Chapter Review Questions (Primal Religions)

1.     They tend to come before the religious traditions.  Primal religions provide special insight into the mythic and ritual dimensions of religion. They have been traditions of non-literate people. Primal religions tend to be traditions of tribal peoples, organized in small groups, living in villages. Also, primal people tend to preserve a mythic orientation toward life, allowing them to retain power and sources of knowledge.

2.     The Dreaming and through it the Aborigines re-created their world as it existed in the beginning.  The Aborigines inhabit a mythic geography- a world in which every notable landmark, whether a hole or a cave is believed to have religious significance. They left behind symbols of their presence in the form of natural landmarks and rock paintings etc. The spiritual essence of the ancestors is also believed to reside within each individual.

3.     Natural landmarks, rock paintings etc.

4.     Totem is the natural form in which the Ancestor appeared in the Dreaming. Taboo dictates that certain things and activities, owing to their sacred nature are set-aside for specific members of the group and are forbidden to others.

5.     Rituals bring about symbolic death of childhood, which prepares the way for the spiritual rebirth that is necessary step toward adulthood. They are taught to young people in order for them to learn the essential truths about their world and how they are to act within it.

6.     The Aboriginal rituals originated through the Dieri tribe, located in South-central Australia. Their first initiation was with a nine-year-old boy and was for a symbolic death. They would knock out the lower two middle teeth and bury them.  Other rituals followed and were passed down to the Ancestors of the Aborigines.

7.     Initiation rituals were served to show that a young boy that was nine-years-old was becoming a man, through a series of challenges given to him. Initiation for the first one, served as a symbolic death and others served as a way to connect with his relatives. All of them together, allow him to officially become a man.

8.     The knocking of the two lower middle teeth and the boys back and neck being struck by wounds that were intended to leave scars.

9.     Western regions of Central Africa, in Nigeria, Benin and Togo.

10. Because they have maintained independence and that the god Orisha-nla began to first create the world.

11. They believe that reality is separated into two parts: heaven and earth. Heaven is invisible home to the gods and the ancestors. Earth is the world of normal experience, the visible home of human beings, who are descended from the gods.

12. The supreme god of the Yoruba tribe. He is believed to be the primary source of power in the universe.

13. The many deities that they worship. They function as mediators between Olorun and human beings.

14. Ogun is the god of iron and war. Esu contains both good and evil properties because he mediates between heaven and earth.

15. A mischievous supernatural being.

16. Family ancestors gain their supernatural status by earning good reputation and living to an old age. Defied ancestors were important human figures know throughout the Yoruba society.

17. Mediate between the gods and ancestors in heaven and the human beings on earth.

18. Determining/learning about one’s future. It is important because knowledge of one’s future is considered essential for how to proceed with one’s life.

19.  Humans came twenty-thirty thousand years ago and they migrated from Asia, crossing over the Bering Strait and spreaded out into areas of North America.

20. It serves as a model of the pan-Indian religion and representing the American Indian religion.

21. Lakota name for the supreme reality. Translated into “Great Spirit or the Great Mysterious.” Literally meaning “most sacred.”

22. The Lakota trickster figure, a mediator between the supernatural and human worlds.

23. Believe that four souls depart from a person at death, one that journeys along the “spirit path” of the Milky Way. The soul meets an old woman, who judges it and wither allows it to continue to the other world of the ancestors, or sends it back to earth as a ghost.

24. Spiritual power that will ensure greater success in activities such as hunting, warfare and curing the ill.

25. It is a dark and airtight hut made of saplings and covered with animal skins. It is intended to represent the universe. Heated stones are placed in the center and the medicine man or woman sprinkles water over them. The person sweats a lot leading to both spiritual and physical purification.

26. The person undergoing the vision quest experiences it towards the end of the trip. A message is often communicated along with the vision. When the individual returns to camp, the medicine man/woman interprets the vision and the message and influence the person’s life.

27. A sacred leader, usually a medicine man.

28. The center of the universe and the tree is the axis mundi for the Sun Dance.

29. Because they believe their bodies are the only things they truly own and offer their body mutilation as the only suitable sacrifice to offer to the Supreme Being.

30. They were highly developed civilization. Many Aztecs were urban, living in the city of Tenochtitlan or in one of the four hundred towns that spread across Mesoamerica. Like the primal religions, they predicated Catholicism and an interrelationship between myth and ritual.

31. Present day Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica.

32. Quetzalcoatl and the origin of the ancient cosmos are in Tenochtitlan.

33. He ruled as a priest king and was a role model for the Aztec in their own authority figures.

34. The sun they called it.  They thought the sun would be destroyed.

35. Understood it as having four quadrants extending outward from the center of the universe, which connected the earthly realm to the many-layered heavenly realm above and the underworld below.

36. Because of the potency of these divine forces, especially the head and heart.

37. The heart offered nourishment to the sun. The head was offered to the sky, warrior’s willingness ascends to the temple stairs in his acceptance of his role in sustaining the fragile cosmos.

38. The religion of the Aztecs.

39.  Through festive and spiritually meaningful rituals.

      40. The all-encompassing nature of religion. In primal societies the secular and the sacred are not separate. Rather, the universe is full of religious significance, and humans constantly draw on its sacred and life giving power.