RSOC 9 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: Gift Offering, Passover
12 Dec 2018
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Hw week 4 livingston ch. 5 and mosha: religious rituals are community-approved series of ceremonial actions and verbal speech that are performed in a sacred way. This is important to study because rituals appeal to the whole-person, serving many essential psychological and social functions. Rituals can help establish your identity, routinize behavior, and reduce anxiety from uncertainty, disorder, or dislocation. Rituals are important to legitimize one"s belief, so to understand one"s belief, you must also understand their rituals. For example, initiation into adulthood for boys involve proving their physical prowess and hunting feats. This may involve purification procedures such as circumcision to signify the transition from childhood to mature adulthood. Performed to cure diseases or life problems by warding off supernatural forces with divine rituals. For example, in malaysia, a shaman would heal a person"s illness by somehow freeing the person"s soul from an evil spirit. Reflects the changing seasons, transition from daytime to nighttime, and times of harvest.
