu's notion of symbolic capital to an analysis of political processes in the small chiefdoms of South Pare Mountain in northeastern Tanzania between 1700 and 1900. Regional exchange of cattle and exotic goods interacted with other social processes to create political change in societies with incipient political centralization. Political legitimization was based on the symbolic capital of ritual preeminence which demanded investment of economic resources. Regional exchange and the development of long-distance ivory and slave trade on the East African coast increased the cost of symbolic capital and exacerbated competition for political power. (East Africa, South Pare, history, political economy, chiefdoms, exchange, politics, ritual) The emergence of political centralization and the dynamics of chiefdoms have recently become central issues in archaeology (Earle 1991; Johnson and Earle 1987; Upham 1990; Hayden 1995). Although that research builds upon earlier theoretical work by cultural anthropologists and is based on ethnographic material, the topic has declined in salience in the field of ethnology. Many archaeologists are also now of the opinion that the utility of ethnographic comparisons has reached its limit, and that research should focus instead on long-term archaeological sequences of chiefdom developments (e.g., Earle 1991). However, in a recent article, Roscoe (1993; cf. Thomas 1996) calls for renewed attention from cultural anthropology to the topic and for collaboration between the two fields in order to develop models based on current social theory (e.g., Giddens 1986; Bourdieu 1990). This article takes up that challenge by applying Bourdieu's notion of symbolic capital to an analysis of political processes in the small chiefdoms of the South Pare Mountain in northeastern Tanzania between 1700 and 1900.(1) During this period, South Pare societies were part of an exchange system involving food, ivory, and slaves. These items were bartered for prestige goods in the form of livestock from pastoralists, and exotic valuables such as cloth, beads, and metals from coastal traders involved in the Indian Ocean trade. This article takes a diachronic perspective to demonstrate how the exchange of prestige goods interacted with other social processes to create political change in societies with incipient centralization. The analysis leads to a hypothesis about how political centralization may have emerged in these chiefdoms. Several authors have observed a relationship between the density of exchange networks and availability of prestige goods on the one hand, and the degree of political centralization on the other (Ekholm 1977; Kipp and Schortman 1989). For Melanesia and Polynesia, Brunton (1975), Friedman (1981), and Persson (1983) show that where valuables necessary for social payments cannot be controlled by any group, political organization is highly competitive and acephalous; while in regions where sources of valuables are few and exchange networks circumscribed, chiefly hierarchies occur. However, the development of incipient political centralization from acephalous social organization involves something more than the control of prestige goods. Cross-culturally, chiefly status and institutions were based on legitimacy, often of a ritual nature. The ritual power of chiefs in Africa is well known. The structural-functionalists saw it as an integrative force for maintenance of the social system (Fortes and Evans-Pritchard 1940). The Marxists view ritual power as legitimizing ideology; a smoke screen for exploitation by elites (Meillassoux 1981:86f.). Both approaches pay little attention to the fact that ideology is costly. Emerging elites cannot simply claim ritual power and expect to be believed. Ideology is rooted in prevailing cosmologies and social norms which may not lend themselves to easy centralization. But Bourdieu's (1990) notion of symbolic capital, while admittedly vague, may better reflect the role of ritual in the politics of chiefdoms and acephalous societies (cf. …

A'aisa's Gifts: A Study of Magic and the Self

Filled with insight, provocative in its conclusions, A'aisa's Gifts is a groundbreaking ethnography of the Mekeo of Papua New Guinea and a valuable contribution to anthropological theory. Based on twenty years' fieldwork, this richly detailed study of Mekeo esoteric knowledge, cosmology, and self-conceptualizations recasts accepted notions about magic and selfhood. Drawing on accounts by Mekeo ritual experts and laypersons, this is the first book to demonstrate magic's profound role in creating the self. It also argues convincingly that dream reporting provides a natural context for self-reflection. In presenting its data, the book develops the concept of autonomous imagination into a new theoretical framework for exploring subjective imagery processes across cultures.

Women as Ritual Experts: The Religious Lives of Elderly Jewish Women in Jerusalem

Women as Ritual Experts reveals how in gender segregated religions like Orthodox Judaism women develop their own autonomous religious sphere and activities that sacralize female roles. Until recently, this female world of religion has been all but invisible to both anthropologists and scholars of religion, who typically speak as though the male sphere of religion were the only definition of religion or the sacred. By exploring this separate sphere of women's religion and demonstrating its variety, depth, and dynamism, Susan Sered here attempts to expand the definition of religion, ritual and the sacred. Sered's research was conducted among uneducated, illiterate Kurdish women. She uncovers the strategies these women have used to circumvent the patriarchal institutions of Judaism, the techniques by which they have made their lives meaningful within an androcentric culture, and how they have developed their own `little tradition' within and parallel to the `great tradition' of Torah Judaism.

Women as Ritual Experts: The Religious Lives of Elderly Jewish Women in Jerusalem. SUSAN STARR SERED

<i>Women as Ritual Experts: The Religious Lives of Elderly Jewish Women in Jerusalem</i>. SUSAN STARR SERED

The Making of the Jewish Middle Class: Women, Family, and Identity in Imperial Germany , and: Women as Ritual Experts: The Religious Lives of Elderly Jewish Women in Jerusalem (review)

The Making of the Jewish Middle Class: Women, Family, and Identity in Imperial Germany , and: Women as Ritual Experts: The Religious Lives of Elderly Jewish Women in Jerusalem (review)

Women as Ritual Experts: The Religious Lives of Elderly Jewish Women in Jerusalem. Susan Starr Sered

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsWomen as Ritual Experts: The Religious Lives of Elderly Jewish Women in Jerusalem. Susan Starr Sered Debra Renee KaufmanDebra Renee Kaufman Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Religion Volume 74, Number 1Jan., 1994 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/489325 Views: 2Total views on this site Copyright 1994 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Women as Ritual Experts, The Religious Lives of Elderly Jewish Women in Jerusalem (Book)

Women as Ritual Experts, The Religious Lives of Elderly Jewish Women in Jerusalem (Book)

The Authority of Ritual Experts

La question du rituel et de la liturgie amene sur le meme terrain des anthropologues, des sociologues, des historiens des religions qui reflechissent a la question de l'autorite des specialistes du rituel. Ces experts apportent une justification de l'existence et de l'importance d'un groupe, et en second lieu par leur vertu meme d'experts, permettent de comprendre comment une communaute interiorise son rituel, quels sont ses buts

Women as Ritual Experts

Women as Ritual Experts

Maasai Age-Sets and Prophetic Leadership: 1850–1910

Opening ParagraphIn their initial interaction with the Colonial powers, several East African peoples such as the Maasai, the Turkana, the Sebei, the Karamojong, and the Nandi—all organized through some type of age-based institution—united around prophetic leaders, diviners, or ritual experts who mobilized men from several territorial sections to confront the intruders. This ad hoc military unity was necessarily short-lived, usually ending with the defeat of the people by the colonial power and see the imprisonment or death of the prophetic leader involved. (See Fosbrooke 1948: 12-19; Merker 1910: 67-105; Jacobs 1965: 20-108; Dyson-Hudson 1966: 15-16; Gulliver 1950: 229, 240; Meinertzhagen 1956: 222 ff; Weatherby 1962: 200-12; 1967: 133-44; Lamphear 1976: 225-43.) While ethnological studies of various age-organizations often mention that diviners or prophets provided professional services for the members of an age-group at their ceremonies, no one has examined the process by which a prophetic leader or diviner established his legitimacy during periods of peace so that he might lead the people during times of crisis. An examination of the prophetic institution among the Maasai and the relationship between the prophets and the members of the age-sets may provide some insight into the process, especially the manner in which prophets emerged as leaders of the people during two major crises in the history of the Purko-Kisongo Maasai: the Ilaikipiak war and the rinderpest pan-zootic.

The Nandi Protest of 1923 in the Context of African Resistance to Colonial Rule in Kenya

The Nandi protest of 1923 is examined in its Kenya-wide context and is seen to be the result of the increased pressures brought to bear on Kenya Africans in this period—pressures for African land, labour and taxes, which greatly affected the Nandi as well as other peoples. The Nandi political protest to colonial policies in this period, in contrast to that of the Kikuyu, however, focused on the traditional leadership of the Nandi orkolyot, or ritual expert, and, as such, mirrors the relative lack of socio-cultural change in Nandi before 1923, and the continuing viability of the traditional Nandi economy and political structure. Squatting, which began in this period, is seen as a key factor contributing to this viability, at the same time as it presented new threats to Nandi economic independence, which the political protest centred on orkoiyot Barserion attempted to counter. An examination of the Nandi protest of 1923, therefore, also contributes to an understanding of the political expression of that sector of the African population which has often been ignored in studies of the origin of political protest in Kenya.