1. RItual: Disenchantment

2. O Brother Where Ar’t Thou
Functions of Ritual
Orients participants to space and time
Connects participants to the divine
Connects participants to a larger community
Includes the body as an instrument for religion
O Brother Where Ar’t Thou
Delmar’s Baptism

3. Liminality & Communitas
group of people who are in the same liminal state
“common generic bond”
(Majority) Anti-structure
Social distinctions fall away
Liminality
Betwixt and Between
No clear social status
unclear status makes liminality dangerous to community and social system
Why?

4. significance of rites of passage
“Social life is a dialectical process that involved successive experience of high and low”
All cultures have successive moments of highs/lows marked by ritual
Rituals help in process that humans go through anyway

5. hopi Kachina cult
Hopi — Native American Pueblo Tribe
Kachina
Supernatural Beings - represent aspects of natural world, not gods
Kachina Dancers
Kachina Dolls given to children
Kiva - subterranean ritual / ceremony space
Central theme of Kachina cult: “The presence of life in all objects that fill the universe. Everything has an essence or a life force, and humans must interact with these or fail to survive”

6. hopi initiation ritual
What: Initiation into Kachina cult
Purpose: Reveal to children nature of the kachinas
Who: 8-10 year olds
What happens:
Children are removed from community
Whipped by Kachinas - “payment” to receive special knowledge; device to ensure secrecy
Kachinas unmasked - members community, possibly relatives
Profound disappointment, disenchantment, discord

7. Disenchantment Dual traumatic effects: disenchantment
altered concepts of Kachinas
profound disappointment and resentment towards elders
modified behavior
excessive indulgence by their elders end
irreversible loss of naive realism

8. What’s next? Active members of the Kachina cult
attentive to Kachina stories
participating in religious preparation and activities
Birth of religious perspective
Religious life begins as serious and reflective (adult qualities)
Motivation for seeking religious awareness

9. characteristics of disenchantment
Encouraging identification of the spiritual with some physical / sensual aspect of the world
Initiatory process
reinforces sense that the fullness of religious reality is invested in these figures and objects
Concluding moments / / Threshold
Illusion dissolved
“Rites demonstrate irreversibly that things are not simply what they appear to be, that one-dimensional literalism is a childish faith that one has to grow beyond”
Choice:
See the world as meaningless
Quest for fuller understanding of the world

10. Other ExaMPLES OF DISENCHANTMENT
Similarities to first members of Christian community?
Disenchantment in secular modernity?