Campbell - Primal Religion in the Modern Age

Stephanie Kaza, “Penetrating the Big Pattern,” Buddhist-Christian Studies, Vol. 23, (2003), pp. 55-59. (JSTOR)

 In this article, Stephanie Kaza delves into the trials of her religious journey. Her first spiritual experience, she states, was her discovery of light as a young child. "I was sitting on the second-story of our house in Buffalo, New York, at age five, spellbound by the dancing shadows of the big apple tree. Shimmering leaves, light and dark changing by the second - alive, dynamic, radiant, and mesmerizing. Across the afternoon the light shifted, the sun dropping lower in the sky. Some big pattern penetrated my young consciousness. What was it?" (p. 2). 

 This experience represents the essence of primal religion in two ways: first, that the senses were heavily relied upon for religious understanding due to lack of written language; second that the natural world was often explained through mythology. 

 To begin with, primal peoples were unable to use written language to record their religious history, which may seem like a setback but it allowed them to be more creative within their mythology. This creativity stemmed from the requirement that primal peoples utilized full sensory experience when disseminating their mythological narratives. For instance, art was a widely-used visual supplement for primal myths, as exemplified in cave art all around the globe Additionally, song and dance was an integral part of ritual for primal peoples, which further enhanced the religious practices of ancient peoples. Hence, Kaza's spiritual exploration of her own sensory experiences were initially produced by our primal ancestors.

 Besides the senses, myths are also associated with understanding the surrounding natural world. In a time where technology was not advanced, our perception of the world was discovered through stories, which explained natural occurrences that we could not understand. Creation myths epitomize this sentiment; because we could not (and still cannot) fully explain the beginning of our existence, primal peoples would devise elaborate stories regarding how the world came to be and how humans - specifically their individual tribe - was born. Thus, myths allowed early peoples to understand and appreciate all that was going on around them, to which Kaza can relate.

 How important is the sensuous experience in your own spiritual life?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Campbell - Time and Primal Culture

One of the major themes that we've discussed in this class throughout the semester has been comparing and contrasting oral cultures with written cultures. There are many differences, including ritual practices, moral codes, and utilization of spaces. However, another major difference that we only briefly touched upon is the way in which primal and modern cultures differ in their dense of understanding time. In today's world, time is very linear. We consider there to be a beginning and an end, and have even become so technical as to mark the years, months, days, and even hours. We measure our lives in the passing of years and death is seen as a gateway to a new life or an eternal paradise. For primal cultures, however, life is entirely cyclical. When we die, our bodies serve as food for scavenging animals or as nutrients for the soil. Our energies are passed along to other members of the natural environment, so despite our deaths, we never stop contributing to the circle of life...
Read more

Campbell - Ossian Mythology and "Oral Texts"

Abram, David.  The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World . New York: Vintage Books, 1996. I really enjoyed Abram's historical summary of how oral language developed and transitioned into written word. He begins this account with the invention of the Hebrew alphabet, or "aleph-beth," which later served as a model for Greek linguistic advancement. However, as any geography lesson will tell you, the Greek nation was geographically broken and thus the cultural climate was highly sectarian (i.e. nation-states), so the concept of written language took awhile for people to accept. Additionally, the mystification of oral chants and stories could not be directly translated into written word, and many Greeks were rather disenchanted by this loss of oral magic. As Abram explains, "the sung stories, along with the numerous ceremonies to which they were linked, were in a sense the living encyclopedias of the culture - carrying and preserving ...
Read more

Hanscom - Lion's Gate Statue

        When we had class outside at Lion's Gate, we had a good discussion about the statue at the top of the hill. The statue commemorated a man who was responsible for making the space around it a place for the public to visit and enjoy. The statue was a very tall, geometric design of a man taming a horse with a bit in the horse's mouth on top. At the bottom of the sculpture, there are four sculptures of men holding different objects representing things we really value in American culture. One of the figures was holding a painter's palette with brushes to represent art, another figure was holding a compass with some paper to represent math/science, the third figure was holding an anvil to represent the trades that use this object for metalwork, and the fourth figure was holding a book by Homer to represent literature/storytelling. These four things represented the most important aspects of American culture at the time this sculpture was made.     ...
Read more