Specific Rituals Research Articles

Family Resources and Reproductive Health of Girls: a Focus on Money and Tugbewcwc Puberty Rites among the Dodome Ewes

There has been considerable concern about the reproductive health status of girls in Ghana in recent years due to the increase in premarital sexual activities amongst the youth, socio-economic implications of teenage pregnancy and illegal abortions. The major objective of this paper is to throw some light on how proper use of family resources could help resolve the problem. All families have certain resources such as money, time, energy, skills of members, and some community resources like schools and traditional society's puberty rites. However, most families do not have access to enough money to meet all the needs of all family members. Traditionally, resources are shared without due regard to needs of individual members, but rather using gender and age as yardsticks with the resultant inequalities in access; with men always getting more than their fair share and women and children not getting enough. It is important that parents make every effort to provide the needs of their children especially the girls, so that they do not accept money from men who in turn ask for sexual favours. In traditional societies in the past, specific rites were instituted to safeguard the reproductive health of the members. Examples of these rites were puberty rites. In Dodome, the puberty rite for girls is called ligTugbewowol/ig but it has been suspended for some years now. As part of these rites, girls are supposed to remain virgins till after the rites are performed. They are taught the arts of womanhood, motherhood etc. and are prepared to take their places as women in society. Modernization has eroded most of these resources that prepared girls to become effective members of society, producing teenage single parents. The rites served as an incentive for mothers to constantly remind their daughters of society's expectations of them and thus they preserved their chastity. That is no longer the case. An exploratory study in Dodome revealed that the majority would like ligtugbewowol/ig to be reintroduced. It is recommended that (1) families be empowered financially to be able to meet needs of members (2) that a detailed study be carried out into ligtugbewowol/ig with the aim of understanding and modernizing the rites for reintroduction in Dodome and the Ho district as a whole. It is concluded that the time has come to seek African solutions to African problems and end the adoption of Western values.

Коллективные и индивидуальные модели памяти о “Великой Отечественной войне” (1941–1945 гг.)

SUMMARY: World War II or, as it was called in the Soviet Union, the “Great Patriotic War” still plays a very significant role in Russia. Specific rituals and traditions of, what we may call, “commemoration cult” were established by Leonid Brezhnev, developed by his successors and were cherished in Russia up to the present day. This article examines two examples of that “commemoration cult”: the memoirs of war written by Irina Ehrenburg (born 1911), and the one written by Marina Pavlovna Chechneva (born 1922). Irina Ehrenburg served during the war as interpreter and war correspondent. Chechneva fought as one of the so-called “night witches”, as they called the pilots of the (all-women) night bomber regiment. The article focuses on how specific patterns of the overall “commemoration cult” have influenced Ehrenburg’s and Chechneva’s memoirs. Ehrenburg reflects first the early death of her husband and then draws the attention of the reader to the negative sides of the war. While Ehrenburg paints a rather realistic picture, Chechneva follows the patterns of the Brezhnevian glorification of the war without forgetting to mention specific problems women encountered while serving in combat troops. Depending on the individual biography and experiences, the two women reflect the course of the war differently. Interesting enough, while some parts of their memoirs deviate decisively from the “official” commemoration cult, other parts reflect the typical patterns of the commemoration cult to be found in specific social groups.

Weeping in a Taiwanese Buddhist Charismatic Movement

Emotion can be a locus of interpretation and a motor for religious commitment. This is illustrated with the thick description of uncontrolled weeping that recurred with the followers of a Buddhist charismatic movement in modern Taiwan. Ethnography of the ubiquity of weeping in this group suggests that emotion in religion expressed in tears is not limited to rituals or uncanny phenomena; and the devotees' and the leader's interpretation of weeping reveals the multivocality and the individual agency of the symbolic emotion. This emotion, expressed in weeping, is not a dialogue of culture but a construct of identity evoked by religious charisma. (Weeping, emotion, religion, charisma, Taiwan) ********** This article attempts a symbolic analysis of uncontrolled crying and its implication in the broader cultural context of a Taiwanese religious charismatic group whose devotees sometimes describe themselves as people who love to cry (Minnan, aikhau; Mandarin, aikuae). Sometimes they weep together, and many members trace their conversion to an inexplicable flood of tears. Uncontrolled crying is especially common among the female followers, who often sob, yet never wail. They remember having cried, and never try to stop any tearful fellow participant from crying, even during the most tranquil ceremonies. Such expressiveness contrasts with the image of Chinese people as rarely showing emotion. At the same time, the pervasiveness of their tears transgressed the conventional domain of adult public crying in Chinese culture. Wailing is not unusual at rituals such as funerals and weddings (Ahern 1986 [1973]; Blake 1979). The common perception of crying tends to be limited to wailing during these two events, characterized by performative expressions of loss and departure. Whether Chinese people shed tears outside these special rites and to what extent their tears represent multiple meanings beyond the sentiments of loss are themes that have not received much attention. A more important problem with the characterization is that it hinges the interpretation of crying on the metaphorical representation and/or reversal of the social relation enjoined by public discourse of patrilineality and patrilocality; i.e., ancestor worship elaborated in the funeral, and the severing of ties between a daughter and her family upon marriage. Although family (being both patrilineal and patrilocal) has been a primary source of emotion and of the construction of self in Chinese culture (Wolf 1968), a conflation of interpretation of emotional expression and metaphor runs the risk of restricting the multivocality of symbolism pertaining to the expression (Turner 1995 [1969]:41-43; Weller 1994) to an assumed mind/body dichotomy (Strathern 1993). A prescribed meaning structure of crying in relation to cultural ideology limits grasping other discourses involved and the importance of individual agency in interpreting emotion. The pervasive crying described here calls for an approach that synthesizes the two anthropological fields of emotion and religion. Religion seems to have been sidelined in the sociocentric anthropology of emotion (Abu-Lughod 1985; Lutz 1988; Lutz and Abu-Lughod 1990; Rosaldo 1992 [1984]). At the same time, anthropologists of religion describe emotion as a part of the phenomenological experience in particular ritual settings such as healing and spirit possession (e.g., Boddy 1989; Csordas 1990:18-23; Lewis 1978 [1971]) and seem not to have attempted emotion as an analytical category. This essay looks at religion through weeping, a nonverbal expression of emotion that recurs in multiple contexts including but not confined to ritual or uncanny experience (Mitchell 1997). Through exploring the interpretations of crying in its multiple contexts, this article seeks to show that 1) emotion, as embodied in nonverbal uncontrolled crying, constitutes a commitment to religious charisma; and 2) that the charismatic religious discourse of crying does not subscribe to Taiwan cultural ideology, yet it still taps into the power of crying within the broader cultural context. …

Caste Politics, Ritual Performance, and Local Religion in a Bengali Village: A Reassessment of Liminality and Communitas

In this paper, I seek to reevaluate Victor Turner's related concepts of liminality and communitas in the context of Hindu ritual. The primary data come from an all-Hindu village named Goalpara, which is located in Birbhum District, West Bengal. The specific ritual in question is an annual three-day event performed for the village's main deity, Dharmaraj, the “king of duty”. Through ethnographic inquiry I argue that the events during the three days seem to reinforce Turner's idea of an actual abolishment of social hierarchy, since low-caste devotees of the deity seem to take on the status of high-caste Brahmans through an initiatory transformation. However, upon closer investigation, the transformation only occurs on the symbolic level. Close observation of the ritual in question suggests that hierarchy is never abandoned. In some respects, it is even reinforced through ritual action. Nonetheless, I argue that the question of a change in social status depends largely on the interpretations provided by part...

The Yoruba's cultural perspective of death with special reference to twins.

To the Yoruba people of South-West Nigeria, on the West Coast of Africa, death, or transition from one level of existence to another, is well accepted as part of life. Rites of passage are seen as an opportunity for saying farewell to the deceased and seeking their continuous protection of the living members of the families. After the death of a twin, a twin statuette, symbolically representing the departed twin, also acts as a companion and solace to the living twin. This paper examines these subjects including the special rites performed for twins, the relationship of the family to the deceased and the question of reincarnation

Intoxication and Rite of Passage to Adulthood in Norway

The author describes young Norwegians' use of alcohol in “russefeiring,” a special rite of passage to adulthood in the form of prolonged graduation parties. In this ritual, the young people wear special clothes, celebrate, and drink beer and spirits from the 1st through the 17th of May. The article argues that young people have invented rites of passage in which expressive individualism is stressed as a value. The article discusses the use of symbolic anthropology and sociology and field methods in research relating to this kind of ritual alcohol use and intoxication. Theoretically, the focus is on studying alcohol use as a ritual practice. Use of alcohol can be defined as a key symbol in these ritual processes, offering an opportunity to communicate meaning between members of the society and culture concerned.

The Yoruba's Cultural Perspective of Death with Special Reference to Twins

To the Yoruba people of South-West Nigeria, on the West Coast of Africa, death, or transition from one level of existence to another, is well accepted as part of life. Rites of passage are seen as an opportunity for saying farewell to the deceased and seeking their continuous protection of the living members of the families. After the death of a twin, a twin statuette, symbolically representing the departed twin, also acts as a companion and solace to the living twin. This paper examines these subjects including the special rites performed for twins, the relationship of the family to the deceased and the question of reincarnation

Embodying the Spirits Among The Iu‐Mien

This paper exploresTaoistrituals among Iu‐ Mien refugees in the United States and the ways in which Iu‐Mien spirit masters provide means of embodiment for the spirits and gods. The Iu‐Mien practice over two hundred separate rituals to provide healing, pay the spirits for benefits received, purchase good health, life, children, and wealth from the spirits, provide spirit guardians, and assist souls in their transitions through the Iu‐Mien universe. This paper examines the ways in which the gods are embodied during specific rituals in sacred spirit paintings (mienvfang), which in themselves are literal bodies of the gods, complete with bones, flesh, and clothing. In other rituals, the Mien spirit masters themselves embody the gods in trance. The relationship of these embodiments to Iu‐Mien cosmology as well as to communication with the spirit world via divination, ritual, and Chinese literacy is discussed.

Governmentality, Modernity and the Historical Politics of Ọ̀yọ́-Hegemony in Yorùbá Transnational Revivalism

Keywords: history, power, geotemporality, race, Yoruba, [Symbol Not Transcribed]Oy[Symbol Not Transcribed]otunji, African villageRed blood splattered throughout the oval-shaped room. Robed in his best African clothes and by pulling the trigger of a borrowed shotgun, one of [Symbol Not Transcribed]Oy[Symbol Not Transcribed]otunji's young men had fallen to his death. The news of the suicide rang throughout the community. His last words inscribed on paper expressed how much he tried and wanted them to be proud of him, how much he hurt and how much he could not deal with the addictions that haunted him, how much he continued to fail those who he loved the most. His solution saddened the residents as they scrambled to explain how it could have happened, wishing that they had only paid more attention to the signs; if only they had tried harder. The lack of experience dealing with death in [Symbol Not Transcribed]Oy[Symbol Not Transcribed]otunji, a three generation-old community, left residents with a numbing powerlessness and malevolent curiosity about how the leaders would deal with a life taken in this way.The emotional inclination of many, regardless of the cause of death, was to honour with a special ritual the life of their friend and brother in the religion. During the first few hours members of the [Symbol Not Transcribed]Oy[Symbol Not Transcribed]otunji community scurried in search of the appropriate ritual procedure. They called the city of Beauport authorities, consulted the ancestors through the use of divinatory rituals, telephoned knowledgeable practitioners outside of [Symbol Not Transcribed]Oy[Symbol Not Transcribed]otunji, and consulted various historical texts in which Yoruba were documented. Although in the midst of a crisis, they not only sought the advice of their ancestors by conducting divination readings to determine the course of action, but they conducted literary research in search of the protocol of traditional burial practices among the Yoruba of Southwestern Nigeria who committed suicide.Over the course of the development of the black cultural nationalist movement, as it moved from Harlem, New York to South Carolina, African Americans disillusioned with Christianity converted to Yoruba practices in an attempt to revive their African past. At the beginning of bi-weekly town meetings and other formal events, in an attempt to enact the social, religious and political life of Yoruba ancestors, [Symbol Not Transcribed]Oy[Symbol Not Transcribed]otunji revivalists have attempted to recreate their understanding of Yoruba cultural practices by educating themselves about Yoruba history and cultural practices. This has ranged from pursuing ritual apprenticeships, learning the divinatory corpus, attending workshops about Yoruba cultural practices and reading and studying texts about the history of African peoples. Most of the texts that document Yoruba traditional practices and are used in [Symbol Not Transcribed]Oy[Symbol Not Transcribed]otunji today were published prior to 1955. These include various early 20th century Yoruba revivalist classics such as Samuel Johnson's The History of the Yoruba and N.A. Fadipe's The Sociology of the Yoruba. These texts form the source of knowledge for African American ancestral history and despite the apparent stability of these written historical forms, Yoruba revivalists participate in shaping norms of acceptability by basing their terms of practice on renditions of those accounts.Despite the attempts of various leaders within the community to focus on historical customs and traditions documented in Yoruba history texts, the friends and relatives of the deceased who lived in [Symbol Not Transcribed]Oy[Symbol Not Transcribed]otunji mourned the loss of their compatriot. Disappointed in the traditionalist prohibitions against suicide, they disputed the actual relevance of applying Yoruba funeral rites in present day circumstances. …

"Modes of Knowing: Intellectual and Social Dimensions of Time in Africa"

AbstractGrounded against a background of a critique of Western characterizations of time in Africa in simple terms such as cyclical or devoid of a sense of the future, the essay analyzes the complex ways in which Africans experience time. Although no single time construct can be applied to all of Africa, since each culture experiences time dynamically in its own way, certain commonalities can be drawn. Today, as millions of Africans find themselves at the confluence of tradition and modernity, the way in which they experience time is multilevel. Conceptions of time are embedded in multiple institutions and practices: life cycles; occupational calendars observed by farmers, fishermen and other workers; ritual calendrical systems in which there are definite patterns of days set aside for performing specific rituals of state; annual festivals that mark the commencement of the local year rather than the arbitrary January 1; myths, legends and genealogies that embody temporal constructs; various indigenous mechanisms and strategies used to establish chronologies, etc.

Vratá Divine and Human in the Early Veda

The relationship between Rigvedic and post-Rigvedic usages of the word vratd has not been adequately explained, despite several studies of the concept. This paper distinguishes three aspects of the word's meaning in the Rg Veda and in the mantra-period texts: (1) rule' in the general sense of a fixed articulation of will or authority; (2) as the attribute of a god, it denotes the distinctive natural and social laws that the god ordains and maintains; (3) in verses in which the god's vratd is closely linked with specific rites (the morning and evening offerings, the three soma pressings) it acquires the sense of 'rule of ritual observance'. In these contexts, this rule of ritual performance is an obligation to be fulfilled by descendants of Manu, who may be called vratyas of the god. RV 7.103.1 and AV 4.11 foreshadow the narrower, technical application of the word in the prose yajus texts, the brāhmanas, and the ritual sutras, viz., an ascetical regimen undertaken by a yajamana or student, under the superintendence of Agni Vratapati.

A community of education: Nepalese children living and learning religious ritual

This paper expands and extends the existing qualitative literature on the relationship between children and the social environment. With reference to a group of Nepalese children I highlight how children learn about religious ritual, and specific rituals in which they engage during their childhood years. I also explore the differences and similarities of children's religious ritual experiences between religious affiliation, castes and gender. Analyses of ethnographic and interview data revealed four important points. First, the children equated religious ritual learning in the forms of daily puja and the coming‐of‐age ceremonies. Second, both Hindu and Buddhist children engaged in these rituals and did not differentiate how Hindu worship differed from Buddhist worship. Third, the children identified their social world—their immediate and extended family and friends—as the primary place where they learned about religious rituals. Finally, children from the low castes, when socialised with children from higher castes, participated in religious ritual more often than children who did not socialise with children from the higher castes.

Mortuary Rites for Inanimate Objects: The Case of Hari Kuyō

In Japan, as in other industrialized countries, old and broken objects mostly end up in the trash. Some items, however, end their «lives» with a special ritual. This article is the first serious Western-language treatment of mortuary rites (kuyō) for inanimate objects. The history of these rites, the Buddhist and Shinto justifications for them, and the motivations of the participants in them are among the topics about which little is known. In an attempt to enhance our knowledge of kuyō, this article examines mortuary rites for needles - objects which are emblematic of women. The goddess connected to the rites is introduced, and mortuary rites for needles performed today at three locations in Tokyo are described.

Un rituel original de l'Age du Bronze : les inhumations en fosse des sites des Estournelles et de La Plaine à Simandres (Rhône)

Two settlements recently excavated in the middle Rhône valley provide new datas on the treatment of the human remains in the late Bronze Age (stage 3a). We found here burials occurred in round pits which seem to take place close to the domestic space. The burial customs signal an elaborate and special ritual : the pits reveal a preparation of the ground and a controlled organization of the internal area, the deposits of the dead are simultaneous or successive, some bones are removed after the decay of the bodies and buried again in the upper layers of the grave (interpreted as « secondary burial »). The unusual burial customs recognized differ fundamentaly from these known for the RSFO culture.

Power Pulses Across a Cultural Divide: Cosmologically Driven Acquisition Between Armorica and Wessex

Understanding of the nature and significance of connections between Armorica and southern Britain in the Early Bronze Age has been inhibited by poorly refined chronologies. The Armorican grave series is now believed to span seven to eight centuries (c. 2300/2200–1500 BC) and association patterns are used to suggest five assemblages (series 1–5). In the absence of many skeletal remains, structural and organisational evidence is gleaned to suggest that some tombs were not immutably sealed and were used more than once. It is suggested that the accumulation of successive grave groups, primarily in series 2 and 4, is one factor blurring signs of chronological progression, whilst added complexity derives from regional shifts.A review of specific artefact types and burial rites on the two sides of the western Channel gives little credence to the migration of more than occasional individuals. On the contrary, an essential autonomy in the way that materials and artefacts are employed by elites comes through, yet this is set against some important material connections. The conundrum is resolved by suggesting that inter-dependence was actually limited and that the procurement of exotic materials/goods was driven by ‘cosmological acquisition’ needs which, if anything, maintained real differences between distant participating societies. In Wessex, however, the growth of this mode of extracting ideological capital from long-range contacts was to have profound consequences for superordinate centres based around Late Neolithic ceremonial complexes – their ultimate transformation and eclipse.

The World of the Harvester Ants

The native red ants of Texas, favored prey of the endangered Texas horned lizard, are but one of many New World ants known as harvesters. The two genera Pogonomyrmex and Ephebomyrmex range from southern Canada to southern Argentina and the western half of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola (Haiti). The book begins with the mythology and folklore surrounding the harvester ants of the Southwest and Mexico: the Aztecs believed that the red harvester brought corn to humankind, and Native Americans of the southwestern deserts invoked special rituals to placate the ants when their mounds were disturbed. Following sections describe the ants' evolution, distribution, nest structure, habits, foods, predators and cohabitors, defenses, chemistry and communication, and sex life. The final chapter considers the ants' interaction with humans, including its perception as a pest and the history of pesticide use. Appendixes give the scientific and common names of each harvester ant species, explain how to identify harvesters without technical devices, and provide a complete key to all sixty species. The key is supplemented by illustrations and distribution maps for every species. An extensive bibliography and a detailed index are included.

La riziculture dans les manuscrits de sagesse traditionnelle à Sathing Phra, dans le Sud de la Thaïlande

In Southeast Asia, rice is not only an agricultural product, it is a cultural one, too. Each process related to rice cultivation, including ploughing, harrowing, sowing, and harvesting, includes specific rituals, taboos and offerings which are seen as the conditions to ensuring a fruitful crop. In Southern Thailand, more precisely in Sathing Phra, Songkhla province, these techno-spiritual commandments are contained in specific "books" which are transmitted and copied from one generation to another The versions used now probably come from the Ayutthaya Period (14th- 18th Century). One of these manuscripts shows how rice is at the junction of the material and the spiritual worlds. While some advice results from simple observation of natural processes, most of the prescriptions are grounded on a set of multiple convictions which bear witness to the multicultural past of the Thais. They are based on a belief in vital principles (khwan) and more elaborated cosmologies where nagas, Indian deities and the Buddha internet. Today, modernity and government campaigns, however, deal bad blows to these traditions.

Cognitive distortions in heavy gambling.

A sample of 38 regular and heavy gamblers, recruited through advertisements and not seeking treatment, were asked to describe special strategies, techniques or rituals that they used to increase their chances of winning at gambling in an open-ended interview. The mean South Oaks Gambling Screen Score for the sample was 7.7 with 64% of the sample scoring higher than 4. Their responses reflected multiple means by which the individual believed they were able to control (i.e., active illusory control, passive illusory control), reframe (i.e., interpretive control), or predict (i.e., probability control, predictive control) gambling outcomes. A larger number of cognitive distortions was associated with playing games in which skill was potentially a component (e.g., cards, sports) than in non-skill games (e.g., lotteries) as well as a positive family history of gambling. There were no sex differences. Implications of these findings for the cognitive psychopathology of gambling are discussed.

Prayer for a Sleeping Child: Iconography of the Funeral Ritual of Little Angels in Mexico

The ritual of little angels, known by this name in almost all Hispanic America, refers to the rite of the transit to life beyond this world of children baptized while still alive. According to the Catholic dogma, children die without mortal sin, and go directly to Heaven where they become angels, without having to pass through Purgatory. Consequently, the death of a little angel, in spite of the pain it inflicts on parents, is a happy event. This ancient ritual arrived in this side of the Atlantic as part of the Spanish culture, and rooted perfectly in Mexico through the Prehispanic celebration that the narrator and evangelizer Friar Diego Duran defined as the 'Miccaihuiltontli,' which is a diminutive noun, and means the festivity of dead children, and I understood that it is a celebration for deceased innocent children. As in the case of other cultural elements, when the indigenous people came to realize that the only way to continue celebrating their ritual was assimilating it to that which came from Spain, they readily did so. Similarly, the tenth month of the year, devoted by the mexicas to the adult dead, fused with November 2, Deads' Day of the Catholic tradition, while the Miccaihuiltontli, previously held during the ninth month of the year, was celebrated under a new fashion each November 1 st. Thus, funeral rituals have a prominent place in Mexican popular culture, but they also reflect an undeniable demographic reality. Death was a frequent event, especially among children, and it continued displaying extremely high levels well into the twentieth century. During the government of Porfirio Diaz, life expectation was around 30 years of age, and infant mortality reached 30%. When the provision of medical and educational services was extended to small locations, mortality declined to 22% in 1920, and represented 13% in 1940. In this paper we will indicate the possible origins of this popular Mexican ritual, and inquire about the specific changes it has undergone, based on iconographic representations and, particularly, the incorporation of photography, which is still practicedthough to a lesser extent-to this day. Thus, we will delve into the particular relationship that is established within the popular recreation of the little angels' ritual, between tradition-symbolic forms of the rite-and modernity, characterized by an almost immediate incorporation of the image, and other elements by the photographer who acts as a new master of ceremonies. The Ritual Background and parallelism Foster defines children's funeral rituals as a popular form of Spanish catholicism. Well into the late nineteenth century, when a child died in Spain-along the Mediterranean coastline from Castellon to Murcia, in Extremadura and the Canary Islands, although it had existed since the turn of the century in most of the southern and central regions of the peninsula-the dance of little angels was performed. Friends and relatives of the dead child sang and danced all through the night to the sound of guitars and castanets. While transformed, dance, music and games are also included in the Mexican ritual. This author points out, among other similarities between both versions of the ritual, that of dressing the child in white (a symbol of pureness), and placing a palm leaf on the coffin (to denote virginity). He also transcribes the description of a child's funeral that the French traveler Charles Davillier witnessed in Valencia around 1870. In his account, Davillier told that the little deceased girl-5 or 6 years old-was laid on a table, and a taper was lit on each corner; she was dressed as for a party and wore a crown of orange blossoms around her head. Details about the garment are important since they are the most prominent of the Mexican ritual. However, while the transference-like that of all other European cultural assets and elements-arrived in America from Spain-which is evident in the dissemination of the ritual throughout the whole Ibero American continent and its presence in communities of both indigenous and African origin-there are portraits of death children of the Renaissance and the Baroque period in Italy, England, Holland, France and colonial North America, that could be suggesting the presence of a special ritual. …

Dualistic Qumran concept in the context of the Christian worldview

The Qumran community of Essenes belongs to the religious sects of Palestine II. BC - 1st century BC not. It arose in the line of Judaism and was closely connected with the Jewish religion. This is evidenced by the spiritual library of the community and the strict observance of the law of Moses by its members. In order to get closer to the understanding of nature and the essence of spirituality, one should not only take into account the complete legal features of its similarity to official or normative Judaism, but to note the differences that existed between them. These differences were determined in the social and religious isolation of the Qumran community from the Jewish community and were reflected in a desert, similar to the monastic way of life, in rejection of participation in the temple cult, a specific ritual of washing, different from the established burial ceremony, in the use of a special solar calendar. All this testifies at the same time to the specificity of the ideological views of the members of the Qumran Brotherhood. It is difficult to say whether the theological system of the Qur'an outlook has survived to date, since its essential elements were transmitted orally and not recorded (in records, such records do not occur).