Ritual Narratives Research Articles

Ritual narratives of infrastructure ceremonies: Time, demands, and relations in modern Chinese history

In recent years, attention has been drawn to infrastructure groundbreaking ceremonies and their ritual and political effects. However, infrastructure ceremonies in China, the world’s largest builder and supplier of infrastructure and the ‘nation of rites’, are somehow overlooked. Using insights from infrastructure and ritual studies, and leveraging narratives from Chinese official media, this study aims to explore how infrastructure rituals shape the sociopolitical significance of infrastructure as technical artefact. Through the Chinese case, we find that three elements of infrastructure ritual narratives (time, demands, and relations) are focused, restructured, and amplified. These elements are then interwoven into broader sociopolitical narratives spanning various eras of modern Chinese history. Our aim is to provide a perspective for a deeper understanding of the sociopolitical production of infrastructure meanings through the case of Chinese ceremonies.

Mark as Ritual Narrative: Anointing, Memorial, and Genre Signifiers in Mark 14:3–9

Abstract: In Mark 14:3–9 and its parallels, a woman anoints Jesus with μύρον, which Jesus interprets as an anticipation of his death. This article considers the ritual and cultic connotations of the use of μύρον (“ointment”) and νάρδος (“spikenard”) from Mark 14:3–9 in connection with the importance Jesus attaches to this woman's act in Mark 14:9: “Truly I say to you: Wherever the Gospel [ἐυαγγέλιον] may be proclaimed in all the world, indeed what this woman has done shall be spoken as a memorial of her.” This declaration is significant for understanding the genre of Mark. Rudolph Bultmann’s observations about the Gospels’ cultic associations, directed less toward the question of their genre than to the question of their historiography, have largely gone unexplored in subsequent scholarship. In this article, I compare the use of μύρον and νάρδος in the LXX, MT, early midrashim on Song of Songs, and early Christian baptismal rituals. The findings suggest that the scriptural and ritual imagery in Mark 14:3–9 indicates that the Gospel uses ritual narration as a means of discourse with readers familiar with these rites.

Mundhum: Exploring the Narratives of Limbu Community in an Urban Setting

This paper explores the hindering factors of ritual transformation from one to the new generation in an urban setting. Paper describes the ritual narratives of the Limbu community practices based on Mundhum, and how it has been impacted in an urban setting. Shared the narratives by generation gaps, its practices, and external influencing factors in Limbu communities on the transformation of Mundhum. The Limbu community are indigenous populations who were migrants from the eastern part of Nepal, especially Taplejung, Terathum, Dhankuta, and Panchthar districts, who are the sampling frame for the qualitative study of this paper. Used ethnography for the collection and interpretation of data from the field with a non-probability sampling technique. In-depth semi-structured interview schedules were used as data collection tools. Seven in-depth interviews were conducted during this research. Key reasons for ritual degradation are low Limbu (native) language practices. Migration, education system, urban socialization practices, and imported culture affect native language transformation from one generation, directly affecting understanding and the transformation of native rituals. Lack of employment, health, and education opportunities are push factors on migrations in an urban setting from their origin. Still, they have mixed experiences with their rituals and bridging native language in Mundhum. Furthermore, lower knowledge, fewer practices of native language, unknown proper practices, urbanization impact, and objectivist thought of the current generation are major hindering factors in transforming Limbu culture and Mundhum rituals into new generations.

Zhuiniu Water Buffalo Ritual of the Miao: Cultural Narrative Performed

The zhuiniu 椎牛 ritual is one of the most elaborate of the Miao people of western Hunan, China. Zhuiniu means “kill the buffalo with a spear” and traces its origins to the worship of spirits and natural elements. Sponsored by a family to repay the spirits, the ritual was a village-wide event that culminated with the sacrifice of a water buffalo and a community celebration. The zhuiniu, estimated to be several thousand years old, is rapidly vanishing from cultural memory. In July and August of 2018, six master badai-spiritual specialists of the Miao—were gathered in La Yi 腊乙, a village in the Wuling Mountain by the cultural bureau of the Xiangxi Tujia-Miao Autonomous Prefecture of Hunan Province to reenact and document the ritual. Using performance ethnography as research methodology, the author employs on-site observations, interviews, field notes, audio, and video to document the reenactment and describe its significance in the words of its practitioners. This essay argues that the zhuiniu has no definitive expression but is an adaptative and interpretative cultural narrative adjusting to circumstances and practice. The ritual exists today as it had historically, in many and varied expressions and interpretations shaped by local need, geography, and subject to the vagaries to orally transmitted forms of practice. Although fragmentary in performance expression and interpretation, the zhuiniu ritual narrative serves as a mythologically-based script that organizes a series of dramatic events that invites community awareness and interaction. In so doing, this sacred ritual has sustained its importance in conveying, embodying, and encoding a spiritual, social, and cultural record of Miao cosmology, culture, and history. Performatively conveyed—using song, music, costumes, dance and movement, props, and set pieces—the zhuiniu has been efficiently and sensorially reimagined in order to reiterate and reaffirm cultural knowledge. With rural modernization, dissolution of cultural context and need, and the aging of its practitioners, the traditional role of the zhuiniu is now in question.

Extended Control Cycle in Ritual Behavior and Narrative Scenarios

Extended Control Cycle in Ritual Behavior and Narrative Scenarios

Using Intersectional Perspectives in the Studies of Non-Religion Ritualization

In the 21st century, the Church of Sweden has lost its dominant position regarding the ritualization of births, marriages, and deaths in Sweden. Above all, name giving ceremonies, civil weddings, and civil funerals have become more common. The purpose of this article is to illustrate how intersectional perspectives can improve the understanding of the construction of non-religion in life-cycle ritualization, such as name giving ceremonies and civil funerals, performed beyond religious or non-religious organizations. This article presents the intersectional analyses of two non-religion ritual narratives as examples of how intersectional analyses could be conducted. The analysis clarifies the impact of power in non-religion ritualization, and how non-religion is constructed in relation to other discursive categories, in this case gender, sexuality, social class and nationality. The conclusion is that the use of intersectional perspectives is relevant for gaining a complex understanding of the construction of non-religion as well as knowledge of ritualization beyond religious or non-religious organizations nowadays.

Religious Conversion and the Decline of Environmental Ritual Narratives

Religion has a major impact on human–environmental relationships as evidenced by cultural responses to agricultural disease. In Belize, Protestant conversion has transformed traditional Mopan Maya environment relations and paved the way for the commercialization of formerly ritual crops. The changes in the spiritual importance of cacao and nature are reflected in farmers’ responses to the emergence of Monilia (Moniliophtora roreri), a fungal disease that attacks the fruits of the cacao tree (Theobroma cacao), the botanical source of chocolate. Traditionally, Mopan cacao farmers relied on ritual offerings to nature spirits to cure diseased trees. However, the widespread adoption of Protestant Christianity by many Mopan has led to the discontinuation of cacao rituals, the demystification of nature spirits, and increased reliance on agro-technical disease management. The decline of Mopan ritual offerings speaks more broadly to the transformation of indigenous environmental relations in the context of Protestant conversion and capitalist agricultural development.

АПОТРОПЕЇЧНІ ДІЇ ПЕРЕВЕРТАННЯ-ВСТРОМЛЯННЯ-РОЗБИВАННЯ ЯК СПОСОБИ ЗАХИСТУ ВІД МЕРЦЯ ТА ЙОГО ДЕМОНІЧНИХ ІПОСТАСЕЙ У ГУЦУЛЬСЬКИХ МІФОЛОГІЧНО-ОБРЯДОВИХ ПРАКТИКАХ

Apotropaic magic actions based on overturning, sticking, smashing are examined on the basis of folkloric and ethnographic discoveries of late 19th and early 20th centuries, and modern authorial field case studies from Hutsulshchyna area. The importance of the topic is determined by polysemantic, and different chronological elements of the archaic culture that these practices contain; they allow us to integrally and systematically research the constituents of funeral ritualism, and also particular occasional phenomena. It is defined that physical actions of overturning, sticking, smashing in Hutsul myth and ritual narratives have a clear apotropiac function of neutralizing the harmful impact of homogeneous, within their genesis, agents of danger – the deceased, and his manistic and demonic images: female characters, loci of nature, household spirits, vampires. Overturning, sticking or smashing as defense actions appear in a rite solely, and in interaction with each other, or are amplified by other items. Sticking achieves a positive result due to outer characteristics of the item that is used: it is, in a way, an autonomous amulet, since it is sharp and made of iron. At least a few paramount motivations are traced in overturning as a defense practice: such causes can originate from manistic motives and be attempts to make it impossible for the secondary entering of the soul into the body of the deceased, or its return into the living space after burying. Overturning and especially its variant: turning inside out, can be also reasonably qualified as a measure called to deceive the source of danger. Sticking could be displayed in the given mythological narratives in relation to everyday analogy, according to which the identical usage of these items neutralizes danger in a physical sense. A more complicated action is dinnerware smashing. On the one hand, defense abilities of this magic rite are improved by the noise caused by breaking, and also by the actional nuance: throwing; on the other hand, the rite performance locus: the threshold can indicate that this practice originated from the means of burying the deceased in the house. At the same time magic defense actions of the same performance and sense, which are based on overturning, sticking, smashing, are traced in other ethnocultural zones, which tells us about their versatility and primary ethnogenetic unity.

The Oral Folk Literature of the Ancient Meiteis of Manipur: An Analysis of its Cultural Significance

Oral narratives are the earliest forms of storytelling as they exist in every culture as a part of religious rituals, folk music and songs. They include ritual texts, curative chants, epic poems, musical genres, folk tales, creation stories, songs, myths, spells, legends, proverbs, riddles, tongue twisters, word games, recitations and other narratives not recorded in writing. With the invention of writing, the ancient forms of oral narratives have undergone a lot of changes and have become valuable works of literature. However, the charm of oral narratives often told by improvisation and even gestures as a part of tradition cannot be transcribed into literature. As oral stories are brought down from generation to generation and are committed only to the memory, the various stages of the growth of such narratives give an account of the culture of the people. These are the sources of popular entertainment and are closely associated with festivals and religious ceremonies. At present, our society feels the need to safeguard and protect these indigenous forms of arts from the danger of extinction due to the impacts of globalisation and commercial entertainments. The exploration of the meanings and themes of ancient narratives, in a broader social context, and the significant role of the variant folklore genres in maintaining collective wisdom, national identity, solidarity and traditional moral values are points of great concern in this study.

Examining traditional communicative practices in Gerai, Indonesia: a nexus analysis

ABSTRACTThis paper reports on a nexus analysis of the village of Gerai, Indonesia. Using mediated discourse theory and nexus analysis it explores the relationship between traditional communicative practices such as ritual poetry, mythic narratives, and traditional forms of music, and the ideological value that different missionaries who have visited this community have placed on those traditional practices. The community is split between those who follow traditional culture, or adat, self-identifying as Roman Catholic, and those who do not follow traditional cultural and linguistic practices, and who self-identify as Protestants. In my analysis and discussion I explore how the value placed upon one mediated action, the consumption of alcohol, has had effects upon the cycles of discourse in this community. As a result the traditional communicative practices of Gerai no longer have a strong presence in the community, are not only being heard less frequently, but are also not being learned by younger members of the community. In my discussion I draw attention to how both waves of missionization have created two disparate discourse systems in the community.

The Medieval Inchinata Procession at Tivoli: Ritual Construction of Civic Identity in the Age of the Commune

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the nascent independent communes of central Italy expressed a new sense of civic identity through the staging of elaborate public liturgical processions that shaped and were shaped by local mythology and idiomatic urban landscapes. The Medieval Inchinata Procession at Tivoli: Ritual Construction of Civic Identity in the Age of the Commune examines Tivoli's Inchinata procession, which continues to circle the city every year on the eve of the Feast of the Assumption. Reconstructing the route and performance of the medieval Inchinata through textual, topographical, and archaeological data, Rebekah Perry argues that the procession evolved as an adaptation of “official” liturgical rites introduced by Tivoli's rival Rome to a native apotropaic ritual and local narratives embedded in the city's topography. Through the cosmographical choreography of the procession, the young municipality may have used this amalgamation to invoke the New Jerusalem as an appeal to divine authority for the right to self-rule.

Ritual Sequence and Narrative Constraints in Leviticus 9:1–10:3

Lev 9:1–10:3 contains two of the most memorable events in the priestly narrative: a public theophany at the tabernacle, and the deaths of Nadav and Avihu. It also contains a long sequence of sacrifices, the importance of which has often been overlooked. This article argues that the ritual acts described in Lev 9 follow established and identifiable patterns, and that only by understanding the ritual logic in this episode is it possible to understand the rhetorical aims of the narrative.

Why do they (still) sing stories? Singing narratives in Tanjung Bunga (eastern Flores, Lamaholot, Indonesia)

In eastern Flores, on the Tanjung Bunga peninsula (among Western Lamaholot speakers), several times a year, ritual narratives (opak) are performed on a square dancing area, where all the clans of the same ceremonial land meet. Three types of narrative are sung, according to three kinds of rituals. The article explains the context, content and performance details of these stories, performed all night long. Why do the various clans continue to sing all these narrative? What values do these long poems have for people who sing them? Until now, studies on this subject have been remarkably few, and not even a partial transcription or translation of these narratives is available. This article offers a preliminary insight into these sung narratives, to show how vital they still are in eastern Flores.

Genetic Study on Aesthetic and Metaphysical Tension of Chinese Jade in a Dream of Red Mansions

This paper starts from the jade image in literary narratives, A Dream of Red Mansions to the genetic study on jade mythological concepts to illustrate the aesthetic and metaphysical tension of jade, to illustrate the particular characteristics of Chinese culture, to reveal the underlying mythological concepts that dominate the ritual behaviors and literary narratives, and highlight the prototype function of mythological concepts in the construction of the jade ideology and narratives. Once the prototype of jade myth is revealed, the evolvement track of its cultural narratives and the operative relations between coding and re-coding will be better understood. Besides, the scope and subject of jade study extends from literary narratives in written form to the pre-writing prehistoric jade articles for worshiping purposes.

In de Ban van Tolkien

This article discusses how ‘believing’ works in Tolkien spirituality, a fiction-based religious milieu that uses J. R. R. Tolkien’s narratives, in particular The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, as authoritative texts. Members of this milieu engage in ritual communication with the supernatural beings from Tolkien’s universe, including the elves and the Valar (gods). After presenting the history of Tolkien spirituality and describing the main groups, I develop a model for analysing religious rationalisation. By this term I refer to the process through which theology is developed within religious traditions as a second-order reflection on ritual practices and authoritative narratives. I demonstrate that contrary to what one might expect the strategies of religious rationalisation in Tolkien spirituality are not that different from what we see in other new religions. While one might think that members of fiction-based religions (can) believe only in a cautious and playful manner, practitioners of Tolkien spirituality in fact tend to believe literally and to legitimise their beliefs with supposed proof. It is striking, however, that they tend to believe in a ‘cosmological’ rather than in a ‘historical’ mode, i.e. they believe in the existence of the Valar as spiritual beings, but not in the historical factuality of Tolkien’s narratives. In this sense, Tolkien spirituality may be a good illustration of a broader ‘dehistoricising turn’ in contemporary religion. The development of reflective beliefs in Tolkien spirituality is further shown to be governed by three principles that together seek to reduce tension between conflicting ideas within the tradition and to strike a balance between fabulousness and plausibility. It is suggested that these three principles of belief elaboration govern religious rationalisation also in other religious traditions, at least in traditions with a low level of institutionalisation.

The penny’s dropped: Renegotiating the contemporary coin deposit

This article examines the status of coins as contemporary deposits in the British Isles. With a focus on both historical and contemporary sites, from the Neolithic long barrow of Wayland’s Smithy, Oxfordshire, to the plethora of wishing-wells and coin-trees distributed across the British Isles, it demonstrates the popularity of coins as ritual deposits. The author considers how they are perceived and treated by site custodians, and concludes with a case study of an archaeological excavation, the 2013 Ardmaddy Wishing-Tree Project, which recovered a large amount of contemporary coin deposits. This article does not aim to locate itself within the debates of site custodianship and accessibility, nor does it propose to address the broader dilemmas of a site’s ritual continuity or resurgence. Instead, its aim is to encourage archaeologists to consider the contemporary deposit as an integral part of the ritual narrative of a site, rather than as disposable ‘ritual litter’.

Créativité et incertitude dans les nouveaux rituels contemporains

This paper is based on fieldwork among Portuguese, Italians, Catalans and Spaniards influenced by the transnational Goddess spirituality movement. Through an analysis of ritual narratives the author analyses the role of doubt and uncertainty in contemporary rituals created within Goddess spirituality. She will show that contemporary crafted rituals offer a privileged window on the uncertainty intrinsic in ritual because participants feel less constrained by a long-standing religious tradition and talk more openly about their doubts and their strategies to neutralize them than in the case of secular ceremonies. Drawing on Simon Coleman’s analysis of pilgrimage and ritual (2009, 2013) she suggests that uncertainty may play an important role not only in rituals created in the context of ‘New Age’ spirituality but also in other contemporary rituals created in plural and increasingly secularized Western contexts.

The memory of the Temple and the making of the rabbis

Notes on Usage Introduction: The Narration of Temple Ritual as Rabbinic Memory in the Late Second or Early Third Century Chapter 1. Rabbis as Jurists of Judaean Ritual Law and Competing Claims for Authority Chapter 2. The Temple, the Great Court, and the Rabbinic Invention of the Past Chapter 3. Narrative Form and Rabbinic Authority Chapter 4. Constructing Sacred Space Chapter 5. The Mishnah in the Context of a Wider Judaean, Christian, and Roman Temple Discourse Conclusion: The Memory of the Temple and the Making of the Rabbis Appendix A: The Mishnah's Temple Ritual Narratives and Court-Centered Ritual Narratives Appendix B: Mishnaic Narratives in Which a Rabbi or Rabbis Issue an Opinion with Respect to a Case Notes Bibliography Index Acknowledgments

Monuments, Empires, and Resistance: The Araucanian Polity and Ritual Narratives

Introduction 1. Purposes, settings, and definitions 2. Shaping analogical and conceptual perspectives 3. Araucanian prehistory and history: old biases and new views 4. Imbricating social, material, metaphorical, and spiritual worlds 5. The ethnographies of kuel, narratives, and communities 6. An archaeological view of kuel and rehuekuel 7. Contact, fragmentation, and recruitment and the rehuekuel 8. Recursiveness, kinship geographies, and polity 9. Epilogue and dying mounds.

Passing into Poetry: Viking-Age Mortuary Drama and the Origins of Norse Mythology

The Burials of pre-Christian Scandinavia in the Viking Age can be broadly divided into a number of basic categories, yet within these the range of individual expression in mortuary behaviour is immense. This paper proposes a model to explain such variation, focusing on the evident deliberation shown in the precise selection and placement of objects, and in the treatment of animals (and sometimes humans) killed as part of the funeral process. It is suggested that Viking-Age burials may have involved complex elements of mortuary theatre, ritual narratives literally enacted at the graveside, providing a poetic passage for the individual dead into a world of ancestral stories. A number of archaeological and literary case studies are discussed, including ship burials, emphasising the central importance of tales in the Norse world-view. The question is posed as to whether the material narratives of funerary rites could form one of the creative strands behind what we know today as Norse mythology.