A Country Without A Mythology? PART III

by Mike Perschon - Copyright © Mike Perschon 1997

EXAMPLES OF MYTH AND RITUAL

"Mythology has a great deal to do with the stages of life, the initiation ceremonies as you move from childhood to adult responsibilities, from the unmarried state into the married state. All of those rituals are mythological rites."

-Joseph Campbell, "The Power of Myth"

BIRTH

The concept of detachment and reattachment comes through strongly in the birth rituals of the Dagara tribe. They believe that a child's spirit is coming from an Otherworld (birth is the conduit for a new spirit from the place where spirits reside), and since the grandfather of that child (if it's a boy) is also close to that Otherworld (death, the place where spirits go to when they leave) the grandfather is given the task of rearing the child initially, later introducing the child to the father. (Some, 1993, p. 55)

The Ainu of Japan have an interesting custom where the father, mother and child are segregated from all ordinary contacts, since the father is believed to give the child his soul in the twelve days following birth. (Fallding, 1974, p.87) The concept is similar to the Dagara's again though; an elder assists the child in passing from the last mode of existence in to the next. Detachment from the place before birth, and attachment to physical life.

Christians practice a form of this in circles where child baptism or dedication is practiced. The child is being welcomed into the community, though not in the same was that other faiths which believe that the soul had some pre-birth form, such as Hinduism. "Hindu rites of passage can be seen to follow the pattern of separation from the previous state, margin or transition, and aggregation or reintegration into the new state." (Flood, 1994, p. 73) A Hindu woman performs several physical actions to show that she is about to become something she has never been before - a mother.

Although the concept of reincarnation is not part of the Muslim faith, the birth and death rituals still have a major similarity. At both, the practice of reciting the shahada is observed. The shahada is a prayer which proclaims that "there is no God but God" and that "Muhammad is the Apostle of God." (Bennet, 1994, p. 94) The same prayer is recited at death, so that the first and last word a Muslim hears is 'God.' (Bennet, 1994)

There is a strong correlation between myth and ritual in Jewish circles. The myth of Adam and Eve and the Creation story are paradigmatic for human birth. In Paradise, they enjoyed perfect communion with God (the womb), but once they had sinned and were expelled from the garden (birth and detachment), were condemned to a life of seeking God in the manner that mankind does today (constantly seeking reattachment). "According to Jewish teaching, while a child is in (the) womb. . .and angel teaches it the whole of the Torah. Just before birth. . . the child forgets all it has learnt. Learning God's Torah in this world beyond the womb is, thus, really a process of remembering." (Unterman, 1994, p. 113) The myth thus spawns the ritual of teaching the Torah, and explains why it resonates within the hearts of the Jewish community.

PUBERTY

Puberty practices of the Yuin and Marring tribes of Australia are good examples of trial puberty rituals; The initiates, or "novices" are first "separated from their mothers" (detachment) and given mentors, usually the elders of the tribe who instruct them in the "religious traditions of the tribe." These mentors take them outside of society, away from female influence to "a specially cleared ground in the forest." which has been declared "sacred space." It is in this "sacred space" that the novices are ". . .shown a drawing of the divinity Daramulun on a tree. After the chief medicine man has knocked out an incisor of each youth with a chisel and small hammer, the youth is told the secrets regarding Daramulun. . . When the entire group are ready to return to camp, first they bathe in the stream to wash away everything connected with their life in seclusion (reattachment). . ." (Eliade, 1967, p. 287-288; Fallding, 1974, p. 88 bracketed words mine)

Although this sounds much like the intense forms of fraternity 'hazing,' with its almost ritual torture, the words of Al Sciarrino are valuable. On the Oprah Winfrey show mentioned earlier, he stated that the soldier must understand something of what will be endured combat situations. For soldiers going into war-time situations, rituals involving prisoner-of-war simulations which use mild torture are necessary for the soldier to prepare for the horrors they must face. "Joining the army, putting on a uniform. . . You're giving up your personal life and accepting a socially determined manner of life. . ." (Campbell, 1988, p. 15) These hunter-gatherer types of societies still have a warrior caste which usually involves all the men with the exception of the shaman. To allow a boy who will endure great pains in single combat or in the pursuit of the hunt to come into manhood without first tasting great pain is to shelter them, making them essentially impotent when the moment of real pain arrives. The boy is becoming a man. "In primal societies, there are teeth knocked out, there are scarifications, there are circumcisions, there are all kinds of things done. So you don't have your little baby body anymore, you're something else entirely." (Campbell & Moyers, 1988, p. 9)

The concept of the puberty ritual is that of the changing of the guard. The boy to man, the girl to woman. Detachment to reattachment. Modern forms of the process of giving a boy a "taste of pain" are seen when parents allow a child to 'make their own mistakes.' As a youth worker, I have observed many children who have been over-protected by their parents; they have had no ritual process to prepare them for society, and as a result, often lose themselves when they grow up and 'go into the world.' Children who are allowed to make their own decisions and are responsible for the consequences of those decisions are by far better integrated into society. Of the two, it is the second who usually has a better grasp of their faith as well, since it has been 'tried by fire.' I have observed this within a Christian Protestant environment, where, like Islam as well, there is no true 'initiation' ceremony which involves 'coming of age.' If a person is born into the faith, the ceremonies of the Islamic recitation the shahada or of Christian Baptism are either performed at birth or at an early age. Later converts are then required to perform these rituals, but this could occur at any age. In both Christianity and Islam there are many rites which will be observed over time which help an individual internalize their faith. (Bennet, 1994, pp. 98-99)

MARRIAGE

In Canada, marriage is perhaps the most well-known form of the detachment and reattachment ritual. Both parties have chosen to go through this ritual, while all other three studied in this essay are imposed on the individual. We do not choose to be born, grow old or die. But in Canada, we can choose whom and when we will marry. "The bride is detached from the family in which she grew up by her father, who 'gives her away,' and then the new family is symbolically welded together by means of rings and solemn promises to be loving and faithful under all circumstances 'until death do us part.' The honeymoon, away from the old family and the environment where one's previous status is still entrenched, is another means to stress the emergence of a separate household. . ." (Mol, 1983, p. 57)

In mythology, the divine couple, Heaven and Earth is a fairly common theme from which the marriage ritual is derived. ""The marriage between heaven and earth was the first hierogamy; the gods soon married too, and men, in their turn, were to imitate them with the same sacred solemnity with which they imitated everything done at the dawn of time. . .In many mythologies in which the sky plays the part of supreme divinity, the earth is represented as his companion. . ." (Eliade, 1971, pp. 239-240.)

Marriage still retains a spiritual element in modern society, despite what seems to be a secularization through legalities such as marriage licenses and certificates. Bibby stated that "younger single Canadians" who are in the "no-religion category" will "turn to religious groups in the future for pivotal rites of passage - ceremonies such as marriage. . ." (Bibby, 1993, p. 34) Herein is seen the hold that traditional religion still has on Canadian society, despite the tangible lack of commitment to the organizations which represent that tradition.

DEATH

Modernity has sterilized death. The passage from Paul's letter to the Corinthians, taken out of context, could be the battle cry of the modern medical profession. "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" (1 Corinthians 15:55 KJV) In our present age, the ideal has been to somehow prolong life beyond what had previously been the natural expectation of longevity. Where the average death for the Neanderthal man came at 30, (Gore, 1997, p. 81) modern man can hope to reach 100, even in the case of recently deceased, but proud cigar smoker George Burns. Even once death occurs, North Americans go through an elaborate set of rituals intended to help 'ease the suffering of the bereaved,' which are more to salve the actual shock of death. "When death finally overtakes us, it is usually in the clinical anonymity of a hospital bed, distanced from our families and tended to by strangers." (Wilkins, 1993, p. 13) Jessica Mitford speaks of these rituals in her essay The story of service: "Alas, poor Yorick! How very surprised he would be to see how his counterpart of today is whisked off to a funeral parlour and is in short order sprayed, sliced, pierced, pickled, trussed, trimmed, creamed, waxed, painted, rouged and neatly dressed - transformed from a common corpse into a Beautiful Memory Picture." (1995, p. 162) She lists a number of the euphemisms associated with death;

"the funeral director has assigned to himself his relatively new role of 'grief therapist'. . . Today 'body' is out, and 'remains'. . . is in. . . a death certificate should be referred to as a 'vital statistics form'. . . we do not 'haul' a dead person, we 'transfer' or 'remove him'. . . we 'open and close' his grave rather than dig and fill it, and in it we 'inter' rather than bury him. . . Anyway, he didn't die, he 'expired.'" (Mitford, 1995, p. 169)

Modernity has nearly destroyed every facet of death but death itself. The old saying that "death is life's one great certainty" still holds sway, no matter how long it is forestalled. Unfortunately, our sterilization of the processes surrounding death have left our culture still incapable of knowing how to cope with the actual loss. "Today we live longer and death has become more remote, sanitized and mysterious. With mystery come ignorance and recoil: few adults below forty have ever seen a corpse." (Wilkins, 1992, p. 13) Although it was not so long ago in North America that the embalming, preparation and viewing of the corpse was done in the home, the whole series of rituals is placed into the hands of someone who is probably a total stranger. (Mitford, 1995) The reasons for the home preparation, while seemingly morbid, were significant. The first reason was to allow younger family members to deal with the concept of death within their own home. It was not even a consideration of the times to remove the concept of death from its immediacy, so great a fact of life as it were. The body started at home and was then moved on to the church and then grave site to represent the journey the soul was about to take. "From the earliest days of the religion Christians have linked the death and funerals of believers with the death and resurrection of Christ. The ritual of the last rites in the Catholic tradition involved confession of sin, absolution by the priest, anointing with oil, and communion. The idea was to prepare the dying for the journey to God which was about to follow; the communion part of the rite was even called the viaticum, a Latin term for the provisions for a journey." (Davies, 1994, p. 54) The ritual was the priest's final rites and the corpses' physical preparation and subsequent transferal to the grave site, and the myth the Christian idea of resurrection of the body. The identification was, and in some circles still is with the body, but the belief is that the soul has already gone on to be with God. (Davies, 1994, pp. 56-58)

The journey motif is also present on the Hindu tradition. There are many cleansing rituals surrounding the deceased due to a fear of 'polluting' the family, in addition to the possibility of an angry spirit or ghost resulting from improper burial procedures. "While the concerns of bereavement, the neutralizing of death-pollution and the freeing of the spirit from worldly attachments are pan-Hindu concerns, the actual funerary rites vary to some extent in different regions of India and in different castes." (Flood, 1994, p. 82) The deceased are washed and cremated on the same day as death. Only holy men and children are buried, as they have no need of ritual cleansing through fire. Not only is the preparation expedient, the funeral procession itself moves much quicker than it's Western counterpart. The deceased is carried as quickly as is possible to the funeral pyre, usually by a river so the ashes can be immersed. The corpse's feet are pointed to the south which is the realm of Yama, the god of death. The head is parted to the north, the realm of Kubera, the Lord of riches. "A pot may be broken by the body's head, symbolizing the release of the soul. . ." After the cremation, the ashes of the deceased are scattered. "In the days immediately following a death, the family are polluted." (Flood, 1994, p. 82) This period of pollution is characterized by sraddha ceremonies, which are "offerings of rice balls (ritual) to the deceased in order to construct and feed its body in the afterlife (myth)." (Flood, 1994, p. 82) This normally takes ten days after which the family is released from the after-death pollution. There is a final sapindikarana rite which is performed anywhere from thirteen days to a year after the death; analogous to the birth rite of the Hindus, it is a final offering of rice balls in order to bring about the final formation of the preta body, which are "hungry ghosts" (Lamb, 1994, p. 33) which enables the deceased to journey from the realm of ghosts to the realm of the ancestors. (Flood, 1994, p. 83)

Buddhism, since it has its roots in the Hindu beliefs, also observes something like the sapindikarana rite, with food being left for the pretas. All of these rites are "undertaken to help the dead person come to terms with is or her new state." (Lamb, 1994, p. 33) Again, the concept of detachment and reattachment is found in the rituals surrounding death.

Islam, like Christianity, believes in life after death, resurrection of the body, and a Day of Reckoning, resulting in heaven for the faithful, hell for those who rebel against God. But the prayer at death is reminiscent of the Hindu sapindikarana rite, linking birth and death. "When a Muslim is dying, friends should gather to recite the shahadah so that this invocation against the Devil, this attestation that there is no God but God, no will but his, no reality but him, will be the last words heard before death. Just as Muslims are welcomed into the world with God's name, so they are bid farewell." (Bennet, 1994, p. 107) This linkage of birth and death is analogous to the Dagara's birth ritual surrounding the initial rearing of the child by the grandfather, since both are close to the spiritual Otherworld. . (Some, 1993, p. 55)

PART IV