Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
While the ritual clearly articulated the cultural ideals of a society through ritual symbolism, the unrestrained festivities of the liminal period served to break down social barriers and to join the group into an undifferentiated unity with "no status, property, insignia, secular clothing, rank, kinship position, nothing to demarcate ...
Ritualization is a crucial process that transforms ordinary actions, behaviors, and events into rituals imbued with cultural, social or religious significance. Understanding the concept of ritualization and its various functions provides valuable insights into human societies and cultural practices.
While the word religion is difficult to define, one standard model of religion used in religious studies courses defines it as [a] system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations ...
Buried deep in an Australian cave, archaeologists have uncovered evidence that an Aboriginal ritual may have been passed down 500 generations and survived 12,000 years, making it the oldest known ...
Animal sacrifice was general among the ancient Near Eastern civilizations of Ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt and Persia, as well as the Hebrews (covered below).Unlike the Greeks, who had worked out a justification for keeping the best edible parts of the sacrifice for the assembled humans to eat, in these cultures the whole animal was normally placed on the fire by the altar and burned, or ...
Religion may be defined as "a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs," [1] whereas ritual is "an established or prescribed procedure for a religious or ...
The Xinglongwa and Hongshan cultures of northeastern China carved elaborate jade sculptures of pigs and dragons speculated to have some religious role; [155] China was one of the first major sites of animal domestication, [156] and domestic animals seem to have played wide-ranging roles in Neolithic Chinese ritual practice, in particular as ...
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to culture: Culture – a set of patterns of human activity within a community or social group and the symbolic structures that give significance to such activity. Customs, laws, dress, architectural style, social standards, and traditions are all examples of cultural elements.