The Elementary Forms of the Religious LifeDurkheim, Émile
Religion
The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life
Durkheim, Émile
Cults; Religion; Religion -- Philosophy; Rites and ceremonies; Totemism
However, the spiritual beings of whom we have been speaking up to the
present are as yet only secondary personages. They are either
evil-working geniuses who belong to magic rather than religion, or else,
being attached to determined individuals or places, they cannot make
their influence felt except within a circle of a very limited radius. So
they can only be the objects of private and local rites. But after the
idea has once been established, it naturally spreads to the higher
spheres of the religious life, and thus mythical personalities of a
superior order are born.
Though the ceremonies of the different clans differ from one another,
they all belong to the same religion, none the less; also, a certain
number of essential similarities exist between them. Since all the clans
are only parts of one and the same tribe, the unity of the tribe cannot
fail to make itself felt through this diversity of particular cults. In
fact, there is no totemic group that does not have churinga and
bull-roarers, and these are used everywhere in the same way. The
organization of the tribe into phratries, matrimonial classes and clans,
and the exogamic interdictions attached to them, are veritable tribal
institutions. The initiation celebrations all include certain
fundamental practices, the extraction of a tooth, circumcision,
subincision, etc., which do not vary with the totems within a single
tribe. The uniformity on this point is the more easily established as
the initiation always takes place in the presence of the tribe, or at
least, before an assembly to which the different clans have been
summoned. The reason for this is that the object of the initiation is to
introduce the neophyte into the religious life, not merely of the clan
into which he was born, but of the tribe as a whole; so it is necessary
that the various aspects of the tribal religion be represented before
him and take place, in a way, under his very eyes. It is on this
occasion that the moral and religious unity of the tribe is affirmed the
best.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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