Religions 5: Myth and Ritual

1. Religions 5: Myth and Ritual

2. A. Simple Rituals1. Ritual • Ritual = repetitive, representational behaviour that often has to be decoded • Simple rituals: prayers, processions, sacrifices • Elaborate rituals: rites of passage and cyclical rites

3. Prayer • Invocation; attention; request • Difference with modern, Christian prayer: • Praise + honour vs. gratitude • Standing with raised hands vs. kneeling • Loud vs. silent • Often involved singing (hymns)

4. Processions • Solemn, religious parade • Different types: parading of sacrificial victim, marriage procession, in memory of the fallen, sometimes with cult statue • Could have symbolic/political aspect, e.g. Panathenaea in Athens

5. Animal sacrifice • Location within social order/pantheon also reflected in victims: most gods received goats/sheep/cattle, but ‘off-centre’ gods Dionysus and Demeter pigs, Aphrodite birds, Ares a dog • Karl Meuli > Burkert(Homo necans, 1983): hunters; feelings of fear and guilt, but cannot generalize from Dipolieia • Vernant: Greek context; killing not main part of sacrifice; only meat for visitors, but too practical and secular • Both approaches have merits but are too reductive: unease and complex religious act

6. B. Elaborate rituals • Rites of transition vs. cyclical rites: cyclical occurred regularly, rites of transition only incidentally (marriage, adulthood, acceptance in cult) • Rites of transition (initiation): rituals marking transition from one age group to another, from unmarried to married, into a special religious cult (mystery cults) Modern examples? Big names: Burkert, Graf, Bremmer

7. Example of Crete: Men’s clubs (andreia): young men obedient >agela ‘herds of horses’ > Ekdysia: taking off clothes, naked, then putting them on again as men Cf. Achilles before Troy

8. Cyclical rituals • Anthesteria: three days in Anthesterion (February); new wine: • Day 1: Pithoigia (opening of wine jars): new wine, tasted • Day 2: Choes (jugs): reversal, chewing of buckthorn, temples closed, doors smeared with pitch; jugs brought to drink unmixed wine in silence; slaves • Day 3: Chytroi (pots): eating of stew

9. Panathenaea • Similarity to New Year’s festivals in other civs (new grain/wine/harvest), cf. Choiak festival in Egypt; though Athens had its own New Year’s festival: Panathenaea • Corn fest in month Hekatombaion/July • Two months of festivals marking the transition from old to new year; amnesty, trials cannot proceed;

10. Arrephoria • Nocturnal festival • two chosen girls; end of priestly service of arrhephoroi (who have worked on dress for Athena all year) • natural underground (cave!) dedicated to Aphrodite • take with them baskets with something that is wrapped in • Connected to the myth of Erechtheus (daughters of Kekrops)

11. Skiria • Nine days later • Priests from Akropolis (priest of Poseidon, priestess of Athena, priests of Helios and Erechtheus) go to Skiron • Skiros companion of E. • Women’s festival

12. Kronia • 12th day of month Hekatombaion (July) • slaves are invited to join in luxurious banquet • run through city and make noise • reversion to the era of Kronos when present order was not yet established

13. Synoikia • 16th of Hekatombaion • Commemoration of Synoikismos (the unity of villages Attika into state Athens by Theseus according to myth) • sacrifice to Eirene on Akropolis • definition of state: women and slaves are set back into their proper place (ahum…)

14. Panathenaea • New Year’s festival • begins in night: new fire is brought at sunrise • From 566 onwards, every 4 years Great Panathenaea: with panhellenic chariot games • procession from Dipylon Gate on Sacred Way to Akropolis • Athena in Parthenon is offered new robe (peplos) • Appropriate animals are slaughtered (sheep and cattle): more than 100 of them!

15. 1 m high, 160 m long, 12 m above ground: procession (Panathenaea)

24. Myth • Connection with fertility: Frazer, Golden Bough (1890); Nilsson, Geschichte der griechischen Religion • Since 1960s: Burkert and Vernant • Myths are: - traditional • of collective importance • Transferable from one society to next • Mostly oral Definition: myths are performances of traditional plots relevant to society

25. Oriental influences • Cosmic stories and stories about gods: division of world (Iliad) • Also motifs, e.g. sacrifice on roof (Odyssey) • Myth of Bellerophon: wife of Proitos becomes in love with him, B. rejects her, wife seeks revenge (which parallel story in East?); P. sends letter to father-in-law, asking him to kill B. (which story?)

26. Athens, 425-420 BCE

27. Myths are more than just a story; they have a message and as such inform us about how the Greeks perceived the world • E.g. myth of Meleager

28. Myth and ritual a. Myth influences ritual; e.g. appropriation of Oidipous by Athens (Colonus) b. Ritual influences myth: Perseus/Theseus fighting with Medusa/Minotaur have background in initiation rites c. paripassu: Kronos; Golden Era but also lawless; same as in rites, connected to agriculture, old - new

29. Differences • What is realistic and irreversible in myth, is symbolic and reversible in ritual e.g. women of Lemnos b. Myth is selective c. Myth bestows significance on ritual and ascribes meaning to it d. Myths can incorporate motifs from other myths and be removed from ritual basis