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.
