The Myth-Ritualist Theory of Religion Author(s): Robert A. Segal Source: Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol.

19, No. 2 (Jun., 1980), pp. 173-185 Published by: Wiley on behalf of Society for the Scientific Study of Religion Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1386251 . Accessed: 20/10/2013 06:16
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Wiley and Society for the Scientific Study of Religion are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 134.58.253.30 on Sun, 20 Oct 2013 06:16:18 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Myth-Ritualist Theory of Religion

ROBERT A. SEGAL*

According to the myth-ritualist theory, religion is primitive science:through myth and ritual, which operate together and constitute its core, religion magically manipulatesthe world. Many of the leading theories of religion present alternative views of the relationshipand function of myths and rituals. Even if false, the myth-ritualist theory is valuable in suggesting aspects of religion which might otherwiseget overlooked.Similarly,charting its alternatives suggests other aspects of religion which might also be missed.

A common assumption in the social scientific study of religion is that theories of

religion are useful only insofar as they are true. Since most of the classic and contemporary social scientific theories of religion have proved at best moot and at worst false, they often get dismissed as worthless. Yet even when false they are valuable for being suggestive. They point out aspects of religion which might otherwise be overlooked. Whether or not Freud's theory, for example, exaggerates the place of sexuality in religion, it at least suggests a link between religion and sexuality. Whether or not Freud's own explanation of the link is correct, it at least prompts one to explain the link in some fashion. The myth-ritualist theory of religion is useful in the same way. In the first place, the theory, which will be described in detail, suggests exactly the importance of both myths and rituals in religion. Modern skepticism toward the two, especially toward rituals, has perhaps resulted in an underestimation of their significance, especially in modern religion. By making myths and rituals the heart of religion and by making rituals at least as important as myths, the theory compels one to reconsiderthe status of both - in modern as well as primitive religion. In the second place, the myth-ritualist theory challenges the ordinary assumption of a gap in religion between beliefs and practices. By incorporatingmyths into rituals, the theory suggests, by extrapolation, that beliefs and practices generally are more united than separate. Rather than leading to practice, belief becomes part of practice. In the third place, the myth-ritualist theory questions anew the relationship between religion and science. If the nineteenth century witnessed the clash between religion and science, the twentieth has supposedly witnessed their reconciliation. Religion and science, it is widely preached,are compatible - not because they coincide but because they run askew. Where, it is typically said, science explains the physical world, religion provides the "meaning of life." By treating religion as science, the myth-ritualist theory suggests that the two may in fact be rivals. Probably the best way to begin presenting the myth-ritualist theory is by describing its scientific-likeview of religion. There are really two theories of religion as scientific-like.The better known one, called the intellectualist theory, considers religion
*RobertA. Segal is a memberof the Departmentof Religion, Reed College.
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 1980, 19 (2):173-185

173

This content downloaded from 134.58.253.30 on Sun, 20 Oct 2013 06:16:18 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

174

JOURNALFORTHE SCIENTIFICSTUDY OF RELIGION

an explanation of the physical world. The myth-ritualist theory, the lesser known one, considers it a magical means of controlling the physical world. Other theories recognize that religion functions consciously for believers like science, but they concern themselves instead with the unconscious social, psychological, and anthropological functions served by religion. Both the intellectualist and the myth-ritualist theory focus on primitive religion, but they regard modern religion as only a pale variant of it. They mean, then, to be describing religion generally, to which modern science is the successor - the successor precisely because it serves the same functions as religion. For both theories, religion is primitive science. The main differencebetween religion and science is that religion - as either an explanation of the world or a means of controlling it - is false while science is true. If both theories deem religion and science as similar, their notions of religion (and so of science) differ sharply. The intellectualist theory views religion as an explanation, a wholly reflective, abstract, almost sublime phenomenon,the modern counterpart to which is scientific theory. Like philosophy for Aristotle, religion arises from wonder from a desire to explain one's experiences. It is composed almost entirely of beliefs, not practices. The myth-ritualist theory, by contrast, regards religion as a resolutely practical, concrete, almost mundane enterprise, to which the modern counterpart is technology. Religion here arises from necessity - above all, from the need for food for survival. The emphasis is on what religion accomplishes, not on what it says. The stress is on practice rather than belief, which is not so much ignored, the way practices are in the intellectualist theory, as subsumed. The classic exponent of the intellectualist theory is the anthropologist Edward Tylor. The primitive, according to Tylor, is intellectually curious, as eager to explain the world, as modern man. In order to explain two particular observations, the primitive first postulates human souls and then ascribes souls to all of nature. Eventually, he personifies the souls, which thereby become spirits, or gods, inhabiting all natural phenomena. Finally, he invents myths to explain their actions. The result is animism, which Tylor equates with religion: the belief in the personification of the physical world. In short, religion represents a response to strictly intellectual problems, not to social, psychological, or existential ones. The classic exponent of the myth-ritualistic theory is generally believed to be the anthropologist and classicist James Frazer. But Frazer in fact wavers inconsistently between the myth-ritualist theory and its Tylorean rival, to which he is also attracted (Ackerman,1975). He criticizes myth-ritualists for their theory (1921:xxvii, note 1) and is in turn often criticized by them. Far better representatives of the theory are thus Jane Harrison and Samuel Hooke, the leaders of the two main groups of mythritualists: the classicists and the Biblists. Their views are almost identical and constitute the purest form of myth-ritualism. Harrison and Hooke begin by pitting their theory of religion against Tylor's, which they attack for "over-intellectualizing"primitive man and primitive religion. Referring to the peoples of the ancient Near East, Hooke says that they "were not occupied with general questions concerning the world but with certain practical and pressing

This content downloaded from 134.58.253.30 on Sun, 20 Oct 2013 06:16:18 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

THEORYOF RELIGION MYTH-RITUALIST

175

problems of daily life. There were the main problems of securing the means of subsistence, to keep the sun and moon doing their duty, to ensure the regular flooding of the Nile. ... In order to meet these needs the early inhabitants of Egypt and Mesopotamia developed a set of customary actions directed towards a definite end" (1933: 2-3). Those actions were rituals. What Hooke says of the ancient Near East Harrison says of ancient Greece, and myth-ritualists collectively say of primitive man everywhere:rituals arose as a means of controlling the otherwise uncontrollableforces of nature. In ritual the desired end is acted out and thereby, it is believed, effected. Ritual works on the basis of what Frazer calls the "Law of Similarity": the magical belief that like produces like, the belief that the imitation of an action causes it to happen. Ritual does not manipulate nature directly. It manipulates the gods, who then manipulate nature. Men play the parts of the gods and imitate what they magically induce the gods to do. The principal ritual, the enactment of the death and rebirth of vegetation, is performed at New Year's, when the planting takes place. Because the gods control nature, the ritual corresponds to the myth of the death and rebirth of the god of vegetation, the chief god of the pantheon. The myth, and so the ritual, culminate in the god's triumphant restoration to power and marriage to the goddess of vegetation. Their intercourse - the planting of his seed in her - corresponds to the planting of seeds in the ground. By definition, all myth-ritualists presuppose that a relationshipof some kind exists between myth and ritual. They differ only over what the relationship is. For William Robertson Smith, myth is an explanation of ritual and arises after the magical meaning of ritual has been forgotten. For Harrison and Hooke, myth is the script of ritual and arises alongside it: "The primary meaning of myth," says Harrison, "is the spoken correlative of the acted rite, the thing done..." (1927: 328). The rectitation of the myth is as magically potent as the performanceof the ritual: "Together with the ritual," says Hooke, "and as an essential part of it there was always found ... the recitation of the story whose outlines were enacted in the ritual. This was the myth, and its repetition had equal potency with the performanceof the ritual" (1935: v). As firmly as Harrison and Hooke deny that myth is an explanation, they grant that it can become an explanation, as myth is from the start for Smith. Myth becomes explanatory, however, only once it has ceased being magical. Of this transformation Hooke says merely that "In the beginning the thing said and the thing done were inseparably united, although in the course of time they were divorced and gave rise to widely differing literary, artistic and religious forms" (1935: v-vi). Harrison speculates that primitive man eventually loses faith in the efficacy of ritual, yet continues to practice it. Seeking a reason for ritual, he finds it in the myth: "When the emotion that started the ritual has died down and the ritual though hallowed by tradition seems unmeaning, a reason is sought in the myth and it is regardedas aetiological" (1927: 16). For Hooke, the aetiological, or explanatory, function of myth is almost frivolous: "... the ritual myth which is magical in character, and inseparable from the ritual which is directed to certain fundamental needs of an early society, ... is older than the aetiological myth, which has no magical potency, and does not seem to satisfy any more fundamental need than curiosity" (1956: 43). For Harrison, the aetiological

This content downloaded from 134.58.253.30 on Sun, 20 Oct 2013 06:16:18 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

176

JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION

function is well-nigh degenerate: "When the Kouretes lose faith in their [ritualistic] power to rear a child yearly they go on uttering their myth, but they put it in the past and interpolate an explanatory conjunction markingthe decay of faith... " (1927:330). The difference between Harrison and Hooke's view of religion and Tylor's could not be more stark. Where for Tylor religion serves primitive man, and serves him admirably, as nothing but an explantion, for Harrison and Hooke religion has lost its true significance when it becomes an explanation. Criticisms of the myth-ritualist theory fall into two categories:those which criticize the application of the theory to particularreligions and those which criticize the theory itself.' Criticisms of the first kind, which are far less important here, deny that the theory fits either ancient Greek or ancient Israelite religion. Criticisms of the second kind deny that myths and rituals exist only in relationship to each other and that their primary function is magical. Numerous myths and rituals, it is argued, exist independently of each other and, together or apart, serve more than a magical function. In arguing that there is more to myths and rituals than magic, critics are arguing that there is more to religion than primitive science. The fate of the myth-ritualist theory has been mixed. On the one hand various theorists of religion have adopted it, and numerous literary critics have applied it to secular works, which they have interpreted as the outgrowth of myths once tied to rituals.2On the other hand most theorists of religion have rejected the theory, for one or more of the reasons cited, and even those who have accepted it have usually accorded it a minorplace in their schemes. Some of those who have rejected myth-ritualismhave nevertheless stressed the nonmagical links between myths and rituals. Others have emphasized the parallel functions served separately by myths and rituals. Still others have focused on either myth or ritual alone. It is as useful to describe the fate of the myth-ritualist theory as to describe the theory itself. Where attention to the theory illuminates aspects of religion, attention to the fate of the theory illuminates aspects of the theories of religion which have treated myth and ritual. In the first place, conceptions of myth and ritual elucidate the conceptions of religion held by theories of religion. For underlying every theory of religion is a fundamental conception of religion - for example, as intellectual or nonintellectual in nature, rational or irrational,spiritual or practical, helpful or harmful,private or public, and true or false. Because views of myth and ritual tend to carry to an extreme the views of religion they evince, they make those views clearerthan they might otherwise be. In the second place, theories of myth and ritual facilitate the comparison of theories of religion. Because theories do not merely explain the same religious phenomena differently but commonly explain different phenomena, a comparison is often difficult. Theories of myth and ritual focus on the same phenomenaand so permit clearercomparisons, even if, to be sure, not all theories deal with both myth and ritual
1. For both kinds of criticism see Bascom; Brandon; Fontenrose; Frankfort, 1948 and 1951; Kirk, 1970: 12-31 and 1974: ch. 10; and Snaith. 2. See, for example, Butler, Frye, Hyman, Ragland, and Weston.

This content downloaded from 134.58.253.30 on Sun, 20 Oct 2013 06:16:18 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

THEORYOF RELIGION MYTH-RITUALIST

177

- an absence which is itself most revealing. In the third place, theories of myth and ritual suggest that religion, for each of the theories, is a considerably unified phenomenon.For the theories cut across the typical division of religion into a variety of aspects - for example, Glock and Stark's by-nowstandard division of religion into experiential, ritualistic, ideological, intellectual, and consequential dimensions (1976: 18-38). Rather than distinguishing the ritualistic dimension from the others, the theories interpret ritual experientially, ideologically, intellectually, and consequentially. Similarly, they interpret myth not simply intellectually but experientially, consequentially, and (above all) ritualistically. Instead of having many dimensions, religion for each theory may have just one dimension, which shapes what become merely variant expressions of it. Among the leading theorists of religion, those who concentrate most on myth or ritual are Emile Durkheim, Bronislaw Malinowski, A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, Mary Douglas, and Claude Levi-Strauss. By contrast, theorists like Max Weber, Talcott Parsons, Robert Bellah, Peter Berger, E. E. Evans-Pritchard, and Clifford Geertz do not single out myth or ritual but instead subsume both under their analyses of religion overall. What they say of religion overall certainly applies to myth and ritual, but they themselves are not theorists of myth or ritual in particular,only of religion as a whole. Writing before Harrison and Hooke but after Robertson Smith, Durkheim says that myth arises following ritual in order to explain it: "In principle,the cult [ritual]is derived from the beliefs, yet it reacts upon them; the myth is frequently modelled after the rite in orderto account for it, especially when its sense is no longer apparent"(1965: 121). If myth is thus subordinate to ritual, ritual is in turn subordinate to general religious beliefs, which Durkheim most confusingly calls "mythology": "But the mythology of a group is the system of beliefs common to this group.... So the rite serves and can serve only to sustain the vitality of these beliefs, to keep them from being effaced from memory . . ." (1965: 419-220). Durkheim's subordination of ritual to belief does not disqualify him as a mythritualist, for no myth-ritualist denies, or could deny, that ritual presupposes some beliefs which account for its supposed efficacy. What does disqualify him is his allowance for myths existing apart from rituals. As he says, ". .. the myth is frequently," not always, "modelledafter the rite ..." (1965: 121). Likely, he allows for rituals existing apart from myths as well. Whatever the connection between myth and ritual, ritual for Durkheimis far more important than myth. For him the heart of religion is not the belief in god but the experience of god, and that experience occurs whenever the members of society amass to perform a ritual. The ritual serves both to inculcate and to renew belief: "In fact, whoever has really practised a religion knows very well that it is the cult which gives rise to these impressions of joy, of interior peace, of serenity, of enthusiasm which are, for the believer, an experimentalproof of his beliefs. The cult is not simply a system of signs by which the faith is outwardly translated;it is a collection of the means by which this is created and recreated periodically" (1965: 464). The experience of god serves, moreover,to spur "citizens" to obey the innumerable laws of society which are ascribed to that god. Securing obedience to society is exactly the function of religion for Durkheim. For Harrison and Hooke, religion is certainly a

This content downloaded from 134.58.253.30 on Sun, 20 Oct 2013 06:16:18 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

178

JOURNALFORTHE SCIENTIFICSTUDY OF RELIGION

social phenomenon, but its function is magical, not social: it serves to secure not obedience but crops, even if the survival of society depends on them. Conversely, religion for Durkheim may involve the magical manipulation of nature - his distinction between magic and religion is on other grounds - but its ultimate function is social. As different as their views are, both Durkheim and Harrison and Hooke regard religion as fundamentallypractical. Religion for both serves foremost to effect matters, not to explain them. Durkheim thus condemns Tylor's view of religion as uncompromisinglyas Harrison and Hooke do: "The theorists who have undertaken to explain religion in rational terms have generally seen in it before all else a system of ideas.... But the believers ... object to this way of regarding it.... The believer who has communicated with his god is not merely a man who sees new truths of which the unbeliever is ignorant; he is a man who is stronger. He feels within him more force, either to endure the trials of existence, or to conquer them" (1965: 463-464). Ritual produces that euphoric state. Writing a decade or more after Durkheim, Malinowski also rejects Tylor's intellectualist view of religion: "Tylor's view of primitive religion, important as it was, was based on too narrowa range of facts, and it made early man too contemplative and rational" (1948: 2). Where the function of religion for Harrison and Hooke is magical and for Durkheim social, for Malinowski it is both psychological and social. Where Durkheim considers myth less important than ritual, and where Harrison and Hooke consider it as important as ritual, Malinowski considers it more important than ritual. It serves, he says, to justify phenomena:"The myth comes into play when rite, ceremony, or a social or moral rule demands justification, warrant of antiquity, reality, and sanctity" (1948: 84-85). Myth justifies phenomena of diverse kinds: not only natural occurrences and catastrophes but also, for example, kinship systems, beliefs, morality, magic, and ritual. The survival of society depends on the continuing acceptance or practice of these phenomena. The justificatory function is thus ultimately a social one. Myth also justifies phenomena which are basically individual in nature and only coincidentally social: death, disease, and lesser unpleasantries of life. The justification provided for these phenomena serves the individual more than society and is therefore ultimately psychological. Whatever phenomena myth concerns, it justifies in a single, limited way: not by making them good but by making them unavoidable. Myth justifies phenomena by rooting them in the primordialactions of gods or men: "The function of myth, briefly, is to strengthen tradition and endow it with a greater value and prestige by tracing it back to a higher, better, more supernaturalreality of initial events" (Malinowski,1948: 122). Myth declares those events not proper or beneficial but only irrevocable. Myth says of human mortality, for example, that "The longed-forpower of eternal youth and the faculty of rejuvenation which gives immunity from decay and age, have been lost by a small accident which it would have been in the power of a child and a woman to prevent" (1948: 113-114).Myth does not rationalize the world. It pronounces the world not the best possible one but, in the wake of primordialevents, the only possible one. Still, it thereby makes the world more acceptable than it would otherwise be.

This content downloaded from 134.58.253.30 on Sun, 20 Oct 2013 06:16:18 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

MYTH-RITUALIST THEORYOF RELIGION

179

Despite the important though limited consolation that myth offers the individual, the obedience it gains for society is more important. Conversely, ritual is more important for the individual than for society. Rituals operate differently in magic and religion, but in both they arise mainly during emotional crises and serve to alleviate distress: "Let us start with the religious act par excellence, the ceremonialof death.... Never does an individual need the comfort of belief and ritual so much as in the sacrament of the viaticum.... These acts are directed against the overwhelming fear, against the corroding doubt, from which the savage is no more free than the civilized man. These acts confirm his hope that there is a hereafter, that it is not worse than present life; indeed, better. All the ritual expresses that belief, that emotional attitude which the dying man requires,which is the greatest comfort he can have in his supreme conflict. And this affirmation has behind it weight of numbers and the pomp of solemn ritual" (1948: 42). However different their functions, myth and ritual work in tandem. For Malinowski, as for Robertson Smith, myth serves to explain ritual and thereby, going beyond Smith, to justify it: "There is no important magic, no ceremony, no ritual without belief; and the belief is spun out into accounts of concrete precedent. The union is very intimate, for myth is not only looked upon as a commentary of additional information, but it is a warrant, a charter, and often even a practical guide to the activities with which it is connected" (1948: 85). Malinowski's inclusion of ritual among the phenomena explained and justified by myth does not, however, make him a true myth-ritualist. For myth serves to explain and justify not only ritual but, as noted, phenomenaof all kinds, in which case there are myths without rituals, even if there are no rituals without myths. Moreover,the final function of myth is not magical or even explanatory but, primarily,social - a function which has nothing to do with myth-ritualism.Nor is the final function of ritual magical but, primarily, psychological and so likewise has nothing to do with myth-ritualism. Even if he is not truly a myth-ritualist, Malinowski shares the anti-intellectualist stance of the myth-ritualists. For both, myth and ritual are not reflections on the world but means of coping with it, not evaluations of the world but responses to it. What is true of myth and ritual is true of religion overall. Radcliffe-Brown,a contemporaryof Malinowski's, opposes Tylor's cognitive view of religion no less forcefully than he. Denying "the hypothesis... most usually adopted by English writers on anthropology... that the beliefs of savage peoples are due to attempts on the part of primitive man to explain to himself the phenomena of life and nature" (1948: 232), he says that in actuality "The Andaman Islander has no desire to understand the processes of nature as a scientist would wish to do . .." (1948: 379). Because primitive man is indifferent to explaining the world, the function of primitive religion can hardly be explanatory. Rather, it is social and, in contrast to Malinowski's view, is exclusively social. Religion serves to instill support for society, and it does so through both myths and rituals. Rituals, or "ceremonials," instill social support by stirring social feelings, or "sentiments." In the fashion of Durkheim, rituals stir feelings of solidarity, good will, and dependence toward society itself: "... in the dance the individual feels the society acting upon him, constraining him to join in the common activity and regulate his

This content downloaded from 134.58.253.30 on Sun, 20 Oct 2013 06:16:18 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

180

JOURNALFORTHE SCIENTIFICSTUDY OF RELIGION

actions to conform with those of others, and, when he so acts in harmony with them, giving him the experienceof a great increase of his own personal force or energy" (1948: 326). Rituals also stir feelings of love and hate toward phenomena which have a positive or negative "social value," or impact on society: "[ I ]f the community did not mournwhen it lost one of its members, that feeling of the social value of individuals on which the existence of the society depends would soon diminish in strength, thereby weakening the social cohesion" (1948: 297). Where for Malinowski ritual prompts feelings toward phenomenawhich affect principallythe individual, for Radcliffe-Brown it prompts feelings toward phenomena which affect all society. Myths, which Radcliffe-Brown uses interchangeably with "legends," in part uphold society by similarly kindling feelings, positive or negative, toward phenomena with a social value: "The legends give us in the first place a simple and crude valuation of human actions.... The young men who failed to observe the rules laid down for those who have recently been through one of the initiation ceremonies were turned to stone .... The bad temper of one of the ancestors resulted in darkness covering the earth..." (1948: 398). Like a funeral ritual, a myth about death provokes feelings of loss for the dead - not, as for Malinowski, in order to alleviate personal anxiety but in order to impress on the living the value to society of every individual. Myths for Radcliffe-Brown bolster society in an additional way, however, and exactly the way in which they do so for Malinowski: by rooting phenomena in unalterable events of long ago and thereby justifying them. Myths "assume that if a force is once set into action it will continue to act indefinitely.... A cicada was crushed and cried out and the night came, and since then the darkness has come every evening as soon as the cicada sings" (1922: 385). Myths and rituals serve the same function, but they do not serve it together, as they do in part for Malinowski. Although Radcliffe-Brown does not rule out any "collaboration"between them, he mentions none. He is, then, no myth-ritualist of any kind. In contrast to Malinowski, Radliffe-Brown deems ritual more important than myth. For him, as for Durkheim, ritual is the heart of religion: "For example, it is sometimes held that funeral and mourning rites are the result of a belief in a soul surviving death.... I would rather hold the view that the belief in a surviving soul is not the cause but the effect of the rites.... My suggestion is that in attempting to understand a religion it is on the rites rather than on the beliefs that we should first concentrate our attention" (1952: 155). In this respect Radcliffe-Brownstands even further from Tylor than Malinowski. The function Radcliffe-Brownaccords myth and ritual evinces his unabashedly practical view of religion. The emotional side of religion fazes him as little as the intellectual side. Only the social side counts. For him, as for the other critics of Tylor, religion is a tool, and its utility, not its content, matters. In the last twenty years a reaction to the lopsided emphasis by all of these "functionalists" on the practical aspects of religion has inevitably developed, and intellecualist views have re-emerged.A preoccupation with the effect of religion has given way to a concern for its meaning as well. Among the leading contemporary theorists of religion the two who have concentratedmost on myth or ritual are Douglas

This content downloaded from 134.58.253.30 on Sun, 20 Oct 2013 06:16:18 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

THEORYOF RELIGION MYTH-RITUALIST

181

and Levi-Strauss - Levi Strauss dealing largely with myth and Douglas dealing almost wholly with ritual. Like her fellow theorists, Douglas begins by attacking her predecessors - not Tylor himself but his critics. She criticizes them for making a series of false assumptions: that the meaning of ritual is literal, that its function is magical, and that it is an exclusively primitive phenomenon.What she says of Frazer,whom she takes as a myth-ritualist, holds not only for Harrison and Hooke but, in its thrust, for Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown,and in part Durkheimas well: "It is not difficult to trace the idea that primitives expect their rites to have external efficacy. There is a comfortable assumption in the roots of our culture that foreigners know no true spiritual religion. On this assumption Frazer'sgrandiose descriptionof primitive magic took root and flourished. Magic was carefully separated from other ceremonial, as if primitive tribes were populations of Ali Babas and Aladdins, uttering their magic words and rubbing their magic lamps" (1966: 58). Because Douglas' opponents in fact regard modernreligion as only a derivative of primitive religion, her criticisms apply to their views of religion in general. The true meaning of ritual, contends Douglas, is symbolic, and its true function is intellectual: "The Dinka herdsman, hurrying home to supper, knots a bundle of grass at the wayside, a symbol of delay. Thus he expresses outwardly his wish that the cooking may be delayed for his return.The rite holds no magic promise that he will now be in time for supper. He does not then dawdle home thinking that the action will itself be effective. He redoubles his haste. His action has not wasted time, for it has sharpened the focus of his attention on his wish to be in time . . ." (1966: 63-64). The Dinka is not, in other words, trying to manipulate nature. He is trying instead to organize, or "frame," his experience by concentrating on the need to be home soon. When, similarly, primitive man performs a fertility rite, he is not seeking to produce good crops, as for Harrison and Hooke, or to unify society, as for Durkheim and Radcliffe-Brown, or to relieve anxiety, as for Malinowski. He is seeking to demarcate one season from another and thereby order his life. The ritual expresses not his feelings, as for Durkheim,Malinowski,and Radcliffe-Brown, but his beliefs - about the meaning of seasonal change: "Of course the Dinka hope ... that rain rituals will [magically] cause rain, healing rituals [magically] avert death, harvest rituals [magically]produce crops. But instrumental efficacy is not the only kind of efficacy to be derived from their symbolic action. The other kind is achieved in the action itself, in the assertions it makes .. ." (1966: 72). Because Douglas writes about rituals alone, she scarcely qualifies as a mythritualist. Whether or not she would say that myths serve the same function as rituals, the function rituals serve is for her no less indispensable, and in that respect no less practical, than magical, social, and psychological ones. The real difference between Douglas and her antagonists is that she concentrates on the meaning, not the effect, of ritual, if not of myth. For Harrison and Hooke, Durkheim, Malinowski, and Radcliffe-Brown, the meaning of myth or ritual is secondary. Its effect, on either society or the individual, is primary. The meaning is at most a means to that effect. For Douglas, the reverse is true. She certainly acknowledges that ritual has an effect - it organizes an individual's life and, when

This content downloaded from 134.58.253.30 on Sun, 20 Oct 2013 06:16:18 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

182

JOURNALFORTHE SCIENTIFICSTUDY OF RELIGION

practiced in common, organizes a society - but its meaning, the outlook it expresses, concerns her more. Just as Tylor is interested in myth as an explanation for its own sake, so Douglas is interested in ritual as an expression of, ultimately, a world view for its own sake. For her, ritual, and religion generally, serve to make a statement about human experience, not to make man feel better or act better. If ritual is a means to an end, the end is intellectual or, better, existential: the experience of an orderly world. Like Douglas, Levi-Strauss begins by criticizing Tylor's anti-intellectualist critics. What he says of Malinowski applies also to Harrison and Hooke, RadcliffeBrown, and in part Durkheim:". .. the feeling in Malinowski was that the thought of the people he was studying... was entirely, or is, determinedby the basic needs of life" (1978: 15). In fact, "... these people whom we usually consider as completely subservient to the need of not starving ... are perfectly capable of disinterested thinking; that is, they are moved by a need or a desire to understand the world around them, its nature and their society" (1978: 16). As close to Tylor as Levi-Strauss seems to be, he is actually most critical of him, but his criticism of Tylor - for regarding religion and especially myth as inferior science rather than a different brand of science - is less significant here than his praise of him for his intellectualist approach. Where for Tylor myth evinces the content of primitive thought, for Levi-Strauss myth evinces its structure. Myth reveals the way man thinks. According to Levi-Strauss, man thinks in the form of classifications and projects them onto the world. He thinks in the form of not just any classifications but, specifically, pairs of oppositions, which Levi-Strauss calls "binary oppositions." Not only myths and science, which Levi-Strauss treats as taxonomies, but all human activities display man's pairing impulse. Myth is distinctive because it not only expresses oppositions, which are equivalent to contradictions, but also resolves them: ". . . the purpose of myth is to provide a logical model capable of overcoming a contradiction..." (1955: 443). Myth resolves a contradiction "dialectically," by providing either a mediating middle term or an analogous, but more easily resolved, contradiction. Either tactic serves to narrowand thereby alleviate the contradiction, but neither fully resolves it. Like the contradictionsexpressed in other phenomena,those expressed in myth are of innumerable kinds. All, however, are apparently reducible to instances of the fundamental contradiction between "nature" and "culture," a contradiction which stems from the conflict man experiences between himself as an animal, and so a part of nature, and himself as a human being, and so a part of culture. That conflict is simply the projection onto the world of the oppositional character of man's mind. The Oedipus myth, for example, partly resolves an instance of the clash between nature and culture by noting that man is able to tolerate a parallel case of the clash: "Although the problem [i.e., the opposition] obviously cannot be solved [i.e., resolved], the Oedipus myth provides a kind of logical tool which, to phrase it coarsely, replaces the original problem .... By a correlationof this type [i.e., of the original opposition with an analogous one], the overrating of blood relations [nature]is to the underrating of blood relations [culture] as the attempt to escape autochthony [nature] is to the impossibility to succeed in it [culture]"(1955: 434).

This content downloaded from 134.58.253.30 on Sun, 20 Oct 2013 06:16:18 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

MYTH-RITUALIST THEORYOF RELIGION

183

Other myths, however, fail to resolve oppositions to even this extent. They show instead that any alternative arrangementis worse. The Tsimshian myth of Asdiwal, for example, serves "to justify the shortcomings [i.e., the contradictions] of reality, since the extremie[i.e., alternative]positions are only imagined in orderto show that they are untenable" (1967: 30). In whatever way myth remedies the oppositions it expresses, it serves to justify man's experience of the world, and to justify it in the fullest sense of the term. Myth shows that the world is better than it seems, not (as for Malinowski)that it is simply venerable and unalterable.Myth justifies death, for instance, by demonstrating that it is superior to immortality: ". . . death could in fact be much closer, or, on the other hand, much farther off. If death were considerably closer, all would be chaos and disorder. The Indians of North America explain this by saying that if death did not exist, the earth would become overpopulated and there would not be room for everyone" (1972: 74). In justifying death myth partly resolves the opposition between it and life. Like Douglas, Levi-Strauss concentrates more on the meaning of myth than on the effect. Like Douglas he certainly notes the effect of myth but is more concernedwith its meaning, which for him is the expression of human thinking. Indeed, even the effect of myth is for him scrupulously intellectual. The justification myth provides the resolution of a logical or mathematical puzzle, not of an emotional or, as for Douglas, existential predicament.Surely the history of the interpretationof myth and ritual (and religion generally) has come full circle. In calling his interpretation of myth "structuralist" Levi-Strauss intends to distinguish it from "narrative"interpretations, by which he means those which adhere to the chronology, or plot, of a myth. He alone dispenses with the plot, or "diachronic dimension," of myth and locates its meaning in the structure, or "synchronic dimension." Where the plot of a myth - say, event A leads to event B, which leads to event C, which leads to event D - the structure, which is identical with the expression and resolution of contradictions, is either that events A and B constitute an opposition mediated by event C or that events A and B, which constitute the same opposition, are to each other as events C and D, an analogous opposition, are to each other. Put another way, every myth contains a series of oppositional sets, each composed of a pair of oppositions resolved one way or the other. The relationship among the sets matches that among the elements within each set. Rather than set one's leading to set two, which leads to set three, which leads to set four, either set three mediates the opposition between set one and set two, or set one is to set two as set three is to set four. A myth has the same relationship to other myths that its parts have to one another. Its meaning lies not in itself but in its "dialectical" relationship with two or three other myths, and the set composed of those three or four myths represents the "transformation" rather than the consequence of its predecessor. Finally, myths collectively have the same relationship to other human phenomena - for example, to political and kinship systems - that individual myths have to one another. Although Levi-Strauss devotes far less attention to rituals than to myths, he does interpret rituals in the same way that he interprets myths. They serve to express and

This content downloaded from 134.58.253.30 on Sun, 20 Oct 2013 06:16:18 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

184

JOURNALFORTHE SCIENTIFICSTUDY OF RELIGION

resolve the contradictions man experiences between nature and culture. Levi-Strauss does not go so far as to say that myths and rituals operate together, but he does say that they have the same dialectical relationship to each other that groups of myths have to one another and that groups of rituals have to one another. Just as his interpretation of myths and rituals separately marks a return to the intellectualist emphasis of Tylor, so his interpretation of the connection between myths and rituals marks a return to the emphasis of Harrison and Hooke on their conjunction, though now in a structuralist form: "The current theory, according to which a [chronological, nonstructuralist]term-to-termcorrespondenceexists between two orders (whetherthe rite acts out the myth, or the myth explicates the rite), is reducible to the particular case of a more general [structuralist] relation. The study of individual cases makes myths and rites appear as different transformations of identical elements" (1976: 65-66). This survey of theories of myth and ritual shows the range of alternatives to the myth-ritualist view of myths and rituals. Even if all of these alternatives prove false, they, like the myth-ritualist view itself, still serve to suggest the importanceof myths and rituals in understanding both religion and theories of religion.

REFERENCES Ackerman,Robert 1975 "Frazer on myth and ritual." Journal of the History of Ideas 36: 115-134. Bascom, William 1970 "The myth-ritual theory." Journal of AmericanFolklore 70: 103-114. Brandon,S. G. F. 1958 "The myth and ritual position critically considered."In Hooke, 1958: ch. 9. Butler, E. M. 1948 The Myth of the Magus. New York: Macmillan. Douglas, Mary 1966 Purity andDanger.London:Routledgeand Kegan Paul. 1970 Natural Symbols. First ed. New York: Pantheon. Durkheim,Emile 1965 The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. Tr. Joseph Ward Swain. New York: Macmillan. First published in English in 1915. Fontenrose,Joseph 1966 The Ritual Theory of Myth. Folklore Studies No. 18. Berkeleyand Los Angeles: University of California. Frankfort,Henri
1948 1951 Kingship and the Gods. Chicago:

Frazer,James G. 1911- The Golden Bough. Third ed. 12 vols. 1915 London:Macmillan.First ed: 1890. 1921 Introductionto Apollodorus,The Library. Tr. Frazer. Loeb Classical Library. London:Heinemann. Frye, Northrop 1957 Anatomy of Criticism. Princeton: PrincetonUniversity. Glock, CharlesY. and Rodney Stark
1965 Religion and Society in Tension. Chicago:

University of Chicago.
The Problem of Similarity in Ancient Near Eastern Religions. Frazer Lecture, 1950.

Oxford:Clarendon.

Rand McNally. Harrison,Jane E. 1905 The Religion of Ancient Greece. London: Constable. 1913 Ancient Art and Ritual London:Williams and Norgate. 1921 Epilegomena to the Study of Greek Cambridge: Cambridge Religion. University. 1922 Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion. Third ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University. First ed: 1903. 1927 Themis.Seconded. Cambridge: Cambridge University. First ed.: 1912. Hooke, Samuel H. 1933 Ed.: Myth and Ritual London: Oxford University. 1935 Ed.: The Labyrinth.London:SPCK. 1938 The Origins of Early Semitic Ritual Schweich Lectures, 1935. London:Oxford University.

This content downloaded from 134.58.253.30 on Sun, 20 Oct 2013 06:16:18 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

MYTH-RITUALIST THEORYOF RELIGION 1956 The Siege Perilous. London:SCM. 1958 Ed.: Myth, Ritual and Kingship. Oxford: Clarendon. Hyman, Stanley Edgar 1962 The TangledBank. New York:Atheneum. Kirk, Geoffrey S. 1970 Myth. Sather Classical Lectures No. 40. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California. 1974 The Nature of Greek Myths. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books. Levi-Strauss,Claude 1955 "The structuralstudy of myth."Journalof AmericanFolklore 68: 428-444. 1963 Structural Anthropology (Structural Anthropology I). Trs. ClaireJacobson and Brooke Grundfest Schoepf. New York: Basic Books. 1967 "The myth of Asdiwal." Tr. Nicholas Mann, in Edmund Leach, ed., The Structural Study of Myth and Totemism, 1-47. A. S. A. Monographs,No. 5. London: Tavistock. 1969 Introduction to a Science of Mythology. Trs. John and Doreen Weightman. 1973 Vol. I: TheRaw and the Cooked(1969).Vol. II: From Honey to Ashes (1973). New York:Harper.

185 1976 Structural Anthropology II. Tr. Monique Layton. New York:Basic Books. Malinowski,Bronislaw 1948 Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays. Robert Redfield,ed. Glencoe, Il.: Free Press. "Magic, science and religion" (pp. 1-71)first publishedin 1925;"Myth in primitive psychology" (pp. 72-124) first publishedin 1926. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, 1948 TheAndamanIslanders.Glencoe,Ill.: Free Press. First publishedin 1922. 1952 Structure and Function in Primitive Society. Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press. Raglan, Lord 1936 The Hero. London:Methuen. Smith, William Robertson 1889 Lectures on the Religion of the Semites. Edinburgh:Black. Snaith, NormanH. 1947 The Jewish New Year Festival. London: SPCK. Tylor, EdwardB. 1913 Primitive Culture.Fifth ed. 2 vols. London: Murry.First ed.: 1871. Weston, Jessie L. 1920 From Ritual to Romance. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity.

This content downloaded from 134.58.253.30 on Sun, 20 Oct 2013 06:16:18 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions