1-Basic concepts

1.1-Definition of religious anthropology

The anthropology of religion is a branch of anthropology that studies the origin, development and evolution of religious phenomena in different societies and human groups. Modern anthropology adopts a complete continuity between magical thinking and religion and that each religion is a cultural product created by the community that practices it.

Religion, due to its universality and evolution through times and cultures, is a very difficult concept to define. It can be said that there are as many definitions as there are scholars of the religious phenomenon. But we can group them into three categories: historical, theological-philosophical and anthropological.

Religion is in its infancy in charismatic movements and in full swing by setting dogmas and beliefs in the form of normative text.

1.2-Brief introduction to the associated concepts

The word magic comes from the Latin magic, which in turn is derived from a Greek word, the main meaning is "done contrary to natural laws". It is an art whose main objective is to surprise people by manipulating the perception of things, using words or movements that manage to confuse the human brain and give the sensation of supernatural acts. People who practice this art are called magicians.

-Temperance: it is the self-control of a behavior among a variety of tastes, which leads us to an inordinate enjoyment of the pleasures of life that they entail; Recreation, clothing, the time dedicated to oneself such as sleeping, the way we speak or even laugh, is called temperance that when we moderate our actions we contemplate an inner life of calm of thought and peace.

-Mentalism; It is a philosophical principle that is based on the presence of a proper mental reality, of a different and independent essence from the bodily one. In the psychological aspect this term includes any theory that uses concepts such as mind, spirit, mental faculties, etc. as well as all the psychology that meditation requires.

-Benevolence; It is a quality of the human being with which he shows in society that he is good with what you live with.

-Abominable; its meaning is curse, boring. It is everything that is considered bad, perverse, being the object of rejection by people for violating established principles. In the Bible it is considered an abomination to deny God, to kill, to worship false gods, etc.

2-Global religious historical and chronological evolution

2.2.1-Magic

Magic has existed since ancient times. The first time we heard of a magician was in Egypt. A papyrus called Westcar was discovered. In this papyrus a magician named Dedi appeared and he was in a palace in Memphis, the residence of the pharaohs. The trick told on papyrus was that the magician cut off the head of a goose and placed it on the ground. Saying a few magic words, the goose walked again as if nothing had happened. Even ancient magic is not really how we understand it today. Magic was long ago used as a measure to convince the masses. It served to scare people and control them more easily. magic at that time was used to deceive and take advantage of people.

Already in the Middle Ages a large number of actors emerged. You used to be puppeteers, minstrels and performed different magic tricks that you mixed with songs and stories.

In the seventeenth century we find the first time that professional magic is used as a method to entertain people. In the following century, the variety theater was born in the 18th century. It is an important moment for magicians because they cease to be considered fairgrounds and become professional artists who charge admission to entertain the public.

We are already talking about modern magic. There is something that all magicians agree with. It was Robert Houdin who began to refute fraudulent wizards who believed they were gods and had real powers. Robert was a big step for The Magic. It was he who installed the magician in a tailcoat and who performed in theaters of high social class. He included in his numbers a different technology coinciding with the industrial revolution and he was the one who produced great illusions through mechanics and electricity. It was this man who popularized magic as the art we know today. That is why he is known as the father of modern magic.

Undoubtedly another of the wizards worthy of mention is Harry Houdini. This magician locksmith by profession influenced the entire world with his magic. He made his numbers heard all over the earth, making him the best known wizard in the world in his time and practically in ours as well. He became famous for his feats of escapism.

Today, magic evolves daily. Today's magicians, more than working in theaters, have taken to the streets and are on television, on the Internet. It is clear that magic advances by leaps and bounds every day and we have to climb the wave that this incredible art offers us. Magic must be a very important instrument to continue believing in life, to continue believing that the most important thing is to live with hope.

2.2.1.1-Types of magic

Like all practices in the world, this one has a good side and a bad side and that is that this art is divided into white magic and black magic. White magic has as its main function the well-being of people and those who practice it perform their spells and spells in order to achieve health, ward off evil and bad luck, as well as everything that can hurt a person. This was the official magic for many historical times.

For its part, black magic is composed of all the spells that seek to negatively affect the well-being and luck of an individual, thus affecting their health, causing accidents or loss of possessions, even other misfortunes.

Likewise, magic has many classes that seek to perform supernatural acts in people's lives, among which are: Chactas, alibamones, Santeria, shamanism, voodoo, candomblé (Brazilian voodoo), spiritism, Wicca, among other classes that seek elevate human experiences, whether it is worshiping God or worshiping the Devil.

2.2.1.2-Witchcraft as a profession

The most frequent use of the term today and almost always in feminine refers to people who practice black magic, but this was not always the case. This is because historically, both in Europe and in Africa and the East, divinatory arts, magic and witchcraft were always practiced by men, except at the time when "demonic witchcraft" was persecuted in Europe during the Age Middle, when witches were considered mostly women. . It is with Christianity that the manipulation of hidden forces, traditionally in male hands, the only ones with enough power to perform charitable spells, is consecrated to female hands, the only ones capable of performing evil spells on parents. of the church.

The idea that the main distinction between witchcraft and sorcery is that in the latter there is no pact with the devil is shared by other authors. Thus, while witchcraft uses herbs, ointments, and hallucinogens to produce suggestion in its victims, witchcraft uses empirical materials.

2.2.2-Ritual

To practice magical rituals we must bear in mind that we will need to have at our disposal all kinds of tools and fundamental elements so that they can be carried out; although if we are convinced that the wishes we ask during these magical rituals we will surely do so since faith plays an important role in the practice of white magic and black magic.

Rituals are performed for various reasons, such as the worship of a God (which would correspond to a religious ritual), a national celebration (such as the independence of a country), the death of a member of the community. as burial and / or vigil). It is necessary to differentiate between a ritual and a daily action that has been repeated for a long time, for example: after getting up in the day, opening the windows. Rituals are sets of actions that are related to beliefs, so they are special actions, different from ordinary ones, although they can be practiced daily. The rituals respond to a need, to carry out or reinforce some belief.

2.2.2.1-Type of rituals

The purification rituals, through which we try to cleanse people from impurities and where water plays a decisive role, since it allows them to be worthy and worthy of the divinities they evoke. medium of water: for example, ritual baths and baptisms.

Initiation rituals, which are performed when a person joins a particular group, such as a sect, a magic circle, a religion, etc.

Rituals of passage are those that occur when someone passes to another special state in their life, such as in marriage, at birth, from adolescence to adulthood or death. the life of a person (birth, puberty, marriage, death); they are specific to each community and culture.

Atonement rituals are those that allow those who perform them to be forgiven by their divinity after some offense that offended them.

Commemoration rituals are used to remember or celebrate a special moment, both good and bad. Funerals: related to death and the passage to another life.

The exorcism rituals are those that allow to remove the evil spirit of some demonic entity from the other world that has been affecting our natural environment. To remove evil spirits or demons from somewhere or someone.

They arise in the shedding of blood: for example, circumcision for religious purposes or religious sacrifices.

· Initiation: Those whose intention is to symbolize and mark the transition from one state to another in a person's life.

· Relating to natural phenomena: spring, sowing, harvest, storms.

In some religions, any believer can perform the rituals, while in others the mediation of a special person or institution is required: the officiant. This is the difference between individualistic religions, such as the Eskimo religion, and communal and ecclesiastical religions, such as Christian or Islamic, which presuppose the work of a priest or mediator.

3. Ideologies of renowned anthropologists and sociologists

3.1-Tylor Animism

He argued that non-Western societies used animism to explain why things happened. Animism would therefore be the oldest form of religion, which would explain why humans developed religions to explain reality. When Tylor presented his theories (Primitive Culture, 1871), they were politically revolutionary.

He is based on the belief in a survival after death, where the first ancestors of humanity are considered deities. Two streams, one in Africa and the other in America: a community of life between the living and the dead is proposed. Death is not a break but a step. The dead still belong to the family. They are neither afraid nor adored. Another current, in Asia: the dead go to the other world that has nothing to do with it. This explanation, like Taylor's, appears rather as part or complement of a religion and not as its origin.

3.2-Golden Branch of Frazer

"The Golden Branch", (1890) by J. G. Frazier., It has been considered one of the most brilliant works of anthropology, especially considering that it was written at a very early time by this discipline of social sciences. The knowledge they had been able to gather at that time was not much compared to today, and they also had to deal with all kinds of religious and racial prejudices that reached even the academic realms. However, this classic work offers us a panorama of human nature that is still valid and that manages to become fascinating.

Although it would appear to be an explanation of magic and religion, in reality, the author understands that explaining magic and religion is equivalent to explaining the human being himself, an undertaking that he performs in an apparently indirect way, through a careful relationship. of documents, of judgments, even of mythical stories representative of all the historical periods during which the same instinctive nature of the human being in community has persisted.

Ultimately, magic, religion, and science are nothing more than theories of thought, and just as science has displaced its predecessors, it may later also replace another more perfect hypothesis, perhaps a totally different way of looking at phenomena. .

"The Golden Branch" is remembered above all for its simple and implacable explanatory formulation of the phenomenon of human action in the face of supposed supernatural events.

3.3-Structuralism of Lévi-Strauss

Structuralist anthropology, or structuralism, is a theoretical current of anthropology. According to her, social phenomena can be approached as systems of signs or symbols, so the anthropologist must be careful not to treat them solely or mainly as events, but as meanings.

Thanks to Lévi Strauss, many scientific researchers began to practice the theory that there are patterns common to all human life, which are manifested in all cultures, language patterns, myths and behaviors. Peoples that were previously classified as barbarians, and for whom an ethnocentric approach to our western culture was used, despising other cultures, began to be recognized with more just values. Eastern culture and other cultures previously considered primitive began to be studied in all its manifestations. Classifications such as those made by nature and the diagnosis of diseases were revalued. Lévi Strauss was more than half a century ahead of the environmental controversy, speaking of an ecological treatment for nature, never before seen in Western culture.

The structuralism of Lévi Strauss has its roots in the ideas of the scientific method of Marx and the linguistic protostructuralism of Ferdinand de Saussure. Lévi Strauss himself quotes Marx when he teaches that the social sciences are no longer built on the plane of events, just as physics is not built on sensible data: the purpose is to build a model, study its properties and the different forms in that reacts in the laboratory, and then applies these observations to the interpretation of what happens empirically and that may be far from predictions. On the other hand, Saussure found the tools to apply it with a modern scientific basis, as a mechanistic practice where human development does not count. It was precisely this idea that caused him a famous controversy with Sartre, the existentialist philosopher.

For Lévi Strauss things consist of structures that can be discovered and analyzed in detail. He considers that just as language consists of minimum units that are ordered according to a series of rules to produce a meaning, culture is communication and consists of minimum units that are combined according to certain rules into larger units that form a meaning. For him, dividing culture into its basic units and understanding the rules by which they are combined is understanding the meaning of culture. He considers that the mind organizes knowledge according to a logic with which our human brain is genetically endowed and that it is applied to different things following laws already determined by their same biological structure, which is what the fact of having been so privileged provides us. species of which we are vainly proud.

3.4-Malinowski functionalism

Malinowski's functionalism, according to certain authors, is biopsychological in nature because it is based on the fact that man has a series of needs (food, security, growth) that are satisfied by social and cultural institutions. Assign an institution to each role. He was criticized for his determinism, as he does not recognize that an institution meets various needs over time.

Malinowski is the representative of a very deterministic (rigid) functionalism, he affirms that there are different authors who consider that there are 3 postulates on which Malinowski's functionalist theory is based:

· Postulate of the functional unit of society: It is a very abstract-conceptual way of explaining. The functional unit of society, through this postulate Malinowski says that each constituent element of a society will be functional for the entire social system and therefore this system is completely organized.

· Postulate of universal functionalism: All the constituent elements of a society fulfill a function.

· Postulate of necessity: Each constitutive element of a society is an indispensable part of it.

3.5-Durkheim Toteism

The elementary forms of religious life (French: Les forme élémentaires de la vie religieuse), is a book by the famous French sociologist Emile Durkheim published in 1912. The work analyzes religion as a social phenomenon and attributes its origin to the emotional security achieved by the individual in coexistence with others.

Durkheim finds that the essence of religion is the idea of ​​the sacred. This concept is the only one that is repeated in all religions. For example, totemism was based on human beings linking their feelings with inanimate objects in their environment, to which they attributed superhuman powers. Other cases examined by the book are the rain dances of village Indians, Australian Aborigines, and psychoactive drug-induced hallucinations.

The comparison between Durkheim and Freud on the subject of totemism attempts to elucidate the convergences and divergences on a reality that both pose as essential for the construction of the social and cultural world.

3.6-The Marxism of Karl Marx

Marxism has traditionally opposed all religions. Marx wrote about this that "" the foundation of irreligious criticism is: human beings make religion, religion does not make man "and the phrase the end would become famous:" Religious misery is, on the one hand, the expression of real misery and, on the other hand, the protest against real misery. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people".

The reference to opium has been lent to a vulgar interpretation, as it is not, as is often assumed, a narcotic or hallucinogen, but a narcotic pain reliever. This misunderstanding by the contemporary reader has led to frequent confusion about the Marxist phrase, according to which Marx would seem to despise religion. The full quote reveals the reason for the reference to an opiate: it never claims that religion is considered a form of intellectual degradation or a mere illusion generated by the ruling classes (a non-Marxist interpretation that would suppress the idea that it had of ideology, that is, the illusion of universality within each class), but that religion is the necessary anesthetic of the whole society in the face of social alienation and of the oppressed classes in the face of their material conditions of existence.

In Marxism, the critique of religion is not a defense of atheism, but the critique of society that makes religion necessary. The suppression of these conditions and the full realization of human communion are unrelated to the biological condition. The philosophical foundation of the Marxist rejection of religion has been related to the development of the dialectical materialism of Engels and Lenin.

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