At the end of the nineteenth century, Victorian anthropology and religious studies reached their intellectual peak in the study and interpretation of myth and ritual. Thus the questions 'what is myth' and 'what is ritual' merged into 'are they linked in any way?'
Ritual Before Myth or Myth Before Ritual
The Arabist William Robertson Smith stated that all ancient religions were founded on practice rather than on belief. Thus, in his opinion, ritual appeared before myth, which only gave a later explanation of the meaning of ritual. He denied that myth was binding in its vision of the world, as its meaning seemed to vary with its interpreters.
On the other hand, James Frazer in The Golden Bough had claimed the centrality of the myth of the god of vegetation in order to understand the meaning of the connected seasonal rituals. For him ritual came at a later stage, out of an original myth. For Harrison and Hooke, instead, myth and ritual arised and worked invariably together.
Later Considerations About the Myth - Ritual Relationship
What followed was a wide ranging application of the myth and ritual theory to the study of the ancient religions and literary genres. However, later on anthropologist Malinowski and religious scholar Eliade, though recognizing that myth used to sanction ritual practices, stated that it also sanctioned other social practices. In this way, the exclusive link between myth and ritual was broken.
Nonetheless, Eliade underlined the important function of ritual in enacting myth, thus fulfilling the latter's aim of carrying people back to a primeval time of closeness to the gods.
Anthropologist Kluckhohn thought that myth and ritual don't work necessarily together; but whether they work alone or not, their primary function would be that of relieving the individual or the community of anxiety. Girard and Burkert agreed on the fact that myth and ritual, when working together, reinforce each other and saw the origin of myth in sacrifice, which, in turn, derives from aggression.
The Structuralist View of Myth and Ritual
The most radical interpretation of myth and ritual was by structuralist anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. In his view, it is possible to work out the meanings and relationships of myths and rituals, by looking for 'binary oppositions' or contradictory features, which can be bridged by a third term, a transformation of the first two.
According to his analysis, not only the structure of myth is made up of binary oppositions. Also the relationship between myths and rituals is dialectical, but in a reverse manner: myths and rituals do not mirror but oppose each other.
This theory was subsequently rejected and most scholars today work either on myth or ritual, mantaining that they are independent from each other.
However, the question of the relation between myth and ritual, narrative and performance, belief and practice is still relevant to the study of many fields of human activity.
Source: Segal, Robert A. (ed.) The Myth and Ritual Theory. An Anthology. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell, 1998.
 |
