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Supernatural beings that do not have human origins include
gods and spirits
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____ are individualized supernatural beings, each with a
distinctive name, personality, and sphere of influence that encompasses the
life of an entire community or a major segment of the community
Gods
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____ are less powerful than gods and usually are more
localized
Spirits
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Frequently, spirits are collections of nonindividualized
supernatural beings and are not given
specific names and identities
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Rituals are often directed toward superhuman beings – to
placate, praise, or make requests
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Nonindividualized and individualized spirit examples
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More focused on particular individuals, families, or groups of
specialists
Spirits live in the human world
They often exhibit complex personalities
One can ask for their assistance
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___, ____, and ___ will promote the development of a beneficial relationship between people and the spirit world
Offerings, entertainment, and attention
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An important element in many Native American cultures is direct
contact with
supernatural beings and supernatural power
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Vision Quest:
An individual enters into an altered state of consciousness, makes contact with the world of spirit beings, and receives a gift of supernatural power
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Supernatural power can be attained from the guardian spirits in
visions and in dreams
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The Qur’an tells of God’s creation of three types of conscious
beings:
humans made from clay, angels made from light, and jinn made from fire without smoke
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Jinn are normally invisible, but they can make themselves visible, in doing so they often take the form of
a human or an animal
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The Hofriyati recognize three types of jinn:
white, black and red
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The red jinn, called ____, are associated with blood and fertility and they are capable of causing illness
zairan
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Spirit possession occurs when a ___ enters the body of a woman
zar
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One common activity of demons, is
demonic possession
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Incubi:
Male demons who have sex with humans while they sleep
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Succubae:
Female demons who have sex with humans while they sleep
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Gods are personalized individuals with
names, origins, and specific attributes
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Gods are ______, that is, they resemble people in their physical appearance and personalities
anthropomorphic
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Within a particular religious system, the gods as a collective make up a
pantheon
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Creator gods:
Are responsible for the creation of the physical earth and the plants and animals that live on it
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Otiose gods:
Creator gods who create the world and then withdraw from active interactions with the world
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A common form of supernatural being found in cultures in many
diverse areas is the
trickster
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The imagery that is used for gods, such as their anthropomorphic
nature, is take from
social categories and statuses
-
Robin Horton suggests that supernatural beings function to extend
the realm of
social relations
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The Yoruba cosmos is divided into two realms: _____, heaven or
sky, and ____, the earth, the realm of the living
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Some scholars believe that early human religions centered on
___, a lunar cycle as opposed to a solar one, and the ___
- fertility
- worship of goddess
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ISHTAR (ANCIENT NEAR EAST):
Worshiped for thousands of years in Mesopotamia; seen as both invincible in battle and a source of fertility, she was one of the paramount national deities
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ISIS (ANCIENT EGYPT):
Women occupied a relatively favorable position in ancient Egyptian society, and the pantheon contained many prominent goddesses, including Isis
- She was probably the most important deity of the Egyptian
- pantheon for the average Egyptian
-
___ was associated with family; her most common representation
was as a mother, seated, suckling her son Horus on her lap
Isis
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KALI (HINDUISM):
The divine in its fierce form
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Polytheistic:
Religions that recognize many deities
-
Monotheistic:
Religions that believe in one god
-
-
-
-
For Christians, Jesus became the mediator between
humans and God
-
The Trinity:
God, the Son, and the Holy Spirit
-
Allah was believed to be identical to the God of the
Jews and Christians
-
____ has historically meant not accepting the current
conception of God
Atheism
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Agnosticism:
The idea that the question of the existence of a god is unsolvable, unprovable
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When anthropologists speak of _____, they generally refer to
individuals who have an innate ability to do evil
witchcraft
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_____ is a very common belief and refers
to the ability of a person to cause harm by means of a personal power that
resides within the body of the witch
witchcraft
-
The power of a witch is a
supernatural power
-
Witches personify all that is
evil in society
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The Azande believe that witchcraft, or ____, is something that
exists within the body of a witch
mangu
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The Azande think of all misfortune as being due to some
supernatural agency
-
Witchcraft is generally associated with immoral and antisocial
behavior such as
greed, vengeance and envy
-
Witchcraft beliefs and accusations reflect
interpersonal behavior between people in stressful situations and that stressful behavior is frequently a recurring situation in particular social relationships
-
Christians redefined pagan gods and goddesses as servants of
Satan
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The Witchcraze began at the end of the Middle Ages and lasted for
about
200 years
-
The __ ___ says that women were more likely to be
witches; beliefs about witches included intercourse with the Devil; and
sixteenth-century Europe was unusually misogynistic
Malleus Maleficarum
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The events of the McCarthy era and the European witch hunts both
focused on __ and ___ and showed an intense preoccupation with loyalty
purity and unity
-
Changes happen in the
climate, in the availability of food and water, and in the presence of hostile peoples on one’s borders
-
Diffusion:
The apparent movement of cultural traits from one culture to another
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Stimulus Diffusion:
Occurs when only the idea moves from one culture to another, and stimulated by that idea, the receiving society invents a new trait
-
An __ __ has to be altered to fit into the cultural
system and to reflect the basic premises of the culture
introduced trait
-
ACCULTURATION:
When one society is dominated by another, that has more developed technology and wealth, the subordinate culture experiences changes as traits are accepted, often at a rate that is too rapid to properly integrate the traits into the culture
-
A society that has undergone change of this type is said to be
acculturated
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ASSIMILATED:
When the dominated society has changed so much that is has ceased to have its own distinct identity
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SYNCRETISM:
A fusing of traits from two cultures to form something new and yet, at the same time, permit the retention of the old by subsuming the old into a new form
-
____ is a religion that is found in the country of Haiti and in
the Haitian diaspora
Vodou
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Symbolism in the ____ (colored posters) used by
early priests who attempted to bring Christianity to the slaves was seen as symbolic
of the deities
chromolithographs
-
___ developed in Cuba from a fusion of West African
religions, primarily Yoruba and Spanish Catholicism
Santeria
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Frequently, when a receiving culture is dominated, there is a
reaction that often manifests itself as a religious or secular movement know as
a
revitalization movement
-
Another possibility is ___, which begins when an
individual or small group constructs a new, utopian image of society and
establishes a model of this image
revitalization
-
Nativistic Movements:
Develop in societies in which the cultural change gap between the dominant and subordinate cultures is vast
-
Revivalistic Movements:
Attempt to revive what is often perceived as a past golden age in which ancient customs come to symbolize the noble features and legitimacy of the repressed culture
-
Millenarian Movements:
Are based on a vision of change through an apocalyptic transformation
-
Messianic Movements:
Believe that a divine savior in human form will bring about the solution to the problems that exist within the society
-
The term __ __ comes from the word cargo, which in the
pidgin English spoken in New Guinea and the islands of Melanesia means “trade
goods”
cargo cult
-
Revitalization Movements:
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormonism)
-
The term neo-paganism refers to pre-Christian religious
traditions that have been revived and are practiced in contemporary times, an
example of
revivalistic movements
-
The ___, or ritual knife, and wand are commonly used to cast
the circle
athame
-
Wiccan Law of Return:
a karmalike idea
-
Wiccan rede:
the single moral rule
-
Denomination:
A new group that is still considered mainstream if it differs on just a few points from the mainstream religion
-
___ are even more different from the older religion than a
denomination is
Sects
-
Historically, ___is a particular form or system of religious
worship
cult
-
New religious movement:
researchers term for cult
-
High demand religions:
Are at the far end of the continuum ranging from mainstream religions to sects
-
-
Believed that a team of extraterrestrial scientists, the Elohim,
created humans in laboratories and them implanted them on earth
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Characteristics of Fundamentalist Groups
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These groups protest against, and fear, modernization in general and the secularization of society in specific
-
Totalism:
Is a reaction to the increasing separation of religion from other domains of life
-
Scripturalism:
Refers to the practice of justifying beliefs and actions by reference to religious text
-
Traditioning:
Religious texts are relevant to life today
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